After Shohei Imamura's financial failure with his over budget production Profound Desire of the Gods, he turned to documentary making, which was financially easier to manage. The first film he made was the fascinating History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970). Imamura worked in this genre until 1979, when he returned to fictional film making with the masterful Vengeance Is Mine. It is hard for me to separate this film from some of his early breakthroughs, The Insect Woman from 1963 for one. The character Tome from that films closely resembles his subject, Madame Onoboro, in this documentary. In that film her frames Tome' life with historical events that were taking place from prewar to postwar periods.It is as if she were created by Imamura. Onoboro tells her story to Imamura as he shows news footage from the postwar era and sometimes asks her to comment on the things that were happening in Japan on the screen as she tells her personal story. She is a burakumin, a lowly stigmatized group of people that have jobs that are seen as impure since her father is a butcher. Something Imamura foreshadows in the beginning when he contrasts WWII footage with cattle being slaughtered in an abattoir at the onset of the film. When she realizes this she sees her world closing in and quits school to work in the family business and takes up with a local policeman to help her family avoid black market raids. This particular coupling will bedevil her for years as she agrees to marry the violent, philandering, layabout who father a child with her. It is several years before she can get a divorce from her. She drifts into the mizushobai (water trade business) working as a bar hostess and prostitute. She saves enough money to buy her own bar and manages to live her life as she pleases always with a man in the picture, a bartender that fathers another child whom she spends several years with follows the same pattern of her first husband and takes to beating her and demanding money. Like Tome from The Insect Woman, she briefly joins the Buddhist religious Sokka Gakkai, which her sister introduced her to. But she's an earthly survivor like Sadako from Intentions of Murder (1964), who finds desire to live after a rape when she gets hungry and begins to eat to satisfy this craving. Onodoro lives to eat, drink, and have sex-she says she will until she dies. After two failed relationships with Japanese men she begins to only date foreign men and the majority of those in Yokosoka, where her bar is located, are American military personnel. At one point she refuses to believe a magazine story that Imamura shows her about American atrocities in Vietnam. She gets pregnant form one of them and gives birth to a mixed child against the wishes of her family who want her to abort it, because she sees it as her last chance and that she likes children despite the fact the father will not acknowledge the child as his when he leaves Japan. Her younger sailor lover comes back to marry her and take her back to America when she muses that he will probably eventually tire of her, since she is much older than he, and she will have to return. But she says she plans to only come back after she has been successful. Throughout the film that contrast the often violent and unstable postwar recovery period footage that shows all the protests, strikes, and brutality at the hands of the police as Japan find sits way in the postwar period. And it never even gets to the economic miracle that was on the horizon. It's hard to marvel how far Japan has come since the end of the war, but it was because of survivors like Onodoro that Japan was able to do it. I think this an important film the career of Imamura that reflects many of his themes and motifs and it is a shame that it isn't more readily available for viewing.
November 10, 2015
October 15, 2014
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (2001) is one of Shohei Imamura's last films, it was made when he was 75. His later phase of film making is much quirkier than the films he made in his prime. This film reunites Imamura with Koji Yakusho and Misa Shimizu from his previous success and Palm D'Or winner The Eel. Thematically it is a continuation of themes Imamura has pursued throughout his career with a focus on the animal and primal aspects of humanity, which always includes sexuality. He is critical of the artificial structures of society that limit humanity. Yousuke (Yakusho) is a salaryman who has been restructured with a wife and son living in another town that are never seen. His philosopher homeless friend send him on a search for a treasure in a house near a red bridge on the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa (also the setting for Hirokazu Kore-eda's stunning debut Marobosi) sets him a on a spiritual journey of sorts. The metaphorical laden condition of the woman, Saeko (Shimizu), that lives there with her senile grandmother is a bit obvious-when she gets full of water she needs to release through sexual intercourse-which Imamura presents as a natural and life giving process. Yousuke is obsessed by the woman and decides to stay, taking the earth connecting profession of fisherman and deals with an eccentric cast of characters as he takes possession of a more natural life and leaves his old one behind as his wife divorces him long distance. There are some suspect dream sequences and special effects that add a sense of the contrived, thus is it fantastical on several levels which distract the viewer from the central message. This film can also be seen as minor Imamura, a Imamura who is past his prime, but still has some interesting things to say about humanity.
October 14, 2014
Endless Desire
Endless Desire (1958) is the third of four films directed by Shohei Imamura in 1958 and another studio assignment from Nikkatsu. It was based on an original script by Natto Wada who would go onto have several collaborations with, and eventually marry, director Kon Ichikawa. Despite the fact that this film was not written by Imamura it reflects several of his pet themes that will be explored later in other films. In this story five venal, greedy and desperate people converge in a small town from Tokyo to retrieve a cache of buried morphine that was stolen from war supplies, which they plan to sell for profit. These desperate people who, postwar survivalists, include a “fake teacher” Ryoji’s (Shoichi Ozawa) open-mouthed food chewing resembling that of a cow chewing on his cud, the seasoned and cynical Onuma, played by Taiji Tonoyama, and the femme fatale Shima Hashimoto (Misako Watanabe) who holds her own against the male members for malevolence while brandishing a gun. They need to dig a tunnel under a butcher shop to obtain the hidden morphine. There is a subplot involving a love affair between the nephew of the real-estate agent, from which they rent a house to do their digging, and the daughter of the butcher whose shop is above the treasure. The film also has elements of noir as the gang members are eliminated one by one due to their overwhelming greed. These themes will be further explored later in Imaura's breakthrough film Pigs and Battleships (1961) about corruption and crime surrounding an American military base. It is an interesting and entertiang step in the development of an auteur, but essentially a minor film in the director's filmography.
October 07, 2014
Nishi Ginza Station
Nishi Ginza Station (1958) is Shohei Imamura's second feature film and was an assignment from the studio as a vehicle for a popular song with the same title of the film by Frank Nagai. This short film comes across as less ambitious than his debut and can also be considered a minor work. But there are some interesting aspects to it. Imamura wrote the screenplay which has some prosaic ideas about human nature. A henpecked husband, who is prone to reality altering day dreams about his idyllic past on a South Pacific island with a local girl "Sally," is left behind for a few days by his wife and kids. His philandering best friend, a veterinarian, whose family has also gone away coerces him into looking for an affair in order to assert his masculinity. Nagai narrates and provides musical interludes throughout. The dream sequences feature a woman-foreign-we know this by her name, "Sally"-obviously a South Pacific Islander name-who appears in black-face. Without giving away too much of the plot, one can expect a happy ending. There is a comic sequence where the doctor's student assistant gives the henpecked husband advice about his upcoming date as if he were giving advice about a female dog. The location scenes of Ginza give the viewer a taste of what it was like in postwar 50s Japan as well.
October 03, 2014
Stolen Desire
Stolen Desire (1958) marks the debut of the celebrated Japanese New Wave director Shohei Imamura. It is very much a mature debut in that it is a very polished film. However, in terms of his oeuvre of films, it is also a minor work. It depicts the trials and tribulations of a traveling troupe of actors with a young college graduate Shinichi (Hiroyuki Nagato), working as the director. The story takes place in the working class Kawachi district of Osaka that has something of a rural feel in the film, but has been enveloped by the city in the modern age. The setting of this film is a statement of sorts since it declares that Imamura will be exploring a milieu that is a far cry from the restrained middle class dramas of Ozu, however, the irony is that in 1959 Ozu would remake his Story of Floating Weeds about a travelling troupe of actors himself. All in all, an entertaining debut from a director who would make some of the more interesting and challenging modern Japanese films in his career.
September 27, 2014
Shohei Imamura
Shohei Imamura (1997), is a book of essays about the celebrated Japanese film maker that was edited by James Quant was designed to accompany a traveling retrospective of the films of the director in Canada and America in 1997-1998. It was organized by Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto) and the Audio-Visual Department of The Japan Foundation (Tokyo). This retrospective was due to Imamura winning a second Plame d'Or at the 1997 Cannes International Film Festival for The Eel, his second (the first was in 1983 for The Ballad of Narayama) one of only three directors to accomplish such a feat-as pointed out in Quandt's Introduction.
This collection contains several essays by critics, an interview with Imamura, as well as translations of writing by Imamura. Most of these writings were collected from other sources so there is some repetition of analysis and summary of Imamura's films as well as commentary about his inspiration and methods as a director. However, there are many insightful comments and discussions of his films. One of the best pieces in the collection is Donald Richie's essay, "Notes for a Study on Shohei Imamura" from Richie's 1995 collection, Partial Views: Essays on Contemporary Japan. Richie makes an interesting point by stating that though Imamura's and Ozu's style and technique differ, they both have a concern for the natural and real as well as an obsession about the concept of being Japanese. Max Tessier's essay, "Shohei Imamura: Modern Japan's Entomologist," felt a bit repetitive after Richie's essay, but included commentary on The Ballad of Narayama, that was not included in Richie's essay. Again, there was repetition in Dave Kehr's essay, "The Last Rising Sun" from Film Comment in 1983, which looks at the career of Imamura up to his Cannes victory. Allan Casebier's essay "Images of Irrationality in Modern Japan: The Films of Shohei Imamura" is another look at Imamura's career from Film Criticism in 1983. Thus more recaps of films like the previous essays. However, there is an insightful section in the essay where he discusses the concept of "yugen" (the presence of of mystery and incomprehensibility in all things) in Japanese culture. Thus, he uses this concept to explore the films of Imamura. This is followed by a translated entry, "Shohei Imamura:Human, All Too Human" by Gilles Laprevotte from Amiens International Film Festival Catalogue 1996. This is notable because it makes reference to some of his later works such as Zegen (1987) and Black Rain (1989). One of the most enlightening entries in this collection is the interview between film maker Toichi Nakata and Imamura, in which the younger director's mentor talks about his past, films, and film school in detail. This is followed by a brief essay written by Imamura after hsi third film called "My Approach to Filmmaking," which underlines his interest in portraying people on the screen. Imamura then writes about his influences in the short piece "Traditions and Influences." Imamura explores the influence of his second mentor, after Ozu, Yuzo Kawashima in "The Sun Legend of a Country Boy." There is more about Kawashima in Imamura's short essay "My Teacher." Audie Bock, one of the trailblazing English historians of Japanese cinema, has written a short piece that places Iamaura in the context of the Japanese cinema written specifically for this collection, "Shohei Imaura: No Confucianist." Antoine de Baecque contributes a review of Profound Desire of the Gods with "Murder of the Pink Pig." While Yann Lardeau writes about The Ballad of Narayama in his piece "Ascent to the Beyond: The Ballad of Narayama." There is more on this film in Charles Tesson's essay "Pigs and Gods." The final essay was one of the more interesting for me, Linda C. Ehrlich's "Erasing and Refocusing: Two Films of the Occupation." In this essay, Ehrlich compares and contrasts Imamura's Pigs and Battleships with Masahiro Shinoda's 1984 MacArthur's Children, a film I have yet to see. Despite the repetition throughout the collection, it is an invaluable document since there is precious little written in English about the films of one of Japan's giants of cinema.
March 07, 2014
Profound Desires Of The Gods
Profound Desires Of The Gods (1968) was Shohei Imamura's last studio backed film. This was a period where films were losing out to TV audiences and studios were reluctant to back prestige projects by auteurs that were likely to have limited box office appeal. It didn't help that Imamura extended the shooting schedule from six to 18 months and allowed the budget to spiral out of control either. After this Imamura would concentrate on documentaries for TV until he made his cinematic comeback with Vengeance Is Mine in 1979. Several of recurrent Imamura themes are investigated in this film about a south sea island, Kurage, (most likely a stand in for Okinawa where it was filmed) that is still 50 years behind the mainland in every aspect of civilization-its a more primitive and organic existence with close bonds to nature. Imamaura more than in any other film acts as a cultural anthropologist studying this semi-ancient culture amid contemporary defilement of Japan, in nature and within the culture. The tentative link between animals and man is once again reflected in the many shots of sea life, animals, and insects that inhabit the island and make it a wild and untamed environment, much like the ostracized Futori family that has upset the balance of life and society on the island through poaching, adultery, and incest (another recurring Imamura theme). However, despite being outcasts there is a tradition of them being shamen, noros, for the island where they converse with the gods and have important roles in the religious ceremonies and traditions of the island. The noro roles are maintained by women, Uma (Neikichi's sister-in-law and common-law husband) and later, Toriko, the sister granddaughter of Kametoru (a family member who helps with the modernization of the island as an assistant to the engineer sent to the island, and who longs to live in Tokyo), half-wit and sort of holy fool and manifestation of sexuality on the island. The island is in transition from the ancient rites and traditions to the lure of island tourism represented by jet planes and a tourist steam engine to bring tourists from the airfield to the center of the island, which is manifested by the appearance of Coca-cola on the island. The islanders are torn between the tendency to adhere to the traditional ways of the island and the desire to modernize and prosper materially from progress from the mainland. It is an epic story, almost three hours in length, with stunning cinematography throughout. A classic from one of Japan's greatest filmmakers.
July 09, 2013
A Man Vanishes
A Man Vanishes (1967) is a fascinating film from one of my favorite Japanese directors, Shohei Imamura, that is difficult to categorize. It is intended as a documentary but takes on elements of fiction and staging throughout. However, it is the mystery of how so many people can disappear in such a small country-at the time of the film Imamura states that in the last year 91,000 were disappeared in Japan. This film looks at the case of the disappearance of a plastics salesman named Tadashi Oshima. Imamura and his crew set out to discover what happened to Tadashi by interviewing those who knew him best—his co-workers, friends, and his fiancée Yoshie. All the while gathering contradictory information concerning his character. But as their investigation delves deeper into Tadashi's dubious business ventures and his enigmatic relationship with Yoshie and, possibly, her sister, the line between filmmaker and subject, fact and fiction, blur. It can be said to be radical in its scope, aesthetic, and technique for what is essentially a nonfiction film.
The DVD is worth it for A Man Vanishes alone but Icarus Films also includes five other fascinating documentaries by Imamura: In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia (45 min.) In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand (50 min.) The Pirates of Bubuan (46 min.) Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home (48 min.) Karayuki-San, the Making of a Prostitute (75 min.)
In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia (1971) is Imamura's first foray into SE Asia and perhaps the least compelling of the bunch. One of the prospective subjects of his documentary has already died apparently of drug and alcohol addiction. However, the other subject is a an Islam convert, who has found an identity, acceptance, and perhaps atonement for his role as a soldier in the war as well, was a fascinating case study. These films are interesting in how they document what SE Asia was like in the 70s as well.
In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand (1971) was more interesting than the previous film mainly due to the three fascinating characters that Imamura has brought together for this film. Imamura is interested in why they chose to remain behind rather than return to Japan after the war. I found it fascinating that two of the three still have strong pro-emperor feelings and are visibly upset when one of them states that the emperor is human just like them. There is frank discussion about the atrocities they committed and their disrespect of the kempeitai (secret police), their officers that made them do questionable things as well as the fact that they raped and kept women. All of them plan to die in Thailand and feel that there must not be anything left for them in Japan. Imamura is particularly moved by Matsu who refuses the interview fee and rode 16 hours 3rd class with his own money back to Chang Mai and is revisited when Imamura makes another documentary about him: Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home.
Before that, Imamura went to the Philippines to film The Pirates of Bubuan (1972). It was another fascinating analysis of truth versus subjective reality. Are there pirates in Bubuan? There is a great build up at meeting these dangerous bandits, but once Imamura gets to the island he meets a serious young man and his family who seems to be on the run, but not overly hostile to others trying to survive among the islands. There is a group of sea gypsies who are discriminated against by Muslims because of their so-called lack of religion, who live a subsistence lifestyle. Imamura investigates their history religion and other traditions and finds much sympathy for them.
In Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home (1973) we get another true life drama unfolding on film. Matsu has come home to make sure his younger sister is being taken care of and finds that she is living with her children after divorcing and fleeing his violent alcoholic older brother who beat her and her daughters. He is a piece of work, with five divorces and somehow retained custody of a nine year old daughter, who he says will be the sole heir to the family fortune, which he has obtained by dubious means. He declaring Matsu killed in action even after learning of this mistake. Matsu confronts him to no avail and leaves Japan disgusted by the greed he sees in contemporary Japan:"I think Japanese people are all insane with greed. I came home and found why Japan had achieved this development...It was for money, wasn't it? The Emperor must've started the war because of he wanted money,too."
The last documentary in this collection is Karayuki-San, the Making of a Prostitute (1975), which is yet another devastating personal narrative of suffering, tragedy, and humility. It is a documentary on one of the Japanese "karayuki-san," who were women who left their homes in Japan to work as prostitutes in Japanese-occupied territories during World War II. Many of these women were told that they were doing this to support their families because of the extreme poverty in wartime Japan. This woman, Kikuyo Zendo, one of the countless Japanese women who were kidnapped or otherwise sold into sexual slavery in order to service the Japanese military in Southeast Asia. She was tricked and then was resigned to her fate. She was coming form a poor family that were burakumin, a caste that was discriminated against in Japan. She was 74 years old at the time of filming, and she offered a frank and harrowing testimony into her horrific wartime experiences, and the reasons that have led her to choose exile over repatriation. Perhaps, the most powerful and heartfelt of Imamaura's excellent documentaries in this set.
Also included is a 12 page booklet with an original essay on Imamura's documentary work by Japanese critic Tadao Sato.
June 20, 2013
Eijanika
The cover above for Eijanika (1981) is a VHS cover since this Shohei Imamura classic is now out of print, and I got a DVD copy with English subtitles from what I think is a Hong Kong-based company based on the Chinese/English subtitles. It was recommended to me by a friend, but it would not have taken much to get me to watch it, since I was already an Imamura fan. He is probably my second favorite Japanese director after Akira Kurosawa. I was compelled to see this film since I have been reading a book about the cultural history of Tokyo called Tokyo: A Cultural History by Stephen Mansfield (which I just finished reading and will review soon). This incident was mentioned in the book, and it was seen as a social/political protest at the start of the Meiji restoration that originated in Kansai (Kyoto and Osaka) and involved dancing festivals. Thus, there is a lot of song and dance in Imamura's film. I thought about why it didn't get much international recognition like most of his films. I arrived at the conclusion that the film was 1) too long, clocking in at 151 minutes and 2) was concerned with what most people would call an obscure historical event. Although, for me, it is one of the most interesting moments in Japanese history since this is where they decided to modernized and disband samurai shogunates after being forced to open the country for trade by Admiral Perry and the US. The speed and vigor of their efforts to modernize were astonishing and within decades they were considered a world power after defeating the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. But this isn't a film about the upper classes, it is essentially about the common folk-earthy women who enjoy the earthly pleasures and who survive by any means possible. And also of the men of the earth who do the dirty work for the bosses and revel in the risk of personal harm. For me it was a fascinating, entertaining, and essential chapter of the Imamura oeuvre.
April 14, 2012
Dr. Akagi
Dr. Akagi (1998) aka "Dr. Liver" is a Shohei Imamaura film adapted from a novel. This is clear in some of the themes and characters. Nature and animals often play symbolic roles in Imamaura films and this is no exception. Imamaura is also fascinated with earthy, sexual women who act as natural beings rather than constructs of society--and the comic prostitute Sonoko fills this role in the film. Dr. Akagi is a rural doctor on a island in the Seto Sea near the close of the war who is battling against an outbreak of hepatitis, which is a metaphor for the mindless patriotism that drives people to sustain an unwinable war. Imamura also shows tolerance for the weakness of his characters: Sonoko's prostitution, the priests drinking, the escaped Dutch prisoner, and the other doctor's morphine addicition. The film is subtly critical in making allusions wartime atrocities like "The Nanking Incident" and the doctors who did cruel experiments on POWs, Unit 731 (going as far to suggest that Akagi's son may have been complicit in the group since he was stationed in Manchuria). The ending shows the fruits of this patriotic disease as the Japanese experienced it in Hiroshima nd Nagasaki.
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