# Typhoon Club (台風クラブ)
**Typhoon Club** (台風クラブ, *Taifū kurabu*) is a 1985 Japanese youth drama film directed by Shinji Sōmai (相米慎二), in which junior high school students in a rural Shinshu town are trapped in their school overnight as a large typhoon strikes, and their suppressed adolescent emotions break loose with the storm.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) • [2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html) It was produced by the Directors Company and distributed by Toho and ATG, and it won the Grand Prize in the Young Cinema section of the first Tokyo International Film Festival.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) • [3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) It has since come to be regarded as Sōmai's masterpiece.[3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 31 August 1985, Japan; genre listed as youth/drama[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) |
| Director and writer | Directed by Shinji Sōmai; screenplay by Yūji Katō, then a Tokyo University of the Arts student whose script placed second in the Directors Company's scenario competition[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) • [3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) |
| Production | Directors Company; distributed by Toho and ATG; American Vista aspect ratio (1:1.85), color[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) |
| Runtime | 96 minutes per KINENOTE; 115 minutes per the Musashino Art University database, the National Film Archive of Japan, and FILMeX[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) • [4](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/319) • [5](https://filmex.jp/2011/FILMeX_2011_fp.pdf) |
| Principal cast | Yūki Kudō (Rie), Yūichi Mikami (Kyōichi), Shingo Tsurumi, Tomokazu Miura as the teacher Umemiya[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) |
| Awards | Grand Prize, Young Cinema section, 1st Tokyo International Film Festival (1985); 4th place in Kinema Junpo's 1985 best-films list[3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) • [2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html) |
| Standing | 55th in Kinema Junpo's All-Time Best 100 Japanese films (1999 edition)[6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571) |
## Spoilers
### Story and setting
The film is set in a country town in Shinshu ([Nagano Prefecture](https://www.edgepedia.org/nagano-prefecture)) as a large typhoon approaches. The adolescent characters, bored with unchanging daily life and full of aimless irritation, have been waiting for something to happen; Rie (Yūki Kudō) murmurs that she wishes the typhoon would come. On Saturday the rain begins and intensifies, and through the teacher Umemiya's carelessness the students are locked inside the school building after class. Rie, who had skipped school to spend the day in Tokyo, cannot return because the trains have stopped. Gradually, in tune with the storm, the students release the emotions they have been holding in.[4](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/319)
The adult world around them is depicted as having run out of answers. Umemiya, their homeroom teacher played by Tomokazu Miura, is described in a contemporary review as a failed teacher who has lost both ideals and passion and compromised with life; his cohabiting partner and her violent-tempered uncle even storm into his classroom. While the students, left behind at school, spend the night of the typhoon wrestling with the meaning of living, Rie alone has run away to Harajuku.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html)
The film's ending is among its most discussed passages. In the storm-damaged wooden school building at night, a boy sits atop a cabinet in a dimly lit classroom strewn with the barricades of desks and chairs and hanging paper cranes left by the night's frenzy; the next morning, before his stunned classmates, he dismantles the pile, rebuilds it by the window, and falls from its top in an apparent suicide. A 2013 study in the journal *Eizogaku* notes that many interpretations have already been offered of this boy's "suicide," and reads the scene through the themes of community and the individual that run through Sōmai's 1980s films.[7](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/eizogaku/91/0/91_44/_pdf/-char/ja)
## Style
Sōmai's signature long takes shape the film. The Musashino Art University database describes how the moods and emotions specific to puberty are rendered through a succession of episodic scenes and the long-take shots that were Sōmai's specialty, singling out the opening swimming-pool scene and the gymnasium and schoolyard rampages, in which the camera follows the children's unpredictable, dance-like bodily movement as if pressed close to it.[4](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/319) A retrospective reviewer notes that the film's many long shots can make the characters hard to tell apart, and compares spotting actors such as Shingo Tsurumi, Tomorowo Taguchi (寺田農), and Sato Koichi among them to a game of Where's Wally.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html)
The school in the film functions, in one critic's account, as a kind of liberation zone for the soul, a place where the students shed their uniforms and can discharge naked impulse; the typhoon, an unstoppable mass of energy that suspends the functioning of the adult world, pours into it and raises the voltage of the festival that follows.[8](https://madamefigaro.jp/culture/211022-somaishinji/)
## Production background
The screenplay came from Yūji Katō, born in 1957, whose script took second place in the Directors Company's scenario competition in 1983 while he was a student at Tokyo University of the Arts; he later wrote only one other film script, *Kyōso Tanjō* (1992), and has otherwise stayed out of the media.[3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) The Directors Company itself had been founded in June 1982 by nine younger directors including Kazuki Hasegawa, Yoshitarō Negishi, and [Kiyoshi Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/kiyoshi-kurosawa) as a planning and production company.[6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571)
Casting drew attention for Yūki Kudō, the 14-year-old daughter of the enka singer Hachirō Izawa.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html) The crew included cinematographer Akihiro Itō, art director Sōkichi Ikegaya, and composer Shigeki Saegusa.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618)
## Reception and standing
At the first Tokyo International Film Festival the film took the Young Cinema Grand Prize, with jury member [Bernardo Bertolucci](https://www.edgepedia.org/bernardo-bertolucci) praising it enthusiastically.[3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) Kinema Junpo's critics placed it 4th for 1985.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html) In 1999 it ranked 55th in the magazine's All-Time Best 100 Japanese films.[6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571)
Sōmai died on 9 September 2001, two days before the [September 11 attacks](https://www.edgepedia.org/september-11-attacks).[6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571) His international reputation, said to have lagged, grew through retrospectives at the Nantes festival (France), the Edinburgh festival (United Kingdom), and the cinémathèque in Paris in 2012, and at the [Frankfurt](https://www.edgepedia.org/frankfurt) festival (Germany) in 2015.[6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571) A 4K restoration has since been distributed, and the film was screened in the 2021 retrospective series marking the 20th anniversary of his death.[3](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html) • [6](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571) On the review site Filmarks, where the film carries a 72.7-point average from 518 users on KINENOTE, recent viewers describe it as a dense portrait of adolescent instability, impulsiveness, and rural stagnation, with several noting that its artistic intensity makes it hard to grasp on a first viewing.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618) • [9](https://filmarks.com/movies/30238)
## Other uses of the name
Typhoon Club (台風クラブ) is also the name of a three-piece rock band formed in Kyoto in 2013, which released the album *Album Dai-ni-shū* in February 2023 and a documentary film, *Taifū kurabu Document*, on YouTube the following March.[10](https://news.joysound.com/article/517671)
## References
1. [台風クラブ - 作品情報・映画レビュー, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17618)
2. [日本映画レビュー─1985年, Nanae Library](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1985_n.html)
3. [超映画術vol.1 加藤祐司「台風クラブ」, A PEOPLE CINEMA](https://www.apeople.world/cinema/event/ev_eigajutsu_01_taifu.html)
4. [台風クラブ, 武蔵野美術大学 美術館・図書館 映像作品データベース](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/319)
5. [Special Program: Filmmaker in Focus, FILMeX 2011](https://filmex.jp/2011/FILMeX_2011_fp.pdf)
6. [台風クラブ〖没後20年 作家主義 相米慎二〗, UPLINK京都](https://kyoto.uplink.co.jp/movie/2021/5571)
7. [田中晋平「相米慎二の映画における孤児たちの共同体」, 映像学 91 (2013)](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/eizogaku/91/0/91_44/_pdf/-char/ja)
8. [没後20年を迎えた映画監督・相米慎二, madameFIGARO.jp](https://madamefigaro.jp/culture/211022-somaishinji/)
9. [台風クラブ - レビュー・評価, Filmarks映画](https://filmarks.com/movies/30238)
10. [台風クラブ、ドキュメンタリーフィルム公開, JOYSOUND 音楽ニュース](https://news.joysound.com/article/517671)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Coming-of-age films › Coming-of-age films released before 2000*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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