Nagisa Ōshima

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

Nagisa Oshima (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 and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Early life

After graduating from Kyoto University, where he studied political history, Oshima 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

Oshima's cinematic career and influence developed very swiftly, and early watershed films Cruel Story of Youth, The Sun's Burial and Night and Fog in Japan all followed in 1960. The last of these 1960 films explored Oshima'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 by a right-wing extremist, there was a risk of "unrest". Oshima left the studio in response, and launched his own independent production company. Despite the controversy, Night And Fog In Japan was placed tenth in that year's Kinema Jumpo's best-films poll of Japanese critics, and it has subsequently amassed considerable acclaim abroad.

In 1961 Oshima 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 Oshima's 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.

Oshima then 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 Oshima after a trip to South Korea.

One of Oshima's more formally unusual films was Band of Ninja (1967), an adaptation of the popular manga by Sampei Shirato, Ninja Bugei-chō, a 16th-century saga of oppressed peasants and deadly ninja. It is not a live-action film, or even an animated one; Oshima simply photographed close-ups of Shirato's drawings and added voices. Oshima had used the technique previously in some documentaries, and a willingness to make use of unorthodox techniques was an indication of the mature period of experimentalism which would soon surface in Oshima's work. The film was a modest critical and commercial success in Japan.

Oshima 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. 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. Death By Hanging inaugurated a string of films (continuing through 1976's In the Realm of the Senses) that clarified a number of Oshima's key themes, most notably a need to question social constraints, and to similarly deconstruct received political doctrines.

Months later, Diary Of A Shinjuku Thief unites a number of Oshima'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, 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 Oshima films (along with Oshima 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, Oshima made In the Realm of the Senses, a film based on a true story of fatal sexual obsession in 1930s Japan. Oshima, 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. Oshima 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.”

In his 1978 companion film to In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, Oshima 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.

1980s and beyond

In 1983 Oshima had a critical success with a film made partly in English, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, set in a wartime prison camp, and featuring rock star David Bowie and electronic musician Ryūichi Sakamoto, alongside future director Takeshi Kitano. The movie has become a cult classic. 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. (He actually won the inaugural Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award in 1960.)

A collection of Oshima's essays and articles was published in English in 1993 as Cinema, Censorship and the State. A critical study by Maureen Turim appeared in 1998.

In 1996 Oshima 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. Ryūichi 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. Oshima died on January 15, 2013 of pneumonia. He was 80.

The 2013 edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival is scheduled to show a retrospective of Oshima's films in September.

Filmography

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	Sēshun 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.
1963	A Small Child's First Adventure	小さな冒険旅行	Chiisana bōken ryokō	60 min, color.
1964	It's Me Here, Bellett	私はベレット	Watashi wa beretto	60 min, color.
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	24 min, B&W.
1966	Violence at High 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	Three Resurrected Drunkards	帰って来たヨッパライ	Kaette kita yopparai	80 min, color.
1969	Diary of a Shinjuku Thief	新宿泥棒日記	Shinjuku dorobō nikki	94 min, B&W/color.
1969	Boy	少年	Shōnen	97 min, color.
1970	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 corrida	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.

TV documentaries

• Kōri no Naka no Sēshun (1962, 25 min) aka Youth on Ice
• Wasurerareta Kōgun (1963, 25 min) aka The Forgotten Army
• Sēshun no Ishibumi (1964, 40 min) aka The Tomb of Youth
• Hankotsu no Toride (1964, 25 min) aka A Rebel's Fortress
• Gimē Shōjo (1964)
• Chita Niseigo Taihēyō Ōdan (1964) aka Crossing the Pacific on the Chita Niseigo
• Aru Kokutetsu-Jōmuin (1964) aka A National Railway Worker
• Aogeba Tōtoshi (1964) aka Ode to an Old Teacher
• Aisurebakoso (1964) aka Why I Love You
• Ajia no Akebono (1964)
• Gyosen Sonansu (1965) aka The Trawler Incident
• Daitōa Sensō (1968) aka The Pacific War
• Mō-Takutō to Bunka Daikakumē (1969) aka Mao Tse-Tung and the Cultural Revolution
• Kyojin-Gun (1972) aka The Giants
• Joi! Bangla (1972)
• Goze: Mōmoku no Onna-Tabigēnin (1972) aka The Journey of the Blind Musicians
• Bengal no Chichi Laman (1973)
• Ikiteiru Nihonkai-Kaisen (1975)
• The Battle of Tsushima (1975, 50 min)
• Ōgon no Daichi Bengal (1976) aka The Golden Land of Bengal
• Ikiteiru Umi no Bohyō (1976) aka The Sunken Tomb
• Ikiteiru Gyokusai no Shima (1976, 25 min) aka The Isle of the Final Battle
• Denki Mō-Takutō (1976) aka The Life of Mao
• Yokoi Shōichi: Guamu-to 28 Nen no Nazo o Ou (1977) aka Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam
• Shisha wa Itsumademo Wakai (1977)
• Kyōto, My Mother's Place (1991)
• 100 Years of Japanese Cinema (1994)

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
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

Notes

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. Tokyo: Kodansha International. ISBN 978-0870117145. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Oshima, Nagisa (1992). Cinema, Censorship And The State. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-65039-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Nagisa Ōshima at IMDb
• Profile at Japan Zone
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database