High school is hell in Isao Yukisada’s Go | Little White Lies

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High school is hell in Isao Yukisada’s Go

22 May 2023

Words by Anton Bitel

A young man wearing a black suit and tie stands on a train platform, with passengers visible in the background.
A young man wearing a black suit and tie stands on a train platform, with passengers visible in the background.
A teenage mis­fit is chal­lenged by a new school and local bul­lies in this cult clas­sic Japan­ese com­ing-of-age film.

Isao Yukisada’s Go has three begin­nings. The first is a text quote from Shake­speare: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any oth­er name would smell as sweet”. Com­ing from Romeo and Juli­et, this sug­gests that we are about to watch a trag­ic romance between mis­matched lovers.

The sec­ond shows pro­tag­o­nist Sug­i­hara (Yosuke Kunozu­ka) – though that is not his real’ name – being iso­lat­ed and bul­lied on a school bas­ket­ball court by the oth­er play­ers. As he recites in voiceover the main­stays of Japan­ese ide­ol­o­gy and iden­ti­ty – Race, home­land, nation, uni­fi­ca­tion, uh, patri­o­tism, inte­gra­tion, com­pa­tri­ots, good­will” – only to dis­miss them all with the words, Makes me sick”, he turns roar­ing on his per­se­cu­tors, kick­ing and punch­ing his own team­mates, the play­ers on the oth­er side, and even the adult coach­es, before his nar­ra­tion declares, incon­gru­ous­ly amid all the vio­lence, This is my love story.”

The third, set three years ear­li­er, shows Sug­i­hara engag­ing in a dan­ger­ous game, known as the Super Great Chick­en Race’, on the Tokyo sub­way, as he out­runs an approach­ing train on the tracks and flees with his school­mates, only to be arrest­ed out­side by pur­su­ing police. Here Sug­i­hara is all at once fear­less, fugi­tive and unstop­pable – at least until he is stopped.

This trip­tych of sequences estab­lish­es both the key themes and the over­rid­ing tone of Go. For this is to be a vibrant­ly dynam­ic com­ing-of-age sto­ry, play­ing out Sugihara’s rebel­lious ado­les­cence and con­fused sense of iden­ti­ty with equal speed and swag­ger, even as it switch­es between Sugihara’s dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences at the high school he was at in the recent past, and the one he is in now. And it will also, as Sug­i­hara insists, be a love sto­ry. Most of all, though it is a por­trait of Japan­ese soci­ety at its most insu­lar, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and exclu­sive, where a mis­fit like Sug­i­hara will always strug­gle to find his place.

A young man wearing a black suit and tie stands on a train platform, with passengers visible in the background.

Sug­i­hara is a Zainichi, or Kore­an-Japan­ese, and his inner con­flicts and con­fu­sions are very much a prod­uct of his upbring­ing and envi­ron­ment. You didn’t have to go to fam­i­ly court – be grate­ful”, his North Kore­an father Hideyoshi (Tsu­to­mu Yamaza­ki), an ex-pro box­er, tells his son after giv­ing him a vicious, bloody beat­ing at the police sta­tion. Say thank you,” adds his Japan­ese moth­er Michiko (Shi­nobu Otake). Sug­i­hara has learnt bru­tal­i­ty ear­ly, both at home and beyond – and the love/​hate rela­tion­ship that he has with his father extends to the coun­try where he was born but bare­ly belongs.

Much as Hideyoshi reluc­tant­ly changes his nation­al­i­ty from North to South Kore­an to make it eas­i­er to take a hol­i­day to Hawaii, Sug­i­hara insists on chang­ing from his North Kore­an junior high school in Tokyo (where only Kore­an can be spo­ken, and where teach­ers impart lessons with their fists) to a Japan­ese high school whee he hopes to become more nat­u­ralised. Yet like his father, Sug­i­hara will nev­er be ful­ly accept­ed, and when he finds him­self bul­lied by the very Japan­ese pupils with whom he had been try­ing to inte­grate, he dis­cov­ers the util­i­ty of the fight­ing skills that Hideyoshi has passed down to him.

Sugihara’s mar­tial prowess and gen­er­al recal­ci­trance attract the atten­tion of fel­low pupil Saku­rai (Ko Shibasa­ki), who recog­nis­es this out­sider as cool’ – but as their rela­tion­ship blos­soms, its taboo nature as for­bid­den love comes to the fore. Sug­i­hara, nick­named Stu­pid’ by his Zainichi friends, and real­ly called Lee Jong-ho before he adopt­ed a more Japan­ese-sound­ing name, will learn that he does not in fact smell as sweet by any of these names. For while he can some­times pass for Japan­ese, he will always, once his iden­ti­ty is revealed, be an impure for­eign­er in xeno­pho­bic Japan, and so must play Romeo to Sakurai’s Juli­et, and face a gen­er­alised racism that even she has thor­ough­ly internalised.

Adapt­ed by Kazu­ki Kaneshi­ro (him­self a Zain­ishi) and Kankuro Kudo from Kaneshiro’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 2000 nov­el of the same name, Go was the first joint Japanese/​South Kore­an pro­duc­tion, and received a simul­ta­ne­ous the­atri­cal release in both coun­tries, even as it uses an unortho­dox roman­tic frame to find rap­proche­ment between the two nations (three real­ly, as Sug­i­hara shares his pari­ah sta­tus with that of his father’s home­land, North Korea). Of course, every teenag­er at times feels like an out­cast both at home and abroad – but Sugihara’s awk­ward, often bru­tal rites of pas­sage reflect in reverse the grow­ing pains and imma­ture iden­ti­ty of an island nation more than capa­ble of alien­at­ing even those who were born there.

Go comes with a hap­py end­ing of sorts, on a snowy Christ­mas Eve whose clichéd choco­late-box nature even Saku­rai acknowl­edges – but even if ulti­mate­ly this cou­ple will over­come their dif­fer­ences and find love togeth­er again, the exam­ple set by the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, with Kore­an Hideyoshi and Japan­ese Michiko repeat­ed­ly split­ting up and reg­u­lar­ly unhap­py, sug­gests that a rocky road lies as much ahead of as behind our star cross’d lovers.

Go is released on Blu-ray by Third Win­dow Films, 22nd May, 2023.

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