ACF 085: Plains Wanderer @ Japan Society

Plains Wanderer / Daisogen no wataridori

1960, 83 min., 35mm, color
Directed by Buichi Saito

With Akira Kobayashi, Ruriko Asaoka, Joe Shishido

Tomorrow, Friday March 14, 2008 at 7:30 pm, New Yorkers will get their first opportunity to see this famous "Eastern-Western" from Nikkatsu Studios with English subtitles. Its one of the nine films in the Wanderer series that were made from 1959 - 1962.

Akira Kobayashi (Kanto Wanderer, Black tight Killers, Bloody Territories) is Taki, a horse-riding, guitar playing, fringed leather jacket wearing wanderer. He travels through Hokkaido with a young boy who's been abandoned by his mother and fights a developer who wants to turn land belonging to the Ainu into an airstrip. The landowner's niece provides the love interest.


Plains Wanderer is one of the eight films in Japan Society's inaugural Monthly Classics series NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema. The series has been curated by author and critic Mark Schilling, who has written a book with the same title. Among his other works are The Yakuza Movie Book - A Guide To Japanese Gangster Films, which I can - and do - highly recommend.

I've seen some of the previous films in the series, though I unfortunately haven't had a chance to review them yet. But I can say that they've all been fun films, quite entertaining and uniformly enjoyable. I'm sure that will also prove to be the case with Plains Wanderer.

For more information @ the Japan Society website about the Plains Wanderer screening, or to buy tickets, click here.

For the Plains Wanderer trailer @ YouTube, click here.