Download Imamura Shohei

Imamura Shohei
Heavy Comedies:
Energy and Vitality of the Underclass
Imamura Shohei
‘I am interested in the
relationship of the lower
part of the human body
and the lower part of the
social structure on which
the reality of daily
Japanese life obstinately
supports itself.’
Immura Shohei
(1926-2006)
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Records of Japan’s
forgotten regions, neglected
people, and oppressed
classes.
• Lustful impulses and
animal desire in human
beings, Japanese native
customs and rituals,
motherliness in Japanese
women, infantile tendencies
in Japanese men.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Rebel against the studio
system
• Reacting against the
production policy of the
studio (Shochiku)
• Opposition to the filmmaking
style of Ozu Yasujiro, to
whom Imamura was an
assistant (Tokyo Story e.g.)
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Imamura moved to Nikkatsu in 1954 and made
his first three films in 1958.
• Stolen Desire, Nishi Ginza Ekimae and Endless
Love
• Clear and well-defined themes from the very
beginning
• Overwhelming libidual desire (particularly
sexual) in the people living at the bottom of the
social hierarchy or on the margin of the society.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Not the ordered world of Ozu but the hopeless
chaos of human existence
‘HEAVY COMEDY’
(c.f. light comedy)
Imamura’s Subjects
and Themes
• The world of the pre- and post-war Japan.
• Inhabited by the underclass - prostitutes, pimps, swindlers,
petit-criminals, pornographers, serial-killers, shaman
• Their comic, pathetic, and raw desire and sexual behaviours
• Their insatiable desire for life - food, money, love, sex, but
not honour, position, status
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Uneducated people in an
itinerant theatre troupe of
in Stolen Desire
• Traffickers of the
morphine found in an
underground military
storage, Endless Love
• Imamura called his films
‘heavy comedy’
• Pigs and Battleships
(1961) - story of a
teenage thug and his gang
who raises pigs on blackmarket garbage, collected
from the US marine base
in Yokosuka.
• Allegory of American
military presence and
Japanese instinct for
survival
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Insect Woman (1963) - Tome brought up in the
deep countryside in an incestuous relationship
with her father.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• She moves to a large city working in a factory
and then becoming a prostitute. She rises to the
grand madam of a brothel and then is replaced by
her own daughter. Insect Woman – like a queen
bee doomed to be replaced by her daughter.
• Intentions of Murder
(1964)
• Sachiko, who is stuck in a
bad marriage, is raped by
a murderer. From shame
and hopelessness, she
prepares to commit
suicide. However, at the
last minute she discovers
desire to live and comes
to be attracted by the
rapist.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• The Pornographer
(1966) - about a man
who creates,
distributes and exhibits
anything pornographic
from ‘blue films’ to
erotic novels, and from
recorded tapes to
photographs. The film
is also about his
relationship with his
common-law wife and
his stepdaughter.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Vengence Is Mine (1979)
• Based on the story of a
real-life serial killer, the
film traces his life - youth,
theft, fraud, murder,
manhunt, and capture - in
flashbacks and flash
forwards, and show those
unlucky people who are
drawn into his crimes.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Ballad of Narayama (1983) - set in a remote,
poverty stricken village, where its tribal custom
and law demands that when anybody reaches 70,
he/she has to go into mountains to die. The film
follows Orin dutifully observes this rule with
dignity.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Black Rain (1989) is
about the dropping of
the A-bomb on
Hiroshima, and a family,
which survived the blast
but were exposed to
radiation (black rain)
and could not escape
horrendous after-effects
many years after the
fallout.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• The Eel (1997) - a
businessman sent to
prison for eight years
for killing his adulterous
wife tries to live a quiet
life as a barber and to
get redemption. His
past haunts him and
threatens to ruin the
equilibrium that he
almost obtained.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Dr. Akagi (1998) The
time is at the final stage
of the Pacific War and
Japan is on its way of
falling apart and even the
remotest part of Japan is
not exempt from it.
Hard-working but
eccentric Dr. Akagi, too,
experiences hard-times.
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Characters - the underprivileged in rural and
urban areas; most of them are involved in illicit,
amoral, or illegal activities
• Settings (time) - modern, particularly post-war,
periods
• (location) - remote, rural area left behind from the
post-war prosperity and modernization, and urban
areas which are only on the margin of prosperity
• Actions - associated with criminal, illegal, or
amoral actions; sexual actions
• Endings - no solution; no redemption
Imamura’s Subjects and Themes
• Motif - strong and
stubborn women grow
even stronger and more
resilient through
experiencing hardships poverty, failed
relationship, male
violence, sexual abuse, etc.
Haruko in Pigs and Battleships, Tome in Insect
Woman, Sadako in Intentions of Murder
Asano Haru in Vengeance Is Mine, Orin in Ballad of
Narayama, Yasuko in Black Rain, and Keiko in The
Eel
Motherliness
• Imamura’s choice of actressess
• Round face, round nose, plump, and large breast
• Reflection of motherly quality - image of
Japanese mother
• Harukawa Masumi and Hidari Sachiko
Warmth of women
Salvation brought by women
Sakamoto Sumiko, Ogawa
Mayumi and Tanaka Yoshiko
Boddhisatuba
Kannon (goddess of mercy)
like figures