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Considered by some to be the Japanese equivalent of Rebel Without a Cause, Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit has long been one of my favorite movies (see View My Complete Profile near the bottom of this page). It is a 1956 film based on the novel, Season of the Sun, by Ishahara Shintaro (born 1932), which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1955. It is about the "Sun Tribe", which was a discontented-youth culture in 1950's Japan.
What I didn't know was that one of the film's stars was the brother of Ishihara Shintaro, Ishihara Yujiro (1934-1987). I also didn't know that Ishihara Yujiro became an icon of 1950's and 1960's Japanese films, and achieved a status in Japan much like that of James Dean in the United States. I also didn't know that since 1999 Ishihara Shintaro has been governor of Tokyo.
Here's the Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow blog about The Top Ten Films that Changed Japanese Cinema; Crazed Fruit is number six.
Here's an interview on FORA.tv with Donald Richie, writer, journalist, and a leading authority on Japanese films.
