Zegen

Director Shohei Imamura's (The Ballad of Narayama, Black Rain) incendiary satire of Japan's colonial expansion across the southern seas in the early decades of the 20th century is based on the autobiography of Iheiji Muraoka, a notorious sex-trafficker and fervent patriot who set up a string of brothels across Southeast Asia.

After washing up, penniless and destitute in Hong Kong in 1901, Iheiji Muraoka (Ken Ogata, The Ballad of Narayama) assimilates straight away into the local Japanese expatriate community, and is soon set up in the city as an apprentice barber. The Japanese consul has higher goals for him in mind, however, and he finds himself dispatched on a spying mission to investigate Russian military activity in Manchuria. After discovering an enclave of young Japanese women being held as prostitutes, Iheiji spots an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the Emperor and make a quick buck in the process, partnering with his former sweetheart Shiho (Mitsuko Baisho, The Eel) and rehabilitating a group of ex-convicts to build an enterprise that stretches to Malaysia and the Philippines.

Imamura's epic rise-and-fall tale of this mythic adventurer, entrepreneur, and sex-trafficker across several decades builds upon his previous depictions of prostitutes and panderers in such works as The Insect Woman and his documentary Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute to present a ribald counterpart to official history, in which the flag follows the flesh.