Volume 39, Number 16 · October 8, 1992
Bad Boy
By Ian Buruma
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956–1978
by Nagisa Oshima, edited and with an introduction by Annette Michelson, translated by Dawn Lawson
MIT Press/An October Book, 308 pp., $35.00
It is remarkable how often Japanese radicals turn to pornography. It is equally remarkable how often Japanese pornography tends toward cruelty and violence. The connection between Japanese politics and sexual violence, then, is something to explore. And the writings of Oshima Nagisa, former student activist, bad boy of the Japanese New Wave cinema, director of In the Realm of the Senses (perhaps the only intelligent hard-core porno film ever made), dandy, and TV personality, would be a good start.
Review, 4121 words
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