One of the questions often tangled with in regard to film is, “What is art?” Many films are widely considered to be so, while many others are much accepted to be not even close. Still yet are the vast numbers of ‘infamous’ films that have gained their notoriety from popular debate over whether or not they qualify as art, or as obscenity.
These films have garnered controversy through the frank depiction of sexuality (Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom), violence (Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs), or even politics (Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers).
Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses features each of these taboos extensively (many would say gratuitously), yet it has never really been debated on these grounds. Of course, there certainly have been many questions raised about it. Is it pornography? Is it exploitation? Is it propaganda? But it has always been recognized as art. This, in and of itself, is a grand accomplishment for a film that, for the thirty-five years of its existence, is still heavily cut and censored in Japan, its own country of origin.
So the question, “It it art?” does not really need to be asked. In fact, one could probably discuss why Oshima’s film is art for an extended period, but the elegantly gliding cinematography, vibrant colors, and reed-driven shakuhachi score are all self-evident, and self-efficacious. Perhaps the best question to ask is, “Why is In the Realm of the Senses important?”
In 1976, the film industry in Japan was in a state of deepening crisis. The great directors of the past generation were dwindling. Kurosawa was in an artistic dry spell. Ozu was not nearly as prolific as he had been twenty years prior. Nobuhiko Obayashi was still an experimental filmmaker, largely associated with the ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ in France, whose homeland debut hit House was still a year away from release. To make matters worse, 1975 had brought Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which made such a big splash (pun intended) in Japanese popular culture that all the major studios were clamoring for native directors to make films of the same style (though, not necessarily of the same caliber). The shift caused by Jaws coincided as well with the widespread popularization of pinku eiga or ‘pink film’ (ironically translated literally to ‘blue film’). Pink films were, in a sense, the Japanese version of exploitation. They centered around pulp settings and, specifically, soft-core sex. Even today the restrictions placed on erotica in Japan are remarkably conservative in light of a culture whose art is excessive and unbridled in terms of the level of violence and passionate emotion.
It is this environment in which director Nagisa Oshima found himself outcast as a pariah. By the mid-1970’s, Oshima had been making films for over twenty years. His modest renown at the time was due to his ability to make impressive movies on less than impressive budgets. And when one views the early films of Nagisa Oshima, there seems to be no reason for his reserved spot on the black list. This leads to the conclusion that his exile is, to a degree, self-imposed (or at least self-caused). He believed he must be an outsider in order to truly affect the farthest reaching boundaries of art. These boundaries, Oshima proposes, are the socially erected enigmas of obscenity and individual repression. He determined to cross and even erase these boundaries to create higher art. The result was In the Realm of the Senses.
The film is based on the real life story of Sada Abe. A servant girl, 1936, she began an affair with her master Kichizo Ishida. Their sexual relationship escalated until, in May, 1936, Sada strangled Kichizo to death. She was caught by police four days later with his castrated genitals in her purse. Oshima’s film studies the physical nature of their interaction from its fateful beginning to its tragic ending. Kichizo Ishida is played by the inimitable Tatsuya Fuji; and Sada Abe by the impossibly passionate Eiko Matsuda.
In order to understand the importance of the film, many of the contemporary moors of Western Culture must set aside in favor of the deep-set values of Eastern history- A transcendent journey into a foreign culture, if you will. As aforementioned, Oshima’s film features (a lot of) sexuality, violence in measure, and oh-so subtle layers of political commentary. However, it is not about any of these things, nor is it slave to them. It has sex, but it is not pornographic. It has violence, but is not exploitative. It has commentary, but is not propaganda, or overtly political. It defies such labels because it masters each of these natures to a purpose. The film is not a vehicle for these subjects. Rather, the subjects are vehicles for the film. Is it pornography? Is it exploitation? Is it propaganda? In the Realm of the Senses hides- stores – its importance within these questions.
The question of the film’s sexual nature has been, perhaps, the most widely discussed at length. One of the stipulations of Japanese society is that film presenting nudity must either blur the privates or not show them at all. Oshima patently refuses to do either. It is here that he begins his first intentional violation of the status quo. As noted Japanese film historian Donald Richie has observed, In the Realm of the Senses does not feature any of the benchmark characteristics that make pornography what it is. While there is plenty of sex onscreen in the film, it is not often lingered on or leered at. The frequent coupling of Sada and Kichizo is part of their relationship, and has nothing to do with our relationship, as the audience, to them. Pornography is exactly the opposite, endeavoring to make viewers part of the experience. Even in modern love stories, from classic romances like Gone With the Wind to recent romantic comedies such as Crazy, Stupid, Love, place the audience in the middle of relationship, and by that method attempt to involve our emotions and tempt us to become invested in the onscreen couple. Oshima seems to know that this is how we work, and he deliberately does the opposite with his film. Our viewpoint is so unnervingly aloof (often literally above in camera angle) that we can do nothing to involve ourselves with the relationship. In this way, both the impassioned couple and the audience are set on a course toward oblivion. Sada and Kichizo are doomed to a tragic end, and we are doomed to watch helplessly as they self-destruct. So the film is not pornography because we are not involved, and one can take no pleasure in watching the tragedy of two unfortunate souls.
Then there is the question of the film’s violence. In truth, there is really only one scene where violence is explicitly shown (when Sada ‘liberates’ Kichizo’s body from its manhood), but even then it is done almost as an act of love turned obsession. The reality of the violence in the film is much, much more subtle than that. There is an air of violence to the passion shown between the two lovers. But it is not shown. It is not reveled in. It is not detailed. And it is by no means truly excessive. The film’s violence appears in the form of tension, the unknown of what will transpire- the unpredictability of the several silently volatile situations. Subtlety, however, is the exact opposite of what exploitation is. So In the Realm of the Senses cannot be exploitation because it is subtle, because it is nuanced, because it only shows violence when violence must happen. Sada brandishes a number of different of violent symbols: a pair of scissors, her own hands, a kerchief as a choking implement, and at the beginning and end, a carving knife. But even in the ultimate use of any of these, she does not go beyond the briefly effective. Unlike exploitation, there is no need here for anything remotely gratuitous. The focus is not on the act of violence itself, but the motivation behind it: passion, anger, jealously… love.
Finally, the question of politics poses, perhaps, the most direct answer to the importance of the film. It is also the hardest subject to drag out of Oshima’s passionate masterpiece. Ultimately, the only direct depiction of political struggle in the film is a single short scene that features Kichizo Ishida, dressed in an obviously expensive kimono, walking down a dirty street while soldiers pass. In 1936 Japan was at war with China in a bid for imperial expansion. The entire economy, from the highest station to the lowest, was mobilized for the glory of Japan. Down the street marches a company of soldiers. The town’s residents follow them. And Kichizo goes the opposite direction. There are several obvious layers to this imagery. For instance, it is a visual representation of the couple’s lack of place in society. It may demonstrate Kichizo’s own conflict with the expectation that he be faithful to his wife even when he is in love with a forbidden woman. But the most poignant statement in the scene is one that connects back to director Nagisa Oshima. Kichizo moves counter to the expectations placed on him by society as Oshima does by making the film itself. His blunt portrayal of a human physical relationship not only ignored visual boundaries, it ignored emotional ones and political ones. ‘Life is not censored’ he seems to say, ‘so why should art be?’
In the Realm of the Senses is important precisely because it is unveiled, uncensored, unadulterated. There is no hidden symbolism. The deeper meaning is the only meaning. The nature of human love, both healthy and unhealthy, is laid bare before the audience. What we see is not sex, violence, or politics, but the simple truth of human emotion. Broken by sin, it is no longer perfect, but we all must grapple with it. We must fight to understand it. We must comprehend it in order accept it as our own.
Sada’s and Kichizo’s escalation of the boundaries of pleasure, then, is not a sexual extreme, nor a violent one. It is an emotional desperation. Rather than face the endless cycle together, they find solace in the ability to face the unknown end with each other instead. This is no better demonstrated than in the final frame of the film where Sada is lying next to Kichizo’s body. On his chest she has written-
“SADA AND KICHI-SAN FOREVER”
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