“Young medical student Hirosuke assumes the identity of a dead man in order to solve the mystery of a weird doppelgänger,” reads MUBI’s synopsis of Horrors of Malformed Men. Directed by Teruo Ishii in 1969, the film belongs to Taishō Roman, the Japanese cultural and intellectual movement of the Taishō era. Sometimes referred to as Japan’s Belle Époqu or Roaring Twenties, this short period (1912–1926) is situated after the political disorder of the Meiji era and before the militaristic Showa Era. Inspired by European Romanticism, Taishō artists and writers could express themselves freely. Revisiting the period, filmmakers such as Shuji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto, and Akio Jissoji created radical and unconventional movies. The Japan Society now presents seven of these films over one week, works that offer “a nostalgia for a bygone age that never existed.” —Jeanne Malle