Dis­cov­er the eth­i­cal out­rage of this erot­ic Japan­ese drama

“Did you see Masao?” 21-year-old Yuri asks the house boy Iwashita near the begin­ning of Akio Jissôji’s This Tran­sient Life. ​“He’s in a rush these days,” Iwashita replies. ​“Today too.” It is clear that Yuri’s broth­er Masao – always on the move, hard to pin down – is going to embody the fugi­tive nature of time to which the film’s title alludes, as he eludes the more tra­di­tion­al, con­ser­v­a­tive lifestyle that his busi­ness­man father tries to lay down for him under the loud-tick­ing grand­fa­ther clock in their Kan­sai home.

The first on-screen appear­ance of Masao in the film sees him climb­ing over a wall, with a ​‘no tres­pass­ing’ sign clear­ly vis­i­ble in the fore­ground. It is not Masao’s last act of trans­gres­sion, as not only does he defy his father’s wish­es for him to join the fam­i­ly busi­ness or even to study in uni­ver­si­ty, but he soon engages in an inces­tu­ous affair with Yuri, who is her­self resist­ing her par­ents’ attempts to mar­ry her off. And after he even­tu­al­ly takes an appren­tice­ship with mas­ter sculp­tor Yasu­ta­ka Mori in Kyoto, he engages first in an affair with Mori’s wife, Reiko, and then in a menage à trois with them both.

An earnest, angry young man with an epi­cure­an streak, Masao believes, as he tells Mas­ter Mori’s son, Takahi­ro, ​“Peo­ple should do what­ev­er pleas­es them; it’s because peo­ple sup­press their desires that the world has become so com­pli­cat­ed.” Masao also has his own con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tude towards reli­gion – he does not believe in the Bud­dhist con­cepts of heav­en or hell, but nonethe­less devotes him­self to carv­ing and sculpt­ing images of Bud­dha, lead­ing his neigh­bour Ogi­no (who is a monk) to point out the irony that Masao seems more inter­est­ed than Ogi­no him­self in Buddhism.

This Tran­sient Life was Jissôji’s direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture debut, although he had pre­vi­ous­ly helmed episodes of the sci-fi/hor­ror TV series Ultra­man and Operation:Mystery!, and the 1969 short film Yoiya­mi Semara­ba, writ­ten by Japan­ese New Wave colos­sus Nag­isa Oshi­ma. This lat­ter con­nec­tion marked the begin­ning of Jissôji’s asso­ci­a­tion with the New Wave pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Art The­atre Guild, for which he went on to direct a loose trip­tych of films (This Tran­sient Life, Man­dara and Poem) that became known as ​‘the Bud­dhist tril­o­gy’. These were all writ­ten by Oshima’s reg­u­lar writer Toshirô Ishidô, who worked on Oper­a­tion; Mys­tery!, and also penned Oshima’s The Sun’s Bur­ial, Night and Fog in Japan and The Catch.

All three films in the tril­o­gy are linked the­mat­i­cal­ly by a con­cern with mask-wear­ing, sex­u­al trans­gres­sion and the place of reli­gious and/​or famil­ial devo­tion in a chang­ing Japan. They also prac­ti­cal­ly define messy cin­e­ma: inde­fin­able, at times impen­e­tra­ble films that aes­theti­cise the inde­cent, jux­ta­pose the irrec­on­cil­able and stylise the irrational.

Boast­ing three cin­e­matog­ra­phers (Yuzo Ina­ga­ki, Masao Naka­bori, Kazu­mi One­da), This Tran­sient Life offers a mosa­ic of flu­id track­ing shots, close-ups, cant­ed angles and uneasy pro­files, all filmed in crisp mono­chrome and cut up by edi­tor Yoshi­hi­ro Yana­gawa in a jumpy fash­ion to sug­gest imagery as desta­bilised and fleet­ing as the film’s mod­el of the world.

Two lengthy con­ver­sa­tions at a monastery between Masao and Ogi­no, piv­otal to the film’s dialec­tic on the­ol­o­gy and moral­i­ty, are chopped up in such a way that they become jar­ring­ly dis­lo­cat­ed, under­min­ing the pious sureties of Ogino’s world­view – even as, in the over­ture of their first sex­u­al encounter, Masao and Yuri run through their large fam­i­ly home wear­ing ances­tral Noh masks that oblit­er­ate their indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ties while also fix­ing them in both a domes­tic and artis­tic tradition.

There is no ques­tion that Masao’s two affairs rep­re­sent a shock­ing assault on con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese val­ues, but his crit­ics are exposed as hyp­ocrites. The eth­i­cal out­rage that Ogi­no express­es at Masao’s inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship with Yuri is tem­pered by the monk’s own lust for Yuri, and by the plea­sure that he appears to derive from spy­ing on the sib­lings’ sex. Mean­while, Takahiro’s vio­lent objec­tion to Masao’s three­somes with Mas­ter Mori and Reiko is under­mined by the rev­e­la­tion that Takahi­ro has been and still is him­self sex­u­al­ly involved with Reiko, his own mother.

The film explores the moral ques­tion sur­round­ing Masao’s actions and atti­tude, and cer­tain­ly does not shy from show­ing their con­se­quences. But Masao’s own per­son­al rejec­tion of good and evil lends him pre­cise­ly the sort of sub­lime indif­fer­ence that is nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with, iron­i­cal­ly enough, the Bud­dha whose image Masao obses­sive­ly carves, and whose tenets he has long since dis­avowed. These con­tra­dic­tions are all symp­toms of an imper­fect world in a con­stant state of transition.

Like Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, This Tran­sient Life ends with its anti-hero on a beach, con­front­ed with an out­sized fish. In this case, Masao is with his (late) grand­moth­er, and in the bel­ly of the gigan­tic carp that he helps her dig up from the sand there are stones paint­ed with the names of peo­ple from Masao’s his­to­ry. It’s a strange sequence, a dream encroach­ing with­out warn­ing upon the film’s real­i­ty, and per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing Masao in a state of inter­me­di­a­cy, between land and sea, past and future. There he is, in a rush, on the move, evad­ing even inter­pre­ta­tion itself.

This Tran­sient Life won the Grand Prix at Locarno, becom­ing the crown and glo­ry of the Art The­atre Guild, yet it has sub­se­quent­ly van­ished from view, lost amidst the count­less oth­er waves wash­ing against Japan’s shores. So its redis­cov­ery and rere­lease are very welcome.

This Tran­sient Life is released, along with Man­dara and Poem, as part of the three-disc Blu-ray set Akio Jis­sôji: The Bud­dhist Tril­o­gy, by Arrow Films on 27 August.