Born in Hokkaido, writer/director Miyake Sho has been steadily making films about people living in the margins of contemporary Japanese society and their delicate human connections since the 2010s.
His shorts and television work have garnered him praises as one of the most promising filmmakers, yet his independent status didn’t quite make him a breakout star in the Japanese cinema landscape, even though his astute and intimate observations in films like And Your Bird Can Sing and All the Long Nights are just as beautiful and resonant as the works of Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kore-eda Hirokazu.
Now in his 40s and working with like-minded young producers, Miyake signals the emergence of a new generation of Japanese filmmakers, working away from the traditional studio system, who are not afraid of being different and more daring, both in themes and structure in their work. And his new film, Two Seasons, Two Strangers shows just that.
Adapting from short manga stories (A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and His Igloo) by cult cartoonist Tsuge Yoshiharu, who passed away this year, Two Seasons, Two Strangers is a strange and wonderful diptych about a screenwriter and her stories as she travels through Japan. The writer is played by Korean actress Shim Eunkyung, who has starred in several Japanese films previously, including The Journalist, for which she won the best actress award, a first for non-Japanese actor to do so, Blue Hour and others.
As she writes in her notebook in Korean, we get to see the film about two shy young people (Kawai Yumi of Desert of Namibia and Takada Mansaku) on their summer vacation, meeting on the beach and their brief friendship. The young man does most of the talking and reveals his background, while the pensive young woman just listens.
She is traveling with a group of other disaffected young people, whom she doesn’t seem to connect with, but comes down to hang out with a chatty young stranger on the beach. Their youthful intimacy and connections in their loneliness are palpable in the sub-tropical setting. It culminates in them swimming in the rough ocean together on a rainy day.
Then the story pivots to the writer taking the train to a snowy countryside on a whim. She can't find lodging since she didn't book anything. Over the mountain, she finds an isolated, quaint inn, run by a grunt who doesn't reveal anything about his private life, such as why he is alone running the inn, which is traditionally done as a family business.
On his part, after hearing that she is a screenwriter for movies and TV shows, he suggests she write about his inn, hoping for more business. Sleeping in the same room with the host with an irori (traditional Japanese square sunken hearth in the middle of the room for heat and cooking), this strange yet intimate arrangement develops into an unexpected friendship.
Becoming bored at being snowed in, the innkeeper suggests checking out a large ornamental carp pond his neighbor owns -- which, it turns out, belongs to his ex-wife’s new family -- in the middle of the night. Then he proceeds to steal a carp despite the protest from the writer. But, in fact, this is the most fun she has had in a long time. The cops are called, but the charges are waived after the sympathetic cops, who know the family history, overlook the misdemeanor.
The contrast in character ages, the setting, and asymmetry of it all are all the charms of Two Seasons, Two Strangers. Miyake goes on sketching out the human connections among strangers in a gentle, playful, abstract way, blurring both fiction and real life/creator and its creations. Certainly, this is one of the highlights of the early 2026 releases.
The film opens Friday, April 24, at New York's Metrograph, with a limited nationwide expansion to follow.
Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com