Special Series

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The Hunter’s Diary

猟人日記

Directed by: Kō Nakahira 
1964 / 123 minutes / Unclassified 15+

Combing the silhouetted streets of Tokyo: a labyrinthian film noir

When a young woman he once seduced is reported dead by suicide, Ichirō Honda assumes the incident to be a pure coincidence with no correlation to his past contact with her. But with the sinister death of another past ‘prey’, a paralysing fear possesses him on his late-night escapades shadowing women. As death trails innocent lives behind him, Ichirō, in a seemingly bizarre twist of events, turns from stalker into the one being stalked.  

Brought out in 1964 amongst a string of memorable Nakahira releases, The Hunter’s Diary swings expansively towards Japan’s post-war cinematic obsession with film noir. Co-starring the novelist Masako Togawa, on whose book the narrative is based, the film’s opening sequence of scientific imagery eerily foreshadows the darker moods to come.  

With mystery crime underpinnings that take us into the shady bars and underground bathhouses of a city awake by night, this suspenseful feature is a shrewd and psychologically thrilling examination of personal, social and legal morality.