Donald Richie

Tokyo rising: how Japan’s new wave rose – and broke

In the 1960s Tokyo became the world’s largest city – as well as its most prosperous. But beneath the economic good times Japan’s youth were agitating for change – and with them a new generation of filmmakers broke away from the studio system to produce exciting, socially challenging work. Donald Richie tells the story of Japan’s new wave and its many triumphs in this feature originally published in our October 2001 issue.