2 Cosmetic multiculturalism and

contemporary Japanese cinema

Us, we look Japanese, but we ain’t. ... Then again, we look Chinese, but we ain’t. That is us who
are not really anything.2
Introduction
In his 100 Years of Japanese Cinema (1995), a documentary film
about the history of Japanese cinema, Oshima Nagisa remarks that
the most visible change in Japanese cinema occurring around the
1990s was the frequent appearance of non-Japanese characters. As
Oshima suggests, one of the themes which seem to have attracted
many Japanese film-makers since the late 1980s onwards has been
foreigners (mainly non-Japanese Asians) in Japan. Needless to say,
this is closely connected with the more general trend in Japan
allegedly promoting multiculturalism. As I argued in Chapter 1,
Japanese multiculturalism in this period is, in many cases, 'cosmetic’.
This is to say, it is a multiculturalism which on the surface celebrates
cultural diversity, but at a deeper level does not subvert the
dominant structure of Japaneseness vis-a-vis 'others’. The present
chapter explores how this kind of 'cosmetic multiculturalism’ is
manifest in contemporary Japanese cinema. I shall start with
Swarouteiru [Swallowtail Butterfly] (1996), directed by Iwai Shunji, as a
typical example of 'cosmetic multiculturalism’ and then move on to
a more complicated case, by using some of the films of Miike
Takashi as examples.
Swallowtail Butterfly: Fetishising the ‘other’
Imagined Asia
Swallowtail opens with the following English narration:
Once upon a time when the yen was the most powerful force in the
world, the city overflowed with immigrants like a gold-rush
boomtown. They came in search of yen, snatching up yen. And
the immigrants called the city 'Yen Town’. But the Japanese
hated that name so they referred to those Yen thieves as Yen-
towns. It’s bit puzzling but Yen Town meant
both the city and the outcasts.3 If you worked hard, earned a
pocketfull of yen and then returned home you could become a
rich man. It sounds like a fairytale, but it was a paradise of yen,
Yen Town. And this is the story of Yen-towns in Yen Town.
As this narration suggests, Swallowtail is meant to be a film about
foreign workers in Japan living in a fictional town called Yen Town
(probably somewhere near Tokyo). While the narration implies that
the film set in the past or, more specifically, in Japan during its
bubble economy (from the middle to the end of the 1980s), the
urban landscape in Swallowtail looks as though it is set in the future,
reminding us of the dark chaotic city of Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s
Blade Runner.
 Swallowtail contains various ‘multicultural’ aspects. First of all,
most of the characters in the film are non-Japanese: They are mainly
Chinese (mainly played by Japanese actors), but there are also some
other foreigners such as Iranians, Americans, and so on. Secondly, as
Eric Cazdyn’s description of the film as ‘a diasporic car crash of
different languages’ suggests, the characters in the film speak
Japanese, English and Chinese and, in many cases, mix them up. 4 Or,
as Aaron Gerow puts it, in Swallowtail ‘there is no unified, linguistic
“we” with which to unite the nation’.5 In addition, while Asian
characters speak English, some ‘typical’ Caucasians (in terms of
appearance, that is, white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes) speak
only Japanese. Thirdly, the landscape of Yen Town has an
atmosphere which may not be specifically Japan but somewhere in
Asia. The film does not show a picture of Yen Town as a whole but
presents its image in fragments: a red-light district, an open-air
night-club on a reclaimed land where people of Yen Town drink, sing
and dance, and an opium street. The image of Yen Town created by
these fragmented images is impossible to identify with any
particular place, but it still retains an iconography redolent of Asia.
Asia here is not necessarily ‘real’ but rather ‘imagined’. It is
imagined as energetic, exotic and seductive but, at the same time,
chaotic, stagnant, and disordered. Such images are suggestive of the
western picture of the ‘orient’ as described by Edward Said, as well
as of ‘Japanese orientalism’ over its Asian neighbours at the turn of
the nineteenth century.6 For instance, the opium street is presented
as a dark decadent slum accommodating people maimed by opium.
Gerow argues that the scene in which one of the main characters,
Ageha, and her friend visit the opium street is presented through a
colonial as well as a tourist gaze. For Gerow, it is colonial to see
Chinese opium smokers as disgusting and inferior while the
distorted camera angle and abrupt cuts assume the gaze of tourists
lost in unfamiliar territory.7 Gerow is undoubtedly right to associate
the scene with the fearful view directed against ‘others’. However,
what is equally important here is that, while chaotic and stagnant,
the opium den nonetheless appears to be somehow sensual and
seductive through the use of soft focus and lighting.
34 6Others9 as spectacles
In an interview, answering the questions what the concept of
Yen Town represents and what kind of town (or city) Yen Town is,
the director Iwai said:
One of the easily conceivable images of Tokyo in the near future
is like Los Angeles and New York, where various different ethnic
groups live and mingle together. I named it ‘Yen Town’ in the hope
of giving a space to various people who are pursuing, for instance,
freedom.8
In a different interview, Iwai also remarked:
I don’t want to show Asians as simply suffering, the way some
recent Japanese films have. I think a lot of them see Japan as a gold-
rush country. They’ve got yen-fever. I hope that some of their
energy rubs off on the Japanese who see this film. Other Asians
have a vitality that we lack.9
From Iwai’s comment above, it is easy to understand that he
somehow attempted to project into his film a vision of multicultural
Japan, where these energetic ‘other’ Asian provide a dynamism to
Japanese society and culture. It is an ambitious and interesting
project, and it may also be based on genuine goodwill towards
foreigners in Japan. However, it is also apparent that what Tessa-
Morris Suzuki calls ‘cosmetic multiculturalism’ is deeply structured
in Iwai’s comment and, also, in Swallowtail itself. Moreover, we should
also remember that what is important for the film is the Japanese
identity, which is to be confirmed and revitalised, as Iwai suggests,
by the energy of ‘others’.
As I described in Chapter 1, in contemporary Japanese ‘cosmetic
multiculturalism’, ‘others’ or ‘other cultures’ are positioned as
‘objects’ to be seen, enjoyed and consumed. As Iwai’s remark that
he wanted to give a space to those foreigners suggests, his (and
Swallowtail's) treatment of foreigners seems to be based on the idea
which presupposes that Japan and the Japanese are in stable and
superior positions, from which they can generously provide places
to ‘others’. As in ‘cosmetic multiculturalism’, images of ‘others’ or
‘other cultures’ in Swallowtail are therefore nothing more than a sign
of ‘permitted’ cultural diversity.
For instance, there is a clear demarcation in this film between
the Japanese and others, and little interaction between them. As I
mentioned earlier, Yen Town assumes an Asian atmosphere, which is
not necessarily real but ‘imagined’. Yet, this Asia does not seem to
include Japan. Although Yen Town is supposed to be somewhere in
Japan, in the film it seems to be separated from the rest of the
country. In other words, Yen Town is not a place of dynamism, in
which new cultures are created through the mixing of the Japanese
culture with those of ‘others’; but rather it is ghettoised. In addition,
in Swallowtail both Yen Town and its foreign reseidents are presented
as ‘objects’. In many cases the camera does not take the characters’
point of view. Rather with

frequent use of soft-focus and close-ups, the camera fetishises

the ghettoised Yen Town and its residents (especially female),
making them attractive as well as seductive. While the characters
are thus wholly objectified and fetishised, the camera’s point of
views sutures the Japanese spectator into the perspective of the
dominant, who are looking at ‘others’ and consuming them.
In a sense, Swallowtail may be seen as a good example of the
current postmodern reactionary euphoria over the celebration of
superficial diversity. Yomota Inuhiko argues that non-Japanese
characters in Swallowtail ‘are treated with a “tourist-like curiosity, a
mix of utopia and fairy tales’”.10 Similarly, Cazdyn points out that
‘[t]hese gratuitous aesthetic gestures, together with a cloying
soundtrack, make it difficult to think through (at any time during the
two-and-a-half hour film) the issues of foreign labour and the effects
of Japan’s bubble economy’.11 As Yomota and Cazdyn suggest,
Swallowtail very much emphasises visual aesthetics and soundtrack
over narrative substance. The plot functions as nothing more than a
device for packaging these highly aestheticised MTV-like images of
‘others’ and ‘other cultures’, along with funky pop music sung by the
Yen Town band, as objects of consumption. In other words,
Swallowtail represents what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam call ‘a
scophilic display of aliens as spectacles’.12
Yen Town: A 6third-space?
In Swallowtail, there is a ‘potentially’ interesting concept: that of
‘third- culture kids’, introduced on the occasion of organising the
Yen Town band for the Yen Town night club: both of them are set up
by Feihong, one of the Yen Town characters, for his girlfriend, Yen
Town diva Glico. At the auditions for the Yen Town band, a
Caucasian, Dave, turns up and gives an impassioned speech in
perfect Japanese.
dave: You are Yen Towners, aren’t you? Yen Towners should have
Yen Towners’ own groove. If you set up the Yen Town band with
Japanese musicians, how can you possibly have such a Yen Town
groove? feihong: But you are not a Yen Towner either, are you? dave:
No, I am not a Yen Towner. Indeed, both of my parents are American.
But I was born and grown up here in Japan. In addition, because of
the horrible English education in Japan, I cannot speak English at all.
Isn’t it funny? Yes, it must be funny. Then am I Japanese or
American? Because of my appearance, I am treated everywhere as a
foreigner. But I was born and grew up in this country and I do not
have any home country but Japan ( . . . ) You, Yen Towners, are better
as you have a home country to go back to. By the way, you little girl
(talking to Ageha, an orphan whose mother was a Yen Town
prostitute), where were you born? In China? ageha: Japan.
dave: Are you a Yentowner? ageha: Yeah ...
36
dave:No, you are not. You did not come to Japan searching for yen.
But the Japanese do not distinguish the second generation like
you. For them, you are a Yen Towner as well. It’s strange, isn’t it?
So I thought we and other second generation Yen Towners need
a new naming. Bingo! I came up a good idea. Do you wanna
 know? It is the Third-culture kids’. And the music we are
pursuing is the Third-culture music’.
The Third-culture kids’ or the Third-culture music’ reminds us of
Homi Bhabha’s term, The third space’, by which he refers to an Tn-
between space’ that is not based on The diversity of cultures’ but on
The inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity’. 13 For Bhabha,
in a Third space’ differences engage and transform each other
through negotiation, resistance and dissonant exchange, to create
new hybrid cultures that are not simply a sum of what is mixed. For
Dave in Swallowtail as well, the phrases Third-culture kids’ or Third-
culture music’ were invented to name thus far nameless dia- sporic
people and cultures which have been ignored or unnoticed, hidden
in the gap of a simple binary relation between the Japanese and
'others’. Although potentially subversive, the concept of Third-
culture kids’ (and music) proposed by Dave in Swallowtail merely ends
up as a label of The others’ as consumer products. Dave collects
musicians for the Yen Town band, pursuing the new third-culture
music, but all of them are western men apparently born and grew
up in Japan (and all of them, except one keyboard player, are white).
Apart from Yen Town diva Glico, there is no Yen Towner in the Yen
Town band. Although the backgrounds of its members are not
identified in the film, it is not difficult to imagine that, unlike Yen
Towners (and unlike the zainichi, to whom no reference is made at all
in the film) their parents - including Dave’s American parents - were
not compelled to come to Japan out of political and economic
necessity, and they themselves, compared with non-western
foreigners in Japan, might have faced relatively less hardship. As
second generation of foreigners in Japan, they might have some sort
of in-between identity; but there is no sign of negotiation or
resistance, at least presented in the film. By homogenising all the
'others’ and by failing to make a distinction between those western
white male 'others’ and other 'others’ (such as Asian workers,
women and the zainichi), the film neglects the unevenness and
inequality of political and economic power relations. The 'culture’ of
Swallowtail's 'third-culture kids’ (and music) is, in this respect, neither
'culture’ in a Fannonian sense, of 'culture as political struggle’, 14 nor
what Paul Girloy calls 'cultural syncretism’, in which new hybrid
cultures are created by mixing or syncretising different culture
through resistance and negotiation.15 Rather, it represents what Fredric
Jameson and Jan Baudeillard see as the postmodern characteristics
of a 'depthless’ culture, which lacks historical understanding and in
which commodification is being extended to all realms of personal
and social life and the 'real’ is transformed into image and
simulacrum.16 Likewise in Swallowtail, the 'others’ are deprived of the
'real’, and therefore the complex givenness of the material reality of,
for
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 37
instance, political and economic hardship is merely transformed
into an ‘image’ or ‘sign’, as a commodity through which ‘otherness’
becomes an attractive cultural ‘label’ for consumption.
Consuming ‘others’, confirming ‘Japaneseness’
As such, although Iwai may wish to challenge the conventional
ways of representing ‘others’ in Japan, his ambition fails to provide a
politically subversive end. The film ends by simply replacing the
traditional homogenised representation of ‘others’ as ‘suffering’ by
another homogenised image, of ‘others’ as ‘fashionable objects’,
which is politically blank and may be even more reactionary than
the prior representation. There is no critical interrogation of
questions of hegemony or of the power relations between the
Japanese and the others, or of complexities within ‘others’. Thus,
the film fails to distinguish different kinds of ‘others’: western white
males, Asian males or females, economic immigrants, the second
generations.
Quoting Iwai’s comments, I argued earlier that he placed himself
in a superior position, from which he patronisingly attempted to
offer a space to foreigners. Iwai, indeed, provides the foreign
characters in the film with a space called ‘Yen Town’, but this space
is ghettoised and apparently segregated from other parts of Japan.
In addition, Iwai seems never to question why his characters did not
have their space in Japan in the first place. However, although he
does not question or explore why ‘others’ have no space from which
they can speak, the film itself embodies the answer. Foreigners are
positioned as ‘objects’ which are neatly packaged, looked at and
consumed. As Gerow suggests, Swallowtail packages the voices of
others for the Japanese consumer.17 Gerow continues to argue that
Swallowtail may be an instance of what he calls ‘consumerist
nationalism’, in which ‘[c]onsumerism offers a vision of Japan’s
accepting Asia, whereas nationalism creates one of Japan’s
accepting itself’ and, by so doing, providing utopian identities to the
Japanese.18 Gerow’s argument confirms the aspects of cosmetic
multiculturalism structured in Swallowtail. The film overpraises and
entertains superficial cultural diversity while maintaining Japan’s
superior position and self-indulgence for accommodating such a
spectacle of fashionable ‘otherness’ and uses ‘the others’ to confirm
the Japanese national identity.
Multiculturalism in the films of Miike Takashi
Writing on Miike Takashi’s gangster films, especially on the Triad
Society trilogy, Abe Kasho argues that the concept of ‘Asia is one’ is a
key thread that runs through Miike’s works.19 According to Abe,
Miike’s films are a form of ‘Asian cinema’ which is set in Japan but
embodies an ‘Asia’ in which the Japanese landscape, especially that
of Tokyo, is ‘Asianised’. In other words, for Abe, Miike’s films exceed
the narrow category of ‘Japanese cinema’ and, by including many
Asian characters, they ‘de-Japanise’ the local landscape.20
38
Similarly, Tony Rayns argues that 'Miike’s films not only take it as
given that Japan is as “Asian” as any of its neighbours, but also
implicitly argues that a bit of cross-cultural fertilisation does Japan’s
uptight mainstream culture a power of good’.21 It is true that, in
Miike’s films, various non-Japanese characters appear and Tokyo
somehow takes on a certain Asian or, more appropriately,
cosmopolitan aspect. However, if, as Abe and Rayns suggest, Miike’s
films embody Asia’, the Asia’ embodied there should be understood
as a particular notion of Asia’, constructed by the Japanese or seen
from the perspective of a specific sector of the Japanese population.
Similarly, although Miike’s films assume a sort of Asianness, they are
not necessarily films about Asia or non-Japanese Asians. Rather
what is at stake is a construction of 'Japaneseness’ which is the self-
representation of Japan, or renders the way Miike conceives the
Japanese society in relation to the specifically constructed notion of
Asia’ and Asians’. Using Miike’s two films Shinjuku Kuroshakai - China
Mafia Senso [Shinjuku Triad Society - China Mafia War] (1995) and Dead or
Alive - Hanzaisha [Dead or Alive - Criminal (1999) as my main examples, I
shall examine how Asianness’, or the discourses concerning Asian
ethnicity as well as traditional notions of 'Japaneseness’, are
constructed in these films and how they relate to contemporary
Japan, where 'multiculturalism’ is popularly promoted.
Shinjuku Triad Society: Emperor and ethnicity
Miike is one of the best-known contemporary Japanese film-
makers. Film Comment introduces him as one of the 'new Japanese
New Wave’ who built his international reputation largely on the
success of the psycho-thriller film Audition (1999).22 Born in 1960,
Miike studied film-making at a private film school founded by
Imamura Shohei. Although he worked as an assistant on Imamura’s
Zegen (1987) and Kuroi Ame [Black Rain] (1989) as well as assisting a
few other directors such as Onchi Hideo and Kuroki Kazuo, Miike
initially worked mostly in television. His first work as a film director
was a made-for-video feature, known as V-cinema in Japan, Toppu
Mini Pato Tai [Sudden Gust of Wind: Miniskirt Patrol], (1991). Since then,
Miike has made more than sixty films, including video releases
which are of the same length as the features. Miike’s films are
commercial and he is mainly working within the genre conventions
of the gangster and, occasionally, the horror film. At the same time,
however, it is often impossible to pigeonhole his films into any one
single genre. As Rayns points out, Miike seems to refuse to bend to
widely accepted norms of narrative and film style and grammar. 23 To
sum up, he is, as Film Comment suggests, an 'ultra-prolific and
stylistically unpredictable’ film-maker of contemporary Japan. 24
And yet, for all their 'unpredictability’, Miike’s films nonetheless
possess certain recurring characteristics or themes. One of these
characteristics is the presence of foreigners and mixed-race groups.
Although it is true that 'foreigners’ in Japan have been one of the
themes which have attracted many
Japanese film-makers since the late 1980s onwards and there
are many films of Miike such as Audition (1999) and Visitor Q (2001)
which do not include foreigners at all, Miike is still unusual amongst
contemporary Japanese filmmakers in ‘continuously’ making use of
non-Japanese characters, including mixed-race groups.
40
The presence of foreigners and mixed-race groups is already
evident in Miike’s first feature film, Shinjuku Triad Society. Like in his
later films, Nihon Kuroshakai-Ley lines [Japan Triad Society Ley Lines],
(1999) and Dead or Alive, the protagonist of Shinjuku Triad Society,
Tatsuhito, is a Chugoku- Kikokusha (a Japanese returnee from China),25
who was born and grew up in China with his younger brother, his
Japanese father and his Chinese mother and is now living in Tokyo
working as the first police detective with such a background and
status. While Tatsuhito’s status as a ‘returnee5 and as a police
detective (a civil servant) implies that, socially, he belongs to Japan,
biologically he, as well as his younger brother, Yoshihito, are of
mixed race (being half-Chinese and half-Japanese), and all his
childhood and most of his younger days were spent in China. Thus,
there is a certain ambiguity surrounding Tatsuhito’s ethnic and
national identity.
In the film, the invisible presence of the emperor sometimes
intervenes in determining Tatsuhito’s ethnicity and his subjectivity,
although the emperor’s figure itself never appears on the screen.
For instance, the names of the protagonist and of his brother,
‘Tatushito’ and ‘Yoshihito\ echo the emperor’s name (the Showa
emperor’s name was Hirohito and the present emperor is Akihito). It is
common in Japan for a son to be named after his father or
grandfather. Thus, the use of these names for characters implies
that they are children of the emperor. In other words, at least in
terms of his name, Tatsuhito is defined as ‘Japanese’, a child of the
emperor. There is also a sequence in which Tatsuhito, Yoshihito and
their parents visit the imperial palace, seemingly at the request of
Tatsuhito’s father. The sequence cleverly illustrates the functions of
Japanese emperor system, for instance, the role of the emperor in
determining Japanese ‘ethnicity’.
Briefly, the sequence opens with a shot in which the camera
catches Tatsuhito and his parents coming out of an underground
station. As they walk towards us, Tatsuhito’s mother stops short and
looks right, as she has seen Yoshihito (off-screen), and says
‘Yoshihito’. Then Tatsuhito and his father stop and look right as well.
Yoshihito does not appear in the frame in this shot, but it is followed
by a long shot which catches him head-on, standing across the road.
The following shot is a close-up of Tatsuhito looking slightly right.
This is followed by another long shot across the road, which is, at
first, empty of people, but soon Yoshihito enters the frame from the
left. Until then, we assume that the camera takes Tatsuhito’s point
of view. However, within a few seconds in the same shot, Tatsuhito
walks into the frame from the right, followed by his parents. So this
is not Tatsuhito’s subjective view. Rather, Tatsuhito, who was
previously the looker, that is, the subject of the look, has become
the object of the look of the camera. This discrepancy of ‘seeing’
and ‘being seen’ implies Tatsuhito’s ambiguous and complicated
subjective position in the film. Here, he is defined rather as an
‘other’, an object, or a subject with no means to affirm his
subjectivity. In the following scenes, however, the Japanese identity
of Tatsuhito and his family are legitimised by the unseen figure of
the emperor or, more appropriately, by being seen by the emperor.
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 41
Later, within the shot mentioned above, Yoshihito, the brother
takes his father’s hand and walks to the left with his parents. The
next shot follows Yoshihito, his parents and, a little later, Tatsuhito
walking into a square. Then there is a cut to an extreme high-angle
shot, which captures the parents in front and Tatsuhito and
Yoshihito at the back of the frame. The father takes off his hat and
makes a deep bow, and then his wife does the same. Apart from
these four human figures and a couple of pigeons, there is nothing
else in the frame; no trees, no buildings, nothing. What are the
parents bowing towards? What is the subject of this authoritative
point of view? It is the emperor. There is no clear sign or
conversation that could tell us that they are at the imperial palace.
Although it may not be impossible to identify this place, the camera
seems to be reluctant to capture landmarks such as the palace
buildings or the Niju-Bridge and the Hanzo-Gate, which are familiar
symbols of the imperial palace. Instead, it is the all-seeing eye of
authority (the emperor), suggested through the use of an extreme
high-angle shot, that implies the emperor’s presence. In other
words, Tatsuhito and his family are, in this shot, under the gaze of
the emperor. But what is the significance of being looked at by the
emperor?
The emperor’s gaze as the feudal scopic regime
This shot seems to operate within what Paul Willemen calls the
‘feudal scopic regime’.26 The feudal scopic regime, Willemen argues,
concerns the social, and indeed the existential authentication and
legitimation of an individual subject by way of an authority’s
gaze, by appearing in the authority’s field of vision and being
recognised and authenticated by that authority, in the way that
one talks of recognising a legitimate child (...). The paradigmatic
manifestation of the feudal scopic regime would then be the
royal audience, the occasion when the one at the apex of a
status society, often deliberately confusing secular and divine
authority, bestows legitimate subjecthood onto someone, a
secular version of the divine gaze bestowing devoteeship upon a
believer in a reciprocal act of mutual recognition.27
Willemen’s argument seems to be helpful for understanding
how the ideology of the emperor system operates in Japan and in
the shot from Shinjuku Triad Society under discussion. One of the best
examples of the relationship between the emperor system and the
feudal scopic regime may be found in public visits to the imperial
palace allowed twice a year, on the emperor’s birthday and on 2
January. On these two occasions, the palace plaza is literally packed
with a great number of people waving rising-sun flags and wishing
to see the emperor and other members of the royal family who
appear briefly at the palace’s balcony and bestow greetings. For
most of the people there, the figure of the emperor might at best be
pea-sized. Yet, as
42
Willemen suggests, rather than seeing authority (here, the
emperor), what is important is to be seen by, and received into the
field of, the emperor. By this act, the people confirm themselves as
‘legitimised emperor’s children’ - that is, as ‘Japanese’.
The power of the emperor’s gaze has operated in the same way
since the late nineteenth century, when Japan embarked upon the
creation of the modem ‘nation-state’ and ‘subject’. As mentioned in
the previous chapter, the founding stone in the creation of modern
Japan in the late nineteenth century was the kokutai ideology, which
‘reinvented’ the emperor as God as well as as the father of the
country in order to unite people under his authority. Takashi Fujitani
argues that the invention of the modern Japanese state was realised
through displays of the emperor and of imperial power. 28 Until the
Meiji period, most of the general public did not feel the presence of
the emperor and had no sense of being related to him. Thus, the
process of modernising Japan started by making this unseen
emperor widely visible, for instance through a photograph of the
emperor’s portrait which was distributed throughout Japan; or
through the emperor’s provincial tours and spectacular imperial
ceremonies and rituals such as weddings, funerals and the
emperor’s inspection of military parades. Fujitani argues that,
through the public ceremonies invented in the Meiji period, which
he calls ‘pageantry’, the emperor and his authority, as well as a
series of concepts such as wealth, family, a monarch and tradition,
became visible and familiar to the public.29 However, Fujitani also
argues that, while it is true that the emperor came to be seen by
people through these pageantries and tours, it is also important that
this constituted a process whereby people became the object of,
and were disciplined by, the emperor’s gaze. Put differently, people
not only saw the emperor but were seen by him as well. It was a
process in which, through being seen by the emperor, the people
legitimised their subjectivity as Japanese, that is, the emperor’s
subjects. In a similar way, the extreme high-angle shot in the
imperial palace sequence of Shinjuku Triad Society may manifest the
way Tatsuhito and his family are legitimised as Japanese or as the
emperor’s children - namely by being exposed to the emperor’s gaze
and encompassed into his field of authority.
As mentioned earlier, apart from the gaze that the high camera
angle manifests, there is no clear sign of the emperor’s presence.
When Tatsuhito’s parents bow, although they were probably bowing
to one of the palace buildings in which the emperor resides, we are
not shown either the buildings or the figure of the emperor himself.
Here, there seems to be an act of power by the ‘unseen’ gaze.
Fujitani points out that, in a lithograph which appeared in a
magazine in 1906 depicting the Meiji emperor’s military parade, the
figure of the emperor is hidden by the limbs of a willow tree, while a
valet sitting faced to the emperor is clearly shown. Although the
emperor is invisible, his presence is indicated by the valet’s slight
bow to him, as well as by the gaze of the spectators looking at this
parade who were there to see, and to be seen by, the emperor.
Fujitani argues that this is one example of the emperor’s gaze
exercising its power. His
presence is suggested even though the direction of his gaze is
not identified. Fujitani argues that, through this mode of depiction,
the emperor’s look became endowed with an infinity capable of
looking out over his subjects.30 The same can be said of the shot in
Shinjuku Triad Society under discussion. The presence of authority is
clearly implied by the deep bow of Tatsuhito’s parents and of the
four tiny figures shot from high-angle. This equates to the figure of
authority, even though the emperor himself or the palace buildings
are not shown. In fact, by not being shown, the emperor here is
represented as an omniscient, God-like being. As Willemen argues in
the quotation above, The one at the apex of a status society, often
deliberately confusing secular and divine’, the Japanese emperor
system has been based on such a confusion since the very beginning
of the emergence of Japan as a modern nation-state at the end of
the nineteenth century. In this sense, the high-angle shot under
discussion may be regarded as a representation of a divine version
of the secular (emperor’s) gaze, rather than as 'a secular version of
the divine gaze’, bestowing the legitimacy of being Japanese upon
Tatsuhito and his family, and at the same time endorsing the myth
(or ideology) of the emperor as a divine being and as the father of
the nation.
The emperor’s gaze as the Panopticon
However, the emperor’s gaze implied by the extremely high
camera angle is a manifestation not only of the feudal scopic
regime, but of the modem one as well. Here, the emperor’s gaze
seems to function as the Panopticon, a modem prison surveillance
system invented by Jeremy Bentham. Michel Foucault argues that
there are two forms of exercising power. One is monarchical and the
other is disciplinary; and, according to Foucault, the latter is exactly
the opposite of the former.31 In monarchical power, the system of
power takes a pyramidical form. At the apex is the king, as the
source of power and justice. The king is highly visible, exposing
himself to the general public as a luminous focus from which all
power derives through spectacular ceremonies and rituals.
Architecture was also important as a manifestation of power.
Foucault notes: The palace and the church were the great
architectural forms, along with the stronghold’ and Architecture
manifested might, the Sovereign, God’.32 While the holder or the
source of power is visible in monarchical power, the general public,
the object of power who saw or were seen by the king were
invisible, an anonymous collective. On the other hand, in
disciplinary power, which appeared around the time of the French
Revolution, the source of power became invisible and anonymous,
while the objects of domination became conspicuous. Foucault
associates the emergence of disciplinary power with the invention
of the Panopticon. The Panopticon was designed so as to make
prisoners feel that they were always under the inspecting gaze of
the central power. While the inmates in the cells are constantly
visible to the observer in the tower, the observer is invisible to the
inmate. Since the design of the Panopticon makes it impossible for
inmates to
44
see the inside of the tower, they have to assume that there is
always somebody keeping a watch on them. Because of this
assumption, the inmates come to interiorise this surveillance system
'to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus
exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself’. 33 Foucault
uses the Panopticon as a metaphor for the disciplinary practices of
modern society, where anonymous pervading power and
surveillance are operating. Thus, like the Panopticon, disciplinary
power is exercised not by the gaze or spectacle of an identified
authority such as the king, but by the anonymous gaze of an
unspecified, invisible observer. For Foucault, such disciplinary power
is not only a negative and oppressive mechanism of control but is
also generative, as it produces subjectivity by bringing the individual
into view. Discipline involves the production of subjects by
categorising and naming them in a hierarchical order. Foucault also
argues that disciplinary technologies such as the Panopticon
produced 'docile bodies’ that could be 'subjected, used,
transformed and improved’.34 In this way, while the disciplinary
regime of power created the object of rule by forcing 'subjection’ to
the power, it also produced a range of subjects at the same time.
Fujitani points out that, although Foucault’s analyses explain
better than any other the effect of the emperor’s gaze in the
creation of modern Japan at the turn of the nineteenth century,
there are some differences. According to Fujitani, Foucault’s general
model, which is based on the western historical narrative that sees
the rise of modernity as coincident with the decline of monarchical
power, cannot fully explain Meiji Japan, where 'what Foucault called
''monarchical power” and "disciplinary power” came together in the
same historical moment’.35 Although Fujitani attributes this only to
the Meiji emperor, I would argue that such coexistence of two
different regimes of power is still true of contemporary Japan.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the creation of Japan as a modern
nation-state in the late nineteenth century was achieved by the
invention of the emperor system, in which the emperor - who until
then had little political power over and familiarity for the people in
general - was mobilised as the father of Japan, a modern nation-
state. Because of this, there is a contradiction or split inherent in
Japan’s modernising project: a modern state with a pre-modem
centre, namely the emperor or the emperor system as a modern
political system, which relies for its legitimation on the pre-modern
myth of a pure, divine, unbroken imperial lineage going back to the
Sun Goddess. In addition to the fact that the Japanese national was
defined as a child of the emperor through mobilisation of the myth
(or ideology) that all Japanese are linked by blood to a single
imperial family, people in general were also disciplined through
education and conscription to become Japanese 'subjects’. Hence
Japan’s modernising operation was materialised through the
mobilisation of both 'monarchical power’ and 'disciplinary power’.
Fujitani writes:
Power was not anonymous but centered on the figure of the Meiji
emperor. The constmction of the emperor as the observer and the
 unprecedented visibility of the people to power coincided
exactly with the
new visibility of the modern monarch.36
Here, Fujitani sees the Meiji emperor as a holder of both
‘monarchical power5 and ‘disciplinary power5. However, it seems to
be more appropriate to see the ‘emperor system 5, rather than the
emperor himself, as mobilising these two different regimes of
power. The ‘emperor5 of the emperor system functions as a
monarchical power; thus his gaze operates in the feudal scopic
regime, where his gaze bestows legitimacy upon people as Japanese
and children of the emperor. On the other hand, the institutional
‘system5 of the emperor system is disciplinary power. It may be true,
as Fujitani argues, that in the Meiji period its power was not
anonymous but centred on the emperor, since the emperor at that
time was located at the centre of the political system. However, in
the post-war era, the source of disciplinary power and of its gaze is
anonymous and function like the Panopticon. Unlike in Meiji Japan
or in pre-war Japan, the power source of the emperor ‘system 5 is no
longer ascribed to the emperor himself, but to anonymous and
ambiguous sentiments, or ideology, which Jon Haliday calls
‘Tennoism5 (emperor-ism) and which ‘arbitrarily “legitimates 55 the
flow of authority from the top5 and thus makes people take
authoritarianism for granted.37 As the gaze of this power regime is
anonymous, functioning like the central tower of the Panopticon,
the people interiorise the discipline that the ‘[subordinate must
obey their “superior55 without question5, wherever they may be - for
instance in the family, school, company or factory.38 While the
emperor is no longer the source of disciplinary power, he still has
monarchical power, and this would explain why so many people visit
the imperial palace on the two occasions mentioned earlier in order
to be recognised by the emperor as his ‘legitimate children5. Thus,
the gaze that the high camera angle manifests in the shot of Shinjuku
Triad Society under discussion may be understood as both pre-
modern and modern. It is the gaze of the unseen emperor to whom
Tatsuhito’s parents pay obeisance and which recognises Tatsuhito
and his family as Japanese. At the same time, by not showing the
figure of the emperor himself, or the building, it also makes the gaze
anonymous, like the Panoptical gaze of the disciplinary power of
‘Tennoism5.
In Shinjuku Triad Societyi, ‘Tennoism5 is also embedded as a strong
filial- ity. Throughout the film, Tatsuhito appears as a character with
strong filial and family connections. Neither Tatsuhito nor his
brother Yoshihito is in any sense a person with integrity. Rather, they
are sly, with little sense of justice and, in Tatsuhito 5s case, extremely
violent. However, both are very dutiful to their parents, and their
filial love is unconditional. As an older brother, Tatshuhito cares
about Yoshihito (albeit in his own quite bossy way) and tries to
extricate him from the gangster world and to lead him to a decent
life. There is a good example of this in a dialogue between Tatsuhito
and Hou, a Taiwanese police detective in Taiwan.
46 hou: ‘How’s your brother?’
4
tatsuhito: 1 am making him a lawyer, leading him to have a decent
life.’ hou: ‘You are supposed to decide that?’ tatsuhito: ‘Yes, it’s the
family who decide.’
Here, Tatsuhito claims that his decision is based on the family, as
if he were playing the role of a patriarch on behalf of his sick father.
Although Hou insinuates a degree of condemnation of Tatsuhito’s
unilateral attitude towards his brother’s future, Tatsuhito has no
hesitation in intervening in (or, more appropriately, determining) his
brother’s personal life. Tatsuhito’s attitude embodies a narrative of
patriarchy such as the law of the father, or the myth of filiation; this
assumes the subordination of the individual to the family, which is
an important ideological bedrock for ‘Tennoism’ and Japanese
society. ‘Tennoism’ in the form of family ideology is, indeed, the
source of the unseen gaze of disciplinary power which operates in
the high-angle camera shot of the imperial palace sequence. At the
same time, it also seems that the film tries to let such a family
ideology or filial discourse, which surrounds the character of
Tatsuhito and his family, set off the other part of the film, which
reveaels that the big city life of modern Tokyo is associated with
corruption, crime and violence, and full of ‘others’ such as
foreigners and homosexuals.
The ideology of ‘emptiness9
The imperial palace sequence also seems to ‘play’ on the idea of
the imperial palace as an empty centre, an idea presented by Roland
Barthes in his L’Empire des Signes [Empire of Signs]. Barthes writes:
it [Tokyo] does possess a centre, but this centre is empty. The entire
city turns around a site both forbidden and indifferent, a
residence concealed beneath foliage, protected by moats
inhabited by an emperor who is never seen, which is to say,
literally, by no one knows who. Daily, in their rapid, energetic,
bullet-like trajectories, the taxis avoid this circle, whose low
crest, the visible form of invisibility, hide the sacred ‘nothing’.
One of the two most powerful cities of modernity is thereby
built around an opaque ring of walls, streams, roofs, and trees
whose own centre is no more than an evaporated notion,
subsisting here, not in order to irradiate power, but to give the
entire urban movement the support of its central emptiness,
forcing the traffic to make a perpetual detour’.39
 Barthes’ idea of the imperial palace as an empty centre is often
quoted in a range of writings on emperor-related subjects. The
imperial sequence in Shinjuku Triad Society seems also to ‘quote’
Barthes’ description of the imperial palace. As in Barthes’ text, the
sequence presents us with walls, the moat (though they are not
shown clearly, due to the use of the long shot, and trees which
cover it), traffic outside the palace and the empty palace square,
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 47
where so many trees block our view further inside the premises.
Barthes5 text itself does not seem to attach any ideological
connotation to the ‘emptiness5 of the imperial palace. Rather, as
Barthes claims himself, he read Japan (through the eyes of slight
exoticism) as full of empty signs, that is, signifiers without a
signified. Thus a sign does not contain connotations, and the
imperial palace is simply an example of such an empty sign. Or, as
Nibuya Takashi writes, Barthes5 text may simply be a description of
the surprise of a foreigner who was expecting to see a spectacular
imperial palace, found there literally ‘blank 5, closed in by trees, in
Marunouchi, Tokyo.40 However, when it is quoted or appropriated in
any discussion of the emperor or the emperor system, the idea of
‘emptiness5 suddenly takes on meanings which go beyond simple
description; and the sequence from Shinjuku Triad Society may be no
exception.
In general, there are two different strands of discussion around
the idea of ‘emptiness5 centring on the emperor and the emperor
system. One is critical of, while the other is positive towards, such
‘emptiness5. The criticism of ‘emptiness5 focuses on the fact that the
emperor and the emperor system exist as something that must not
be trespassed or talked about (hence they should not be criticised).
Watanabe Naomi, a literary critic, argues that the ‘emperor5 is an
empty centre of Japanese literature, and especially of novels. 41 It is
true, as Watanabe suggests, that there has been a tendency to see
criticism towards the emperor and the emperor system as ‘taboo5 -
not only in literature, but in the public sphere more generally. Films
are no exception. In pre-war and wartime Japan, the strict
censorship did not allow narrative feature films to represent (or
even imply) the emperor and the imperial family, while, as Iwamoto
Kenji points out, the Showa emperor often appeared in the
newsreel and documentary films of the period, though his
representation was carefully controlled through framing and
editing.42 While the official censorship was abolished, the
representation of the emperor figure in post-war Japanese films has
still been very limited. Some films featuring the Meiji emperor were
made in the late 1950s, for instance Meiji tennno to nichiro-senso [The
Meiji Emperor and the Russo-Japanese War] (directed by Watanabe Kunio,
1957), which gained great public popularity and commercial
success.43 However, unlike the Meiji emperor who was a legendary
figure, the film industry has been more reticent about representing
the Showa emperor. There have been few films in which the Showa
emperor’s figure appears or in which issues relating to the emperor
are dealt with. As Kodama Ryuichi argues, although there were
some films in which the character of the Showa emperor appeared,
most of the films avoided framing him directly from the front.
According to Kodama, the character of the emperor was often shot
in a long shot or captured in such a way that he was hidden by other
characters of the film.44 In Japan, freedom of speech and press is a
constitutionally sanctioned right; thus one would never be
subjected to the punishment of the criminal code for criticising the
emperor or the emperor system. Instead of the law, however, uyoku,
the ultra-right-wing nationalist organisations, monitor any kind of
48
critical opinion against, or what they regard as disrespectful
representation of, the emperor and the emperor system, and apply
their own brutal threatening and sanctions.45 Because of this, there
is a sort of voluntary regulation, tacitly adopted in the media
industry, and even by individuals. Thus, as Watanabe points out, like
the taxi and traffic described in Barthes’ text, which avoid the circle
of the imperial palace, speeches, representations, discussions and
stories have to make a detour around this centre. In this respect,
criticism of the emptiness detects the ‘constructedness’ of the
‘emptiness’. The ‘emptiness’ is therefore not innocent, but an
ideological and political construction that manipulates discursive
practices and formations. It not only makes it impossible to discuss
the problems of the emperor system but, by enveloping it within the
idea of ‘emptiness’, it denies or covers up the existence of the
problems and contradictions inherent in the emperor system. As
such, criticism of the emperor system as an empty centre attacks
the ‘emptiness’ as ‘constructed’ - an ‘ideological’ mechanism for
suppressing criticism of the emperor and of the emperor system as
well as for manipulating and transforming them into something
‘apolitical’ and ‘holy’, which is not to be touched.
On the other hand, the advocates of ‘emptiness’ see it as if it
were an essential quality of ‘Japaneseness’. Barthes is, in fact, not
the first person to link Japan to the notion of ‘emptiness’. In the
early twentieth century, Nishida Kitaro, one of the most important
philosophers of modern Japan and the founder of the Kyoto School
of philosophy, articulated the concept of 'mu no basho’ or ‘the place of
nothingness’ and identified it with the imperial court. Although in
the West, ‘empty’ as an opposite of ‘full’ may have negative
connotations, for Nishida, or for Zen thinking, this is not the case.
Nishida’s key philosophical principle of ‘mu\ or ‘nothingness’, is not a
transcendental centre but a negation of itself that ‘becomes an
empty place, embracing seemingly contradictory elements’. 46 In
other words, ‘nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ here is connected to the
ability to accommodate different and contradictory elements. For
Nishida, the imperial court was the ultimate ‘place of nothingness’
which, like an empty cylinder, contains Japan. As Asada Akira briefly
but clearly summarises, Nishida’s idea of the imperial court as the
‘place of nothingness’ is contraposed to that of European kings and
nations, which are based on the concept of ‘yu\ or ‘presence’: they
contain conflict between individuals and the whole, and thus have
‘no choice but to repeat collision through striving to expand the self
in space’.47 Unlike European kings and nations in conflict and
collision, the Japanese imperial household was peaceful and
powerless for Nishida, since actual power was exercised by
successive Shogunates. Nishida also believed that this notion of a
‘place of nothingness’ would be the ‘groundless ground for peaceful
co-prosperity between nations, between human beings and nature,
in the twentieth century’.48 Here, Nishida’s philosophy of the ‘place
of nothingness’ coincided with aspects of the imperialist ideology of
the emerging modern Japan, for instance isshi-dojin (being ‘equal
under the
emperor5) and D ait oa-ky oaken ('the great East Asian co-
prosperity sphere5), which identified the essential quality or virtue
of imperial Japan and the emperor with its ability to accommodate
and embrace 'others5. In addition, the idea or the ideology of 'the
place of nothingness5 involved an aestheti- cisation of Japan. This
ideology rendered imperial Japan sublime in the timeless realm of
beauty as the manifestation of 'nothingness5, which is a subtle,
fragile and noble beauty, nothing to do with the contingency of
history and political issues.49
How, then, does the 'emptiness5 of the imperial palace sequence
in Miike’s Shinkuku Triad Society operate? Is it criticising the ideology of
'emptiness5, which does not permit the representation of the
emperor? Or is this sequence endorsing the ideology of 'emptiness5
and the aesthetics of 'nothingness5? Unlike the films of Kitano
Takeshi, and HANA-BI in particular, in which the project of
aestheticising Japan as a subtle and fragile place may be detected,
there is no similar project of beautifying the Japanese landscape in
Miike’s films. Similarly, the imperial palace sequence under
discussion is not particularly aestheticised, but rather assumes the
characteristics of a pastiche of Barthes5 description of the imperial
palace. Nonetheless, it endorses its 'emptiness5 rather than
criticising or satirising it. The sequence self-consciously makes the
figure of the emperor and the palace buildings absent, but it is by no
means criticising or challenging the prevailing tacit rule that the
emperor and the emperor system should not be represented.
Rather, it may be seen as a manifestation of the ideology of 'the
place of nothingness5, or of the ideology of isshi-dojin (being 'equal
under the emperor5), namely the idea that, on account of
emptiness, the emperor is capable of accommodating and
embracing 'others5. Here in the shot, the half-Japanese and half-
Chinese Tatsuhito and Yoshihito and their Chinese mother seem to
be embraced as well as disciplined, along with their Japanese father,
as children of the emperor and as subjects of the emperor system.
Ambiguous subjectivity
As such, there are several functions in operation at the same
time in the imperial palace sequence, such as the feudal scopic
regime, disciplinary power and the ideology of the emptiness or
isshi-dojin, all of which are mobilised in order to legitimise Tatsuhito
and Tatsuhito’s family as 'Japanese5. However, the ambiguity
surrounding Tatsuhito’s subjectivity is not completely resolved.
There continues to be ambiguity and uncertainty attaching to the
way Tatsuhito’s subjectivity is constructed in the film. One of the
factors that contribute to this ambiguity may be related to his
ethnicity.
Throughout the film, Tatsuhito seems to define himself as
Japanese. For instance, earlier in the film, Tasuhito visits his parents 5
house. In that house a framed newspaper article is hanging in the
room: it carries the story of Tatsuhito as the first police detective
with his background of Chugoku
50
kikokusha (returnee form China). The camera captures this
newspaper in a close-up, moving from the headline to a news story
in which Tatsuhito comments: ‘My father is Chugoku zanryu-koji (an
orphaned Japanese in China). My mother is Chinese. And I am a
Japanese’. As Tom Mes suggests, Tatsuhito’s fierceness and
obsessive pursuit of Chinese mafia may be an act of denial of his
Chinese heritage.50 With a few exceptions, he always speaks in
Japanese, despite the fact that he is fluent in Mandarin. Sometimes
Tatsuhito even talks in Japanese to his own mother, who does not
understand this language well. In Taiwan, too, Tatsuhito makes no
effort to speak in Chinese, and he even calls the name of the
Taiwanese cop, ‘Mr. Ko’, using the Japanese reading of the Kanji
(ideogram) rather than ‘Mr. Hou’, the Chinese pronunciation. In
addition, Tatsuhito shows no critical attitude towards, or makes no
negative comments on, Japan, though he makes some critical
remarks about both China and Taiwan. For instance, when he has
something to eat with Hou on his first night in Taipei, Tatsuhito
criticises Hou, who had tried to avoid involvement in the issue
related to Wang, the Taiwanese gangster in Japan. Tatsuhito
exclaims: ‘You don’t care as long as he is making a mess in Japan, do
you?’ Another example is one of a few occasions in which Tatsuhito
speaks in Chinese. When Wang and his henchman, Karino, dump the
heavily wounded Tatuhito into the car boot, Tatsuhito spits at Wang
first in Japanese, ‘Keep away from Yoshihito. Yoshihito is my family.
In that village like shit in winter so cold that even piss gets frozen,
we were sent away to a pigsty.’ Tatsuhito continues, this time in
Chinese: ‘Because we have Japanese blood. When there was
stealing, they always blamed us.’ Here, Tatsuhito is criticising a small
community in China, where he and his brother grew up, for the
discrimination he experienced as a ‘half-Japanese’. However,
throughout the film, Tatsuhito never makes any comment on, for
instance, the discrimination which he might have experienced in
Japan as ‘half-Chinese’; on the policy of the Japanese government,
which until the early 1980s completely ignored those Japanese, like
Tatsuhito’s father, orphaned or left in Manchuria after the end of
World War II; or on Japanese history, which included aggression
against the country of his mother and partly of his own. The film
itself is not completely ignorant of Japan’s colonial history. It has
Hou criticise Japan mildly by letting him say to Tatsuhito: ‘You know,
my grandfather died as a Japanese soldier’ - and on a different
occasion: ‘There are many Japanese who buy them (internal organs
with which Wang engages in illicit traffic).’ However, for the most
part, the film is uncritical of Japan. One of the scenes which are
symptomatic of this can be found, again, in the imperial palace
sequence, when Tatsuhito’s parents make a deep bow towards the
unseen emperor. Following her husband, Tatsuhito’s Chinese mother
makes a bow, without hesitation, to the emperor who invaded her
country.
Like the beginning of the imperial palace sequence, Tatsuhito is
sometimes deprived of his subjective view. For instance, when he
visits the hospital in a deserted-looking rural area with Hou, the
sequence begins with the tracking
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 51
shot of a hospital corridor. We hear Hou talking to Tatsuhito,
although they are not visible in the frame. We are thus led to
believe that the camera moves as Tatsuhito and Hou walk and that
what is in the frame is what they see. However, as the camera turns
left, we see Tatsuhito and Hou coming down the stairs from the
front. In addition, within this shot, Tatsuhito turns his eyes to
something in the corridor. The subsequent shot shows four children
with a nurse. However, once again, the camera is not taking
Tatsuhito’s point of view. Tatsuhito, who is the apparent subject of
the look, is in the frame, since the camera captures the others from
a high angle over Tatsuhito’s shoulder.
This deprivation of Tatsuhito’s subjective view suggests a
continuing ambiguity concerning his subjective position. Tatsuhito’s
ethnicity as half- Japanese and half-Chinese may be one of the
reasons for this ambiguity and ambivalence. He himself does not
seem to be questioning his ethnic identity as a Japanese. However,
his subjectivity in the film is also the result of his interplay with
other agents - such as other characters, the author (that is, the
director), the narrative, and even the socio-historical conditions. In
some cases, like the unseen gaze of the emperor in the imperial
palace sequence or the use of his name, the interplay with other
agents affirms his subjectivity as a Japanese. On other occasions it
can bestow upon Tatsuhito the status of the 'other’. A Japanese
gangster in the film, for instance, expresses on one occasion his
suspicion that Tatsuhito may be shielding Wang; he says: 'Because
you are "mixed”, you are not sticking up for Wang, are you?’ The
word 'mixed’ refers to 'mixed blood’ (or race), which implies the
'impurity’ of Tatsuhito’s 'Japanese’ blood. Later in the film, the same
gangster also provokes Tatsuhito by saying (this time in Mandarin):
'you are an unnecessary child!’ The gangster says this in the context
of the corrupt relationship between his yakuza organisation and
Tatsuhito as a police detective; thus he means that his organisation
no longer needs Tatsuhito’s patronage (or connivance) for its illegal
business related to China. However, the use of Mandarin and the
words 'unnecessary child’ suggest a double meaning, which not only
claims that Tatsuhito is no longer needed for them but also suggests
that he is an 'outsider’ and 'unnecessary child’ for Japan. As far as
this gangster is concerned, Tatsuhito is regarded as 'other’. The
insertion of the narrator’s objective view into what is supposed to
be Tatsuhito’s subjective view expresses Tatsuhito’s position in
Japanese society, or the disparity between how he sees himself and
how he is seen. Put differently, this is a manifestation of the
discrepancy between being socially Japanese, or belonging to the
Japanese state as a citizen, and being ethnically Japanese, or
belonging to the emperor’s blood. In terms of the latter sense,
Tatsuhito’s status as a Japanese is ambiguous. To sum up, the role of
'ethnicity’, or of the 'emperor’s blood’, as an agent in the creation of
the Japanese subject, which is still very important in contemporary
Japan, is implicated in the ambiguity of Tatsuhito’s subject position
in the film, which is manifested by the occasional deprivation of his
subjective view.
It is also ambiguous from whose perspective the story of the film
is told. Shinjuku Triad Society opens with the following voice-over
narration in Mandarin:
‘Long-Chiaw’
‘Long-Chiaw-Bang’ ... People call us so.
Although it makes me laugh as it sounds sentimental, there’s
something I want to tell about the love I know ...
The concluding voice-over is also in Mandarin:
‘Long-Chiaw’, it sounds nostalgic. The cop called Kiriya Tatsuhito was
also killed by somebody. In an alleyway in Shinjuku.
In the opening, the screen frame is black; then, as the voice-over
continues, it dissolves gradually into a shot that shows a naked body
on the bed, in a rather vulgar-style room. At this stage, we do not
know whose voice it is, apart from the fact that it belongs to a
Chinese speaker. Later we realise that the voice is that of Shu, a
Taiwanese boy and the lover of Wang, a Taiwanese gangster. Thus,
we are lead to assume that the position of the narrator in Shinjuku
Triad Society is given to Shu. However, there is ambiguity over Shu’s
status as a narrator. In no sense does Shu occupy a central role,
either in the narrative disclosure or in determining the other
characters’ positions in the filmic text. Put differently, while Shu
opens and closes the story as a narrator, it seems that the story is
not told from Shu’s perspective.
Rather than occupying the role of a narrator who can actively
control the unfolding of the narrative, Shu takes a more passive
position, as a (homo) erotic object of the gaze. In the opening
sequence, the person lying face down and naked on the bed is not
identified. However, when similar images appear later, we discover
that it is Shu. Thus, in the opening scene, while Shu is performing
the narrator’s role by providing the voice-over narration, at the
same time he is being presented on the screen as an object of gaze.
Although Shu’s naked body is shot from a certain distance and thus
not so clearly presented in the opening scene, when a similar image
appears later, his body is fetishised and displayed as a spectacle. The
camera captures Shu lying face down on the bed first from his legs;
then the camera moves slowly up, displaying his beautiful and firm
body. Shu’s naked body is displayed as an object of (homo) erotic
looking.
In her influential essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’,
Laura Mulvey points out that Hollywood cinema presents female
characters as passive erotic objects for the desiring look of the male,
while male characters take the more active position of making
things happen; they make the story unfold and they represent
power, as bearers of the look. According to
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 53
Mulvey, such a dichotomy, active male gaze versus passive
female image, demonstrates the way the unconscious of patriarchal
society has structured film form.51 This argument is relevant to the
way in which the images of Shu are presented in Shinjuku Triad Society.
In no sense does Shu assume an active role as a male character. He
is not presented as ‘masculine5 but rather as a ‘feminine5, with a
face almost like that of a girl. Rather than being the bearer of an
active look, Shu is an object and is subordinated to the dominant
‘look5. Here, however, rather than male domination over the female,
it is the relationship between the dominant Japanese and the
‘others5, the foreigners. In other words, the way Shinjuku Triad Society
presents Shu as a fetishised erotic spectacle involves the
‘otherisation5 of Shu. Just as the female body presented in films as
an object of erotic desire implies the structure of patriarchy and
women’s subordination to men, Shu’s fetishised body also connotes
a ‘to-be-looked-at-ness5 that can be read as the sign of the
subordinate position of the ‘other5. Although the ‘otherness5 of Shu
may not attach exclusively to his status as a foreigner, it is safe to say
that his ethnicity contributed to a great extent to determining his
position in the film as an ‘other5. In this respect, the way Shu is
presented in the film may exemplify an aspect of ‘cosmetic
multiculturalism5 whereby ‘others’ become an object of
entertainment and consumption.
Although the reliability of Shu’s status as a narrator is
questionable, it is not possible to identify the real narrator.
However, it is safe to say at least that Shinjuku Story tells a story from
a Japanese point of view.
Basically I think that what is at stake is always in the relationship to
the putative object of study; it’s neither the identity of the
object nor its content; it’s always the self-representation of the
speaker.52
Although the quotation above is not about film, the same may
be true of Shinjuku Triad Society and of all Miike’s films that include
foreigners and mixed-race groups. In other words, Miike’s films are
not necessarily about foreigners in Japan. Rather, they should be
seen as the self-representation of Japan, or how Japan sees itself in
relation to these foreigners. The question to be asked here,
therefore, is how the films dramatise or represent Japan along with
these ‘others’. In order to answer this question, we should look at
other important characteristics of Miike’s films.
Dead or Alive: The break-up of the national body
Along with the presence of foreigners and mixed-race groups,
Miike’s films often display two other equally important
characteristics. The first of these is the weakening of diegetic or
narrative unity within his fictional worlds. For instance, in Katakurike
no kofuku [The Happiness of the Katakuri] (2001), Miike inserts animation
sequences which may relate to the plot but disrupt the diegetic
world of the film, while in Shinjuku Triad Society the opening sequence
54
 is fragmented in narrative terms, juxtaposing images that may or
may not be part of the same diegesis. In IZO (2004), a blues singer
often and abruptly appears in the film and sings songs disrupting the
flow of the narrative. Similarly, in Blues Harp (1998), the opening
credits sequence is also fragmented. It begins with a cross-cutting
between the performance of live music and a fight among
gangsters. Later in this sequence, some other images are inserted
and juxtaposed, apparently at random: military planes in the sky,
people on the street and images from a TV-game. In addition, while
the gangsters are punching each other, the sound accompanying the
diegesis sometimes assumes the stretches of a diegetic event. Like
in cartoon comics, onomatopoeia such as ‘Boom!’ and ‘Biff!’ appear
as text on the screen against a black background in the fighting
scene. It is not clear whether this sequence does or does not
possess a diegetic unity, as it is not always possible to tell whether
the images belong to a diegetic or to a non-diegetic world. Even
though the soundtrack in such sequences does tend to provide a
cohesive continuity of sorts, it is evident from such examples that
Miike destroys the integrity of the fictional worlds he stages or, at
least, that the breaking open of diegetic homogeneity is one of the
key characteristics of many of his feature films.
The other characteristic is the repeated use of the metaphor of
the body or, more precisely, a concern with the metaphor of 4 a lack
of bodily integrity’. This, in turn, links to a different but, I will argue,
related notion of fragmentation. Fragmentation of the body, for
instance, a severed human head, fingers or arms, is evident in many
of Miike’s films, including Audition, Gokudo Sengokushi: Fudo [Fudo: The
New Generation] (1996), and Shinjuku Triad Society, to name but a few. In
Fudo, for instance, freshly severed human heads repeatedly appear
throughout the film. In one of the more surreal scenes, little boys
are playing football with a chopped-off human head. The opening
sequence of Shinjuku Triad Society also contains a diegetic image of a
severed head as well as a non-diegetic image of a pig’s head. It
needs hardly to be said that in Audition the severing of bodily parts
plays a prominent role as a heroine’s main act of revenge. 'Lack of
bodily integrity’ here signifies a collapse of bodily boundaries with
things coming out of or going into bodies, which blurs not only the
contours of bodies, but also the boundaries between that which is
(or ought to be) either inside or outside the body. In Fudo, one of the
female characters (although she is actually a hermaphrodite) is
showered with sulphuric acid while stripping in a club, and thus
removes a whole layer of her skin and flesh. As an image suggesting
the dissolution of bodily boundaries, this scene could not be more
explicit. Moreover, excessively spouting blood evident in most of
Miike’s films may also be cited as an example of this feature, as are
the pervasive scenes of drug injections, eating and drinking, or the
forced insertion of objects into people’s bodies. The activity of
forced or voluntary, but always excessive, ingestion tends to be
followed by equally virulent eruptions or ejections from bodily
orifices.
These characteristics (lack of diegetic unity, and repeated body
metaphors and the presence of foreigners) are not, of course,
Miike’s monopoly.
Cosmetic multiculturalism and contemporary Japanese cinema 55
However, my argument here is that the presence of non-
Japanese characters within the Japanese body politic of Miike’s
films, the breaking open of die- getic homogeneity and narrative
integrity, and the constant emphasis on the transgression of body-
boundaries are connected and echo each other. This is to say that
these three aspects of his films, reinforced by others at the thematic
and acting levels, constitute a kind of basic constellation, a matrix
which organises important dimensions of his films and which,
following the works of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, we may
read as a preoccupation with the homogeneity of Japan - or its lack -
as a social-political entity. In other words, Miike’s films tell us about
a particular conception of ‘Japaneseness’ in the context of a
contemporary Japan allegedly concerned with questions of
multiculturalism, which I shall now discuss in detail in relation to
Miike’s Dead or Alive.
The lack of diegetic unity and body metaphors in Dead or Alive
The body integrity constellation may be seen clearly at work in
Dead or Alive. The film is set in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. The story
basically consists of the battle between Jojima, a Japanese police
detective, and Ryuichi, a half- Japanese and half-Chinese gangster
who is a returnee from China (Chugoku kikokusha). The presence of
non-Japanese characters is an important feature in Dead or Alive, as
many of its characters, such as Ryuichi and his comrades, are of non-
Japanese (mainly Chinese) origin and belong to mixed-race groups.
In addition, throughout the film, Dead or Alive presents various
examples of the relevance of the body metaphor as well as of the
stretching of ‘narrative coherence’.
The opening sequence, for instance, provides a good example of
the lack of unity within, or the fragmentation of, the film’s narrative
world. It continues for five minutes and consists of various image-
strands, juxtaposed in ways that prevent the formation of a unified
narrative world: a naked woman with a bag of cocaine in her hand
falling from a building onto a street; strip dancing; an act of sodomy
in a public toilet; a man snorting a long line of cocaine; a man eating
a huge amount of noodles at a Chinese restaurant; the retrieval of a
gun from a supermarket fridge; and several killings. In this five-
minute opening sequence, which consists of twenty scenes and
more than one hundred shots, the plot is set in motion and most of
the main characters are introduced, but each shot is edited
abstractly, in a quick tempo, with full use of jump-cuts and abrupt
location changes. Apart from the soundtrack, which constructs a
continuous ‘sound space’, there is hardly any spatial or narrative
coherence across the shots. Unlike The Happiness of the Katakuri and
Shinjuku Triad Society, in which diegetic unity is disrupted by the
insertion of animation and non-diegetic images, the opening of Dead
or Alive seems to maintain some sort of potential diegetic coherence.
However, the narrative that animates this world does not possess a
coherent unity and is drastically fragmented. The sequence also
includes the metaphor of the ‘lack of bodily
56
integrity’: when the man eating noodles at the restaurant is
killed later in this same sequence, the noodles he was eating erupt
from his stomach and scatter over the screen (by way of computer
graphics with animation-like rather than realistic effect), signalling
the loss of ‘bodily integrity’ and the breakdown of ‘bodily
boundaries’. Another striking example of such a collapse of bodily
boundaries appears later in the film, when Ryuichi’s girlfriend Kaoru
dies at the hand of a Japanese yakuza. Kaoru is killed in a pool of her
own bodily excreta, after being injected with a narcotic, raped and
given an enema. Such excessive excretion clearly suggests a loss of
control over bodily boundaries.
The concluding sequence also contains body-related metaphors
of various kinds. In the middle of the end-sequence showing the
confrontation between Jojima and Ryuichi, Jojima comes out from a
crushed car with steel rods sticking into his stomach. He then
wrenches off his own injured arm. Jojima and Ryuichi then shoot at
each other several times. Both Jojima and Ryuichi are about to
collapse and the camera alternates between each of their tortured
faces. At this point, the film suddenly abandons verisimilitude
altogether: a bazooka comes out of Jojima’s back which he aims at
Ryuichi, and then there is a cut to a shot of Ryuichi extracting what
looks like a burning sphere from his chest. .After staring at the fire
ball in his hand, Ryuichi throws it at Jojima while Jojima fires his
bazooka. As the fireball and bazooka collide between Jojima and
Ryuichi, there is an explosion and the fire blast obliterates the
screen images. The next shot consists of an image of the earth seen
from

space, showing Japan. The fire ball explodes in the Tokyo area
and the film ends apocalyptically, implying a nuclear explosion
which blows up Japan and, with it, the world. While both the
bazooka and the burning sphere may invite various possible
readings, it is neither possible nor important to bestow a single fixed
meaning on them. What is important to note here is that, by
breaking down genre conventions and verisimilitude, the film takes
the confrontation of individuals (namely a policeman and a
gangster) to another level, making it a confrontation between
Japanese and 'others5 which leads to the obliteration of Japan.
Body as a metaphor of the body-politic
The work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas provides a useful
framework for connecting the three characteristic aspects of Miike’s
films exemplified in Dead or Alive to the socio-historical context of
contemporary Japan. In her essay 'Do Dogs Laugh?5, Douglas
identifies an analogy between the relation of the spoken word to
non-verbal communication and the relation of the written word to
the physical materials and visible manner of its presentation. 53 Just
as the physical embodiment of the written word, for instance
typography, the arrangement of footnotes or the layout of the
margins of a written document, indicates a set of implicit meanings
about the realm of discourse to which it belongs, bodily functions
such as posture, voice, articulation and speed support and
contribute to the meaning of a spoken communication as well as
indicating the social sphere to which it is directed. Douglas is not the
first to claim the importance of the unspoken part of any discourse,
or to identify an analogy between society and the body. The
important aspect of her work is, however, her attempt to reverse
the usual organic analogy by which society is seen as a body. Instead
of seeing society as a body, Douglas identifies the body as a site of
information, a coding and transmitting machine, arguing that 'the
body communicates information for and from the social system of
which it is a part5.54 For Douglas, the body expresses the relationship
of the individual to the group, and it both represents and
contributes to the social situation at a given moment. It is also
important to note that the body is, as Douglas points out, 'not
always under perfect control5.55
Douglas5 account of the body as a metaphor of the body-politic
provides a useful framework for a discussion of Miike’s films. Here,
in addition to the 'real5 bodies (whether or not those of human
beings) that appear in the film, Douglas allows us to look at a filmic
text or at a diegetic world also as a body. How the story is told, and
how it is presented in the films, are as important as (or sometimes
more important than) 'what5 is told. The way the film treats
(whether consciously or unconsciously) its own body (the filmic text)
and the way the actual body and bodily functions are presented in
the film may also be seen, following Douglas5 framework, as
embodying a notion of contemporary Japanese society to which the
film belongs and which it
58
‘figures’. As I discussed earlier, Miike’s films are not about
foreigners but rather about Japan’s understanding of itself in
relation to these foreigners. In that sense, the lack of bodily integrity
in Miike’s films (literally, as in actorial bodies, or figuratively, as in
the ‘body’ of the text) dramatises the break-up of the nation or,
more appropriately, the break-up of the national body or kokutai of
Japan.
Writing on Tsukamoto Shinya’s cult film Tetsuo [Tetsuo: The Iron
Man] (1989) and on Oshii Mamoru’s animated film Kokakukidotai:
Ghost in the Shell (1995), Cazdyn argues that these two films are about
the body and subjectivity, and that they allegorise the break-up of
the nation (Japan) by narrating the break-up of the individual. 56
Establishing an analogy between the ‘I’ of the ‘cyborg’ and the
relation of the ‘nation’ to the ‘global’, Cazdyn argues that the
problematic of the ‘I’ and its instability in the cyborgian body in
Tetsuo and in Ghost in the Shell represents the problematic of the
‘nation’ and its instability in relation to ‘a world in which “Japan” no
longer exists’.57 Although not referring to Mary Douglas, Cazdyn’s
argument seems to be a good example of Douglas’ anthropological
framework for reading the relation between body and society
applied to films. However, while Cazdyn’s analogy refers to the
individual body and the nation (Japan), my argument here focuses
on the relationship of the body (both the real and the filmic body) to
a myth, or ideology of ‘Japaneseness’, that is to say, to the kokutai
ideology which specifies notions of Japaneseness in terms of body
homogeneity.
As indicated previously, kokutai is an ideology invented so as to
unite Japan as a modern nation-state under the emperor, in the late
nineteenth century. As an ideology, it claims that Japan is a racially
homogeneous organic unity and that all Japanese are linked by
blood to a single imperial family. In addition, the myth of
Japaneseness stresses the notion of ‘boundary’, as it conceives of
Japan as an organic unity in which outside and inside can be clearly
delineated. Although the term kokutai is no longer used or heard in
Japan, the myth, or the ideology, of Japan as a racially and culturally
homogeneous country has continued to be a dominant discourse of
Japaneseness, serving as a dominant self-portrait of Japan and as a
bedrock of Japanese nationalism. Although the word is often
translated as ‘national essence’, if we write it down in Japanese, the
characters of ‘kokutai (H#) signify ‘national body’ (koku H - national, tai
W - body). Thus, the analogy between ‘body’ and ‘society’ becomes
more relevant in relation to the kokutai ideology, which sees
Japanese society or the nation as a ‘body’ with a clear boundary.
Therefore, by the repeated use of metaphors emphasising the lack
of bodily integrity, the breakdown of bodily boundaries and the
fragmentation of the body, Miike’s films seem to allegorise the
break-up of the mythical national body of Japan as a racially
homogeneous organic unity. By using the metaphors of bodily
disintegration, Miike’s films can be seen to attempt to deconstruct
the myth (or ideology) of a homogeneously unified Japan. However,
this may not necessarily be a critically progressive deconstruction,
as he
may be presenting a nostalgic nationalist discourse lamenting
the loss of kokutai, or he may merely be registering the breakdown of
any notion of kokutai, without attaching a positive or negative
meaning to it.
Deconstructing Japaneseness?
In one sense, the fragmentation of the body may be read as a
progressive deconstruction of kokutai ideology, or of the traditional
notion of Japaneseness. Like modernist works of art, especially
those of the avant-garde, which challenge the notion of an apparent
natural or given, self-evident unity, Miike splits up the narrative
world or the body of the films in the opening sequences of Dead or
Alive and goes beyond the conventional boundaries of generic unity
in the end-sequence. Thus, if we look only at these aspects and at
the fact that there are many non-Japanese (including mixed-race
characters) in the films, it may be possible to argue that, by splitting
apart and breaking up the coherent unity of the filmic body, Miike’s
films attempt to subvert or deconstruct the idea of the unified body
or of the mythical national body of Japan. However, in Miike’s films,
4
de-construction’ does not involve 4re-construction’. Put differently,
the de-construction of the ideology of kokutai (or of the notion of a
homogeneous and unified Japan) does not involve the radical
project of a re-construction of a new 'Japan’, characterised by
cultural and racial diversity. Rather, as the apocalyptic ending of
Dead or Alive suggests, the break-up of the national body leads to the
obliteration of Japan.
Such a 'non-productive’ deconstruction may also be found in the
way mixed-race groups are treated in the film. In Dead or Alive as well
as in Miike’s other films - such as Shinjuku Triad Society, which contains
mixed- race characters - 'mixed-raceness’ is represented as an
erosion of the boundaries of Japaneseness or, in other words, as a
'contamination’ of Japanese blood. In Dead or Alive there is a scene in
which Jojima and his colleague visit a small town where there seems
to be a community of Chugoku kiko- kusha (returnees from China) and
where Ryuichi obtained a reputation as a troublemaker when he
was a teenager. Jojima and his colleague approach two young men
with afro hair and ask about Ryuichi. One of them refers to Ryuichi
as 'our’ hero. Jojima’s colleague asks him what he means by 'our’ or
who 'us’ is. The two young men reply: 'Us ... We look Japanese, but
we ain’t ... Then again, we look Chinese, but we ain’t. That is us who
are not really anything ... ,’58 Here, the identity of mixed-race people
or people with two different cultural backgrounds, is defined
through negation, that is, through what they are not - they are
neither fully Japanese nor fully Chinese - rather than by what they
are - Japanese and at the same time Chinese, people who hold the
potential of producing a new Japanese culture through what Paul
Gilroy calls 'cultural syncretism’.59 As the two of them say, they are
not anything. While the kokutai ideology presents Japaneseness as
linked to a single imperial family by blood, the metaphor of
'Japanese blood’ is an important element in the affirmation of
Japanese identity. Thus, the erosion of 'Japanese
blood’ by foreign blood symbolised as ‘mixed race’ causes the
difficulty or the impossibility of constructing a stable, clearly defined
identity Like the ending of Dead or Alive, which suggests that the
break-up of the boundary is associated with the ‘destruction’ of
Japan, here the break-up of national identity is associated with the
production of a subjectivity which is described as ‘nothing’, rather
than being associated with multiple and hybrid subjectivities. The
way these two men are presented also makes them anonymous
‘others’. First of all, their big afro hair-style makes them look visibly
‘others’. The camera captures them in a static long shot and, even
when they talk about ‘who they are’, the camera never moves close
to them. Once they realise that Jojima and his colleague are
policemen, they start running away. Then, there is a cut that catches
one of them from behind, running on the railway line. He runs but
the camera does not follow, and there is no reverse angle shot that
shows him from the front. Just as they say they are not ‘anything’, so
the camera does not tell us who they are either. Instead, they
remain anonymous ‘others’. By treating them as such, Miike, in a
sense, respects ‘otherness’ of these characters, as the inclusion of
close-up here would violently force an ‘explanation’ about these
people or ‘externally’ impose certain identities on them.60 In other
words, the use of a long shot respects the right of ‘others’ to refuse
to be explained. Yet, as the dialogue suggests, the two men
nonetheless define themselves according to the dominant ideology
of Japaneseness. Here, the remark of ‘being nothing’ implies what
Aaron Gerow calls the ‘sadness of being rootless’ or the ‘yarn for
home’61 rather than a refusal of labelling or of being labelled any
national or ethnic identity.
Conclusion
In this respect, although the film contains many non-Japanese
Asian characters as well as a protagonist with a mixed-race
background which is unusual in Japanese film history, the degree to
which Dead or Alive, along with Miike’s other films featuring non-
Japanese characters, actively subverts the ideology of ‘Japan as a
homogeneous unified country’ is limited. Although Miike’s films do
not present a nostalgic vision of old mythical Japan, they still
suggest a sense of ‘loss’. The disintegration of the national body and
the loss of control of bodily boundaries appear to be conceived as
the tragedy (and probably the comedy) of contemporary Japan.
Moreover, even though the metaphor of the lack of bodily integrity
is discernible in Miike’s films which do not deal with foreigners, it
does, nonetheless, appear to be foreigners and mixed-race groups
that most forcefully dramatise the break-up of the national body
through the device of dramatising the loss of control over bodily
boundaries.
It must be noted, however, that Miike’s films should not then be
regarded as xenophobic. They do not present non-Japanese
(including half-Japanese) characters as stereotypically threatening
‘others’, in a simple binary relation between ‘good’ Japanese and
‘evil’ foreigners. Although it is true that
non-Japanese characters in Miike’s films are, in many cases,
extremely nasty and violent, Japanese characters are not any better.
As Abe Kasho puts it with regard to Shinjuku Triad Society, it is a
'multiple5 and 'multinational5 evil that is presented in Miike’s films.62
Moreover, unlike Iwai’s Swallowtail, in which foreigners are
represented as fashionable others whose material hardships are
largely overlooked, Miike’s films, as Gerow suggests, evince a
sadness in relation to those 'others’ or mixed-race people who 'slip
into the cracks of national identity’.63 Similarly, although in Miike’s
films mixed-race characters are associated with a 'lack 5, or
'contamination5, of Japanese blood and with the disruption of the
'alleged’ peaceful homogeneity of Japan, the predicaments of these
characters may also be seen to demonstrate how the ideology of
Japaneseness operate within Japan. As discussed earlier, both
Shinjuku Triad Society and Dead or Alive suggest how the dominant
ideology of Japan’s homogeneity, and Japanese blood, makes it
impossible for people of mixed-race groups to construct their
subjectivity and identity, leaving them 'homeless5.
Yet, Miike’s films do still dramatise, insistently and graphically,
how the loss of body-integrity also 'figures’ the destruction of any
notion of a stable Japanese identity, and any notion of both social
and aesthetic homogeneity. While this breakdown of bodily integrity
generates intense energies that pervade his films at all levels, it is
also linked explicitly with pain and the destruction of Japan as a
coherent geopolitical image. This does not necessarily mean that
Miike’s films lament the loss of Japanese 'essence’ and
homogeneity, however.64 Rather, they merely register it and note its
destructive impact while savouring the energies released by this
destruction. The breakup of the national body is not registered as
something that needs to be, or even can be, counteracted or
restored. The breakdown is dramatised without envisaging an
alternative conceptualisation of Japan, as was the case, for instance,
in Hani Susumu’s films of the 1960s and 1970s, for example Buwana-
Toshi no uta [Buwana Toshi\ (1965) and Andes no hanayome [The Bride of the
Andes] (1966), where the oppressive aspects of the discourse of
'Japaneseness’ and of its attendant myths of exceptionalism and
unity were put to the test.
Similarly, by including foreigners and mixed-race groups who
were previously undererepresented in Japanese cinema, Miike’s
films certainly represent Japan in a way that does not fit with the
dominant self-image of racial and cultural homogeneity. However,
while they may be seen as 'critiquing ideologies of Japanese
homogeneity’ and 'discussing alternative identities’,65 Miike’s films
do not, in fact, offer any alternative identity, either for Japan or for
the 'others’. What his films suggest instead is a bleak image of Japan
which provides no place for 'others’ and where mixed-race people
are unable to construct a positive identity and subjectivity.
Moreover, as Gerow argues, while the desire to escape from the
oppressive reality of Japaneseness may be evident, the films’
characters often fail to achieve this.66 Thus, what Miike demonstrates
in his films may be the impossibility of

overcoming (or escaping from) the dominant ideology of

Japaneseness. However, by figuring the impossibility of overcoming
the myths of Japaneseness, Miike’s films seem to end up confirming
rather than subverting them. This is probably most evident in IZO,
even though the film does not concern foreigners or mixed-race
groups. In this film, the central character is Izo, the vengeful spirit of
a homicidal samurai, full of grudges, who travels beyond time and
space, from a mediaeval rural village to contemporary Tokyo, killing
almost everyone whom he comes across.67 With the inclusion of
historical and contemporary newsreel footages, it is implied in the
film that Izo’s grudge is not simply personal but also directed at the
dubious nature of the modern nation-state, democracy and
continuing futile violence (though Izo himself manifests such
violence) - and, most importantly, at the ruling elites and at the
emperor, who are responsible for creating and maintaining injustice.
His final target is high-ranking government officials such as
politicians, a military leader, and their revered emperor. Izo
successfully kills them all, except for the emperor, who throws Izo
away literally with a breath. Here, the emperor is not represented as
a hero of justice beating the homicidal monster. Rather, he is a
mysterious and uncanny figure, though at the same time a beautiful
one, endowed with ultimate power. While Izo directs his restless
anger and hatred at the emperor, his failed attempt to kill him
affirms the ‘untouchability’ or (divine) power that the emperor
possesses.
To sum up, while they may be based more on cynicism and
pessimism than on cosmetic multiculturalism as such, Miike’s films
do not actively disrupt the dominant structure and definition of
Japaneseness (for all their inclusion of previously underrepresented
Asian and mixed-race figures). Instead, it is the films’ lack of formal
homogeneity, their multi-tiered and shattered discursive figuration,
that bear the brunt of Miike’s encounter with the core metaphor
which incarnates Japanese exceptionalism: the kokutai or unified
national body.