The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987)

“I like to make dramatic movies. I feel strongly about this, more than other directors. I love Hollywood action films, and I wanted Okuzaki to act like an action star. I want to make action documentary films.” – Kazuo Hara.

In my post, I’d like to present some selected, interesting material from Jeffrey Ruoff and Kenneth Ruoff’s 50-page monograph, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Cinetek, 1998). It contains facts, production details, and observations that might prove useful to the discussion. In order to use this space efficiently, let me present the material in the form of bullet points rather than an essay.

-- To begin with a few quotations from Hara:

“From my viewpoint, a documentary should explore things that people don’t want explored, bring things out of the closet, to examine why people want to hide certain things.”

“I did not go to college. I did not participate in the [60s and 70s student protest] demonstrations. I was on the outside looking in…The sense of failure among those who participated was strong. But I was not directly involved, so I don’t have this feeling of failure; I was always…on the outside, thinking to myself, ‘how wonderful.’ The 60s and 70s continue to shine in my mind.”

“My outlaw complex is very strong. I don’t feel that I’m in the middle of society. I am in the lower part. Those people on the bottom disdain those people in the mainstream. A movie director from the ‘bottom’ does not make movies that portray mainstream society nicely. I make bitter films.”

-- Ruoff & Ruoff: “The filmmaker does not passively record reality [referring both to Hara and Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985)], but rather provokes certain encounters. Of his methods, Hara later noted: “I am not the type of director to shoot something just happening [like a demonstration], but rather I like to make something happen and then shoot it.” His documentaries are like virtual collaborations — along the lines of the ethnographic fictions of Jean Rouch such as Moi, un noir (Me, a Black, 1957) — in which the director encourages the subjects to perform their lives for the camera. In Hara’s words: “There are two sides to people. The person one wants to be, and the person one is. I want the people in my movies to act the way they want to be.””

-- In the late 70s, Okuzaki asked Shohei Imamura to make a film about his life. Imamura initially considered a TV film about Okuzaki but then changed his mind when he realized that the project would be too controversial for television. He then suggested it to Kazuo Hara, who was his assistant cameraman on Vengeance is Mine and Eijanaika.

-- The film started out as something quite different: a broad portrait of the war generation. It was “only after the filming of ex-Sergeant Takami Minoru [scene 11, about a half-hour into the film, which confirms that the garrison leader Koshimizu shot one of his own men] did Hara narrow his focus to the murder of Japanese soldiers by their superior officers during the New Guinea campaign.”

-- R & R: “Okuzaki was as overbearing a star as any filmmaker could find. The director recalled that his outlandish subject was always fighting with the crew: “Some of the younger staff members quit. I, too, really came to dislike Okuzaki. He was chaotic. In the film he sounds logical only because of skillful editing. The way he speaks is often incoherent.” At numerous points during the shooting, the erratic veteran withdrew from the project. In one case, he threatened to burn all the accumulated footage in Tokyo.” [...]

“Shortly after the filmed encounter with ex-medic Hamaguchi Masaichi, Okuzaki disclosed his intention to murder one of his former officers, hoping to convince the director to record the homicide. “I want to kill Koshimizu and I would like you to film it”, the veteran told Hara. “No movie has such a scene in it. Having you film such a scene would be my greatest present to you.” Hara discussed the issue at great length with his lawyer, his producer and other directors. The filmmaker recalled: “This was a very delicate problem. I had to decide if I should film it or not. I still have not made up my mind. One reason that I didn’t film it is that I had become really sick of Okuzaki. I might have filmed it. Human beings have dark sides, and people want to see something frightening. People want to see the evil side of people. A little bit of me says I would like to see it. I went to speak with Imamura. His opinion was really different. He told me not to do it.””

-- The original Japanese title of the film is Forward, Divine Army. The English title was given not by Hara but by the Institute which provided grant money for striking 35 mm prints for theatrical release.

-- R & R: “Proud of his convictions, Okuzaki sees himself as a warrior in a crusade. Above all, he is a man of action, as Hara noted: “Okuzaki threw pachinko balls at the emperor. But intellectuals, you know, they debate ideas, but they can’t do anything.”” [...]

“Like the vigilantes of American detective films, he [Okuzaki] works for justice through extralegal means, outside a system he defines as corrupt. The protagonist of a hard-boiled crime story is typically, as John G Cawelti notes, “a private investigator who occupies a marginal position with respect to the official social institutions of criminal justice.” Like the classic action hero, Okuzaki has to resort to violence to bring the guilty to justice. Incapable of compromise, Okuzaki’s awkward nobility derives from the righteousness of his moral beliefs and the justness of his cause.”

-- Hara opts not to use techniques we often associate with historical documentaries like archival footage, eyewitness interviews, authoritative ‘Voice of God’ narration, and interviews with scholars or journalists. Bill Nichols sees such conventional historical documentaries (which can often be didactic) as contributing to the “discourses of sobriety.”

-- A few words about reception. Commercial distributors refused to handle the film, fearing attacks from right-wing protesters. But after a few short-run public screenings in Tokyo, word-of-mouth publicity spread like wild fire. It then played at an 80-seat art theatre in Tokyo for 3 months, with daily standing-room-only crowds.

A national controversy and debate ensued; the director joined it by writing an essay on the film in a leading Japanese film journal and publishing a 120-page making-of account.

-- The historian Akira Iriye pointed out that Okuzaki’s extremism mirrored that of the Japanese military: “His fanaticism—at one point he says, ‘the use of violence is justified for the good of mankind’—is reminiscent of Japanese wartime behavior, and it is possible to see in his facial expressions, stripped of surface civilities, the same combination of brutality and self-righteousness that impressed foreign observers of the Japanese army during the war.”

-- R & R on an ethical question: “If Okuzaki had not been the subject of the film, would he still have shot Koshimizu’s son, who committed no crime? Did the making of the documentary contribute to the wounding of an innocent man? Hara only inflamed the argument by candidly admitting that he considered filming the murder attempt after Okuzaki proposed it. Disturbed by his own morbid curiosity, Hara asked himself: “Is film God for me?””

-- Links: At Jeffrey Ruoff's site, an essay on the documentaries of Kazuo Hara that appeared in the journal Iris, and an interview with the filmmaker. Also, there's a review of the Ruoff & Ruoff monograph at Offscreen.