General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

April Story (四月物語)

April Story (四月物語) is a 1998 Japanese youth romance film directed, written, and edited by Shunji Iwai, starring Takako Matsu in her first leading film role as a university student who moves from Hokkaido to Tokyo.¹ It was released in Japan on March 14, 1998, and runs 67 minutes.² The film follows Uzuki Nireno through her first month of independent life in Tokyo, concealing until late in the story her real reason for choosing her university: a senior schoolmate named Yamazaki, on whom she had a crush in high school, attends the same school.³

Key fact	Detail
Director, script, editing	Shunji Iwai (岩井俊二)¹
Japanese release	March 14, 1998¹
Runtime	67 minutes (eiga.com lists 80 minutes)²^•¹
Lead role	Takako Matsu as Uzuki Nireno (楡野卯月), her first film starring role¹
Production and distribution	Rockwell Eyes (製作協力 Suplex Inc.)²
Cinematography	Noboru Shinoda (篠田昇)²
Music	CLASSIC; Iwai began producing his own soundtracks with this film²^•⁴
Format	Color, CinemaScope (1:2.35), 35mm, DTS sound²

Spoilers

Plot

In April, Uzuki Nireno leaves her family in Hokkaido and moves to Tokyo to enter a university in the Musashino area. Shy and inexperienced at living alone, she meets her apartment neighbor Teruko, an eccentric fellow student named Saeko, and a fishing club she joins at the urging of others, gradually opening up as she adjusts to the city.²^•³

When asked why she chose this university, Uzuki hesitates. Her unstated motive is that Yamazaki, a senior one school year above her in high school whom she admired, attends the same university. She begins frequenting the bookstore where he works part-time, hoping he will remember her, and one day he finally does.² The film ends shortly after this first real exchange between the two, during a rainstorm in which they share a broken red umbrella, leaving the rest to the viewer.⁵

Production

A handmade production. Iwai described the project as one that began in a fairly loose way: the crew was small, and filming was fitted around breaks in the schedule of the television drama in which Takako Matsu was then appearing. He recalled the set as a chaotic, handcrafted one in which everyone gathered cherry blossoms and scattered them again by hand.⁶ A Japanese academic survey of Iwai's career places the film as his third feature, made after the large-scale Swallowtail Butterfly, and notes that he cast the then-newcomer Matsu, born in 1977, to portray the pure first love of a student who has moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo.⁷

The film's music is credited to CLASSIC, and from this film onward Iwai produced his own soundtracks.²^•⁴ The piano-centered score includes performances by Matsu herself.⁸ The theatrical release used DTS sound, which one home-video publisher describes as a first for a Japanese film at the time of release.⁹

Casting. Matsu's character's family appears in the opening send-off scene, and the roles were filled by her actual family: her father, the film and kabuki actor Koshiro Matsumoto, as the father; her mother, the former actress Noriko Fujima, as the mother; and her brother, the kabuki actor Somegoro Ichikawa VII, as the elder brother.¹⁰ Seiichi Tanabe played Yamazaki, with Kaori Fujii, Rumi, and the musician Kazuhiko Kato in supporting roles.³

Style and reception

The film is a short, quiet piece. Reviewers have noted that it has little conventional plot and no narration; Uzuki's thoughts are conveyed through her actions, body language, and sparse dialogue, with the camera observing her new daily life in a documentary-like, private register.¹¹^•³ On Filmarks it holds a user rating of 3.7 out of 5 from nearly 15,000 reviews, with commenters frequently citing the film's springtime imagery, including its cherry-blossom scenes and the red umbrella in the rain.¹² On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1.¹³ Rotten Tomatoes records an 82% Tomatometer from three critics' reviews.¹⁴

A detail that has changed since release concerns the university's name. At the time of the film's release, Musashino University as depicted was fictional; in 2003 the real Musashino Women's University changed its name to Musashino University, so the institution now exists under that name.⁸

Place in Iwai's career

April Story followed Iwai's Love Letter (1995), a hit across Asia, and Swallowtail Butterfly (1996).¹⁵ Scholars of his work group the years 1995 to 2003 as his "development period," in which he established his style and released films in succession, with April Story as the third feature in that run.⁷ Iwai later said that the heroine of his 2020 film Last Letter, played by Matsu, resembled Uzuki as an adult, and that Matsu's long association with him dated from this film.⁶

The film has remained in circulation. It was released on Blu-ray in Japan in 2012 by Pony Canyon.¹⁶ It has been shown in retrospectives marking the 30th anniversary of Iwai's film work, including the IWAI SHUNJI Film Works 30th Anniversary program in 2025 and 2026.¹⁷ In Japan it is currently available for unlimited streaming on U-NEXT and for rental on Amazon Prime Video and FOD.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1995 to 1999 › Teen comedies

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?