A Stranger in Shanghai

International Premiere

A special FREE screening presented by NHK WORLD-JAPAN

Q&A with Taku Kato & Natsuko Katsuta

Director: Taku Kato

Executive Producer: Natsuko Katsuta

Starring: Ryuhei Matsuda, Takashi Okabe, Kim Scar

Synopsis:

Almost a century ago, Shanghai was a city in the midst of major turmoil. Under the foreign concessions, its citizens suffered extreme poverty and exploitation at the hands of the domineering Western European countries and Japan. During his career, Ryunosuke Akutagawa travelled to Shanghai as a newspaper correspondent and became acquainted with the men who were living the revolution and the women of the brothels who were soundly living through the revolution. Akutagawa, now a synonym for Japanese literature, is known for his masterpiece Rashomon, which was later made into a classic film by one of Japan’s most important and influential film directors, Akira Kurosawa. This drama, which is largely based on Akutagawa’s Shanghai Yuki (A report on the journey of Shanghai), delicately interlaces the realities of China at the time with the writer’s literary universe.