Still censored in its own country, In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida), by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, remains one of the most controversial films of all time. A graphic portrayal of insatiable sexual desire, Oshima’s film, set in 1936 and based on a true incident, depicts a man and a woman (Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda) consumed by a transcendent, destructive love while living in an era of ever escalating imperialism and governmental control. Less a work of pornography than of politics, In the Realm of the Senses is a brave, taboo-breaking milestone.
WARNING: THIS FILM IS SEXUALLY EXPLICIT
Cast
| Sada Abe | Eiko Matsuda |
| Kichizo | Tatsuya Fuji |
| Toku | Aoi Nakajima |
| Inn manager | Yasuko Matsui |
| Yoshidaya maid | Meika Seri |
| Old maid | Kanae Kobayashi |
| Old beggar | Taiji Tonoyama |
| Patron | Kyôji Kokonoe |
Credits
| Director | Nagisa Oshima |
| Producer | Anatole Dauman |
| Screenplay | Nagisa Oshima |
| Line producer | Koji Wakamatsu |
| Consulting producer | Hayao Shibata |
| Cinematography | Hideo Ito |
| Lighting | Kenichi Okamoto |
| Production Design | Jusho Toda |
| Music | Minoru Miki |
| Editing | Keiichi Uraoka and Patrick Sauvion |
| Sound | Tetsuo Yasuda |
| Costumes | Jusho Toda and Masahiro Kato |
| Makeup | Koji Takemura |
Jun 11, 2009
Close Criterion collaborator and friend James Quandt, longtime senior programmer at the Cinematheque Ontario and whose theatrical traveling retrospectives are always major events in the film world, is in the spotlight this week in a new, far-reaching conversation with http://theeveningclass...
May 4, 2009
Perhaps the most shocking thing about Nagisa Oshima’s infamous, hard-core In the Realm of the Senses and savage ghost story Empire of Passion is just how elegant they are, a couple of critics have noted in their reviews of our special edition DVDs. The former, writes Dennis Demody...
Apr 30, 2009
The following article, based on an interview with Nagisa Oshima conducted by Katsue Tomiyama in April 1983, first appeared, in slightly longer form, in the Japanese...
by Donald Richie
Apr 30, 2009
The concept of “obscenity” is tested when we dare to look at something that we desire to see but have forbidden ourselves to look at. When we feel that everything has been revealed, “obscenity” disappears and there is a certain liberation. When that which one had wanted to see isn’t sufficiently...
by Donald Richie
Apr 23, 2009
These profiles of the real-life Sada Abé and the actress who portrayed her in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses first appeared in Donald Richie’s 1987 book Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese, and can also be found in the 2006 Japanese Portraits: Pictures of...