Grass Labyrinth

Grass Labyrinth (草迷宮, Kusa meikyū) is a Japanese film directed by Shūji Terayama which was released in France in 1979 and in Japan in 1983.

Grass Labyrinth
Kusa Meikyū (草迷宮)
Directed by	Shūji Terayama
Starring	Juzo Itami
Distributed by	Toei Company (Japan)
Release dates	1979 (1979) (France) November 12, 1983 (1983-11-12) (Japan)
Running time	40 minutes
Countries	France Japan
Language	Japanese

Plot

A surreal excursion into a young man's subconscious as he searches for the words to a tune that his mother may have sung to him as a child. The dreamlike images culminate in a scene of a girl's naked body covered with calligraphic characters.^[1]

Cast

• Hiroshi Mikami as Akira (as a boy)
• Takeshi Wakamatsu as Akira (as a man)
• Keiko Niitaka as Mother
• Juzo Itami as Principal / Priest / Old man
• Miho Fukuya as Girl
• Masaharu Satō

Release

Grass Labyrinth was originally one of the installments in a French movie package called Private Collections, the other two sections being directed by Walerian Borowczyk and Just Jaeckin, both associated with avant-garde films with strong sexual content. Grass Labyrinth was the longest of the three and was later (1983) released as a separate film in Japan.^[1]

Awards and nominations

8th Hochi Film Award^[2]

• Won: Best Actor – Juzo Itami

References

1. Sharp, Jasper (2008). Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Guildford: FAB Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-903254-54-7.
2. 報知映画賞ヒストリー (in Japanese). Cinema Hochi. Archived from the original on 2011-03-25. Retrieved 2010-01-25.

External links

• Grass Labyrinth at IMDb
• 草迷宮 at the Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)