Oshima/Pusan/Soundtracks

[Chuck Stephens]

One of the top treats for me in Pusan this year was the series of 
Oshima Nagisa films from the late 60s dealing with Japanese/Korean 
identity issues: *Death By Hanging*, *Three Resurrected Drunkards* 
(Kaette Kita Yopparai*, 1968), *Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Song* 
(*Nihon Shunka-ko*, 1967; screened in Pusan under the alternate title 
"Sing a Song of Sex"), and *Yunbogi's Diary* (*Yunbogi no nikki*, aka 
*Diary of a Yunbogi Boy*). One of the most interesting aspects of the 
last three was Oshima's (dialectical, as always) use of American 
music, particularly folk songs, in counterposition with Japanese folk 
and pop songs, not to mention composer Hikaru Hayashi's haunting 
scores.

In the deeply weird poli-tragedy *Treatise*, the bawdy song of the 
title (which is a scabrous litany of  various approaches to sexual 
relations with various sorts of partners), as well as a haunting 
lament concerning a comfort woman's ministrations to her nightly 
visitors, is constantly being counterposed with period campfire 
classics like *This Land is Your Land*,  *Goodnight Irene* and 
*Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore*. The variety of cultural antinomies 
this sets in motion are quite staggering, not to mention impossible 
take in one sitting -- particularly in the midst of the film's 
hothouse/widescreen tableaux/atmosphere of death, destruction, 
violation and self-loathing. And sex. (The print was amazing, too: 
super-saturated colors bleeding from the screen.) Does anyone here 
know the title of the comfort woman song in the film, or anything 
about its history?

In the surrealist poli-comedy *Drunkards* (a film as Bunuelian as 
*Max, Mon Amour*, though pitched in an entirely different register), 
the members of the Monkees-esque Folk Crusaders re-enact the famous 
Vietnam War newsreel of the captured soldier being executed (bullet 
to the temple) by the officer who later went on to run a well-known 
restaurant in Georgetown (D.C.) while their Chipmunks-esque hit, from 
which the film takes its title -- a sped-up ditty about a dead 
drunk-driver who gets kicked out of heaven by an angry God (released 
in the States as "I Only Live Twice") -- plays on the soundtrack. The 
film is very much like Oshima's version of the Monkees' cine-curio 
*Head* -- just as "un-funny" but far more caustic. The group also 
sing another song in the film which seemed to have some Korean 
context, something about southern shores and flying birds, but I 
don't know the title; anyone?

*Yunbogi*, predictably, makes use of *Sometimes I Feel Like a 
Motherless Child* -- as clich? and period-specific as it as effective.

General questions:

Are these films available on DVD or VHS in Japan?

Are soundtracks to these films available on CD -- or are there 
Hikaru Hayashi CDs available that contain the scores he wrote for 
Oshima's films, or compilations of his soundtrack work generally?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has the time to check amazon.co.jp, 
or a like website, for leads; I've had little success searching in 
English.