Nagisa Ōshima

Nagisa Ōshima (大島 渚, Ōshima Nagisa, March 31, 1932 – January 15, 2013) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His films include In the Realm of the Senses (1976), a sexually explicit film set in 1930s Japan, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), about World War II prisoners of war held by the Japanese.

Nagisa Ōshima
大島 渚 (Ōshima Nagisa)
Ōshima in 2000
Born	(1932-03-31)March 31, 1932 Tamano, Okayama, Empire of Japan
Died	January 15, 2013(2013-01-15) (aged 80) Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
Occupation	Film director Screenwriter
Years active	1953–1999
Spouse(s)	Akiko Koyama ( m. 1960)
Awards	Cannes Film Festival 1978 Empire of Passion – Best Director (Prix de la mise en scène)

Early life

After graduating from Kyoto University in 1954, where he studied political history,[1] Ōshima was hired by film production company Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Town of Love and Hope in 1959.

1960s

Ōshima's cinematic career and influence developed very swiftly,[2] and such films as Cruel Story of Youth and Night and Fog in Japan followed in 1960. The last of these 1960 films explored Ōshima's disillusionment with the traditional political left, and his frustrations with the right, and Shochiku withdrew the film from circulation after less than a week, claiming that, following the recent assassination of the Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma by the ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi, there was a risk of "unrest". Ōshima left the studio in response, and launched his own independent production company. Despite the controversy, Night and Fog in Japan placed tenth in that year's Kinema Jumpo's best-films poll of Japanese critics, and it has subsequently amassed considerable acclaim abroad.[3]

In 1961 Ōshima directed The Catch, based on a novella by Kenzaburō Ōe about the relationship between a wartime Japanese village and a captured African American serviceman. The Catch has not traditionally been viewed as one of Ōshima major works, though it did notably introduce a thematic exploration of bigotry and xenophobia, themes which would be explored in greater depth in the later documentary Diary of Yunbogi, and feature films Death by Hanging and Three Resurrected Drunkards.[4] He embarked upon a period of work in television, producing a series of documentaries; notably among them 1965's Diary Of Yunbogi. Based upon an examination of the lives of street children in Seoul, it was made by Ōshima after a trip to South Korea.[3][5]

Ōshima directed three features in 1968. The first of these - Death by Hanging (1968) presented the story of the failed execution of a young Korean for rape and murder, and was loosely based upon an actual crime and execution which had taken place in 1958.[6] The film utilizes non-realistic "distancing" techniques after the fashion of Bertold Brecht or Jean-Luc Godard to examine Japan's record of racial discrimination against its Korean minority, incorporating elements of farce and political satire, and a number of visual techniques associated with the cinematic new wave in a densely layered narrative. It was placed third in Kinema Jumpo's 1968 poll, and has also garnered significant attention globally.[7] Death By Hanging inaugurated a string of films (continuing through 1976's In the Realm of the Senses) that clarified a number of Ōshima's key themes, most notably a need to question social constraints, and to similarly deconstruct received political doctrines.[8]

Months later, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief unites a number of Ōshima's thematic concerns within a dense, collage-style presentation. Featuring a title which alludes to Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal, the film explores the links between sexual and political radicalism,[9] specifically examining the day-to-day life of a would-be radical whose sexual desires take the form of kleptomania. The fragmented narrative is interrupted by commentators, including an underground noh performance troupe, a psychoanalyst, and an impromptu symposium featuring actors from previous Ōshima films (along with Ōshima himself), all dissecting varied aspects of shifting sexual politics, as embodied by various characters within the film.

Boy (1969), based on another real-life case, was the story of a family who use their child to make money by deliberately getting involved in road accidents and making the drivers pay compensation.

1970s

The Ceremony (1971) is a satirical look at Japanese attitudes, famously expressed in a scene where a marriage ceremony has to go ahead even though the bride is not present.

In 1976, Ōshima made In the Realm of the Senses, a film based on a true story of fatal sexual obsession in 1930s Japan. Ōshima, a critic of censorship and his contemporary Akira Kurosawa's humanism, was determined that the film should feature unsimulated sex and thus the undeveloped film had to be transported to France to be processed. An uncensored version of the movie is still unavailable in Japan. Ōshima testified in a Japanese court about whether the film was obscene. "Nothing that is expressed is obscene," the director said. "What is obscene is what is hidden."[10]

In his 1978 companion film to In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, Ōshima took a more restrained approach to depicting the sexual passions of the two lovers driven to murder, and the film won the 1978 Cannes Film Festival award for best director.[11][12]

1980s and beyond

In 1983 Ōshima had a critical success with a film made partly in English, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, set in a wartime Japanese prison camp, and featuring rock star David Bowie and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, alongside Takeshi Kitano. The movie is sometimes viewed as a minor classic but never found a mainstream audience.[13] Max, Mon Amour (1986), written with Luis Buñuel's frequent collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière, was a comedy about a diplomat's wife (Charlotte Rampling) whose love affair with a chimpanzee is quietly incorporated into an eminently civilised ménage à trois.

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, he served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan.[14] He won the inaugural Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award in 1960.[15]

A collection of Ōshima's essays and articles was published in English in 1993 as Cinema, Censorship and the State.[16] In 1995 he wrote and directed the archival documentary '100 Years of Japanese Cinema' for the British Film Institute.[17] A critical study by Maureen Turim appeared in 1998.[18]

In 1996 Ōshima suffered a stroke, but he recovered enough to return to directing in 1999 with the samurai film Taboo (Gohatto), set during the bakumatsu era and starring Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence actor Takeshi Kitano. Ryuichi Sakamoto, who had both acted in and composed for Lawrence, provided the score.

He subsequently suffered more strokes, and Gohatto proved to be his final film. Ōshima had initially planned to create a biopic entitled Hollywood Zen based on the life of Issei actor Sessue Hayakawa. The script had been allegedly completed and set to film in Los Angeles, but due to constant delays, declining health, and Ōshima's eventual death in 2013 (see below), the project went unrealized.[19][20]

Ōshima had a degree of fluency in English. In the 2000s, he worked as a translator, translating four volumes by John Gray into Japanese, including "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". Ōshima died on January 15, 2013 of pneumonia. He was 80.[1]

The 2013 edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival scheduled a retrospective of Ōshima films in September.[21]

Awards

Blue Ribbon Awards
1961 Night and Fog in Japan & Cruel Story of Youth – Best New Director
2000 Taboo – Best Director & Best Film

Cannes Film Festival[11]
1978 Empire of Passion – Best Director (Prix de la mise en scène)

Kinema Junpo Awards
1969 Death by Hanging – Best Screenplay
1972 The Ceremony – Best Director, Best Film & Best Screenplay
1984 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence – Readers' Choice Award for Best Film

Filmography

Films

Year	English title	Japanese title	Romaji	Notes
1959	Tomorrow's Sun	明日の太陽	Ashita no Taiyō	Short (7 min), color.
1959	A Town of Love and Hope	愛と希望の街	Ai to Kibō no Machi	62 min, B&W.
1960	Cruel Story of Youth	青春残酷物語	Seishun Zankoku Monogatari	96 min, color.
1960	The Sun's Burial	太陽の墓場	Taiyō no Hakaba	87 min, color.
1960	Night and Fog in Japan	日本の夜と霧	Nihon no Yoru to Kiri	107 min, color.
1961	The Catch	飼育	Shiiku	105 min, B&W.
1962	The Rebel	天草四郎時貞	Amakusa Shirō Tokisada	101 min, B&W.
1965	The Pleasures of the Flesh	悦楽	Etsuraku	90 min, color.
1965	Yunbogi's Diary	ユンボギの日記	Yunbogi no Nikki	(Short) 24 min, B&W.
1966	Violence at Noon	白昼の通り魔	Hakuchū no Tōrima	99 min, B&W.
1967	Tales of the Ninja (Band of Ninja)	忍者武芸帳	Ninja Bugei-Chō	131 min, B&W.
1967	Sing a Song of Sex (A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs)	日本春歌考	Nihon Shunka-Kō	103 min, color.
1967	Double Suicide: Japanese Summer	無理心中日本の夏	Muri Shinjū: Nihon no Natsu	98 min, B&W.
1968	Death by Hanging	絞死刑	Kōshikē	117 min, B&W.
1968	Diary of a Shinjuku Thief	新宿泥棒日記	Shinjuku Dorobō Nikki	94 min, B&W/color.
1968	Three Resurrected Drunkards	帰って来たヨッパライ	Kaette Kita Yopparai	80 min, color.
1969	Boy	少年	Shōnen	97 min, color.
1970	The Man Who Left His Will on Film	東京戰争戦後秘話	Tōkyō Sensō Sengo Hiwa	94 min, B&W.
1971	The Ceremony	儀式	Gishiki	123 min, color.
1972	Dear Summer Sister	夏の妹	Natsu no Imōto	96 min, color.
1976	In the Realm of the Senses	愛のコリーダ	Ai no Korīda	104 min, color.
1978	Empire of Passion	愛の亡霊	Ai no Bōrē	108 min, color.
1983	Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence	戦場のメリークリスマス	Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu	123 min, color, UK/Japan.
1986	Max, Mon Amour	マックス、モン・アムール	Makkusu, Mon Amūru	97 min, color. France/USA/Japan.
1999	Taboo	御法度	Gohatto	100 min, color.

Television

Year	Original title	English title	Notes
1962	Kōri no Naka no Seishun	Youth on the Ice	25 min
1963	Wasurerareta Kōgun	Forgotten Soldiers	25 min
1963	Chiisana Bōken Ryokō	A Small Child's First Adventure	60 min
1964	Watashi wa Beretto	It's Me Here, Bellett	60 min
1964	Seishun no Ishibumi	The Tomb of Youth	40 min
1964	Hankotsu no Toride	A Rebel's Fortress	25 min
1964	Gimei Shōjo	The Girl Under an Assumed Name	30 min
1964	Chita Niseigo Taiheiyō Ōdan	Crossing the Pacific on the Chita Niseigo	2 x 30 min
1964	Aru Kokutetsu-Jōmuin	A National Railway Worker	25 min
1964	Aogeba Tōtoshi	Ode to an Old Teacher
1964	Aisurebakoso	Why I Love You
1964	Ajia no Akebono	The Dawn of Asia	13 x 60 min
1965	Gyosen Sonansu	The Trawler Incident	30 min
1968	Daitōa Sensō	The Pacific War (The Greater East Asian War)	2 x 30 min
1969	Mō-Takutō to Bunka Daikakumē	Mao and the Cultural Revolution	49 min
1972	Kyojin-Gun	Giants	73 min
1972	Joi! Bangla		24 min
1972	Goze: Mōmoku no Onna-Tabigēnin	The Journey of the Blind Musicians
1973	Bengal no Chichi Laman	The Father of Bangladesh
1975	Ikiteiru Nihonkai-Kaisen	The Battle of Tsushima	50 min
1976	Ikiteiru Gyokusai no Shima	The Isle of the Final Battle	25 min
1976	Ōgon no Daichi Bengal	The Golden Land of Bengal
1976	Ikiteiru Umi no Bohyō	The Sunken Tomb
1976	Denki Mō-Takutō	The Life of Mao
1977	Yokoi Shōichi: Guamu-to 28 Nen no Nazo o Ou	Human Drama: 28 Years of Hiding in the Jungle	49 min
1977	Shisha wa Itsumademo Wakai	The Dead Remain Young	49 min
1991	Kyōto, My Mother's Place
1994	100 Years of Japanese Cinema		60min

Film theorists

Film scholars who have focused on the work of Ōshima include Isolde Standish, an Australian and British Humanities Scholar and Film theorist specialised in East Asia.[22] She teaches courses on Ōshima at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and wrote extensively on him as for example:

• Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. New York: Continuum Int. Publishing Group.[23]
• 'Transgression and the Politics of Porn. Ōshima Nagisa's In the Realm of the Senses (1976)'. In: Phillips, A. and Stringer, J., (eds.), Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. Abingdon: Routledge, pp 217-228).[24]

Writings

• Pasolini Renaissance, ISBN 978-4925095044

Translations

• "Ai ga Fukamaru Hon - "Honto no Yorokobi" o shiru tame ni" (translation of "Making Heart-to-Heart Love in Bed" by John Gray) ISBN 978-4837970170
• ベスト・パートナーになるために―男と女が知っておくべき「分かち愛」のルール 男は火星から、女は金星からやってきた (translation of "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" by John Gray) ISBN 978-4837971764

Notes

1. Bergen, Ronald (January 15, 2013). "Nagisa Oshima obituary". The Guardian. London. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
2. Bock 1978, p. 311
3. Bock 1978, p. 333
4. Turim 1998, p. 168
5. Oshima 1992, p. 101
6. Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film. Tokyo: Kodansha International. p. 198.
7. Bock 1978, p. 335
8. Sato, Tadao (1982). Currents In Japanese Cinema. Tokyo: Kodansha International. p. 177.
9. Turim 1998, p. 88
10. Lim, Dennis (January 15, 2013). "Nagisa Oshima, Iconoclastic Filmmaker, Dies at 80". The New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
11. "Festival de Cannes: Empire of Passion". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
12. "Nagisa Oshima". The Daily Telegraph. London. January 15, 2013.
13. Oliver, Jia. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence — A Clash of Cultures". www.medium.com. Medium. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
14. "Nihon eiga kantoku kyōkai nenpyō" (in Japanese). Nihon eiga kantoku kyōkai. Archived from the original on July 26, 2010. Retrieved August 17, 2010.
15. "Nihon Eiga Kantoku Kyōkai Shinjinshō" (in Japanese). Directors Guild of Japan. Archived from the original on November 22, 2010. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
16. Oshima 1992
17. "100 Years of Japanese Cinema". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
18. Turim 1998
19. Schilling, Mark. "Nagisa Oshima: a leading force in film". The Japan Times. The Japan Times. Retrieved December 21, 2014.
20. "Gil Rossellini Interview with Nagsia Oshima (Part 3 of 3)". YouTube. YouTube. Event occurs at 3:15. Retrieved December 21, 2014. Yes, I am planning to shoot a story of a Japanese. His name is Sessue Hayakawa. He was the only Japanese star in Hollywood. It was the 1910s silent film period of Hollywood. I will try to describe this star and the situation of the Japanese in the states.
21. "The 61st San Sebastian Festival will dedicate a retrospective to Nagisa Oshima". San Sebastian Film Festival. January 17, 2013. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
22. Unknown (August 20, 2018). "STANDISH, Isolde". Federation University Australia. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
23. Standish, Isolde (June 2, 2011). Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-8264-3901-7.
24. "イゾルダ・スタンディッシュ". 教員インタビュー (in Japanese). Retrieved April 15, 2020.

References

• Turim, Maureen Cheryn (1998). The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast. Berkeley: University of California. ISBN 978-0520206663.
• Bock, Audie (1978). Japanese Film Directors. Kodansha. ISBN 0-87011-304-6.
• Oshima, Nagisa (1992). Cinema, Censorship And The State. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-65039-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

External links

• OSHIMA PRODUCTIONS LTD
• Nagisa Ōshima on IMDb
• Profile at Japan Zone
• Kim, Nelson (April 2004). "Profile". Senses of Cinema. Great Directors (31).