> The most fascinating modern male artists in Japan, however, have
> dedicated themselves to obsessive portrayals of ambiguities of "male
> masochism," in a variety of political registers. Perhaps the best
> known example is _In the Realm of the Senses/Ai no Corrida_ (1976),
> directed by Oshima Nagisa.
But also apparent, in a latent sort of way, in Soseki. Oshima's film rocks, though -- there's that great scene with the knife, one of the great radical symbols of the East Asian media culture, the volcanic proto-feminism boiling beneath this thin patriarchal veneer (the knife later shows up in a key scene in Yimou Zhang's "Joudou"). It's only halfway thru the film that you realize everything has this doubled political meaning: the bankruptcy of the Japanese liberal bourgeoisie, the rise of Fascism, the lovers are like some Surrealist rebus transported from the feudal household to the marketplace, the factory, and finally the ominous, empty space of the postmodern hotel at the very end, which consumes the characters as they consume each other.
-- Dennis