‘The Horses of Fukushima’ and ‘Tale of a Butcher Shop’: An Unlikely Pair of Beautiful, Brave Portraits of Japan’s Social Fringe

Animals die. Horses are not indestructible, despite what Steven Spielberg would have you believe. To eat beef we must first kill cows. Death is a fact of life, one that is made no less present by pretending it isn’t there.

This truth is part of the shared DNA of the two documentaries playing in this year’s Japan Cuts, the annual festival programmed by Ne…