Crazed Fruit

Maybe a good way to assess this film is to consider it the Japanese "Easy Rider". It represents a genre of films that came into being in the late '50s, dramas that dealt specifically with youth culture. Like its American counterpart, it features some interesting editing techniques and a new treatment of young adulthood. And like Easy Rider, it's ultimately not that great of a film when compared to the work being done by Ko Nakahira's contemporaries: Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Naruse, Ichikawa, etc. The emerging Japanese new wave may have drawn inspiration from its coarse subject matter, but the films those directors made far surpassed Crazed Fruit in nearly every way. To finish the Easy Rider analogy, it's worth a look and contains a few great scenes, like when the shy younger brother tells the girl of his affection that he needs to see her soon to return her bathing cap to her, all the while holding the cap in his hand for her to see.