Trivia

There are two versions of the film, one with English narration by Roy Scheider , the other with Japanese narration by Ken Ogata . The Ogata version also has scenes added by director Paul Schrader that were cut out from the original 1985 release. These scenes were added by Schrader to the Criterion DVD release: "We did quite a bit of work on it - [cinematographer] John Bailey and I worked a week redoing the D.I. [Digital Intermediate] and balancing the color. We did great work to the soundtrack. We added a short little scene that I had cut out featuring Chishû Ryû , the Ozu [ Yasujirô Ozu ] actor, that I always regretted cutting out - we found the original negative and I put that back in. I did some sky replacement at the end of [the segment] "Runaway Horses" because I wasn't really happy with the shots at the end. We were able to go back and replace the natural sky with an artificial sky. Then we went back to the original digital on Philip Glass ' soundtrack and so the sound is much better on the Criterion version. We also put Ken Ogata's narration in, so now it finally has Japanese narration." See more