Oshima Nagisa

[David Ehrenstein]

Oshima always sided with the younger 60's generation, except when they radicalized themselves during the "Tokyo War" in 1970 (the Japanese Red Army Faction), went underground, and started the Tokyo and Osaka bombings.

The Secret History of the Tokyo War is, I believe the correct title for the Oshima known as The Man Who Left His Will on Film and/or He Died After the War. A masterpiece by any name.

[shirobamba]

The Secret History of the Tokyo War[/i] is, I believe the correct title for the Oshima known as The Man Who Left His Will on Film and/or He Died After the War.

A masterpiece by any name.

There is no "correct" title of "Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa", for Oshima's title is deliberately abivalent. In Japanese, it's very easy to evoke a multitude of possible meanings. In this case it could as well be "The Sectret History..." as " The History of the Secret....". But either way, the title is meant to be ironic, because the film explicitely doesn't show anything of the "real" Tokyo War. It's one big ellipsis, so to speak. Oshima's main concern in Tokyo Senso was to deconstruct and criticize the simplistic and naive concept of reality, that was used by young political activists of the left. The dualism "reality" vs. the "imaginary" is successfully undermined, in the same way it has been deconstructed by the French Nouveau Roman of Robbe-Grillet et. al. (who, BTW, is explicitely mentioned in the trailer). In the end of Oshima's mise-en-abime construction, "reality" and the "imaginary" are mingled unseperable, and the reality of the "imaginary" is proven to be real, while the reality of the "real" is proven to be imaginary.

As you said, David, a masterpiece. And not the only one, that can't be seen. One could speak of the "Secret History of Oshima's Films" wouldn't it be so sad, that the most important postwar Japanese director is still judged by his lesser early and late works, and not by his mature masterpieces. How about an essay, David, about the distortion of filmhistory through forced ignorance?

The film that deals directly with the Tokyo War is Wakamatsu Koji's "Ecstasy of the Angels", which has just received a restoration, too.
But the 4 Wakamatsu boxsets currently released in Japan - you guess it - don't have subs.

[David Ehrenstein]

How about an essay, David, about the distortion of filmhistory through forced ignorance?

Oh my stars -- where to begin? My head hurts just thinking about it. What's proffered as "Film History" is a vast profusion of distortions.

[a7m4]

UCLA is Playing Oshima's Band of Ninja on March 11th. I've been wanting to see this for awhile but wasn't really expecting to get a chance considering how rare it is. Has anyone seen it?

BAND OF NINJA
(Ninja Bugeicho)
(1967, Japan) Directed by Oshima Nagisa

Shirato Sampei's classic 1959 manga tells the story of the son of an assassinated feudal lord who enlists a renegade ninja in his attempt to avenge his father's death. Together the two gather a band of peasants and farmers to rebel against a corrupt regime. Famed filmmaker Oshima Nagisa realized that a story about revolution demanded revolutionary storytelling. Oshima was determined not only to tell Shirato's sprawling tale but to challenge the definition of cinema in the process. Constructed using only manga illustrations with dialogue and sound effects, BAND OF NINJA is less an adaptation than a dazzling experiment in cross-pollination. Rarely screened and never equaled, BAND OF NINJA proved long before CG that with an "adventurous spirit," as Oshima said, "any kind of material can be brought to the screen."

Based on the comic by Shirato Sampei. Producer: Nakajima Masayuki, Yamagushi Takuji, Oshima Nagisa. Screenwriter: Sasaki Mamrou, Oshima Nagisa. Cinematographer: Takada Akira. Presented in Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 131 min

The San Francisco Cinematheque is also playing Death By Hanging and Diary of a Shinjuku Thief on March 31st. As impractical as it is I am really tempted to drive up there from LA to see it and then spend the weekend San Francisco. Program notes are here.

[Taketori Washizu]

Is Oshima retired from filmmaking now? IMDb lists Taboo as his last credit from 1999.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

He suffered a stroke in 1996, then another one after making Gohatto. I believe that the second stroke was more serious than the first, and he is reportedly now retired as a result.

[impossiblefunky]

Looks like JNWC has a lot of Oshimas to offer -- has anyone ordered from them?

[yoshimori]

Shochiku just announced the contents of the second OSHIMA box due on 27/04/06.
Again it will contain 3 restored films:

Burial of the Sun (1960)
Violence at High Noon (1966)
Treatise On Japanese Bawdy Song (aka: Sing a Song of Sex) (1967)

All w/out subs as usual.

Panorama put out Nihon shunka-ko [Treatise ... aka Sing a Song of Sex] on 6/16. English subs. One hopes they used the Shochiku print.

link to sensasian.com listing.

[subliminac]

Looks like JNWC has a lot of Oshimas to offer -- has anyone ordered from them?

I just recently received two DVDs from them, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Inferno of First Love. These being my first bootlegs I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was dying to see some of these films having recently read the Desser Eros Plus Massacre book, so I ordered without hesitation. Must say I'm pleased with the image quality. It looked very good on my 32" LCD, aside from the compression artifacts which appeared regularly during darker scenes. Nothing too distracting though, especially considering how f-ing amazing these films are. The Oshima was everything I could have hoped for and then some, and I had pretty high expectations going into it.

[shirobamba]

UCLA is Playing Oshima's Band of Ninja on March 11th. I've been wanting to see this for awhile but wasn't really expecting to get a chance considering how rare it is. Has anyone seen it?

Yes, in 2000 Pony Canyon released it on DVD, now out of print. It's definitely worth it, if you're open-minded. Note: This "anime" has nothing in common with modern high-tech anime like "Ghost in the Shell" et al. Oshima had almost no budget for the film, and had to film the drawings without any animation let alone special effects. In order to get the motion he wanted, he panned and zoomed into the static drawings, and used rapid editing. The 2+ hour film contains more then 2000 cuts and was an experiment.

Panorama put out Nihon shunka-ko [Treatise ... aka Sing a Song of Sex] on 6/16. English subs. One hopes they used the Shochiku print.

link to sensasian.com listing.

Thanks for the link! I haven't high hopes for the subs, because the variety of Shunka and literary citations Oshima used in this film are damn difficult to translate (especially w/out context knowledge). The Shochiku remaster is pretty good, very clean and carefully transferred, though letterboxed and DVD5 only.
I ordered the Panorama anyway, and will report back about the disc.

[Steven H]

Both the Panorama official site and dvdasian.com list Bawdy Song as not having english subs. DDDHouse *does* list it as having english subs, however they also have the director listed as "Magisa Oshima", which I just know is going to have me tripping over the N in Nagisa for a bit. That's 2 to 2, but with the official site saying "no subs", it doesn't look good.

For what it's worth, none of the covers match the one linked from senseasian, which seems to be part of their "A Century of Japanese Classic Film" series (however, I've gotten a few of these with seperate cardboard covers that looked different from the series, where the real cover on the alpha case looked more like the standard.)

[yoshimori]

Both the Panorama official site and dvdasian.com list Bawdy Song as not having english subs.

fwiw, dvdasian now lists English subs. Like shirobamba, however, I'm not particularly expecting great subs from panorama.

[shirobamba]

Both the Panorama official site and dvdasian.com list Bawdy Song as not having english subs.

fwiw, dvdasian now lists English subs. Like shirobamba, however, I'm not particularly expecting great subs from panorama.

This case develops a bit curious: asking Sensasian to confirm the subs before sending out the DVD to me, they refunded me instead. I'm not sure, if this means, that there are no Engl. subs on the disc, or if they didn't want to open a DVD case and have a look. Yesasia now lists Engl. subs as well.

[jguitar]

Looks like JNWC has a lot of Oshimas to offer -- has anyone ordered from them?

I just recently received two DVDs from them, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Inferno of First Love. These being my first bootlegs I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was dying to see some of these films having recently read the Desser Eros Plus Massacre book, so I ordered without hesitation. Must say I'm pleased with the image quality. It looked very good on my 32" LCD, aside from the compression artifacts which appeared regularly during darker scenes. Nothing too distracting though, especially considering how f-ing amazing these films are. The Oshima was everything I could have hoped for and then some, and I had pretty high expectations going into it.

Another postitive experience here with japanesenewwave.com. But I also have a question. I ordered Shinjuku Thief, Inferno of First Love, and The Man Who Left His Will On Film. On the JNWC website, they list Shinjuku Thief as being 1.85:1 aspect ratio and letterboxed. It's not letterboxed, but rather full screen. I thought that it's possible that they made a mistake on the website, since they also list the running time as 80 minutes, and it's actually 94. So, I tried to track down the aspect ratio of the film at the time it was released and can't find that info. Does anyone have any suggestions? I've consulted numerous reference sources (and have done some Googling) and can't find anything that consistently and comprehensively lists aspect ratios of films.

I've also taken the obvious step of emailing JNWC but haven't heard back yet. I don't mean this as a criticism of them; to my mind, they're providing a public service and I plan on ordering additional titles. The films look perfectly good on my tube and the presentation/subtitles/special features are great. And the films, of course, are tremendous.

[Gordon]

Interesting to note that Koshikei (1968), Ai no corrida (1976), Ai no borei (1978), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) were all shot in horizonatal 8-perforation 35mm, ie. VistaVision, though they are not credited as being VistaVision films, as the process was longer officially in use, but those films were shot with American VistaVision cameras.

[Steven H]

On the JNWC website, they list Shinjuku Thief as being 1.85:1 aspect ratio and letterboxed. It's not letterboxed, but rather full screen. I thought that it's possible that they made a mistake on the website, since they also list the running time as 80 minutes, and it's actually 94. So, I tried to track down the aspect ratio of the film at the time it was released and can't find that info. Does anyone have any suggestions? I've consulted numerous reference sources (and have done some Googling) and can't find anything that consistently and comprehensively lists aspect ratios of films.

According to the comprehensive Art Theatre Guild "catalog" (from the 2003 Viennale retrospective), Shinjuku dorobo nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief) is in 1:33 aspect ratio and is 94 minutes long.

[jguitar]

Great, thanks Steven. That's just the info I was looking for. I'd still be curious to know of any sources that routinely list aspect ratios and other important data on films. If anyone knows of such a thing, that would be wonderful to hear about. I'll keep on searching and will share info if I find anything.

[Scharphedin2]

Looks like JNWC has a lot of Oshimas to offer -- has anyone ordered from them?

I just recently received two DVDs from them, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Inferno of First Love. These being my first bootlegs I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was dying to see some of these films having recently read the Desser Eros Plus Massacre book, so I ordered without hesitation. Must say I'm pleased with the image quality. It looked very good on my 32" LCD, aside from the compression artifacts which appeared regularly during darker scenes. Nothing too distracting though, especially considering how f-ing amazing these films are. The Oshima was everything I could have hoped for and then some, and I had pretty high expectations going into it.

Another postitive experience here with japanesenewwave.com... The films look perfectly good on my tube and the presentation/subtitles/special features are great. And the films, of course, are tremendous.

I just received the first six of their titles today (my first "unofficial" releases ever), and I am very impressed. The image and sound is as good or better than many other official releases of Japanese films that I own. Moreover, the whole presentation of the films show that the people putting together these releases have a very high love and respect for these films and the artists that created them.

Other companies could learn something from the subtitling, which is perfect in size and font, in white, and placed below the image for those films in letterbox.

For releases with little or no budget, they went the extra mile and included a lot of text materials, in at least one instance multi-media texts with excerpts from films interspersed in the essay (a format I have always really enjoyed, but which is not very often used).

Finally, the menus (or intros) to the films are beautiful (and must have been created by japanesenewwave) being a few minutes long on each disc, presenting the names of the main actors and technicians of the film over clips from the film in question accompanied by music from the soundtrack. It reminded me a little of the old practice of having "walk-in" music before beginning the screening of a prestige film at premier theatres. It sets the mood and creates excitement about watching the film proper.

Great initiative all around! Anyone with any interest in Japanese film art should do what they can to acquire these discs.

[vogler]

Panorama put out Nihon shunka-ko [Treatise ... aka Sing a Song of Sex] on 6/16. English subs. One hopes they used the Shochiku print.

I received this dvd this morning. I don't think it's the Shochiku restored print though - looks analogue to me. As you would expect the quality is not great but it's watchable and it's cheap. It does have english subtitles. I've not had a chance to watch the film properly yet but I skipped through parts of the disc and the subs looked ok from what I saw.

The strange thing is that they appear to have got their aspect ratios mixed up. The dvd displays as fullscreen 4:3 with widescreen picture and large black bars on top and bottom. This looks to be vertically stretched to me and none of the Oshima films I've seen have been this aspect ratio. I changed the display mode to 16:9 so that the whole thing including black bars is squashed into the 16:9 area and that looks to be correct. They seem to have encoded what should have been a 16:9 video file in 4:3. Not a great issue as you can just change your display settings accordingly. What a stupid mistake to make.

Here are some links to screenshots to illustrate the aspect ratio issue.

screenshot 1 - 4:3, screenshot 1 - 16:9, screenshot 2 - 4:3, screenshot 2 - 16:9, screenshot 3 - 4:3, screenshot 3 - 16:9, screenshot 4 - 4:3, screenshot 4 - 16:9

[brunosh]

Looks like JNWC has a lot of Oshimas to offer -- has anyone ordered from them?

I see their second tranche of releases is now available. One of the things holding me back is that I have been wanting to see Insect Woman for so long that I am almost bound to be disappointed by it.

[Steven H]

lots of spoilers

What a stunning, hilarious, and unforgettable film Three Resurrected Drunkards is. The structure, or structures, of the narrative seem to be a number of things working together and against each other. It's a film about three lost and confused friends, a story of learning about oneself or growing up, a political allegory concerning racism, war guilt, revolution, and identities, both national and personal, but it's also a film about film. Three Japanese friends are having a day at the beach. While away their clothes are stolen by a mysterious hand coming out of the sand, and their student uniforms are replaced with used, and apparently cheap, clothing. After this, they are taken for two identified, and one non-identified, Korean stowaways. The confusion continues until the film takes a turn for the bizarre and surreal, both Brechtian and Bunuelian in turn.

Oshima is eagerly compared to Godard, but Oshima was as casually epic and silly as Godard was serious and self-consciously iconoclastic (though Oshima certainly had a self-consciously iconoclastic streak). Oshima would have taken Week-end and turned it into a giddy farce, with a vicious close up of Jean Yanne as he grimaces and makes an ironic statement about wasting good cars by setting them on fire for the background of a film set. The diegetic and non-diegetic big splash of an idea behind Three Resurrected Drunkards is that the film starts repeating itself, but the main characters eventually "catch up" with the film replaying and turn it to their own advantage (though certainly not very heroically.) It's very reminiscent of three other self-conscious Oshima films from the same time, The Man Who Left His WIll on Film, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Death by Hanging (and starring many of the same actors, particularly Sato Kei and Watanabe Fumio).

The film begins playing with our, and the three Drunkards', expectations. Logic is turned on its head (very much like in Death by Hanging) and relationships can change on a dime. We, and they, have no clue when the film will end, or who friend or foe can be, except by going on previous different versions of the film. A young woman who initially helps, becomes a villain, and her husband/father/pimp (depending on the story) changes roles as well. By the end of the film, even the Japanese drunkards have no idea who they are, and after escaping the two Koreans that attempted to steal their identities, saying to each other:

"Your acting last night was good"
"What acting?"
"That we're Korean and they're Japanese"
"Huh? But it's all true"
"Right! We're Korean!"

Since other than the Korean names, they are nameless, in some ways it's hard to know who to believe. There's a long scene shot documentary style asking seemingly random Koreans on the street if they're Japanese. The confusion of national identity versus personal identity is something Oshima had a huge interest in. In this way it almost becomes Celine and Julie Go Boating, where Celine and Julie switch roles with each other, and then switch roles with the nurse in the haunted house. Except this is more explicitly acknowledging it's own filmness and political attitudes (cultural relativism and universal human rights).

Doesn't this sound so manipulative? But how should we feel, being manipulated? Business as usual, that's what films do. By showering us with feelings of the unexpected, Oshima takes a film about mistaken identity and turns it into a film about mistaken narrative expectations. By the end of the film do we know what we're watching anymore (the characters are hopelessly confused, saying "Now the real finale, in Tokyo!" and of course, being incorrect)? By the end of the film, the political allegory of "war guilt" has risen to the surface, foreshadowing in a classic sense at the beginning of the film, the three Japanese reenact the famous picture from the tet offensive, and this is before surreality sets in. Throughout the film, anytime a gun is pointed at someone's head, it's brought up that it doesn't look right, not the right grimace. Is Oshima wondering out loud why it takes a picture to bring the human element in so much focus (similar to Godard's Letter to Jane)? Or maybe he's using the picture as a point of repetition, like the narrative structure itself, which eventually drums it into our brains like a previously familiar word made to sound strange and new. By the end we're confronted with the "reality" of the photograph, a large mural and dual reenactments (with very little grimace.)

The three drunkards, like the audience, are never fully satisfied by the narrative, but a sentimental emotional connection, and high melodrama are definitely not what the director is after: "If it was a movie, she'd come running into my arms right now!", "If it was by a stupid Japanese director!" The main characters exclaim this towards the end (about the young Korean girl), but you can almost hear their exasperation and imagine them crying out "why can't we be in a more reasonable film!?" Reasonable films aren't nearly as much fun, of course.

I also wanted to note that there was a Pickpocket moment in Diary of a Shinjuku Thief. At the very beginning when Suzuki grabs Birdey Hilltop's arm as he's about to steal a handful of books, I could have sworn it was right out of the Bresson film.

[zedz]

A great, mouth-watering post. This reminds me of all those other Oshima films I read so much about so long ago, sounding like nothing I'd ever seen before. They turned out to be better, and stranger, than I'd imagined, and I'm sure the same will be true for Three Resurrected Drunkards.

I love how his films from this period are about so many different things simultaneously, without losing focus or satirical edge. Death by Hanging tackles a fistful of huge social and political topics - capital punishment, anti-Korean racism, the nature of guilt, the nature of legal culpability, the function of memory in relation to the previous two, the social determination / assignment of roles - and has interesting things to say about all of them, and their interaction, building up to a complex, nuanced consideration of identity politics. At the same time, the film is juggling a different, but curiously related, collection of aesthetic ideas - documentary vs. fiction, theatre vs. cinema, ideas of performance, slippage of character roles - with an equivalent deftness. Plus the film is stylish, funny, and rockets along. And, as a footnote, has what might be the best trailer ever made.

[Steven H]

I love how his films from this period are about so many different things simultaneously, without losing focus or satirical edge ... And, as a footnote, has what might be the best trailer ever made.

They're entertaining. I've shown them to people, friends, coworkers, and anyone with even a halfway openminded approach to film (i.e. OK with subtitles, OK with strange Japaneseness) jumped right in and enjoyed themselves. Death by Hanging is a great example of this sort of filmmaking, which is funny and fast paced as well as politically thick like an essay. Though I haven't really posted much about it, I keep thinking I might consider The Ceremony (or Ceremonies) his greatest film, by a hair. I'm surprised Criterion, or someone else with money, hasn't busted all the doors they can down to get the rights cleared for this film. But if it hasn't happened by now, I'm sure there are very logical (and annoying) reasons.

I agree about the trailer, however, Nanami: Inferno of First Love has a pretty wild one as well.

[zedz]

Though I haven't really posted much about it, I keep thinking I might consider The Ceremony (or Ceremonies) his greatest film, by a hair. I'm surprised Criterion, or someone else with money, hasn't busted all the doors they can down to get the rights cleared for this film. But if it hasn't happened by now, I'm sure there are very logical (and annoying) reasons.

From my days of trawling through the old film books in the university library, I gathered that, for a brief period, The Ceremony was considered Oshima's consensus masterpiece, even making it into some long forgotten "100 Greatest Films" volume. It seems that the international notoriety of In the Realm of the Senses (if a reference book mentioned only one Oshima - and if you were lucky, they did - this became the one) and the general inaccessibility of the earlier films soon put paid to that.

It's a magnificent film (and builds to an amazing climax), but also far straighter (on the surface) than many of his others. The same is the case for Boy. Both films show that Oshima was not just a master of wigged-out avant gardisms, but a masterful filmmaker building on the tradition of Ozu, Mizoguchi, Yamanaka. And these more stylistically traditional films weren't just a distinct phase in his output, but came out on top of and between his wildest, most transgressive stuff. As a director, Oshima is certainly one of the most perplexing omissions from Criterion's makeshift canon.

[Steven H]

As a director, Oshima is certainly one of the most perplexing omissions from Criterion's makeshift canon.

This may change as Shochiku has issued at least nine films on DVD (with supposedly great transfers, according to No. 1 Oshima fan Shirobamba-san). Since Criterion does have a relationship with Shochiku, this puts Pleasures of the Flesh, Cruel Story of Youth, A Town of Love and Hope, Night and Fog In Japan, Violence at Noon, The Sun's Burial, Three Resurrected Drunkards, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs within their grasp. How does that sound for a truly mouthwatering box set release? Add to that Toei's imminent release of The Rebel.

That certainly does leave out the late 60s ATG co-produced material (all the japanesenewwave.com films, plus Dear Summer Sister), though Geneon seems to have been tackling much of the ATG work lately, so that's a possibility. As far as I know Criterion and Geneon have no relationship, and their R1 non-anime production schedule leaves much to be desired. But enough speculation!

I could imagine The Ceremony to be a well loved classic. To be honest, I've tried watching In The Realm of the Senses twice, and both times gave up on it. I haven't seen Dear Summer Sister, but there's such a depth of difference in quality between Ceremony and In the Realm, that I almost have a hard time comprehending it was made by the same director. If I'd seen the latter film first, it would have taken a mountain of effort to be enthusiastic about his earlier films. Where the Ceremony plays on every level of film experience, character development, rhythm, seen and unseen experiences, letting us in on the joke, and keeping information hidden until the strike, In The Realm of the Senses plays like it was directed by a Cinemax soft porn hack, made with only the broadest sweeps at sexual politics, while the barn burns down around it. Then again, I haven't even finished it. Maybe at the end the director shows up and says "just kidding".