Young yakuza Koji Wakamatsu was sent to prison in his twenties; there, he learned that power leads to repression and brutality. After his release, he wrote a book about his experience, and found in filmmaking a way to expose the abuse of power. In 1959, he worked for television and, four years later, shot his first films. He was granted total artistic freedom, as long as sex and violence predominated. His “pinku-eiga” (erotic Japanese movies) attracted a lot of attention and, step by step, he realized that eroticism was necessary to the development of his political discourse; thus, the original constraint had become a necessity. In 1965, he created his own production company, Wakamatsu Productions, and directed Secret Act Inside Walls (aka Affairs Within Walls). The film was submitted to Berlin Film Festival that same year and was nominated for the Golden Bear. It caused general indignation; Wakamatsu’s camera had thus become an active political weapon exposing the faults of a hypocritical government and the mouthpiece of the identity crisis of young people. Wakamatsu’s films, shot frenetically (around ten films a year), with a simplistic touch in their bare staging that reminds Jean-Luc Godard, but with sexual excesses and brutality that are typical of exploitation films, are virulent anarchist manifestos that are still maddening Japanese authorities, while Wakamatsu is still forbidden on American grounds for his left-winged position.
Do you have particular memories here in Berlin?
I’ve had a film in 1966 in the Berlin Film Festival and it’s not so much with Berlin but at that time people said here, and in Japan as well, that I was a national disgrace.
You didn’t came here since 1966?
That’s right. And again I’m afraid of what can be told about my new film.
Can the reactions be the same that 40 years ago?
It’s completely different now, people seem to be really interested in my films.
What was the impulse for making United Red Army?
I wanted to look at the reasons why these very talented or excellent young people at the time, what they stood up against, what they were fighting for. I wanted to put these questions in a film, why they went all away, and at the end it was a failure but even though it’s a little bit exagerated, I wanted to do that for the future generation. In Japan there are other films about this Asama case but they are full of lies and I wanted to restore the truth and give it to the future. I feel that it is my mission as a filmmaker.
There are three countries which were fascists : Japan, Germany and Italy. And for some reasons, in these countries which have been fascists, after the war there have been these young people who gathered under the same ideology, the communism and the red army factions. There are differences though. Whereas in Germany and Italy the people really fought against the state power, the powerful people, in Japan they actually killed their own comrades, and that different is very hard for me.
Did you intend to do from the beginning a part-documentary part-fiction film? And what is actually the fictional part?
There are news footage from the sixties and the seventies. I wanted to include this documentary news footage because I think you can’t understand the background which lead to the Asama case without it. You have to include all those documents to understand why some Japanese raised and stood up against the power. But then of course I had to do a fictional part because first the landscapes have changed. And I’ve done a lot of research and while I was doing my research it became clear that there were part that I had to make fictional in order to show them in the film. That’s why I chose to do a part-documentary and part-fictional film, and I very honestly said it at the beginning of the film.
Does the fiction fill the gaps of the events how they were recounted?
Of course because there are actors acting so it’s not documentary, it’s about emotions, it has to be fictional in a way. And also I actually talked to Kunio Bando who was in the lodge, after he was released from prison. I asked him about what happened in the lodge so it’s based on what I heard from the protagonists. All the events are based on facts. But there isn’t any documents about what happened in the last lodge.
I felt that the documentary part was also very emotional because everything goes so fast, because there are so many informations that it’s becoming hard to understand intellectually. Did you intend to make something so overwhelming in the “documentary part”?
No it’s just all the facts that happened. So there were this movement against Japan Security Treaty, the movements against Vietnam War, the assassination of Malcolm X, may 1968 in France and in China there were many changes and developments so I tried to put all the context in the film to understand why it happened. In Japan today some people don’t know what happened, don’t even know that Japan fought against America. There’s a cruel lack of understanding and History and I wanted to make sure that a lot of things happened in the sixties and that young people came out in the streets and said loud what they didn’t want, that there were ready to get caught by the police. During Vietnam war, a lot of weapons crossed by Japan, the country was a basis for the weapons that would be sent in Vietnam. People were very angry about the japanese government who only listened about what the United States said to them. That’s why incidents happened at that time in Shinjuku Station. It just had so much impact on youth.
What is the difference between RAF and RLF, the two factions that are depicted in United Red Army?
In the japanese Red Army Faction soon there were split groups. As they organized military trained groups the executive members get caught ald also the leader Shiomi was arrested are arrested. Many of them hijacked a plane to go to North Korea and stay over there and some persons went to Palestine to form another branche there. All the leading members left.
On the other side there was a group which formerly belonged to the Japanese Communist Party which is the Revolutionary Left Faction, the RLF. Naruta belong there and those two groups came together. They probably agreed on the fact that Revolution had to be armed, whereas the Communist Party was against use of violence.
There is not many eroticism in the film, but there is a love story which is more or less hidden: is that because there truly were no sex or because in today’s look about this era, sex and revolution can’t be as mixed as it was?
Are you asking only in the context of that film or because you know that I have made many erotic films? I made this film because there is three other films in Japan that deals with the Asama events. They’re all false and based on imagination. One particularly which is based o the report on the officer of police Sasa and when I saw it I thought it was very important to leave the truth. And also I felt that the people who were killed during the events were telling me to tell about what really happened, I felt there were giving me courage. There were nothing erotic : even having one more cookie than the others could lead to be killed, so eroticism was really not important.
What did actually bother you in these three other films dealing with the Asama events?
The first one was made by a very young director and it’s mainly a film about Yoko Nagata and it’s showing how she had sex with different people, she’s depicted like a demon who consomate and kill people. The director wasn’t born at that time and didn’t know at all what really happened. The second film is more like a making-of style film about the United Red Army but all the names have been changed so you don’t have clue in knowing who’s who. It’s not very much understandable. And the third is based on those police officer memories, and actually there are many stories that come from this side, showing how they actually caught the “bad people”, the bad people being the United Army members. Bach then the siege was was broadcasted on Japanese television throughout Japan in order to kill the movement completely. And it was really a strategy to show that young people was bad and to say to them : if you do such movements you’ll be opposing state powers and you’ll become bad.
What’s the meaning of the last sentence: “We didn’t have enough courage”?
The character who says that hardly talks during the film, and have to wash the dishes, etc. But I’ve heard that in the mountains he was the most radical, engaged person, and was the one who thought the most of all. These words have been related to me by Bando Kanio.
How long did the shooting last?
The whole period for the shooting was three months but as we had to wait or move from place to place it did only represent one month.
What about your situation now in Japan as a filmmaker, is it still hard to find money?
Of course I didn’t get any funding. I put my own house and the movie theater I own as a pledge, so I’m about to go bankrupt.
During the siege, it’s becoming really hard to see what happens, there is a lot of dust and fog, gunfire everywhere, and the camera stays inside so you never see what happens outside, just hear the megaphones. Was it only for economical reasons?
In reality you can only see things from one side, so when it’s possible, that’s what I choose to do.
Is it criminal to shoot from the point of view of the police?
It’s criminal to shoot from a powerful point of view.
By Antoine Thirion in Berlin on February 16, 2008
Translated by Masayo Kajimura