Sing a Song of Sex

Sing a Song of Sex
Theatrical Poster
日本春歌考
Directed by	Nagisa Oshima
Written by	Nagisa Oshima Mamoru Sasaki Tamura Tsutomu Toshio Tajima
Produced by	Masayuki Nakajima
Starring	Ichirō Araki Hiroshi Satō Kazuyoshi Kushida Kōji Iwabuchi Juzo Itami Akiko Koyama Nobuko Miyamoto Hideko Yoshida Hiroko Masuda Kazuko Tajima
Cinematography	Akira Takada
Edited by	Keiichi Uraoka
Music by	Hikaru Hayashi
Production company	Sozosha
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date	23 February 1967 (1967-Feb-23)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Sing a Song of Sex, also known (more accurately) as A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs is a 1967 Japanese avant-garde New Wave musical film directed by Nagisa Ōshima. Despite having four credited writers, the film was largely improvised. The story follows four high school seniors on their peripatetic outings across Tokyo after having taken their university entrance exams. They have one fateful night of drinking and singing with one of their teachers, who sings a bawdy song that becomes the main musical theme of the film. The film was screened at Harvard in 2008 as part of their "Nagisa Oshima and the Struggle for a Radical Cinema" Program. The film appeared in Kinema Junpo's 1999 list of the 120 best Japanese films of all time.

Plot

Four high school students have travelled to Tokyo on a snowy day to take their university entrance exams. They are Nakamura (Ichiro Araki), Ueda (Kōji Iwabuchi), Hiroi (Kazuyoshi Kushida) and Maruyama (Hiroshi Sato).

The boys are not politically engaged and openly mock both an anti-Vietnam petition request and a political march against National Foundation Day (the accession date of the legendary first Emperor of Japan).

One of the boys during his exam espies a very pretty girl that he knows only as "Number 469" (her exam seat number), and the four become obsessed with her. They talk frequently about the girl and fantasize a plan to rape her. But even in their fantasies their desires are thwarted.

They also join one of their high school teachers, Ōtake, and three other high school girls, on a night of drinking and singing. Ōtake, drunk, sings a short bawdy song and explains that "bawdy songs represent the voices of the oppressed." The four boys become smitten with the song, and it becomes the major musical theme of the film.

Title

The film's Japanese title (Hepburn: Nihon shunka-kō) is more accurately translated as A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs; however, the film has come to be mostly known as Sing a Song of Sex, due to its DVD release name.

Cast

• Ichirō Araki as Toyoaki Nakamura
• Hiroshi Satō as Kōji Maruyama
• Kazuyoshi Kushida as Katsumi Hiroi
• Kōji Iwabuchi as Hideo Ueda
• Juzo Itami as Ōtake (Teacher)
• Akiko Koyama as Takako Tanigawa (Teacher's lover)
• Nobuko Miyamoto as Sanae Satomi
• Hideko Yoshida as Sachiko Kaneda
• Hiroko Masuda as Satoko Ikeda
• Kazuko Tajima as Mayuko Fujiwara

Themes

Discrimination Against Koreans

Sing a Song of Sex is part of an unofficial trilogy of films that deal in part with the topic of Koreans in Japan. The other two are Death by Hanging and Three Resurrected Drunkards. The central female character of the film is Sachiko Kaneda, who is possibly of Korean descent. In the folk songs rally, she sings a shunka about a Korean prostitute who lures customers; soon after that a number of the young man who had been previously playing music forcibly take her away and it's suggested that they rape her. This scene and the glorification of rape that the four main characters often indulge in, are symbolic of Japanese sex crimes against Korean women.

Apathetic Youths

Nagisa Oshima came to prominence in 1960 with two important films. These films showed the young in a state of rebellion against the previous generation (Cruel Story of Youth) and against the political mainstream (Night and Fog in Japan). The young of Sing a Song of Sex, on the other hand, are an embodiment of a new generation that is indifferent to politics and whose central quest is for pleasure. They are passive and live mostly through their imagination.

Music

The film is a musical of songs. Though many songs are sung in isolation, singing often becomes competitive, with one singer or group of singers competing with another as they sing different songs simultaneously. There are over a dozen songs, among them are famous American songs sung in English, such as We Shall Overcome, Goodnight Irene, and This Land is Your Land.

Main Theme

The main song of the film is Yosakoi Bushi, which the four protagonists often sing and improvise upon. This song is an example of shunka, a Japanese erotic folk song. The original lyrics are:

1. Let’s begin with the first case, ho, ho. When you do it with an only daughter, you have to get permission from her parents.

2. Let’s go on to the second case, ho, ho. When you do it with two sisters, you have to do it with the older sister first.

3. Let’s go on to the third case, ho, ho. When you do it with an ugly girl, you have to do it covering her with a wrapping cloth.

4. Let’s go on to the fourth case, ho, ho. When you do it on the second floor of someone else’s house, you have to do it without making a sound.

5. Let’s go on to the fifth case, ho, ho. When you do it with the same girl as usual, you have to do it like you normally do it.

6. Let’s go on to the sixth case, ho, ho. When you do it with an old acquaintance, you have to do it until you go weak in the knees.

7. Let’s go on to the seventh case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a pawnshop, you have to take it in and out.

8. Let’s go on to the eighth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a greengrocer, you have to lay your head on a squash.

9. Let’s go on to the ninth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a school principal, you have to do it being ready to be expelled from the school.

10. Let’s go on to the tenth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a noble person, you have to do it in haori and hakama (traditional Japanese male formal clothing).

External links

• Sing a Song of Sex at IMDb
• Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties an essay by Michael Koresky that touches on the film