Dairy Of A Shinjuku Thief

Nagisa Oshima's Diary Of A Shinjuku Thief (1969) is not a conventional film. In this film the artist, Tadnori Yokoo plays “Birdey Hilltop”-a book thief who is caught by Umeko (Rie Yokoyama), who we later discover is merely posing as an employee in one of the film’s many acts of role play. Umeko drags the shoplifting Birdey up to see her “boss”, Mr. Tanabe (the real life boss of Kunokuniya playing “himself”) but he isn't interested in pursuing the matter and and send them on a journey. Oshima is obviously making some sort of statement about sexuality, but what it is I am not certain. I suspect there is some sort of societal criticism lurking in the film as well. Various guides appear during the journey including some counterculture types playing themselves such as Juro Kara. Oshima uses intertiitles to comment on the action throughout the film and sparing uses color at random points in the film as well. Perhaps the documentary footage and Shinjuku locations were of most interest to me-the Kunokuniya bookstore building still exists and operates on the south side of the station. It is a challenging film, and not among my favorites of Oshima.