Soldier's Lament

A private in a Japanese World War II regiment has shot at Emperor Hirohito with a slingshot for atrocities commited during the war. He drives a van whose every inch is painted with messages of the emperor's betrayal and the need of consolation for those men reportedly killed after August 14th, 1945, the day the war officially ended. They are his friends, but some of them he did not know at all. He has been jailed over 13 years for acts committed that for him hold the burden of consoling the dead. When he is pulled over in his van by angry drivers and police, he speaks to them through a bullhorn apparatus mounted on the top of his vehicle. He is prepared for all of it.

In this documentary (Yuki Yukite Shingun/The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On) we watch Kenzo Okuzaki confront the men who committed these murders and the men who gave the orders to kill them. He beats them in their homes when they will not speak to him, and the ones laying bed-ridden in the hospital after some operation, he slanders and tells them they have gotten what they deserve.

During his time with these men we learn that the privates were "executed" not so much because they had betrayed their regiment as was reported, but because they were to be eaten by the rest of the regiment stationed in the foodless jungle of New Guinea. They were chosen because they were the lowest ranking men. Ozuzaki has brought with him the brother and sister of one of these cannabalized men as a means of provoking these sergeants into a confession of the truth of what happened. When the relatives cannot continue, or are unwilling to go along, Ozuzaki has his wife, or an old friend of his, to go along with him to play the role of the grieved relative.

The film is often used to draw out a discussion of the ethics and responsibilities of the documentary filmmaker. Why did he not come to the aid of the man being beaten? Why did he allow Ozuzaki to lie to these men as a means to wheedle the truth from them? At the end of the film Ozuzaki tells us he will contnue to use violence if necessary as a means to console the souls of the dead. We learn that, years later, Ozuzaki, in an attempt to kill one sergeant, has shot his son instead. He is back in jail. Perhaps the filmmaker, like Ozuzaki, believes the atrocites committed warrant the methods used or needed to uncover the truth.

But to watch this film and ask these formal questions seems to me a way to avoid talking about its content. (Although, the dilemma of whether or not it is acceptable to use violence and deception to have war criminals confess implicates, if not incriminates, the viewer through every minute of the film. Is their an argument to be made for Ozuzaki's moral fury?--is an important and untimely question given our general all-around agreed upon post-ideological and ethics-avoiding 'daily-life.') This film is not a general warning that needs to be understood on a global scale in order to prevent an imminent disaster. Although, it is certainly that too, this film makes that point crystal clear by offering the viewer the unique, fundamental nausea at the sight of the malice with which humans attempt to culturize their own internecine slaughter. Its when that truth has an embodiment in persons with families, houses, and dinner-times that it suddenly becomes something much more horrifying than any inconvenient truth.