One thing that struck me while watching The Choice of Hercules (2002) was how the film chose to portray the Japanese media and their direct access to police proceedings during the siege of Asamasanso. The idea that news cameramen would be just a few feet behind riot police during the final stages of their violent assault on the lodge, as they are portrayed as doing in the film, baffled me and their prominence in the operation seemed a bit over exaggerated to say the least. However, after having listened to Marco’s lecture about changes in media and read Mark Schreiber’s piece on the actual incident, I feel as though the film’s portrayal of the media isn’t nearly as ridiculous as I had initially thought. According to Schreiber, the event was a national news phenomenon during which TV audiences received multiple daily updates of the standoff’s progress and Muta Yasuka, the female hostage, “became a national heroine, her picture appearing on the cover of several women’s magazines” (207). He confirms that television cameras did indeed follow the riot squads in for the final assault and underscores the immense interest of the public by noting that “so many people sat by their televisions to view the event that day that the Kyushu electric power utility registered at least two surges in demand that eclipsed the levels of the Sapporo Winter Olympics and annual High School Baseball Tournament” (209). Looking back on the film after having gathered some context on the event, the filmmakers’ choice to show the police chief being mobbed by reporters while going to the bathroom and to stress the police’s daily interaction with impatient journalists seem much more fitting. In the same vein, I noticed that after the film and in Tuesday’s class a lot of comments were made about the inefficiency of the police chain of command during the events of the film. While I agree that the film’s portrayal of the seemingly incompetent police leadership was working well within generic conventions to generate comedy and play up Sassa’s heroic leadership, there is something to be said about the police wanting to run a clean operation for the media. The press, as the film shows, was always ready to report something about the standoff to the public and would not hesitate to show the police in a negative light if it meant getting more news out. Little moments throughout the movie, such as Sassa’s insistence on continuing the informationless press conferences to prevent media condemnation and the concerns the Tokyo brass have over the public’s fury over police inaction, show the influence that public perception held over the operation’s proceedings. In his chapter on Japan in 1968, William Marotti underscores the ability of the press to harm the reputation of the police, noting the marked negative shift in public opinion after the media coverage of the violent handling of a student protest against US military influence. He notes how even previously unsympathetic publications began to run articles that sympathized with the students after bearing witness to violent police actions and noted that article titles like “You’re Going Too Far! Police Actions Criticized by Citizens” garnered public for the students and necessitated an apology from the mayor (112). Given this history of press influence, it isn’t hard to understand why the police in The Choice of Hercules act hesitantly and focus intently on proceeding in such a way as to not lose face.
The Choice of Hercules could have been a movie very much like the Baader-Meinhof complex. Reading through Schrieber's chapter, it seems that the Japanese Red Army Faction did some pretty drastic, intense, and cinematic acts. A film about the rebels would have presented us with hijackings, raids, riots, the murdering of police, and would give the audience, hopefully, a decent look at what the rebels were really like. An especially intense scene that could have happened takes places just before the events of the Choice of Hercules, when Nagata "purged," many members of her group. Schrieber states "Those who were beaten to death by their fellows may have been the lucky ones. Six of those who were killed for lesser offenses were hogtied, gagged, tired to trees, and left outside in subzero weather, where they froze to death." So, why not make this movie? This seems like a pretty dramatic ending. Although I don't know much about Japanese culture, from what I have read, after the events of Asamasanso and later the incident at the Lod airport in Israel, Japan's sympathies for the leftist movement faltered. They were embarrassed by what they had done. The RAF was looked down upon publicly and the leftist movement for the most part died down. There was no myth built up on them as there was for Baader, Meinhof, etc. Japan has no need to destroy the mythic reputations of the RAF, because they have none; unlike Baader, who was virtually a celebrity, and whose mysterious death led many to further mythologize him.
The Choice of Hercules (2002) provides little to no background on the RAFs militancy in Japan before or after the seige of Asamasanso in 1972. I noticed this during the movie, but fully realized this after reading Mark Schreiber, “The United Red Army and the Siege of Asamasanso”. By 1972 the Red Army had already hijacked a plane and flew it to North Korea, staged dozens of attacks on police with guns, molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, and also attempted to assassinate the head of the Tokyo Police Department, killing his wife. The only previous action by the RAF that is mentioned in The Choice of Herucles was the raid on the guns store that supplied the militants with the guns at Asamasanso. More importantly, this was not the end or even the climax of the Japanese RAF, a group which seems to be depleted(? or at least it hints at this) at the end of the movie. Rather the Japanese RAF attacked Swedish and American embassies in Kuala Lumpur in 1975, and hijacked a plane in 1977 in Bangledesh and demanded the release of 6 imprisoned RAF members, a mission which was successful. So in context, it is hard to see the seige of Asamasanso as a success for Japanese Police. In reality it is another mission, in a long line of mishaps by the police trying to handle the RAF. The lack of context shows the viewer that The Choice of Hercules is not trying to inform, but simply entertain and persuade the viewer of the police’s hardships. This can also be seen in the theatrical interaction’s between characters throughout the movie and the creation of a clear protagonist in Sassa. Oh and the hubris, the police reek of hubris throughout, or in Japanese culture, it may just be called courage?
Like I talked about the other day, I quite enjoyed Children of the Revolution's extra mini documentary "Under My Skin" because it gives us a unique perspective on the legacy of student protestors and filmmakers during the events of the 1960s and 1970s. Near the end of the film, the interviewees are asked about their opinions of (then) modern Japan. One of the directors (his name escapes me at this moment) was not positive at all, almost scolding the youth for not being as active in their protests like he was. Perhaps in the new generation he saw youth brought up on the policies that have come to be since their failure to change Japan since their protests, and that is why he is so stubborn on the issue. It strange that the documentary was clearly biased against Japan's youth as so far to not give them a voice. Perhaps it wasn't relevant to their topic, but it's quite unfair to have a learned film director rail off against youth and cut to a candid interview with a 20-something who clearly wasn't prepared for such scrutiny. You could do the same, simply switch the candid role to the older generation and get a student of Japanese history and the older interviewees would look silly in comparison. It's disappointing to see obvious bias in a documentary like this. However, I did quite enjoy the comments of the dancer near the end. While plenty of my peers thought they were humorous, I though that his logic was sound. Generations thrive no matter what restrictions are placed upon them was what I took from his interview, and it's something that I believe in myself.
The tone of The Choice of Hercules is significantly different than what we've seen in Something in the Air and The Baader Meinhoff Complex. Whereas the two previous films have had a more serious and mature attitude towards their incidents following 1968, The Choice of Hercules boasted a humorous and more immature when portraying the hostage situation the film depicted. This is prevalent early on in the film; when the police moving in on the small cottage seem inadequate in knowing how to load their guns with ammo, and once the suspects emerged from the cottage the police shoot not at the assailants but into the air - even though they have clear shots at point blank range, and the suspects all carry firearms while they flee from the authorities. This continues on in many instances: the man who gets shot when attempting to enter the hostage situation casually gets up and walks off afterward (although it is told that he dies later on); the music often doesn’t match the scene, sometimes a flute like instrument sounds even when the police are determining what their next move will be; the police refer to one of their tactics as “operation: rocks”; and sometimes the dialogue throws off the balance of appropriate tension, like the conversation that stems the idea that “a normal officer should be constipated by now.” Whether or not this is meant to be a large part of the film and its understanding is unclear, but it is distracting nonetheless, enough so that it makes me question how serious the director’s understanding of the situation was and how it is regarded in Japanese culture and society.
While both, Choice of Hercules and Under my Skin were entirely different in nature, it seems as though one’s depiction feeds into the observations of the other. In Under My Skin, a point that is expressed in several ways towards the end of the film was that the current young generation in japan was one that is complacent, uninterested in history or emotionally distant from their surroundings. In a few subtle ways I felt that Choice of Hercules feeds into this idea a little bit. Throughout the telling of the story we are only given one point of few, since the film has decided for us who the hero of the story is and what side to be on, it deprives the viewer a chance to relate to other characters or make decisions about the film. Going along with this idea of a narrow point of view, it seemed that the film was depicted at a distance, in a historical sense but also through cinematography. The opening scene of the film is a wide angle shot with most of the frame composed of landscape while Sassa is seen in a car in the distance, the next scene is introducing the Government officials and is shot through a small window in a door. Both of these introductory scenes set up a sort of detached mood for the rest of the film. Hearing Wakamatsu in Under My Skin talk so passionately about how revolutions can be accomplished through film, I can’t help but feel that Choice of Hercules is a antithesis to this in a way. While Choice of Hercules is retelling a significant part of Japan’s revolutionary movement it’s lack of variety both in the story and cinematography perpetuates this notion of simple one-sided minds that the revolutionaries of the time are associating with the younger generation, the ones that would be consuming this film.
Mark Schreiber’s text illuminates that the Red Army Faction’s five militants in the Siege of Asamasanso were not only police escapees, but escapees of the faction’s leaders Mori and Nagata, who saw their members as entirely expendable if their allegiance to the “cause” did not match the same level as their leaders. The escapees’ decision to continue as fugitives and take refuge in the Asamasanso building instead of turning themselves over to the police at some level implies they have not lost all of their political aspirations, yet the The Choice of Hercules (2002) reconstructs the event as merely a game of survival than a political statement between the fugitives and the police. Unlike Something in the Air or the Baader–Meinhoff Complex which are situated in urban environments, The Choice of Hercules shows how the police, like the terrorists, can barely function in the “wilderness” and need urban support and technology in order to survive. Schreiber’s chapter also claims the citizens received “regular updates” but the film minimizes their involvement extensively to emphasize the location’s sense of isolation. The documentary Under My Skin (2002) proposes a different problem in that the youth, as one would expect to be the most politically conscious, are in fact, as George Carlin would say, “bought off and silenced by gizmos and toys.” This is in contrast to the late 1960s youth activists who would use entertainment though the form of filmmaking to politically inspire people around them. The documentary essentially mocks “the younger generation” through a montage sequence that includes sped up “time lapse” shots of young people constantly looking at their phones in between staged “candid” interview segments where the subjects appear disinterested or unaware of societal issues and their own aspirations.
The Choice of Hercules had a vast difference between the other films we have previously viewed in class. While the other movies were either documentaries or serious historical fiction, Choice of Hercules had many comical moments that could also be called “juvenile”. The movie has an overall transformation from beginning to end, that our protagonist endures. Atsuyuki, at the start of the movie, is unsure of how to act when he arrives at Nagano. The officers at Nagano didn’t want any direct assistance from Toyko, and yet Tokyo ended up sending people to “help” them, which really means “take over”. Atsuyuki, throughout the movie, starts to gain confidence and a strong hand at controlling the situation. Now, he isn’t the best commanding officer, seeing that it took many days and more fallen soldiers than necessary, to rescue a single victim. But he does the best he can. A lot of the decisions and actions that were made were not the best options. There was one moment, that a soldier was standing up and walking behind the barriers, while the radicals were shooting, and he was so overwhelmed that he didn’t make a decision and stood there as an easy target and was shot in the head. The tension between the soldiers during the intrusion of the building that held the radicals and the hostages was very strange to watch. It felt like there wasn’t a commanding officer to tell the men what to do. They didn’t have a plan after entering the building. They were disoriented and confused as to where the shots were coming from and who was hurt and who was in charge. Along with the hostility between the men who thought they were in charge.
One point the film is making is the non-effectiveness of violence in strategic situations. My initial reaction to the movie was why not storm the place and shoot each and every one of the captors, but as the movie goes on, I clearly understood why. I must say that I disagree with Daniel about the media not being important in the movie. Mentioned from our reading, “so many people sat by their televisions to view the event that day that the Kyushu electric power utility registered at least two surges in demand that eclipsed the levels of the Sapporo Winter Olympics and annual High School Baseball Tournament” (209). I must bring up the fact that it is pretty well know the High School Baseball tournament in Japan is their largest sporting event in the entire country of Japan. This is great evidence and speaks volume to how huge of part that the media plays in society and how media will scrutinized everyone from police to students, and helps the viewer understand how and why the state officials handled the hostage situation in the manner they did. This can be supported by our reading, Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest, “In a flurry of editorials and articles, newspapers roundly condemned the violent tactics of the students, with some quoting Chief Cabinet Secretary Kimura Toshio's statement that Yamazaki's death was the result of student groups' rehearsal for violent revolution” (109). The movie focuses on how involved public opinion is in making their moves. This priority is depicted in the scene where the commissioner would not even a press conference to be canceled because in the eye of the public, no news was bad news. From that statement, one can incur that public relations had everything to do with how the Japanese police were ordered to handle their situation. It is very important in the film to show the incompetency of the local policemen, that way Sassa could be glorified on screen. As we discussed in class, the movie Dirty Harry shows vigilantism in a positive manner, so that the director could get viewers to back the main character. Emphasizing the ongoing struggle of police procedure does just that in our movie by showing Sassa in constant disagreement. The Choice of Hercules (2002), however, does so in a different manner, instead gives great detail as to how leadership and moral shapes some of biggest problems in the movie by showing over and over again. Scenes where characters are constantly making a mockery of the higher-ups in Tokyo are important because it shows the disagreement between the higher ranking officers, and not just one particular officer in a unit. The chain of command is all over the place in the movie, but the media never picks up on this, and I am surprised that this point is left out as if it was hiding it from their own public and the viewer.
In the two previous films that we have seen we are more engaged with the activists in these groups. In "Something in the Air" we follow at least one member of this group the entire time. In the "Baader Meinhof Complex" we go back and forth between the activist group and the police for to show the battle between the two. There is a sense of battle in "Something in the Air" as well, but the struggle is not shown nearly as much as in "Baader Meinhof Complex" Now, in "The Choice of Hercules" we don't see any member of the activist group except for when they stick their rifles out the window and when they are captured at the end. We are identifying more so with the police force of the town as well as Tokyo. We see characteristics of the new and old ways of Japanese culture. This coming out in the struggle for power and the need to address people by their proper title. There are multiple scenes that we are shown them setting up the room for meetings. Who would sit where, people moving around multiple times to get everything just so. Another big difference between the films that we have previously watched and “The Choice of Hercules” besides the fact that we don’t have a chance to identify with the members of the United Red Army. As well as seeing the encounter from more of the police perspective. We are also cut off from all sympathizers of the United Red Army and the other generations of the group. In both of the other films there were multiple generations of activists. In “Something in the Air” the main characters are trying to become a part of this movement and trying to make their mark. In “Baader Meinhof Complex” the second and third generations are trying to break them out of prison. Trying to continue what the first generation started, even though they really didn't know that they should for in the first place. In “The choice of Hercules” the United Red Army were corned, and shut off from the world. There was nobody trying to continue what they have done. There was nobody trying to break them out. The only people trying to get in were trying to trade themselves for the hostage or trying to get in there to take them down.
Something that strikes me as being markedly different between the protests in Japan versus the protests in West Germany and France, is that one of the key rallying points in Japan was a very specific issue, the US-Japan Security Treaty. Those in France and West Germany were more concerned with the class system, capitalism and then Vietnam and Pakistan. In Japan, the central point of the protests was The US-Japan Security Treaty. This is a very concrete issue that the Japanese protestors were attempting to stop. “…With the treaty set for automatic renewal in 1970, the events of 1968 were read by observers forward and backward, both in comparison with this previous high-water mark for postwar mass activism and as portents of a possibly later convulsion at the close of the decade---particularly in the context of an intensifying security relationship with an America again at war in Asia” (100 Marotti). How the two films, Children of the Revolution and Under My Skin tackle the differing issues, I think, shows the difference between violent activism attempting to change a policy and violent activism attempting to change an entire system. In Children of the Revolution, the RAF is shown in the light of having given up everything in hopes of change, and hurting many people along the way. This is very different than in Under My Skin in which all those interviewed talked about the bravery of those who were protesting and how the current young generation is too complacent. This is interesting because Under My Skin is showing the contrast of the generations. The older people who were once the young rebels are now in positions of power, but will not make the changes that they wanted as a youth, yet they criticize the youth for not rebelling as they did. In Children of the Revolution, there was a lot of talk about how those involved were just doing what they thought was the right thing to do. The differences in the tenses of the films accentuate the effectiveness of the protests and the things being protested. Children of the Revolution is mostly all in the past. While Under My Skin is also in the past, there is a hopefulness that the ideas and the activism will continue.
While watching The Choice of Hercules, I was wondering why the title of the film was not translated as the less awkward Hercules’ Choice, which would’ve meant the same thing; some direct translations of the Japanese title are Breaking In No Matter What! Asam Sansō Case/Rush In! Asama Sansō Incident (totsunyūseyo! asama sansō jiken 突入せよ! あさま山荘事件 ). Following some precursory research, I learned that the English title is likely a reference to the parable about Hercules/Herakles having to choose between an easy life through Vice or a glorious, difficult one through the Virtue of hard work; the tale is also the source for a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Annibale Carracci and Handel’s one-act oratorio. While the title is a clear inspiration for the difficult choices protagonist Attaché Sassa Atsuyuki has to make, especially at the end of the film, it is more noteworthy for its nature as the frame for the prevalence of Western (read: American) influences throughout.
By 1972, when the film is set, Japan had been infused with Western culture. The tension between new and old implicit in the film came to a head with the protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in the 1960s and ’70s. “The United Army and the Siege of Asamasanso (1972)” establishes a background of student violence against police, but also provides the source of the name of the “scrambled thinking of Japan’s leftist ideologues”: uchi-geba originates in uchi meaning “internal” and gebaruto from the German gewalt meaning “violence”; it can also be read as uchigeba 内ゲバ, or “internalized strife” (p. 198). In The Choice of Hercules, laconic, wealthy Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture is invaded by violent youth and big-city police officers. Both groups are the face of Western influence, with the former representing the negative effects of interventionism, the Tokyo bureaucracy functioning as the blending of several negative aspects of both cultures, and Sassa is the positive culmination of experience outside Japan. He even enters the film as he returns from a conference in London. Moreover, Sassa has been to the United States and is shown at the beginning as being able to read English. He is the heroic mediator between the two worlds – Tokyo and Karuizawa, West and East, modern and traditional. His ideas are the ones that save lives by bringing into play his experience with the world outside Japan, namely his recommendation (and later, command) that officers remove their insignias in light of the killing of officers in Vietnam. The bumblers and the terrorists are those who cannot adapt. Contrastingly, Sassa is portrayed as the confident, competent hero who exemplifies traditional Japanese views of masculine honor *and* personifies the new method of policing.
In my opinion, the purpose of the film “The Choice of Hercules” is not to idolize the police, like most police procedural films. In fact, The Choice of Hercules consistently highlights the struggle, or sometimes even inadequacy, of the police. In my opinion, the trials of Hercules (Mr. Sassa) so to speak, act as a red herring for the real purpose of the film. Which after reading “The United Red Army and the Siege of Asamasanso” by Mark Schreiber, I believe is to make the viewer see how far the RAF in Japan had gone. According to Schreiber: “The movement had became, by turns, competitive and highly factionized, with occasionally fatal clashes occurring between rival groups of students.” From being just a student movement, to this point in the movie, where the RAF is holding a woman hostage, to where the RAF went after this event. I think this point is driven home in the scene where all of the policemen, led by Mr. Sassa, are standing there with their riot shields in hand, and one of the men says something along the lines of “here we are once again a riot squad, with our riot shields, water cannons and Tear gas” I think what he is talking about is how this whole thing started with the student movements, and how even though the whole movement had evolved from protests, to the RAF holding a woman hostage in a lodge, they were still just a riot squad. In essence, they were still trying to subdue the same movement that had started in 1968. On the surface, this movie is the classical hero story which follows the theme of the trials of Hercules. Mr. Sassa is called upon to do a difficult task, freeing the captive woman, which he eventually succeeds in. so on the surface, the “mission” is a success and all is well. But as Joseph pointed out, this isn’t really much of a victory in Japan police’s battle with the RAF, because after the events in this movie, the RAF attacked the Swedish and American embassies in 1975, and hijacked a plane in 1977 in Bangladesh and demanded for 6 members of the RAF to be released from prison. Therefore, I can see how one might disagree with this movie because on the surface, it almost suggests “victory” over the RAF in its ending, however we all know that this was not the end of the RAF.
One thing that struck me while watching The Choice of Hercules (2002) was how the film chose to portray the Japanese media and their direct access to police proceedings during the siege of Asamasanso. The idea that news cameramen would be just a few feet behind riot police during the final stages of their violent assault on the lodge, as they are portrayed as doing in the film, baffled me and their prominence in the operation seemed a bit over exaggerated to say the least. However, after having listened to Marco’s lecture about changes in media and read Mark Schreiber’s piece on the actual incident, I feel as though the film’s portrayal of the media isn’t nearly as ridiculous as I had initially thought. According to Schreiber, the event was a national news phenomenon during which TV audiences received multiple daily updates of the standoff’s progress and Muta Yasuka, the female hostage, “became a national heroine, her picture appearing on the cover of several women’s magazines” (207). He confirms that television cameras did indeed follow the riot squads in for the final assault and underscores the immense interest of the public by noting that “so many people sat by their televisions to view the event that day that the Kyushu electric power utility registered at least two surges in demand that eclipsed the levels of the Sapporo Winter Olympics and annual High School Baseball Tournament” (209). Looking back on the film after having gathered some context on the event, the filmmakers’ choice to show the police chief being mobbed by reporters while going to the bathroom and to stress the police’s daily interaction with impatient journalists seem much more fitting.
ReplyDeleteIn the same vein, I noticed that after the film and in Tuesday’s class a lot of comments were made about the inefficiency of the police chain of command during the events of the film. While I agree that the film’s portrayal of the seemingly incompetent police leadership was working well within generic conventions to generate comedy and play up Sassa’s heroic leadership, there is something to be said about the police wanting to run a clean operation for the media. The press, as the film shows, was always ready to report something about the standoff to the public and would not hesitate to show the police in a negative light if it meant getting more news out. Little moments throughout the movie, such as Sassa’s insistence on continuing the informationless press conferences to prevent media condemnation and the concerns the Tokyo brass have over the public’s fury over police inaction, show the influence that public perception held over the operation’s proceedings. In his chapter on Japan in 1968, William Marotti underscores the ability of the press to harm the reputation of the police, noting the marked negative shift in public opinion after the media coverage of the violent handling of a student protest against US military influence. He notes how even previously unsympathetic publications began to run articles that sympathized with the students after bearing witness to violent police actions and noted that article titles like “You’re Going Too Far! Police Actions Criticized by Citizens” garnered public for the students and necessitated an apology from the mayor (112). Given this history of press influence, it isn’t hard to understand why the police in The Choice of Hercules act hesitantly and focus intently on proceeding in such a way as to not lose face.
Nice post, Dan. I like how you offer one focus and manage to use not just one but two of the assigned readings to support your argument.
ReplyDeleteThe Choice of Hercules could have been a movie very much like the Baader-Meinhof complex. Reading through Schrieber's chapter, it seems that the Japanese Red Army Faction did some pretty drastic, intense, and cinematic acts. A film about the rebels would have presented us with hijackings, raids, riots, the murdering of police, and would give the audience, hopefully, a decent look at what the rebels were really like. An especially intense scene that could have happened takes places just before the events of the Choice of Hercules, when Nagata "purged," many members of her group. Schrieber states "Those who were beaten to death by their fellows may have been the lucky ones. Six of those who were killed for lesser offenses were hogtied, gagged, tired to trees, and left outside in subzero weather, where they froze to death."
ReplyDeleteSo, why not make this movie? This seems like a pretty dramatic ending. Although I don't know much about Japanese culture, from what I have read, after the events of Asamasanso and later the incident at the Lod airport in Israel, Japan's sympathies for the leftist movement faltered. They were embarrassed by what they had done. The RAF was looked down upon publicly and the leftist movement for the most part died down. There was no myth built up on them as there was for Baader, Meinhof, etc. Japan has no need to destroy the mythic reputations of the RAF, because they have none; unlike Baader, who was virtually a celebrity, and whose mysterious death led many to further mythologize him.
The Choice of Hercules (2002) provides little to no background on the RAFs militancy in Japan before or after the seige of Asamasanso in 1972. I noticed this during the movie, but fully realized this after reading Mark Schreiber, “The United Red Army and the Siege of Asamasanso”. By 1972 the Red Army had already hijacked a plane and flew it to North Korea, staged dozens of attacks on police with guns, molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, and also attempted to assassinate the head of the Tokyo Police Department, killing his wife. The only previous action by the RAF that is mentioned in The Choice of Herucles was the raid on the guns store that supplied the militants with the guns at Asamasanso. More importantly, this was not the end or even the climax of the Japanese RAF, a group which seems to be depleted(? or at least it hints at this) at the end of the movie. Rather the Japanese RAF attacked Swedish and American embassies in Kuala Lumpur in 1975, and hijacked a plane in 1977 in Bangledesh and demanded the release of 6 imprisoned RAF members, a mission which was successful.
ReplyDeleteSo in context, it is hard to see the seige of Asamasanso as a success for Japanese Police. In reality it is another mission, in a long line of mishaps by the police trying to handle the RAF. The lack of context shows the viewer that The Choice of Hercules is not trying to inform, but simply entertain and persuade the viewer of the police’s hardships. This can also be seen in the theatrical interaction’s between characters throughout the movie and the creation of a clear protagonist in Sassa. Oh and the hubris, the police reek of hubris throughout, or in Japanese culture, it may just be called courage?
Like I talked about the other day, I quite enjoyed Children of the Revolution's extra mini documentary "Under My Skin" because it gives us a unique perspective on the legacy of student protestors and filmmakers during the events of the 1960s and 1970s. Near the end of the film, the interviewees are asked about their opinions of (then) modern Japan. One of the directors (his name escapes me at this moment) was not positive at all, almost scolding the youth for not being as active in their protests like he was. Perhaps in the new generation he saw youth brought up on the policies that have come to be since their failure to change Japan since their protests, and that is why he is so stubborn on the issue.
ReplyDeleteIt strange that the documentary was clearly biased against Japan's youth as so far to not give them a voice. Perhaps it wasn't relevant to their topic, but it's quite unfair to have a learned film director rail off against youth and cut to a candid interview with a 20-something who clearly wasn't prepared for such scrutiny. You could do the same, simply switch the candid role to the older generation and get a student of Japanese history and the older interviewees would look silly in comparison. It's disappointing to see obvious bias in a documentary like this.
However, I did quite enjoy the comments of the dancer near the end. While plenty of my peers thought they were humorous, I though that his logic was sound. Generations thrive no matter what restrictions are placed upon them was what I took from his interview, and it's something that I believe in myself.
The tone of The Choice of Hercules is significantly different than what we've seen in Something in the Air and The Baader Meinhoff Complex. Whereas the two previous films have had a more serious and mature attitude towards their incidents following 1968, The Choice of Hercules boasted a humorous and more immature when portraying the hostage situation the film depicted. This is prevalent early on in the film; when the police moving in on the small cottage seem inadequate in knowing how to load their guns with ammo, and once the suspects emerged from the cottage the police shoot not at the assailants but into the air - even though they have clear shots at point blank range, and the suspects all carry firearms while they flee from the authorities. This continues on in many instances: the man who gets shot when attempting to enter the hostage situation casually gets up and walks off afterward (although it is told that he dies later on); the music often doesn’t match the scene, sometimes a flute like instrument sounds even when the police are determining what their next move will be; the police refer to one of their tactics as “operation: rocks”; and sometimes the dialogue throws off the balance of appropriate tension, like the conversation that stems the idea that “a normal officer should be constipated by now.” Whether or not this is meant to be a large part of the film and its understanding is unclear, but it is distracting nonetheless, enough so that it makes me question how serious the director’s understanding of the situation was and how it is regarded in Japanese culture and society.
ReplyDeleteWhile both, Choice of Hercules and Under my Skin were entirely different in nature, it seems as though one’s depiction feeds into the observations of the other. In Under My Skin, a point that is expressed in several ways towards the end of the film was that the current young generation in japan was one that is complacent, uninterested in history or emotionally distant from their surroundings. In a few subtle ways I felt that Choice of Hercules feeds into this idea a little bit. Throughout the telling of the story we are only given one point of few, since the film has decided for us who the hero of the story is and what side to be on, it deprives the viewer a chance to relate to other characters or make decisions about the film. Going along with this idea of a narrow point of view, it seemed that the film was depicted at a distance, in a historical sense but also through cinematography. The opening scene of the film is a wide angle shot with most of the frame composed of landscape while Sassa is seen in a car in the distance, the next scene is introducing the Government officials and is shot through a small window in a door. Both of these introductory scenes set up a sort of detached mood for the rest of the film. Hearing Wakamatsu in Under My Skin talk so passionately about how revolutions can be accomplished through film, I can’t help but feel that Choice of Hercules is a antithesis to this in a way. While Choice of Hercules is retelling a significant part of Japan’s revolutionary movement it’s lack of variety both in the story and cinematography perpetuates this notion of simple one-sided minds that the revolutionaries of the time are associating with the younger generation, the ones that would be consuming this film.
ReplyDeleteMark Schreiber’s text illuminates that the Red Army Faction’s five militants in the Siege of Asamasanso were not only police escapees, but escapees of the faction’s leaders Mori and Nagata, who saw their members as entirely expendable if their allegiance to the “cause” did not match the same level as their leaders. The escapees’ decision to continue as fugitives and take refuge in the Asamasanso building instead of turning themselves over to the police at some level implies they have not lost all of their political aspirations, yet the The Choice of Hercules (2002) reconstructs the event as merely a game of survival than a political statement between the fugitives and the police. Unlike Something in the Air or the Baader–Meinhoff Complex which are situated in urban environments, The Choice of Hercules shows how the police, like the terrorists, can barely function in the “wilderness” and need urban support and technology in order to survive. Schreiber’s chapter also claims the citizens received “regular updates” but the film minimizes their involvement extensively to emphasize the location’s sense of isolation.
ReplyDeleteThe documentary Under My Skin (2002) proposes a different problem in that the youth, as one would expect to be the most politically conscious, are in fact, as George Carlin would say, “bought off and silenced by gizmos and toys.” This is in contrast to the late 1960s youth activists who would use entertainment though the form of filmmaking to politically inspire people around them. The documentary essentially mocks “the younger generation” through a montage sequence that includes sped up “time lapse” shots of young people constantly looking at their phones in between staged “candid” interview segments where the subjects appear disinterested or unaware of societal issues and their own aspirations.
The Choice of Hercules had a vast difference between the other films we have previously viewed in class. While the other movies were either documentaries or serious historical fiction, Choice of Hercules had many comical moments that could also be called “juvenile”. The movie has an overall transformation from beginning to end, that our protagonist endures. Atsuyuki, at the start of the movie, is unsure of how to act when he arrives at Nagano. The officers at Nagano didn’t want any direct assistance from Toyko, and yet Tokyo ended up sending people to “help” them, which really means “take over”. Atsuyuki, throughout the movie, starts to gain confidence and a strong hand at controlling the situation. Now, he isn’t the best commanding officer, seeing that it took many days and more fallen soldiers than necessary, to rescue a single victim. But he does the best he can. A lot of the decisions and actions that were made were not the best options. There was one moment, that a soldier was standing up and walking behind the barriers, while the radicals were shooting, and he was so overwhelmed that he didn’t make a decision and stood there as an easy target and was shot in the head. The tension between the soldiers during the intrusion of the building that held the radicals and the hostages was very strange to watch. It felt like there wasn’t a commanding officer to tell the men what to do. They didn’t have a plan after entering the building. They were disoriented and confused as to where the shots were coming from and who was hurt and who was in charge. Along with the hostility between the men who thought they were in charge.
ReplyDeleteOne point the film is making is the non-effectiveness of violence in strategic situations. My initial reaction to the movie was why not storm the place and shoot each and every one of the captors, but as the movie goes on, I clearly understood why. I must say that I disagree with Daniel about the media not being important in the movie. Mentioned from our reading, “so many people sat by their televisions to view the event that day that the Kyushu electric power utility registered at least two surges in demand that eclipsed the levels of the Sapporo Winter Olympics and annual High School Baseball Tournament” (209). I must bring up the fact that it is pretty well know the High School Baseball tournament in Japan is their largest sporting event in the entire country of Japan. This is great evidence and speaks volume to how huge of part that the media plays in society and how media will scrutinized everyone from police to students, and helps the viewer understand how and why the state officials handled the hostage situation in the manner they did. This can be supported by our reading, Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest, “In a flurry of editorials and articles, newspapers roundly condemned the violent tactics of the students, with some quoting Chief Cabinet Secretary Kimura Toshio's statement that Yamazaki's death was the result of student groups' rehearsal for violent revolution” (109).
ReplyDeleteThe movie focuses on how involved public opinion is in making their moves. This priority is depicted in the scene where the commissioner would not even a press conference to be canceled because in the eye of the public, no news was bad news. From that statement, one can incur that public relations had everything to do with how the Japanese police were ordered to handle their situation. It is very important in the film to show the incompetency of the local policemen, that way Sassa could be glorified on screen. As we discussed in class, the movie Dirty Harry shows vigilantism in a positive manner, so that the director could get viewers to back the main character. Emphasizing the ongoing struggle of police procedure does just that in our movie by showing Sassa in constant disagreement. The Choice of Hercules (2002), however, does so in a different manner, instead gives great detail as to how leadership and moral shapes some of biggest problems in the movie by showing over and over again. Scenes where characters are constantly making a mockery of the higher-ups in Tokyo are important because it shows the disagreement between the higher ranking officers, and not just one particular officer in a unit. The chain of command is all over the place in the movie, but the media never picks up on this, and I am surprised that this point is left out as if it was hiding it from their own public and the viewer.
In the two previous films that we have seen we are more engaged with the activists in these groups. In "Something in the Air" we follow at least one member of this group the entire time. In the "Baader Meinhof Complex" we go back and forth between the activist group and the police for to show the battle between the two. There is a sense of battle in "Something in the Air" as well, but the struggle is not shown nearly as much as in "Baader Meinhof Complex"
ReplyDeleteNow, in "The Choice of Hercules" we don't see any member of the activist group except for when they stick their rifles out the window and when they are captured at the end. We are identifying more so with the police force of the town as well as Tokyo. We see characteristics of the new and old ways of Japanese culture. This coming out in the struggle for power and the need to address people by their proper title. There are multiple scenes that we are shown them setting up the room for meetings. Who would sit where, people moving around multiple times to get everything just so.
Another big difference between the films that we have previously watched and “The Choice of Hercules” besides the fact that we don’t have a chance to identify with the members of the United Red Army. As well as seeing the encounter from more of the police perspective. We are also cut off from all sympathizers of the United Red Army and the other generations of the group. In both of the other films there were multiple generations of activists. In “Something in the Air” the main characters are trying to become a part of this movement and trying to make their mark. In “Baader Meinhof Complex” the second and third generations are trying to break them out of prison. Trying to continue what the first generation started, even though they really didn't know that they should for in the first place.
In “The choice of Hercules” the United Red Army were corned, and shut off from the world. There was nobody trying to continue what they have done. There was nobody trying to break them out. The only people trying to get in were trying to trade themselves for the hostage or trying to get in there to take them down.
Something that strikes me as being markedly different between the protests in Japan versus the protests in West Germany and France, is that one of the key rallying points in Japan was a very specific issue, the US-Japan Security Treaty. Those in France and West Germany were more concerned with the class system, capitalism and then Vietnam and Pakistan. In Japan, the central point of the protests was The US-Japan Security Treaty. This is a very concrete issue that the Japanese protestors were attempting to stop.
ReplyDelete“…With the treaty set for automatic renewal in 1970, the events of 1968 were read by observers forward and backward, both in comparison with this previous high-water mark for postwar mass activism and as portents of a possibly later convulsion at the close of the decade---particularly in the context of an intensifying security relationship with an America again at war in Asia” (100 Marotti).
How the two films, Children of the Revolution and Under My Skin tackle the differing issues, I think, shows the difference between violent activism attempting to change a policy and violent activism attempting to change an entire system. In Children of the Revolution, the RAF is shown in the light of having given up everything in hopes of change, and hurting many people along the way. This is very different than in Under My Skin in which all those interviewed talked about the bravery of those who were protesting and how the current young generation is too complacent. This is interesting because Under My Skin is showing the contrast of the generations. The older people who were once the young rebels are now in positions of power, but will not make the changes that they wanted as a youth, yet they criticize the youth for not rebelling as they did. In Children of the Revolution, there was a lot of talk about how those involved were just doing what they thought was the right thing to do. The differences in the tenses of the films accentuate the effectiveness of the protests and the things being protested. Children of the Revolution is mostly all in the past. While Under My Skin is also in the past, there is a hopefulness that the ideas and the activism will continue.
While watching The Choice of Hercules, I was wondering why the title of the film was not translated as the less awkward Hercules’ Choice, which would’ve meant the same thing; some direct translations of the Japanese title are Breaking In No Matter What! Asam Sansō Case/Rush In! Asama Sansō Incident (totsunyūseyo! asama sansō jiken 突入せよ! あさま山荘事件 ). Following some precursory research, I learned that the English title is likely a reference to the parable about Hercules/Herakles having to choose between an easy life through Vice or a glorious, difficult one through the Virtue of hard work; the tale is also the source for a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Annibale Carracci and Handel’s one-act oratorio. While the title is a clear inspiration for the difficult choices protagonist Attaché Sassa Atsuyuki has to make, especially at the end of the film, it is more noteworthy for its nature as the frame for the prevalence of Western (read: American) influences throughout.
ReplyDeleteBy 1972, when the film is set, Japan had been infused with Western culture. The tension between new and old implicit in the film came to a head with the protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in the 1960s and ’70s. “The United Army and the Siege of Asamasanso (1972)” establishes a background of student violence against police, but also provides the source of the name of the “scrambled thinking of Japan’s leftist ideologues”: uchi-geba originates in uchi meaning “internal” and gebaruto from the German gewalt meaning “violence”; it can also be read as uchigeba 内ゲバ, or “internalized strife” (p. 198). In The Choice of Hercules, laconic, wealthy Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture is invaded by violent youth and big-city police officers. Both groups are the face of Western influence, with the former representing the negative effects of interventionism, the Tokyo bureaucracy functioning as the blending of several negative aspects of both cultures, and Sassa is the positive culmination of experience outside Japan. He even enters the film as he returns from a conference in London. Moreover, Sassa has been to the United States and is shown at the beginning as being able to read English. He is the heroic mediator between the two worlds – Tokyo and Karuizawa, West and East, modern and traditional. His ideas are the ones that save lives by bringing into play his experience with the world outside Japan, namely his recommendation (and later, command) that officers remove their insignias in light of the killing of officers in Vietnam. The bumblers and the terrorists are those who cannot adapt. Contrastingly, Sassa is portrayed as the confident, competent hero who exemplifies traditional Japanese views of masculine honor *and* personifies the new method of policing.
Well done!
DeleteIn my opinion, the purpose of the film “The Choice of Hercules” is not to idolize the police, like most police procedural films. In fact, The Choice of Hercules consistently highlights the struggle, or sometimes even inadequacy, of the police. In my opinion, the trials of Hercules (Mr. Sassa) so to speak, act as a red herring for the real purpose of the film. Which after reading “The United Red Army and the Siege of Asamasanso” by Mark Schreiber, I believe is to make the viewer see how far the RAF in Japan had gone. According to Schreiber: “The movement had became, by turns, competitive and highly factionized, with occasionally fatal clashes occurring between rival groups of students.” From being just a student movement, to this point in the movie, where the RAF is holding a woman hostage, to where the RAF went after this event. I think this point is driven home in the scene where all of the policemen, led by Mr. Sassa, are standing there with their riot shields in hand, and one of the men says something along the lines of “here we are once again a riot squad, with our riot shields, water cannons and Tear gas” I think what he is talking about is how this whole thing started with the student movements, and how even though the whole movement had evolved from protests, to the RAF holding a woman hostage in a lodge, they were still just a riot squad. In essence, they were still trying to subdue the same movement that had started in 1968. On the surface, this movie is the classical hero story which follows the theme of the trials of Hercules. Mr. Sassa is called upon to do a difficult task, freeing the captive woman, which he eventually succeeds in. so on the surface, the “mission” is a success and all is well. But as Joseph pointed out, this isn’t really much of a victory in Japan police’s battle with the RAF, because after the events in this movie, the RAF attacked the Swedish and American embassies in 1975, and hijacked a plane in 1977 in Bangladesh and demanded for 6 members of the RAF to be released from prison. Therefore, I can see how one might disagree with this movie because on the surface, it almost suggests “victory” over the RAF in its ending, however we all know that this was not the end of the RAF.
ReplyDelete