The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yukiyukite shingun) (1987)

Saw this terrific Japanese documentary last night. The director Hara Kazuo was also there in person providing some amusing anecdotes about Okuzaki (the main protagonist in the film) and answering questions about the film.

There were some shocking revelations in the film where these old men who were once soldiers posted in New Guinea during World War-II admit with great guilt and agony that they had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive under those hostile conditions. It began with eating the natives and the enemy soldiers but at some point they even began to even kill each other. The film brings out the contrast that while Okuzaki came away from New Guinea (where only 300 of the 1300 soldiers who went there returned alive) intensely angry with the Emperor for having put them in such a situation and wanting to do something about it, the others had quietly integrated themselves back into society despite feeling the same anger and guilt.

1. The blurb from the HFA, where I saw the film: "A true radical, Hara Kazuo has produced a series of shockingly personal documents which challenge the mores of postwar Japanese society through stark, revelatory modes of presentation. In The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, Hara turns his probing camera on Kenzo Okuzaki, a World War II veteran who served prison terms for murder and for shooting pachinko balls at the emperor. Okuzaki seeks out members of a squadron who were responsible for the death of two of their own soldiers. The pursuit grows stranger and more unexpected as Okuzaki becomes more aggressive in his tactics, physically attacking anyone who resists his inquiries. Although fully engaged in the filming process, Hara’s reserved, observational position allows his volatile subject to express his unpopular political position with reckless abandon."
   
   
2. For a good (thought dated) commentary on the film: "Filming at the Margins: The Documentaries of Hara Kazuo", Jefferey Ruoff and Kenneth Ruoff, Iris: A Journal of Theory on Image and Sound, no. 16 (Spring 1993), 115-126.