Dis­cov­er this clas­sic Japan­ese satire about cap­i­tal punishment

Nag­isa Oshi­ma, Japan­ese cinema’s fore­most icon­o­clast, is remark­ably dif­fi­cult to pin down. From project to project, his chameleon-like style adapt­ed to suit what­ev­er his cho­sen sub­ject mat­ter. In con­trast to the estab­lished Japan­ese mas­ters Yasu­jiro Ozu and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, whose for­mal tech­niques and mood can be spot­ted in mere moments of obser­va­tion, Oshi­ma sim­ply nev­er fit into a box.

This is all very fit­ting, as his oeu­vre is a rest­less one at odds with the soci­ety that sur­round­ed him. Oshima’s com­men­tary was nev­er more point­ed than in his 1968 mas­ter­piece, Death by Hang­ing, in which he skew­ers, by dark­ly com­ic means, Japan’s cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, her­itage and irre­spon­si­ble and unjust present.

The main tar­get here is cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Inspired by the true sto­ry of a Kore­an young man con­vict­ed of mur­der, whose pub­lished let­ters served as inspi­ra­tion to Oshi­ma, Death by Hang­ing begins in an exe­cu­tion cham­ber, where near­ly the entire film takes place. A man named R is guilty of rap­ing and mur­der­ing two women and is about to be hung. But he sur­vives the hang­ing and awakes with­out mem­o­ry of his crimes or his identity.

A pan­ic ensues as the offi­cials see­ing out the exe­cu­tion are at a loss. The doc­tor, chap­lain, edu­ca­tion offi­cer, and the oth­er on hand all scram­ble mad­ly to fig­ure out their next move. They decide they can’t hang R if he is no longer aware of what is hap­pen­ing. It would be wrong. Their solu­tion? To refresh his mem­o­ry by re-enact­ing the crimes in front of him.

The far­ci­cal yet infu­ri­at­ing sce­nario smacks of Dr Strangelove’s mix of absur­di­ty and pitch black view of human­i­ty. Oshima’s cam­era weaves around, cap­tur­ing the fran­tic head­less-chick­en behav­iour of the offi­cials, trans­form­ing the box-like space of the cham­ber into a Rubik’s Cube of twist­ing pieces that nev­er align. Begin­ning as doc­u­men­tary, segue­ing into a Brecht­ian the­atri­cal piece, and esca­lat­ing into sur­re­al­ism, Death by Hang­ing is a mad­den­ing satire that can be dif­fi­cult to laugh at with such high moral stakes. Oshi­ma bril­liant­ly unfolds Japan’s guilty con­science through his myr­i­ad char­ac­ters and their dubi­ous pasts and bias­es that become appar­ent as the film goes on.

The hypocrisy of jus­tice, Japan’s his­tor­i­cal mis­treat­ment of Korea(ns), and impe­ri­al­ist nation­al ide­ol­o­gy are all torn to bits here with con­sid­er­able aplomb. The most dis­con­cert­ing char­ac­ter of all may not be the yap­py edu­ca­tion offi­cer, who takes plea­sure in act­ing out rape and vio­lence, nor the oth­er author­i­ties who glee­ful­ly take part in the obscene role play, but rather it is the pros­e­cu­tor who stares blankly ahead, a silent wit­ness for most of the film who appears unmoved by the goings-on.

An instru­ment of Japan’s con­for­mi­ty, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the nation’s sup­pressed uncon­scious, approv­ing of what­ev­er is deemed best by the pow­ers that be. The film remains chill­ing­ly poignant today, and its themes extend beyond the speci­fici­ty of Japan­ese soci­ety to any­where where bureau­cra­cy and insti­tu­tion­alised vio­lence reign over human­i­ty. Death by Hang­ing is a sin­gu­lar and vision­ary mas­ter­piece that stands as one of the great­est Japan­ese films of the ​’60s.

The film is avail­able on DVD and Blu-ray now from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion and fea­tures an insight­ful 30-minute inter­view with Asian cin­e­ma expert Tony Rayns, who sharply clar­i­fies the film’s ideas, as well as Oshima’s short 1965 doc­u­men­tary, Diary of Yun­bo­gi, based on his own pho­tographs tak­en in Seoul, South Korea, where he had strik­ing encoun­ters with impov­er­ished street children.