Sing a Song of Sex (as part of the Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties – Eclipse Series #21) (a J!-ENT DVD Review)

May 8, 2010 by Dennis Amith 

“Sing a Song of Sex” begins the first in Oshima’s Japan’s Korea trilogy and possibly one of his most surreal and complex films that the filmmaker has created.

Image courtesy of © 1966 Shochiku Co. © 2010 The Criterion Collection. All Rights Reserved.

TITLE: Sing a Song of Sex (as part of the Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties – Eclipse Series #21)

DURATION: 103 Minutes

DVD INFORMATION: Color, 2:35:1 Aspect Ratio, Monaural, Japanese with English subtitles

COMPANY: Janus Films/The Criterion Collection

RELEASED: May 18, 2010

Directed by Nagisa Oshima

Written by Nagisa Oshima, Mamoru Sasaki, Toshio Tajima, Tsutomu Tamura

Music by Hikaru Hayashi

Cinematography by Akira Takada

Edited by Keiichi Uraoka

Starring:

Ichiro Araki as Toyoaki Nakamura

Juzo Itami as Professor Otake

Koji Iwabuchi as Hideo Ueda

Kazuyoshi Kushida as Katsumi Hiroi

Hiroko Masuda as Satoko Ikeda

Nobuko Miyamoto as Sanae Satomi

Hiroshi Sato as Koji Maruyama

Kazuko Tajima as Mayuko Fujiwara

Hideko Yoshida as Sachiko Kaneda

Often called the Godard of the East, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima was one of the most provocative film artists of the twentieth century, and his works challenged and shocked the cinematic world for decades. Following his rise to prominence at Shochiku, Oshima struck out to form his own production company, Sozo-sha, in the early sixties. That move ushered in the prolific period of his career that gave birth to the five films collected here. Unsurprisingly, this studio renegade was fascinated by stories of outsiders—serial killers, rabid hedonists, and stowaway misfits are just some of the social castoffs you’ll meet in these audacious, cerebral entries in the New Wave surge that made Japan a hub of truly daredevil moviemaking.

In Oshima’s enigmatic tale, four sexually hungry high school students preparing for their university entrance exams meet up with an inebriated teacher singing bawdy drinking songs. This encounter sets them on a less than academic path. Oshima’s hypnotic, free-form depiction of generational political apathy features stunning color cinematography.

Nagisa Oshima, one of Japan’s most controversial filmmakers and one of the founders of the Japanese New Wave, Oshima was known for taking on Japanese taboos and creating films against the status quo, the filmmaker has been doing his style of films since 1959 and working for the studio Shochiku in order to fulfill the studio’s desire of creating edgier material for the youth market. Oshima would go on to create three films which were known as “The Youth Trilogy” (“Cruel Story of Youth”, “The Sun’s Burial”, “Night and Fog in Japan”).

After politics played a part in Oshima leaving Shochiku, the filmmaker would go on to create his own company known as Sozo-sha (Creation Company) and in celebration of his work from his new studio and many fans bombarding Criterion for more Oshima, The Criterion Collection has chosen Nagisa Oshima’s mid-to-late ’60s films to be part of the latest Eclipse Series Collection known as “Eclipse Series 21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”. The DVD box set would include the following films: “Pleasures of the Flesh” (1965), “Violence at Noon” (1966), “Sing a Song of Sex” (1967), “Japanese Summer: Double Suicide” (1967) and “Three Resurrected Drunkards” (1968).

In 1967, Oshima created the film “Sing a Song of Sex” (Nihon Shunka-ko or “A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs”), not exactly a sex film as indicated by the title but one can call it a political film in which Oshima takes on his feelings towards Japanese youth and his feelings of Japanese prejudice towards Koreans after his trip to South Korea in 1964 and the mistreatment of Koreans in Japan. The film would be be the first in the trilogy that would not be as upfront towards Japan’s treatment of Koreans as the next two films that would follow but more critical towards Japanese youth.

His interest in student-radical movement and the end of his belief in “realism” led to films that would go between reality and fantasy and has mentioned that one of in his directorial influences was the master of surrealism, Luis Bunuel.

“Sing a Song of Sex” would focus on four male students – Nakamura (played by pop star Ichiro Araki, who was cast by Oshima in order to give his film better distribution), Uede (played by Koji Iwabuchi), Hiroi (played by Kazuyoshi Kushida) and Maruyama (played by Hiroshi Sato).

We first get a glimpse of the guys as two of them start smoking several cigarettes all at once and then they begin talking about their attraction towards a female student known as #469.  They start talking about the beautiful student with their other friends and suddenly the four students being their search for the student.  Who is she?  And why are they so fixated on her?

While walking, they see their teacher Mr. Otake (played by Juzo Itami) walking with a woman, Takako Tanigawa (played by Akiko Koyama).  Next thing you know, the guys start following the woman for no reason.

Then the students being their search for student #469 which leads them to a few female students who the guys begin to follow.  The female students seem to have a crush on Mr. Otake and take him out to a bar in which the teacher starts singing perverted, erotic songs.  After the leave, the drunk teacher tells them that they will stay in a hotel for the night in which they do.  The four friends sleep stay in the hotel but are often wondering if they can score with the other three female students staying in the next room.

Meanwhile, Nakamura goes to retrieve his pen from Mr. Otake’s room and notices the gas heater on while Otake is sleeping.  He notices the room smells of gas but instead of fixing it or turning it off, he just leaves it on and goes back to his room.

The following morning the three female students begin crying and report to the guys that Mr. Otake is dead but the guy students show no care.  The girls cry hysterically but the guys could care less if their teacher is dead. In fact, they joke with the female students that they killed the teacher.

This lack of emotion from these men are disturbing but as we get to see more these guys, we also get to see what is in the mind of their perverted minds.  The men start talking about raping the female students they just met with the exception of the female Korean student Kaneda (played by Hideko Yoshida) and discussing how they would do it and laughing about it.  The guys then start talking about how each would rape student #469.

And from this point on, we see Oshima’s work at hand as we see images that are either reality or fantasy.  We see friends of Otake arguing about how the dead should be remembered, we see demonstrators in protest of the “Kenokokubi” (Founder’s Day), we see a group of Japanese students protesting Vietnam singing “This Land is Your Land” which leads to rape while the character Takako Tanigawa giving the boys a lecture of Korean and Japanese origin.

In the case of “Sing a Song of Sex”, Oshima’s film which came a year after Tomomi Soeda’s book which studies song as an expression of discontent among the Japanese and their escape into fantasy.  This is an important theme in the film as the viewer is left to see how the songs relate to ones discontent and one’s emotion.   May it be a happy song, a political song or even the most erotic.   Are these characters feeling these emotions because of song, because they are sick or because they are amoral and simply don’t care.

“Sing a Song of Sex” is literally a surreal film intermixing reality and fantasy by director Nagisa Oshima.  Also, a film that is literally improvised as the cast and crew was not given a script and shows Oshima as an experimentalist and also capturing vocal radicalism.

VIDEO:

“Sing a Song of Sex” is presented in color (2:35:1 Aspect Ratio).  And once again, The Criterion Collection delivers by showing us a film that looks absolutely great for a film that is 43-years-old.  Throughout the film, we see Japanese pop culture from films of sexual Japanese films to western commercialism in Japan via Coca Cola.  And also imagery of Japan through the snow during the day and a variety of images which mixes realism with fantasy.  Which is real?  Which is fantasy?  Or is anything that we are watching real at all?

AUDIO & SUBTITLES:

“Sing a Song of Sex” is presented in Japanese monaural with English subtitles.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Eclipse Series releases do not come with special features but included in the insert is a background on Oshima and the information about the film.

In the previous two films of “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”, the big theme is about self-destruction.  This time around, “Sing a Song of Sex” begins Oshima’s trilogy on Japan’s Korean legacy and a turning point of the director as his trip to South Korea changed his life.

In promotional materials that were used in promoting the film, Oshima said, “My trip in 1964 to South Korea, a former colony of Japan, had a great influence on my life and fate.”  The more he saw Korean oppression by Japanese, it made Oshima much stronger in creating films that urged Koreans to remember their oppression by Japanese and urged Koreans in Japan to be come student radicals.

And it’s quite interesting because this is 1967 in which Oshima started to show his discontent towards Japanese youth.  Inspired by student radicalism in other countries, “Sing a Song of Sex” is a Japanese film but moreso, a Japanese film that continues his theme of unlikable characters but surreal to the point in which the viewer will probably want to watch this film several times to figure out what message Oshima is trying to relay to the audience.

In the case of “Sing a Song of Sex”, Oshima’s film which came a year after Tomomi Soeda’s book which studies song as an expression of discontent among the Japanese and their escape into fantasy.  This is an important theme in the film as Mr. Otake talks about it to the students and the people at the bar and we hear songs sung in which people show their happiness and some that show their discontent.

In essence, the four young men are horny young men who look to Otake-sensei as their way out of the mundane.  Their way into sexual exploration and by following him, he will help guide them to that direction indirectly.    In fact, even after Otake’s death, the song the perverted, erotic song that Otake sings resonates with the four young men as it is their song that depicts their sexual desire.   Meanwhile, female student Kaneda’s song is more about Japanese imperialism which she tries to sing over the Vietnam War protesters who are singing “This Land is Your Land”.

The film which has been satirical for the majority of the film is then taken to the extreme of fantasy as imaginary rapes now seem like actuality and the behaviors of the four amoral young men once again carries out Oshima’s trend of characters that are unlikable and doing the unthinkable but this time, there is no actuality because part of us feel that the fantasies are all about one’s interpretations of these songs.

At any rate, “Sing a Song of Sex” is not an easy film to describe because of its surreal surrounding but one of the good things about this release on DVD is the fact that we can rewatch the film, rewind it and try to understand the songs within the film and learn about the context in which they are used.  I often wonder if those who watched the film at the theater grasp the film’s intricacies and complexities with a single viewing.

Overall, “Sing a Song of Sex” is an interesting and surreal film and unlike the previous two films that start off “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”, this is one film that doesn’t give closure but for the most curious, will challenge one’s thoughts as you try to think about the character’s moral turpitude as their surreal actions are juxtaposed within the film’s bawdy songs and its lyrics.  A complex film, no doubt but overall a most welcomed addition to this DVD box set.