Black Rose Mansion (1969, Jap w/ Eng sub)

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Hypnotic and entertaining Shochiku stylized melodrama, with Kabuki influence in that the female lead is played by a female impersonator. The unspoken irony is that this object of male desire and obsession is played by a man with a very male face, height, hands. His studied precision at mimicking traditional Japanese female characteristics makes the response of the male characters seem appropriately pathetic. Fukasaku's studied use of visual metaphor has a distancing effect. An odd, but fascinating film. Don't watch it for the plot. Watch it for the complex point of view and the lead's tour de force performance. It doesn't belong to the same category as the John Waters' films. There's no mockery here, self or other. 



This movie is basically a gorgeous showpiece for Akihiro Miwa (also known as Akihiro Maruyama), a famous female impersonator in Japan. Akihiro is a very interesting person who has written and published over 20 mind-opening books about his own life and philosophies. His stage presence, even if he doesn't fully pass as a woman physically, has the feminine mannerism down to a 'Kabuke' believability and he wears gorgeous clothes. This movie has been inadvertently lumped in with other 60's/early 70's foreign movies that mixed Poe with erotica and camp, like Vampiros Lesbos, Daughters of Darkness, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Its less a movie and more a well-choreographed documentation of a unique performer and a wild time-period, a time period was extremely complex. 

Miwa started his career as a professional cabaret singer in Ginza at the age of 17 when moving out to Tokyo in 1952. He started working in various nightclubs singing his favourite of the French chansons such as those of Édith Piaf, Yvette Guilbert and Marie Dubas, eventually getting a job at a specific club at which he worked continually for 40 years. His claim to fame came rather early in 1957, with a smash-hit called "Meke-Meke" which included a string of profanities not used in media at the time. He was also renowned for his effeminate beauty, making him a hit with the media. Miwa was the lifelong lover of Yukio Mishima. The relationship started in the cabaret when Mishima allegedly said to Miwa, "Maruyama, you only have one flaw. That you could never fall in love with me." 



Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author, poet and playwright, famous for both his highly notable post-war writings and the circumstances of his ritual suicide by seppuku (aka 'hari kiri'). Yukio was a prodigious writer who played a pivotal role in stylizing post-war Japanese literature through avante garde plays and novellas, as well as the classical Japanese theaters of Noh and Kabuki. After briefly considering a marital alliance with Michiko Shōda—she later became the wife of Emperor Akihito—he married Yoko Sugiyama in 1958. Nominated for 3 Nobel Prizes in Literature, Mishima was a devout Nationalist with an outspoken and anachronistic commitment to bushidō (the code of the samurai). Although Mishima actually denounced Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his claim of divinity at the end of World War II and that Hirohito should have abdicated and taken responsibility for the war dead, in 1967 Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), a private army composed primarily of young students who studied martial principles and physical discipline, and swore to protect the Emperor. It was with this personally trained army that he unsuccessfully attempted a coup d'etat to instill the Emperor to his former prewar powers after which he returned to the commandant's office and committed seppuku that included the customary kaishakunin (ritual beheading). An hommage to Mishima's life, 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' is an episodic, stylized 1985 film based on his life and works, directed by Paul Schrader and produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas while they were involved with Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha in Japan, where it has not been allowed official release to date. 



The director, Kenji Fukasaku, is more famous for his last film Battle Royale in which he completed production while dying of terminal cancer. Fukasaku's movies have been described as Japanese Kabuke meets Hammer's House of Horrors among which Black Rose Mansion typifies exquisitely. 



Knowing the historical subtext of the period made this film much more compelling viewing. Enjoy.

Production

Director: Kenji Fukasaku

Producer: Akira Oda

Writer: Kenji Fukasaku & Hirô Matsuda

Cast: Akihiro Miwa ... Ryuko (as Akihiro Maruyama)
Eitarô Ozawa ... Kyohei
Masakazu Tamura ... Wataru
Ayako Hosho ... Kyohei's Wife
Kô Nishimura
Kikko Matsuoka
Ryohei Uchida
Akira Jo ... Mulatto companion of Ryuko

Categories

Tags: japanese drama transvestite kuro yakata bara. akihiro desire. kabuki odd miwa torture

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Black Rose Mansion (Jap w Eng sub).mkv

215.53 MB

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