Iwa ni Hana

A scene from the theatre play "Ashi no Kago" (葦ノ籠) in 2008.

I just learned about a Japanese theatre troupe with the sort of angsty decadent beauty that I always go ga-ga about. They are called Kokushokukitan Katarinaha [黒色綺譚カタリナ派], and you can find out more from their official website here: http://www.kokusyoku.com/

There is a catchphrase on their homepage which I think summarizes the kind of beauty which is preoccupied with death and destruction that the theatre troupe embodies. (I call that hakai no bi [破壊の美] and have written about it here before.) The catchphrase goes like this:

飛ぶ鳥水面に波紋の残さずして死ねるか

(Can a flying bird die without leaving a trace on the water surface?)

I think you might get a feel of their aesthetic sense if know what the kind of original plays they produce are like. For example, the play Ashi no Kago [葦ノ籠] dated 2008 goes something like this:

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Bakeneko (the cat spirit) in film and anime

This is purely a guess. If any one film inspired Nakamura Kenji’s anime Bakeneko (2006), it must be the B&W film directed by Shindō Kaneto [新藤兼人] dated 1968 and entitled Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko [藪の中の黒猫].

A scene from "Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko" (1968) directed by Shindō Kaneto.

Shindō Kaneto is best known for the film Onibaba (1964), of which Yabu no Kuroneko is said to be a “sister work”. The story is set in the late Heian era, in which a pair of mother and daughter working on a farm were raped and killed by a group of passing samurai who had just returned from war. Having struck a deal with some dark powers, mother and daughter return to the human world as bakeneko (cat spirits) in order to lure passing samurai to death. The plot thickens when the daughter’s husband, who had been taken to war by force, return with high honours as a samurai, and is charged by his superior to confront and exorcise the two bakeneko. He is surprised that the two bakeneko look so much like his wife and mother-in-law. Meanwhile, part of the deal that mother and daughter struck with the dark powers is that they must never speak to anyone of why they turned into bakeneko…

A screenshot from the OP of the anime "Bakeneko" (2006).

So I wondered, could the ban to tell their tragic story be what inspired the Medicine Seller’s catchphrase in the anime Bakeneko, which is:

モノノ怪の形を成すのは 人の因果と縁
よって、皆々様の 真と理 お聞かせ願いたく候
The katachi (form) of mononoke is caused by the karma and enishi of people. Therefore, would everyone please let me hear your makoto (truth) and kotowari (reason)?

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There ought to be a word for Japanese films in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens.

A screencapture of the official website of the film "Yamazakura" (山桜), based on a novel written by Fujisawa Shūhei (藤沢周平).

A while ago, I was watching Yamazakura (2008), an above-average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. Before that, I was watching The Invitation from Cinema Orion (2007), an average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. There are many other Japanese films in which the love story is characterized by what never happened (I mean this in a positive way). These films are a genre in themselves.

History’s sense of black humour

Before I go on, I would like to take a moment to mention the two people – Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I think it must be history’s sense of black humour that just when all the traditional barriers to love such as class, wealth, religion, race and nationality fell apart to a large extent (though not entirely) after the WWI, this pair came along and turned “freedom” itself into a barrier to love.

Personally, I found their idea of “freedom” dubious, but I suppose one must give them credit for managing to turn “freedom” into a prison. I say it is a prison because it seems that under their credo you have the freedom to do what whatever you like… except for the freedom to refrain from doing whatever you like.

Love and harmony

The Japanese humorist Harada Munenori [原田宗典] once mused in his writing that the translation of “love” as ai [愛] back in the Meiji era was a mistake; instead, the more correct expression should have been the word wa [和], or “harmony”. So instead of a girlfriend asking her boyfriend, “do you love me?” [愛してる?], she would ask, “do we harmonize?” [和してる?] and he in turn would reply, “yup, we are harmonized” [うん、和してるよ]. And instead of saying things “love will save the world,” you would say “harmony will save the world”.*

The below is just my opinion. If you look at the word wa, it is comprised of the words for “thousand” [千] and “mouth” [口]. In other words, harmony is made of a thousand voices. Naturally, these thousand voices may all say different things. This makes me think of Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, a manga series I have been reading. You can read more my introduction of this series here.

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Movie posters of "The Beauty Remains" (美人依旧)

Just a very quick post – I think this obscurer than obscure movie is a fair example of the Chinese aesthetic concept of decadent beauty known as tui fei mei [頹廢美] (which I explained here in the past). Everything from the narration, the setting, the clothes and the atmosphere just gives you the feeling that “the end is nigh” and the characters (or at least some of them) are “putting on their best dress to greet the doom.”

Plot Summary: In the midst of a sea of change in China in 1949 – two long separated sisters, Ying (Vivian Wu) and Fei (Zhou Xun), are reunited in the event of the death of their wealthy father in order to execute his will. Ying (the elder sister) was borne by the legitimate wife and had always lived the life of opulence and leisure. Fei (the younger sister) was borne by a housemaid and had been expelled since childhood from the family’s mansion. Now a high school student, Fei was determined to not count her hopes on men – she wanted to do well at school and become a medical doctor. Fei’s simple life as a student was changed one day when she was summoned back to the family mansion after many years to live with Ying, and there Fei was introduced to Ying’s lover Mr Huang, who runs a casino. Mr Huang is a man with a “colorful past” involving many women. Not surprisingly, he began to seduce Fei, who yielded to him out of a vague feeling of revenge against Ying…

You can watch the trailer from YouTube below:

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