Nagisa Oshima

Abstract

Nagisa Oshima (大島渚/Ōshima Nagisa, b. 1932–d. 2013) is a paradox: one of the most iconic filmmakers in Japanese film history, but one whose body of work is among the most iconoclastic. Oshima was a wayward product of Japan’s postwar studio system. He entered the Shochiku Studio in 1954 after studying law at Kyoto University and cut his professional teeth during the studio golden age, but from his feature directorial debut in 1959 he demonstrated the restlessness and unorthodoxy characteristic of the new youth cinema. His 1960 film Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari), along with published editorials denouncing the stagnation of the studio system, assured his position as a representative of the Shochiku New Wave, a group of newly promoted young directors marketed as Japan’s answer to the French New Wave (Oshima later said that he disliked the label). He left Shochiku in 1961 in protest over the shelving of his politically charged 1960 film Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri), a striking reflection on student movement factionalism, which was pulled from theaters days after its release. He founded his own production company (Sozosha) the same year, and later worked closely with the Art Theatre Guild, helping forge the path for independent art film production in Japan. He was prolific and provocative during the 1960s: both an influential filmmaker and a public intellectual. But despite his visibility, he resisted auteurist assessment. His body of work includes many bold, perplexing experiments, but generally lacks a consistent signature style. The 1960s theatrical films range from the photo roman–style montages of still photographs and drawn images in Diary of Yunbogi (Yunbogi no nikki) and Band of Ninja (Ninja bugeicho) to the Brechtian theatricality of Death by Hanging (Koshikei), his 1968 international breakthrough film. He made television documentaries, and spent much of his late career as a television commentator and personality. His 1976 French-Japanese coproduction In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korida) tested the boundaries between the art film and pornography, and was the subject of an obscenity trial in Japan. It also placed him at the international forefront of cinematic modernism. Oshima is known for the reliability of his confrontational posture more than for a recognizable style. He interrogated Japan’s postwar democracy, victim consciousness, and political movements as well as Japan’s relationship to its “others” (notably Koreans), and constantly questioned authority. His post-1970s films, notably Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Senjo no meri Kurisumasu) and Taboo (Gohatto), provocatively explore historical subjects through the lens of homosociality.