Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan (1960)

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Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan (1960)

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Named after Alain Resnais' essay film on the abandoned landscapes of postwar Auschwitz that bear silent witness to the tragedy of the Holocaust, Night and Fog in Japan, Nagisa Oshima's fictional deconstruction of the left movement in the aftermath of the ratification of the second U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) in 1960 is also a caustic and pointed cultural interrogation into personal and collective accountability that, as implied by Resnais' film, have been (consciously) obscured by the fog of guilt and memory. The marriage of two Zengakuren members sets the symbolic stage for Oshima's critical inquiry into the collective failure of the Japanese Left: former activist turned field reporter, Nozawa (Kenzo Kawarazaki), a member of the student movement during the collapsed opposition to the first Anpo treaty in 1950 who now covers the continued political struggle of a new generation of young radicals for the local newspaper (a gesture that he believes demonstrates his continued solidarity with the movement), and the younger Reiko (Miyuki Kuwano), a student protestor who had been injured during recent demonstrations opposing the treaty's extension. As in Oshima's subsequent film, The Ceremony, the empty performance of the traditional wedding ceremony becomes a reflection of dysfunctional, antiquated social rituals, cultural displacement, and impotence.

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Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan (1960)

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Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan (1960)

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Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan (1960)

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Cast:
Miyuki Kuwano … Reiko Harada
Fumio Watanabe … Haruaki Nozawa
Masahiko Tsugawa … Ôta
Hiroshi Akutagawa … Prof. Udagawa
Kei Satô … Sakamaki
Rokko Toura … Higashiura Toura
Shinko Ujiie … Mrs. Udagawa
Ichirô Hayami … Takumi
Takao Yoshizawa … Katsuhiko Nakayama
Akiko Koyama … Misako Nakagawa

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