The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On [1987]

 Iconoclastic and rebellious Japanese filmmaker Kazuo Hara’s most emblematic work – and groundbreaking “action documentary” – The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On focused its gaze on a man who’s so fervently anti-war that, ironically, he’s even ready to use violence for his activism. Kenzō Okuzaki, a veteran of Japan’s notorious campaign in Papua New Guinea during WW2, was a one-man truth squad and defiantly anti-establishmentarian agitator – driven by righteous fury bordering on madness – against his country’s hideous war-time atrocities, and his monomaniac crusade to hold Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s military to account often landed him in long prison stints. Introduced to this fascinating provocateur by his idol and mentor Shōhei Imamura, Hara made a film – amalgamating anti-imperialist politics with gripping investigative journalism, cinéma vérité techniques and searing condemnation of militarism and blind nationalist obedience – that was as radical, complex and riveting as its subject. Okuzaki, with Hara’s camera in tow, goes about exposing a particularly horrific chapter from over 40 years back when two low-ranking privates were executed – supposedly for desertion – even though the war was already over by then. With their respective brother and sister as company – later, when they decide to part ways, replaced by his stoical wife and a fellow-anarchist as stand-ins – he goes about confronting the now-ageing officers and perpetrators, often bullying and even beating them to extract confessions. Hara alternated the edgy interactions in closed spaces, shot using handheld cams and unbroken long takes, with stunning panoramic shots and street footage of Okuzaki driving his van filled with political slogans and having passive-aggressive altercations with cops, for a work that pushed the limits of nonfiction filmmaking by inciting reactions, shattering social conventions and uncovering buried truths.

Director: Kazuo Hara

Genre: Documentary/Investigative Documentary/Biopic

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan