[A]

I haven't exactly been feeling well these past few weeks (weaks!), so most of my time has been spent visiting doctors and pharmacies in search of that magic pill that'll make everything better. But all this down-time has offered me an opportunity to catch up on some Japanese cinema:

1. First, the insignificant: Samurai Champloo is an exercise in gleeful anachronism. Where it pretends to be an Edo-period genre piece (specifically, 'chambara'), it's determining leitmotiv is urban hip-hop flavor. That's pretty far-fetched, but it carries it off with suitably self-referential goofiness all the same, freely adapting plotlines from all over (Zatoichi, Yakuza movies, etc.) This one is ridiculous, but amusing in its playful misuse of historical locale, event, and personae (and for the disciminating eye, there is plenty in there for parody). Now shut up and enjoy the show.

2. Second most insignificant: Shimotsuma Monogatari. In case you're wondering, Shimotsuma is a little town out in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the story naturally is about this town, and how it's not Daikanyama, Tokyo. Actually, it's about two girls who live in that town and how their styles and identities are produced by the media images they consume. Sort of. One embodies the 'white lolita' style only purchasable in Tokyo, while the other brandishes the country-side biker gang trappings readily available at Jusco (similar to Walmart). The movie itself is cut to pieces in a gaudy version of Tarantino's backwards-first method, and just as easily jumps from genre to genre (including anime segments, ala Kill Bill). But the intent is to merely tickle the audience, and not necessary to skewer them; the jolting shifts and odd twists are comic suggestions of our own media-saturated lives.

3. Last, and speaking of media, I rented Mori Tatsuya's documentary on Aum/Aleph/(or just as appropriately, Araki Hiroshi, the embattled young spokesman for the cult) entitled simply 'A'. Mori is ultimately fairly sympathetic to the cult (which was named Aum when it's members released the nerve toxin Sarin in Tokyo's subway network), and it is amazing to see how much access he has to its inner workings. The documentary picks up after the atrocity with the newly appointed spokesman Araki Hiroshi, boyish and bewildered, and tasked with explaining his faith to a shocked and hostile Japan. The documentary doesn't dwell on the details of the gas attack, or the trial of it perpetrators. That element definitely needs to be kept in mind however, since the context for the widespread social abuse of the cult cannot be understood without it. For audiences in Japan, overwrought news reporting has already brought the message home, but people outside will need to refresh their memories.

What is most powerful about this piece however is its depiction of the extreme, vindictive, and narrow-minded response by the media, the police, and average citizens to the cult. I don't believe it can really apologize for what Aum has done, nor does it really lead to a conclusive judgement of the cult as evil or not, since even its spokesman can not reconcile his own simple faith in Aum and the blatant deeds of its leaders. Cornered by journalists over the issue of whether the 'new' Aum would adopt new teachings, seeming to simultaneously claim both that the teachings were not wrong, and that there were some misunderstandings under the old leaders, Araki testily remarks that 'you don't seem to understand how religions work'. And he might be right. After all, all the denunciations and arguments against Aum seem ex post facto; the public has already judged it an evil cult, so people don't feel the need to be careful in their arguments, especially whether their criticisms can also be applied to other mainstream religions as well. Witnessing the police bullying of average cult members demonstrates an extension of this logic; since nobody is going to sympathize with them (they're guilty of being a cult member), does it really matter how far you mistreat them? Does atrocity make us less willing as a society to demand justice over vengeance?

But that's probably an overreading of the movie, according to my own perspective as an American. Mori's point might be simpler: looking at how Japanese society treats Aum cult members (who were not involved in the attack) only shows us why cults like Aum arise in the first place. People feel a need to escape. . .