Emperor's Naked Army Marches on
by Kazuo Hara
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DVD Cover Information
Director: Kazuo HaraBrand: FACETS VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Japanese (Original Language), Unknown; English (Subtitled); Japanese (Published), Unknown
Format: Color, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Facets
Movie Reviews of Emperor's Naked Army Marches on
Movie Review: Onward, Soldiers of the Rising Sun
Summary: 4 Stars
After being fired from Shochiku Ofuna studios for his film Night and Fog in Japan, Oshima Nagisa immersed himself in the world of documentary film making for the big screen and television. While this at first might seem as a demotion in comparison to the work he was doing before, in fact, documentary film making allowed Oshima to film on a number of subjects, The Vietnam War, Forgotten war veterans of Korean roots who had fought for Japan, the state of modern South Korea, racism, poverty, etc., that if not outright banned were frowned upon by more conservative film production studios who viewed profit instead of content as the main purpose of film. Oshima would eventually go back to making "mainstream" films, but other directors such as Ogawa Shinsuke and Tsuchimoto Noriaki concerned themselves with making films concerning Japanese people who were harmed or left behind by Japan's rapid growth during the 1960s.
Amongst these significant documentary directors is Hara Kazuo. A former photography student who made his debut in 1972 with his film Sayonara CP which displayed in vivid detail the suffering of individuals afflicted with cerebral palsy and how they were treated and ignored by the Japanese populace. In 1974, Hara would film Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, an autobiographical film concerning his ex-girlfriend who fled to Okinawa and prostituted herself to black soldiers after leaving Hara. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On began filming nearly a decade later and it took Hara some five years to edit and release the completed film.
The Emperor's Naked Army (Naked Army for the duration of this review) concerns the life of war veteran Okuzaki Kenzo, a confrontational man who had served the Japanese Imperial Army in New Guinea and who had also served 13 years and 9 months in prison for murder, shooting a sling shot at Emperor Hirohito, and handing out pornography depicting Hirohito performing lewd acts. Apparently, Okuzaki had also planned to assassinate Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei. Angry and unable to escape the past, Okuzaki has taken it upon himself to find out why two soldiers, Nomura and Yoshizawa, were sentenced to death by gunfire after the war had come to an end. With Hara and a small film crew in tow, Okuzaki visits a number of his fellow foreign soldiers who were stationed in New Guinea in order to get information on the deaths of Nomura and Yoshizawa. Being some 40 years after their deaths, most of the former soldiers' stories contradict each other and they obviously trying to put themselves in a better light, even when it comes to the question of cannibalization ("Black Pigs" refer to the natives and "White Pigs" were foreign soldiers. Japanese soldiers were often killed and consumed as well).
At time in which he is not receiving what he considers a proper response; Okuzaki does not hold back and attack the aged war veterans. He blames Hirohito for the war and for the suffering that he and the other war veterans have experienced. By telling their stories and by airing the dirty laundry of the Japanese Imperial Army, Okuzaki believes they can be free from the past.
At its length of a little over two hours, Naked army consists of only a little over a twentieth of the 40 plus hours of film Hara used to make the documentary. During filming, Hara came to dislike Okuzaki and the director has stated that Okuzaki seemed relatively stable due to his editing. At least, as stable as someone who beats up old men can be. Naked Army can be a difficult, tedious film viewing experience, but it is also a vital one for those who are interested in Japan's jingoistic past and how it continues to thread itself within modern Japanese society.
Summary of Emperor's Naked Army Marches on
This absorbing documentary follows Kenzo Okuzaki--a veteran of Japan's WWII campaign in New Guinea--as he searches out those responsible for the mysterious deaths of several soldiers in his unit. Though he holds Emperor Hirahito accountable for all the suffering caused by WWII he painstakingly tracks down former military officers and accuses them of specific war crimes oftentimes abusing them verbally and physically. Director Kazua Hara's subtle cinema verite not only captures the zeal of Okuzaki's lifelong mission but also exposes the atrocities committed by the Japanese military against its own soldiers. The film created such controversy in Japan upon release that no major distributor would touch it. "The most amazing piece of filmmaking" (Michael Moore). Winner of the Caligari Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. In Japanese with English subtitles.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating:?NR UPC:?736899104627 Manufacturer No:?DV91921Whatever you call it--a righteous and cathartic quest for the truth and the odyssey of a vengeful madman are two possibilities--the saga depicted in The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is both compellingly strange and strangely compelling. A good five years in the making (it was released in 1987), director-cinematographer Kazua Hara's documentary concerns itself with one Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old World War II veteran and an anti-establishment character of a kind little known in Japan. Having already served almost fourteen years in prison for various offenses (including killing a real estate broker and shooting a sling at Emperor Hirohito), the unrepentant Okuzaki spends much of the film trying to root out the perpetrators of an atrocity that occurred during his deployment in New Guinea, when two soldiers were executed for desertion--after the war had ended. Sometimes accompanied by the two men's surviving relatives, Okuzaki simply shows up at the alleged perps' homes; in typical Japanese fashion, he apologizes profusely for arriving unannounced (even though that's obviously one of his primary tactics) before challenging them, relentlessly and abrasively ("You can't escape God's judgment!" he shouts at one. "I'm a much better human being than you!" he tells another). For the most part, the accused pass the buck to their commanding officer (who himself claims that he was only following orders). And while some of these confrontations are reasonably civil, others find the outraged Okuzaki physically attacking his prey, culminating in yet another prison sentence. This is genuine cinema verite, presented utterly without artifice; there's no music, the look of the film is plain and washed out, and the lighting is often terrible. Yet the fact that a character like this exists at all in Japan, a country where "the nail that sticks up shall be hammered down," is quite remarkable. Kenzo Okuzaki refused to be hammered--and he's got the scars to prove it. --Sam Graham
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