Grass Labyrinth

Grass Labyrinth (Kusa Meikyū) is a Japanese film by director Shūji Terayama. Only forty minutes long, it was released in France in 1979 along with two other short avant-garde films by directors Just Jaeckin and Walerian Borowczyk.

A young man named Akira (Takeshi Wakamatsu) is seeking the music and lyrics to a song he loved as a boy. In his search he slips into a time-warp, and his childhood and adulthood blend together. There are balls, big and small. One is a dinosaur-egg-sized pregnancy stone, which may have magically impregnated Akira's mother. He's desperate to know the song completely, and in the film's frantic wanderings, Akira's labyrinth, he happens upon the grungy home of an insane nymphomaniac witch. This tormented girl has been waiting ages for her lover to return. She sheds her clothes and attempts to seduce (or rape?) Akira the boy (Hiroshi Mikami) in a scene that's brilliantly insane. It's alarming too. My eyes were wide open for all of it. And the screeching panicky bird and witch's ghostly make-up make it all the more bewitching.

Akira frees himself until his mother ties him to a tree, to protect him, she says, and, for good measure, she writes magical words across his skin and clothes in order to stave off the lonely nympho demon should she come round. Later, Akira visits a brothel, watches the body of a woman wash up on shore (who has drowned herself after a love affair with a war deserter), and he seemingly gets trapped in a maze-like house near the film's end, in a grotesque, incredibly compelling scene that must be watched since it defies accurate written description.

I've read that Terayama's other films also depict the nightmarish dread children experience when they encounter cruelty and indifference. In Grass Labyrinth, Akira is obsessed with that song he once knew, and nostalgia certainly plays a role in his story, mixed in with distorted memories, and everything through a surreal lens. There are countless compelling scenes, with plenty of colors, and series after series of short cuts for a remarkably intense effect, making it all the more disturbing. Definitely memorable.

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood (1987) is a novel by Haruki Murakami. The first-person narrator, Toru Watanabe, takes a long and very detailed look back on his college years when he was between the ages of 18 and 20 or so. At first I thought the novel was boring, but then the characters started to grow on me, and Murakami's prose becomes hypnotic in a sense, and I often felt like a fly on the wall for the pages of seemingly endless but incredibly natural dialogue. Parts of the story take place in Yotsuya, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Myogadani, Kichijoji, Otsuka and Ebisu, all places I've lived or worked or both, and reading fiction set in real places that I'm familiar with always makes things more interesting.

There is lots of banal dialogue with sudden erotic turns as well. Sex, or talk of sex, just kind of pops up now and then, like in the following exchange between Watanabe and his friend Midori:

“I wonder what ants do on rainy days?” Midori asked.

“No idea,” I said. “They’re hard workers, so they probably spend the day cleaning house or taking inventory.”

“If they work so hard, how come they don’t evolve? They’ve been the same forever.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe their body structure isn’t suited to evolving—compared with monkeys, say.”

“Hey, Watanabe, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know. I thought you knew everything.”

“It’s a big world out there,” I said.

“High mountains, deep oceans,” Midori said. She put her hand inside my bathrobe and took hold of my...

Suicide, or giving up on this world, is a big theme too, and three characters off themselves, changing the lives of those (three) who remain to push forward. We're also given the philosophy: “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of life.” And, “By living our lives, we nurture death.” The book also reflects the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and for all these elements it's a little sad in places.

What's also interesting is we're given a sense that Watanabe is recounting his college years perhaps a decade or two later. We don't know what his life is like in the present, but at least we know he made it, through the cynicism, depression, meaninglessness, and mental problems of friends, and by the end of the novel, his making it is in some ways good enough.

The Famous Sword Bijomaru

Meito Bijomaru (The Famous Sword Bijomaru) is a 1945 film by director and screenwriter Kenji Mizoguchi. Kiyone Sakurai forges a sword for his benefactor, Kozaemon Onoda, a sword that shatters while Onoda is defending his lord. He is placed under house arrest for his failure to protect the lord's palanquin, then Naito tells Onoda that he can help restore Onoda's honor so long as he can wed Onoda's daughter's, Sasae, and when Onoda refuses, Naito slices him dead.

Sasae instructs Kiyone to make another sword, to avenge her father’s death. But Kiyone, overcome with guilt, commits suicide by seppuku. His dying request is that his soul be used in the making of a new sword to avenge Onoda. Eventually, the sword is made, and it's Sasae (a woman!) who fights Naito to the end in a remarkably well-timed and carefully choreographed scene, with pyrotechnics no less.

There is a lot of cinematic beauty in the film, with incredible framing and outdoor scenes at night as well as shots of sparks flying as the swordsmiths hammer away by the fire. Mizoguchi's famous long takes allow us time to reflect on what has transpired, while at the same time we're able to read slowly the mise-en-scène, which not only creates atmosphere but on some level plays a role itself. In one such instance, we're given two long takes of a space surrounded by shoji screens, which are hanging off their rails after a sword fight between the authorities and ronin. This destruction which remains after the battle is left for us to ponder without distraction of movement or sound, and I wonder if it could also be viewed as a symbolic representation of Japan in tatters nearing the war's end.

There are elements of propaganda as well. Considering the film was made in 1945, I expected the doctrine to be blatant, and yet it's not overbearing, at least not to the point where we can no longer take the storyline seriously or to where we cannot appreciate the film's artistry. The more pronounced propaganda comes in just a couple spurts, such as in messages about loyalty and devotion to the emperor, like:

"By being born in this country, we follow the way of the subject, which is loyalty and self-sacrifice. This is nothing heroic. It is serving the emperor. The emperor encourages the young generations and allows rewards to mourning families. Such is the imperial government. One must not conspicuously brag. And certainly not when the deeds aren't amazing. One must restrain himself of any envy. And model his behavior on previous generations."

The sword as a symbol of strength, and the embodiment of ancestral spirits, at a time when Japan was facing defeat, makes the film quite historically significant. The swordmakers try and try again to produce a weapon that's unbreakable, realizing they must do it on their own, without the help of outsiders, but with heart, and also with their master's soul. "We won't make it!" one cries, and the other berates him with, "Stop whining!" and then a transparent Sasae (her soul) starts hammering away with the men. The message is clear: Only together, with heart and soul, can the powerful Japanese spirit survive and transcend, only then can it be victorious.