Decades
before Title IX and the Netflix short doc Little
Miss Sumo, women’s sumo wrestling was a popular attraction in Japan.
Evidently, many rural spectators flocked to bouts in the mistaken hope the
wrestlers would grapple topless. These weathered peasants were exactly the sort
of lumpen proletariat the anarcho-socialist Guillotine Society hoped to
radicalize, so they too start attending the tournaments staged by Tamasaburo Iwaki’s
touring wrestling stable. They will stir up considerably more love, lust, and
tragedy than revolutions and consciousness-raising in Takahisa Zeze’s The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine,
which screens tomorrow as part of the Mubi Presents series at the Spectacle Theater.
The
Imperial regime cynically capitalized on the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 to
crackdown on revolutionary elements. That included assassinating the
charismatic leader of the Guillotine Society, as well as his wife, a feminist
professor, and their six-year-old nephew. As the new de facto leader of the
underground organization, Tetsu Nakahama burns for revenge. However, the
unpublished poet and self-styled Valentino is not a formidable man of action.
When one reprisal attempt goes horribly wrong, Nakahama and the achingly
conscientious Daijiro Furuta retreat to the countryside to lay low and raise
funds for a further attempt.
One
day, they attend some matches held by Iwaki’s wrestlers. Nakahama is
immediately struck by Tamae Tokachigawa, a former prostitute, who survived a
massacre of ethnic Koreans instigated by a clique of local veterans turned
vigilantes. At the same time, Furuta is quite struck by the younger and more
naĂŻve Tomoyo Hanakiku (or “Kiku” for Chrysanthemum), who joined the stable
after fleeing her abusive husband.
Suddenly,
Nakahama and Furuta largely lose interest in politics, especially the former.
Unfortunately, they will get dragged back in again when the vigilantes try to
flush out the Guillotines by targeting the wrestlers. They are a sad, clumsy
lot. Sort of like Clouseau, they suspect everybody and everything, but their
methods are brutal and their hunches are not wrong.
So,
this film is three hours and nine minutes long. It is good, but that is still a
tad bit excessive. In fact, the first two hours set in 1924 are considerably
more engaging and engrossing than the subsequent hour set several years later.
Arguably, it might have been more effective as an epilogue than a full third
act.
Nevertheless,
the cast is excellent and Zeze sustains an impressive vibe of wistful
romanticism during the respite from the grubby business of revolt. Some
ambitious programmer should consider pairing it with Radford’s Il Postino.
Young
Mai Kiryu is an arresting wide-eyed wonder as Hanakiku. As a bonus, her sumo
chops are also pretty convincing. However, Hanae Kan really shatters our hearts
with her achingly anguished and vulnerable performance as Tockigawa. For half
the film, Masahiro Higashide seems questionably glib as Nakahama, but he goes
to some interesting places when the tragedy starts to crescendo, whereas
Kanichiro’s Furuta is a consistently soulful sad sack.
Throughout
C&G, the Guillotine Society are
like the Keystone militants, who can never shoot straight. Zeze definitely
sympathizes with peasants, as well as domestic violence victims and plucky
underdogs in general. However, his portrayal of the Guillotines, almost like
children in a state of arrested development, is unlikely to earn C&G a spot on Antifa’s watchlist—but
that makes the film interesting to rest of us law-abiding bourgeoisie.
Recommended for patrons of Japanese Cinema (historicals, romantic tragedies,
sumo movies), The Chrysanthemum and the
Guillotine screens tomorrow night (12/15) at the Spectacle and it streams
for five more days on Mubi.