Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd ii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM EDINBURGH STUDIES IN EAST ASIAN FILM Series Editor: Margaret Hillenbrand Available and forthcoming titles Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits: Th e Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura Edited by Lindsay Coleman and David Desser Independent Chinese Documentary: Alternative Visions, Alternative Publics Dan Edwards Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity Edited by Irene González-López and Michael Smith Worldly Desires: Cosmopolitanism and Cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan Brian Hu Th e Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday Woojeong Joo Eclipsed Cinema: Th e Film Culture of Colonial Korea Dong Hoon Kim Moving Figures: Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke Corey Kai Nelson Schultz Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema Qi Wang Hong Kong Neo-Noir Edited by Esther C. M. Yau and Tony Williams ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China Kiki Tianqi Yu edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/eseaf 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd iiii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura Edited by Lindsay Coleman and David Desser 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd iiiiii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organization Lindsay Coleman and David Desser, 2019 © the chapters their several authors, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd Th e Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/13 Chaparral Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 1181 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 1182 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 1183 7 (epub) Th e right of the contributors to be identifi ed as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd iivv 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM Contents List of Figures vii Notes on the Contributors ix 1 Introduction 1 Lindsay Coleman and David Desser 2 Th e Making of an Auteur: Th e Early Films (1958–1959) 21 Jennifer Coates PART I KILLERS 3 Confronting America: Pigs and Battleships and the Politics of US Bases in Postwar Japan 41 Hiroshi Kitamura 4 Insect Men and Women: Gender, Confl ict and Problematic Modernity in Intentions of Murder 56 Adam Bingham 5 Hidden in Plain Sight: Th e False Leads and True Mysteries of Vengeance Is Mine 75 John Berra 6 Th e Eel: Trauma Cinema 92 David Desser PART II CLIENTS 7 Th e Insect Woman, or: Th e Female Art of Failure 115 Michael Raine 8 Th e Obscene in the Everyday: Th e Pornographers 139 Lindsay Coleman 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd vv 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM vi Contents 9 Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desire for Japan’s Cultural Roots: Critical Approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods 159 Mats Karlsson 10 “Products of Japan”: Karayuki-san, Th e Making of a Prostitute 177 Joan Mellen 11 Th e Female Body as Transgressor of National Boundaries: Th e History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess 192 Bianca Briciu PART III KINDRED SPIRITS 12 Better Off Being Bacteria: Adaptation and Allegory in Dr. Akagi 213 Lauri Kitsnik 13 Time Out of Joint: Shohei Imamura and the Search for an “Other” Japan 228 Bill Mihalopoulos 14 Promotional Discourses and the Meanings of Th e Ballad of Narayama 246 Rayna Denison 15 Boundary Play: Truth, Fiction, and Performance in A Man Vanishes 267 Diane Wei Lewis 16 Why Not? Imamura, Nietzsche, and the Untimely 287 David Deamer 17 Kuroi Ame: An Anthropology of Suff ering 308 Dolores P. Martinez 18 Th e Symbolic Function of Water 326 Timothy Iles Index 343 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd vvii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM Figures 5.1 Th e power of reconstruction and the potential for interpretation 80 5.2 Achieving upward mobility by adopting an academic persona 83 5.3 Breaking the rules to visualize the presence of the restless spirit 88 6.1 A long-take, deep-focus shot of the layout of the house 99 6.2 Th e priest’s traditional house, shot from the low level characteristic of Yasujiro Ozu 102 6.3 Of eels and women; the longest take in the fi lm 105 6.4 It’s all done with mirrors 108 7.1 Newsreel footage of the demonstrations against the America–Japan Security Treaty in June 1960, with superimposed text 118 7.2 Freeze frame of Tome counting her money after she has been tricked into becoming a prostitute 119 7.3 Chūji’s sudden looming behind Matsunami creates a kind of ironic visual punchline 120 7.4 Th e Insect Woman press sheet 121 7.5 Tome, followed by Nobuko, in the middle ground 128 7.6 Tome urinates in a mulberry fi eld 134 8.1 Ogata spies on Keiko through multiple frames-within-frames 150 8.2 An establishing shot of star Anthony Perkins, as the character Norman Bates 151 8.3 Hitchcock then allows the camera to adopt the perspective of Norman as we spy on an undressing Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) 151 8.4 Ogata is briefl y tempted by young Keiko 153 8.5 Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham invests in a complex erotic fantasy life 154 8.6 Angela is eroticized not only for Burnham, but also for the audience 155 8.7 Th e fi nal seeming consummation of Burnham’s desire is framed classically and romantically 155 8.8 A father’s incestuous relationship with his own daughter is discovered in a blackly comic moment in Th e Pornographers 156 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd vviiii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM viii Figures 8.9 Th e titular characters engage in a semi-absurd, and again blackly comic, exchange on the relative virtues of incest 157 9.1 Rentaro Mikuni as an islander with his own ideas in Th e Profound Desires of the Gods 159 9.2 Nekichi’s Sisyphean labor 160 9.3 Kariya goes native 165 9.4 Th e Rock appears to budge 166 9.5 Th e masked villagers closing in for the kill 167 11.1 Akaza and her daughter walking arm in arm with GIs 195 11.2 Newsreel footage shows General MacArthur descending from a plane and Occupation troops marching on Japanese soil 196 11.3 Newsreels of violent protests show the divided nation and the public opposition to Occupation in contrast to the discourse of peaceful democratization 197 11.4 Akaza watching documentary footage showing people’s reaction to the emperor’s announcement of defeat 198 11.5 Akaza tells how she explained to her American lovers that the imperial family are not gods 199 11.6 Imamura shows pictures of atrocities committed by the Americans in the Vietnam War but she denies their reality 200 12.1 Dr. Akagi running through streets to meet another patient 216 12.2 Dr. Akagi presenting the results of his research on liver disease 219 12.3 A dream sequence about Dr. Akagi’s son in Unit 731 221 12.4 Dr. Akagi and war prisoner Piet setting up research equipment 223 12.5 Witnessing the end of the war 225 13.1 Akeem, a former Japanese soldier who converted to Islam and lives in a close-knit Muslim community in Malaysia 237 13.2 Th e “wild boy” from Nagasaki, Fujita Matsukichi 239 13.3 “Outlaw Matsu” returns to Japan 240 14.1 Location shooting 252 14.2 Imamura as the exaggerated center of Th e Ballad of Narayama 256 14.3 Tatsuhei and Orin in helicopter downdraft 259 15.1 An ad for A Man Vanishes in the August 1967 issue of Eiga hyōron 268 17.1 Yasuko with her aunt and uncle, making their way through Hiroshima 317 17.2 Yasuko and her uncle Shigematsu see the king carp 318 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd vviiiiii 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM Notes on the Contributors John Berra is a lecturer in Film and Language Studies at Renmin University of China. He is the co-editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010/12/15). He has also contributed to World Film Locations: Tokyo (2012) and Ozu Interna- tional: Essays on the Global Infl uences of a Japanese Auteur (2015). His articles have been published in Asian Cinema, Film International, Geography Compass, and Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television. Adam Bingham is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Japanese Film Studies at SOAS in London. He has taught fi lm at various institutions around the UK and has published widely on Japanese and Hong Kong cinema. His book Japanese Cinema since Hana-Bi was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2015, and he has been a regular contributor to Film Comment, CineAction, and Asian Cinema. He recently completed studies of Ozu Yasujiro and representations of prostitution and of female fi lmmakers in Japan. Bianca Briciu is an instructor in fi lm studies and communication at Carleton University and St. Paul University, Ottawa. She has a PhD in Cultural Mediations and an interdisciplinary formation in fi lm studies, gender studies, and social psychology. She has done extensive research on the representation of gender and sexuality in Japanese cinema and has published six articles in peer reviewed journals. She is pursuing research on the representation of aff ect and the body in cinema and other media. Jennifer Coates is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Arts, Culture, and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, University of East Anglia. She is the author of Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964 (2017). Her current ethnographic research focuses on early postwar fi lm audiences in Japan. 66005577__CCoolleemmaann..iinndddd iixx 3300//0044//1199 1122::5500 PPMM