Film genres are more or less universal. Even the Western, that quintessential American genre, has inspired filmmakers everywhere, from Italy to Japan, to make local versions. But some genres thrive particularly well in certain cultures, for reasons not always clear to outsiders. Why, for example, the Japanese fascination with seishun eiga ("youth films") — dramas about teenagers, usually set in or around schools?

One explanation is the enormous importance here of adolescence, when kids are prepping for the exams that will determine the course of many of their lives. But that is surely not the whole of it, since other exam-mad Asian countries do not have anything like Japan's seishun eiga tradition.

Jun Ichikawa, who began his directing career with the seishun eiga "BU*SU" (1987) and "Tsugumi" (1990), is less interested in the exam pressure cooker than the struggles of adolescent outsiders to find their own path in a conformist society. Ichikawa is hardly alone — so many Japanese directors have tackled this theme as to suggest another reason for the seishun eiga's popularity: Mostly outsiders themselves, filmmakers here often see teen rebels as kindred spirits (if not actually based on the filmmakers' youthful selves), as well as convenient vehicles for explorations of Japanese society's ills.