• 飼育 (The Catch)

9/8/18 (Sat)

An unforgiving 1961 satire of Japanese society by the ever-radical Nagisa Oshima based on a story by Oe Kenzaburo. A group of dirt-poor villagers toward the end of WWII capture a black US pilot whose B29 has crashed nearby. (The setup itself is unlikely since blacks were nowhere near Japan at the time due to segregation issues in the US, but I assume the author wanted something super-exotic.) The mere presence of the outsider, who is almost never shown speaking, causes havoc in the village given the cost of maintaining him and a sense that he is unlucky: some want to kill him, others want to keep him in hopes of a big reward, the children are fascinated by him (at one point, they plant rice with him), others are repelled by him. The plethora of problems among the villagers long predating the foreigner’s arrival, including theft, alcoholism, infidelity, a lack of sexual outlets for guys (with the inevitable consequences) and constant bickering, has made relations difficult. The presence of a foreign enemy – perhaps more so with a black foreigner – offers a convenient scapegoat. Everything in the end is pinned on him, and the community is determined to do something about it. Two children try desperately to protect him but are eventually brushed aside as the community’s verdict is rendered – just before the news arrives that the war is over. A Japanese youth who had gone underground to avoid the draft is also brutally punished, not for his lack of patriotism but for fear in the community that they will be held to blame. The community members spend more time thinking up excuses for their actions than reflecting on them. Civilization quickly unravels into barbarism.

The film is known in English as “The Catch”, but the Japanese title refers to an animal being bred in captivity, which seems more appropriate. The film is an uncompromising look at raw emotions and primal fear in extreme situations. Some scenes are unrealistically extreme, like the rape by the draftee, and there are tedious touches like the madwoman that should have been left on the cutting room floor. But the point gets across. An interesting film.

Warning: The subtitles use a rather un-PC word for kuronbo, an unflattering slang word for blacks, but I think it’s accurate enough. (I understand that the phrase in the original novel was corrected in a new translation simply to “black person”, which seems somewhat tame.)