The Broken Commandments

I've been reading a collection of essays, Kon Ichikawa, on Japanese director Kon Ichikawa edited by James Quant for Cinamatheque Ontario and was inspired to see The Broken Commandments (Hakai 1962). This is largely due to Keiko McDonald's essay "The Modern Outcast State: Ichikawa's Hakai." it is a cinematic adaptation of Toson Shimazaki's novel about burakumin (formerly a minority group that suffered injustices in the past) during the late Meiji period. In the essay McDonald summarizes the novel and discusses the differences between it and Ichikawa's adaption, written by his wife Natto Wada. It is the story of a young teacher coming to terms with his identity and society's lingering prejudices against burakumin. Ichikawa does an admirable job of depicting the suffering that Ushimatsu (Raizo Ichikawa) feels about his situation cinematically by using close ups and other devices to avoid lengthy literary discourse from the novel. McDonald also points out that Ichikawa and Wada have fleshed out the females roles of Ushimatsu's non-Burakumin love interest Oshio (Shiho Fujimura) and his mentor, Inokok 's (and burakumin advocate) widowed wife (Kyoko Kishida). There is another interesting analysis of the film in Yasuzo Masumara essay "Kon Ichikawa's Mehtod," in which he praises the director for portraying the "New Commoner"-Ushimatsu of the Meiji era, by focusing on a black bull in the opening shot of the film. The bull is to be killed by the protagonist's father and it's terrified and sad eyes reflect the "New Commoner" in an image. Then in another scene the a cow is slaughtered, which not only shows how this was a New Commoner profession, but also to represent the cruelty of their existence-what Masumara calls a "powerful portrait of the position that the New Commoner Ushimatsu found himself in, of his psychology, and of the the society that constrained him."