CINEMA FROM THE WORLD
Suzuki Seijun's - Taisho Trilogy
"(The Taisho Trilogy) are amazing films set in a '20s decadent artistic milieu, full of identity confusion, sensuality and eroticism, teasing enigmas, and a total blurring of the border between reality and fantasy."
- Senses of Cinema
Maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki spent the 60s concocting astonishing masterpieces of yakuza psychedelia with such famous films as Branded to Kill (1967) and Tokyo Drifter (1966). With the ambitiously stunning Taihso Trilogy, Suzuki reincarnated himself as a master auteur of modern Japanese cinema. Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy of Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagegro-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991) are considered by cult film fanatics and critics alike to be his mightiest works.
 
Set in a 1920s Japan, at a time when rapid modernization broke the bonds of tradition and set the stage for the Japanese militarism of the 30s, these independent productions allowed Suzuki’s penchant for stunning visuals, and unconventional narratives to reach new creative heights. Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy is cinema at it’s most fantastic and bizarre, and are now regarded are as undisputed masterpieces of world cinema. 
About the Taisho Period.
The Taisho era was a brief but dynamic period in Japan's modern development that is often described as a Japanese version of the Roaring Twenties. Officially it lasted from 1912 to 1926, the reign of the Emperor Taisho, but the phrase “Taisho culture” evokes a society in transition in the twenties and early thirties, when Western Jazz Age mores and styles bumped up against traditional Japanese values of harmony and tranquility. During this period, as Japan was becoming an international power, the gap, born in the Meiji era, between a traditional agriculturally based population and the modern industrial sector widened The period is just prior to Japan’s military buildup and its invasion of Manchuria—the era of Director Seijun Suzuki’s childhood.
Zigeunerweisen (1980) A stunning film about decadence and nihilism in the twenties, the film centers on the relationship between four people, drawn together by unseen strings of fate, and nearly driven mad by their own fears and desires.

Kagegro-za (1981)The fever-dream follow-up to his acclaimed Zigeunerweisen, the enigmatically erotic Kagero-za is the second film in Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy

Yumeji (1991) A sensual, absurdist ghost story spun around the character and work of real-life painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) a chronic philanderer and dreamer.