becoming korean
by Douglas Messerli
Masao Adachi, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu
Tamua and Nagisa Oshima (writers), Nagisa Ōshima (director) Kaette kita yopparai (Three Resurrected Drunkards) / 1968
In Three Resurrected Drunkards, Japanese director Nagisa Ōshima uses a 1960s comic genre to discuss far more serious issues. Like a mix of the Beatles’ and Monkees’ movies and Jean-Luc Godard, Ōshima takes his three musicians of the Japanese band The Folk Crusaders through a series of semi-comic, self-conscious adventures.
On a beach, this group of mismatched drunkards, Kazuhiko Kato (described
throughout as a “beanpole”), Osamu Kitayama (shorter), and Norihiko Hashida
(very short) somewhat darkly point their fingers at each other’s heads in a
goofy mock re-enactment of the famed Eddie Adams photo of a Vietcong guerilla
being executed, The Folk Crusaders hit song, “I Only Live Twice” playing in the
background. If the game there are playing has more dark undertones than comic
ones, so too does their somewhat blasphemous song about heaven being a place where
“the booze is good and the girls are pretty,” run by a god who is an “old
meany.”
That soon is played out within the plot, as the three go swimming, their
Japanese soldier uniforms being stolen from beneath the beach by a hand that
replaces their uniforms with those of Korean soldiers, along with some money.
Returning from the water, two of them are forced to dress in the Korean
costumes, while beanpole retains his own dress.
From that outward transformation, along with their insistence to a local
tobacconist that a popular brand of cigarettes costs only 40 yen (the real
price is higher), things go quickly from bad to worse, as the police begin
following them and other beach dwellers are on the attack. Only a mysterious
woman is evidently willing to help them, suggesting they steal other’s
clothing. At a local spa they try just that, but are suddenly attacked by the
Koreans who have stolen their clothes and are forced to return to their Korean
costumes, as they are captured and sent to Korea’s Pusan Bay, before being sent
away to Viet Nam to the war in which they die.
Waking up once more to see the mysterious girl hovering over them, the
three change, this time into her dress and blouse, attempting to get away once
more, only to meet up again with two AWOL Koreans, who restore them to their
Korean identities.
Ōshima’s theme, clearly, is the Japanese
xenophobia, in particular their hatred and dismissal of Koreans. On the streets
of Tokyo, the three, film camera in hand, ask citizens a simple question: “Are
you Japanese?” which each time gets answered with the words “No, I’m Korean,”
clearly satirizing the real situation of racial purity. And when the film
suddenly begins all over again, including the ocean swim, the robbery, the
event at the tobacconists and the attempt to steal clothes at the spa, the trio
answer their questions slightly differently, this time admitting and even
embracing their enforced Korean identities.
Nonetheless, the three find themselves in a further series of
misadventures, particularly because one of their group has fallen in love with
the mysterious and helpful woman, whom, they have discovered, is also Korean.
It hardly matters what happens in the end, for everything in this film
happens over and over as in a surreal dream, the story forever repeating itself
due to the Japanese society’s clear inability to learn from history. The last
scenes of the film take us to a mural that portrays the very scene which trio
was imitating in the very first scene, a horrible image of Asians murdering Asians,
just as the boys had pretended to shoot one another at the beach, the director
revealing that the comedy is, in fact, a tragedy the society must face.
Los
Angeles, June 7, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment