Slash And Burn

Take This Job and Love It

Title: Departures
Japanese Title: Okuribito
Director: Yojiro Takita
Actors: Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue
Year Released: 2008
Genre: Drama
Otaku Alert: Director Yojiro Takita got his start making pink films.

Title: Big Man Japan
Japanese Title: Dai Nippon Jin
Director: Hitoshi Matsumoto
Actors: Hitoshi Matsumoto, Ua
Year Released: 2007
Genre: Comedy, Kaiju
Otaku Alert: That’s everybody’s favorite yakuza, Riki Takeuchi, as the one-legged monster.

This is quite a rarity, to have two first-run Japanese films open in the theaters in the same weekend. How could I not go see both of them? I felt almost duty-bound to do so. While I do admit I originally thought about grouping these two films into one review for the sake of convenience, after some thinking I realized there’s more to unite them then just release dates. Despite their seeming differences—one is a drama about preparing the dead to be sent off to the next world, the other a comedy about a man who fights giant monsters—both films are ultimately about doing jobs that society looks down upon even though they provide a necessary service.

Departures, from director Yojiro Takita (Onmyoji, Ashura), tells the story of cellist Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a man who’s forced to reassess his talents when the symphony he’s playing with goes bankrupt. Realizing he’s just not as good as he needs to be, he takes his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), and moves back north to his childhood home of Yamagata. Almost immediately he finds a job involving, according to the newspaper ad, “departures,” and is hired on the spot by the slightly eccentric boss (Tsutomu Yamazaki, Tampopo).

Daigo soon finds out that his job involves helping the dead “depart” to the next world, via the encoffining process. While the family watches, Daigo and his boss discreetly clean and dress the body, apply makeup and help get the body inside the coffin. I’m not sure exactly what the undertakers, who hire Daigo and his boss, do but once the body is in the coffin Daigo’s job is finished. As is, apparently, any animosity the mourners may have had for them, which appears to be considerable.

Japan has a long history of taboos related from death, going back to pre-history, so it’s not surprising that they should continue today. Departures, although it never states so blatantly, is on the side of modernity. Daigo is made to feel like a pariah by both the townspeople and his wife, who calls him unclean and worries how their unborn child will be treated. However, all it takes is for someone to witness Daigo in action, respectfully doing his job, and thousands of years of social conditioning vanish with a misty-eyed smile.

This is an extremely interesting topic but one that is not well served by this kind of pat oversimplification. As with a lot of dramatic films coming out of Japan these days, Departures opts for a kind of TV show resolution, with little in the way of true conflict. I would be lying if I said Departures was a bad movie, but it does feel like a missed opportunity.

Not so Big Man Japan, a dry comedy about Daisato, a man who makes a living saving Japan from giant monsters. If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m a fan of kaiju films. I’m also a fan of the old henshin TV shows like Ultra-Man, which featured a normal man who transforms into a giant to fight a never-ending succession of imaginative monsters.

What those shows didn’t give us, though, was an insight into the private life of such a hero, and that’s the bulk of Big Man Japan. Structured like a documentary, we see Daisato at home, on a “business trip” (in Nagoya to fight a monster), and interacting with his estranged daughter. It’s in this sequence that we really get an insight into what this kind of life means, with the ex-wife complaining that because of his job, Daisato’s daughter gets picked on at school.

As with in Departures, Daisato doesn’t seem at all interested in quitting. Unlike Daigo though, Daisato doesn’t really seem to love his job either. It’s just a job, one that the men in his family have been doing for generations. The static that comes with it (family tension, a growing public outcry against him) is merely part of the job.

Comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto wrote, directed and stars in Big Man Japan, and you can’t help but wonder how much of this comes from his own experience in show business. People on the street are interviewed about what they think about Daisato, and one man says, “He used to be more edgy. Now he’s getting fat.” Seems like there’s not that much difference between fighting monsters and making people laugh. Either way, you can't please everyone.

Fantastipo

Director: Shogo Yabuchi 
Actors: Tsuyoshi Domoto, Taichi Kokubun, Kimika Yoshino
Year Released: 2005
Genre: "Comedy"
See Also: Survive Style 5+, Taste of Tea
Availability Note: Import only.

Fantastipoop.

When Yokai Attack: Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare and The Great Yokai War

Title: Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare
Japanese Title: Yokai daisenso
AKA: Big Ghost War, Big Monster War, Ghosts on Parade
Director: Yoshiyuki Kuroda
Actors: Yoshihiko Aoyama, Hideki Hanamura, Akane Kawasaki
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Samurai, Horror
See Also: Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters, Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts
Otaku Alert: Director Yoshiyuki Kuroda went on to helm the last entry in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, White Heaven in Hell.

Title: The Great Yokai War
Japanese Title: Yokai Daisenso
AKA: The Great Hobgoblin War
Director: Takashi Miike
Actors: Chiaki Kuriyama, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Etsushi Toyokawa
Year Released: 2005
Genre: Adventure
See Also: Kibakichi, Kibakichi 2
Otaku Alert: The Great Yokai War is based on a novel by Hiroshi Aramata, the same writer who brought us the source material for Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis.

I recently picked up Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, a great book that catalogs many of Japan's best known yokai. Yokai, for lack of a better word, are goblins, although their sheer variety in size, shape and temperament belies something as plain a word as "goblin." As a kid I marveled at the amazing variety of monsters on shows like Ultraman, creatures with mouths and hands in all sorts of odd places, and this is reflected in the yokai as well. From the giant foot that appears in your home, to the walking wall, to the angry Buddhist priest who turned into a giant rat, yokai truly are like no monsters we have in the West.

The best way to see yokai in action (bar walking alone on a dark forest path at night in Japan) is in the movies. In 1968, Daiei followed up its spooky samurai kids movie Yokai hyaku monogatari (aka Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters) with Yokai daisenso, a film that saw some of Japan's most famous yokai doing battle with a Sumerian god. Released in the US on DVD under the name Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare, the film is a great introduction to the world of the yokai.

The god Daimon, trapped in a tomb in the ancient Babylonian city of Ur, is set free by a pair of grave robbing white guys in Abe Lincoln beards dressed up like Arabs. Daimon kills them and immediately makes a bee-line for Edo-era Japan, because, apparently, life is good there. He sucks the blood of a few samurai higher-ups, takes over their bodies, and soon has his vassals destroying the family altar and doing various other unholy things.

A kappa (part-turtle yokai with a plate on his head) is the first to see Daimon and rallies the yokai troops, who take him on in a fit of nationalism. Can't let some foreigner god come waltzing into Japan and start pushing the locals around.

Highlights: kappa getting his plate rubbed raw against a wooden support column; wacky antics with Karakasa, the umbrella yokai, and a pair of manzai-like samurai; and a fat kid who runs around in a NSFW thong. The effects are pleasantly cheesy, the monster performances respectably hammy and, it being a Daei production, the film looks great.

In 2005, Takashi Miike took it upon himself to do a remake of Yoaki daisenso. (Although it had the same name in Japan, Miike's version was released in the US as The Great Yokai War, which is essentially a direct translation of the title.) Aside from the title, and the fact that both movies have yokai in them, Miike kept little else from the original.

It's present day, and Tadashi, a middle school-age transplant from Tokyo, is busy getting pushed around by the local country bumpkin bullies. Pretty soon Tadashi has more to worry about than bad kid actors, as he gets caught up in the titular yokai war. This time it's not an invading foreign beastie but a former human-turned-demon, out to destroy all the yokai in Japan. Helping him in his cause is Agi, played by Chiaki Kuriyama in a series of skin-tight costumes and the best beehive wig the B-52s never wore.

The Great Yokai War, like its predecessor, is decidedly a kids' movie, but it's also a Miike film, which means there's a nasty undercurrent running throughout. Yokai are transformed into half-mechanical monsters, screaming as their bodies are mutated into metal. There's also a great scene where the requisite cute sidekick gets the crap kicked out of it by Agi. Priceless.

I saw The Great Yokai War at a packed screening in San Francisco, and the audience—with nary a child in attendance—was hooting and hollering the entire time. Miike knows how to make a fun movie, whether underground or, as of late, for a mass audience. Let's just hope he never loses his sense of humor.

The Race We've Already Lost: Matango and Goke

Title: Matango
AKA: Attack of the Mushroom People
Director: Ishiro Honda
Actors: Akira Kubo, Miki Yashiro, Kumi Mizuno
Year Released: 1963
Genre: Horror
See Also: Gojira, Dogora
Otaku Alert: Apparently, the mushrooms that everyone eats were custom-made rice confections.

Title: Goke the Body Snatcher From Hell
Japanese Title: Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro
Director: Hajime Sato
Actors: Teruo Yoshida, Tomomi Sato, Eizo Kitamura
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Horror
See Also: Terror Beneath the Sea, Snake Woman's Curse
Otaku Alert: Comely stewardess Kuzumi, played by Tomomi Sato, would next appear in Kinji Fukasaku's Blackmail Is My Life. Talk about trading up.
Availability Note: Import only.

Western DVD stores are full of sci-fi films that mine our fear of loss of identity. From Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the Borg in Star Trek, themes of being subsumed into a group are more common than pedophiles at a Little League game. But what if you come from a country that values the group over the individual? Where do you go with your paranoia sci-fi situations then? In this pair of delightful '60s films, Matango and Goke The Body Snatcher From Hell, you go where everyone else goes when the group loses its senses: over the cliff of depravity.

Matango (1963), another fine Toho film from Ishiro Honda, is a kind of Gilligan's Island on hallucinogenics, a three-hour tour that turns into an extended bad trip. A group of Tokyo socialites gets caught in a storm while sailing and ends up shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. They find a ship that suffered a similar fate, but where are the crew? If they're dead, where are the corpses? And don't these mushrooms growing everywhere look yummy?

Soon, as it is wont to due, humanity is breaking down, with people selfishly pilfering from the food rations, selling bird eggs at extortion-level prices, and being generally nasty to each other. Keeping their heads above the waters of de-evolution are a stalwart man and woman, a pair of innocents who hold out against the groups' head-long march towards barbarism. Precipitating this transformation are the wild, addictive mushrooms of the island. Once you start eating, you can't stop, even when you realize that they're turning you into a mushroom too.

Part diatribe about modern, hedonistic behavior (during a mushroom trip we're treated to images of night time Tokyo and dancing cabaret girls), part warning about where society is headed, and part pre-counter culture drug trip, Matango is a smart, entertaining, and uncharacteristically kid-unfriendly film from Honda.

Five years later, when Goke The Body Snatcher From Hell was released in 1968, a hell of a lot had changed. The backslide of humanity that Matango hinted at was apparently complete, with the Vietnam War raging not far from Japan, and the US using Japan as a jumping-off point for its "peace-keeping" activities. Hajime Sato, who previously entertained us with Terror Beneath the Sea, had apparently had it up to here with the whole human race. His solution? An unstoppable invasion of outer space vampires. However, in this dark vision of humanity, the vampires needn't even bother—humanity is too busy killing itself to care.

An airplane full of reprobates (assassin, mad bomber, politician, arms dealer, scientist who enjoys testing peoples' limits, etc.) crashes into a mountainside after a UFO strafes it. Turns out the UFO is piloted by a puddle of spilled Prell shampoo, which wastes no time in taking over the assassin by (get this) psychically making his forehead split open into a vagina-like slit, and then slithering inside. Dude runs around for the rest of the movie with this vagina on his face. I can't help wonder if Sato had some unresolved fear of women. Anyway, assassin catches a few survivors and sucks their blood but the real danger here is from (cue heavy music) each other.

There's lots of back-stabbing and double-dealing, a blue print for every season of Survivor to come, but the best is between the arms dealer and politician. The two obviously know each other, and it is later revealed that the politician took bribes and even the dealer's wife(!) to push favorable legislation through the Diet. However, there's some bad blood running between them, with the dealer pushing whiskey on the dehydrated politician and delighting in his hoarse-throated cries for water.

By the time the invasion lands, most of our plane-crash survivors are already dead, save for a virginal pair, a captain and cabin attendant who both look smashing in uniform and could probably do a good job of repopulating the world. If it weren't for that whole invasion thing, natch. I can't recall another alien invasion movie that placed the actual invasion on the backburner while giving bickering, disgusting people the limelight. When the end comes, you're almost relieved to be rid of such reprobates.

Oh, and that whole Vietnam War thing? Yeah, we sure learned a lot from that, didn't we?

King Kong Escapes

Japanese Title: Kingu Kongu no gyakushu
AKA: King Kong's Counterattack, The Revenge of King Kong
Director: Ishiro Honda
Actors: Rhodes Reason (no, seriously), Mie Hama, Linda Miller
Year Released: 1967
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Godzilla Vs. King Kong, Godzilla Vs. Hedorah
Otaku Alert: Mie Hama, who plays the perfectly named Madame Piranha, was the first Asian to pose for Playboy.

Note: the following was recovered from a discarded Post-it Note.

King Kong Escapes

Attractive white girl (model)

Take over world w/ Kong robot

Guy in a cape with nasty teeth

@ North Pole in frogged Chinese shirts and pants suits—what gives?

Element X is bullshit

Nappiest Kong ever

Kong's eyelids flap back like he's deranged

Weird, poop-like lips

Looks kinda like Homer Simpson

Robot breaks getting element X so they steal real Kong

Mie Hama—cute hats

Kong understands English?

Battle w/ Gorosaurus best part—jump kick

Still better than Jackson's King Kong

Out of beer, must get more before I can watch any more of this movie

Godzilla Vs. Hedorah

Japanese Title: Gojira tai Hedora 
AKA: Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster
Director: Yoshimitsu Banno
Actors: Akira Yamauchi, Toshie Kimura, Gara Takatori
Year Released: 1971
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Gojira, Gappa the Triphibian Monsters
Otaku Alert: The actor playing Dr. Yano in the underwater sequences is the director himself, Yoshimitsu Banno. He apparently chose Akira Yamauchi to play the good doctor because he had a similar build.

The other day I was loitering around my local neighborhood Toys"R"Us (well, this being Japan the sign said, トイザらス). After marveling that the store looked more like a heaven for adult otaku rather than children, I stumbled upon the Godzilla aisle and nearly wet myself. Being on a scholarship, instead of buying everything I wanted (which included large and expensive Ultraman play sets) I settled for a $7.00 vinyl toy Hedorah. The irony is delightful: here is a toy of a monster created from pollution, heavily featured in a film with a strong environmental message, and it's made from processed petroleum. Try as Godzilla might, Hedorah always wins!

The sole Godzilla film directed by Yoshimitsu Banno, Godzilla Vs. Hedorah (or, as I remember it from schoolyard discussions, Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster) is an anomaly in the series, an art-film kaiju spectacular with a heavy environmental message and a willingness to kill off major characters. It is a turning point in the series (of sorts), a wonderful confluence of "head" culture and kiddie entertainment, and far and away my favorite Godzilla film.

A fisherman finds a strange looking, oversized tadpole and brings it to Dr. Yano (Akira Yamauchi), a marine biologist. Yano and his son go down to the bay where the tadpole was discovered and there are attacked by what the short-shorts-wearing son names Hedorah (from the Japanese for sludge, hedoro). Soon Hedorah is growing and attacking ships, then changes form and emerges onto land to suck—with eyes half-closed in ecstasy like a suckling kitten—on factory smokestacks, fondle greenhouse-gas-producing cars and spread poisonous gas around. This is the first film in the series since the original Gojira to exploit the metaphorical possibilities of the sci-fi genre, and exploit it, it does. When Hedorah takes flight, polluting cities like a biplane dusting clouds of DDT, terrified adults and children fall to the ground, clutch their throats, and die. Yes, people actually die in this film, horrible deaths that recall both the dropping of the atomic bombs and recent ecological threats. This is a kid's movie?

Of course, Godzilla shows up, somehow psychically connected to the short-shorts kid, who sees Godzilla in a dream and knows when he's coming to help. It's a nod to Gamera and an indication of the direction kaiju films had gone by the early '70s. Despite this, the producers of the series hated the film and refused to let Banno make any more Godzilla films, but if you ask me he rescued the series from the tedium of the South Seas films that occupied most of the late '60s. I mean, the previous entry was Godzilla's Revenge, a clip-show retread built around an annoying story about a kidnapped child who imagines a friendship with a pint-sized Minira. Banno here injects a dose of much-needed relevance to the series.

I love this movie for so many reasons, but if I have to name just one: he kills off the hippies. A group of hippies (who hallucinate after drinking whiskey—go Japan and its strong anti-drug laws) decides to hold a happening in the countryside near Mt. Fui to stop ecological disaster. They power up their electric instruments, undoubtedly powered by exhaust-spewing gasoline generators, and proceed to writhe like rutting snakes until Hedorah gasses them to death. Seriously. They fall to the ground and die. Ha! Stupid hippies. I'm not sure where Banno's sympathies lie where the counterculture was concerned, but this scene sure is funny.

The movie ends on a down beat. As with the ineffectual hippies and their misguided attempts to "stop pollution," is there really anything anyone can do? Godzilla gives it his best and loses and eye and a hand AND gets covered in what looks like liquid Hedorah diarrhea for his troubles. And in the end, the movie hits us with a big question mark; "And Yet Another One?" is splashed over a still of a new Hedorah emerging menacingly from the water. Hippy, giant lizard, short-shorts-wearing kid—all are powerless against man's monolithic and rampant irresponsibility.

Snake Woman's Curse

Japanese Title: Kaidan hebi onna
AKA: Ghost Story of the Snake Woman
Director: Nobuo Nakagawa
Actors: Sachiko Kuwahara, Ko Nishimura, Chiaki Tsukioka
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Horror
See Also: Jigoku, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, Blind Woman's Curse
Otaku Alert: Pinky violence regular Yukie Kagawa makes her debut in Snake Woman's Curse.

Nobuo Nakagawa was the Kiyoshi Kurosawa of his day, a master of the horror genre with a unique style that pretty much set the stage for the way horror films would be made well into the '60s. Starting at Shintoho in the '50s, he put his indelible stamp on the genre with classics like Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan and Jigoku, both films that married unique camera work and color palettes to a genre better known as a utilitarian way to fight the summer heat (they were supposed to give you chills, literally).

With Snake Woman's Curse, made for Toei in 1968—a time when matinee audiences were more concerned with yokai and daikaiju than traditional horror—Nakagawa brought back both his liquid camera work and eye for effects, and, as screen writer, all the hallmarks of the traditional Japanese horror film.

Traditional kaidan (ghost stories), many based on folktales, generally concern a woman who, wronged in life, returns from the dead to haunt the man who wronged her. Many of these were set in the Edo era, a time when women were largely oppressed in Japanese society. In these stories, women—pushed to the margins of society in terms of rights and presence—become the "other," and become associated with the uncanny and horrible, another kind of "other." Snake Woman's Curse takes place during the Meiji era, a time when Japan was rapidly modernizing and emerging from its feudal past. However, women were still treated shabbily, the traditions of the Edo era codified into law.

After Yasuke, a sharecropper farmer, dies, his debts are passed on to his wife, Sue, and comely adult daughter, Asa, who are forced to move into the main house and work for the landlord. Sue soon finds herself the object of the landlord's affections, much to the dismay of both her and the landlord's wife, who treats her ruthlessly. Asa is then targeted by the son of the landlord, who sees in her a quick and consequence-free lay. Soon Sue, sick with the same ailment that killed her husband, dies, and Asa, unable to contain her grief at the death of her parents and being repeatedly raped by the landlord's son, kills herself.

To the wealthy of the film, these farmers are little more than pests, or beats to exploit. Whether for the work they produce or for their bodies, they exist to service the landlords, or so they would like to believe. However, pushed to the margins, the poor—particularly the women—are transformed into obake, ghosts, and begin to haunt the landlord and his son.

The landlord's son marries soon after Asa's suicide, and his guilt is transferred to his own wife, whom he hallucinates as having huge snake scales instead of skin. Although higher in society than the farmers, the new wife is still female, and thus also an "other" in the eyes of the son.

Snake Woman's Curse was the (snake's) tail-end of the kaidan genre, and would soon be replaced by American-style slasher films. However, it was a wronged woman named Sadako who would bring this traditional element back to Japanese horror in the form of Ringu, the popularity of which suggests that Japan may still have some issues of sexual equality left to address.

Audition

Audition Director: Takashi Miike
Actors: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura
Year Released: 1999
Genre: Horror
See Also: Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q
Otaku Alert: Eihi Shiina's latest, Tokyo Gore Police, looks to be a real treat.

In 2001 I moved to Los Angeles and promptly experienced the worst date of my life. It was the beginning of internet dating, and I was more than ready to put technology to good use to meet interesting women in Los Angeles. We flirted online, flirted over the phone, and then agreed to meet. I drove the two hours down to Irvine, a wealthy suburb at the extreme southern end of Orange County to meet her, a college student currently enrolled in Phoenix but home for the weekend.

I was instantly disappointed. Her face did not match her picture. This being my first internet date, I had yet to learn the wily ways that people disguise their, shall we say, shortcomings in photographs. But I try to not be too shallow, so instead of running back to my car and not looking back, as I should have done, I soldiered on. After saying hello, she asked me to lie to her mother about how we met. I don't lie. Don't ask me to lie. So when her mother asked how we met, I was honest. My date shot me daggers. It only got worse from there.

At the club, my date and her friend did nothing but cattily make fun of the people there while I sipped a drink. Then my date turned to me, grabbed my sideburns, and said, "What the hell are these? Are they supposed to look good?" I said, "What does it matter?" to which she said, "Well, I have to look at them." No you don't, I thought, and almost got up and left then, willing to strand them at the club instead of put up with this abuse. But I am nothing if not a gentleman, and stuck it out until the end.

A few months later, I saw Audition for the first time, and realized it could have been worse. A lot worse.

Audition, an unusually restrained film for Takashi Miike, is about a lonely middle-aged filmmaker's bad dating choice gone horribly wrong. It builds upon the fear of making yourself vulnerable to someone you don't really know and explodes in an infamous climax that had me covering my eyes the first time I saw it.

Stalwart character actor Ryo Ishibashi is Shigeharu Aoyama, a documentary filmmaker who lets his producer colleague talk him into holding an audition to find his next wife. The audition is supposedly for a film but really the women—all young and attractive—are trying out for the opportunity to date Shigeharu. It should be noted that Shigeharu is not some braying chauvinist, he's just a lonely guy whose wife died seven years ago and now hasn't a clue how to go about meeting women.

At first the audition ruse seems to have worked—Shigeharu chooses the fragile and beautiful Asami (Eihi Shiina, Eureka) and soon they're dating, the film role long since forgotten. She reveals some bad past experiences but this only draws Shigeharu to her more, attracted by her vulnerability and strength in overcoming hardships. However, all is not well in the world of Asami, and our vulnerable waif turns out to be something quite terrifying.

Miike, known for excess and flights of directorial fancy, is here uncharacteristically restrained, and the film excels because of it. I've always felt that Miike was a great filmmaker sabotaged by his own boredom. He can't just let a film play straight—he has to throw in some lame shit like stop-motion chickens or fireballs or something. But Audition he leaves as is, and it works perfectly. By the time the end of the film is upon you, you have no idea what's happening. Like I said, I covered my eyes, and it was all I could do to not walk out with the other people at the screening.

Hmm, seems like there's a trend here. I couldn't walk out on a bad date, nor a terrifying sequence in a film. I'm not sure if that says more about my tenacity, or my terrible survival skills. If I end up feetless in a laundry bag someday, we'll have our answer.

Masumura/Wakao Retrospective in Oita

Oita, Japan. Not a hot bed of cinematic activity. There are only two small cinemas in the downtown area, and they show pretty much only foreign films. You occasionally get a Japanese film but usually by the time I notice they've come, they've gone. I've caught this one in time, but will I actually make it to a screening?

The Cinema 5 is running Yasuzo Masumura movies all week long, specifically ones fro the '60s that star Ayako Wakao. They are: A Wife Confesses (1961), Seisaku's Wife (1965), Irezumi (Tattoo) (1966), and Red Angel (1966). Irezumi is the one I really want to see, a revenge film with a script by Kaneto Shindo (director of The Naked Island). The only problem is it's only playing late Wednesday night, and I have to get up early on Thursday for a kanji test.

School or Ayako? Good grades or hot tattoos? Sleep or, well, less sleep? If I make it to the theater, you'll know it by the review posted here.

In the Realm of the Senses

Japanese Title: Ai no corrida
AKA: Empire of the Senses
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Actors: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aoi Nakajima
Year Released: 1976
Genre: Drama
See Also: Gohatto (Taboo), Cruel Story of Youth
Otaku Alert: Lead actor Tatsuya Fuji has done everything from Gamera movies to the recent Midnight Eagle.
Availability Note: Out of print.

Is it or isn't it? It's almost not even worth having this argument anymore. Nagisa Oshima's controversial 1976 In the Realm of the Senses has sparked plenty of debate in its 32 years of existence—so much so that it's almost old hat by now to pontificate over its pornness. Yeah, that's what we're talking about here: is it pornography because it shows actual sex, or is it just arty sex?

The shouts of "it's porn!" tend to come from the conservative side of the debate, as one would expect. The argument goes that: any filmic depiction of sex—be it penetration, fellatio, ejaculation (all of which occur in the film)—automatically defines the event as pornography, and is thus worth banning, or censoring, or feeling ashamed for liking it.

The other side, on which I stand, says that just because there's sex doesn't mean it's pornography. Sex isn't all that icky, really, so what's the big deal about telling an honest story about consenting adults who happen to have an amorous love life? Just because this film is more honest than most, does that automatically assign it to the status of prurience? For really, isn't that what defines pornography? Pornography exists to masturbate to. You'd have a difficult time saddling In the Realm of the Senses with that definition.

Based on a true story, Senses centers around the couple of Sada Abe, a former prostitute who's gone to work as a servant for a wealthy man, and Kichizo Ishida, said wealthy man who finds in Sada an equal in amorousness. The two progress from quick dalliances around the house to a full-blown sexual obsession, squirreled away in an inn and taken to choking each other in coitus to heighten the pleasure. Anyone familiar with the famous, Showa-era source material will already know how it ends; the story thus builds to this climax and provides reasons for how something so outlandish could actually happen. (If you don't know the story, think of a pre-war, Japanese John Wayne Bobbitt.)

As difficult as In the Realm of the Senses is to pigeonhole as pornography, it comes pretty damn close, and not just for the fact that it graphically depicts sex. As with "real" porn, Senses suffers from becoming boring. Really, how much sex can you watch in one sitting? Also, Sada Abe is a doctor-certified nymphomaniac, a common porn plot device (common back when porn had plots, at least). I find this unfortunate, as it defines her sexuality as a pathology, while Kichizo Ishida's is merely manly. (Also, Eiko Matsuda, the actress who played Sada, quickly disappeared into the world of softcore while Tatsuya Fuji, a longtime character actor with kids' movies under his belt, continues working today.)

I consider Oshima a director with a mission. Like with Gohatto, his film about homosexuality among the samurai of the Shinsengumi, Oshima is here making a point as much as he is telling a story. Oshima had to go to France to make the movie he wanted to, and was greeted with an obscenity charge in his native Japan upon his return (acquitted). The movie has still never been shown uncensored in Japan, which proves his point rather nicely, I think. That it also tells a rather interesting story is testament to his abilities as a director. If only it had managed to avoid the same pitfalls as—in the words of Troy McClure— "the finest R-rated movies Europe has to offer."