• 黒蜥蜴 (The Black Lizard, 1968 film)

7/5/26 (Sun)

I decided to watch Fukasaku Shinji’s 1968 film of Mishima Yukio’s nutty detective comedy upon the death of its star, the cross-dressing Miwa Akihiro, just last week at the age of 91. The part in the original 1962 stage show was played by an actual female, the venerable Mizutani Yaeko, but Miwa (reputedly Mishima’s lover) became closely associated with the show over the years. Despite claims to the contrary, Miwa was not playing the role in drag, which implies some sort of parody, but in utmost seriousness as a woman in a Japanese tradition going back centuries. That fits the hall-of-mirrors free-flow of identities throughout, not least when Miwa disguises himself as a man – a Victor Victoria touch that highlights the moment in a way that actresses can’t touch. (Miwa performs here under his real name Maruyama, but I’ll refer to him below by his much better known stage name.)

In my play review, I noted that the work

centers on a female gang leader nicknamed the Black Lizard who seeks to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy jeweler as ransom in order to gain a prized diamond. Ace detective Akechi Kogoro has been charged with protecting the girl. The various machinations as the two move to outwit each other drive the plot, but the real story becomes the charged feelings that they develop for each other along the way.

The Lizard is obsessed with the ephemeral nature of human beauty, seeing the body as a victim of the corrosion of heart and soul. She wants people to be like her beloved gems, soulless and forever beautiful. Her solution is to murder young people at the peak of their splendor and stuff them so that they never deteriorate, keeping them on display in her House of Horrors. She initially wants to use the girl to get the diamond, but ultimately decides to embalm her as well. After her interaction with the detective, though, she feels that he is the first man who truly understands her. Thus humanized, she gradually falls in love with him. Meanwhile, Akechi has his own theories about evil and crime and is attracted to the Lizard as the personification of those ideals. He thus falls for her as well, but only as the perfect criminal, a character type.

All of which is interesting in theory but comes off just as self-conscious in the film as on stage. They thankfully remove some of the more risible dialogue from Mishima’s ever-talky script (the stage show is significantly longer), but the story is no more convincing. The idea of freezing a person’s physical presence at its peak form, like a human diamond, is loony in the first place, and the perfect specimen here is presented in the form of Mishima himself, who, having been stuffed and mounted, poses motionlessly half naked. Miwa had said in an interview, rebroadcast after his death, that Mishima’s interest in body building was sparked when Miwa kidded him for being small and scrawny (as well as ugly – seems rather rude). That may account as well for the prominence of his obsession with physical beauty in his works, such as Terrace of the Leper King. This preservation of his body on film (he had made a special appearance in the role on stage in the final performance of the original production) may have been just what he was seeking.

In any case, the film is stylish in presentation. Though not a typical piece for Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Battle Royale), he makes the most of his opportunities with flashy depictions of the Lizard’s disco-like lair, the exchange of the ransom for the daughter on the pier, and elsewhere. The Lizard’s costumes are appropriately glamorous. The film is more story-oriented and does not touch as deeply on the fluidity of identity, though the scenes are all there – the Lizard disguised as a man, the daughter as a doll, the woman as the daughter’s doppelganger, the policeman as the old man, and so forth. That theme is worn more lightly than in the original. I was hoping for a greater focus on the back-and-forth between the Lizard and detective to show their mutual respect, even affection, but that was not particularly evident here either.

Miwa had been insufferably bad when I saw him on stage (I walked out after the first two acts), but that may have been a function of the campy direction and his age (he was in his 70s). He actually comes off respectably in the film despite the closeness of the camera. I wouldn’t call it good acting, but he maintains a consistent style throughout that matches the weirdness of the plot. He does bring a flair to the role that certainly matched the estimable Nakatani Miki’s stage version. I haven’t seen Kyo Machiko’s take in the earlier film version, but Miwa has undeniably put his stamp on it. Mishima himself preferred this remake. I’m sorry now that I didn’t see Miwa on stage in his prime.

The acting elsewhere is not worth mentioning but was not out of line with the material. I’m not sure that Mishima’s intended theme is well served here, but the film is never boring. And that’s something.