The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
(Yukiyukite Shingun)
JAPAN / 1987 / Japanese / Color / 16mm / 122 min
Director, Photography: Hara Kazuo
Sound: Kuribayashi Toyohiko
Editing, Construction: Nabeshima Atsushi
Producer: Kobayashi Sachiko (Shisso Productions)
Source: Japan Foundation
Hara Kazuo’s electrifying film features the most extreme interviews in documentary history. When veteran Okuzaki Kenzo “interviews” his old comrades in arms and gets obfuscation instead of honesty, he simply beats the real story out of them. One asks how this method could be justified, at least until the truth of the story is revealed. Hara’s films all skirt the ethical boundaries of conventional documentary, pushing his subjects and his viewers in new directions.
Hara Kazuo
Born 1945 in Yamaguchi. After studying photography, Hara Kazuo was an assistant on feature films by Imamura Shohei and others. His films include documentary Goodbye CP (1972), a provocative portrayal of activists for the disabled, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974), which explores the life of Hara’s former lover, a radical feminist, and A Dedicated Life (1994), which sifts through layers of reality and fabrication in the life of a controversial author. He also directed the fiction film The Many Faces of Chika (2005). He is currently a professor at the Osaka University of Arts. He was a jurorar YIDFF ’93.