木村：おぐりこうへいの「眠る男」、素晴しい映画ですね。
佐々木：ええ。彼の監督した作品は、どれも粒揃いですね。
Tsubuzoroi
Kimura: Oguri Kohei no "Nemuru Otoko," subarashii eiga desu ne.
Sasaki: Ee. Rare no kantoku shita sakuhin wa, dore mo tsubuzoroi desu ne.
Kimura: Kohei Oguri's "Sleeping Man" is an excellent film, isn't it?
Sasaki: Yes. All his films are of the same excellent standard.
Tsubuzoroi means uniformly good, of equally high quality.
When you ask a Japanese to name a Japanese film director of international standing, most people say Kurosawa. With films like "Rashomon" and "The Seven Samurai," tsubuzoroi no sakuhin ga ooku, kokusaiteki na hyooka mo takai (there are so many of his works that are all equally good, that he is highly rated worldwide).
Of course, his work is technically brilliant, but also we cannot overlook the fact that he expressed something uniquely "Japanese" at the same time.
This is similar to the case of Yasunari Kawabata's Nobel Prize-winning "Snow Country." These days, as Kenzaburo Oe has shown, the Nobel Prize goes to works which may be less uniquely "Japanese" and more universal.
Since Koohei Oguri's debut, juu-gonen de san-saku shika tsukutte imasen ga, tsubuzoroi no eiga bakari desu (he has only made three films in 15 years, but they are all uniformly good).
His first film, "Doro no Kawa," was about boat dwellers who remained living on the water in Japan's period of rapid economic growth in the 1950s. His second film, "For Kanako," was a love story about a Japanese girl and a boy of Korean origin. And his third film, featuring top Korean and Indonesian actors and actresses, revolves around a man who is unconscious and hardly speaks or moves.
Kore dake, tsubuzoroi no sakuhin wo tsukuru hito wa, honto ni mezurashii (It's rare to find an artist who produces nothing but masterpieces like this). This is because rather than simply imitating Western film techniques, he has developed his own style.
It doesn't matter how many works he produces; Kore kara mo, tsubu no sorotta sakuhin wo tsukuritsuzukete hoshii (I hope he goes
on producing works of the same high standard).