Takeshi Kitano interview

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Chris Perrius posed some very good questions about _Hana-bi_ a while ago, 
but I, getting caught up with the start of classes here, ended up 
delaying my response.  Sorry about that.

>Thank you for your wonderful comments on Takeshi's work.  I
>recently viewed Hana-Bi, and it was the first Takeshi film I've
>seen.  Could you say more about this film's variations on the
>usual stylization of violence in Takeshi's work?  Stillness, at
>least slow motion w/o sound, and deadpan faces seemed to be
>characteristic of the style of violence in this film.

I think it is fair to call _Hana-bi_, as many are calling it here, a film 
that summarizes a lot of Kitano's work.  It contains many elements from 
his previous films or builds on others.  Thus it in no way drastically 
differs from the films he has made before.  Much of the violence depicted 
here is the same, but I would contend there are two differences.  One is 
precisely what Chris points out:

>	Another opposition playing out in the film is
>tenderness/violence.  Nishi fondles some rocks, gently takes
>leave of his wife, then walks over and smashes the thugs faces
>with the rocks.  The cops are differentiated from the yakuza by
>the tenderness of their friendships, which justifies their
>violence as protection of or revenge for loved ones. The two
>qualities fuse in the 'mercy killing' of the wife (also where
>his need to escape his debts conveniently coincides with the
>doctor's suggestion to take the wife on a final trip).  

Except for _Violent Cop_ (which I find as problematic as _Hana-bi_), much 
of the violence in Kitano is not justified by the feelings of revenge or 
the desire to protect a loved one.  True, such "motivations" do exist in 
previous work, but as I have argued before, we have characters being 
drawn who are largely empty, deviod of a full inner life, who mostly 
exist only as blank outer faces--who do not possess a clear identity.  
With such characters, we can never fully sense (less identify with) their 
emotions which motivate their violence.  Violence becomes mechanical, 
often arbitrary, and thus all the more unpredicatable and frightening.

_Hana-bi_'s biggest difference is its greater effort to depict inner 
emotions: here we have characters with an inner life, an inner 
identity--people we can identify with as full individuals.  The key 
character here is, I think, Nishi's wife.  It is her smile when he rings 
the bell in the temple, or when they play with fireworks, that gives her 
a psychology which I don't think is fully present in any of Kitano's 
films (even Takako in _A Scene at the Sea_ is much more abiguous an 
existence).  That psychology reflects on Nishi who himself is then 
presented as having strong emotional motivations we just don't see in 
previous films.  

>	I find her silence disturbing, but as it's not
>differentiated from any authorizing male voice, I think it
>would be reductionist to read it as gender oppression.  To
>counter that this is the wily ideology of the film--to justify
>or 'naturalize' violence against a woman through plot devices
>including her terminal illness, Nishi's traumatic loss of voice,
>etc--may be the same kind of reductiveness...Her passivity must
>be the most disturbing, but she is dying...  

Silence is, given _A Scene at the Sea_ (featuring two deaf mutes), a 
recurring element in Kitano's work.  It even extends to many of the 
characters who can talk: Masaki in _Boiling Point_, for instance, is just 
about as untalkative as Nishi is (who does not have a line, if I remember 
correctly, until about 20 minutes into the film).  Silence figures in his 
work both as a "return" to silent film (but without its complex 
constructions of character) and as a means of depriving his characters of 
the "voice" that expresses an inner, developed psychology or identity.

Silence becomes more problematic, however, when it is doubled with a 
greater effort to depict inner psychology as in _Hana-bi_.  Silence then 
ceases to be "normal" (as it was in his previous work), and now becomes 
the result of trauma or repression.  True, men like Nishi seem to suffer 
the same "illness" (though clearly not as much), but I still can't easily 
accept the fact that the character who is murdered at the end is the one 
given the least opportunity to talk (and her last words are, I must 
admit, all too typical of the stereotype of the Japanese wife: apologetic 
and passive) is a woman.   _Hana-bi_ by itself may not seem so bad, but 
when connected to _Violent Cop_ (which has the same "mercy killing," but 
revolves around patently patriarchal notions of the male possession of 
female sexuality), the issue of patriarchal authority over the wife seem 
in no way challenged.

It might be important to point out that reports about the film long 
before it was made had Takeshi proclaiming it would be the first one to 
focus on a female character.  I think some of the dissappointment 
colleagues had about the film was in part a result of that.

Last, I would argue there is an authorizing male voice in the film: not 
Nishi's, but Takeshi's.  To repeat myself a bit, I do think one of 
_Hana-bi_'s big differences is the fact it does not work to undermine or 
deconstruct the image of "Takeshi" himself.  This is a film where 
"Takeshi" dominates almost every scene, especially with the inclusion of 
his paintings (which render Horibe into a mirror of himself).  True, the 
Horibe/Nishi opposition represents a certain conflict in Kitano himself 
(he has said it represents himself before (Nishi) and after (Horibe) his 
accident), but Horibe's mastery of the narrative (his ability to "paint" 
Nishi's "jiketsu"), coupled with the frankly conventional depiction of 
his status as an artist, clearly make _Hana-bi_ Takeshi's post-accident 
declaration of his status as an auteur, a status that itself is not 
contested by the film.  It is in opposition to this male authorial voice 
that the writing of the main female character can also be considered 
disturbing. 

>	To focus specifically on the final scene, I wonder about
>the girl with the kite who witnesses the 'shinjuu' on the beach
>(how would it fit in the double suicide tradition?)... Nishi
>seems to delight in destroying her kite--read: 'Nishi is
>sadistic to women' or 'Nishi says that women should not
>have idealistic illusions'?  These are not mutually exclusive,
>of course, but both are  complicated by the whole road trip, the
>'gift' of romance he gives her before her death.    I find it
>all quite complex and provocative...

Frankly, I have no clear answer about the status of the girl.  Clearly 
Nishi's mischeif here is a continuation of the kind he commits throughout 
the film: with the boys playing ball, with the bell, etc.  It represents 
both his individuality and lack of respect for conventions, and is very 
typical of Takeshi's humor as a comedian.  It also rings out as a 
"Takeshi" moment since the girl there is played by Kitano's daughter in 
real life (who is using this to debut into the geino world).  It does 
also reflect, in some ways, the sadism of much of Takeshi's humor: even 
though he is the butt of some of his gags, the majority (especially the 
cases of physical humor (usually involving inflicting pain) are directed 
at others (that is one of the functions of the Gundan).  The scene still, 
I believe, reinforces Takeshi's authoritative status (as author, as in 
power) right before another manifestation of that status.  But as you 
said, it is quite complex and worthy of further analysis (as is much of 
_Hana-bi_).

The comparison with the shinju tradition is an interesting one.  I would 
argue a difference with the classical tradition represented in Kabuki 
given that, in such plays, the male character was inevitably a nimaime 
character who, by definition, is feminine and weak (compared to the 
tateyaku characters).  Even if he is the one to initiate the suicide, 
there is always the implication that this is all the result of his lack 
of manliness (a tateyaku would never commit double suicide).  Nishi, in 
contrast, is definitely not a nimaime character.  Even if he is pressed 
by his imminent arrest, his suicide is self-generated (Nishi, as a 
version of Kitano, is as much of a "director" of the narrative as Horibe) 
and a product of his control over the situation.  Their deaths, one the 
one hand, do represent Kitano's continuing view that life and death are 
not distinct, but they also, as Kitano has implied in interviews, 
represent the kind of "action" lacking in Japanese today (such statements 
disturbingly refer to right-wing violence).

I'm afraid my failure to respond to Chris's questions may have dampened 
the Kitano discussion that had started a while ago.  Maybe now that a few 
more people have seen _Hana-bi_, we can talk a bit more about this 
complex film.

Aaron Gerow
YNU