“Pastoral: To Die in the Country” (田園に死す), Original Release Japanese Movie Poster 1974, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) Q181

This is an original Japanese B2 poster printed in 1974 for the first theatrical release of Pastoral: To Die in the Country (田園に死す), the avant-garde masterpiece written and directed by Shūji Terayama and released through Art Theatre Guild (ATG). It is one of the most important and visually distinctive Japanese film posters of the 1970s, combining Terayama’s surreal cinema with the graphic imagination of Japan’s underground art scene.

Film background
Released in 1974, Pastoral: To Die in the Country is one of Terayama’s defining works: a dreamlike, semi-autobiographical film in which the director revisits, distorts, and attempts to rewrite his own childhood memories. Set against the rural landscape of Aomori and the symbolic presence of Osorezan, the film blends folklore, circus imagery, maternal obsession, sexuality, death, memory, and theatrical illusion into a highly personal visual poem.

Produced in association with ATG, the film stands as a major work of Japanese experimental cinema and was later selected for the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Its cast includes Kantarō Suga, Hiroyuki Takano, Kaoru Yachigusa, Masumi Harukawa, Yoshio Harada, J. A. Seazer, and other figures closely associated with Terayama’s theatrical and cinematic world.

Poster design
This is a superb and highly collectible poster, with artwork by Kazuichi Hanawa, one of the great figures of Japanese alternative manga and underground illustration. The composition is a dense surreal collage of images from the film’s symbolic universe: a pale central female figure, bound puppet-like figures, ritual objects, a clock, a trumpet, children’s toys, shrine architecture, and theatrical performers all arranged in a strange dream tableau.

The large central title 田園に死す is rendered in bold black calligraphy on a vertical white panel, cutting through the image like a theatrical placard. Around it, the visual language shifts between folk memory, childhood nightmare, circus spectacle, and religious iconography. The result is unmistakably Terayama: poetic, unsettling, nostalgic, and violently anti-naturalistic.

The poster is also important within the broader history of Japanese graphic design. It connects the worlds of Terayama’s Tenjō Sajiki theatre, ATG experimental cinema, Garo-era manga, and 1970s underground visual culture. For collectors, this is not only a film poster, but a major piece of Japanese countercultural design.

Condition
Very Good / Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale.

This poster is an original Japanese theatrical B2 from the 1974 first-release campaign.
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.

It is over 52 years old!

Certificate of Authenticity included.