A Japanese Mirror

by Ian Buruma

  The yakuza hero and the ‘Japanese’ have much in common in their attitudes to the outside world. Both realize they are part of it, yet they feel cut off, misunderstood, even discriminated against. They convince themselves that they are blessed with a unique spirituality, yet they humble themselves at the same time: ‘We are a small, poor country’; ‘I am the dregs of society.’ People identify with the ambivalence of the yakuza hero. He is proud, yet an outcast, part of a group, but still alone. Yakuza heroes are ultimately the heroic victims of this world, which is exactly the way many Japanese like to picture themselves.

  Of all the yakuza outcasts, Takakura Ken was the hero of the radical young during the romantic 1960s. Tsuruta represents the older generation. He has seen it all, indulged in every vice: too wise to be cynical. He knows he is fighting for a lost cause, which is precisely his tragedy. Ken-san is the adolescent hero, pure, naive and angry. Women and gambling are not for him. He is imbued with the puritanism of a revolutionary. He is in fact the perfect student radical, always boiling over, and unlike Tsuruta, whose deliberate death is an act of resignation, Ken-san’s last gesture is an explosion of frustrated anger – increased perhaps by his sexual abstemiousness – at the inhumanity of the modern world.

  The radical young of the 1960s, having grown up in post-war ‘demokurashi’, never as democratic as it purported to be, felt deeply confused by the role of the individual in a collectivist society. Like their hero, they sought the answer to their problems in a violent combination of group fanaticism and individual sacrifice; or at least, the radical fringe did; most young Japanese, like young people everywhere else, took their lives for granted and were quite content to see Takakura Ken explode for them, safely confined to the cinema screen.

  As everywhere in the industrial world, the end of the decade dashed many student dreams. May 1968 became a fading illusion in Paris, London, Berkeley, and Tokyo too. Hopes of violently changing the world petered out and a new era began. Significantly the era of the orthodox yakuza film and thus the Golden Age of Ken-san and Tsuruta ended at exactly the same time. This was partly because the formula had worked itself out. Any art as mannered as the yakuza film cannot be repeated ad infinitum, even in Japan where people have a high tolerance for repetition.

  But apart from that it was the pure myth that exploded, for the time being, at least. The symbols, so dependent on time and place, became redundant. It was not the end of the yakuza hero, but he changed completely. He was not even played by the same actors any more. The new yakuza, like the ever more violent student radical fringe, is a perfect example of what happens when the Japanese hero is stripped of the codes and rituals that normally hold him in check. He becomes a nihirisuto.

  Arguing that the Japanese individual is educated to become a member ‘of a mythical body to which he sacrifices his life and thought in order to receive his true self’, Kurt Singer goes on to say: ‘Wherever this process is disturbed an anarchical state of mind is sure to develop, according to the same law that makes nihilism the end result of European attempts to replace reasonable freedom – as the goal of education – by a cult of the irrational.’17

  The orthodox yakuza films were officially known as ‘Chivalry Films’ (‘Ninkyo Eiga’). The new type is known as ‘True Document Film’ (‘Jitsuroku Eiga’). Realism of the most sordid kind took over from the myth. Tsuruta Koji wanted to have nothing to do with this new development. His characteristic comment was that these were not true yakuza pictures.

  The title of the most successful series, ‘Fighting Without Nobility’ (‘Jingi Naki Tatakai’), is typical of the whole genre. The new heroes are not noble men agonizing over the finer points of duty and humanity, but tough brutes such as Sugawara Bunta, slouching around like Chicago hoodlums on a Kabuki stage, in dark glasses, black gloves, silk suits, and white raincoats draped around the shoulders like capes, collars well up, and the faces held in perpetually angry scowls.

  The myths and symbols are smashed. In this world everybody, including the hero, plays dirty. The old ceremonies, for which Tsuruta lived and died, are almost forgotten. In one hilarious scene in ‘Fighting Without Nobility’ Bunta attempts to cut off his finger. This is a classic yakuza ritual to make up for lost face: the injured party is presented with a severed finger, neatly wrapped in a piece of white paper, by the one who did the injury. Bunta, being a gangster without nobility, has no idea how to conduct this painful ceremony properly, and when at last he manages to hack off his little finger with a kitchen knife, it gets lost in the ensuing scuffle. The entire gang of silk-suited scowlers then goes on hands and knees to retrieve Bunta’s finger.

  This would have been inconceivable in the solemn yakuza films of the previous decade. One would think it were a farce, if it were not for the following scenes in which people get their eyes stabbed with hot skewers, their stomachs slit with scissors and their backs slashed with knives. Bunta and others of his kind are like raging animals shut up too long in a cage. They do not talk, they grunt. One senses a pathological state of frustration constantly on the brink of violent hysteria. In one extraordinary scene in a film called ‘The Ando Gang’, celebrating the blood-thirsty adventures of Ando Noboru, a real yakuza turned poker-faced film gangster, we see Bunta alone in a garish neon-lit bar. After downing half a bottle of whisky in one noisy gulp, he smashes the bottle on the table and drags the jagged edges across his own face.

  It is the kind of violence that builds up in heavily repressed people, suddenly let loose without any restraints, like soldiers in a war going on a rampage. But although there is hardly any method to the madness in these films, there is a perverse kind of beauty in the way violence is choreographed. One especially memorable murder in ‘Fighting Without Nobility’ takes place in a toy shop, with the victim’s blood mingling prettily with the gaudy colours of tinkling toys and festival decorations. The contrast between violent death and garish kitsch, turning the scene into burlesque, in an important element in Japanese aesthetics of this kind.

  What strikes one is the complete gratuitousness of the violence. Just as there is little or no attempt in Japanese film comedies (called ‘nonsense films’ – nansensu mono – in the olden days) to connect the jokes in any coherent order, there is no logic behind the violence in these pictures. Acts of violence are strung together more or less at random like those old-time jokes or sex scenes in a porn film.

  But this is precisely the point: there is no logical reason for the hideous cruelty indulged in by the Bunta-type hero, for he is a nihirisuto. The cycle of obligations and loyalties that chain the ordinary mortal simply do not exist for him. The true nihirisuto just smashes his way through the tight web of Japanese society. He is heroic in his utter badness.

  Nihirizumu is as much part of the Japanese heroic tradition as the suicidal retainer or the noble scapegoat. It is most likely influenced by that most nihirisuto of creeds, Zen Buddhism. Nihirizumu is the result of the victory over the ego, over the discursive mind. The ego-less mind is a mind without emotions, without pity. The ideal Zen hero can easily be turned into an unthinking murder-machine, whose pure spontaneity takes him to a twisted kind of Buddha-hood.

  The nihirisuto does what nobody else can do; he is a super-individualist in a society that suppresses individualism. Deep in his heart no doubt many a meek ‘salaryman’ or, before him, the Edo townsman, would like to be a sword-waving killer or a Bunta with a gun, just as the macho tradition in the West invites people to identify with John Wayne or Charles Bronson.

  In the West, however, a hero must ultimately be on the side of virtue. Even anti-heroes never turn out to be as bad as they look. Jean Gabin as Pepe le Moko, king of the casbah, is rather a good fellow underneath the tough exterior. James Cagney ‘turns yellow’ in front of the electric chair in ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’, to stop the neighbourhood boys from worshipping his memory. Such a deed would be unthinkable for a Japanese villain. Bad heroes in Japan need not have any goodness in them; they are as they present themselve
s.

  Susanoo, the Sun Goddess’s brother, was a true nihirisuto, breaking all the taboos. He was violent, pathologically anti-social and, like many nihirisuto heroes, finally condemned to a life of drifting as an outcast, although he was redeemed in his old age. And yet he is a popular deity. Badness is accepted as part of the human condition and Susanoo is a very human god. Because of this one feels that Japanese heroes are judged aesthetically rather than ethically. The bad man can be a hero as long as his behaviour, however murderous, has a certain kind of style; as long as he is kakko ii – bella figura.

  In a way the nihirisuto is like the super samurai, except that he is not a god on earth defending the weak against the bullies, but more an angel of vengeance striking at random. Some of the most celebrated nihirisutos are samurai. Most of them lived, in fantasy and fact, in that most ‘nihiru’ of times, the bakumatsu, the chaotic tail-end of the Edo period.

  The middle of the nineteenth century was a time of constant fighting, spying, police terrorism, radical fanaticism and endless intrigues. The foreign powers were pushing Japan to open her doors. The military government was collapsing under its own weight. Class barriers were breaking down and anti-Tokugawa samurai, mostly from the south, were grabbing for power.

  Little in this confusion made much sense to the population at large, for it was difficult to know just who was fighting whom – often the contenders themselves hardly knew, for loyalty was a fickle thing and allegiances were switched at the flash of a sword.

  One of the most typical nihirisuto heroes of the bakumatsu is the protagonist of a story, filmed many times, entitled The Great Buddha Pass’ (‘Daibosatsu Toge’): Tsukue Ryunosuke, a roaming sword-fighter whose only purpose in life is to kill people with one clean swoop of his well tended weapon. He is not on the side of anybody or anything; and he is not choosy about his victims, as long as he can practise his murderous skills.

  Fairness is irrelevant. Many of his victims, elderly pilgrims and the like, are entirely defenceless. This does not detract from his heroic stature; it just adds to the nihirizumu. What is important is that he has style. One of the most interesting film versions of the story was directed in 1957 by Uchida Tomu, a specialist in blood and gore; but blood and gore presented with great panache. The grotesque violence of the roaming killer is shown as a piece of wonderful kitsch: the screen goes blood red as heads are lopped off and bodies are sliced in half. The hero is the epitome of badness, lips curled in an evil leer, growling, ‘let’s see if my sword still cuts’, fondly caressing his blade. But he is also an artist and as such he is admired.

  Violence in these films is a combination of stylization and detailed realism, like late-Edo Kabuki. One can hear the bones crunching when a victim is being jumped upon – this example is actually from a children’s film; one can also hear the squelching sound of a sword entering a slit stomach; one can see an eye being dislodged or a face being consumed by flames.

  Violence is committed as a form of art for art’s sake. Bloodshed is aestheticized in a way hard to imagine in the West. Sam Peckinpah’s films come to mind, but he is enough of an exception to be controversial. I am not suggesting for a moment that aesthetic violence is uniquely Japanese, but in the West violence, like sex, needs an excuse, however spurious. (Or it becomes pure fancy, as in fairy tales or horror stories which, in any case, depend more on shock effects than graphic depictions of real violence.) Even Peckinpah could not justify cruelty in his films on purely aesthetic grounds, although he has been accused of being immoral. Under his macho exterior lurks an American puritan showing the violence that man is capable of in order to denounce it. He is hypocritical in so far as he (and his audience) obviously revels in the violence he publicly condemns. But then this kind of hypocrisy is very much part of our cultural heritage.

  Japanese aesthetes of cruelty do not feel the need to justify themselves in this way. Their aestheticism has nothing to do with morality, for they take the Wildean view that beauty is amoral, just as heroes, and indeed the gods themselves are amoral. Moreover, the pure gratuitousness of their cruelty shows, once again, the melancholy arbitrariness of fate. This does not mean that Japanese audiences are cruel or sadistic. They are perhaps more tolerant of extreme violence than is common elsewhere: ultra-violent television programmes for children seem to bear this out. The reason is that there are no absolute moral rules against it; unlike the Marquis de Sade, Japanese nihirisutos have no Christian morality to rebel against.

  In Japan violence is like sex: not a sin as such, but subject to social restraint. The only release from these restraints is asobi, play; the tougher the restraints, the more grotesque the play. Violent entertainment is a way of letting off steam as in a brothel, or even a religious festival. It is surely no coincidence that the gruesome paintings by such typical bakumatsu artists as Ekin (1813–76) should be used as temple decorations, to be viewed on festival days. His favourite subjects were the cruellest, bloodiest scenes of the Kabuki theatre, such as the bishonen Gompachi hacking his attackers to death or the noble retainer Matsuo watching his own child being murdered. Like Uchida Tomu’s films and the Kabuki theatre of his own time, Ekin’s paintings served as a release of aggressive energy suppressed by a disciplined and safe society.

  The Japanese concept of dramatic entertainment comes very close to Artaud’s theory on the theatre of cruelty: The audience can believe in the theatre as a dream; not as a copy of reality … They let themselves go in the magical freedom of their dreams. This freedom is recognized by the audience when it is coloured by fear and cruelty.’18

  As long as it is aesthetically pleasing. The Kabuki actor Bando Mitsugoro once said that ‘Kabuki is the art of presenting cruelty as a thing of beauty, as cruelty that doesn’t feel like cruelty’.19 Beauty, in other words, purifies it, and presumably, by doing so, purifies us too.

  There is an element of farce in all this. It is at first a little disconcerting to see people giggling in theatres and cinemas just as somebody is being cruelly tortured. Undoubtedly this is partly a natural reaction to break the nervous tension. It is also an aspect of what the Japanese like to call their ‘festival spirit’, matsuri no seishin. Indeed, the ultra-violent films, featuring nihirisuto heroes, are often advertised as ‘blood festivals’ (chi no matsuri), which is exactly what they are. Often these ‘blood festivals’ are farcical. The tradition goes back to the grotesque trickery in nineteenth-century Kabuki plays which was a form of slapstick, with artificial legs snapping and heads rolling, red and gruesome, across the stage. The cruelty, like sex in traditional pornography – called ‘comic art’ in the olden days – is simply too grotesque, too stylized, too extreme to seem real. Naturally people laugh, exorcizing the menace of real violence.

  Sato Tadao, referring to the work of a famous aesthete of cinematic violence, Suzuki Seijun, used the Buddhist term mujo,20 the transience of life, to describe this theatre of cruelty. Suzuki, whose films, quite consciously, have come to resemble the Kabuki theatre more and more, deliberately mixes farce with violence. In one classic film entitled ‘The Tokyo Drifter’ (Tokyo Nagaremono’), the nihirisuto hero is played by a popular teenage idol of the time (1966), dressed in an immaculate white suit. The final massacre takes place in a kitsch night-club, painted in glittering white to contrast prettily with the splashes of red blood. With every killing – shades of Uchida Tomu here – the strobe lights change from white to yellow, to purple, to bright, horror-show red.

  Suzuki himself relates his nihirizumu to his wartime experience. As he remembers it, life was not only cheap when he was sent with his friends to die for the emperor, but also totally absurd. Nothing made sense and the sight of death even seemed comical at times: ‘When they sunk your ship, you had to be saved by other ships. I shall never forget the sight of those men climbing up the ropes, swaying from side to side, hitting their heads all over the place. By the time they got on board they were black and blue … Some of them died, of course and they had to be buried at sea. Two sailors
would take the corpses on either side and the trumpets would go tatata and then they’d throw the corpse overboard: tatata, another corpse, tatata, another one … (laughs).’21

  It could be a scene from one of his films. He could not but become a nihirisuto, for whom humour and aesthetics are the only antidotes to the cruel fleetingness of life. The tragic sense of mujo can only be relieved by laughter. The pollution of violent death can only be purified by beauty.

  11

  Making Fun of Father

  It is axiomatic that every full-blooded Japanese hero loves his mother. But what about his father? Is he as much loved, or at least respected? Given the strong sense of family in Japan, one would have thought so. None the less, much in popular culture seems to suggest otherwise.

  About ten years ago a comic-book series called ‘Stupid Dad’ (‘Dame Oyaji’) appeared. It was meant for children, but as usual in Japan, it was very popular with adults. The contents of this comic are remarkable for their virulent sadism of which the victim, as the title implies, is always Dad. Dad is a sad little man with glasses and buck teeth, a little like a ‘Jap’ caricature in Second World War American propaganda films, dwarfish and ugly like a stunted fish.

  After spending his days bowing and scraping at a nightmarish office, Dad is tormented by his wife, a vicious, screaming harridan, nicknamed ‘the devil woman’. His son, a bald little horror and his daughter, a whining sadist, both happily assist their mother in acts of unspeakable brutality. In one typical episode the father is chained to a post like a dog. When he speaks, he is kicked in the head by his wife, who screams, ‘If you want something, go woof woof!’ ‘Yes’, he answers, cowering in the corner. This earns him another kick from his little son, screeching with glee.