1987 ‘ゆきゆきて、神軍’ Directed by Kazuo Hara
Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old veteran of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, sets out to conduct interviews with survivors and relatives to find the truth behind atrocities committed while the Japanese garrison was surrounded, in particular the unexplained killing of two Japanese privates in his unit.
Yuki Yukite shingun, Идет армия голого короля
Works on so many different levels: As an uncompromising piece of investigative journalism shedding light on the unimaginable horrors of Japan's wartime sojourn into Southeast Asia, an attempt to untangle complex knots of guilt, patriotism, cognitive dissonance, and willful ignorance, and a character study of a bullheaded veteran driven to (possibly over) the brink of madness on a quest to find someone accountable for the horrors he endured.
Kenzo Okuzaki has a rap sheet of a number of bizarre offenses, ranging from second-degree murder to public disturbances caused by driving around one of his three automobiles decked out with anti-government slogans to "distributing pornographic images of Emperor Hirohito" (never elaborated upon, to much hilarious effect). His defiance of authority goes…
"You're just filming this and doing nothing to stop it?"
" . . . violence is my forte."
An aging but violent veteran looking for divine redemption beats up other veterans in order to find the truth about possible cannibalization during World War 2 in this ethically dubious, always enthralling, and completely batshit documentary that is even crazier than it sounds.
80
What's important to recognize about The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (what a title!!) is that it's frequently lost in its own dubious sense of ethics, even if Kazuo Hara understands that our subject, Kenzo Okuzaki, is integral in bringing traumatic motions and inescapable truths to the surface. The film allows the spectator to observe the hypocrisy of its moral strength, while acknowledging the horrors of war in the Pacific Theater. There's an unsettled, deranged absurdity to how quickly Naked Army veers from a study of vicious activism to a sincere document of lingering WWII repression. Can't say I've seen anything like this, especially when its distinctive livewire energy is almost entirely found in the tension between the main subject and the historical baggage of the past. Brilliant, memorable work.
“Violence is my forte.”
I’m at a loss for words at the moment. This doc is unlike anything I’ve seen. Every moment feels incredibly surreal and unfathomably insane, yet what we are watching is 100% real. Using a combination of investigative journalism, vigilante justice, and perhaps some insanity, Okuzaki (whether purposefully or unintentionally) irrevocably blurs the lines of morality, taking a just cause and fueling it with the same hateful sentiment it is rallying against.
Towards the end of the film, Okuzaki reasons that violence is ok if its means are justified in the end, yet this hypocritical stance doesn’t seem lost on the filmmakers. However, how complicit are the filmmakers in this? Do they share the same perspective as…
"Today, I came here fully prepared to beat you up." is the hardest line of all time. Violence is bad but violence yields results, kenzo okuzaki was a mad man.
not a lot i can say abt this except that okuzaki is clearly mentally broken—so is everyone he interrogates, except they’ve buried their sins beneath two tons of repression that okuzaki refuses himself. each day he rips off the scab, never even letting the wound scar over. he appears to experience every step of his rabid crusade with the same emotional impact as if the war was just last week; the early scene at the grave is extraordinarily powerful.
to become a divine instrument okuzaki sacrificed himself entirely; he made himself the light that illuminates the darkness, the spade that digs up what is buried. i imagine that would drive anyone mad !!
Got consistently blindsided while watching this. Everything that unfolds is absolute insanity, from the horrors of war to the ridiculous methods of acquiring testimonies, right through to the epilogue. Heavy subject matter but an absolute must-watch.
War movies, whether narrative or nonfiction, are necessarily limited by the perspective of those who make them. The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is what happens when this fundamentally selfish framing is pushed by sheer force of will to such an extreme that it actually becomes a true reckoning with the forces of one’s own homeland because one man’s grief is so profound it escapes the limits of his body and soul. Okuzaki Kenzo is just about the least likable protagonist in the history of cinema; from the moment we meet him derailing a wedding to soapbox about Emperor Hirohito’s crimes (and, wildly, his own), the WWII veteran is obviously still trapped in that war in some catastrophic way. Haunted…
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On luminously introduces the very controversial yet intriguing central figure Kenzo Okuzaki, a political agitator and Pacific War veteran. The documentary observes him relentlessly campaigning to unearth a conceivable war crime, the suspicious death of two soldiers, privates Tetsunosuke Yoshizawa and Jinpei Nomura.
Okuzaki almost obsessively implicates Emperor Shōwa possessing all accountability for war-inflicted trauma and noisily makes his arguments publicly. His prior activities have inevitably seen him become a somewhat infamous figure with the police, proudly carrying his previous incarcerations for violence with a semblance of honour.
Director Kazuo Hara channels what Okuzaki perceives as society's conformity together with its nation-wide amnesia over injustices during the war, and the film crew records him travelling…
- Kenzo Okuzaki's determination is both frightening and admirable in this astonishing document of one man's battle to prevent society from forgetting Japan's role in World War II. Again and again Kenzo compulsively crashes through the decorum of polite society to effectively rub everybody's nose in the horrors of war. Violence frequently boils to the surface and the trauma suffered by Kenzo in New Guinea is plain to see.
- Despite him ostensibly investigating the murder and possible cannibalisation of soldiers by (still living) superior officers, one gets the feeling that no such specific quest for truth is needed to motivate Kenzo's angry activism. He lives to prevent others from forgetting and is more than willing to kill for what…
