By Rowena Aquino
Out in Los Angeles to promote Camera Obtrusa, a companion book to his 1987 film The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, director Hara Kazuo looks back at the film that made him a legend in documentary circles.
This year's Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival paid tribute to two highly significant and influential documentary films made in the 1980s: Renee Tajima and Christine Choy's Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) and Hara Kazuo's The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987). Hara's films stands solitary in its obsessive drive -- through its main protagonist, WWII veteran Okuzaki Kenzo -- to reveal and examine the continuing taboo subjects of Japanese war crimes and responsibility, and cannibalism. On the day of his film's screening, APA had the great opportunity to speak with Hara about the film. He was also on hand to present his English-language book, Camera Obtrusa, to be published officially in the US sometime in the summer.
When I think of Hara Kazuo and his work, "renegade" immediately comes to mind. One has to simply look at his films: in looking, you'll be hard-pressed to resist looking away at the same time. Hara's work is unflinching, and his documentary film subjects are equally so, if not more so, beyond ways that even Hara could have imagined. Images of a man with cerebral palsy naked in the middle of the street; a hard-fisted feminist, who was also Hara's first wife, giving natural birth in her apartment, filmed in real time; a WWII veteran and one of the few who survived the New Guinea campaigns in pursuit of war crimes by Japanese military officials -- these are just some of the people we get to know through Hara's films. As is obvious in the above scenarios, we get to know these people at the most intimate manner possible.
That is, indeed, the power of Hara's cinema: time and again in his films you get someone asking Hara or some other person a question like, "You just keep on shooting?" Hara's work tickles a host of ethical issues because they continually challenge the lines between private and public, fiction and documentary -- looking and looking away. The following interview gave us the chance to look again at The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On and its tumultuous production and reception history.
Interview with Hara Kazuo
May 5, 2009
Interviewed by Rowena Aquino
Onsite interpreter: Naomi Iwamoto
Transcription and translation by Ayano Takeuchi
On coming to VC and Camera Obtrusa:
Kazuo Hara: I have come to America several times already, and have had this kind of experience like Q&As or discussions in class at universities when a movie [of mine] came out. But there is always a time restriction. The movie, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, took five years to shoot, and while we were actually shooting an endless variety of things happened, which cannot be shown in the movie; only 10 percent [of what happened during production] is shown. So you cannot know the rest, 90 percent, even if you watch the movie. You know of icebergs, right? You can only see a part of it, the rest of which is so huge but you cannot see because it is below the ocean.
I have been thinking that I have to, at the same time want to, explain the unseen part of the movie because, if not, people cannot understand the movie, the 10 percent part. So I published a book [in Japanese] on the movie to explain the unseen part. I always wanted to publish an English version, too. Finally the publishing company Kaya helped me to publish the book.
Now I want to let people know that the book has just come out. This book covers the content of the two books that were already published in Japan. This book talks about the way of making four movies that I directed and the production notes of the movie, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On.
On the shooting of The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On:
KH: The way Okuzaki and I came to know each other is through a film director. Shōhei Imamura introduced me to Okuzaki, and we started out relationship. I basically can understand [Okuzaki’s] way of thinking, but it was difficult to get along with him. He wanted to control the movie-making, but it was I/we that was/were, in fact, in charge of the movie. But I cannot control all aspects of the production, because documentary movies require many people to work on it. So I cannot do whatever I want to. I had my opinion, and Okuzaki-san had his own opinion. Okuzaki-san wanted to control the production, which means that confrontations often happened between us.
When confrontations happened, Okuzaki-san became furious and ranted on me. And then I could not stand him, and developed a hatred towards him. Then we would argue, like “Shit!” or “Curse you!” This happened during the whole shooting. If you carefully watch the movie, you can perhaps tell that Okuzaki-san became frustrated with me since I did not always follow or obey him or say “yes” [to what he wanted to do].
We did not have physical fights. But even if it was only a quarrel, once we started fighting he would say, “Burn all the films!” This means that we had to stop shooting, not only once but many times. We stopped shooting and we almost broke up all relations with him. Even so, Okuzaki-san wanted to keep shooting, in his mind. But once he told us to stop shooting, we did so and went back to Tokyo. But after a period of time, he asked us to start shooting and we kept shooting. We usually got a call from him after a week or something, and went back to shoot. We repeated this kind of fight many times, and finally finished shooting in Japan. Then we moved to New Guinea.
On Filmmaking and Film Ethics with Okuzaki
KH:In New Guinea [during WWII], jimniku-jiken (eating human flesh-affair/case) happened, in which two people of the same group were killed and eaten. The younger sister and younger brother of the people were going along with Okuzaki-san [for the film]. But they had a fight with Okuzaki-san in the middle of shooting, and did not return again. Okuzaki-san then asked me to make my mother play the role of the younger sister [to accompany Okuzaki to get testimonies], which quite surprised me, you know, “Why should my mother do that?”
He wanted to know the truth of the case, even though he had to tell a lie [in the process] – I mean to have someone disguise themselves [as the siblings of the deceased soldiers]. I was so surprised by his strong will and also his idea of disguising somebody, which made me distrust him. I, of course, rejected the idea. Then he made his wife act the part of the younger sister and his back-up the younger brother. I filmed the scene where Okuzaki-san actually asked them to role-play so that people can know what happened. Okuzaki-san then went to ex-soldiers and tried to force them to apologize to the relatives, who were in fact pretenders. As I said earlier, I filmed everything but developed distrust and loathing toward him.
We did everything on our own, including money matters, which means that I could not pay enough money for the crew – just a little. We had an assistant director, who helped us because he thought this movie was worth doing. But as I told you already, Okuzaki-san got angry and told us to stop shooing or something, which caused fights between him and us, the crew. Then we felt uncomfortable and annoyed, and did not want to keep shooting. It was terrible.
When we visited ex-soldiers to interview, Okuzaki-san sometimes attacked them; other times he forced us to shoot without their permission, and forced them to talk about what actually happened [during the war]. We were there with him. So from the ex-soldiers’ perspective, we were the same as Okuzaki-san. We felt sorry for them and felt we were actually doing something bad for them. The assistant director developed more distrust than me toward Okuzaki-san. He could not stand him anymore and quit.
Footage Found and Lost in Indonesia, part I:
KH: Where Okuzaki-san wanted to go is basically the territory of Indonesia. Before going there we had to officially apply for permission. Unfortunately, there was a war, a National Liberation Front happening, in the area where Okuzaki-san wanted to shoot. We got to know about the war while looking for a lot of information. Then, people told us that money, I mean a bribe, could work in Indonesia. When we arrived at the airport, we gave an officer a bribe; otherwise we could not be allowed to bring a camera with us. There were two difficulties, one was the camera and the other was the war. So we were told that it would be difficult to shoot there. But, you know, when we gave money to the officer we were able to enter Indonesia. And we went to the place that Okuzaki-san wanted to go and shoot, actually. But the footage was taken away by an Indonesian officer at the airport.
We tried to take it back. What we did first is that a person told us that we ought to go to the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta and ask them to give back the footage. We, with Okuzaki-san, went to Jakarta, but they told us that it was not so easy to do that. They told us we ought to go back to Japan and ask the Foreign Ministry instead. So we went back to Japan and asked the Foreign Ministry, and they said yes. But they also said that it might take much time. So Okuzaki-san went back to Kobe, and I to Tokyo.
In Tokyo I visited Shōhei Imamura and he advised me that we could ask a Diet member to help us. We visited one of them together. The first Diet member told us that he could manage to deal with this problem but needed around 1,500,000 yen for recompense, and asked us to come to his place a couple of weeks later. So we went to his place after a few weeks later, and he introduced us to another member who had more power. But this time we needed more money for recompense, and the second member asked us to come to his office a few weeks later. Then, we went to his office again and he said that he would like to introduce us to another member, a third member. The third member asked for 5,000,000 yen as recompense.
At first, we thought we could manage to obtain 1,500,000 yen. But not 5,000,000 yen. So we had to give up getting help from Diet members.
Footage Found and Lost in Indonesia, part II:
KH: Around 6 months had passed since we came back from New Guinea, when Okuzaki-san decided to kill ex-company commander Koshimizu, and went to his place to kill him. We totally did not know anything about this.
When Okuzaki-san visited the ex-company commander, he was not there and his son came out instead of him. Okuzaki-san opened fire on him. I found out about this incident from TV news, after the fact. The TV news said that Okuzaki-san ran away. After three or four days, newspapers said that Okuzaki-san turned himself in to the police and was arrested. After his arrest, it turned out that Okuzaki-san was thinking about killing four other people – except for the ex-company commander’s son.
The TV news also said that Okuzaki-san told the police that he also thought about killing the Indonesian consular officer. Moreover, Okuzaki-san had sent a letter to the then president of Indonesia about the Indonesian military police confiscating the film, and that it should be returned to him; otherwise something worse would happen. That is, he sent his threat by letter and at the same time he tried to kill the consular officers. After his arrest, you know, this incident of course was reported, so that everyone could hear about it, including Indonesian people.
We tried to get back the film by ourselves, apart from Okazaki-san. In such a situation, however much money we would have paid, the film would not have gotten back to us. That is, Indonesia would not return the footage to us, never. We were eager to get it back, but it never happened.
On the Film’s Initial Reception
KH: When Okuzaki-san was forcing the ex-soldiers to talk about the facts [of what happened], we thought he was strong and mean rather than thinking he was doing something right. The ex-soldiers were overpowered by Okuzaki-san. That’s why we, the crew and me, were so worried that people would not want to watch it and ask, “What the heck is this movie!?”
However, once the movie screened people found funny what Okuzaki-san was doing in it, and started laughing at him. As I just now said, we had not known or been aware, even me, that there would be much humor in it. People kept laughing as the movie went on. I was quite surprised.
On Documentary Filmmaking, Influences…and Michael Moore
KH: It is so tough. Making documentaries always comes with the difficulty of money matters, so people struggle to deal with money. In Japan some people borrow money from their parents or friends, like us, but I think the way of getting funds depends on countries. Perhaps foundations put some money in productions in some countries, but this is not the case in Japan. That’s why we borrowed money from people. A lot of people do the same thing in Japan, among young people, too. All I can say is that people manage to get funding, struggling with a lot of difficulties, all over the world.
Michael Moore is different because he is good at making money.
Shōhei Imamura is a big name in Japan, so I cannot say that I have not learned anything from him. But in terms of documentary films, I think that I am influenced by documentary TV programs from late 1960s to 1970s. I would say that I am not only influenced by Shōhei Imamura, but also by TV programs altogether.
Published: Friday, May 22, 2009