Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will analyze Ōshima Nagisa’s film Kōshikei (Death by Hanging, 1968) as a paradigmatic case of Japanese New Left cinema. I will discuss the prevailing interpretative lines about the film and propose an alternative one based on an ideological contextualization.

Paper long abstract:

Although all films can be interpreted from many points of view and there is no single valid conclusion but usually a myriad of open interpretations, this does not mean that analyzing a film is a relativistic exercise. We need to use the epistemological tools that bring us closer to an objective view of cinema. One of the ways to accomplish this is through an ideological analysis of cinema. This means observing the immediate context of the film in question, identifying the ideologies present at the time and in the place in which it was released, and finding the lines connecting the film discourse with the ideology that it fits with most.

In this paper I will base this ideological analysis approach to address the Japanese cinema of the long 1968 on the paradigmatic case of Ōshima Nagisa’s film Kōshikei (Death by Hanging, 1968). Two recent interpretative lines about this film prevail: an Althusserian interpretation that considers that the film’s axis is the political domination by ideological state apparatuses, and another that considers that the axis is a humanist denunciation of the oppression of the Korean minority in Japan. However, I consider these two interpretations to be removed from the immediate ideological context of the film, which I consider close to the Japanese New Left, the core of which comprises an assertion of subjectivity as self-denial. I will back this interpretation with the political theories of some of the most important ideologues of the Japanese New Left, such as Umemoto Katsumi and Yoshimoto Takaaki. This approach will serve not just to produce a new interpretation of this film, but also to gain a better understanding of the Japanese New ideology to which it is related.