Hibiki Inamoto: Rumbling Stomachs and Discotheque Chandeliers (opens in new tab)

In his latest Secret History Of Film Music column, Philip Brophy considers how music elucidates Japan's post-war outlook in Tomoyuki Takimoto's Netflix series Straight To Hell Tokyo, 2005. Inside a white stretch limousine with a peach-haired poodle perched on a cushion, an elegant woman is reading a newspaper headline: “Over 30,000 suicides seven years in a row.” The mise-en-scène snapshots post-bubble Japan in the early 2000s: people half in denial of the economic downturn, and half hustling...