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The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025: Broken Commandment (PG)
Tavistock Place
Plymouth
Devon
PL4 8AT
Opening Times
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Prices
Standard Ticket: £9
OAPs (over 60): £7.75
Budget (Unwaged/ Low Income) No proof needed: £4
Students: £4
25 and Under: £4
Arts University Plymouth Staff: £4.
Friends: 10% discount and £6 tickets on Tuesdays
Matinees: £7
Bringing in Baby: £4
Free tickets are available for Companions, Personal Assistants or Carers accompanying customers who are Disabled and/or customers who have a CEA card. Click here for more information.
Online bookings: add £1.50 booking fee per transaction. This fee helps to pay for maintaining and operating the website and booking system (this fee is waived for Members).
Where applicable please produce proof of eligibility when collecting a ticket.
About us
Dir. MAEDA Kazuo, Japan, 2022, 119 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles. Cast. MAMIYA Shotaro, ISHII Anna, YAMOTO Yuma, MASHIMA Hidekazu.
SEGAWA Ushimatsu (MAMIYA Shotaro) is a teacher at a rural school in early 20th-century Japan. A keen humanist passionate about his job, he also hides a dangerous secret that may never be revealed: he is a burakumin, a member of Japan's outcaste community.
Only by hiding his roots was Ushimatsu able to become a teacher, but now he is constantly tormented by his professional duty to lead by example and tell the truth. His feelings are intensified by his admiration for INOKO Rentaro (MASHIMA Hidekazu), a writer and activist who makes no secret of his burakumin status. Though Ushimatsu continues to keep his own secret for the sake of his social survival and romantic prospects, those around him begin to question his origins, and his position within the school soon comes under threat.
Adapted from literary master SHIMAZAKI Toson's 1906 classic, Broken Commandment is a moving deep-dive into a hidden, taboo class system that still lingers in Japan today. A contemporary successor to previous adaptations by master directors like KINOSHITA Keisuke and ICHIKAWA Kon, this new version inherits its predecessors' opposition to injustice and discrimination while critiquing the growing militarism at the turn of the century.
