A film festival brings Japanese classics to Monterey, reviving an old tradition.

Japanese anime is doing well at box offices and on streaming services. Series are being picked up sometimes years after the original release for the pleasure of Western audiences. And traditional cinema is receiving acclaim. In 2021, the drama Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi won Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.

“It’s a pleasure to see it happen,” says Chihiro Tabata, curator for the Japanese Film Festival, a series of screenings at the Japanese American Citizens League Hall. The festival is part of the 100th anniversary of the Japanese American Citizen League of the Monterey Peninsula and its building, which can welcome up to 100 audience members.

The Hidden Fortress (1958) by Akira Kurosawa was already screened, but five more movies will be shown on selected Saturdays until June. The next one in line is a 1985 comedy titled Tampopo, about a search for the perfect ramen recipe.

The tradition of showing Japanese films at the JACL Hall is impressive. According to Tabata, movies had been screened in Monterey even before WWII. Tabata’s father witnessed local Japanese film screenings in the ’50s and ’60s, and the trend, despite slowing down, lasted until the 1990s.

“The audiences were diverse,” she adds. “They served hot dogs and Japanese rice crackers.”

Another movie on the program is Like Father, Like Son, a family drama by Hirokazu Kore-eda, who is known to Western audiences as the director of Shoplifters from 2018, a movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Kore-eda’s 2013 production is another commentary on class and income inequality in Japan. In Like Father, Like Son, we meet two families – one wealthy, one poor – who learn their sons had been accidentally switched in the hospital, years ago.

“One thing I like about Japanese cinema is multigenerational dramas and the fact we have so many actors representing older ages,” Tabata says, recommending Touch, the final movie in the series which takes on the subject of love later in life. “That’s because Japan is an aging society with a big aging audience.”

TAMPOPO screens 5pm Saturday, Jan. 31. Japanese American Citizens League Hall, 424 Adams St., Monterey. Free; donations accepted. (831) 648-8830, jaclmonterey.org. Japanese Film Festival takes place on selected Saturdays through June 6.