Terayama’s autobiographically inspired feature is an avant-garde cine-memoire and the fullest expression of the mythopoesis of childhood, family and history that recurs throughout his films and writings. Set in the rural North where Terayama spent his formative years, the visually dazzling Pastoral Hide and Seek glides seamlessly between past and present, oneiric theater and cinematic kaleidoscope in a cascade of collaging and overripe symbols that are simultaneously offered as critical and emotional reflections upon Terayama’s past and the traumatic history of post-WWII Japan.