Obscenity and Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses and Empire of Passion
Nagisa Ōshima can be placed as one of Japan’s foremost iconoclasts, challenging well placed systems of modesty and the format of filmmaking in the post-war chaos of culture and identity.
Ōshima, being the most important of Japanese New Wave directors along with his domination in the exploration of styles, earned him the title of an auteur. He challenged the ways in which a director may explore the flesh, removed from the actor as a sexual object. In the process, he lifted the filming of intercourse from mere pornography to one that lifts the soul above all that is base, producing the effect of the intermingling of bodily passion and ethereal beauty that arises from sensation.
For such a presentation, it would not be a stretch to draw parallels between him and Pier Paolo Pasolilni, the Italian director who played with similar subject matter and indulged in very similar representation of the act. However, Ōshima brings a humanity and tenderness which is absent from Pasolini. In Pasolini, the act is a cold rebellion as opposed to Ōshima’s fiery individuality.
In The Realm of the Senses (1976)
In The Realm of the Senses(1976) is based on the true of story of fatal attraction between Sada Abe, a geisha, and a prostitute who murders her lover in a fit of passion and fury caused quite an uproar upon its release due to the unsimulated sex featured between to the two actors, Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji.
It can be endlessly debated upon whether such a presentation was necessary at all. But such a statement can be applied to any art ever created. What purpose does art serve in a community of people? Is sensory pleasure of any kind, from music through literature necessary for survival? For Ōshima, it clearly was. For this very reason, he shifted the production of the movie to Paris.
Ōshima was certainly not just a sensualist, his work explored everything from Japanese social constraints, the price of love, xenophobia and sexual expression. It is interesting to note that the man is disrobed and graphically exposed before the woman is, which happens more than halfway through the movie.
The movie features unabashed intimacy, the most tender private moments of lovers in naked embrace and it does so without sensationalism. They exist as the everyday sensual experiences of two people who might intersect as they go about their lives. Every frame exists as a testament to the power of touch and its effect on the lover. There is a child-like innocence in such a communion where exploration of the body is not bound by shame on either the part of the man or the woman. Both exist in desire and beauty, together with equal parts which make a whole. Every touch quivers with the energy of Eros, both become each other’s Gods.
Empire of Passion (1978)
Empire of Passion is the spiritual sequel to In The Realm of the Senses and quite similar in its themes of possession, passion, and taboo expression of love. It is the story set at the turn of the century in Japan about Toyoji, a poor young army man just released from service, and Seki, a married inn worker who is twenty-six years his senior. The film traverses the social and psychological impact their choice to murder Seki’s husband has on them over a period of three years where each meeting is a risk to their freedom and life. Fueled by an internal uncontained passion, they finally meet their end upon being found out by the village folk and the police.
The movie follows the format of the classic revenge tragedy, where the ghost of Guisaboro (Seki’s murdered husband) haunts his wife and her lover and leads them to their imprisonment. The psychological torture endured by both the lovers and their eventual mental spiral as they break down, unable to live in shame and hiding any longer.
The movie features minimal nudity, certainly a huge change from the previous film. However, it explores the shame and the mental burden prevalent in a largely homogenous Japan in greater detail. The question of censure and what is unacceptable may be Ōshima’s response to the critics of his previous movie. In a society, graphic displays of sensuality are as unacceptable as any deviation from the moral code laid in place for the family unit. Anyone who dares to break from it is punished. Whether hidden or exposed, all that is in deviation is punishable.
Ōshima and Obscenity
Nagisa Ōshima and his works explore more than the Japanese systems of guilt and punishment. It is the individual he treats and looks for. The desire, the simmer, the beauty of unrestrained passion. All that is hidden should be made bare, stripped of all pretenses. What is obscene in The Realm of the Senses? All that can be seen of the flesh is not obscene. The obscenity of something is a suggestion of its hidden nature. Every cell of the bare skin, once exposed ceases to be obscene.
