Director: Shohei Imamura
Script: Shohei Imamura - Daisuke Tengan adapted from Ango Sakaguchi's novel
Cinematographer: Shigeru Komatsubara
Music: Yosuke Yamashita
Cast: Akira Emoto, Kumiko Aso, Jyuro Kara, Masanori Sera, Jacques Gamblin
Production: Imamura Productions, Toei Co. Ltd., Tohoku Shinsha
Distribution:
Tamasa Distribution
5 rue de Charonne
75011 Paris
01 43 59 01 01
[email protected]
Year: 1998
DCP, Colour, 128 min,
OV Japanese with French Subtitles
We are in Okayama, a small city on the sea side, on the eve of the surrender of Japan in 1945. Brave and dedicated Doctor Akagi keeps on going all over the country. He has diagnosed so many liver diseases that his patients start to have doubts about his competence. Yet, his peers acknowledge the value of his work. He is mainly supported by Umemoto, a debauched bonze, and Toriumi, a surgeon addicted to morphine. He decides to take Sonoko, a young prostitute, as his assistant if she agrees to stop selling her body. The Japanese army is annoyed by this doctor who puts soldiers to rest because of liver disease, while they would be useful to the country. His son, who is also a doctor, has been mobilised. Akagi and his friends take the risk of putting Piet up, a Dutch soldier who escaped from a prisoners' camp. In this tribute to his father, who was also a doctor, Shohei Imamura takes up the themes that are dear to him: Japanese imperialism during the Second World War, the atomic bomb, phallocracy and violence.
