Directory of World Cinema
with the growth of cine-literate audiences seeking novelty beyond the boundaries of more conventional studio entertainment, with this audience being predominantly based in major metropolitan cities. Although the Japanese New Wave was initially sponsored by the studio system, with Shochiku Studios funding Oshima’s initial entries: A Town of Love and Hope (1959) and Cruel Story of Youth (1960), the distribution network that was provided by the Art Theatre Guild, which had previously specialized in foreign imports, would provide exposure to such fascinating films as Matsumoto Toshio’s Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) and Shinoda Masahiro’s Double Suicide (1969). These two titles exemplify the aesthetic extremes of the New Wave movement, with Funeral Parade of Roses being an unflinching excursion into the gay sub-culture, with the story being abruptly intercut with interviews with real-life members of the scene, while Double Suicide is a more formally-detached experience, using the techniques of Brecht to study the racial discrimination which existed in Japan regarding Korean minorities. While the initial studio investment in the New Wave can be seen as a cynical corporate ploy to exploit the emerging youth, or student, market, it afforded opportunity to film-makers such as Oshima and Shohei Imamura, who were allowed the artistic freedom necessary to create works which felt authentically ‘independent’ in that they dealt with a shifting social and cultural landscape in a manner which was raw, immediate, confrontational and uncompromising, frequently encountering censorship issues. As Oshima already had a public persona due to his work as a film critic and his outspoken political views, he made an ideal figurehead for the movement, just as Godard and Truffaut were popularly associated with the term French New Wave by audiences outside of the cinephile set. For this reason, and also because of the remarkable films that he delivered in quick succession due to studio production resources, Oshima serves as an ideal entry-point for those uninitiated in the provocative wonders of the Japanese New Wave, as he swiftly explored his political disillusionment with two films that were both released in 1960, The Sun’s Burial and Night and Fog in Japan. His second feature, Cruel Story of Youth, is often cited as being the first film in the Japanese New Wave, and concerns and follows the sexually-charged relationship between a delinquent university student and a high-school girl who feel alienated from adult, consumerist society, and yet have not been swept up by the fervour of the activist movement, with their confused feelings about society and each other ultimately leading to their tragic deaths. While his frequent use of hand-held camera, long takes, quick-pans and his interest in the urban sub-culture lead to comparisons with the French New Wave, Cruel Story of Youth is more politicized, with newspaper headlines employed as graphic backgrounds to establish the mood of the time, which saw students demonstrating against the Japanese Prime Minister, Kishi Nobusuke, launching a political movement which would rapidly lapse into disillusionment. Oshima films of this period, most notably The Sun’s Burial and Pleasure of the Flesh (1963), were examinations of the lower social class, and dealt with teenage gangs, prostitutes, violence, and rape, but Night and Fog in Japan focuses on former student activists who meet at a wedding and argue over their subsequent political compromises. It was clear that Oshima was as frustrated with the failings of the leftist movement as he was with the Japanese government. Other directors associated with the Japanese New Wave include Susumu Hanu, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Yasuzo Masamura, and Imamura. Although these directors would work separately, rather than as part of a collective film-making community, their works shared similar protagonists in that they often focused on criminals or delinquents, and explored sexuality in a frank manner that was shocking at the time and added to the debate about the changing role of women within society.
228 Japan