Zen and Its Opposite: The Sword of Doom

Swords do not kill people, ronin (masterless samurai) do—a whole lot of people, in fact. Yet, some believe it is the inherent qualities of the sword (or the fighting style) that makes the swordsman, for good or for bad, in Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom, which screens this Friday as the conclusion of the Japan Society’s Zen & Its Opposite film series exploring the darker side of Zen Buddhism.

Stopping at a Buddhist shrine, an elderly pilgrim prays for death in a general “deliver me home” sort of way. Much to his surprise a stealthy ronin, answers his call, from behind and without mercy. Hardly compatible with the bushido code, it will lead to some bad karma for the killer, Ryunosuke Tsukue. While the old man’s murder has no apparent motive beyond Tsukue’s sociopathic tendencies, there will plenty of reason for his next killing. Tsukue has an exhibition bout, relatively meaningless for him but critical for his opponent, Bunnojo Utsuki, an aspiring master. However, Tsukue uses the circumstances to corrupt Utsuki’s wife, Ohama. In a fit of jealousy, Tsukue’s opponent turns their contest into a death match, giving Tsukue a perfectly valid excuse to kill.

Of course, Utsuki has many friends, whose bodies quickly litter the road out of town. Somehow though, Ohama becomes his common law wife, an arrangement that makes them both miserable. It is just an inkling of what fate has in store for Tsukue and those around him. Indeed, Tsukue is troubled by the matter of Utsuki’s younger brother, a student of Shimada, a master fencer so heavy he could only be played by Toshirō Mifune.

Doom might be considered high art cinema, but there is enough hack-and-slash action to make a fanboy swoon. Even for more upscale Jidaigeki (Edo era costume drama) enthusiasts, watching Mifune (in a relatively small part) and Tatsuya Nakadai lining up on opposites sides of some grand conflict is a pretty foolproof premise (coming after Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but before Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion). Intended as the first (and ultimately only) installment in a projected series of films adapting Kaizan Nakazato’s serial novel, Doom is somewhat notorious for its inconclusive freeze-frame ending. Still, what it lacks in closure it makes up for in manic bloodlust. Hinting at the supernatural, Okamoto’s visually stylish climax bears comparison with that of Welles’ Lady from Shanghai.

Nakadai plays Tsukue so stone-cold, he is practically the anti-Christ. Likewise, Mifune is all business as Shimada. In a welcome contrast, Yôko Naitô is believably sweet and endearing as Omatsu, the orphaned granddaughter of the ill-fated pilgrim. Adding memorable color and ambiguity, Kô Nishimura keeps viewers consistently off-balance as Omatsu’s mysterious “Uncle” Shichibei.

Frankly, Doom offers the best of both movie worlds, carrying the Janus Films/Criterion Collection seal of approval, while delivering several scenes of lone swordsmen standing amid mountains of their vanquished foes. What’s not to like? Thoroughly entertaining, Doom screens in all its black-and-white glory this Friday (2/18) at the Japan Society.

Zen and Its Opposite: Jigoku

Dante truly tapped into something significant. His visions of Hell are compatible with not just the Christianity, but the tenets of many world traditions, including Buddhism. In fact, it is the Buddhist conception of Hell that graphically informs Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku (or Hell), which fittingly screens this Friday as part of the Japan Society’s continuing Zen & Its Opposite film series exploring the darker side of Zen Buddhism.

Shiro Shimizu is going to Hell. In his case, the road is paved more with cowardice and compliance than good intentions. He is not really a bad person, but he is no match for Tamura, his self-appointed frienemy. Whenever his Mephistophelian fellow student is present, bad things seem to happen. After crashing Shimizu’s intimate engagement celebration with Yukiko Yajima, his fiancé, and her parents, Tamura insists on driving Shimizu home. However, at Shimizu’s insistence, they take a fatal detour resulting in the hit-and-run death of a low level yakuza. Wracked with guilt, Shimizu is intent on confessing. However, on the way to the police station, Shimizu’s cab has a freak accident, killing innocent Yukiko.

Believing himself truly accursed (and not without reason), Shimizu descends into a boozy bender of vice, attracting the attention of the late yakuza’s mother and lover. Yet, he somewhat pulls out of it when he is called home to his dying mother’s sick bed. There he meets Sachiko, the perfect likeness of his beloved Yukiko. Of course, the malevolent Tamura materializes soon enough, not that the unsavory characters surrounding Shimizu, most definitely including his dissolute father, need much help choosing the path to damnation.

There are a number of “wait, what just happened?” moments in Jigoku, but once Nakagawa has everyone in the fiery underworld the film suddenly makes perfect sense. Though usually labeled a horror film, Jigoku is better described as a feverish metaphysical head-trip, sort of a forerunner to Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. Fifty years later, the brutal and surreal imagery is still disturbing thanks in large measure to the striking cinematography of Mamoru Morita. (One cannot miss the color red in his color palette.) If nothing else, Jigoku will convince viewers Hell would be a good place to avoid.

Later to star in the original Ringu and its sequel, Yôichi Numata is just creepy as all Jigoku in the role of Tamura. Luxuriating in pure evil, he is an unforgettable movie devil. Conversely, Utako Mitsuya expresses an endearing vulnerability as Yukiko and particularly as Sachiko. Though his meek character is maddeningly passive, Shigeru Amachi is at least credible enough expressing his pain and angst.

Visually, Jigoku at times suggests a kinship with Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1965), which also screened during the Zen and Its Opposite series. Yet, where Kwaidan is Da Vinci-esque, Jigoku is Boschian. There is indeed a bloody grisliness to some sequences that must have been shocking for 1960. Perhaps most impressively, Nakagawa wraps it all up with a conclusion open to positive interpretation while staying true to all that precedes it. A far richer film than Noé’s Void, Jigoku is quite a hallucinatory journey. A true cult classic, it screens this Friday (1/21) at the Japan Society.

Zen and Its Opposite: Fires on the Plain

It is considered a masterpiece among war (and anti-war) films, but it might as well be called a zombie movie. The tubercular Private Tamura is truly one of the walking dead. Vividly and grimly illustrating the horrors of war, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain (trailer here), screens tomorrow as part of the Japan Society’s Zen and Its Opposite film series.

Japan has essentially lost the war and most of the soldiers stationed on Leyte fully realize it. Unfortunately, they do not have much option but to futilely carry-on. However, Tamura is caught in an absurd Catch-22, too sick to serve with his company, but not damaged enough for the field hospital to admit him. Instead, he lingers outside with his fellow ghosts, waiting to die. When an Americans bombardment forces a general retreat, the absurdity gives way to horror.

Tamura finds himself on a death march marked by degradation and a black humor worthy of George Romero. Yes, there is even cannibalism. He also encounters a strange shaman-like survivor, whose cryptic Buddhist references and Zen-like acceptance of death clearly qualifies Plain for the Japan Society’s Opposite series, which explores the darker, more ominous aspects of the Japanese Buddhist tradition.

Plain begins as a brutally naturalistic anti-war film, but it steadily evolves into a surreal critique of human nature. Surprisingly though, Kon indulges in no appreciable anti-Americanism. In fact, the only Yank we see, at least tries to observe the laws of war (the Filipino partisans are a different story). The Japanese officers however, are depicted as cold martinets and the enlisted men turn on each other like desperate rats in a cage.

Shuffling and shambling, the hollowed-out Tamura looks undead. In his award-winning performance, Eiji Funakoshi vividly conveys the death-rattle of a man’s soul as well as the forlorn private’s shocking physical deterioration.

Ichikawa is a great filmmaker who ought to be more acclaimed in this country. With Plain, he makes All Quiet on the Western Front look like militaristic boosterism. It is one of his acknowledged masterworks, featuring unforgettable images and deeply disturbing sequences. (Audiences will never forget the phrase “monkey meat” after watching it.) An anti-war classic, it screens tomorrow night at the Japan Society as part of both its Opposite and Shadows of the Rising Sun retrospectives.

Zen & Its Opposite: Onibaba

Forget the Ghostface from the Scream films. It simply cannot compete with the creepiest movie mask ever, as seen Kaneto Shindō’s first great pseudo-horror film. Based on a Buddhist fable, Shindō’s atmospheric Onibaba (trailer here) screens this Friday as the next fitting selection of the Japan Society’s ongoing Zen & Its Opposite film series, which highlights the intersection of Zen Buddhism and the dark side of humanity.

Alas, poor Kichi. We never meet the poor farmer pressed into military service in Sixteenth Century feudal Japan. He left behind his unnamed mother and wife, who prey on wayward samurai, selling their armor and weapons to survive. Evidently, he was recently killed in a futile military campaign, according to Hachi, a fellow peasant shanghaied alongside Kichi. However, his mother has her doubts about the circumstances of his death and the messenger bearing the news.

Kichi’s mother also does not like the way Hachi leers at her daughter-in-law. Her concerns are justified. Before long, Kichi’s presumed widow is regularly meeting Hachi for amorous assignations. Fearing she will be unable to survive without the younger woman, the mother-in-law begins a campaign of desperate manipulation. Then one dark and stormy night, while the none-too-secret lovers are together, an imposing samurai appears, demanding the older woman show him the way out of susuki grass. He happens to be wearing an unsettling mask suggesting an ancient devil-clown over what he assures the woman are unbearably handsome features. At first, she wants to see his beauteous features for herself and then gets certain ideas for re-establishing control of her domestic situation.

In Onibaba, nature is dark and foreboding rather than bright and cheerful. A perfect selection for the Opposite series, it also presents a fire-and-brimstone side of Buddhism in the older woman’s guilt trips completely at odds with the New Agey presentations of its reincarnation precepts common in western popular culture. She exhorts her daughter-in-law in no uncertain terms, sin now and pay for eternity.

Though there is no supernatural monster in Onibaba per se, Shindō still conveys the sense that some malevolent cosmic force is definitely at work. Indeed, there is great ambiguity about the nature of the mask. Better described as a sinister psychological thriller rather than an outright scary movie, it artfully instills a consistent sensation of foreboding. Definitely for adult sensibilities, Onibaba also frequently features its lead actresses topless (because of the heat, you see). It notches up a respectable body count too.

While Ozu often explored father-daughter relationships, Shindō seemed to be intrigued by the mother-daughter-in-law dynamic, which he revisited a few years later with Kuroneko. The relations between the women of Onibaba are particularly complex, fraught with considerable resentment as well as years of shared history. Nobuko Otowa makes one scary mother-in-law, yet she is also quite human and fragile. Disarmingly innocent one moment than recklessly hedonistic the next, Jitsuko Yoshimura brings manifold dimensions to the sort of dutiful daughter-in-law as well.

Though titled Zen and Its Opposites, this series could have easily been called something like “all-time great Japanese films not directed by Kurosawa and Ozu” instead. Onibaba is no exception. While it might have been genre programmer in its day, it is a legitimate masterwork from Shindō. Highly recommended, it screens this Friday (11/12) on the big screen at the Japan Society.

Zen & Its Opposite: Kwaidan

Lafcadio Hearn helped popularize the distinct cultures of both the Crescent City and the land of the Rising Sun (where he is still well respected) to English speaking readers. The Irish Greek who naturalized in Japan via New Orleans remains best known for his ghostly tales adapted from Japanese folklore. The original Nipponophile, Hearn would have appreciated the premise behind Zen & Its Opposite, the Japan Society’s latest film series exploring the nexus of Zen Buddhism and the darker reaches of humanity. Appropriately, it starts this Friday with Kwaidan (trailer here), Masaki Kobayashi’s classic anthology film adaptation of four Hearn tales.

While Kobayashi needed three films to tell the story of his towering The Human Condition cycle, he was able to tell four stories within Kwaidan, albeit at a relatively generous running time 164 minutes. Fittingly for the Zen-inspired series, one is immediately struck by the lack of idle chatter therein. Of course, the samurai in the opening The Black Hair does not have much to say for himself. Divorcing his loyal wife to remarry into a connected family, he makes no pretenses of honor. However, he soon discovers why it took so long to marry off his shrewish new wife. For years, he pines the warm embrace of the wife he wronged and of course her long black tresses. If you are expecting a happy reunion though, you don’t understand the supernatural genre.

By contrast, young woodsman Minokichi seems to find domestic bliss in The Woman of the Snow, after being spared by the title spirit during a freak blizzard. She does so on the condition that he will never discuss the incident with anyone or she will immediately appear to finish the job. Hoichi the Earless then tells the story of a legendary blind biwa player living at a Buddhist monastery. Night after night a ghostly samurai takes him to recite the epic Battle of Dan-no-ura to the restless Heike spirits who lost to the Genji forces. Obviously, the very title telegraphs just how things will end up for Hoichi. Kwaidan concludes on a particularly strange note with In a Cup of Tea, a story of a samurai haunted by a spirit in his tea and the author who was unable to finish the tale. A rather clever narrative change-up, it still feels fresh in this game-playing postmodern age.

The quietness of Kwaidan makes the musical accents of avant-garde composer Tôru Takemitsu all the more unsettling. Yet it is the Daliesque landscapes that truly give the film its unworldly character. Eschewing realism, its haunted forests and eyeball filled skies are some of the most striking imagery ever immortalized on color film. True, there are not a lot of surprises in store for viewers, but Kobayashi ratchets up the tension quite effectively as viewers wait for the expected inevitable to happen. Indeed, many relatively early manifestations of j-horror tropes can be found in Kwaidan, like the supernaturally long flowing black hair and the malevolent spirits seen in reflections.

Connoisseurs of Japanese cinema will appreciate the first rate cast as well, including Tatsuya Nakadai frankly looking a bit old for the eighteen year Minokichi, but perfectly suiting the woodsman as a supposedly more mature family man. Though not as cute as she was in Ozu’s Early Spring, Keiko Kishi still makes quite an impression as his wife Yuki. Also keep an eye out for the always watchable Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura as the head priest in Hoichi. Perhaps most haunting though is Michiyo Aratama, luminous in Kobayashi’s Human Condition, both poignant and disquieting here as aggrieved first wife of Black Hair.

Arguably, Kwaidan is the greatest realization of the horror movie as high art. Sumptuous to look at, while appropriately atmospheric and creepy, it is a work of strange beauty that should be even more rewarding on the large screen of the Japan Society’s first class theater. Highly recommended, it kicks off Zen & Its Opposites this Friday (10/15).