Another strange one from Suzuki Seijin an off beat and strange account of the making of a young fascist in Japan in the 1930’s. And told with Suzuki’s characteristic strangeness. And this was actually supposed to be the first of 2 films based on the book by Suzuki Takashi, and the second half would have had the hero Kiroku Nanbu joining the army and dying in battle in China, but this was Zuzuki’s last film for Nikkatsu. This is a bizarre one for sure, with actors in their 20’s portraying middle school kids.

Review Contains Spoilers.

Nanbu Kiroku (Takahashi Hideki) is a middle school student in the city, living at a Catholic boarding house where there is a beautiful daughter of the owner, a talented piano player named Michiko (Asano Junko). She also likes him, but he is a bad boy, and with his raging hormones gets into many fights, joining a bunch of militant rowdies in the school, but fights back when they try to bother him for liking Michiko. He has been fight trained by a mechanic named Turtle (Kawazu YUsuke) who helps in his scraps, though his father Nanbu Yoshino (Miyagi Chikako) tries to help with Michiko’s help. Even when he starts masturbating on Michiko’s piano he can’t stop getting in fights because he is filled with thoughts of lust for this woman he sees as an angel. After going too far at school, and insulting the army he and Turtle must leave, and he runs to Aizu prefecture, but finds no authority figure that can control him, and he fights and beats everyone, though he does see a mysterious stranger at a bar run by the sensual haiku writing Misa. We learn at the closing that this man was Ikki Kita (Midorigawa Hiroshi) author of a notorious book that called for a Nazi-style reconstruction of Japanese society and imperial expansion overseas. Michiko comes to him and tells him she loves him, but is joining a convent because something is wrong with her, and not to follow her or she will die, and she is trampled by soldiers in the snow, and wanders off, as Kiroku heads to Japan to join the rebellion that has started in tokyo by Ikka Kita (the real person was executed in 1937 for starting the rebellion).

The film is in gorgeous black and white and in cinescope which Suzuki always used so well to his advantage, with excellent and off-throwing editing, such as quick jump cuts to supposed authority figures talkign about the Aizu Spirit, but quickly returning to the wide shots.

As the liner notes say (always excellent in Criterion DVD’s) “This is, after all, an “elegy” for all the testosterone spilled in the Pacific War.”

It is just too bad the sequel was never made!