The luminous and streaky light rippling in the waters of the Inland Sea has the subtle power of a desert mirage. Pellucid like those of an atoll or a sea-green lagoon, these waters fill up an internal space connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Sea of Japan, also making possible the shipping industry integral to an island nation that until the nineteenth century was closed to the world. It hid its secrets from its neighbors greedily, cleaving only to itself, and when at last it permitted the opening of its ports to the American ships helmed by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, it burst onto the modern stage and unfurled its…
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In a succession of shots inside a silk factory showing the long piston-like production lines and the bits and pieces of a mechanical world, the parameters of O-Tsune’s own world become apparent: it is that of an endless toiling so that her son, the young and prepubescent Ryosuke, can finish up his elementary education and they can both live unperturbed in their scrimping and meager existence in the small, homey, rural town of Shinsü. But one evening, while working in the house, O-Tsune hears from her son that he has been asked at school whether he plans to continue with his education, going to high school and from there even…
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“Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth too.”–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow The hypocrisy of the current military strategy of all nations was pointed out by Friedrich Nietzsche as early as 1880, when The Wanderer and His Shadow was published as an addendum to his first aphoristic work, Human, All-Too-Human: Every military erected as a means of self-defense presupposes that those against whom the military has been erected (i.e. the other nations) are on the offensive, since no military would be erected for self-defense if there were nothing to…
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A glorious, suspenseful film told in flashback, Harakiri delivers a potent and gut-wrenching ethical message that has lost none of its thrust, released though it was more than fifty years ago, and dealing with subject matter dating to the early seventeenth century of the Edo period. It is a samurai film, a storied “jidaigeki” with critical acclaim; but it is also a coup de grâce delivered to the outmoded Bushido-way-of-life, so honorable to those with unbending principles that it becomes hypocrisy and an excuse for the cruel mistreatment of others. The historical distance of the film magnifies, rather than reduces, the timeliness of the issue of merciless, inflexible ideologies: not…
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A variant of the earlier Late Spring, which features the hallowed and iconic actress, Setsuko Hara, alongside the mainstay of its director, Chishû Ryû, An Autumn Afternoon still has its own unique claim to individuality, and it is no less moving than its predecessor. If I had to choose between them (a difficult choice since both are moving masterpieces) I would watch An Autumn Afternoon, saving Late Spring for a later date; the former is to me more contemplative than the latter, and dissipates more the headlong feeling of the daily rush of life, exemplifying the fine sensibility and artistry of Yasujirô Ozu. This film reaches a pinnacle of the…
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The meeting of Bob and Charlotte is the meeting of two people, straying, despondent, groping in the desert of an existence, and disoriented by the foreignness of a culture emphasizing that they are adrift. Tokyo as the setting of the story brings out the loneliness of Bob and Charlotte, a swirling storm distilling its center, which is both the characters and the hotel refuge above the city; accentuating their loneliness and ennui, the culture shock of the characters lays bare what many travelers have experienced: that foreign cultures expose the contingency and existential arbitrariness of our own, revealing the hollowness of the unquestioned safeguards of meaning and purpose. Foreign cultures…
