Period Dramas in Japan FINAL PAPER

DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE IE SAIS D'ATG By Yomota Inuhiko

How to describe Shinjuku in the late 60's and early 70s? The scene was something like the noise and bustleof the famous Bou- levard du Crime in 19th-century Paris or London's Picadilly Circus. Tokyo was formed by the grouping together of a number of centers such as Ginza, Shibuya,and lkebukuro.Of all those Pplaces,Shinjuku in this period was the center of underground art and culture, filled with vulgarity and nihilisticenergy. Shinjuku |was divided into East and West by the train station.The West

side is now a forest of skyscrapers,an offial space symbolized by the new City Hall, but in those days a water treatment plant ex. tended to the horizon and the place was almost deserted. Action films would often shoo scenes in this out-of-the-way location.

On the other hand, the East side of the station was as crowded as lsewhere.At last a signal is given and the audience leaves the it gets. Watching films like Oshima Nagisa's Shirjulkuw dorobo

decoy tent as one body and rushes into the new tent.And so the nikki(Diary of a ShinjukuThief,1969) or Matsumoto Toshio's play starts without incident. The police are frustrated: once theBara mo soretsw(FuneralProcession of Roses,1969),you'll se |audienc is in the new tent they can't interrupt the performance.the kinds of impromptu street performancs that filled Shinjuku

in 1968. In the square in front of the station futenzoku(Japanese Artistic experiment and political contestation went hand inhippies)from all over Japan, homeless and hungry, sleep on the hand. A demonstration against the US-Japanese Security Treatygrass and sing songs.In the cale Fugetsudo, self-declared artists | turned into a riot, the mob turning over cars and flooding onto| with long hair and beards rub shoulders with lefist activists, the railroad tracks so the trains couldn't run.The riot police firedwhile American soldiers who are against the Vienam war and tear gas canisters to suppress the disturbances. On riot days you|who've gone AWOL from their bases huddle with anti-war had to hide lemons in your bag to counteract the effect of thegroups, plotting escapes to northern Europe.Out in the main tear gas on your eyes.Young people felt asensc of liberation, thatstreet, ten or so men and women form a strange procssion. anything goes in Shinjuku.You felt that if you were chased by theApart from the gas masks on their heads thcy're completely cops you could turn into an lley and hide in a coffe shop.That'snaked.At the other cnd of the main street a gay bar district has not the feeling you got from pre-war amusement dstricts like grown up.A French semiotician, not yet famous in Japan, is a Asakusa,nor higher class bourgeois districts like the Ginza.furtive regular, Truly,Shinjuku in late-60's Tokyo was what Bakhtin had called a

carnival space.In the hitherto sacred precincts of a temple rises a scarlet tent where grotesque Theater of Cruelty is performed.Riot policc are brought in to prevent these scandalous performances.The spon.

ATG'sArt Theatre Shinjuku Bunka was at the heart of the chao-sors of the theater group act as if they fully intend to hold the tic bustle of the East side of Shinjuku.It was surrounded by rowsperformance, engaging the riot police in extended and meaning. of cinemas with gaudy billboards advertising endlss programsless wrangling. Meanwhile, another red tent is stealthily erected of anything from yakuza films to Hollywood movies. But the

会批科 atmosphere of the ATG cincma,a400 seat cinema that had been in use since before the war, was unique.The building was pain- |ted a uniform dark gray, the main door was a special back-tinted

glass. The interior walls were gray-blue and the doors to the auditorium were padded with black leather, It's no surprise that | when the newly-founded ATG refurbished the cinema in such

muted colors someone dubbed it the mausoleums.In any case, the decision to make everything monochrome created a sense of total separation from the surroundings. |I first saw a film at ATG four years later,in June 1966.I rushed to

| see Orson Welles'Citizen Kame on its first release in Japan.The

| &rosebuds of the film was as intoxicating as the word suggests.

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At the time Tokyo was buzzing with the Beatles visit,but Iit I At the ATG cinema they used the time after the last scrcening to thought Welles was much more important.His was the first di-| put on new playwrights such as Albee,Wesker,Genet,and LeRoi rector's name I remembered.I decided on the spot to become aJones.When Mishima Yukio,a major supporter of ATG,pre-

sented his sole directorialeffort Yakoku(Patriotism,1966) at the|mcmber of ATG- simply by becoming a member I could sece films restricted to adults. I was still only 13 at the time.I saw Shinjuku Bunka, he also put on a modernized version of a No many films at ATG after that: Fellni's Giulieta degli spiriti; Go- play after the screening. I was also there when the founder of dard's Pierrot lefou;Losey's TbeSeruant;Bresson's Prmces de Jean Buto dance,Hijikata Tatsumi,performed five of his works over

27 days in 1972.Following those performances,Hijikata wentdArc; Paradzhanov's Teni zabyeb predkou(Shadows of Our into a long seclusion before leaving this world wrapped in theForgotten Ancestors).If it hadn't been for the overwhelming in.

fluence of the films I saw between graduating Junior High and cloak of legend. beginning High School,perhaps I would never have become an

The majority of the films that were shown and plays that wereart critic and would be slogging away as a businessman at a Japa- nese company instead.It wasn't only me: you could probably sayperformed at ATG were by artists who were already known

abroad and who in their own ways had built careers withinthe same for the musician Sakamoto Ryuichi and the poet Yoshi- masu Gozo as well. At the time ATG was a unique guide to the |Japan. As interest in the underground counter-culture developed European art film, so different from the Hollywood entertain. in the 1960's,ATG opened a small theater in the basement. ment film. It is impossible to overstate the influence of ATG pro- Mishima, who loved Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Riing,dubbed the

space Sasori-za(Theatre Scorpio).The fist film shown in thisgramming on the Japanese literary and art scene,even up to the new theater was Gingakei(Galaxy,1967) by radical student film-present day. maker Adachi Masao.The Sasori-za, which had projectors for all

After a certain point ATG,in addition to distributing foreign au- film gauges from 8mm to 35mm and so could show films on an equal footing, soon became the center of Shinjuku underground teur films, started to produce new films by radical Japanese di.

rectors.Oshima Nagisa's Ninja bugeicba (Manual of Ninja Marti.culture. al Arts), released in 1967,packed in the students and became a huge hit.The film told the story of the head of a group of ninja The year 1971/72 was a major turning point for Japanese anti-

|system movements and the underground counter-culture.ATGwho organized farmers' rebellions and fought against powerful samurai in the 16th century.It was based on an original 16-volume teamed up with the master of pink eiga Wakamatsu Koji and

|Adachi Masao to make Tensbimo kokotsu(Ecstasy of the An-manga series by leftist manga artist Shirato Sanpei.In order to make the film Oshima developed his own unique method of fre.|gels,afilm about the heroic isolation visited on agroup of terro- ly selecting from and enlarging the actual manga frames,dubbing rist bombers after they attacked a US army base.During the voices over those images without using any animation or live shoot a time-bomb hidden in a Christmas-tree exploded less that footage.Oshima followed Welles in being firmly enshrined in my 100 meters from the ATG cinema,injuring many seriously. A |personal pantheon. false but believable rumor went around that just after the explo.

E_g百田三三ggFrom 1968 to 1972Oshima released Ksbikei (Dcath by Hang- --n前0no日卫

ing),Sbinukeu dorobo mik(Diary of a Shinjuku Thief),Sbowew (Boy,1969),Takyo sesso sengo bioa(The Man Who Left His Will on Film),Gisbki(The Ceremony),and Natsu no imoto (Dear Summer Sister).He worked at a frenetic pace, puting into practicec what he himselfcalled esleeping witho the times.In par. ticular,I felt that Tokyo semso sengo biow was exactly my story The budding8mm-filmmakers who appeared in this film were the same age as me, albeit we went to different high schools.We all spoke in the same coded way about the connection between film and politics, participated in the same anti-government de- monstrations, were chased by the same riot police and wandered

the same tear-gas canister littered streets of Shinjuku.But I,who was caught up in all the political excitement,couldn't understand |why Oshima viewed things from a meta-level and was critical of their actions.

After Oshima,AIG produced films by Yoshida Yoshishige(who |became also known as Kju),Matsumoto Toshio, Terayama Shj, Kuroki Kazuo,and Jisoji Akio one after the other.Until then I had thought of Japanese cinema as Japanified versions of Ameri. Can westerns and gang films, or as monster movies in which one or another enormous beast attacked Japan, but at ATG for the | first time I realized that Japanese films could also be cartisticow.

| At the same time,I was deeply impressed by the music used in their films.Iakemitsu Toru,Ichiyanagi Toshi, and Hayashi Hi.

karu were the leaders of Japanese music. Apart from anything clse, this period of ATG films stands as an archive of modern Japanese . music. Takyo seso sengo biawa(1970)

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|Finally, Shin-Toho specilized in ghost films and historical spec.sion some suspicious characters were seen running into the Saso- taculars. Each company had its own peculiar individuality butri-za. All at once the media started a violent attack on ATG, all of them were devoted to commercial entertainment films.which was advised to stop the making of the fim.However, at a There was litte interest in leaving a legacy of film as an art.Ofprss conference director Wakamatsu said:al want people to re. course it's also true that the period films of Kurosawa Akira andalize that behind this incident lics a much greater danger, of the Mizoguchi Kenj,filed with samurai and geisha,were lauded atviolence that is war,》 The film was relecased at the Shinjuku Western film festivalks. But those films were exceptional: theBunka in March 1972 to great acclaim. |dlocal films that formed the greater part of Japanese cinema

were made in a studio system in which the star and the scriptHowever,that happy age in which political excitement and cine. were already decided, and the director was simply an artisanmatic experiment scemed to be permanently linked was already | who turned the script into images. Directors were low in theending by the early 1970s.The student movement turned into hierarchy: for example,at Shochiku they could do nothing whensomething cultish,indulging in meaninglesstir-fortat murders or films were cut for broadcast or pulled for political reasons.wanton bombing campaigns. The big studios that ATG had op.

posed in the 1960's reached an economic impasse that resulted in ATG's film production policy was born in reaction to that situa-bankruptcy or radical changes in direction.Kurosawa Akira at- tion,out of a desire to bring a high artistic quality to Japanesetempted suicide, while SuzukiScijun and Kato Tai were expelled cinema. A close historical analysis of ATG films,starting withfrom the studios and silenced for many years.In the end, ATG Oshima Nagisa's Kosbikei in 1968, would reveal any number of turned to a policy of making youth films, seeking to develop a variations but in broad outline the films of this period can benew audience.Adachi Masao disappeared from view, leaving characterized in the following way:AIG was opposed to com-Japan to engage in the struggle on bechalf of Palestinian refugees. mercial entertainment cinema,so it gave directors who fled the big studios a chance to make their own films. From the end of the 1950's,talented young directors debuted at the Shochiku stu-Let's return to the1960's to consider the state of Japanese Cinema dio.Oshima Nagisa with Nibow no yor to kiri(Night and Fog in when ATG started producing films.The Japanese cinema achie- Japan,1960),Yoshida Yoshishige with Roeu denashi(Good-forved its largest audience in 1958,and in 1960 produced 547 Nothing,1960),and Shinoda Masahiro with Kaoaita mizuwwi filIms. As the saying went, film was the king of mass centertain- (DryLake/Fury of Youth,1960) each in their own way absolute-ment. The six major companies produced two program pictures ly rejected the established melodramatic mode of Shochiku films.| every week. Nikatsu specialized in Japanesestyle westerns and They were called the Shochiku Nouvelle Vague but they hatedaction films. Toho made period films and monster movies.At the oppressive structure of the conservative studio and turned to-Shochiku it was melodramas of the lower middle cdass.Toci fo- ward independent production.ATG played an extremcly impor-| cused on period films,while Daiei featured their actrsses in tant role in that procesmelodrama

Sra mo soretsu (Funeral Procssion of the Roses,1969)

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rous yet critical commentary on the then-prominent yakuza genre in Japanesce cincma.

Jiswoji Akio is one example of a director who came from tele- vision. In Jissoi's debut directorial ffort Mao (This Transient Life,1970) a brother and sister in a traditional Japanese house in the suburbs of Kyoto put on No masks and indulg in incest as a Bach partita plays on the soundtrack and the camera tracks with |unbelievable fluidity. The allegory in this film is based on the Buddhism that is part of everyday folk custom but on the other hand the youth and the priest are influenced by Pascal and Dos.

toyevsky and their conversations seem real.Jissoj vividly expres. ses what was suppressed in the television system through the | free-thinking sense of liberation in these scenes.Although Muo was not strictly speaking an ATG production, after it became a华e一常 major hit Jissoji was able to make three ATG productions from

Nibon mo akury (EvilSpiris ofJapan),directed by Kuroki Kazuo 1971 to 1974:Mandarn(Mandala,1971),Uha (Poem,1972),and Asakeiywmewisbi（The Life of a CourtLady,1974).He is remem-

If ATG had not existed, pethaps we would have remembered bered as the first director to fasten onto Buddhism as an intelec: tual subject in Japanese cinema. He later directed the UramanYoshida only as a director of delicate melodramas,not as an series on television and became known as a monster movie direc.auteur who experimented with ways of representing historical tor but even those films were scripted by Sasaki Mamoru, who|over-determination in Erosu＋Gyakeusatsw (Eros Plus Massacre,

1970) and Kaigewrei(Coup d'Etat,1973).Also, Oshima might had worked with Oshima Nagisa on films such as Kosbikei and have had to spend the rest of the 60's in unproductive silence. Toeyo senso sengo biuwa. Berween 1968 and1972Oshima made five important films, allof

The most important names to emerge from the field of amateurwhich were co-produced by ATG and his own company Soz6 fimmaking were Adachi Masao and Hara Masato. When ATGsha. In Shinoda's varied filmography too, the films made with

ATG-Shimja tenno Amijima (Double Suicide,1969) and Him- opened its underground theater Sasori-za in 1967, the first film it | showed was Adachi's Gingakei. Before that his film Sain(1963)ko(1974)-brim with avant-garde techniques and a critical per- was shown at the Shinjuku Bunka. This 16mm short film createdspective on received ideas about Japanese history and tradition.

That would surprise people who know Shinoda only through the an intense politicalllegory out of the female protagonist's con- nostalgia and retro-stylings of his post-1980's films, in which he genitally sealed vagina and made Adachi a legend in the early

1960's world of student filmmaking. The screening marked aseemed to have turned into a mediocre speople's director. turning point after which ATG,quite apart from already recog- nized aulewrs such as Oshima and Shinoda, committed itself toIt is significant to the history of Japanese cinema that all of the the agresive distribution and exhibition ofunderground cinema. films mentioned here originated in passionate interchanges bet. Adachi collaborated with his contemporariesOshima and Waka-.wen the drctors and ATG produccr Kuzi Kinshiro.It was matsu,but in the mid-seventies he left to support the Palestiniannormal procedure for the director to bring a proposal to ATG,

where it would be asscssed rigorously in a single production liberation strugle as a fighter in the Japanese Red Army. meeting. After that single meeting,if the project was approved,

Hara Masato was only 17 in 1968 when he won the Grand PrixATG would make no further intervention.The completed film in the first Japanese amateur film contest.He went on to writewas the director' alone. At last,through this unrestricted system,

fims worth being called auteur cinema were produced in Japan. Oshima's Tokyo senso sengo biud with Sasaki Mamoru.The star- ting point for that film was that the &Battle of Tokyos frequently instigated by the New Left in 1969 was a complete fiction.The

ATG did not concern themselves with the pedigree of the direc. plot concerns an amateur film that becomes a kind of last testa- ment when it is entrusted to one youth by another who then dies.| tors they employed.Whether they came from documentary,8mm

|or I6mm amateur film, or from television,not to mention avant- However, as the film proceeds it becomes clear that the protago. garde theater and comic books,ATG invited people with a talent nist is himself an enigmatic fiction.If this film is the most pecu-

liar amongOshima's body of work, it's due to the participation offor experiment and gave them a chance to direct their fist feature this high school student who had been influenced by Jonasfilm. There was a strong sense of breaking with the established Mekas and Godardform of studio films and testing the boundaries of the mediun

creating gcnres that had not yet been categorized. From these various sources ATG scouted talent that had ex.

ceded in some way the structures of the mainstream system. The For examplc,Matsumoto Toshio (Bana mo soretw), Kuroki most turbulent of them all was Terayama ShujiIn some ways,|Kazuo (Nibon o akeuryo/Evil Spirits of Japan,1970),and Higas: Terayama might be called aJapanese Pasolini or Fssbinder. Hehi Yoichi (Sdo/A Boy Called Third Base,1978)had back-

grounds in documentary film. Bana no soretsu, which could be was, simultaneously,a poet writig in a traditional form, a horse called Japan's first gay film, skilfully juxtaposes interviews in | racing commentator, and a director of the most scandalous plays

of the 1960's.He was a dangerous agitator who advocated incestShinjukugay bars with dramatic sequencs adapted from Sopho- clean tragedy,and films everytbing with an Artaudian cruelty,In and running away from home to young people.He also wrote a Nibon no aeuryo, yakuza get caught up in a serious story accus- | whol unreliable autobiography. Terayama's many independent ing the communist party of betrayal. The film becomes a humo-films take as their subject the most symbolic actions,filmed with

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od of time. Films from Kocbikei to Sbarna(Pandemonium,1971)

followed this format, modeled on Mishima's film, in which the

only two characters commitritual suicide after making love.

Although you could se clouds on the horizon, the Japanese film

industry was sill t its peak,boasting of a healthy number of pro-

ductions,when ATG started distributing and exhibiting films in 1962.By 1971, soon after ATG tumed to film production, the

production arms of the big film companies with their massive studios were al in serious trouble.Nikatsu abandoned its staple

| action film genres and turned to sex comedies.Daiei went bank-

rupt and Toho only managed to survive by splitng offits pro-

|duction division.

The collapsc of the five-company system gave a big boost to in-

dependent production.The most prestigious Daiei directors such as Masumura Yasuzo and Ichikawa Kon madc fims at ATG in the first half of the1970's.Of the nine films screened at the Shinjuku Bunka theater in 1962, seven were famous foreign films

and only two-one being Teshigahara Hiroshis Olorbin(The

Pifall,1962)-were independent Japanese productions.How.

ever, if we look at the screening list for 1972,only three of the

eleven films were foreign and the remaining eight were ATG or

independent productions.In this way the founding principle of ATG-to crecate a series of artstic films-ws superbly realized.

However,in the larger scheme of things even though ATG was improving the technique ofJapanese cinema it couldn't shore up

the subsiding foundations of the Japanese film world as a whole.

天g的ce?国 By the end of 1972 ATG carried an accumulated debt of 20 million yen. Unlike the big studios ATG had no asets so if the

Dew'enwisbisw(Pastoral:To Die in the Country,1974) |current film was not a hit it was not able to provide the capital

for the next one.Also, with the rise in prices the policy of pro- the most humorous sensibility.One film unspools in darkne as

| ducing each film for the unbelievably low budget of ten million a hand scarches for a light switch on a wall.At the moment the

yen became incresingly dffcult.Inside ATG, too, conservative switch is thrown, the screen turns white and the film itself comes

voices were growing stronger,a did the sense that it was safer toto an end. Another flm consists of an extended take of a human entrust films to veteran directors rather than to unproven new-

figure in the background running toward the camera. At the mo- |comers.ment the figure attains life size,we realize that the figure was pro-

jected on a screen within the screen we are watching, when that We can sce many points of rupture in Japanese culture and socie-

| paper scren suddenly tears and from behind it a real person ty that occurred around 1972. That year saw the Japanese Red

bursts forth who is dressed just like the runner. Army beating members to death and shooting it out with the

police at the Asama mountain lodge. The NewLeft movement in ATG,which often produced Terayama's plays,also produced

|Japan lost sight of its objective and turned to murderous inter-

two of Terayama's ilms,Sbo o uteyo, macbi e deyo(Throw Away |necine battes or to terrorist bombings.The utopian ideal of link-

the Books,Let's Go into the Strcets,1971)and Den'enmishisw ing art with politics in a vanguard movement was abandoned and

(Pastoral: To Die in the Country,1974).The former film is a the mores of the young people who gathered in Shinjuku chan-montage of fragments that thoroughly provokes the audience in ged completely. They lost the excitement of being part of a

|the theater and shows the spontaneous imaginative power of Te- crowd,faling into cynicism and nihilism, and were swallowed up

rayama, who was called the charismatic leader of youth at the by the prevailing culture of mass consumption. High rise build- end of the 1960's.The latter flm is based on his fascination with ings rose over West Shinjuku. Soon it was no big deal to travel

falsehood and his ambivalence about his mother. abroad.People's lives became so comfortable that it surprised

even themselves. Nursing a single cup of coffe while debatingIt is important to remember that one reason ATG embarked on philosophy or hard to understand flms became old-fashioned.

film production was that novelist Mishima Yukio's 16mm inde- Almost overnight the arts tended to take on the character of

pendent film Yaeokeu was a big hit when it was scrcened at the commoditis to be consumed. As if to symboliz that state of

Shinjuku Bunka. ATG was ofen a hotbed of politially radical afairs,Oshima Nagisa dssolved his Sozosha production company.artists but we shouldn't forget that Yzeokew was the model for the scale of films that AT'G decided to produce. Although the bud-

ATG's conomic difficulties became more and more clear.Oneget for a typical commercial film was 40 to 50 million yen,ATG by one it was forced to dispose of its ten cinemas around the could only afford to put up 10 million. Sets tended to be ab- country. At the cnd of 1974,Terayama Shuji's Der'enmi sbisu

stract, closed-off rooms,and films were forced to focus on the marked the last experimental work produced under ATG's longconflict between a small number of characters over a shott peri-

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shunned all the established directors,actively searching for com- pletely unknown young filmmakers to entrust with a film project. He rapidly discovered talented filmmakers from the worlds of |porn films, student8s films, and Nikatsu program picrures. This is how Omori Kazuki,lzutsu Kazuyuki,Takahashi Banmei, Negishi Kichitaro, and Ishil Sogo came to work with ATG.On the other hand,Sasaki also helped Nakagawa Nobuo,known as an overlooked master of B-movies, to make his final film.Only three characters appear in Kaidan-lkileirw Kobej (Mysterious Story:The Living Koheiji,1982),yet it is still a bloodcurdling horror masterpiece.

As a producer,Sasakis style was the completc opposite of Kuzui's. Kuzu liked to produce profound and difficult films that con- tained all the contradictions and distortions of post-war Japan. The privileged themes of that cinema were taboo crimes and vio- lence, anarchism and eroticism. Sasaki endeavored to produce simple and vigorous films that escaped the gravitational field of |Japanese history and aimed for the free and easy sensibility of a | youth audicnce attuned to the outside world. That difference corresponds perfetly to the shif in the mood of Japanese society between the 1960s and the 1980s. During the same period the Japanese film industry became more and more impoverished,in contrast to the increasingly thorough penetration of Japanese socicty by high level capitalism.

1972 marks a point at which something important was lost, something that could not easily be replaced but that people soon forgot they had lost in the fist place.The next dividing point for Japanese cinema came in 1989 with the death of Emperor Hiro- hito and the debut of Kitano Takeshiand Tsukamoto Shinya.Bur

Seisbuw no satswyjinsba（Young Murderer, 19/6) let us leave that discussion for another time. standing policy of supporting experimental art.However,it was Translation by Michael Raine no longer possible to roadshow the film at ATG's Shinjuku Bunka for a long period.In order for the cinema to make a profit YOMOTA INUHIKO the film was limited to a short run and replaced with the ultra- Born in 1953in Nishinomiya.Finished a Ph,D coursc at Tokyo popular French film Emmanuelle.The anecdote gives a symbolicUniversity.Teaches film history at Mciji Gakuin University as a

indication of the breakdown of the ATG cinema's previous reser- profssor, and is a prolific writer of books about literature,urba- |ve. It also prowoked ATG's regular producer since 1968,Kuzui nism,fod,manga and cinema (e. g.papanese Actresesw,2000,Kinshiro, to leave in despair.He was preparing an adaptation by<100Years of Japanese Cinemas,2000,sGodard,Images and Yoshida Yoshishige of Oe Kenzaburo's masterpiece aMan'en History,2001).He also has translated works by Edward Said, gannen no futoboru>(The Silent Cry),but the project never Peter Brooks,Paul Bowles and Pier Paolo Pasolini. came to frution.The president of ATG was less intcrested in Oe's difficult style than in adapting the mystery writers who were so popular at the time. The successful adaptation of Hozin

satswjin iken(Murder in Honjin Manor House,1975) served as the nail in the coffin of ATG's avant-garde production policy.

Taga Shosuke, who replaced Kuzui as the main producer at ATG, had been a scriptwriter a Shochiku.He got steady results by employing veterans such as Saito Koichi and Kuroki Kazuo but he also scouted the totally inexperienced Hasegawa Kazu. hiko to direct Seibun o satsuyinsba(Young Murderer,1976), based on Nakagami Kenijis short story.With the exception of Nikatsu, the studio system that had regularly produced new directors had come to an end by the 1970's. After being pre- sented by ATG as a promising new director,much was expected of Hasegawa.Naturaly, he disappeared from view after making only one more film.

Sasaki Shiro tried to change the reputation of the ATG produc. tion wing more boldly when he became president in 1979.He

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