Comedy, jazz and carnage:
The absurdity of war according to Kihachi Okamoto
Contents
1. Situation in Postwar Japan
1.1 The year 1945: Japan loses the war
1.1.1 Public perception of the capitulation
1.1.2 Hypocrisy of the American occupation
1.2 The Emergence of Kihachi Okamoto
1.2.1 Okamoto - a descendant of war
1.2.2 Okamoto, the director - a descendant of postwar nihilism
2. The Japanese postwar anti-war film
2.1 Before 1959: Division into two types of anti war films
2.1.1 The non-political, pacifist and sentimental anti-war film
2.1.2 The political, polemical and anti-American anti-war film
2.2 The year 1959: New directions for the postwar anti-war film
3. Exemplary anti-war films of Kihachi Okamoto
3.1 Desperado Outpost (1959)
3.1.1 Unconventional integration of elements from different genres
3.1.2 The Satire of Desperado Outpost
3.1.3 Contemporary criticism of the film
3.2 Fort Graveyard (1965)
3.2.1 Autobiographical elements
3.2.2 Depiction of violence
3.2.3 Use of Western music and rythmic editing
3.2.4 Anti-war message at the end of the film
3.3 The Human Bullet (1968)
3.3.1 The absurdity of war in The Human Bullet
3.3.1.1 Bizarre comedy scenes
3.3.1.2 Comical characters
3.3.1.3 The solitude of war
3.3.2 The Humanism of The Human Bullet
3.3.2.1 Pacifist main character
3.3.2.2 Intelligent exposure of militarism
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography
1.1 The year 1945: Japan loses the war
1.1.1 Public perception of the capitulation
1.1.2 Hypocrisy of the American occupation
1.2 The Emergence of Kihachi Okamoto
1.2.1 Okamoto - a descendant of war
1.2.2 Okamoto, the director - a descendant of postwar nihilism
2. The Japanese postwar anti-war film
2.1 Before 1959: Division into two types of anti war films
2.1.1 The non-political, pacifist and sentimental anti-war film
2.1.2 The political, polemical and anti-American anti-war film
2.2 The year 1959: New directions for the postwar anti-war film
3. Exemplary anti-war films of Kihachi Okamoto
3.1 Desperado Outpost (1959)
3.1.1 Unconventional integration of elements from different genres
3.1.2 The Satire of Desperado Outpost
3.1.3 Contemporary criticism of the film
3.2 Fort Graveyard (1965)
3.2.1 Autobiographical elements
3.2.2 Depiction of violence
3.2.3 Use of Western music and rythmic editing
3.2.4 Anti-war message at the end of the film
3.3 The Human Bullet (1968)
3.3.1 The absurdity of war in The Human Bullet
3.3.1.1 Bizarre comedy scenes
3.3.1.2 Comical characters
3.3.1.3 The solitude of war
3.3.2 The Humanism of The Human Bullet
3.3.2.1 Pacifist main character
3.3.2.2 Intelligent exposure of militarism
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography
1. Situation in Postwar Japan
1.1 The Year 1945: Japan loses the war and its consequences
On August 15, 1945, a historical radio announcement was broadcasted all over Japan which, spoken by Emporer Hirohito personally, declared the unconditional surrender of Japan's military forces. With this measure, the Japanese Emporer (Tenno) ended World War II. Before this, the Japanese military had brought Asia under a totalitarian reign of terror with merciless conquests but had also demanded indescribable sacrifices from their own people with radical calls for perseverance. Never before had a Tenno, glorified as the symbol of the purity and sacredness of Japan by the propaganda apparatus, talked personally to the common people. The consequence was that he needed to give up his his godlike status. He handed the control of his now defenseless country over to the American occupation forces under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur.
1.1.1 Public perception of the capitulation
Despite of a widespread war-weariness, the Japanese surrender and the associated takeover by an American occupation force was perceived in very ambivalent ways. On the one hand, many Japanese regretted the war crimes committed by their own troops and realised their own role as willing sheeps in a fascist military dictatorship which had forced its own population to unconditional sacrifice and punished liberal thoughts in favor of the collective, but on the other hand, many people were furious with the Americans, who had wiped out millions of lives with nationwide bombardments and their dropping of the atomic bombs.
1.1.2 Hypocrisy of the American occupation
In addition to this inner paradox concerning Japan's own participation in the war, the often hypocritical practices of the American occupation seemed to confirm the contradictory feelings of the Japanese. The Americans democratized the country and tried to teach Western values like freedom and individualism to the Japanese, who had been thoroughly brainwashed by their own propaganda before. At the same time, they ironically started a merciless hunt for the rising Communist Party of Japan. Blacklists were made and numerous alleged Communists were arrested and dismissed from their jobs. The hunt culminated in the so-called Red Purge in 1950 in which tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. In the film industry this affected directors like Satsuo Yamamoto or Kaneto Shindo, who originally had welcomed the liberal and democratic values of the American occupiers and were nevertheless punished solely for their leftist views.
Therefore, Japanese post-war society could be described as being shaken to its very foundations and, by the contradictions in postwar Japan, thrown into a period of confusion and mistrust. In the movie business this resulted in a movement which could be labelled post war nihilism. It was composed of a young generation of directors who, having experienced the horrors of war as young soldier themselves, began to work as directors within an established studio system in the late 1950s. Independently of each other, directors such as Masaki Kobayashi (1919), Kenji Misumi (1921) or Yasuzo Masumura (1924) should add a new darkness and brutality to the Japanese genre cinema of the 1960s and dared for the first time to openly criticise Japanese militarism and the hypocrisy of Japanese post-war society [1]. One of the most notable members of this indirect movement was Kihachi Okamoto (1923 - 2005), a filmmaker who should use his own encountners with violence on the battlefield to revolutionize the Japanese war film and whose life seems representative of that battlefield generation of Japanese films.
1.2 The Emergence of Kihachi Okamoto
1.2.1 Okamoto – a descendant of war
Kihachi Okamoto was born in 1923. Thus, he was member of a generation that reached their majority in the 1940s, and hence was old enough to be thrown into the height of the Second World War as soldiers. A generation to which the director should later refer as "cursed" and which led him to the following statement: "You could say it's a miracle I survived the war at all, since statistics show that the largest of people killed were those born, like me, in 1924". [2]
When he turned seventeen years old Okamoto moved to Tokyo to study at university. The war had already started at that point, and Okamoto lived with the constant fear of being drafted and eventually losing his life at the front. Despite his fears Okamoto managed to graduate at age 19 without having to join the army. In 1945, he was drafted after all but the war had already reached its final stage and ended in August. In the end, Kihachi Okamoto only had to spend eight months in the military. In spite of his relatively short time span in the army, the war years in Tokyo shaped his later career in the movies crucially. In an interview with the author Chris D. from 1997 he states: "[...] I was thinking that any day I would get drafted, then die. I thought I would probably end my life by about 21". [3] Though he initially had no plans to go to the movies Okamoto escaped into the world of cinema and became a manic fan of American action movies and French comedies during the war. When he had still not been drafted at age 19 he made the decision to become a director himself. He managed to be hired by the Toho Company and worked as assistant director under such directors as Mikio Naruse before he was assigned to work in a factory that was making fighter planes because of the oversupply of assistant directors at Toho. After the war he went back to Toho and finally made his directorial debut in 1958 with All About Marriage (Kekkon no subete).
1.2.2 Okamoto, the director – a descendant of the post war nihilism
Okamoto began his career as a lower-ranking contract director of the Toho Company whose job it was to turn assigned film projects into routine program films. Soon it became apparent that Okamoto had much greater ambitions. As a member of that battlefield generation over the course of his career he should, like many of his colleagues, explore the boundaries of genre cinema.
In his films he soon showed a tendency for the grotesque exaggeration of seasoned genre mechanisms into the absurd and mixed black comedy with sincere tragedy and gloomy nihilism. This highly unconventional style was soon to be known as "Kihachi Touch" [4] and quickly helped the director to win himself a reputation as a promising new talent of the Japanese film. Although he made several notable samurai films and comedies the main focus of his oeuvre was on the war film.
Already with his third film, the war satire Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai, 1959), the director had managed to direct a big box office hit and the Toho Company commissioned him to shoot numerous other war films. Nevertheless, the relationship between the director and his film studio seems to be rather ambivalent and contradictory. Well aware of his talent the Toho Company let him direct big-budget war films and after that put him to work on the usual company programmers, often gangster films.
Reasons for this could be Okamoto's unconventional style which seemed to be a few years ahead of its time. Conveniently, many of his ambitious avant-garde comedy projects like Oh Bomb (Aa bakudan, 1964) bombed at the box office. This probably explains the desire of the Toho Company
to keep the director on a short leash. Therefore, especially the big-budget war films of the director appear to be more conventional and hardly show the unique style of its director. Battle Of Okinawa (Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen, 1971) for example was an unsubtle indictment of war with extremely brutal scenes of violence, while Japan's Longest Day (Nihon no ichiban nagai hi, 1967), a star-studded and relatively uncritical account of the political backgrounds behind the last day before Japan's surrender, was even condemned by the film critic Joan Mellen “for whitewashing the leading militarists”. [5]
Ironically, the prestigious latter movie was directed directly after Epoch of Murder Madness (Satsujin Kyojidai, 1967) which for its bizzare comedy moments and uneven narration was declared not publishable and was shelved for several months by the Toho Company [6]. Again this shows the contradictory relationship between the director and his film studio. Therefore, the focus of this seminar paper should be on Okamoto`s personal war movies. At least while directing projects on a smaller financial scale Okamoto enjoyed a remarkable artistic freedom during his entire career. [7] He was allowed to make comedies which were avant-garde and original, nihilistic samurai movies which were highly critical of Japanese feudalism and war films which revolutionized the whole genre with Okamoto`s characteristic “Kihachi Touch”.
2. The Japanese post war anti-war film
2.1 Before 1959: Division into two types of anti-war film
Before starting with the analysis of individual war movies by Okamoto it is important to take a quick look at the development of the Japanese anti-war film before his emergence so as to underline the director's particularities more accurately. In contrast to post-war Germany, where anti-war films were strictly avoided, a new genre was developed in the 1950s in Japan which concerned itself only with the presentation of the Second World War and its consequences on the Japanese. Already in 1950, two years before the American forces left Japan, the genre became interesting for the Japanese filmmakers. According to Donald Richie, this interest has mainly two reasons: First, American and French anti-war films as La Grande Illusion (1937) were shown in Japan for the first time. They enjoyed great popularity amongst critics and the public and left a remarkable impression on the Japanese film industry. Second, the Korean War had just started and the widespread desire of the Japanese was to stay out of it at any cost. [8] But it was not until the American occupation forces left the Japanese mainland in 1952 and released the Japanese filmmakers into an new artistic freedom that the genre flourished in its entirety. Generally, one can divide films from that era in two categories: The non-political ,pacifist and sentimental anti-war film and The political, polemic and anti-American anti-war film. The explanation of the differences between the two types of film shall be ensue by reference to films which deal with the argueably most controversial war tactics of the Americans in World War II, the dropping of two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2.1.1 The non-political, pacifist and sentimental anti-war film
The initial Japanese anti-war films deal with the war in a pacifist way whose sole purpose seems to be to illustrate for the audience the horrors and brutalities of war. Political backgrounds which led to the start of the war are largely excluded so that Japanese militarism is often only mentioned in a negatively connotated side note. In addition, those films are characterized by a relative subjectivity. War opponents usually appear only as an abstract mass, battle scenes are hardly shown on screen and usually only serve as the obscure origin of horror and devastation. Instead, the viewer is confronted with the consequences of war. The fatal damage it caused to the Japanese people is presented in a highly emotional and sentimental manner on the basis of individual fates. However, this relative subjectivity should not be dismissed as ignorance or denial of one's own war guilt because based on the Japanese example the universal demonization of the war is aimed at in which nationality or politics ultimately do not matter. In the context of the dropping of the atomic bombs the The Childen of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, 1952 ) directed by Kaneto Shindo could be named a prime example of this type of film. After four years of absence a teacher visits her hometown of Hiroshima only to discover that many of her old friends are dead or lie dying and the whole city seems to be little more than a pile of rubble. She decides to visit a local orphanage and learns that Hiroshima is flooded with orphans who have to suffer the consequences of the atomic bomb. Through the person of the teacher the rest of the movie follows numerous individual stories of children who were thrown into misery by the radiation or the death of their parents. Nevertheless, no trace of direct criticism of America can be found in the movie, instead, it is concerned completely with the suffering of the victims, which, in Donald Richie's words, is staged with "the coupling of the most lifelike naturalism and truly excessive sentimentality" [9]
2.1.2 The political, polemic and anti-American anti-war film
Naturally, the anti-war film is perfectly suited for political propaganda and therefore it wasn't long before filmmakers started to use the medium to practice harsh criticism of the American occupation forces behind the filmic curtain of the war. The directors of those films such as Satsuo Yamamoto (1910 - 1983) or Tadashi Imai (1912 - 1991) were often communists who had to experience persecution and ostracism by the Americans themselves and now, sponsored by the Communist Party of Japan, displayed their anger on celluloid. As much as the Americans, their own nationalism and militarism is condemned in such films. Heroes of those films are usually found in left-leaning individuals who try to bring traces of humanity back into their imperialistic homeland and usually die a tragic but nonetheless heroic death. Like the "humanist anti-war film" war is subjectively shown as the greatest evil of mankind from the perspective of the Japanese and its cruelness is presented with the same relentless gravitas and excessive melodrama. The main difference between the two is the clear naming of the parties guilty of the war in the "political anti- war films" and the polemical defamation of those people. An example of such a work is provided by Hideo Sekigawas anti-nukes film Hiroshima (Hiroshima, 1953). As The Children of Hiroshima funded by the Japan Teachers Union the film was intended to fix the errors of its predecessor which was criticised “for making the story into a tear-jerker and destroying it's political orientation”. [10] The leftist Hideo Sekigawa directed the film as a strange mishmash between an epochal and moving drama which deals with the consequences of the atomic bomb, using 20,000 extras and directing a polemical attack against America which apparently includes scenes of Americans buying bones of explosion victims as souvenirs and dropping the atomic bombs with racist motives. [11]
2.2 The year 1959: New directions for the post war anti-war film
The year 1959 could be seen as the major turning point in the development of the Japanese
anti-war film. Three anti-war films were released whose unique approach to war defies the usual categorisation in one of the two categories described above and which gave new impetus to the genre .
The first film was Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Conditions (Ningen no joken), first part of an epochal and elaborately staged trilogy which as a whole should have a running time of more than nine hours. The movies centers around the soldier Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) who is sent to the Manchurian front in a Japanese prison camp for Chinese convicts, and tries to convince his fellow guards to implement more humanism in dealing with the Chinese prisoners. He serves as a mediator between the brutal camp wardens and the maltreated prisoners but finally he fails and has to watch as several prisoners are beheaded before his eyes as punishment for a prison breakout. The film marks the first time that Japanese war crimes against the Chinese were shown on screen.The horrors of war were no longer confined to the Japanese, and Japanese militarism was condemned most eloquently without ever being polemical. Instead, there was a new form of realism whose main goal was to focus on the gritty documentation of the atrocities of war and the tragedy of its main character.
A second film was Kon Ichikawa's Fires on a Plain (Nobi), a striking document of the Japanese defeat in the Philippines. Although in a humanistic tradition, Ichikawa avoided the sentimentality of the "humanist anti-war films" and replaced it with a gloomy and unsentimental nihilism. The hero of the film Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) appears as a delirious, half-starved soldier who seems to be merely a shadow of his former self. Yet, he has got one last spark of humanism and tries to preserve his humanity while his comrades around him degenerate to murder and cannibalism. But the grim scenes of the film are repeatedly crossed by sudden moments of black humor by which Ichikawa illustrates the absurdity of war. Notable for example is a scene in which a soldier is looking down on a supposedly dead comrade whose head lies in a puddle and wonders aloud, "Will we all end up like this?." And the man believed dead lifts its head out of the water and in a weak voice replies, "What do you mean, ending like this?"
The third major anti-war film of 1959 was a seemingly typical program film called Desperado Outpost. But instead of offering the expected action comedy, the movie surprised the audience by possessing the nihilism and the absurdity of Fires on a Plain but at the same time containing scenes which, as in The Human Condition, showed executions of Chinese prisoners by the Japanese military. Nevertheless, the style of the film was far from the bleakness and the fierce anger of the two previous films. The mood was almost light-hearted so that the exuberant humor seemed almost disrespectful. It was the work of Kihachi Okamoto who directed his breakthrough with the film and blossomed in the following years to become a celebrated director of action and war movies.
3. Exemplary anti-war films of Kihachi Okamoto
3.1 Desperado Outpost (1959)
Desperado Outpost was Kihachi Okamoto's fifth film and his first war movie. In addition, it was also the first film which had not been assigned to the director by his film studio but which he realized according to his own script. [12] The irreverent war satire was a major financial success and catapulted its leading man Makoto Sato to stardom. Therefore, in many ways it was a milestone in the career of its director. The plot revolves around a mysterious murder in a military base at the Manchurian front. Sergeant Okubo (Makoto Sato) is sent to the military base to investigate. His arrival is considered with hostility by the leading military and Okubo soon finds out that he is onto a conspiracy which leads him directly to the chambers of the camp commander.
3.1.1 Unconventional integration of elements from different genres
Intended as an adventurous war movie Desperado Oupost is in reality a wild mix of different genres. With the inclusion of a mysterious hero who rides on a horse into a foreign military base Okamoto clearly quotes motifs from the American western. Likewise in the numerous shoot-outs and the almost superhuman marksmanship of his protagonist. With the plot revolving around a unsolved murder at the front the film also uses elements of the film noir with corrupt officers and a mysterious plot. But what's most surprising is probably the combination of a war film with the stylistic devices of a satire. Only in the 1970s the Americans should discover the addition of satirical elements into the anti-war film and started to turn out notable Vietnam War satires such as Mash (1970). This satirical reflection of everyday life during war time, as it was shown in those films, was anticipated by Okamoto and thus he directed a new type of war film which baffled the critics and filled the audience with enthusiasm.
3.1.2 The Satire of Desperado Outpost
Despite of the fact that Desperado Outpost is a war film the mood of the film appears not in the least bit gloomy or depressing. Instead, a black and occasionally silly type of humor and grotesque exaggerated characters define the mood of the movie. The hero for example is a permanently grinning gunslinger whose coolness and energetic persona is in stark contrast with the sentimental and tragic hero of the Japanese war films from the 1950s. Unlike him, the villain of the film, a cruel and arrogant officer, is a wannabe gunslinger whose poor shooting skills are the target of many jokes in Okamoto's film. The war serves more as a adventurous setting in this farce so that the satire aims more at the action movie than at the war film. Particularly the almost westernlike showdown in which the hero mows down dozens of Chinese soldiers with heavy artillery supports this interpretation as a satirical action film in disguise of a war film. With popular action heroes like Rambo or Sergio Leone's Man Without a Name, this figure of a superhuman action hero represents no peculiarity today but back in 1950 it was, especially in a war movie, still a novelty. Here Okamoto parodied the courage and strength of arms of the traditional samurai heroes in the popular samurai films and exaggerates the valor and heroism of his protagonist into the grotesque.
Desperado Outpost also contains significant elements of an anti-war film, albeit in the form of satirical superelevation. As in the previously mentioned The Human Conditions Okamoto also includes a scene of Chinese civilians getting executed by the Japanese military. While The Human Conditions, treated those war crimes of the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War with appropriate seriousness and dignity, Okamoto travesties this scene into the ridiculous. The execution is performed by said wannabe gunslinger who seemingly shoots down an old man first. Our hero can convince him to spare his next victim, a young woman, but when wannabe gunslinger tells her to go, suddenly the old man stands up as well and flees completely unscathed towards the exit. Especially in the context of The Human Conditions, directed in the same year such a parody of horrible war crimes must have snubbed many viewers. Another similarly irreverent parody focuses on the figure of the camp commander (Toshiro Mifune). He appears as an obviously insane laughing stock who permanently screams arbitrary warnings of air strikes, which is dismissed by the stationed soldiers with an annoyed eye roll. Less than a dramatic story and a strong anti-war message Kihachi Okamoto here seeks the deheroisation of militarism by exposing it to ridicule.
3.1.3 Contemporary criticism of the movie
While the black-humored satire of Desperado Outpost shows its director already at the height of his ability, it lacks the characteristic humanism and the gloom of Okamoto's best films. This lack of a humanistic message confused contemporary critics who called the film “disrespectful” and accused it of making fun of war. [13] Nevertheless, the film was a huge commercial success even if Okamoto's films were frowned upon for a few years by the critics. It was not until his self-financed The Human Bullet (Nikudan, 1968) that he managed to redeem himself for the critics. Finally, they realized what Okamoto was driving at: not to ridicule war, but the warmongers.
3.2 Fort Graveyard (1965)
Fort Graveyard (Chi to suna) was the fifth and final film of that satirical war film series whose first part Kihachi Okamoto had directed with the previously discussed Desperado Outpost. However, unlike the previous four parts (of which Okamoto directed also the second film Westward Desperado (Dokuritsu gurentai nishi-e, 1960)) which were intended as simple programmers with meager budgets, Fort Graveyard was planned as an epic conclusion of the series with a big budget. With elaborate staging, the inclusion of Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai, the two biggest stars of the Toho Studios, and a running time of over two hours Kihachi Okamoto returned one last time back to Manchuria to direct again a satirical attack on Japanese militarism and the horrors of war. The plot revolves around a squad of inexperienced musicians who are sent to the front and are ordered, under the leadership of the rebel officer Kosugi (Toshiro Mifune), to recapture a fort, called Fort Graveyard, which has been overrun by the Chinese.
3.2.1 Autobiographical elements
In many ways, Fort Graveyard can be seen as the most personal war film of Kihachi Okamoto in the series. At the center of the plot are not professional soldiers but a naive squad of young recruits who, in the final stages of the war in 1945, are thrown right into the battle without the least combat experience. Okamoto also had to do his service in the army as a young man, barely older than his protagonists, with only minimal training. In this presentation of the young soldiers as a playful orchestra which, although it has plenty of experience with its instruments, has never even fired a gun in its life, Okamoto's critical attitude towards war can be found. The very idea of sending untrained recruits to the front shows the profund desperation of the Japanese military, which tried in a desperate act to draft all available military forces to maintain order. But instead of showing his little troops as a heroic fighters Okamoto focuses on the fear and desperation of the young soldiers who seem like foreign bodies in the hostile environment of the war zone. Already the first scene in which the squad starts playing a jazzy version of the American classic When the Saints Go Marchin' In, right in the middle of enemy territory only to panic after the bombardment by a startled Chinese partisan, emphasizes the bleak character of the film. The initial carefreeness of the soldiers is slowly destroyed by the the cruel everyday life of war and turns into agony.Unlike Kihachi Okamoto who had to endure his time as a soldier on his own, a person of trust is on the side of the young soldiers in the form of officer Kosugi. Kosugi is represented as a rebellious officer who was transferred to the front for physically assaulting a superior and who sees the notion for sacrifice of the Japanese military critically. He tries to put humanity back into a humane military system by treating the group with respect and even allows them to bring their musical instruments to the battlefield.
3.2.2 Depiction of Violence
Like its predecessor intended as an action film, there are numerous, elaborately choreographed shoot-outs in Fort Graveyard. Nevertheless Kihachi Okamoto denies his troop any heroism in killing their opponents. No lust for battle but the constant fear and despair of the young soldiers define the mood. The battles are consequently staged realisticly and brutally with much use of fake blood and dirt but they are also repeatedly undermined with sudden moments of comedy. The comic parts are mostly achieved through the character of the stupid gravedigger Mochida (Yunosuke Ito) whose heroic battlecry Banzai ("Ten thousand years" based on the desired duration of the Japanese empire) can always only be heard when the battle is already over, but also through the clumsiness of the young soldiers . But less than making fun of his characters, Okamoto emphasis the tragedy and the absurdity of war with this humor. No victory of the young squad is glorified since every battle beaten is coupled with unsustainable losses. The scenes of violence seem even more shocking because apart from the war scenes, the tone of the film is almost light-hearted and the numerous musical pieces almost animate the audience to move their feet to the rythm of the film. The violence thus gains an abrupt and effective character because it constantly breaks the light-hearted mood of the film with its sudden appearence. Also, the futility of war is made clear. The occupied fort has obviously no meaning for the young soldiers, they do not know why they fight and just try to survive. Thus, they die completely wasteful deaths expecially since the war is reaching its end and the defeat of Japan is already visible. In the figure of the incoming prostitute Oharu (Reiko Dan), who takes away the virginity of the soldiers, they finally find a reason to fight in order to protect her life. Significantly, Mochida says at one point to a Chinese prisoner, "You may fight for a red flag, but our flag is a red lace skirt". Given all the humanism in the characterisation of his Japanese protagonists their Chinese enemies appear as faceless crowd even though Kihachi Okamoto grants them significantly more cries of pain and frightened close-ups than the average American war film would consider it necessary. An exception is the afromentioned Chinese who is captured at the beginning by the soldiers. After he first is the object of the soldier's fury some of them develop something like sympathy for him throughout the film. As a member of the orchestra falls in battle, the flute of the fallen is given to him with which he enthusiastically tries to imitate the music of the troop.
3.2.3 Use of Western music and rythmic editing
In his mise-en-scène Kihachi Okamoto chooses a curious rhythmic style. Various pieces of jazz music are played repeatedly over the course of the film. In scenes in which the soldiers stalk upon their enemies he coordinates their movements and the editing with with the current piece of music in the background, creating the impression of a music video. In another scene, a soldier in a prison has to sing exactly in the rythm of the orchestra playing outside so as not to wake the sleeping guard and to be able to tell his imprisoned colleagues important information. In a sense, one could call Fort Graveyard a musical war film but the music serves far more purpose than being just a flashy backdrop. It illustrates the humanist message of the film. Instead of giving every soldier a name and significant character, Okamoto identifies them based on their individual instruments. Whenever one of the soldiers dies the whole orchestra is deprived of a part of their sound. Thus, Okamoto emphasizes the tragedy and futility of sacrificing talented young men and finds a clever way to stress the individuality of each soldiers with his unique intrument. But music also serves as the only catharsis in the everyday life of the young soldiers. With jazz the young soldiers try to defeat the war but are ultimately overtaken by its realities. In this regard, especially the showdown of Fort Graveyard should be mentioned.
3.2.4 Anti-war message at the end of the film
At the end of the film the situation of the young soldiers seems hopeless. After the troop
was able to conquer the fort and defend it against waves of enemies with heavy losses on both sides the ammunition depots are empty and many members of the orchestra, including Sgt. Kosugi, have died. Awaiting a fatal mortar attack of the Chinese the musicians decide to put down their weapons and instead reach for their musical instruments. When there last piece, again When the Saint Go Marchin' In, sounds the old enthusiasm seems recovered but soon the music is drowned by the sound of the bombs. With each of the young soldier who falls victim to the bombs also the sound of his intrument dies down and in the end a deathly silence has fallen upon the scenery. Despite the numerous pieces of music and the playfulness of the musicians, the horrors of war ultimately triumphed over the music. A powerful evidence for the anti-war attitude of the director. One surely cannot imagine a more persuasive ending by a seemingly avid music fan like Okamoto.
3.3 The Human Bullet (1968)
The Human Bullet is perhaps the most personal film of Kihachi Okamoto and is considered his masterpiece in some quarters. After the great success of his war opus Japan's Longest Day and the satirical samurai film Kill (Kiru) of 1968, the director was able to set up a film project os his for the first time. With the help of the ATG (Art Theatre Guild), a small, independent production company which had the goal to finance independent film projects of young artists he directed the tragic-comedy The Human Bullet. It was the first time that he was in complete control of a film project but had to get along with a fraction of the budgets of his Toho films. Despite the minimal budget, partly paid out of his one pocket, Okamoto managed to recruit a number of well-known character actors (including Chishu Ryu, Etsushi Takahashi and Yunosuke Ito) who acted for a fraction of their usual fee. The plot revolves around a young soldier (Minori Terada) who is enlisted for a kamikaze mission in the final stages of the war in 1945 and gets his first day off since he had to join the army. As he wanders aimlessly around his military base to prepare for his mission he meets many strange characters that soon reveal themselves as tragic victims of the war.
3.3.1 The absurdity of war in The Human Bullet
In contrast to his Toho epics The Human Bullet is a movie on a much smaller scale. There are no battle scenes even when our hero is attacked by an airplane only its noise can be heard while nothing of the actual aircraft is shown. Despite the absence of war scenes, the film is perhaps the sharpest and most satirical attack of Okamoto against the war. The initial situation alone is evidence of his deep bitterness in the face of the injustices of war. A respectable young soldier has to give his life for a militaristic country by crashing into an enemy ship with a torpedo. But Okamoto undermines the tragedy of this initial situation with black humor and satire. Especially in the first part which deals with the training of the hero the absurdity of Japanese militarism at the prospect of imminent defeat is shown. Consequently, the satire is aimed more at the militarism than at the war itself. For example, when our hero expresses vague doubts about the victory of the Japanese, a yelling officer suffers a small breakdown and starts screaming repeatedly, "What the heck?” to which Okamoto shows via an ironic image a “suspended” record.
3.3.1.1 Bizarre comedy scenes
The film gains a large part of its humor from the disastrous conditions in destroyed Japan and the propaganda, which is nonetheless lively continued by the Japanese militarists who still proclaim a glorious victory of the Japanese forces. Actually, the soldiers receive not even adequate food rations so they have to learn ruminating to stretch their meager meals. The reaction of a well-fed senior officer is to advise the soldiers to “chew every bite forty-eight times so that each bite feels like a whole meal.” Elsewhere the soldiers have to carve themselves bamboo spears because neither guns, nor ammo is available. But the most memorable scene in this respect is the Kamikaze attempt of the hero. In a primitive iron barrel attached to an old torpedo he has to wait, virtually unable to move for enemy warships and then detonate the torpedo per hand. When he actually fires his torpedo it floats a few yards at a sluggish pace, just to sink into the ocean.
3.3.1.2 Comical characters
While the hero prowls around he encounters many bizarre characters with whom he interacts. For example, an old man (Chishu Ryu) who has lost his arms in an explosion and asks the hero to help him pee. When he goes to a brothel to lose his virginity, there he encounters truly monstrous wenches that repel the hero with their shrillness and ugliness. What is also noteworthy is his encounter with two young brothers who, indoctrinated by the propaganda, seemingly unconsciously maunder propagandistic slogans and stories all the time. All these characters are clearly exaggerated, but next to the comic absurdity of their traits nevertheless all reveal a profound tragedy. This shows very clearly Okamoto's intention not to laugh about the funny idiosyncrasies of his characters but to show the absurdity of their cruel living conditions. Therefore, all the characters soon prove themselves to be tragic products of the war. The prostitutes only became those "freaks" (as the hero calls them) because they were forced to serve as comfort women for their fellow soldiers at the front. The old man obviously had arms before he lost them in the war and the young siblings constantly recite propaganda because they have learned nothing else since their childhood. Okamoto implies that those people have develeoped this oddity as a protective mechanism to cope with the war. Some now constantly depend on the help of others (the old man), others hide behind the heroic propaganda (the military and the children) and others have gone insane (the prostitutes) while the hero starts reciting math formulas in every situation of distress. That of all these fictional characters seem authentic is due to the very real madness of war. When you consider that kamikaze pilots killed themselves, unprotesting, for a made-up ideology then the little quirks of the characters in the film appear as actually quite ordinary in such times.
3.3.1.3 The Solitude of War
During World War II, the Japanese were subjected to radical indoctrination. The individual was suppressed and the Japanese were encouraged to act as a collective with unquestioning obedience. All of Japan should always be ready to sacrifice themselves for the Emperor. If Japan should be defeated, every Japanese was ordered to commit suicide in order not to stain the honor of the Japanese homeland. This tactic of the Japanese military was called “The Honorable Death of the Hundred Million" [14]. It is against this background that The Human Bullet takes place, conjuring a nihilistic apocalyptic atmosphere which is enhanced by locating the majority of the running time in a nearby desert. But Okamoto reverses the desired ideal of the collective consciousness of the Japanese. In the face of the madness of the propaganda surrounding the characters of the film, they withdraw into their own world. As noted previously, the absurdity and thus the individuality of those movie characters is a product of the war. Thus, it could be said that The Human Bullet is a film about scared people. Okamoto shows that unity in death cannot exist. In the face of certain death, social conventions serve no purpose anymore, instead, an existential anxiety remains as experienced by Okamoto himself during war. Even the construct of propaganda, to which the military clings so desperately, proves to be extremely unstable. When two cocky military in the film once see a supposedly live grenade, both break down completely and even then do not stop to tremble when the grenade reveals itself as dysfunctional.
3.3.2 The Humanism of The Human Bullet
Although The Human Bullet contains numerous elements of humorous satire, its mood is melancholic. The hero is about to die a senseless death for a fascist country, which provides the film with an existentialist note. Even as the hero meets a beautiful girl (Naoko Otani) who gives him consolation, the melancholy mood is reinforced because the audience already knows that the war will make that relationship impossible. Okamoto tells his story in the humanistic tradition of the anti-war films of the 1950s, but at the same time avoids the sentimentality of those movies with including grotesque humor. But in addition to intelligent satire, there are also numerous humanistic elements in the film which reveal Okamoto's intention to indict the horrors of war.
3.3.2.1 Pacifist main character
The main character of The Human Bullet is no indoctrinated sheep to propaganda but rather a quite astute and eloquent man who sees the inhumanity of the Japanese system very clearly. However, the idea of actively rebelling against the military apparatus never crosses his mind. For this he seems too naïve, although he tries to help the people he meets within his means. His attitude is pacifist and when he sees a military beating the older of the two brothers he tries to help the boy. Remarkably, he defeats the military, not with violence, but with words by showing him the futility of his violence. Again the aspect of the afromentioned "loneliness of war" comes to mind, because when the hero illustrates the militarist's mortality, he turns him into a picture of misery. When the older brother is killed in an air raid, the hero can also convince his little brother not to seek revenge and thus manages to pass on his humanist ideals. In the end however, the main character becomes also a victim of the war. Helplessly drifting in the sea, he dies in his iron barrel without having made a hit with his torpedo. At least he seems to have made the little brother rethink his militarist thoughts. The final scenes show him using several grenades, not to kill anyone, but to practise math.
3.3.2.2 Intelligent exposure of militarism
A great thematic block of the movie is concerned with the dehumanizing indoctrination performed by the military. The main character's officer refers to the ruminating soldiers as "cows". When our hero asks for more food the same officer calls him a "pig" and, with the words that pigs do not wear clothes, forces him to complete his training naked. Okamoto displays great irony when the hero is obliged to go on his kamikaze mission and thus is suddenly considered a "God" (Kamikaze means "holy wind"). Despite his “promotion” the authorial narrator of the film tells us that the hero doesn't want to be a cow, nor a pig nor a God, but would prefer to be considered as a normal person. But this desire for humanity cannot be realised in times of war, because as a small wheel of a huge propaganda apparatus, our hero is degraded to a mere instrument of political purpose. Okamoto's statement seems obvious: In a militaristic system, humanity cannot exist for purely logical reasons. The individual is eliminated and only the military ability of a person counts.
4. Conclusion
The war films of Okamoto are among the most original and unique representatives of the genre. Despite of that, doubts about his anti-war attitude were uttered throughout his entire career. Was the director making fun of war? Are his films just intended as disrespectful provocations? Today it seems certain that it is precisely this satirical exaggeration which turns Okamoto's films into classics of the genre. He gave the genre a new depth by uniting it with the means of the satire. Not to laugh at the war, but to emphasize its absurdity. In his best films such as The Human Bullet, he managed to blend grotesque comedy with tragedy, reaching a humanist power that appears much more truthful and intelligent than those innumerable completely earnest and insincere humanist war films of his contemporaries.
5. Bibliography
- Anderson, Joseph L., Richie, Donald, The Japanese Film: Arts and Industry, Princeton University Press, 1982
- Anon., n.d., http://www.chud.com/community/t/44760/the-honorable-death-of-the-hundred-million [11.11.2013]
- Desjardins, Chris, Outlaw Master of Japanese Cinema, I.B Tauris Publishers, 2005
- Gatto, Robin, Epoch of Murder Madness [August 2013] http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/epoch-of-murder-madness/ [11.12.2013]
- High, Peter B., An Interview with Kihachi Okamoto, Wide Angle 1, no.4, 1977
- Jacoby, Alexander, A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Stone Bridge Press, 2008
- Mes, Tom, A Tribute to Kihachi Okamoto [April 2005] http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/ [11.11.2013]
Erstveröffentlichung auf "nippon-kino.net" am 13. 03. 2014
Geschrieben von Pablo Knote
1.1 The Year 1945: Japan loses the war and its consequences
On August 15, 1945, a historical radio announcement was broadcasted all over Japan which, spoken by Emporer Hirohito personally, declared the unconditional surrender of Japan's military forces. With this measure, the Japanese Emporer (Tenno) ended World War II. Before this, the Japanese military had brought Asia under a totalitarian reign of terror with merciless conquests but had also demanded indescribable sacrifices from their own people with radical calls for perseverance. Never before had a Tenno, glorified as the symbol of the purity and sacredness of Japan by the propaganda apparatus, talked personally to the common people. The consequence was that he needed to give up his his godlike status. He handed the control of his now defenseless country over to the American occupation forces under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur.
1.1.1 Public perception of the capitulation
Despite of a widespread war-weariness, the Japanese surrender and the associated takeover by an American occupation force was perceived in very ambivalent ways. On the one hand, many Japanese regretted the war crimes committed by their own troops and realised their own role as willing sheeps in a fascist military dictatorship which had forced its own population to unconditional sacrifice and punished liberal thoughts in favor of the collective, but on the other hand, many people were furious with the Americans, who had wiped out millions of lives with nationwide bombardments and their dropping of the atomic bombs.
1.1.2 Hypocrisy of the American occupation
In addition to this inner paradox concerning Japan's own participation in the war, the often hypocritical practices of the American occupation seemed to confirm the contradictory feelings of the Japanese. The Americans democratized the country and tried to teach Western values like freedom and individualism to the Japanese, who had been thoroughly brainwashed by their own propaganda before. At the same time, they ironically started a merciless hunt for the rising Communist Party of Japan. Blacklists were made and numerous alleged Communists were arrested and dismissed from their jobs. The hunt culminated in the so-called Red Purge in 1950 in which tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. In the film industry this affected directors like Satsuo Yamamoto or Kaneto Shindo, who originally had welcomed the liberal and democratic values of the American occupiers and were nevertheless punished solely for their leftist views.
Therefore, Japanese post-war society could be described as being shaken to its very foundations and, by the contradictions in postwar Japan, thrown into a period of confusion and mistrust. In the movie business this resulted in a movement which could be labelled post war nihilism. It was composed of a young generation of directors who, having experienced the horrors of war as young soldier themselves, began to work as directors within an established studio system in the late 1950s. Independently of each other, directors such as Masaki Kobayashi (1919), Kenji Misumi (1921) or Yasuzo Masumura (1924) should add a new darkness and brutality to the Japanese genre cinema of the 1960s and dared for the first time to openly criticise Japanese militarism and the hypocrisy of Japanese post-war society [1]. One of the most notable members of this indirect movement was Kihachi Okamoto (1923 - 2005), a filmmaker who should use his own encountners with violence on the battlefield to revolutionize the Japanese war film and whose life seems representative of that battlefield generation of Japanese films.
1.2 The Emergence of Kihachi Okamoto
1.2.1 Okamoto – a descendant of war
Kihachi Okamoto was born in 1923. Thus, he was member of a generation that reached their majority in the 1940s, and hence was old enough to be thrown into the height of the Second World War as soldiers. A generation to which the director should later refer as "cursed" and which led him to the following statement: "You could say it's a miracle I survived the war at all, since statistics show that the largest of people killed were those born, like me, in 1924". [2]
When he turned seventeen years old Okamoto moved to Tokyo to study at university. The war had already started at that point, and Okamoto lived with the constant fear of being drafted and eventually losing his life at the front. Despite his fears Okamoto managed to graduate at age 19 without having to join the army. In 1945, he was drafted after all but the war had already reached its final stage and ended in August. In the end, Kihachi Okamoto only had to spend eight months in the military. In spite of his relatively short time span in the army, the war years in Tokyo shaped his later career in the movies crucially. In an interview with the author Chris D. from 1997 he states: "[...] I was thinking that any day I would get drafted, then die. I thought I would probably end my life by about 21". [3] Though he initially had no plans to go to the movies Okamoto escaped into the world of cinema and became a manic fan of American action movies and French comedies during the war. When he had still not been drafted at age 19 he made the decision to become a director himself. He managed to be hired by the Toho Company and worked as assistant director under such directors as Mikio Naruse before he was assigned to work in a factory that was making fighter planes because of the oversupply of assistant directors at Toho. After the war he went back to Toho and finally made his directorial debut in 1958 with All About Marriage (Kekkon no subete).
1.2.2 Okamoto, the director – a descendant of the post war nihilism
Okamoto began his career as a lower-ranking contract director of the Toho Company whose job it was to turn assigned film projects into routine program films. Soon it became apparent that Okamoto had much greater ambitions. As a member of that battlefield generation over the course of his career he should, like many of his colleagues, explore the boundaries of genre cinema.
In his films he soon showed a tendency for the grotesque exaggeration of seasoned genre mechanisms into the absurd and mixed black comedy with sincere tragedy and gloomy nihilism. This highly unconventional style was soon to be known as "Kihachi Touch" [4] and quickly helped the director to win himself a reputation as a promising new talent of the Japanese film. Although he made several notable samurai films and comedies the main focus of his oeuvre was on the war film.
Already with his third film, the war satire Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai, 1959), the director had managed to direct a big box office hit and the Toho Company commissioned him to shoot numerous other war films. Nevertheless, the relationship between the director and his film studio seems to be rather ambivalent and contradictory. Well aware of his talent the Toho Company let him direct big-budget war films and after that put him to work on the usual company programmers, often gangster films.
Reasons for this could be Okamoto's unconventional style which seemed to be a few years ahead of its time. Conveniently, many of his ambitious avant-garde comedy projects like Oh Bomb (Aa bakudan, 1964) bombed at the box office. This probably explains the desire of the Toho Company
to keep the director on a short leash. Therefore, especially the big-budget war films of the director appear to be more conventional and hardly show the unique style of its director. Battle Of Okinawa (Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen, 1971) for example was an unsubtle indictment of war with extremely brutal scenes of violence, while Japan's Longest Day (Nihon no ichiban nagai hi, 1967), a star-studded and relatively uncritical account of the political backgrounds behind the last day before Japan's surrender, was even condemned by the film critic Joan Mellen “for whitewashing the leading militarists”. [5]
Ironically, the prestigious latter movie was directed directly after Epoch of Murder Madness (Satsujin Kyojidai, 1967) which for its bizzare comedy moments and uneven narration was declared not publishable and was shelved for several months by the Toho Company [6]. Again this shows the contradictory relationship between the director and his film studio. Therefore, the focus of this seminar paper should be on Okamoto`s personal war movies. At least while directing projects on a smaller financial scale Okamoto enjoyed a remarkable artistic freedom during his entire career. [7] He was allowed to make comedies which were avant-garde and original, nihilistic samurai movies which were highly critical of Japanese feudalism and war films which revolutionized the whole genre with Okamoto`s characteristic “Kihachi Touch”.
2. The Japanese post war anti-war film
2.1 Before 1959: Division into two types of anti-war film
Before starting with the analysis of individual war movies by Okamoto it is important to take a quick look at the development of the Japanese anti-war film before his emergence so as to underline the director's particularities more accurately. In contrast to post-war Germany, where anti-war films were strictly avoided, a new genre was developed in the 1950s in Japan which concerned itself only with the presentation of the Second World War and its consequences on the Japanese. Already in 1950, two years before the American forces left Japan, the genre became interesting for the Japanese filmmakers. According to Donald Richie, this interest has mainly two reasons: First, American and French anti-war films as La Grande Illusion (1937) were shown in Japan for the first time. They enjoyed great popularity amongst critics and the public and left a remarkable impression on the Japanese film industry. Second, the Korean War had just started and the widespread desire of the Japanese was to stay out of it at any cost. [8] But it was not until the American occupation forces left the Japanese mainland in 1952 and released the Japanese filmmakers into an new artistic freedom that the genre flourished in its entirety. Generally, one can divide films from that era in two categories: The non-political ,pacifist and sentimental anti-war film and The political, polemic and anti-American anti-war film. The explanation of the differences between the two types of film shall be ensue by reference to films which deal with the argueably most controversial war tactics of the Americans in World War II, the dropping of two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2.1.1 The non-political, pacifist and sentimental anti-war film
The initial Japanese anti-war films deal with the war in a pacifist way whose sole purpose seems to be to illustrate for the audience the horrors and brutalities of war. Political backgrounds which led to the start of the war are largely excluded so that Japanese militarism is often only mentioned in a negatively connotated side note. In addition, those films are characterized by a relative subjectivity. War opponents usually appear only as an abstract mass, battle scenes are hardly shown on screen and usually only serve as the obscure origin of horror and devastation. Instead, the viewer is confronted with the consequences of war. The fatal damage it caused to the Japanese people is presented in a highly emotional and sentimental manner on the basis of individual fates. However, this relative subjectivity should not be dismissed as ignorance or denial of one's own war guilt because based on the Japanese example the universal demonization of the war is aimed at in which nationality or politics ultimately do not matter. In the context of the dropping of the atomic bombs the The Childen of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, 1952 ) directed by Kaneto Shindo could be named a prime example of this type of film. After four years of absence a teacher visits her hometown of Hiroshima only to discover that many of her old friends are dead or lie dying and the whole city seems to be little more than a pile of rubble. She decides to visit a local orphanage and learns that Hiroshima is flooded with orphans who have to suffer the consequences of the atomic bomb. Through the person of the teacher the rest of the movie follows numerous individual stories of children who were thrown into misery by the radiation or the death of their parents. Nevertheless, no trace of direct criticism of America can be found in the movie, instead, it is concerned completely with the suffering of the victims, which, in Donald Richie's words, is staged with "the coupling of the most lifelike naturalism and truly excessive sentimentality" [9]
2.1.2 The political, polemic and anti-American anti-war film
Naturally, the anti-war film is perfectly suited for political propaganda and therefore it wasn't long before filmmakers started to use the medium to practice harsh criticism of the American occupation forces behind the filmic curtain of the war. The directors of those films such as Satsuo Yamamoto (1910 - 1983) or Tadashi Imai (1912 - 1991) were often communists who had to experience persecution and ostracism by the Americans themselves and now, sponsored by the Communist Party of Japan, displayed their anger on celluloid. As much as the Americans, their own nationalism and militarism is condemned in such films. Heroes of those films are usually found in left-leaning individuals who try to bring traces of humanity back into their imperialistic homeland and usually die a tragic but nonetheless heroic death. Like the "humanist anti-war film" war is subjectively shown as the greatest evil of mankind from the perspective of the Japanese and its cruelness is presented with the same relentless gravitas and excessive melodrama. The main difference between the two is the clear naming of the parties guilty of the war in the "political anti- war films" and the polemical defamation of those people. An example of such a work is provided by Hideo Sekigawas anti-nukes film Hiroshima (Hiroshima, 1953). As The Children of Hiroshima funded by the Japan Teachers Union the film was intended to fix the errors of its predecessor which was criticised “for making the story into a tear-jerker and destroying it's political orientation”. [10] The leftist Hideo Sekigawa directed the film as a strange mishmash between an epochal and moving drama which deals with the consequences of the atomic bomb, using 20,000 extras and directing a polemical attack against America which apparently includes scenes of Americans buying bones of explosion victims as souvenirs and dropping the atomic bombs with racist motives. [11]
2.2 The year 1959: New directions for the post war anti-war film
The year 1959 could be seen as the major turning point in the development of the Japanese
anti-war film. Three anti-war films were released whose unique approach to war defies the usual categorisation in one of the two categories described above and which gave new impetus to the genre .
The first film was Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Conditions (Ningen no joken), first part of an epochal and elaborately staged trilogy which as a whole should have a running time of more than nine hours. The movies centers around the soldier Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) who is sent to the Manchurian front in a Japanese prison camp for Chinese convicts, and tries to convince his fellow guards to implement more humanism in dealing with the Chinese prisoners. He serves as a mediator between the brutal camp wardens and the maltreated prisoners but finally he fails and has to watch as several prisoners are beheaded before his eyes as punishment for a prison breakout. The film marks the first time that Japanese war crimes against the Chinese were shown on screen.The horrors of war were no longer confined to the Japanese, and Japanese militarism was condemned most eloquently without ever being polemical. Instead, there was a new form of realism whose main goal was to focus on the gritty documentation of the atrocities of war and the tragedy of its main character.
A second film was Kon Ichikawa's Fires on a Plain (Nobi), a striking document of the Japanese defeat in the Philippines. Although in a humanistic tradition, Ichikawa avoided the sentimentality of the "humanist anti-war films" and replaced it with a gloomy and unsentimental nihilism. The hero of the film Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) appears as a delirious, half-starved soldier who seems to be merely a shadow of his former self. Yet, he has got one last spark of humanism and tries to preserve his humanity while his comrades around him degenerate to murder and cannibalism. But the grim scenes of the film are repeatedly crossed by sudden moments of black humor by which Ichikawa illustrates the absurdity of war. Notable for example is a scene in which a soldier is looking down on a supposedly dead comrade whose head lies in a puddle and wonders aloud, "Will we all end up like this?." And the man believed dead lifts its head out of the water and in a weak voice replies, "What do you mean, ending like this?"
The third major anti-war film of 1959 was a seemingly typical program film called Desperado Outpost. But instead of offering the expected action comedy, the movie surprised the audience by possessing the nihilism and the absurdity of Fires on a Plain but at the same time containing scenes which, as in The Human Condition, showed executions of Chinese prisoners by the Japanese military. Nevertheless, the style of the film was far from the bleakness and the fierce anger of the two previous films. The mood was almost light-hearted so that the exuberant humor seemed almost disrespectful. It was the work of Kihachi Okamoto who directed his breakthrough with the film and blossomed in the following years to become a celebrated director of action and war movies.
3. Exemplary anti-war films of Kihachi Okamoto
3.1 Desperado Outpost (1959)
Desperado Outpost was Kihachi Okamoto's fifth film and his first war movie. In addition, it was also the first film which had not been assigned to the director by his film studio but which he realized according to his own script. [12] The irreverent war satire was a major financial success and catapulted its leading man Makoto Sato to stardom. Therefore, in many ways it was a milestone in the career of its director. The plot revolves around a mysterious murder in a military base at the Manchurian front. Sergeant Okubo (Makoto Sato) is sent to the military base to investigate. His arrival is considered with hostility by the leading military and Okubo soon finds out that he is onto a conspiracy which leads him directly to the chambers of the camp commander.
3.1.1 Unconventional integration of elements from different genres
Intended as an adventurous war movie Desperado Oupost is in reality a wild mix of different genres. With the inclusion of a mysterious hero who rides on a horse into a foreign military base Okamoto clearly quotes motifs from the American western. Likewise in the numerous shoot-outs and the almost superhuman marksmanship of his protagonist. With the plot revolving around a unsolved murder at the front the film also uses elements of the film noir with corrupt officers and a mysterious plot. But what's most surprising is probably the combination of a war film with the stylistic devices of a satire. Only in the 1970s the Americans should discover the addition of satirical elements into the anti-war film and started to turn out notable Vietnam War satires such as Mash (1970). This satirical reflection of everyday life during war time, as it was shown in those films, was anticipated by Okamoto and thus he directed a new type of war film which baffled the critics and filled the audience with enthusiasm.
3.1.2 The Satire of Desperado Outpost
Despite of the fact that Desperado Outpost is a war film the mood of the film appears not in the least bit gloomy or depressing. Instead, a black and occasionally silly type of humor and grotesque exaggerated characters define the mood of the movie. The hero for example is a permanently grinning gunslinger whose coolness and energetic persona is in stark contrast with the sentimental and tragic hero of the Japanese war films from the 1950s. Unlike him, the villain of the film, a cruel and arrogant officer, is a wannabe gunslinger whose poor shooting skills are the target of many jokes in Okamoto's film. The war serves more as a adventurous setting in this farce so that the satire aims more at the action movie than at the war film. Particularly the almost westernlike showdown in which the hero mows down dozens of Chinese soldiers with heavy artillery supports this interpretation as a satirical action film in disguise of a war film. With popular action heroes like Rambo or Sergio Leone's Man Without a Name, this figure of a superhuman action hero represents no peculiarity today but back in 1950 it was, especially in a war movie, still a novelty. Here Okamoto parodied the courage and strength of arms of the traditional samurai heroes in the popular samurai films and exaggerates the valor and heroism of his protagonist into the grotesque.
Desperado Outpost also contains significant elements of an anti-war film, albeit in the form of satirical superelevation. As in the previously mentioned The Human Conditions Okamoto also includes a scene of Chinese civilians getting executed by the Japanese military. While The Human Conditions, treated those war crimes of the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War with appropriate seriousness and dignity, Okamoto travesties this scene into the ridiculous. The execution is performed by said wannabe gunslinger who seemingly shoots down an old man first. Our hero can convince him to spare his next victim, a young woman, but when wannabe gunslinger tells her to go, suddenly the old man stands up as well and flees completely unscathed towards the exit. Especially in the context of The Human Conditions, directed in the same year such a parody of horrible war crimes must have snubbed many viewers. Another similarly irreverent parody focuses on the figure of the camp commander (Toshiro Mifune). He appears as an obviously insane laughing stock who permanently screams arbitrary warnings of air strikes, which is dismissed by the stationed soldiers with an annoyed eye roll. Less than a dramatic story and a strong anti-war message Kihachi Okamoto here seeks the deheroisation of militarism by exposing it to ridicule.
3.1.3 Contemporary criticism of the movie
While the black-humored satire of Desperado Outpost shows its director already at the height of his ability, it lacks the characteristic humanism and the gloom of Okamoto's best films. This lack of a humanistic message confused contemporary critics who called the film “disrespectful” and accused it of making fun of war. [13] Nevertheless, the film was a huge commercial success even if Okamoto's films were frowned upon for a few years by the critics. It was not until his self-financed The Human Bullet (Nikudan, 1968) that he managed to redeem himself for the critics. Finally, they realized what Okamoto was driving at: not to ridicule war, but the warmongers.
3.2 Fort Graveyard (1965)
Fort Graveyard (Chi to suna) was the fifth and final film of that satirical war film series whose first part Kihachi Okamoto had directed with the previously discussed Desperado Outpost. However, unlike the previous four parts (of which Okamoto directed also the second film Westward Desperado (Dokuritsu gurentai nishi-e, 1960)) which were intended as simple programmers with meager budgets, Fort Graveyard was planned as an epic conclusion of the series with a big budget. With elaborate staging, the inclusion of Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai, the two biggest stars of the Toho Studios, and a running time of over two hours Kihachi Okamoto returned one last time back to Manchuria to direct again a satirical attack on Japanese militarism and the horrors of war. The plot revolves around a squad of inexperienced musicians who are sent to the front and are ordered, under the leadership of the rebel officer Kosugi (Toshiro Mifune), to recapture a fort, called Fort Graveyard, which has been overrun by the Chinese.
3.2.1 Autobiographical elements
In many ways, Fort Graveyard can be seen as the most personal war film of Kihachi Okamoto in the series. At the center of the plot are not professional soldiers but a naive squad of young recruits who, in the final stages of the war in 1945, are thrown right into the battle without the least combat experience. Okamoto also had to do his service in the army as a young man, barely older than his protagonists, with only minimal training. In this presentation of the young soldiers as a playful orchestra which, although it has plenty of experience with its instruments, has never even fired a gun in its life, Okamoto's critical attitude towards war can be found. The very idea of sending untrained recruits to the front shows the profund desperation of the Japanese military, which tried in a desperate act to draft all available military forces to maintain order. But instead of showing his little troops as a heroic fighters Okamoto focuses on the fear and desperation of the young soldiers who seem like foreign bodies in the hostile environment of the war zone. Already the first scene in which the squad starts playing a jazzy version of the American classic When the Saints Go Marchin' In, right in the middle of enemy territory only to panic after the bombardment by a startled Chinese partisan, emphasizes the bleak character of the film. The initial carefreeness of the soldiers is slowly destroyed by the the cruel everyday life of war and turns into agony.Unlike Kihachi Okamoto who had to endure his time as a soldier on his own, a person of trust is on the side of the young soldiers in the form of officer Kosugi. Kosugi is represented as a rebellious officer who was transferred to the front for physically assaulting a superior and who sees the notion for sacrifice of the Japanese military critically. He tries to put humanity back into a humane military system by treating the group with respect and even allows them to bring their musical instruments to the battlefield.
3.2.2 Depiction of Violence
Like its predecessor intended as an action film, there are numerous, elaborately choreographed shoot-outs in Fort Graveyard. Nevertheless Kihachi Okamoto denies his troop any heroism in killing their opponents. No lust for battle but the constant fear and despair of the young soldiers define the mood. The battles are consequently staged realisticly and brutally with much use of fake blood and dirt but they are also repeatedly undermined with sudden moments of comedy. The comic parts are mostly achieved through the character of the stupid gravedigger Mochida (Yunosuke Ito) whose heroic battlecry Banzai ("Ten thousand years" based on the desired duration of the Japanese empire) can always only be heard when the battle is already over, but also through the clumsiness of the young soldiers . But less than making fun of his characters, Okamoto emphasis the tragedy and the absurdity of war with this humor. No victory of the young squad is glorified since every battle beaten is coupled with unsustainable losses. The scenes of violence seem even more shocking because apart from the war scenes, the tone of the film is almost light-hearted and the numerous musical pieces almost animate the audience to move their feet to the rythm of the film. The violence thus gains an abrupt and effective character because it constantly breaks the light-hearted mood of the film with its sudden appearence. Also, the futility of war is made clear. The occupied fort has obviously no meaning for the young soldiers, they do not know why they fight and just try to survive. Thus, they die completely wasteful deaths expecially since the war is reaching its end and the defeat of Japan is already visible. In the figure of the incoming prostitute Oharu (Reiko Dan), who takes away the virginity of the soldiers, they finally find a reason to fight in order to protect her life. Significantly, Mochida says at one point to a Chinese prisoner, "You may fight for a red flag, but our flag is a red lace skirt". Given all the humanism in the characterisation of his Japanese protagonists their Chinese enemies appear as faceless crowd even though Kihachi Okamoto grants them significantly more cries of pain and frightened close-ups than the average American war film would consider it necessary. An exception is the afromentioned Chinese who is captured at the beginning by the soldiers. After he first is the object of the soldier's fury some of them develop something like sympathy for him throughout the film. As a member of the orchestra falls in battle, the flute of the fallen is given to him with which he enthusiastically tries to imitate the music of the troop.
3.2.3 Use of Western music and rythmic editing
In his mise-en-scène Kihachi Okamoto chooses a curious rhythmic style. Various pieces of jazz music are played repeatedly over the course of the film. In scenes in which the soldiers stalk upon their enemies he coordinates their movements and the editing with with the current piece of music in the background, creating the impression of a music video. In another scene, a soldier in a prison has to sing exactly in the rythm of the orchestra playing outside so as not to wake the sleeping guard and to be able to tell his imprisoned colleagues important information. In a sense, one could call Fort Graveyard a musical war film but the music serves far more purpose than being just a flashy backdrop. It illustrates the humanist message of the film. Instead of giving every soldier a name and significant character, Okamoto identifies them based on their individual instruments. Whenever one of the soldiers dies the whole orchestra is deprived of a part of their sound. Thus, Okamoto emphasizes the tragedy and futility of sacrificing talented young men and finds a clever way to stress the individuality of each soldiers with his unique intrument. But music also serves as the only catharsis in the everyday life of the young soldiers. With jazz the young soldiers try to defeat the war but are ultimately overtaken by its realities. In this regard, especially the showdown of Fort Graveyard should be mentioned.
3.2.4 Anti-war message at the end of the film
At the end of the film the situation of the young soldiers seems hopeless. After the troop
was able to conquer the fort and defend it against waves of enemies with heavy losses on both sides the ammunition depots are empty and many members of the orchestra, including Sgt. Kosugi, have died. Awaiting a fatal mortar attack of the Chinese the musicians decide to put down their weapons and instead reach for their musical instruments. When there last piece, again When the Saint Go Marchin' In, sounds the old enthusiasm seems recovered but soon the music is drowned by the sound of the bombs. With each of the young soldier who falls victim to the bombs also the sound of his intrument dies down and in the end a deathly silence has fallen upon the scenery. Despite the numerous pieces of music and the playfulness of the musicians, the horrors of war ultimately triumphed over the music. A powerful evidence for the anti-war attitude of the director. One surely cannot imagine a more persuasive ending by a seemingly avid music fan like Okamoto.
3.3 The Human Bullet (1968)
The Human Bullet is perhaps the most personal film of Kihachi Okamoto and is considered his masterpiece in some quarters. After the great success of his war opus Japan's Longest Day and the satirical samurai film Kill (Kiru) of 1968, the director was able to set up a film project os his for the first time. With the help of the ATG (Art Theatre Guild), a small, independent production company which had the goal to finance independent film projects of young artists he directed the tragic-comedy The Human Bullet. It was the first time that he was in complete control of a film project but had to get along with a fraction of the budgets of his Toho films. Despite the minimal budget, partly paid out of his one pocket, Okamoto managed to recruit a number of well-known character actors (including Chishu Ryu, Etsushi Takahashi and Yunosuke Ito) who acted for a fraction of their usual fee. The plot revolves around a young soldier (Minori Terada) who is enlisted for a kamikaze mission in the final stages of the war in 1945 and gets his first day off since he had to join the army. As he wanders aimlessly around his military base to prepare for his mission he meets many strange characters that soon reveal themselves as tragic victims of the war.
3.3.1 The absurdity of war in The Human Bullet
In contrast to his Toho epics The Human Bullet is a movie on a much smaller scale. There are no battle scenes even when our hero is attacked by an airplane only its noise can be heard while nothing of the actual aircraft is shown. Despite the absence of war scenes, the film is perhaps the sharpest and most satirical attack of Okamoto against the war. The initial situation alone is evidence of his deep bitterness in the face of the injustices of war. A respectable young soldier has to give his life for a militaristic country by crashing into an enemy ship with a torpedo. But Okamoto undermines the tragedy of this initial situation with black humor and satire. Especially in the first part which deals with the training of the hero the absurdity of Japanese militarism at the prospect of imminent defeat is shown. Consequently, the satire is aimed more at the militarism than at the war itself. For example, when our hero expresses vague doubts about the victory of the Japanese, a yelling officer suffers a small breakdown and starts screaming repeatedly, "What the heck?” to which Okamoto shows via an ironic image a “suspended” record.
3.3.1.1 Bizarre comedy scenes
The film gains a large part of its humor from the disastrous conditions in destroyed Japan and the propaganda, which is nonetheless lively continued by the Japanese militarists who still proclaim a glorious victory of the Japanese forces. Actually, the soldiers receive not even adequate food rations so they have to learn ruminating to stretch their meager meals. The reaction of a well-fed senior officer is to advise the soldiers to “chew every bite forty-eight times so that each bite feels like a whole meal.” Elsewhere the soldiers have to carve themselves bamboo spears because neither guns, nor ammo is available. But the most memorable scene in this respect is the Kamikaze attempt of the hero. In a primitive iron barrel attached to an old torpedo he has to wait, virtually unable to move for enemy warships and then detonate the torpedo per hand. When he actually fires his torpedo it floats a few yards at a sluggish pace, just to sink into the ocean.
3.3.1.2 Comical characters
While the hero prowls around he encounters many bizarre characters with whom he interacts. For example, an old man (Chishu Ryu) who has lost his arms in an explosion and asks the hero to help him pee. When he goes to a brothel to lose his virginity, there he encounters truly monstrous wenches that repel the hero with their shrillness and ugliness. What is also noteworthy is his encounter with two young brothers who, indoctrinated by the propaganda, seemingly unconsciously maunder propagandistic slogans and stories all the time. All these characters are clearly exaggerated, but next to the comic absurdity of their traits nevertheless all reveal a profound tragedy. This shows very clearly Okamoto's intention not to laugh about the funny idiosyncrasies of his characters but to show the absurdity of their cruel living conditions. Therefore, all the characters soon prove themselves to be tragic products of the war. The prostitutes only became those "freaks" (as the hero calls them) because they were forced to serve as comfort women for their fellow soldiers at the front. The old man obviously had arms before he lost them in the war and the young siblings constantly recite propaganda because they have learned nothing else since their childhood. Okamoto implies that those people have develeoped this oddity as a protective mechanism to cope with the war. Some now constantly depend on the help of others (the old man), others hide behind the heroic propaganda (the military and the children) and others have gone insane (the prostitutes) while the hero starts reciting math formulas in every situation of distress. That of all these fictional characters seem authentic is due to the very real madness of war. When you consider that kamikaze pilots killed themselves, unprotesting, for a made-up ideology then the little quirks of the characters in the film appear as actually quite ordinary in such times.
3.3.1.3 The Solitude of War
During World War II, the Japanese were subjected to radical indoctrination. The individual was suppressed and the Japanese were encouraged to act as a collective with unquestioning obedience. All of Japan should always be ready to sacrifice themselves for the Emperor. If Japan should be defeated, every Japanese was ordered to commit suicide in order not to stain the honor of the Japanese homeland. This tactic of the Japanese military was called “The Honorable Death of the Hundred Million" [14]. It is against this background that The Human Bullet takes place, conjuring a nihilistic apocalyptic atmosphere which is enhanced by locating the majority of the running time in a nearby desert. But Okamoto reverses the desired ideal of the collective consciousness of the Japanese. In the face of the madness of the propaganda surrounding the characters of the film, they withdraw into their own world. As noted previously, the absurdity and thus the individuality of those movie characters is a product of the war. Thus, it could be said that The Human Bullet is a film about scared people. Okamoto shows that unity in death cannot exist. In the face of certain death, social conventions serve no purpose anymore, instead, an existential anxiety remains as experienced by Okamoto himself during war. Even the construct of propaganda, to which the military clings so desperately, proves to be extremely unstable. When two cocky military in the film once see a supposedly live grenade, both break down completely and even then do not stop to tremble when the grenade reveals itself as dysfunctional.
3.3.2 The Humanism of The Human Bullet
Although The Human Bullet contains numerous elements of humorous satire, its mood is melancholic. The hero is about to die a senseless death for a fascist country, which provides the film with an existentialist note. Even as the hero meets a beautiful girl (Naoko Otani) who gives him consolation, the melancholy mood is reinforced because the audience already knows that the war will make that relationship impossible. Okamoto tells his story in the humanistic tradition of the anti-war films of the 1950s, but at the same time avoids the sentimentality of those movies with including grotesque humor. But in addition to intelligent satire, there are also numerous humanistic elements in the film which reveal Okamoto's intention to indict the horrors of war.
3.3.2.1 Pacifist main character
The main character of The Human Bullet is no indoctrinated sheep to propaganda but rather a quite astute and eloquent man who sees the inhumanity of the Japanese system very clearly. However, the idea of actively rebelling against the military apparatus never crosses his mind. For this he seems too naïve, although he tries to help the people he meets within his means. His attitude is pacifist and when he sees a military beating the older of the two brothers he tries to help the boy. Remarkably, he defeats the military, not with violence, but with words by showing him the futility of his violence. Again the aspect of the afromentioned "loneliness of war" comes to mind, because when the hero illustrates the militarist's mortality, he turns him into a picture of misery. When the older brother is killed in an air raid, the hero can also convince his little brother not to seek revenge and thus manages to pass on his humanist ideals. In the end however, the main character becomes also a victim of the war. Helplessly drifting in the sea, he dies in his iron barrel without having made a hit with his torpedo. At least he seems to have made the little brother rethink his militarist thoughts. The final scenes show him using several grenades, not to kill anyone, but to practise math.
3.3.2.2 Intelligent exposure of militarism
A great thematic block of the movie is concerned with the dehumanizing indoctrination performed by the military. The main character's officer refers to the ruminating soldiers as "cows". When our hero asks for more food the same officer calls him a "pig" and, with the words that pigs do not wear clothes, forces him to complete his training naked. Okamoto displays great irony when the hero is obliged to go on his kamikaze mission and thus is suddenly considered a "God" (Kamikaze means "holy wind"). Despite his “promotion” the authorial narrator of the film tells us that the hero doesn't want to be a cow, nor a pig nor a God, but would prefer to be considered as a normal person. But this desire for humanity cannot be realised in times of war, because as a small wheel of a huge propaganda apparatus, our hero is degraded to a mere instrument of political purpose. Okamoto's statement seems obvious: In a militaristic system, humanity cannot exist for purely logical reasons. The individual is eliminated and only the military ability of a person counts.
4. Conclusion
The war films of Okamoto are among the most original and unique representatives of the genre. Despite of that, doubts about his anti-war attitude were uttered throughout his entire career. Was the director making fun of war? Are his films just intended as disrespectful provocations? Today it seems certain that it is precisely this satirical exaggeration which turns Okamoto's films into classics of the genre. He gave the genre a new depth by uniting it with the means of the satire. Not to laugh at the war, but to emphasize its absurdity. In his best films such as The Human Bullet, he managed to blend grotesque comedy with tragedy, reaching a humanist power that appears much more truthful and intelligent than those innumerable completely earnest and insincere humanist war films of his contemporaries.
5. Bibliography
- Anderson, Joseph L., Richie, Donald, The Japanese Film: Arts and Industry, Princeton University Press, 1982
- Anon., n.d., http://www.chud.com/community/t/44760/the-honorable-death-of-the-hundred-million [11.11.2013]
- Desjardins, Chris, Outlaw Master of Japanese Cinema, I.B Tauris Publishers, 2005
- Gatto, Robin, Epoch of Murder Madness [August 2013] http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/epoch-of-murder-madness/ [11.12.2013]
- High, Peter B., An Interview with Kihachi Okamoto, Wide Angle 1, no.4, 1977
- Jacoby, Alexander, A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Stone Bridge Press, 2008
- Mes, Tom, A Tribute to Kihachi Okamoto [April 2005] http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/ [11.11.2013]
Erstveröffentlichung auf "nippon-kino.net" am 13. 03. 2014
Geschrieben von Pablo Knote
References:
[1] Tom Mes, A Tribute to Kihachi Okamoto [April 2005] http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/ [11.11.2013]
[2] ibid.
[3] Chris Desjardins, Outlaw Master of Japanese Cinema, I.B Tauris Publishers, 2005 (pp. 94)
[4] Peter B. High, An Interview with Kihachi Okamoto, Wide Angle 1, no.4, 1977
[5] Alexander Jacoby, A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Stone Bridge Press, 2008, (p. 235)
[6] Robin Gatto, Epoch of Murder Madness [August 2013] http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/epoch-of-murder-madness/ [11.12.2013]
[7] Peter B. High, An Interview with...
[8] Joseph L. Anderson, Donald Richie, The Japanese Film: Arts and Industry, Princeton University Press, 1982 (p. 200)
[9] ibid, (p. 218)
[10] ibid, (p. 218f.)
[11] ibid, (p. 219)
[12] Chris Desjardins, Outlaw Master... (p. 95)
[13] Chris Desjardings, Outlaw Master... (p. 95)
[14] Anon., n.d., http://www.chud.com/community/t/44760/the-honorable-death-of-the-hundred-million [11.11.2013]
[1] Tom Mes, A Tribute to Kihachi Okamoto [April 2005] http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/ [11.11.2013]
[2] ibid.
[3] Chris Desjardins, Outlaw Master of Japanese Cinema, I.B Tauris Publishers, 2005 (pp. 94)
[4] Peter B. High, An Interview with Kihachi Okamoto, Wide Angle 1, no.4, 1977
[5] Alexander Jacoby, A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Stone Bridge Press, 2008, (p. 235)
[6] Robin Gatto, Epoch of Murder Madness [August 2013] http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/epoch-of-murder-madness/ [11.12.2013]
[7] Peter B. High, An Interview with...
[8] Joseph L. Anderson, Donald Richie, The Japanese Film: Arts and Industry, Princeton University Press, 1982 (p. 200)
[9] ibid, (p. 218)
[10] ibid, (p. 218f.)
[11] ibid, (p. 219)
[12] Chris Desjardins, Outlaw Master... (p. 95)
[13] Chris Desjardings, Outlaw Master... (p. 95)
[14] Anon., n.d., http://www.chud.com/community/t/44760/the-honorable-death-of-the-hundred-million [11.11.2013]
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