The folks at Fantoma Films continue to impress and amaze avid fans of Japanese cinema with their ambitious release schedule devoted to the films of Yasuzo Masumura. They previously released
Giants and Toys (1958), his delirious pop satire of advertising focusing on three competing candy companies, and
Blind Beast (1969), a controversial tale of erotic horror which prefigures Nagisa Oshima's more graphic
In the Realm of the Senses (1976).
Manji (1964), the latest Masumura release on DVD from Fantoma, falls somewhere between
Giants and Toys and
Blind Beast in terms of its style and narrative, merging the wicked black comedy of the former with the sexual intensity of the latter. The story, told in a breathlessly paced series of vignettes, introduces us to Sonoko Kakiuchi (Kyoko Kishida), an unhappily married housewife who is currently enrolled in a private art school. It is through her painting class that Sonoko befriends Mitsuko (Ayako Wakao), a younger classmate who has unexpectedly aroused her sexual interest. The relationship between the two women soon develops into an intense erotic bond, with Sonoko enacting the part of the lovesick pursuer while Mitsuko willingly plays the object of desire. But the tables are quickly turned when Mitsuko introduces Sonoko to her neurotic boyfriend, Eijiro (Yusuke Kawazu), and Mitsuko finds herself being cruelly manipulated by the younger woman. Complicating the scenario is Sonoko's husband, Kotaro (Eiji Funakoshi), a seemingly stuffy lawyer who reveals his own pent-up sexual urges when he meets Mitsuko. If you think this is going to have a happy ending, then you don't know your Japanese cinema.
Manji, as the DVD box art so succinctly puts it, weaves "a web of desire, deceit, blackmail, blood oaths and suicide pacts."
Manji is an extremely faithful adaptation of the Japanese novel by Jin'ichiro Tanizaki, unlike Masumura's
Blind Beast which greatly altered Edogawa Rampo's original book in both plot and structure. According to Earl Jackson, Jr. who wrote the Fantoma liner notes for
Manji, "it shouldn't be surprising that Yasuzo Masumura made more adaptations of the work of Jin'ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) than any other writer. Both artists were preoccupied with the extremes of desire that were usually sublimated within the Japanese social order. They were interested in people who allowed their desires to redefine the means and end of human life. Tanizaki's and Masumura's chronicles of their subjects' ecstatic rush to annihilation, never becomes cautionary tales or morality plays. The consequences of the characters' choices are not seen as punishments but as the final revelation of the power of the drives that the characters embrace."
The
Manji DVD is presented in a new digital widescreen transfer (2:35:1) that is enhanced for 16X9 TVs and marks the U.S. debut of the director's cut. The extras include the original theatrical trailer, a photo and stills gallery and a Yasuzo Masumura biography and filmography. Fantoma is also releasing the DVD of
Afraid to Die, 1960 (we will review it in this section soon), Masumura's "yakuza" thriller starring the controversial Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima in the lead.
For more information on
Manji, visit
Fantoma.
By Jeff Stafford
