In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Japan's enfant terribleNagisa Oshima takes the hardcore plunge with his 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses!
Nagisa Oshima never rose to the level of international success and acclaim of his mainstream forebears like Akira Kurosawa or Yosujiro Ozu, nor did he work in the more extreme vein as directors that came after him like Takashi Miike or Sion Sono. Rather, like his contemporariesKaneto Shindo and Seijun Suzuki, Oshima's work was mostly unknown outside of Japan prior to The Criterion Collection bringingit to a wider audience. While Shindo was more interested in horror and ghost stories, and Suzuki trafficked in the world of stylish gangster films, Oshima was harder to pin down, with controversy seeming to be the main thing tying all of his films together.
After graduating from Kyoto University in the mid-50s, Oshima moved into the world of feature filmmaking with 1959's A Town of Love and Hope. Ever an ardent admirer of his French New Wave-adjacent contemporary Alain Resnais, several of Oshima's films like 1960'sNight and Fog in Japan and 1986's Max, Mon Amour, were homages to Resnais' Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. In fact, one of the ways that Oshima was able to skirt censorship laws in Japan with his 1976 feature In the Realm of the Senses was by editing and processing the film in France, away from the reach of Japanese censors.
Never one to shy away from censorship, Oshima's films were all tinged with an air of what has now become a dirty term, "Social Justice." His 1968 masterpiece Death by Hanging concerns the prosecution of Koreans living in Japan. It was the political stances his films took that got him in trouble more than the actual displayed content, which is what makes In the Realm of the Senses such an interesting case study. The film does feature hardcore, penetrative sex, which was sure to get it butchered by the censors, but it was the film's political undertones that have prevented the film from being sold or exhibited in Japan to this very day.
In the Realm of the Senses is based on the true story of Sada Abe, a geisha and prostitute who murdered her lover, hotel managerKichizo Ishida, in May 1936 and carried around his severed genitals until she was captured several days later. She had intended to commit suicide but was apprehended before she could carry out her plan. When questioned by authorities as to why she carried around his penis and testicles with her after asphyxiating him, she responded, "Because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories." Just one year prior, the story was brought to the screen in Japan withNoboru Tanaka’sA Woman Called Sada Abe, but Oshima's version was more concerned with the relationship before the murder.
In Donald Richie's essay on the film which accompanied its release from The Criterion Collection, he posits why Oshima's version was met with resistance while Tanaka's film was released without issue...
The reason that the Oshima film has experienced such difficulties in the country of its origin is that it challenges conventional Japanese opinion, and in so doing confronts and defies the political rationales that rest upon it. As the director himself has written, films such as Tanaka’s take sex as subject matter but not as theme and harmlessly inhabit the soft-corepinku eigacategory, which was built to contain them.
Oshima, however, was directing a different kind of film, one that he said “broke taboos” by using eroticism not as something for its own sake, as in the “pink film,” but as a vehicle for exploring and demystifying Japanese culture and the resultant Japanese character. For this it was necessary to create a manner of filming, a style that showed everything and at the same time encouraged empathy. This wasn’t two actors trying to titillate us, as in the pink film; the hard-core film Oshima was inventing would be about two real people who are titillating each other. He wanted a politicized eroticism rather than a pornographic performance.
There was precedent in Japan for featuring sexually explicit content outside the confines of the "pink film."1972's Hanzo the Razor features many explicit situations but to appease the censors, no female pubic hair is shown and the penises shown in the film were all prosthetics. Oshima thought such ploys would cheapen his film and its message of empathy.Eiko Matsudastars as Sada Abe opposite Tatsuya Fuji'sKichizo Ishida, and the story begins with Ishida helping himself to a little non-consensual sex with Sada Abe. This eventually devolves into a controlling sexual relationship that causes Ishida to leave his wife, and his sexual escapades with Sada Abe to become more dangerous.
The film's sexual content begins right away with their first sexual encounter featuring real, unsimulated sex. Matsuda goes on to bare all and even give Fuji a real deal blowjob, seen all the way at the top of the article. It's their final sexual encounter that leaves the biggest impression however. After tying a handkerchief around his neck and mounting him, she ends up erotically asphyxiating Ishida just as she orgasms...
While the film doesn't show it, the postscript informs us that she cut off his genitals and left them inside of her until she was arrested several days later. In the real story, Sada Abe carried the genitals in her kimono, but Oshima takes it one step further by insinuating that she left his severed genitals inside her vagina over the next few days, obviously not taking practicality into consideration. Oshima faced ostracism from the Japanese film community after the release of the film, an experience he channeled into his next film 1978's Empire of Passion. Shortly after the film's release, Oshima defended the content of In the Realm of the Sensesin a piece titled“Theory of Experimental Pornographic Film.” Here is his succinct thesis statement on the film...
The concept of “obscenity” is tested when we dare to look at something that we desire to see but have forbidden ourselves to look at. When we feel that everything has been revealed, “obscenity” disappears and there is a certain liberation. When that which one had wanted to see isn’t sufficiently revealed, however, the taboo remains, the feeling of “obscenity” stays, and an even greater “obscenity” comes into being. Pornographic films are thus a testing ground for “obscenity,” and the benefits of pornography are clear. Pornographic cinema should be authorized, immediately and completely. Only thus can “obscenity” be rendered essentially meaningless.
—Nagisa Oshima, from “Theory of Experimental Pornographic Film” (1976)
Check Out These Other "Real Sex" Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene
—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now
—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball
—Chloë Sevigny Goes Down in History forThe Brown Bunny
—The Strange Sexual Dynamics of Dogtooth
—Kelly Lynch Can Never Escape Her Road House Sex Scene Thanks to Bill Murray
—Barbara Crampton Gets Head From a Severed Head in Re-Animator
—Two Highly Respected Actors Have Real Sex in Intimacy
—Oscar Winner Ang Lee Goes Full NC-17 with Lust, Caution
—Examining Nymphomaniac's Dubious Claims of Digital Double Trickery
—Did Sienna Miller and Anakin Skywalker Really Do It in Factory Girl?
---------------------
Click Here to Check Out All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
