Toshiaki Toyoda Returns With YOMIGAERI NO CHI!

Oh, it does me good to say this: Toshiaki Toyoda is back behind a camera, where he belongs. In September of 2005 the director of Blue Spring and 9 Souls was on the cusp of releasing The Hanging Garden while prepping a planned biker gang film when a drug arrest put his career into exile - partially self imposed, partially governmental. He's maintained a meticulously low profile since then but word is out that he's back with a new film scheduled to be released in the fall.

Yomigaeri no Chi was shot in July, an adaptation of a legend about a kabuki singer who travels to a holy land after nearly dying from a poisoning. The casting of drummer Tatsuya Nakamura in the lead makes me think that Toyoda will be putting his own spin on things but - as he proved with The Hanging Garden - Toyoda is also more than capable of reining in the stylistic impulses when doing so will serve the story.