JISSŌJI Akio

(March 29, 1937–November 29, 2006)

実相寺昭雄

Jissōji’s oeuvre contains a curious mixture of high art and pulp fiction. Directing for television during the sixties, he earned a reputation for visual invention with his contributions to the science fiction series Ultraman (Urutoraman). After the critical success of his big screen work during the seventies, a compilation of these episodes was released in cinemas. In the meantime, Jissōji had made a sequence of remarkable arthouse movies for ATG, starting with the featurette When Twilight Draws Near (Yoiyami semareba, 1969). Based on a Nagisa Ōshima script, this was originally intended for television, but was released in a double bill with Ōshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobō nikki, 1969).

Jissōji’s first full-length feature, and acknowledged masterpiece, was This Transient Life (Mujō, 1970), a visually stunning account of an incestuous love affair. Not only the love scenes, but also the textures of wood, stone, and water, were filmed with an extraordinary sensuality, and Jissōji displayed a keen eye for the emotional resonances of traditional Japanese architecture and interior space. Though his elaborate tracking shots sometimes seemed more decorative than expressive, the film remained a powerful study of the destructive consequences of a single transgressive act. Jissōji also made Mandala (Mandara, 1971), Poem (Uta, 1972), and Life in a Dream (Asaki yumemishi, 1974) for ATG. These films displayed marked differences of approach: Poem, with its stark monochrome imagery and classical music score, seemed a companion piece to This Transient Life; Life in a Dream was a period film set during the Kamakura shogunate; while the context of Mandala, about a sexually predatory Buddhist sect, was the proliferation of militant groups in the late sixties and early seventies. Even so, all were variations on a theme, sharing common settings and motifs: the Kansai region; temples and graveyards; the sea, lakes, and waterfalls; clocks; traditional art forms. Their central concerns were sexual transgression and Buddhist theology: Roland Domenig has argued that “Jissōji’s importance for Japanese cinema can be compared to that of Christian directors like Carl Dreyer or Robert Bresson for European cinema.” Nevertheless, it may be argued that Jissōji was critical of Buddhism, hinting that its doctrines were inadequate as a response to human suffering.

After leaving ATG, Jissōji directed Utamaro’s World (Utamaro: Yume to shiriseba, 1977), a portrait of the eighteenth-century ukiyo-e artist. However, during the eighties he again worked mainly in television. Among his more important films in that medium was Obon Waves (Nami no bon, 1983), a story about the divided loyalties of Japanese emigrants to Hawaii during World War II. He returned to the cinema with Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (Teito monogatari, 1988), a big-budget horror film about an evil spirit whose awakening threatens the capital. Though the plot was pure mumbo-jumbo, the recreation of Meiji, Taisho, and early-Showa era Tokyo was very picturesque. Jissōji’s subsequent films were mainly in the horror genre: with Watcher in the Attic (Yaneura no sanposha, 1994), The D-Slope Murder Case (D-zaka no satsujin jiken, 1998), and a segment from Rampo Noir (Ranpo jigoku, 2005), he adapted the work of the early twentieth-century writer on macabre themes, Edogawa Ranpo, while Ubume (Ubume no natsu, 2005) was a version of a digressive avant-garde novel by Natsuhiko Kyōgoku. Here and in Watcher in the Attic, Jissōji again recreated the atmosphere of prewar Japan.

Jissōji’s work was generally flawed; his artier conceits tended to lack discipline and there was perhaps something slightly opportunistic about his vacillation between the modernist and highbrow on the one hand and cultish genre pieces on the other. Nor, it seems, were any of his films perfectly achieved from start to finish. Nevertheless, his early films especially contain some of the most extraordinary individual images in Japanese cinema: the woman excavating a giant stone fish in This Transient Life; the boat with a mandala for its sail in Mandala; the desperate hero surrounded by discarded calligraphic manuscripts in Poem. His work is frustrating and rewarding in equal measure.

1969 Yoiyami semareba / When Twilight Draws Near

1970 Mujō / This Transient Life

1971 Mandara / Mandala

1972 Uta / Poem

1974 Asaki yumemishi / Life in a Dream / The Life of a Court Lady (lit. Transitory Dream)

1977 Utamaro: Yume to shiriseba / Utamaro’s World (lit. Utamaro: If I Knew It Was a Dream)

1979 Urutoraman / Ultraman

1988 Teito monogatari / Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis

Akutoku no sakae / Glory of Corruption

1989 Ijimete kudasai: Arietta / Arietta

1990 Ra varusu / La Valse

Urutora Q za Mūbī: Hoshi no densetsu / Legend of the Stars

1992 “Daraku”: Aru hitozuma no tsuiseki hōkoku / The Fallen: Report on a Followed Wife

1993 Jissōji Akio kantoku sakuhin: Watashi nandemo shimasu / The Films of Akio Jissoji: I’ll Do Anything

1994 Yaneura no sanposha / Watcher in the Attic / Stroller in the Attic (lit.)

1998 D-zaka no satsujin jiken / The D-Slope Murder Case

2005 Ubume no natsu / Ubume / Summer of Ubume

Ranpo jigoku / Rampo Noir (co-director)

2006 Yume jūya / Ten Nights of Dreams (co-director)

Shirubā kamen / The Silver Mask (co-director)