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The Sweetest Taboo Among Samurai

By Kimberly Chun

“Don’t ask — don’t tell” didn’t start with the Clinton administration. Gays in the military were an issue — and were considered a threat — at the end of the Tokugawa Shogun rule in Japan, 1865, according to Taboo (Gohatto), the latest film by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima.

In this exquisitely directed and highly artificial period drama, the director of In the Realm of the Senses explores, once again, the intersections of sexual and social intercourse and the coupling of Eros and Thanatos (death), with thought-provoking, if somewhat chilly and abstract, results. The taboo here is same-sex desire, as well as the other relationships men form out of love, loyalty or duty.

Based on novellas by Ryotaro Shiba, Taboo opens on the brink of a rebellion — and the establishment of an absolute monarchy — amid a staged conflict. New recruits to the Shinsengumi militia are being auditioned by Lieutenant Toshizo Hijikata (Actor/director Takeshi

Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda) fending off advance by Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano). Photo courtesy of Larsen Associates

“Beat” Kitano) and Commander Isami Kondo (Director Yoichi Sai, who also worked as first assistant director with Oshima on In the Realm of the Senses). The militia has been entrusted with the serious task of protecting the Shogun, and out of hundreds of young men from peasant or merchant-class families, only two are selected to face off with the unit’s best samurai, Soji Okita (Shinji Takeda), in a kendo bout — Hyozo Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano), a low-level samurai, and Sozaburo Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda), a young man with an unusual androgynous beauty, long hair and pouty, kewpie-doll lips. When Hijikata, Kondo, Tashiro and Kano sit down to talk about their parts in the militia, the tension, sexual or otherwise, simmering beneath the formality is palpable. Betraying nothing on his face, Hijikata notices Kondo’s subtle, heightened attention toward Kano and thinks to himself: “Well, he usually doesn’t react like that.”

Is he jealous or is he attracted? Probably a little of both. Kano has more than a little of Leopold and Loeb in him: His hypnotic good looks are cut through with a streak of cruelty. He immediately jumps at the chance to execute a samurai who broke one of the Shinsengumi’s strict codes of conduct. At first, Tashiro seems envious of Kano because his pretty rival got the opportunity to test his abilities, but his competitiveness turns into admiration. “Without sleep you can’t perform tomorrow,” he whispers to the ever-impassive Kano, as they lie on futons among the other samurai. “Have you ever killed a man? Have you ever made love?”

The next day Kano beheads the prisoner, and it’s clear the beautiful boy has turned more than one head. Tashiro confesses his love, and other samurais begin find themselves drawn to Kano, sexually or combatively. Either way, Kano spells trouble, and as members of the militia begin to turn up dead, Hijikata and Kondo decide to stage another, deadly bout between Kano and Tashiro.

Inscrutable is an overused term, but it’s unavoidable when it comes to describing Taboo. Kitano sets the tone, as the only character with an audible interior life, and his stony mien is the rule rather than the exception. The implacable faces of actors such as Kitano, Matsuda and Asano are divinely empty, ambiguous canvases, the perfect counterpoint to Oshima’s love-and-war story.

Taboo’s highly theatrical look mirrors the appearance of impeccably groomed Kano. Production designer Yoshinobu Nishioka’s buildings, courtyards and interiors are an earthy, yet stylized, golden brown, rich black and searing white, while director of photography Toyomichi Kurita bathes the entire cast in the transparent light he used in films ranging from Forest Whitaker’s Waiting to Exhale to Paul Schrader’s Mishima. And like Mishima, which borrowed much from Oshima’s earlier ground-breaking work, and In the Realm of the Senses, Taboo is less concerned with verisimilitude than the ideas percolating beneath the haunting, repeating piano chords and mechanistic beats of the main theme by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who made his name as a film composer for Oshima’s last movie with Kitano, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

But unlike In the Realm of the Senses, Oshima has shied away from graphic sexual depictions. Instead, the characters talk more about desire than express their feelings on screen. Call it a conscious choice to foreground dialog rather than explicit sex, call it lazy filmmaking, or call it the squeamishness of aging for a 68-year-old iconoclast with more than 25 films under his belt. The latter notion is hard to buy from a filmmaker who has been quoted, “I spend all my life breaking taboos.” In a world where gay characters on TV and film are commonplace, perhaps the last taboos are within — for this filmmaker.