Connor Jessup on Seijun Suzuki’s TOKYO DRIFTER | POP JAPAN | TIFF 2023

Seijun Suzuki superfan Connor Jessup on where to get started on the prolific director’s work. Tasked with making a vehicle for actor-singer Tetsuya Watari to croon the title song, Suzuki concocted Tokyo Drifter (1966)’s crazy yarn about a reformed yakuza on the run from his former comrades. The film features an escalating series of playful musical numbers and over-the-top fight scenes. Popping with garish colours, self-parodic style, and avant-garde visual design, Tokyo Drifter embodies a late-1960s zeitgeist in which camp and high art joyfully commingle. POP Japan is a series celebrating the convergence of the cult, pulp, and popular in Japanese film and art, running at TIFF Bell Lightbox from May 10 to June 27. POP Japan includes three film series: Seijun Suzuki, marking the iconoclast director’s centenary with six newly restored 35mm prints; World of Anime, a survey of Japan’s most influential anime, co-curated by Yuki Ohsawa; and Miyazaki Spotlight, a four-film ode to the “godfather of anim