Japanese Avant-Garde: Matsumoto, Terayama & Others

[postmodern-chuck]

This is my first post here. Horray for inevitability.

I've been doing some selected readings on the Japanese Avant-Garde movement, and though a portion of the names are familiar to me, of both films and filmmakers, others elude me entirely. Two of the more fascinating entries wax poet about Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto. Granted, my reading is a fine starting off point, but it offers little insight or introspection of the artist's work, focusing more on, "holy hell, look how messed up this is!" Not the most academic article; Peter Wollen he is not! And that will do no good.

So are there any fans posting here... and if so, what do you think of these two?

I'm especially interested in the films:
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Funeral Parade of Roses
Nanami: First Love
Song of the Stones

Also, is there anyone else of merit I might be missing out on?

And if you guys need a barometer for my tastes, remember... I love both Un Chien Andalou and A Page of Madness. I ain't scared of no avant-garde.

[Lino]

This is a nice little topic. Actually, I haven't seen any of those but am planning on buying Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses (which I've been meaning to for the longest time but still haven't) as it's one of those films that I am sure that it will appeal to my Lynch/Buñuel/Tsukamoto track of mind. And judging from images like these, how can you go wrong?

Truly ahead of its time. Anyway, about Shuji Terayama: I haven't seen Emperor (...) but I did see his take on the Story of O - Fruits of Passion - many, many moons ago and certain images are still fresh in my mind today. But that can be due to Klaus Kinski...

Another Terayama that I managed to catch was the omnibus Private Collections (you know, the one he did with Walerian Borowczyk and another guy) and I must say that his segment is the one that really stands out as it's very surreal and populated with unforgettable images. He was very good at that.

I'm afraid I'm not much of a help here but here you go. BTW, can you spill more info on Nanami: First Love and Song of the Stones? Who directed them and what are they about?

[postmodern-chuck]

Nanami: The Inferno of First Love is another Terayama film, one of the more infamous ones, if the recollection of my studies is in order. From what I gather, it's about a man who falls in love with a nude model, but can't consummate their relationship because of some past sexual trauma. It also includes subtle hints of one of Terayama's chief caveats: pedophilia.

Song of the Stones... well, all I know about it is that it's Matsumoto's first film and incredibly experimental.

[Gregory]

On the previous forum I made the acquaintance of a member with the username ptmd who mentioned he was doing a lot of research for a writing project on the subject of Japanese avant-garde film. I don't mean to put him on the spot, but I'd be interested in what he has to say.
Most of these will not be commercially distributed on DVD, of course, although I did borrow and watch the Emperor Tomato Ketchup DVD from Five Minutes to Live. Anyway, those who really want to fully explore this area of avant-garde film will usually have to attend exhibitions in Japan.
There are festivals of these films in the United States, but they're few and far between. Last year there was a film festival called JPEX that toured the U.S. Searching for "JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film" on Google will turn up lots of articles, lists and descriptions of the films included.

[Nihonophile]

I've been doing some selected readings on the Japanese Avant-Garde movement, and though a portion of the names are familiar to me, of both films and filmmakers, others elude me entirely. Two of the more fascinating entries wax poet about Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto.

Chuck, could you perhaps list what your reading material is?

[Michael Kerpan]

Hatsukoi: Jigoku-hen (Nanami: The Inferno of First Love) was directed Susumu HANI (albeit co-written by Terayama).

Not a film I liked much. ;~}

[drpauligari]

I have the Japanese R2 of Terayama's Saraba Hakobune (aka Farewell to the Ark). I've always found the images in this film stunningly beautiful. It is an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien Años de Soledad, so if one is familiar with the story, the fact that this disc does not have english subs is not such a problem. I believe dvdrs of this and other Terayama work are available at superhappyfun.com.

I would stay away from Fruits of Passion, I don't find it representative of Terayama's work.

[Steven H]

I think Nanami, by Susumu Hani, is one of my favorite Japanese films. It's extremely sensitive to humanity, and emotionally stark. The two protagonists are going through puberty and/or sexually confused together (guy and girl), innocent and yet touched by perversion (boy through his father, girl through society). Good and bad are blurred and don't really enter into this, but Terayama's pedophilia is a strong link to story and character development. The film is told by combining past and present, showing how intermingled the two can be. The cinematography is blunt and sometimes beautiful. There's a little bit of french new wave, and it certainly has more in common with those director's than any Japanese that I've seen (though Hiroshi Shimizu may have also influenced Hani (from plot descriptions, so I'm just guessing). The director started his career doing documentaries (much like Koreeda, whose Maborosi shares Hani's use of ambiguity) which may also explain the verite like style used.

If you like this look into She and He and Bad Boys (both available on somewhat expensive VHS along with Nanami). She and He is more stylistic (beautiful shots and sequences) and a more expressionistic than Nanami, while Bad Boys leans more towards documentary.

I'm *dying* to see more of this directors films of this same period, especially his widescreen color film Song of Bwana Toshi. I've actually started a Susumu Hani thread in the Old Films section somewhere around here.

I've seen Farewell to the Ark, but only without subtitles... still held my attention, but the dialogue seemed to be rich and I'm sure I missed out on a great deal. I plan on watcing Emperor Tomato Ketchup ASAP. Also, there's some Terayama news in the "3 Films By Shinoda" thread in the International DVD section. His Buraikan is going to be released in May with english subtitles.

As for Matsumoto, there's already been some talk of his films. They're available in Japan on DVD with english subtitles (though pricy). The only one I've seen is Dogra Magra which I totally enjoyed (though I'm banking my full understanding of it will not be reached in the near future). Great visual and quite a hypnotizing story. It toys with Japanese culture and art and throws them to the new wave wolves (so to speak). Highly recommended for those interested in subversion. Sorry for the long post... this stuff is terribly interesting to me.

[yoshimori]

If you search Terayama on cdjapan you get nothing. But if you search the films you find:
Kusa-meikyu (Glass Labyrinth) with English subtitles

and the following without subs indicated:
Den-en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country)
Saraba Hakobune (Goodbye Ark)
Les Fruits de la pssion [sic]

[postmodern-chuck]

Chuck, could you perhaps list what your reading material is?

Well, nothing published. My friend is writing her MA thesis right now, reigning in some feminist criticism on Hiroshi Teshigahara, and since I'm an English undergraduate who has read most Kobe Abe's novels, she asked me to read it over. She mentioned both Terayama and Matsumoto in passing, if only as a way of describing the construct of masculinity in this particular movement / milieu.

Everyone - Thanks for all the help. Now if only I could just get over how bloody expensive those Japanese DVDs are! My pocketbook's already bleeding enough....

[Michael Kerpan]

I think Nanami, by Susumu Hani, is one of my favorite Japanese films.

I guess my adverse reaction inspired you to re-watch this. I suspect that I have virtually no affinity for "avant-garde" art. ;~}

[Lino]

I shouldn't post this on this forum but, Postmodern, if you got emule, go here or here. At least it's cheaper...

[Gregory]

As for reading material, I recommend Barbara London's chapter on experimental film and video in the book Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. She is a film and video curator at MOMA and provides a nice brief overview of many of the major filmmakers.

[feihong]

Lots of these filmmakers worked in the 70s through ATG, the Art Theatre Guild. They are responsible for releasing much of Terayama's work, as well as Matsumoto's and even Seijun Suzuki's Zigeunerweisen and a couple of Shinji Soomai films, I think.

A film you ought to include is Terayama's magnum opus, Pastoral: To Die in the Country. You can find it at Superhappyfun, with subs or higher quality without. It is maybe the most beautiful of these experimental films.

The Japanese DVD of Grass Labyrinth is magical and wonderful and very high quality, and the optional English subtitles aid in making the movie even more perplexing and strange and confusing. For fans of pop Japanese film, Juzo Itami plays three separate roles in Grass Labyrinth and a young, 13-or-14 (?) year-old Hiroshi Mikami (who later played Fei Hong in Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly; the character I got my screenname from) plays the younger incarnation of the narrator. Beware that the DVD audio is not levelled the way normal discs are, and about 18 or so minutes into the picture a song peaks at a volume level remarkably louder than anything else in the film.

[Lino]

Ok, so I borrowed back again the tape from a friend of mine who has the Terayama omnibus film that I mentioned above - Private Collections - because this thread made me want to see it again.

And just as I suspicioned, the segment by Terayama included alongside contributions by Walerian Borowczyk and Just Jaeckin is none other than Grass Labyrinth. It sure was great to see it again and I definitely enjoyed it much more this time around. The symbolic imagery that it contains is surely fantastic.

I think it is curious to note that in this film, that segment has a voice-over narration in french by a female. I don't know if the japanese DVD has it or not but my guess is that it doesn't. As this was a french co-production, I think a decision was made to have someone narrate over the images since the whole story is highly stylized and its narrative is somewhat dream-like and thus not linear. Highly recommended of course.

[Nihonophile]

I just watched a terayama short but i dont know what the title was. The whole thing was tinted green, there was no dialogue, and a very slow and repetative rhythm played during the 11 minute short. There was lots of shots of a goat in a landfill and children breaking a clock in a street. It was very interesting at least, anyone else see this short or can identitfy it?

[feihong]

That is the short-film version of Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

[todcraproductions]

I just found a copy of Funeral Parade of Roses for rent at Scarecrow video, and I just watched it.

First off: This version of the film I saw was ~100-101 minutes (imdb and other places say 105, but the back of the sleeve said 85 or 89 minutes), however, there were a few tape glitches, and it looked like there might have been credits chopped off at the end. So I don't think this is an edit or anything. The 8X figure is right out.

Secondly: The video quality was really bad -- it was a DVD-R (put out by Five Minutes To Live, actually, but really, really old -- the DVD menu was, well, basically what you'd expect from really early authoring software) taken from an N-th Generation VHS copy with loads of tape errors and whatnot; blurry picture (the stills are obviously taken from the new DVD) and white subtitles that sometimes blend in with the picture and don't seem to translate everything. I'm pretty sure this pre-dates the Region 2 Legit Version, which I would assume those stills came from. This is most definitely the one to get. (And, hey, it's a legit copy; though it looks like Superhappyfun's version is taken from the DVD rather than a tape.)

But, OK, the film: It is <i>really good</i>. If it didn't cost 40-50 dollars to get from Japan, I would totally have been happy had I just blind-bought this. I've only seen it once through, and I think I'm going to have to see it again (er, I know I'm going to have to see it again) but it's really well done. And, uh, yeah -- it's pretty obviously an inspiration for Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange. It'd be really interesting to do a Double Feature of the two movies, I think.

I'm not going to go too much into the structure or whatnot, but it's very well done. There's only one bit that I think could have been trimmed a little, and the beginning is a _little_ slow. It's not my New Favorite Movie, but it's damned good, and I want to see more of Matsumoto's stuff. (Apparently there's a 4-5 DVD box set in Japan -- all but one disc, apparently, are subtitled.) It's really well made; I don't get any sort of "exploitation film" vibe from this at all. I'd love to see a better print of this, though, which means I'm basically putting the japanese one on my Non-Literal Wish List. I wish there were a (legit) US version; this would be perfect for the Criterion Cult Sub-Label (if not Criterion proper).

It sorta reminded me of Branded to Kill (my favorite Suzuki) and to a lesser extent its remake-sequel Pistol Opera (it's good, but a little over-indulgent). But yeah -- I totally want a real copy of this. It is outstanding.

But yeah -- <i>excellent</i> film. There's a lot to say about it, but I'm trying to stay away from spoiler territory. (One thing I thought was interesting/cool: The trans people are all way more glamourous/sexy than any of the biological women in the film. As one of them says (in a reall amusing scene which also happens to be pretty <i>ACO</i>-y) "Men don't stare at JUST women", and they make that point pretty well.)

Anyway, though, yeah -- this is definitely a film to check out. I just wanted to post here to thank you for turning me on to it.

[todcraproductions]

Yeah -- I checked it online, and couldn't find anything (though, I, say, find it hard to believe that they don't have _any_ films with "funeral" in the title, say...), so I figured the online search wasn't complete -- and I think they leave out their bootlegs just because, well it could kinda leave them open. (for example, I just checked for Emperor Tomato Ketchup -- online, they don't have it; in person, they've got two different DVDs -- I think they're both 5 Minutes ones, though, just Old Style Case and New Style Case)). I had a hunch they might have it anyway, partially because they have tons of stuff and the aforementioned "funeral" example, so I went there yesterday. (Well, to be fair, it's also because, um, going to Scarecrow to look for a film involves, well, going to Scarecrow and it's pretty much the Happiest Place On Earth.)

I don't know if they had any of the other Matsumotos -- I didn't see any, but I wasn't looking for them, either. (Although now, I definitely will.)

I'm willing to cut 5 Minutes some slack on this one, just because it seemed pretty clear from the look (especially compared to the later releases) of the DVD case (it was a black-and-white generic thing, back cover in Times New Roman, front cover was some clip art of film, one frame had a logo, one had the title, and the last frame might have been blank, or maybe another logo; the disc was blank with what looked like the Windows 3.1 "Script" font), I'm assuming it actually pre-dates the real DVD, which I think came out last year maybe? But that's pretty much the only 5MtL disc I've seen, soooooo... (And, hey, it was way better looking than my tape of "The World's Greatest Sinner".) But yeah -- I am definitely gonna pick up a Decent Looking One, and I can't wait to watch that. At least the print was watchable -- it wasn't very good -- I mean, I'm not wasting a DVD-R on copying it, which is kinda lousy -- but, well, I've owned (and given away) DVDs that looked worse, so... hey.

At least I got to see it, is the main thing, and, well, for anyone else in the Seattle Area: If you don't trust me that it's worth the blind buy (it SO is), it's a cheap, good way to at least get a pretty good idea of the film. You know, before you end up going "Oh man, that is good" and buying a better version.

And you've pretty much nailed my experiences with a lot of the "gay" type cinema that I don't like; there's always good stuff, but it often seems that it's pretty much like that. It's a very mature film in the way it approaches those issues -- mainly by approaching the characters as _characters_ and not empty vessels to be filled with a certain characteristic.

[antnield]

Though - as has been said - hardly representative, 'The Fruits of Passion' recently gained a R0 UK release courtesy of Nouveau. Note that this is an English dubbed version however. DVD Times Review

[Pinback]

The Seoul Art Cinema (now my local) is screening a bunch of Matsumoto's shorts under the title Matsumoto Toshio Special 1961-75. The following shorts are being screened back-to-back, forming one (presumably very strange) feature:

Nishijin 1961 26min
For My Crushed Right Eye 1968 13min
Extasis 1969 10min
Metastasis 1971 8min
Expansion 1972 14min
Mona Lisa 1973 3min
Shiki Soku Ze Ku 1975 8min
Atman 1975 11min

The Seoul Art Cinema is currently hosting the Cinema=Movement/Revolution festival, and the Matsumoto special is part of the Japanese Underground Cinema section. Only a fraction of the films screened have English subtitles, but these shorts are non-dialogue anyway. Has anyone seen any (or all) of the above films? It seems like an unmissable screening, and I'm curious about what to expect.

[Steven H]

I just wanted to add some DVD related updates to this thread.

The genius of Hani's Hatsukoi Jigoku-hen is now made even more clear by a stunning R2 Japan transfer from Geneon. Perfect detail, fine grain, great sound. For anyone familiar with this film in it's awful home video form, this is a revelation (there's even a bit of color that was previously non-existent, and the beginning is totally different). Hopefully it will show up somewhere with english subtitles soon.

And it's not mentioned on this thread, but in the last few months there's been an upgraded copy of Terayama's Pastoral: To Die in the Country, which is the R2 transfer with top quality english subs. Definitely a prized possession (to be found at superhappyfun). This film has really opened up to me in the last week, where I was once put off by the grotesque imagery, the personal nature of the work is filled to the brim. There's a lot of human emotion and honesty hidden beneath the colorful and almost overpowering imagery. Fans of late Fellini, Jodorowsky, Japanese New Wave, and intelligent self-referential cinema should seek this out.

Also, is anyone familiar with Jissoji Akio? He seems to have a few interesting sounding films, produced or distributed by ATG (here's an interesting midnighteye article about the Art Theatre Guild), including Mujo, or "This Transient Life" (another midnighteye article, about Mujo). Mujo was the first of a handful of films he directed during the New Wave era (Mandara (1971), Uta (1972), Asaki yumemishi (1975), Utamaro: Yume to shiriseba (1977)), which, to me, all sound well worth looking into (though expensive and unfortunately unsubtitled).

Here's another fantastic article about ATG from midnighteye.

[shirobamba]

For those interested in Japanese avantgarde and Terayama especially: The first booklength study about the Japanese avantgarde icon Terayama Shuji (1935-1983) outside Japan has just been published by the UoHawai Press. Terayama was not only the director of 3 experimental feature films and more then 20 shorts, but a prolific writer of screenplays (Shinoda, Hani) a famous poet, dramatist and leader of an experimental theatre group. In 1993, 10 years after his death more then 200 publications, essays and articles were published on T. in Japan. He has his own museum in Misawa, and his plays are performed regularly to this day in Japan.

"Unspeakable Acts" the book by Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei does not concentrate on Terayama's cinematic work, (though it is treated where appropriate) but on his experimental theatre. But it contains a wealth of context information (cultural, historical, biographical) and explains in some length the main themes and concerns of Terayama, that it is invaluable to everybody interested in Japanese avantgarde art at large and his cinematic work. More info here.

Sadly not one of Terayama's main works is out on legit subbed DVD. But if you look at the usual places, you can find a lot.

[Steven H]

I bought the Akio Jissouji box set and have been extremely impressed with what I've seen, especially with Mujo (Mutability, or This Transient Life). Here are some stills if you're interested in taking a look (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine). They represent some of the *many* dynamic compositions, but don't give you an idea of the camera movement, unfortunately, which is singular, constantly changing, and would take me a long time to describe.

I suggest doing what you can to see this film (it's available on it's own now that the set's out of print) even unsubtitled I enjoyed it *very much*, using Roland Domenig's plot synopsis at midnighteye.com.

[peerpee]

FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES [BARA NO SORETSU] (Toshio MATSUMOTO, 1969) is forthcoming from MoC.