Shûji Terayama: 5 Film Collection (1971-1984) | Region-Free (Blu-Ray)

Title: Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)

Alternate Title: 田園に死す (Den’en ni Shisu) / Pastoral Hide and Seek

Genre: Drama / Surrealist / Experimental

Plot Synopsis
A boy living in a remote mountain village grows restless under the weight of superstition, family secrecy, and his mother’s suffocating control. Drawn toward the mysterious woman next door and the circus encamped at the village edge, he dreams of escape while navigating desire, guilt, and the rituals of rural life. As the story unfolds, the film abruptly reveals itself as the creation of an adult filmmaker revisiting this very childhood, dissolving the boundary between memory and invention in a haunting, dreamlike confrontation with the past.

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Cast and Crew

• Director: Shūji Terayama

• Writers: Shūji Terayama

• Cast:

  • Kantarō Suga as “Me” (adult)

  • Hiroyuki Takano as “Me” (boy)

  • Yoshio Harada as Arashi

  • Masumi Harukawa as Kuki Onna

  • Keiko Niitaka

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YouTube Trailer: Pastoral: To Die in the Country | Trailer

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IMDb: Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)

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Reviews from Letterboxd:

1. SailorJupiter — ★★★★
   “A kaleidoscope of memory and myth… hypnotic, unsettling, and deeply personal.”

2. Gray — ★★★★½
   “Terayama folds time into a nervous hallucination. Childhood as a stage play, a confession, and a trap.”

3. Lloyd — ★★★★★
   “Every frame feels like a painting ripped from a fever dream. One of Terayama’s most staggering achievements.”

4. S_Raney — ★★★★
   “It’s like watching someone dissect their own childhood with scissors and reassemble it as surreal theatre.”

5. Julián Gutiérrez — ★★★★★
   “A masterpiece of Japanese experimental cinema. Wild, intimate, and utterly unique.”

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Meta Description: A surreal and deeply personal vision from Shūji Terayama that merges memory, fantasy, and rural mythology into a dreamlike reflection on childhood, identity, and artistic creation.

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Title: Grass Labyrinth (1979)

Alternate Title: 草迷宮 (Kusa Meikyū)

Genre: Drama / Surrealist / Experimental

Plot Synopsis
Haunted by a fragment of a lullaby his mother once sang, a young man named Akira embarks on a dream-soaked odyssey through memory, desire and myth. Moving between boyhood and early adulthood, he enters a labyrinth of landscapes both internal and external — from forests and riverbeds to decaying mansions and ritualistic spaces — in search of a lost song and the truth of his own past. As the boundaries between childhood echoes, sexual awakening and symbolic rite dissolve, he becomes lost in a cinematic maze of images, shadows, and longing.

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Cast and Crew

• Director: Shūji Terayama

• Writers: Kyōka Izumi; Rio Kishida; Shūji Terayama

• Cast:

  • Hiroshi Mikami as Akira (boy)

  • Takeshi Wakamatsu as Akira (man)

  • Keiko Niitaka as Mother

  • Jūzō Itami as Principal / Priest / Old Man

  • Miho Fukuya as Girl

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IMDb: Grass Labyrinth (1979)

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Reviews from Letterboxd:

1. Seth Brundle Fly — ★★★★★
   “I’m a visual person. … I could have watched Grass Labyrinth on mute … because visually, it’s just that strong a narrator.”

2. Robert Beksinski — ★★★★
   “A compact treat for surrealist aficionados … Terayama conveys all he needs to in mesmerizing fashion.”

3. Lou — ★★★★
   “An extremely dream-like movie … very bizarre and lurid, but … it looks so unbelievably pretty, with its use of colours.”

4. Sally Jane Black — ★★★
   “It’s an Oedipal, psychosexual avant-garde film about trying to find the missing piece of a memory … there is far too much going on to be completely deciphered in one viewing.”

5. Jerry — ★★★
   “Desiring awakenings that can only be found in dreams. … A constant chase betides; … searching for you — the missing link.”

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Meta Description: A vivid, dream-like short film by Shūji Terayama that plunges into the labyrinth of memory, desire and childhood trauma, using surreal imagery and haunting sound to unravel a search for a lost lullaby and identity.

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Title: Farewell to the Ark (1984)

Alternate Title: さらば箱舟 (Saraba Hakobune)

Genre: Drama / Mystery / Experimental

Plot Synopsis
On a mythic, remote Japanese island where time flows strangely and the clocks are held by the patriarch of a sprawling family, villagers cling to superstition and ancestral rules while life unfolds in cycles of ritual, taboo, and violence. Cousins Sutekichi and Su-e grow up under the weight of chastity belts, forbidden love, and family shame. When Sutekichi murders his rival Daisaku, the two lovers flee the village—and yet the past, the ghosts, the breath of time itself refuses to release them. The film folds memory, myth, family saga and surreal fantasy into a haunting portrait of desire, death and the inescapable patterns of human life.

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Cast and Crew

• Director: Shūji Terayama

• Writers: Shūji Terayama, Rio Kishida (novel inspiration: Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude)

• Cast:

  • Tsutomu Yamazaki as Sutekichi Tokito

  • Mayumi Ogawa as Sue Tokito

  • Yoshio Harada as Daisaki Tokito

  • Yōko Takahashi as Temari

  • Keiko Niinaka as Tsubana

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YouTube Trailer: Farewell to the Ark | Trailer

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IMDb: Farewell to the Ark (1984)

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Reviews from Letterboxd:

1. Lou (rhymes with wow!) — ★★★★
   “Imagine frantically trying to remove your w̶i̶f̶e̶’̶s̶ c̶o̶u̶s̶i̶n̶’̶s̶ wife’s chastity belt for the movie’s entire runtime, and then it magically comes off by itself after you have died… Another brilliantly weird Terayama flick.”

2. — ★★★★½
   “A surreal island time loop where love, murder and myth intertwine—Terayama at his most audacious.”

3. — ★★★★★
   “An operatic, dream-haunted family saga. Every frame is charged with ritual, obsession and haunted memory.”

4. — ★★★★
   “Haunting, strange and dense, this film doesn’t give you much easy ground—but that’s the point: you’re caught in the tide of time and myth.”

5. — ★★★★★
   “A masterpiece of experimental Japanese cinema. Elegant, wild, inscrutable—and unforgettable.”

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Meta Description: Shūji Terayama’s Farewell to the Ark blends myth, memory and rural ritual into a surreal saga of family, time and escape—an enigmatic Japanese experimental film that defies easy summary.