April 5, 2011 (XXII:11) Nagisa Oshima: MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (1983, 123 min)

Directed by Nagisa Oshima Written by Nagisa Oshima and Paul Mayersberg Based on the novel by Laurens Van der Post Produced by Jeremy Thomas Cinematography by Toiciro Narushima Edited by Tomoyo Oshima Production Design by Shigemasa Toda Art Direction by Andrew Sanders Music Composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto

David Bowie...Maj. Jack 'Strafer' Celliers Tom Conti...Col. John Lawrence Ryûichi Sakamoto...Capt. Yonoi Takeshi Kitano...Sgt. Gengo Hara (as Takeshi) Jack Thompson...Group Capt. Hicksley Johnny Okura...Kanemoto (as Johnny Ohkura) Alistair Browning...De Jong

NAGISA OSHIMA (March 31, 1932, Okayama, Japan – ) directed 51 films, many of which he wrote or co-wrote and many of which are JEREMY THOMAS (July 26, 1949, London, England, UK – ) won a documentaries*. Some of them are: 1999 Taboo, 1995 “100 Years Best Picture Oscar for The Last Emperor (1987). He was also of Japanese Cinema”*, 1991 Kyoto, My Mother's Place*, 1986 Max producer or executive producer for 51 films, some of which were mon amour, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1978 Empire of 2011 A Dangerous Method, 2011 Pina, 2010 13 Assassins, 2009/I Passion, 1976 In the Realm of the Senses, 1975 “The Battle of Creation, 2009 Empire of Silver, 2008 Palermo Shooting, 2006 Tsushima”*, 1972 Dear Summer Sister, 1971 The Ceremony, 1970 Fast Food Nation, 2006 Glastonbury, 2005 Getting Gilliam, 2005 He Died After the War, 1969 Boy, 1969 Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Tideland, 2003 The Dreamers, 2003 Young Adam, 2002 Rabbit- 1968 “Daitoa senso”*, 1968 Sinner in Paradise, 1968 Death by Proof Fence, 2000 Sexy Beast, 1996 Victory, 1996 Stealing Beauty, Hanging, 1967 Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, 1967 A Treatise 1993 Little Buddha, 1991 Naked Lunch, 1990 The Sheltering Sky, on Japanese Bawdy Songs, 1967 Band of Ninja, 1966 Hakuchû no 1987 The Last Emperor, 1984 The Hit, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. toorima, 1965 Diary of Yunbogi*, 1961 The Catch, 1960 Night and Lawrence, 1980 Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, 1978 The Shout, Fog in Japan, 1960 Taiyô no hakaba, 1960 Cruel Story of Youth, and 1976 Mad Dog Morgan. and 1959 A Town of Love and Hope. TOICIRO NARUSHIMA was cinematographer for 15 films: 1983 PAUL MAYERSBERG (June 18, 1941, Cambridge, England, UK – ) Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1973 Seigen-ki, 1971 The has 13 screenwriting credits: 2012 The Treehouse, 1999/I The Ceremony, 1970 He Died After the War, 1969 Double Suicide, 1969 Intruder, 1998 Croupier, 1991 The Last Samurai, 1989 Return from Snow Country, 1966 The River Kino, 1964 Escape from Japan, the River Kwai, 1988 Nightfall, 1987 “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, 1963 Arashi o yobu juhachi-nin, 1963 Koto, 1962 Akitsu Springs, 1986 Captive, 1983 Eureka, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1962 Mother Please Marry, 1961 Bitter End of a Sweet Night, 1960 1977 The Disappearance, 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Blood Is Dry, and 1960 Good-for-Nothing. 1972 Siddhartha. He also directed 1991 The Last Samurai, 1988 Nightfall, and 1986 Captive. ANDREW SANDERS has 16 art director credits: 2002 Possession, 1998 “Performance”, 1997 The Wings of the Dove, 1996 Victory, 1996 Surviving Picasso, 1995 Sense and Sensibility, 1993 Little Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—2

Buddha, 1990 The Sheltering Sky, 1988 The Last Temptation of TAKESHI KITANO...Sgt. Gengo Hara (January 18, 1947, Tokyo, Christ, 1988 Crusoe, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1983 Japan –) has acted in 51 films and television dramas, among them Privates on Parade, 1981 Shock Treatment, 1981 Chariots of Fire, 2010 “Kenji Onijima Heihachirou”, 2010 Outrage, 2008 Achilles 1974 Son of Dracula, and 1970 Ned Kelly. and the Tortoise, 2007 To Each His Own Cinema, 2004 Blood and Bones, 2003 The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi, 2002 “Kichiku”, 2000 RYUICHI SAKAMOTO (January 17, 1952, Tokyo, Japan – ) is one of Battle Royale, 2000/I Brother, 1999 Taboo, 1998 Tokyo Eyes, 1997 Japan’s top rock musicians. He shared a 1988 best original score Fireworks, 1995 The Five, 1995 Johnny Mnemonic, 1994 Getting Oscar for The Last Emperor (1987)/ He did score for 35 other films: Any?, 1990 Boiling Point, 1989 Violent Cop, 1986 Comic 2010 Mumbai Diaries, 2009 Women Without Men, 2007/I Silk, Magazine, 1985 Yasha, 1985 Kanashii kibun de joke, 1983 2005 Zarin, 2005 Shining Boy & Little Randy, 2004 Tony Takitani, Mosquito on the Tenth Floor, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 2004 Original Child Bomb, 2004 Appleseed, 2004 Seven Samurai 1982 “Keiji yoroshiku”, and 1981 Manon, 1980 Makoto-chan. In 20XX (Video Game), 2003 Life Is Journey, 2003 The Blonds, 2002 recent years, he has become an important director of feature films. Femme Fatale, 2002 Alexei and the Spring, 2002 Derrida, 2000 “Eien no ko”, 1999 Taboo, 1998 Love Is the Devil: Study for a JACK THOMPSON...Group Capt. Hicksley (August 31, 1940, Portrait of Francis Bacon, 1998 Snake Eyes, 1995 Wild Side, 1993 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia –) has appeared in 94 films Little Buddha, 1993 “Wild Palms”, 1993 Rabbit Ears: Peachboy, and TV series, among them 2011 The Telegram Man, 2010 Don't 1992 Wuthering Heights, 1992 “Cerimònia d'inauguració jocs Be Afraid of the Dark, 2009 Mao's Last Dancer, 2008 Australia, olímpics Barcelona '92”, 1992 Tokyo Decadence, 1991 High Heels, 2008 Leatherheads, 2006 The Good German, 2005 Man-Thing, 1990 The Sheltering Sky, 1990 The Handmaid's Tale, 1989 “News 2004 Oyster Farmer, 2004 The Assassination of Richard Nixon, 23”, 1987 The Last Emperor, 1987 Wings of Honneamise, 1986 2002 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, 1999 Feeling Koneko monogatari, 1985 “Tokyo melody: un film sur Ryuichi Sexy, 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1996 Last Sakamoto”, 1984 YMO Propaganda, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Dance, 1996 “The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years”, 1996 Broken Lawrence, and 1983 Daijôbu, mai furendo. Arrow, 1994 Resistance, 1993 A Far Off Place, 1992 Wind, 1992 Turtle Beach, 1989 “The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy”, 1988 DAVID BOWIE...Maj. Jack 'Strafer' Celliers (January 8, 1947, “Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun”, 1986 Short Circuit, 1983 Brixton, London, England, UK – ) is best known as a rock Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1983 It's a Living, 1982 Bad musician, but he has also done some terrific film work. He has Blood, 1982 “A Woman Called Golda”, 1982 The Man from Snowy acted in 30 film and television films, among them 2008 August, River, 1980 The Club, 1980 The Earthling, 1980 Breaker Morant, 2007 “SpongeBob SquarePants”, 2006 The Prestige, 1999-2000 1978 The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1976 Mad Dog Morgan, “The Hunger” (6 episodes), 2000 Exhuming Mr. Rice, 1999 1975 Scobie Malone, 1970-1974 “Homicide”, 1973-1974 “The Evil B.U.S.T.E.D., 1996 Basquiat, 1992 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Touch”, 1971-1973 “Spyforce” (42 episodes), 1972-1973 “Matlock 1991 The Linguini Incident, 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ, Police”, 1971 Outback, 1970 “The Rovers”, 1969 “Riptide”, and 1986 Labyrinth, 1985/I Into the Night, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. 1968 “Motel.” Lawrence, 1983 The Hunger, 1978 Just a Gigolo, and 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth.

TOM CONTI...Col. John Lawrence (November 22, 1941, Paisley, Scotland, UK –) has 85 acting credits, among them 2011 Rekindle, 2010 “Miranda”, 2010 The Tempest, 2010 Blind Revenge, 2008- 2009 “Four Seasons”, 2007 Dangerous Parking, 2006 O Jerusalem, 2006 Almost Heaven, 2006 Rabbit Fever, 2005/I Derailed, 2001 “I Was a Rat”, 2000-2001 “Deadline” (13 episodes), 2001 The Enemy, 1999 Don't Go Breaking My Heart, 1998 “Friends”, 1995 Someone Else's America, 1995 “The Wright Verdicts” (7 episodes), 1991 The Siege of Venice, 1988 Two Brothers Running, 1987 The Gospel According to Vic, 1987 Beyond Therapy, 1986 Miracles, 1986 Saving Grace, 1984 American Dreamer, 1983 Reuben, Reuben, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1977 “The Norman Conquests: Table Manners”, 1977 “The Norman Conquests: Living Together”, 1977 The Haunting of Julia, 1977 The Duellists, 1976 “The Glittering Prizes”, 1975 “Madame Bovary”, 1975 Galileo, Nagisa Oshima by Nelson Kim, Senses of Cinema 1973 “Barlow at Large”, 1973 “Z Cars”, 1972 “Adam Smith” (10 b. March 31, 1932, Kyoto, Japan episodes), 1970 “The Borderers”, 1968 “The Flight of the Heron”, filmography bibliography articles in Senses web resources 1964 “Teletale”, 1964 “Dr. Finlay's Casebook”, 1963 “The Plane Introduction Makers”, and 1959 “Mother of Men” Nagisa Oshima’s interest in politics began at a young age. His father, a government official (reportedly of samurai lineage)* who Ryûichi Sakamoto...Capt. Yonoi is, as noted above, one of died when Oshima was six, left behind an extensive library of Japan’s top rock musicians and the composer and primary Socialist and Communist texts, which the young man read through performer of this film’s haunting score. He has acted in four films: as he came to maturity. He attended Kyoto University, studying law 2004 “Neo the Office Chuckler”, 1998 New Rose Hotel, 1987 The while dabbling in theatre and becoming deeply involved in student Last Emperor, 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence activism. The years of his youth were turbulent ones for Japan, as the nation rebuilt itself after its defeat in World War Two. Food Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—3 shortages and depressed wages sparked a surge in labour-union of their critical spirit and powers of expression in a persistent activity. The threat of labour unrest, and the dawning of the Cold struggle that strongly and effectively pits the content of their works War mentality, led to crackdowns and “Red purges” of suspected against the premodern elements of Japanese society. radicals. Slowly, the American occupiers were transforming Japan There are several things to note here. First, the condemnation of into a stable capitalist democracy, and as the Cold War got the “premodern” Japanese mentality: feudalistic, xenophobic, underway, the U.S. came to see its new client state as an essential undemocratic, hostile to personal liberty, mired in dead traditions. ally in the region. In 1951, the American occupation officially Second, the importance granted to cinema: the belief that Japanese ended. That same year, the signing of the U.S.-Japan mutual cinema can profoundly influence the direction of the Japanese security pact established a permanent U.S. military presence in nation. (For the better, and for the worse: Oshima has always Japan. Japanese leftists, fearing a return to authoritarianism and disdained the great humanist tradition of Japanese film, seeing it as militarism, stepped up their demands for greater freedom. At the the artistic embodiment of those “premodern elements of Japanese time of the security pact signing, society” he opposes). Third, the Oshima was an officer in Kyoto warning against “degeneration” University’s left-wing student and “surrender”: the fear that association, and led the student bold, innovative young body in a series of protests. (In filmmakers might lose their one famous incident that occurred nerve and become “mediocre while Oshima was a student technical artists” (this from a leader, the Emperor’s visit to man still in his twenties, whose Kyoto University was disrupted first feature would not appear by a mass demonstration.) until the following year). By the time Oshima graduated Finally, the notion of persistent in the mid-1950s, he had lost struggle: the awareness that in interest in practicing law. Steady the war against a reactionary and employment was hard to find in repressive society, no true and the post-war, pre-boom years, lasting victory can be won. One particularly for a young man with must be forever vigilant, must a record of leftist activism, so will oneself constantly forward, when a friend notified him of an or be dragged down into opening at Shochiku Ofuna corruption and waste. studios’ assistant-director training program, he applied, though he Through the 1960s and into the early ’70s, Oshima put his was not a passionate cinephile. He was admitted, and began to work youthful theories into practice with a series of films that retain their his way up the ranks as a screenwriter and assistant director. power to provoke and surprise. Politically and formally radical, they In 1959, as the renewal of the U.S.-Japan security pact are remarkable documents of their era and constitute a major (stipulated to occur every ten years) approached, student activists contribution to the various “new waves” that swept through world joined forces with the Socialist and Communist parties, intellectuals cinema during the ’60s. As a director, Oshima never settled into an and labour unions. Strikes, boycotts, rallies and occupations of identifiable aesthetic, a particular mode of address; the films range official buildings erupted nationwide. Revolution seemed a real from neorealist naturalism to pseudo-documentary to avant-garde possibility. Amid the disorder, the Japan Communist Party shifted modernism to surrealist farce. There is no such thing as a “typical” its stance and denounced the student groups as dangerous Oshima shot or scene. As a result, his detractors have accused him extremists, selling itself as “a responsible, civic-minded opposition of lacking a style or voice of his own. But form, for Oshima, serves party working against the security treaty and for the independence as a vessel for content). His subject matter was new: post-war of Japan”. Many on the left, Oshima included, saw the JCP’s alienation among Japanese youth, the failures of left-wing political actions as a betrayal of the young by their elders. Nevertheless, movements, the rise of capitalism, the hangover from the imperial demonstrations continued, sometimes ending in violent clashes past. These new stories could not be told in the old ways; new between protestors and police. The treaty was renewed in 1960, the content demanded new forms. Traditional forms – the classical style fledging revolutionary movement defeated, but a new spirit of of conventional studio filmmaking – reflected the political and radical agitation had been released into the culture – years before cultural status quo. To critique and reform a corrupt society, to “the sixties” as such really began in the U.S. and Europe. change the way people think and act, would require a change in During the years leading up to the great disruptions of 1959-60, how they see and hear. The lack of a signature style, the search for Oshima was learning his craft at Shochiku, waiting for the new forms, is part and parcel of the never-ending struggle to see opportunity to make a feature. He had also started writing film contemporary Japan with fresh eyes. Restlessness equals criticism. In a 1958 essay called “Is It A Breakthrough? (The development and growth; repetition leads to self-satisfaction and Modernists of Japanese Film),” he assessed the new crop of the weakening of the will. From a 1961 essay: Japanese directors (“modernists”) – most of them, except for This accumulation of new images [discovered during shooting] Yasuzo Masumura, unknown to Western audiences today: becomes a work and thereby gives the filmmaker a new The modernists are at a crossroads. One road would lead to consciousness of reality. When he is preparing for the next work, it gradual degeneration of their innovations in form into mere shapes his total dynamic vision of the inner person and outer entertainment, bringing about their surrender to the premodern circumstances. The filmmaker goes on to discover new images as he elements that are subconsciously included in the content of their works on each production, testing and negating his vision…. films. In that case, they would simply live out their lives as Reality, however, is always changing. Thus, the filmmaker who is mediocre technical artists. Another road requires them to exert all unable to grasp it immediately ceases being a filmmaker and Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—4 degenerates into a mere crafter of images. head scolding the director, “This film is saying that the rich and Constant self-negation and transformation are necessary if one poor can never join hands!” The company promptly buried the film, is to avoid that debilitation and continue to confront circumstances releasing it in only a few small theatres. as a filmmaker. Naturally, that means preparing a new methodology. Moreover, those transformations and that The success of his next feature, Cruel Story of Youth (1960), put methodology must not themselves be made into goals of the ego, Oshima back in his employers’ good graces. Cruel Story is often but, as weapons used to change reality, must always follow through compared to Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955): a with their objective of revolutionizing consciousness. With this in juvenile delinquent and a “good” girl fall in love and manoeuvre place, the law of self-negating movement is not merely a law of their way among disapproving adults and dangerous youth gangs. production or of the filmmaker, but a law of human growth and of But Oshima’s film is set in a meaner milieu, and he lacks Ray’s the development of the human race – a law of the movement of all romantic idealism. The couple in Cruel Story operate a scam in things. which the girl lures middle-aged lechers into driving her home, The filmmaker must uphold that law. then, once the marks make their moves on her, the boy appears and “Reality” in this passage stands for the thing to be resisted, shakes them down. These are not Rebel‘s wounded innocents, but struggled against, overcome. Reality is the way things are, the tainted people in a dirty world, predators as well as prey. Where the received wisdom of the social order. The artist pursues a personal film does resemble Rebel is in its supercharged, hot-blooded style: vision that will lead to a new consciousness of reality, but once that bold colours, intense close-ups, a mood of coiled tension that vision has expressed itself in a particular work, an act of self- periodically explodes in sex and violence. Cruel Story is Oshima’s negation must occur, to clear the way for new visions. The creation splashiest, most pop-besotted work, a grim tale that’s great fun to of an oeuvre, the ego-gratifications of artistic success: these are watch. mere by-products of the true quest, to change reality, and to Social commentary shares the foreground with the tale of the two revolutionize consciousness. lovers. The boy’s close friend is a However: the radical filmmaker student protestor taking part in seeks these goals, but knows that the anti-security-treaty ultimately, they can never be demonstrations, real footage of achieved. It is not a question of which appears in the film. And reforming a certain law, or the girl’s older sister is a former bringing a particular issue to activist of Oshima’s generation; light. There is no victory over watching her younger sister’s the horizon, only the persistent heedless flouting of convention struggle, the movement of all reminds her of her own vanished things. youth. She reconnects with her This was how the young former lover, now a doctor, but Oshima defined his mission. But, their meeting ends in as we shall see, even in his disillusionment and a sad earliest films, theory did not recognition of compromised always walk hand in hand with ideals: she settled down with an practice. The films display tremendous anger at social and political older man for security, while he supplements his meagre income corruption, but also great scepticism about the possibility of performing back-alley abortions. The doctor is arrested (after giving effecting positive change. The aspiring revolutionary becomes a the heroine an abortion) and the young lovers meet separate, bloody brilliant anatomist of failed revolutions; the rebel youth who set out ends. to reform society ends up making film after film exploring the Oshima’s next film presented an even harsher view of lowlife twisted, murky psychology of the rebel. Japan. The Sun’s Burial (1960) depicts the struggle between two Early Films criminal gangs in an Osaka slum. Prostitution, black-marketeering, Oshima got the chance to direct his first feature after a series of identity theft, rape and robbery are the going concerns in this box-office failures led Shochiku’s management to promote some of ensemble piece. Oshima repeatedly ends scenes with cityscapes of its more promising assistant directors. A Town of Love and Hope the sun setting over the decrepit slum. The Sun’s Burial, with its (1959) sounded acceptably conventional in outline: a social-realist corrupt, conniving characters, its squalor and cruelty, is the drama about a poor teenage boy who sells a homing pigeon to director’s disgusted mockery of the nation’s self-image as the “land gullible buyers as a pet, only to later recall the pigeon and sell it of the rising sun”. again. A close friendship with a rich girl ends when the girl These first three pictures showed Oshima working largely within discovers the boy’s scam, and orders the pigeon shot. But, Japanese the boundaries of conventional genre storytelling: A Town of Love critic Tadao Sato reports: and Hope was an urban melodrama, and Cruel Story of Youth and [i]n the original script another scene followed in which the The Sun’s Burial were approved and marketed by Shochiku as part teenagers agree not to let their friendship end on such a sour note, of the then-popular Taiyo-zoku (or “Sun Tribe”) films about and there was the brave, heartwarming message that together they rebellious contemporary youth. Oshima’s fourth feature, and would build a more genuine society. However, Oshima’s film ended (astonishingly) his third to appear in 1960, marked a significant with the slain pigeon falling – an image which pierced the viewer to breakthrough – an audacious and original work, conceptually the core. It was a compelling ending because the viewer, who had rigorous, blisteringly political. been an objective, detached observer, was suddenly and forcefully Night and Fog in Japan begins at the wedding of a thirtyish confronted with the question: Where do you stand? According to journalist and a younger activist, who met a few months earlier at Sato, Shochiku disliked Oshima’s harsher ending, with the studio the bloody height of the security treaty protests. The groom’s Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—5 friends are from Oshima’s generation, those who took to the streets characters, but to understand them, and to see how contemporary in the early 1950s. Some have left the movement, some have social history plays itself out through their lives. Though some first- consolidated their power within it, some hang on at its margins. The time viewers might be put off by Oshima’s obsessively detailed re- bride’s friends are from the younger generation, the students freshly creation of decades-old Japanese political infighting, ultimately the wounded in the recent protests. (The contrast between the two film works as a portrait of any movement of true believers that falls generations recalls the older and younger pairs of lovers in Cruel apart when truth and belief prove hard to hold onto (the critic Paul Story of Youth.) The wedding’s formalised serenity is very quickly Coates calls Night and Fog a “prescient post-mortem of 1968 broken, as guests invited and uninvited begin to speak of their before the fact”). shared pasts. Night and Fog in Japan takes place during three A few days after the film was released, Shochiku withdrew it separate time frames: the present of the wedding, the recent past of from circulation, claiming concerns about social stability following the 1960 demonstrations, and the more distant past of the older the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, chairman of the Japan generation’s activism during the early 1950s. As the guests’ tongues Socialist Party. Oshima was furious, denouncing the studio in the loosen and memories take hold, press for its cowardice, and even recriminations and accusations (like a character in his film) are flung about, and old making a grandstanding anti- jealousies and resentments come Shochiku speech to the guests at to light. his own wedding to actress Akiko Toyama. He left Shochiku to With Night and Fog, Oshima form his own independent (and his co-screenwriter Toshiro production company, Sozosha Oshido, also a former student (Creation). Thus ended his career activist) comments on the as a studio filmmaker, to the immediate moment of the 1959– relief of both studio and 60 protests while simultaneously filmmaker. crafting a memory-piece about The 1960s and Early 1970s his own political coming-of-age The next few years saw in the early ’50s. The film can be read as Oshima’s indictment of Oshima collaborating with novelist Kenzaburo Oe on a film about a the Old Left’s leadership: how they betrayed one another when Japanese village holding an American POW during the war (The young, and how they sold out their successors several years later. Catch, 1961), making a biopic about an eighteenth-century The constant flashbacks begin to exert a relentless, vertiginous pull, revolutionary (Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, 1962) and travelling as if history is grabbing the characters by their necks and dragging extensively in Korea and Vietnam. His Asian travels led to a series them out of the present. One character’s j’accuse leads to a of documentaries for Japanese television. Then, in 1965, he flashback furnishing the evidence for the indictment, but then the returned to features with Pleasures of the Flesh, about a criminal accused gets a chance to speak and the viewer is plunged into an who pursues a life of dissolute sensualism. Pleasures of the Flesh alternative version of the past events, and then on to the next signalled the beginning of a remarkably fertile period: over the next argument and counter-argument. The quest for truth, for meaning, eight years, Oshima would turn out a dozen features. for a final settling of accounts, circles back on itself in a spiral of Many of these films are difficult to find today. But at least half of confusion, and the film ends on an ambiguous note. The fugitive of them made their mark on international contemporary cinema; they the group is arrested, the guests stand in pensive disarray, and the form the better part of Oshima’s filmmaking legacy. The first of group’s leader, by now revealed as an unprincipled Stalinist control these was Violence at Noon (1966). The story was inspired by a freak, reasserts order with a speech (surely inspired by the Marquis’ real-life serial rapist and killer who terrorised the nation in the late words at the close of Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu [1939]) about the 1950s. Oshima and his screenwriter Tsutomu Tamura (working need for unity. The camera drifts past the characters, through the from a novel by Taijun Takeda) make their criminal, Eisuke (Kei enveloping fog, and into the night. Sato), a fugitive from a collective farm that had failed a year before, Stylistically, the film departs from the naturalism of Oshima’s adding a social and political backdrop to this noir tale of private first three features. During the wedding scenes, the actors, spread perversion. out along the wide Cinemascope screen in neat rows, stand Oshima was by now reinventing his style for each new work. No motionless while the camera pans and tracks across their faces, two films from this prolific period look alike: the director was registering their expressions as they take in what’s happening and living up to his credo of “constant self-negation and think back on the past. The stiff, still tableau of the wedding, transformation.” Violence at Noon, in stark contrast to the long traversed by the restless camera, correlates to the state of the sequence shots of Night and Fog in Japan, consists of some 2,000 characters’ lives, frozen in the present as their history swells and shots. Scenes seem to break apart and re-form before our eyes, as swirls around them. Many scenes are filmed in a heavily Oshima jump-cuts from angle to angle with unsettling speed, theatricalised shorthand – call it minimalist expressionism: a fracturing space like a cubist. The fragmented style brings us into massive protest march is rendered as the sound of crowds chanting, the criminal’s consciousness, a jumble of fetishised memories and glimpses of waving flags and flashing lights, and a lone protestor uncontrollable urges. By the end, Eisuke has receded in importance stumbling through shadows. next to the two women whose lives he has haunted: his Night and Fog in Japan is a demanding viewing experience, but schoolteacher wife and his first rape victim. Eisuke is brought to a rewarding one. We don’t sink comfortably into the flow of the justice, but the women find no comfort, no escape, no happy ending story but instead are constantly thrown out of it, forced to shift our (significantly, Eisuke’s capture and execution are never shown but conception of what has happened to these people as more facets of reported from offscreen, denying us any sense of relief). their past are revealed. Oshima doesn’t want us to “like” his Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—6

Oshima’s obsession with crime and criminals runs deep, from the dreams of crime, perversion, and self-gratification. How does the boy with the homing-pigeon scam to the killers who populate his artist deal with this split in the self? Oshima’s ’60s and ’70s films later work. (Audie Bock: “[I]n every Oshima film at least one tie together his personal demons and political critiques in murder, rape, theft or blackmail incident can be found, and often the increasingly knotty, fascinating ways. whole of the film is constructed around Oshima’s concern with the legacy the chronic repetition of such a crime”). of Japan’s former colonisation of In his writings and interviews, Oshima Korea manifested itself in three films sometimes equates the outlaw with the from the late ’60s. A Treatise on artist: both live lives of risk and Japanese Bawdy Song (1967) touches uncertainty, closer to the edge than on the subject as part of a larger study those who conform to social norms. of sexual fantasy. Three Resurrected This is not an original or profound Drunkards (1968) is a mistaken- observation, and Oshima can sound identity comedy about a Korean naïve, vain, or foolish when soldier and a Japanese student. Death expounding on the theme in print: by Hanging (1968), the only one of the In the first place, to make films is a three to be widely seen outside Japan, criminal act in this world. is essential Oshima, an aggressively Doesn’t this also explain why it is difficult, feverishly inventive film. difficult to establish a movement in the Once again, the director and his film world? It is easy for one person to scenarists started from a real-life story. commit a crime, but it is really difficult Chin’u Ri, a poor 22-year-old born in to commit a crime in a group. People Japan to Korean parents, had been who try to commit a crime in a group arrested, tried, and executed for raping are inevitably shot down. and killing a Japanese schoolgirl. Ri’s And: case made headlines, particularly after Rather than being our own, the a journalist published a book of Ri’s labors of our days are merely a series letters showing him to be, in Oshima’s of things we are made to do by those words, “the most intelligent and outside ourselves. We live lives that are sensitive youth produced by post-war even more evanescent than the bubbles Japan”. Ri’s defence team had argued floating along the stream – and even that his actions must be understood in more meaningless. the context of his second-class social The reason we show an abnormal status: interest in crime and scandal is that a life, which usually drifts by, [Ri] had been systematically denied his heritage as a Korean yet thereby appears caught up by a pole in the river’s flow. A drowning denied access to economic and social advancement because he was man grasps at straws. For we find, in crime and scandal, a tiny Korean… To many Japanese critics of the courts, it seemed trace that reminds us of human dignity…. hypocritical, at least, to discriminate against someone of a different The path to human dignity lies through the act of one who, ethnic background while at the same time to expect him to act like a having been previously involved in a crime or scandal, chooses that member of the dominant society. Part of Oshima’s interest in Ri’s option for himself once again, in the very midst of the flow. story was the chance to voice his opposition to both the death But in his films, Oshima’s identification with the outlaw penalty and the systemic prejudice against ethnic Koreans in Japan. becomes considerably more interesting than these passages might But Death by Hanging is more than a simple message picture. indicate. One complicating factor is how Oshima’s empathy with Oshima expands his critique beyond specific social structures to call the criminal colors his identity as a political activist. Like the into question, at least for the running time of the film, our very outlaw and the artist, the would-be reformer takes a rebel stance notions of reality and identity. against normative behaviour. In almost every film, Oshima’s main It begins like a documentary about capital punishment: a character or characters, whether artist, criminal or activist, makes prisoner, “R” (Yundo Yun), is led to the gallows, and his body the conscious choice to live in defiance of the law. Bock reports that drops through the trapdoor. But the prisoner survives, and now a the director had recurring nightmares in which he committed rapes clearly fictional drama starts to unfold, about the not-dead R and the and mass murders, and felt guilty and ashamed upon awakening: Japanese jailers who must figure out what to do with him. For the He gradually came to the conclusion that his guilt feelings were botched hanging has induced amnesia in R, and by a legal related to the impurity that had entered his attitude toward technicality, he can’t be executed if he’s not aware that he revolution – he was, after all, a filmmaker and not a committed a crime. An absurdist comedic tone takes hold as the revolutionary…While he still expresses admiration for the jailers try different ways to get R to acknowledge his guilt so they determination of filmmakers like Godard concerning their avid can kill him: from verbal interrogations and abuse, to psychological commitment to a revolutionary purpose in the filmic medium, probing, to explorations of R’s past. We move far afield of Oshima is adamant in his belief that such a goal is doomed to conventional realist storytelling into a kind of dream-world, as the frustration; hence the criminality complex apparent in his own spaces of the courthouse become the rooms of R’s childhood, and films. as R and the jailers find themselves at the scene of the crime, re- enacting the assault. Then the rape and murder “victim” comes to The activist’s mission is to speak truth to power, to do good life as R’s “sister,” urging him in long, didactic speeches to works in the world, to live by a higher morality. But in private he embrace his identity as a Korean in Japan, representative of an Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—7 oppressed minority. Finally, R accepts that he is R, and submits to watched earlier. As in Death by Hanging, identity is a fluid process hanging a second time. A voice-over thanks us for watching. and not a fixed fact: we, and Motoki himself, aren’t sure if Motoki Character and narrative continuity, spatial and temporal logic: all is on the trail of a mystery with a plausible solution, or if he’s losing are systematically undermined in Death by Hanging as Oshima his mind in attempting to take the dead man’s place. In the end, scrambles together political polemic, Brechtian alienation effects, Motoki becomes the victim of his obsession: he takes a camera up Kafkaesque parable and a surrealist assault on perception worthy of onto the same roof seen at the start of the film, and jumps to his Buñuel. (And as in much Buñuel, the comedy is magnified by the death. A hand reaches into the frame and steals Motoki’s camera, solemnity with which the characters go about their business, just as Motoki himself had earlier grabbed the camera from the seeming all the crazier for their attempts to behave “rationally” in a cops. The end. We realise: Motoki himself was the dead man, and mad world.) the story we just watched has formed a Möbius loop of repetition compulsion. Motoki’s despair at his own ineffectiveness as a Oshima continued this extraordinary creative streak with his next filmmaker-revolutionary, evident in scene after scene, is shown to four films: Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1968), Boy (1969), The Man be the same despair that led his “friend” to take his own life in the Who Left His Will on Film (1970) and The Ceremony (1971). beginning. Noël Burch writes that The Man Who Left His Will on Shinjuku Thief juxtaposes the story of a sexually frustrated young Film ties together a number of Oshima’s concerns: couple (aggressive female; passive/masochistic male who can only …the contradictions within the radical movement, Japan’s find sexual release by stealing and being caught) with the account multiply divided self, and the dilemma of Oshima himself, unable to of an avant-garde theatre production and documentary footage of establish a dialectical relationship between his art and his student riots: the links between crime, art and political protest are politics…. [A]n ambitious attempt to develop a dialectical narrative made explicit, as the couple seeks personal liberation in acts of form [that considers] the mechanisms of the unconscious in relation social rebellion. The acclaimed Boy was, like Violence at Noon and to the contradictions of political filmmaking. Death by Hanging, inspired by a true story. A man and a woman Next came The Ceremony, a multigenerational family saga in the travelled around Japan with their young son, whom they had trained mode of The Godfather 1 and 2 (Francis Coppola, 1972/74) and to run in front of moving cars and pretend to be struck and badly City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989). Like Coppola and Hou’s injured. The parents would then demand money from the frightened films, Oshima’s covers several decades, but while theirs are drivers. Oshima returns to a more straightforward narrative style sprawling, expansive (if elegiac) epics, his traces another with Boy; the film, one of his most affecting due to its sympathetic claustrophobic closed circle of failure and frustration. The central depiction of the title character, is a savage vision of Japanese family character is Masuo (Kenzo Kawarazaki), a high-school baseball values (patriarchy, filial obedience) grown poisonous at the root. coach in his late youth. As the film begins Masuo is on the way to By 1970, the U.S.-Japan security pact was once again up for visit one of his three cousins. The cousins belong to the Sakurada renewal, and a younger generation of student activists (further clan, a well-to-do family presided over by Masuo’s grandfather energised by their opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam) took to Kazuomi (Kei Sato, the killer in Violence at Noon). A series of the streets in protest. But history repeated itself: despite massive flashbacks spanning the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s show the family demonstrations, several of which ended in violence, the treaty was members gathering at various ceremonies: weddings, anniversaries, renewed. There was, however, one thing that made the youth funerals. protests of ’69–70 different from those of ’59–60: cinema. The international New Wave had happened. Godard and Oshima, et al., The Ceremony pulls together themes and devices from several of had happened. It was the period of cinema verité, the camera stylo, Oshima’s previous films into a masterful summation. As in Night and “truth 24 times a second,” of a new generation that saw and Fog in Japan, the flashbacks qualify and condition our filmmaking as a weapon in the battle for social change. The Man understanding of the present: the family, for all its outward Who Left His Will on Film focuses on one such group of young men prosperity, is rotting from the inside out, and from the top down. and women. In the opening scene, Motoki (Kazuo Goto) is seen Kazuomi is a fearsome patriarch whose cruelty and love of power through the lens of a camera carried by one of his friends. The have stunted the succeeding generations. Also like the earlier film, cameraman runs away – we see only a rushed blur of street the traditional rituals of Japanese society (the wedding in Night and movement – with Motoki in pursuit. Motoki’s friend commits Fog, and nearly every flashback scene here) are shown to be shams, suicide by jumping off a roof. Motoki grabs the camera from the empty ceremonies masking broken spirits and wasted lives. Though police, but they catch him and take custody of the dead man’s much of the story is presented in a relatively (for Oshima) footage. conventional way, there are frequent detours into the Brechtian anti- Motoki and his peers, a collective of young Marxist filmmakers, realism of Death by Hanging: in one extraordinary scene, Masuo’s recover the footage and screen it. The dead man was supposed to be arranged marriage to a woman he’s never met is about to be filming political demonstrations, but his camera captured only dull cancelled once the bride-to-be sends word that she will not be street scenes: uninflected, unexciting quotidian reality. In a bravura arriving, but Kazuomi insists the ceremony continue as planned. sequence, Oshima shows us the footage as we hear voice-over Bride or no bride, the forms of tradition must be obeyed, so the debates among the spectators about what they’re watching: “But gathered guests watch as the humiliated Masuo stands at the altar what was he thinking when he shot this?” “Watching this is a waste alone, “marrying” nothing but air. And, as in so many Oshima of time. He was bankrupt, politically and artistically.” “Maybe he films, the path to personal freedom is blocked by crippling psychic figured that by linking meaningless shots he could make meaning compulsions: The Ceremony ends with Masuo reliving a childhood by paradox.” In our heads we join Motoki and his friends in the memory, taking part in an imaginary baseball game with his absent debate, searching for meaning and coherence in the seemingly cousins. Masuo’s escape into childish fantasy seems poor random footage. Soon Motoki grows obsessed with the dead man, compensation for his ineffectiveness in the real world. The film initiating a romance with Yasuko (Emiko Iwasaki), the deceased’s suggests that modern Japan, like the Sakadura clan, is trapped girlfriend, and eventually restaging and reshooting the scenes we between past and present. The older generation, authoritarian, Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—8 patriarchal, supporters of the nation’s imperialist and militarist making In the Realm of the Senses, but in hindsight it looks like a traditions, continues to hold power over Masuo and his necessary move from an artistic point of view as well. The utopian contemporaries, who have no new ideals or beliefs with which to ideals of the ’60s had collapsed. Social revolution seemed an resist the old order. impossibility and Oshima no longer felt at home making films The International Years within the Japanese system . Where could the Oshima protagonist After making one more film, the little-seen Dear Summer Sister go, then, except turn inward? In Realm, the characters’ search for (1972), Oshima’s career took a new turn. Though sex plays an freedom has no political or social dimension; it is a purely selfish important part in almost all his films, he had for years wanted to act. No rebellion against society is possible or desirable, only a make a picture that took sexuality as its central concern. But he held shutting-out of society and an obsessive focus on one’s own back: pleasure (and pain). At one point, while Kichi is awaiting Sada’s I had resolved not to make that kind of film if there were no return from a rendezvous with her sugar daddy, he wanders outside, possibility of complete sexual expression. Sexual expression carried where a regiment of the imperial Japanese army is marching off to to its logical conclusion would result in the direct filming of sexual war. A crowd of citizens stands by the road cheering them on. This intercourse. is the film’s only acknowledgment of the world outside the lovers’ Now, censorship restrictions had been lifted in many countries, bedroom, the world where history is being made, armies are and French producer Anatole Dauman (a nouvelle vague veteran massing, nations falling and rising, great causes being lost and who produced films for Resnais, Godard and Marker) offered to won… Kichi, uncaring, walks past the crowd and retreats to his back him in making an erotic – or pornographic – film. Oshima room. dissolved Sozosha, his production company, and set to work on a In 1978, Dauman and Oshima reunited for Empire of Passion. script inspired by the case of Sada Abe, a madwoman who in 1936 Like Realm, Empire of Passion starred Tatsuya Fuji, had a period was found walking the streets of Tokyo holding the severed penis of setting (this time the 1890s), and centered on a doomed love affair. her dead lover. In the Realm of the Senses (1976) was financed with It was even titled In the Realm of Passion in some English-language French and Japanese money, and shot in Japan with a Japanese cast releases. But the transgressive intensity of the earlier film was and crew, then (to circumvent replaced by a sombre study of Japanese laws) the footage was guilt and remorse. Toyoji (Fuji), sent to France to be processed a labourer in a provincial village, and edited. Oshima followed up falls in love with Seki (Kazuko on Bertolucci’s earlier Yoshiyuki), the wife of a provocation Last Tango in Paris rickshaw driver, Gisaburo (1972), but went further: Realm (Takahiro Tamura). Toyoji and caused an international sensation Seki kill her husband to prevent with its explicit depictions of him from discovering their affair, fellatio, penetration and S&M. but when Gisaburo’s ghost (Oshima’s film was banned in begins to haunt Seki, the lovers Japan for many years.) The two slowly fall apart. Despite some films also share a theme: the steamy sex (far less explicit than desire to shut one’s social being In the Realm of the Senses) and entirely out of one’s sexual life, to shed one’s everyday self in the horror-shocks, the storytelling is mostly restrained, the mood sex act – to fuck your way to freedom. And both portray uninhibited mournful and tender. Oshima blends film noir (the early scenes in eroticism as a road ending in death. particular have the heat and tension of a James M. Cain thriller), ghost-story, and period-piece tropes to make this one of his most In Realm, Sada (Eiko Matsuda) is a former prostitute now accessible and entertaining works. Overshadowed at the time of its working as a maid at an inn. The master of the house, Kichi release by its more sensationalistic predecessor, the film is due for (Tatsuya Fuji), exercises his privileges and takes her to bed. A great rediscovery. passion sparks in both of them. Kichi leaves home with Sada, and The two collaborations with Dauman inaugurate a shift – the they travel the countryside staying in different inns, spending all central dividing line, in fact – in Oshima’s body of work. He their time in bed. In its early scenes, the film seems like a portrait of becomes an international filmmaker, dependent on international co- many a new love affair: the endless fascination of the other; lots of production deals for financing, and (for his next two films after sex, sex talk, testing of sexual boundaries. But Sada and Kichi go Empire of Passion) working with international casts and crews, in further, leaving their “regular” lives behind. Apart from Sada’s two foreign languages. He seeks a larger, more global audience. In an visits to an old sugar daddy to raise money for their food and essay titled “Perspectives on the Japanese Film,” Oshima explained lodging, she and Kichi keep to themselves, giving their entire the reasons for this change. With the internationalisation of the existences over to sex. Their rooms grow increasingly filthy (and, Japanese economy, foreign films – in mass terms, that meant humorously, even the geishas are scandalised by their nonstop largely American films – ate away at the domestic box-office share sucking and rutting). Sada is insatiable: she demands ever-greater of Japanese films. Raising money became more difficult, with more pleasure, endless pleasure. Soon they escalate to S&M games, filmmakers competing for fewer production and distribution hitting and choking each other. She can’t stop, but Kichi begins to opportunities. wear out. The bold, energetic seducer of the earlier scenes seems Films conceived in the multiracial United States can become dried up, emptied; he lives only to fulfil Sada’s desires. In the end, global films just as they are. Their expansive investments in with his blessing, she strangles him to death in a sex ritual and production are possible because of a firm belief in this fact. lovingly cuts his penis off his body. I don’t work under these conditions. Some accused Oshima of opportunism and commercialism in However, even if I can’t attract large audiences everywhere in Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—9 the world, I can make films that are sure to attract audiences screen time than the Japanese, and though the film is bilingual everywhere, even if they are small. Although the numbers in each there’s more English than Japanese spoken on the soundtrack. We country will be small, they will add up to a certain total worldwide. learn much about Lawrence and Celliers’ pasts, less about Yonoi That is probably what makes it possible for me to make my next and Hara’s. And yet the film is Oshima’s most thorough fictional film. This is how I would like to make international films… treatment of the Japanese during World War Two, teetering Oshima’s dilemma, and his proposed solution to it, are shared by between the high noon of their imperial ambitions and their filmmakers worldwide; he has “confirmed this in conversations imminent, ignominious defeat. Lawrence explains to Celliers: with Wim Wenders, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paolo Taviani, Theo “They were an anxious people. They could do nothing individually. Angelopoulos, Jim Jarmusch, Mrinal Sen… Chen Kaige and Lee So they went mad en masse.” Oshima is working on an Jang ho” and others: international scale for a global audience, but he uses the “foreign” But why is this trend global? It is because the film worlds of their point of view to take a fresh look at his own nation’s history. own countries are ghettoes for His next film was in essence these film people…. Not one an entirely European venture, country has been able to find a filmed in French and English. breakthrough point – which is to Max, Mon Amour (1986) was say that industrially the size of produced by Serge Silberman, film audiences only decreases, co-written by Jean-Claude while practically no films are Carrière, and made in France made that broaden the artistic with a French crew led by possibilities of the form . cinematographer Raoul Coutard. Due to difficulties raising Silberman and Carrière were money, and a debilitating stroke Buñuel’s partners during his late in the 1990s, Oshima was far less flourishing in France in the ’60s prolific during this second, and ’70s, and much about Max internationalist half of his career: resembles Buñuel’s work. An eighteen features between 1959 English couple residing in Paris, and 1973, only five since 1976. Margaret and Peter Jones (In the ’90s, he also completed (Charlotte Rampling and two documentaries: Kyoto, My Anthony Higgins), have their Mother’s Place [1991] for the lives thrown into disarray when BBC, and the Japanese episode Margaret falls in love and carries of the British Film Institute’s The on an affair. The film is a light Century of Cinema series domestic farce satirising [1995].) Inevitably, this bourgeois manners – with the diminishment in productivity has added twist that Margaret’s lover given the later films the impression of an artist in search of a Max is a chimpanzee. The social satire fuses with the kinky- subject. Nevertheless, the five features from this period are surrealist monkey business and yields some comic gems, as when impressive works. The radical formal experimentation of the ’60s Max joins a dinner party but ignores the food and drink to stroke, and early ’70s mindfuck films is replaced by a more classical, easy- nibble, and kiss Margaret in full view of the guests (who are too to-read style; the social inquiry and psychological complexity polite to object), or when Peter grows crazed with jealousy remain, but head into new territory. wondering just what it is Max and Margaret actually do in bed. Along with the Buñuelian elements of the story, Oshima and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) was adapted by Oshima Coutard also seem to have borrowed Buñuel’s late style: simple and Paul Mayersberg from the novel The Seed and the Sower by camera setups, unobtrusive editing, no flash and dazzle; the bizarro Laurens Van der Post. (It was produced by Jeremy Thomas, who events onscreen are made more real to us by the director’s lack of also worked with Roeg, Bertolucci, and Cronenberg; he later interest in hyping them up with jazzy angles and cutting. Max, Mon produced Oshima’s Taboo [1999].) Mr. Lawrence is set in a Amour is minor Oshima – in so many ways it hardly seems like “an Japanese POW camp in Java during World War Two. The Oshima film” – but it’s a fun joke, enjoyably sustained over the repressed, aristocratic Captain Yonoi (pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto, film’s running time. who also composed the score) runs the camp with the assistance of the earthy, rough-and-tumble Sergeant Hara (television comedian Oshima spent a few years trying and failing to raise money for and future auteur Takeshi Kitano in his first dramatic role). POW Hollywood Zen, a biopic about the Japanese American movie star John Lawrence (Tom Conti) is a British officer who has lived in Sessue Hayakawa. He returned to Japan to make Taboo instead, but Japan and is comfortable with the language and culture of his a stroke in 1996 derailed those plans. He recovered sufficient captors. The camp is thrown into chaos with the arrival of another strength to direct the film a few years later, albeit from a British officer, the Afrikaner Jack Celliers (David Bowie). Celliers wheelchair. Taboo, based on a novel by Ryotaro Shiba, is set in exerts a strong homoerotic pull on Yonoi, whose frustrated urges 1865, when the shogunate had taken control of the nation from the begin to eat away at his psyche. Yonoi’s men think Celliers is a emperor. The Shinsengumi, a samurai militia serving the shogunate, devil sent to kill their captain’s spirit. In the name of maintaining is recruiting new members from the peasant class. One of the new order, the devil must be destroyed. inductees is Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda). Kano, a young man of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is based on an English-language feminine delicacy and mysterious motives, becomes the locus of novel, and co-written by an Englishman. English actors get more homoerotic and homosexual desire among several members of the Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—10 militia. The group’s leaders, Commander Kondo (Yoichi Sai) and from http://www.leninimports.com/nagisa_oshima.html Captain Hijiketa (Takeshi Kitano), try to maintain order but the lust Nagisa Oshima has been called the least inscrutable of Japanese Kano inspires in the men leads to jealousy, dissension and betrayal. directors. But as the leader and chief theoretician of the ‘New Taboo seems, on the surface, to be Oshima’s least original film. Wave’ movement, which started in Japan at the same time it did in It’s full of generic hand-me-downs: cherry blossoms, swordplay, France, he has also been thought both difficult and inaccessible. He dialogues about samurai honour and duty. It has the feeling of is, however, a remarkable film-maker. Known widely in the West something we’ve seen before – except that at its heart it’s a study of mainly through Ai No Corrida (1976, Empire of the Senses), a gay desire. The samurai film is a venerable Japanese genre, and treatise on physical sex, made for a French producer, that rivaled Oshima obeys its codes only to inject this unfamiliar element into Bernardo Bertolucci’s Ultimo Tango a Parigi (1972, Last tango in its bloodstream – to blow up the tradition from within its gates. But Paris) for notoriety. To some, it was a strange movie for so radical the director is not interested in scoring easy points off the social and socially conscious a director, but to him, Sada and her lover are prejudices of an earlier era (as Todd Haynes was in the not crazed libertines; they are drop-outs from society at a time (in accomplished but smug Far from the Thirties) when Japanese Heaven [2002]): the warriors accept imperialism was imposing a puritanical man-on-man love as a natural ethos upon the nation. ‘Make love, not occurrence in military life. What links war’ was at least a subsidiary text in Taboo to Oshima’s earlier work is its the film. depiction of the social order shaken by Cruel story of youth unstoppable human urges. (Taboo most Oshima was born on March 31, obviously resembles Merry Christmas, 1932 in Kyoto. His father, the Mr. Lawrence: a rigid military descendant of a samurai, was an hierarchy crumbles into chaos with the accomplished amateur painter and poet arrival of a beautiful stranger.) who died when the boy was six, Tellingly, it’s the lower-ranking men leaving a library which included a large who openly express their desires. number of Marxist and socialist texts. Kondo and Hijiketa, the leaders, These Oshima read in the solitude of a smother their own passions in the name lonely childhood. And by the time he of duty. We absorb much of the story left high-school he was ready to through Hijiketa’s eyes, and we hear become a fully-fledged student activist some of his thoughts in voice-over, but as well as embryo writer and dramatist. Kitano might as well be acting with a Studying law at Kyoto University, he mask on: he gives almost nothing led a student group that got into trouble away, until his banked emotions flare up in a sudden, startling with the authorities: when the Emperor visited the campus, the release in the final scene. The mood of the film fits its meaning: the group held aloft placards imploring him not to allow himself to be tone is stately, restrained, but the presence of Kano charges each deified because so many had died during the war in the name of his scene with tension. divinity. Oshima suffered a second, more serious stroke after completing When he graduated, he joined the Shochiku Film Company in Taboo; there may be no new films forthcoming. Though the social 1954 as an assistant director, despite his reputation as a ‘red and political upheavals that inspired much of his work have now student’ and the fact that there were over 2,000 applicants for only passed from the headlines to the history books, and his international five jobs. Five rather desultory years later, he was entrusted with his reputation has declined since its peak in the 1970s, his best films first films as director: Ai To Kibo No Machi (1959, A Town of Love remain a potent testament to radical cinema’s capacity to and Hope) and Seishun Zankoku Monogatori (1960, Naked Youth), “revolutionise consciousness” – one viewer at a time. two of the teenage yakuza (gangster) genre then popular. In 1960 he also made Taiyo No Hakaba (The Sun’s Burial), a violent story *Oshima’s great contemporary Shohei Imamura once remarked, about slum life in which a community of tramps, junkies and the “I’m a country farmer; Nagisa Oshima is a samurai.” The usual unemployed sell their blood for food and clothing. interpretation of this oft-quoted remark is that Imamura was humbly Each of these films contained obvious social comment as well as praising Oshima for his warrior spirit: Audie Bock reads Imamura’s the kind of excitements required of a commercial director, but his statement as alluding specifically to the “moral rectitude” of the fourth film, also made that year, lost him his job. Nihon No Yoru To samurai class Oshima represents. But Maureen Turim argues that Kiri (1960, Night and Fog in Japan) was an attack on both the Imamura was one-upping Oshima: though both filmmakers are traditional Left and the muddled activists of the student movement, social critics who speak out in protest against the structures of calling for real action from a new radicalism. When a socialist power, Oshima the aristocrat speaks as a privileged insider, while leader was assassinated a few days after the films release, it was Imamura (in fact, the middle-class son of a physician) speaks as a hastily withdrawn from circulation. true man of the people, a peasant or “’outcast’ (hani), inherently Oshima reacted by setting up his own production company and critical of Japanese official culture.” See Audie Bock, Japanese making Shiiku (1961, The Catch), in which a black American Film Directors (revised paperback edition), Tokyo and New York, airman is imprisoned and eventually killed by villagers who are Kodansha International Ltd., 1985, p. 329; Maureen Turim, The unaware that World War II has finally ended. It was an angry Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast, rejection of traditional moral values, suggesting that Japan’s fierce Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, University of California Press, nationalism and hatred of foreigners was responsible for the war. 1998, p. 7. Only the village children are seen as a hopeful portent—in the last sequence a young boy moves away form the communal fire and Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—11 quietly builds one of his own. which does not so much accuse the parents as blame a society that The man who left Japan on film has produced such a perversion of the norm. His next features were all highly critical of Japanese society, and made in an easily-assimilated naturalist tradition that he finally Gishiki (The Ceremony), made in 1971m was less obviously began to eschew in 1967 with Nihon Shunka-ko (A Treatise on universal in appeal but perhaps Oshima’s finest demonstration of Japanese Bawdy Songs). In this extraordinary film, a band of the film-making art. The chronicle of a wealthy provincial family students visiting Tokyo react to the alienation they feel by singing from the end of World War II to the present, it is punctuated by the their songs and end up, in a fantasy scene, strangling a rich girl who marriages and funerals at which the family is drawn together. has been the object of their erotic dreams. Dominated by an authoritarian grandfather, the older members In Muri Shinju: Nihon No Natsu (1967, Japanese Summer: show themselves to be both militaristic and feudal in their outlook, Double Suicide) he again left realism behind with a story about a much to the disillusion of the younger elements. The film, formal in man who wants someone to kill him and a woman who wants a structure and stunning to look at, yields riches even to western eyes lover. The two meet, get involved, are mixed up in gang warfare trying to decipher its many layers of meaning. By contrast, Natsu and ultimately kill each other No Imoto (1972, Dear summer before the police can get them. Sister) is virtually impenetrable Oshima’s pessimism at this time without knowing that Okinawa— seemed to know no bounds. where it is set—was once part of His first film to be shown the Japanese empire and also extensively in the West was Japan’s Ulster. Even then, the Koshikei (1968, Death by story of a Tokyo girl looking Hanging), based on a true story of round the island for her long-lost a young Korean in Japan who brother and finding he is the raped and killed two girls and was tourist guide with whom she has hanged years later after he had had an affair, seems an allegory confessed reformed. In the film, without a centre. the hanging fails and the It scarcely prepared the world hypocritical and mindless for Ai No Corrida, based on an authorities force the Korean to go incident during the Thirties when through a re-enactment of the a Tokyo woman was found crime before killing him. By now, wandering the streets with her Oshima’s films had become lover’s severed penis in her hand. frankly revolutionary in both form He had literally died of love, and content, and were influenced allowing himself to be strangled as much by Jean-Luc Godard as and mutilated in a final ecstasy of those of many other radical pleasure. It is all superbly directors of the day all over the filmed—an illustration of French world. And again, the West was to writer George Bataille’s thesis be startled by Shinjuku Darobo that equates the orgasm with la Nikki (1969, Diary of a Shinjuku petite mort. But is the west was Thief), a fractured story full of life amazed and sometimes and vitality about the sex problems scandalized, in Japan the film was of a young student who steals regarded as a blow for sexual books in Tokyo’s version of Soho. equality, since, in their sexual Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa encounters, the maidservants and (1970, The Man who Left His Will the owner of the geisha house are on Film) developed from this shown as having become absolute anarchic superstructure, its protagonist being a young man who equals, giving and taking what each one wants. The woman on photographs student demonstrations in Tokyo, and tries to find whom the film was based, incidentally, has long been a heroine of within all his footage how a friend has disappeared. What he the woman’s movement in Japan, and Oshima underlined why. discovers, in fact, is that he himself has almost disappeared in the After passion general worthlessness of his own life. In 1978, Oshima made another film in France for the same Empire of disillusion producer, and the fact that it was called Ai No Borei (Empire of But between these two films came a remarkable change of Passion) suggested to some that he was trying to repeat that box- course, as if Oshima was trying to find some way of appealing to a office triumph. In fact, the film was a ghostly thriller in which an wider audience. Shonen (1969, By) was a much more direct adulterer is hounded by the police after plotting with a woman to narrative, a moving story, again based on actual events, about a kill her husband. There were social but hardly political implications, couple who wander across Japan, having trained their small son to suggesting that Oshima, the ‘activist samurai’, might be beginning run in front of passing cars and pretend to be injured so that they to lose his way. Yet, over all, he is undoubtedly as significant and can claim compensation. Eventually they are cornered, but the skillful a director as most of the great aJapanese film-makers of the boy—loyal to the last—cannot be made to confess. Using the child generation before him. If he only occasionally evinces the as a pathetic yet amazingly dignified emotional shuttlecock within a universality of a Kurosawa or Ichikawa, his concerns are different family of parasites, Oshima constructs an almost classical film and less reliant on commercial appeal. Oshima—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—12

Oshima clearly sees Japan developing blindly, its old values Similar success greeted Oshima’s first truly international piece corrupted and its new ones worthless. Once a politicized director he Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) a Japanese POW story, from now says: “No matter what political system we live under, a Laurens Van Der Post novella. The casting of pop giant David people at the bottom stay there.” Bowie as one of the put-upon inmates may have helped. But there is It is those people with whom he is most concerned, who await a no denying his directional skill in presenting the erotica of the revolution that never seems to come. In particular, the plight of the androgynous—as well as his concern, not for one nation only, but Japanese woman interests him greatly—for some time in the mid- for all races. With this viewpoint, Oshima’s subsequent films, Max Seventies he hosted a programme especially for them on Japanese mon amour (1988), Kyoto, My Mother’s Place (1991) and Gohatto television, with huge success. (1999) have all been fine films.

JUST THREE MORE IN THE SPRING 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXII: Apr 12 Stephen Frears THE GRIFTERS 1990 Apr 19 Jafar Panahi DAYEREH/THE CIRCLE 2000 Apr 26 Ridley Scott BLADE RUNNER1982

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