Buta to gunkan, 1961
[Pigs and Battleships/The Flesh is Hot]
A rousing Star Spangled Banner-themed overture accompanies
the impressive sight of modern buildings lining the industrial landscape
of a postwar Japanese port town in a seeming celebration of the scale of
reconstruction achieved under American occupation. The idyllic image of
progress through cooperative international unity would, however, be immediately
subverted with a perspective shift to a crane shot, bird’s-eye view
of the neighboring area to reveal the rundown, bustling alleys of the red
light district in the periphery, an area conspicuously teeming with carousing,
animated American sailors on shore leave. Using an arsenal of underhanded
tactics ranging from aggressive solicitation to distractive, leading chases
through labyrinthine alleys, low-level gangsters lure the all-too willing
sailors into packed, mob-operated brothels operating from the back rooms of
legitimate businesses under the knowing watch of corrupt, shore patrol
officers. Among these hired patron corralers is a cocky young man named Kinta
(Hiroyuki Nagato) who, as the film begins, proudly boasts to his devoted
girlfriend, Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura) that he has been handpicked by the
yakuza boss for an integral position as (appropriately) piggery chief in the
syndicate’s new venture of selling livestock on the black market in a
convoluted financial arrangement that involves funneling capital from periodic
coercion of small shop owners to contribute to euphemistic “charity”
collection drives in order to buy food scraps from US battleships to breed
fatter pigs. The ecologically perverted food supply chain serves as an
implicitly metaphoric view of everyday life under occupied Japan as poor,
but hardworking people like Haruko find themselves increasingly marginalized
under the crushing weight of lawless, violent thugs seeking to get rich from
the economic chaos of a fledgling democracy, or prostituted by their own
families to curry favor from the Americans. Chronicled from the perspective
of the young couple as they struggle to build a life together, the film
reveals the innate, hollow myth of the Japanese postwar modernization model
under occupied reconstruction - a deceptive and figuratively aborted bright
future illuminated by the gaudy signs of a dystopian, false paradise.
Based on the novel by Kazu Otsuka, Pigs
and Battleships is a wry, acerbically blunt, provocative, and
irreverent satire on exploitation, greed, instinctuality, lawlessness,
and imposition of cultural identity. From the establishing crane shot of
the port town that reduces its inhabitants into near-imperceptible,
animated dots (in a miniaturized, behaviorally entomological perspective
of humanity that the filmmaker subsequently revisits in The Insect Woman),
Shohei Imamura creates a caricatured and hyperbolic, yet intrinsically
incisive allegory for the turbulent cultural conditions of occupied Japan
as the nation’s fragile and uncertain path towards democratization
becomes increasingly supplanted by exploitive opportunism and economic
anarchy, and the inevitable tide of modernization and globalism (through
Westernization) are reduced into ideologically detached pop culture
imitation and crass consumerism (note Kinta’s stereotypical
American wardrobe that consists of a varsity jacket, baseball cap,
and aviator sunglasses, an implicit reflection of his behavioral
pattern of imitative conformity). Visually, Imamura reflects the
country’s pervasive sentiment of rootlessness and absence
of direction through episodic cross-cutting between parallel
storylines, fragmented narrative, and off-axis camera angles, often
positioned near waist level (a reflection of Imamura’s
familiar theme of instinctual human sexuality) or at ceiling height
to reflect the characters’ basality. Note Imamura’s
implementation of a dizzied, rotating crane shot to depict Haruko’s
violation at the hands of a trio of drunken sailors that reinforces
the upended - and increasingly estranged - role of the Allied forces
as both military conquerors and humanitarian reconstructionists of a
ravaged nation. It is this increasingly nebulous and irreconcilable
duplicity that inevitably underlies the tragic social dichotomy that
the lovers’ represent: a displaced idealism borne of cultural
alienation, empty surrogate values, and elusive (and indefinable) human desire.
© Acquarello 2005. All rights reserved.
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The
Insect Woman
A
film crew hikes to the outskirts of town in order to surreptitiously
shoot a pornographic film. Flouting the law, a pornographer named
Ogata (Shoichi Ozawa) rationalizes his disreputable livelihood as
a necessary commodity and public service for the continued well-being
of society. The enterprising men screen their latest project, and
the film opens with a comical shot of an amorous Ogata attempting
to elicit a response from his wife, the widowed Haru (Sumiko Sakamoto),
on her preference of intimate partners. Haru evades the question,
and the playful exchange is abruptly truncated when Haru's coddled
and insolent university-aged son, Koichi (Masaomi Kondo) barges into
the room and hides underneath the blankets for warmth. Koichi is
resentful
of Ogata's presence in the household, arguing that Ogata is nothing
more than a former unemployed lodger with a criminal past, and that
their relationship violates her vows to her late husband. Nevertheless,
despite his animosity, Koichi is quick to exploit his mother's influence
on Ogata in order to obtain enough money to move out of the family
home and rent his own apartment. In contrast, Haru's daughter, Keiko
(Keiko Sagawa) is more considerate of her stepfather and defends
Ogata
by rationalizing that his criminal history stemmed from nothing more
than "election irregularities". Having walked Keiko to
school when she was a little girl, Ogata has demonstrated a fatherly
concern
for her well being - a close bond that is increasingly developing
into an uncomfortable attraction towards the young woman. Years earlier,
Ogata's hopes for his own children with Haru were dissipated when
she became convinced that the soul of her late husband has been reincarnated
into an overgrown pet carp at her hairdressing salon, and that her
late husband has expressed disapproval at their union. And so the
bizarre puzzle that constitutes Ogata's unusual life emerges, as
the
beleaguered Ogata strives to make a living through his illegal commerce,
hide his activities from the police, elude gangsters demanding extortion,
nurse an ailing Haru back to health, and resist his compulsion to
pursue Keiko. 
On
January 4, 1964, a convoy of patrol cars traverse a provincial countryside
to escort captured criminal Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) to the local
police precinct for interrogation. Callous and unremorseful, Enokizu
laments his inevitable fate as unfair, citing that his arresting
officers
will outlive him and continue the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure
now denied him. The indignant and self-absorbed Enokizu refuses to
answer
questions that will aid the police trace his fugitive steps from
the first inexplicable murders a few months earlier, on October 18,
when
Enokizu decided to murder his coworkers, an affable deliveryman named
Tanejiro Shibata, and the quiet, unassuming driver, Daihachi Baba.
Despite his unwillingness to cooperate, the police investigation
has
uncovered an accurate, albeit unsettling, account of Enokizu's destructive
path. His mistress provides a glimpse into his insatiable sexual
appetite
and emotional cruelty. His father, Shizuo Enokizu (Rentaro Mikuni),
recounts a difficult episode in the summer of 1938 when a Japanese
officer humiliated Shizuo, and his seeming cowardice causes a lifelong
animosity and estrangement with the young and impressionable Iwao.
Enokizu's neglected wife Kazuko (Mitsuko Baisho) has left him, but
agrees to return at his father's request, only to be accused of having
an affair with Shizuo. Driven away by his family and determined to
evade the authorities, Enokizu moves into the Asano Inn, a secluded
retreat near a cemetery that is managed by a trusting, repressed
innkeeper
named Haru (Mayumi Ogawa) and her interfering, eccentric mother,
Hisano (Nijiko Kiyokawa) who reputedly spies on all the guests. Posing
as
a benevolent university professor, Enokizu continues his destructive
double life of theft, swindles, and senseless murders.
On
the morning of August 6, 1945, a young woman named Yasuko (Yoshiko
Tanaka) catches a ride with a neighbor
who is evacuating from Hiroshima in order to transport her family's
formal clothes and sentimental possessions to a friend's home for
safekeeping on a nearby island in Furué. At 8:15, during a
tea ceremony, Yasuko and her hosts witness a sudden, blinding flash
of light and hurry outside to observe the surreal sight of an ominous
mushroom cloud rising from the island. Concerned over the plight of her
supportive and compassionate guardians, uncle Shigeko (Etsuko Ichihara)
and aunt Shigamatsu (Kazuo Kitamura), Yasuko boards a boat returning
to Hiroshima and, along the way, encounters the radioactive fallout from
the atomic bomb in the curious form of black rain that discolors her
clothing and face. Arriving home, she unsuccessfully attempts to wash
the indelible stains from her clothing (which Shigeko innocently surmises
must have been caused by the explosion of an oil vessel), but is soon
scuttled away by her guardians in order to escape the rampant chaos and
continued danger of falling debris and uncontrolled fires raging through
the center of town. Yasuko and her family eventually find refuge in Shigeko's
place of employment - a factory on the outskirts of the island. A few
years later, as the family struggles to rebuild their life amidst the
ruins of Hiroshima in the rural village of Takafuta, Shigeko and Shigamatsu
attempt to find a suitable husband for Yasuko in the grim realization
that they have begun to exhibit initial symptoms of radiation poisoning.
However, despite reaching marrying age and receiving a clean bill of
health from the neighborhood doctor, Yasuko's marital prospects prove
bleak, marred by the experience of the atomic bomb that invariably drives
suitors away in fear of the unknown long-term effects of the island's
exposure.