| In the Realm of the Senses | |
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Japanese theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Nagisa Oshima |
| Produced by | Anatole Dauman |
| Written by | Nagisa Oshima |
| Starring | Eiko Matsuda Tatsuya Fuji |
| Music by | Minoru Miki |
| Cinematography | Hideo Ito |
| Editing by | Keiichi Uraoka |
| Distributed by | Argos Films |
| Release date(s) | 15 September 1976 (France) 16 October 1976 (Japan) 1 April 1977 (United States) |
| Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country | Japan France |
| Language | Japanese |
| Box office | 1,424,906 kr |
In the Realm of the Senses (Japanese: 愛のコリーダ Ai no Korīda, literally Bullfight (Spanish: Corrida) of Love;[1] French: L'Empire des sens) is a 1976 Franco-Japanese romantic drama film directed by Nagisa Oshima. It is a fictionalised and sexually explicit treatment of an incident from 1930s Japan, that of Sada Abe.[2] It generated great controversy during its release;[2] while intended for mainstream wide release, it contains scenes of unsimulated sexual activity between the actors (Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda, among others).
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In 1936 Tokyo, Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) is a former prostitute who now works as a maid in a hotel. The hotel's owner, Kichizo Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji), molests her, and the two begin an intense affair that consists of sexual experiments, drinking, and various self-indulgences. Ishida leaves his wife and family to pursue his affair with Abe. Abe becomes increasingly possessive and jealous of Ishida, and Ishida more eager to please her. Their mutual obsession escalates to the point where Ishida finds he is most excited by being strangled during lovemaking, and he is killed in this fashion. Abe then severs his penis and writes, "Sada Kichi the two of us forever," in blood on his chest.
The British title of the film is In the Realm of the Senses, while the U.S. version is Realm of the Senses. The French title L'Empire des sens (Empire of Senses) is derived from that of Roland Barthes's book about Japan, L'Empire des signes (Empire of Signs, 1970).[1]
Strict censorship laws would not have allowed the film to be completed as per Oshima's vision in Japan.[2] To get around this, the production was officially listed as a French enterprise, and the undeveloped footage was shipped to France for processing and editing. At its première in Japan, the sexual activity was optically censored.
In the US, the film was initially banned upon its première at the 1976 New York Film Festival, but later screened uncut; a similar fate awaited the film when it was released in Germany. The film was not available on home video until 1990.
The British Board of Film Censors, at the time of its first limited screenings in the UK, recommended it be shown under private 'cinema club' conditions to avoid the need for cuts to be made, but only after the Obscene Publications Act had been extended to films (in 1977) to avoid potential legal problems.[3] More recently the BBFC has granted the film an "18" certificate (suitable for adults only), leaving all of the adult sexual activity intact, but ordered that a shot showing a prepubescent boy having his penis pulled as punishment be optically reframed so that the act itself was not shown (the cut was finally waived in 2011).[3] The film has been made available, however, in completely uncut form in France, the United States (including the current The Criterion Collection DVD), the Netherlands, and several other territories.
In Canada, when originally submitted to the provincial film boards in the 1970s, the film was rejected in all jurisdictions except Quebec. It was not until 1991 that individual provinces approved the film and gave it a certificate. However, in the Maritimes the film was rejected again as the policies followed in the 1970s were still enforced.
The film does not so much examine Abe's status as a folk hero in Japan ("Pink film" director Noboru Tanaka's film A Woman Called Sada Abe explores this theme more directly) as the power dynamics between Abe and Ishida. Many critics have written that the film is also an exploration of how eroticism in Japanese culture is often morbid or death-obsessed. Oshima was also criticized for using explicit sex to draw attention to the film, but the director has stated that the explicitness is an integral part of the movie's design.
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[[Category:Films shot in Japan}}