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妻は告白する [Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru / A Wife Confesses] (Yasuzō Masumura, 1961)
Jul
15
1961
An expert called into the court case studies an enlarged photograph of the supposed crime scene. DP: Setsuo Kobayashi.
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鴎よ、きらめく海を見たか めぐり逢い [Kamome-yo, kirameku umi o mitaka/meguri ai / Oh Seagull, Have You Seen the Sparkling Ocean? An Encounter] (Kenji Yoshida, 1975)
May
30
Pokkī
A young woman in a red-and-white striped sweater (Yōko Takahashi) leafs through fashion magazines strewn out before her on a grass-green carpeted floor while chewing a Pokkī. On a small stove close to her a fire truck red coffee pot. DP: Kōshirō Ōtsu.
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太陽の墓場 [Taiyō no hakaba / Grave of the Sun / The Sun's Burial] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1960)
Mar
31
An empty-looking woman eats something while a scrawny man in a pork pie hat and dirty shirt eyes her. Next to the woman a bulking bearded guy, cleaning his nails. DP: Takashi Kawamata.
“Empires, the past – they're beyond me! Will things change for the better? Will bums like these disappear? And the slums too? Come on. Tell us!”
– Hanako
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飼育 [Shiiku / The Catch] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1961)
Dec
26
offerings
An altar with two rotund, smiling stone statues – possibly Jizō, a bowl of rice with chopsticks stuck into it, and a Japanese soldier's photograph. The position of the chopsticks tells us that the soldier has died. DP: Yoshitsugu Tonegawa.
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飼育 [Shiiku / The Catch] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1961)
Feb
2
National Catchers Day
The nameless soldier (Hugh Hurd) in the barn. Another person is with him. The soldier looks away, at something offscreen. DP: Yoshitsugu Tonegawa.
In the summer of 1945, the people of a small Japanese village find a Black American helicopter pilot in one of their traps and lock him in the communal storeroom. While the war continues and the villagers wait for orders from above, the man – for the townspeople, his presence, this allegory – becomes something else.
“Your keeping this animal has meant all of us suffer!”
飼育 shares more than a few themes with Đorđe Kadijević's Празник from 1967. The war's the same, any war is, and the Chetniks too capture a Black American pilot. Again, the villagers seem to share a folie, a madness, rooted in an unshaken belief – call it tradition or shared illusions foolishness or hope.
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