Motoharu Jônouchi

A popular poet, Goku, becomes depressed when his editor jokingly suggests that he is a sell-out.

It’s said that people die twice. The first death is a physical one and the second, true death comes when there is no one to remember that person.

This extraordinary documentary is an unflinching record of the workers’ struggle during Japan’s economic rebirth in the 1980s, centered on Tokyo’s Sanya “yoseba”—a slum community dating from the 19th century where day laborers lived in terrible conditions while they sought work.

The Stormy Times is a collection of three short films created as a series of visual poems (Dream Running, Grasshopper’s One-Game Match, andWe Can Hear Joe’s Poem). Katsu Kanai screened this films together, along with extra documentary footage, as a memorial to his friend Jônouchi Motoharu.