破戒 「Hakai」
Release Date: July 08th, 2022
Duration: 119 mins.
Director: Kazuo Maeda
Writer: Masato Kato, Norio Kida (Script), Toson Shimazaki (Original Story)
Starring: Shotaro Mamiya, Anna Ishii, Yuma Yamoto, Naoto Takenaka, Ayako Kobayashi, Yoji Tanaka, Renji Ishibashi,
Thursday Jul 28, 6:30pm
Broken Commandment is an adaptation of Toson Shimazaki’s 1906 novel. Set in Meiji-era Japan (1868–1912), it tells the story of Ushimatsu Segawa (Shotaro Mamiya) a popular teacher in a rural town in who hides his burakumin heritage to avoid social stigma.
The titular commandment that is broken is one Ushimatsu’s father gave (intoned with deep seriousness by Yoji Tanaka in a strikingly dramatic storm-filled flashback) telling his son to hide his background because, to be burakumin is to be part of a community of ethnic Japanese who suffered discrimination based solely on the basis of their class.
Whether or not Ushimatsu will break that commandment is always a knife-edge question.
Despite having idealistic ideas of equality inspired by living in a more modern age and imbibing on socialist teachings, Ushimatsu has good cause to hide his origins because, while Japan might be modernising, old prejudices die hard. This can be witnessed in scenes where a rich man (Renji Ishibashi) is met with physical violence after being revealed as burakumin and turfed out of the guesthouse Ushimatsu stays in. There are also instances when the insidious prejudice is demonstrated in everyday conversations and at the school that he is teaching in where members of the conservative administration and even some of his students are openly discriminatory.
Ushimatsu’s uneasy situation brings him further personal pain when he decamps from the inn to temple lodgings and starts a budding romance with Shiho (Anna Ishii), a beautiful book-loving young woman from an impoverished family descended from more noble samurai stock.
In his own way, Ushimatsu bravely tries to change reality with his we’re-all-equal-in-Meiji-era-Japan teachings and behaviour. He is shown by him fighting for the employment rights of others, defending Shiho’s honour, and trying to get his students to accept a burakumin classmate but tension underlies everything as his background is always under question, whether class-wise or through his politics.
Audiences will find that the film works well because it is adept at showing how oppressive Ushimatsu’s situation is through historical details. His utopian ideals are contrasted with a background of rising nationalism at a time of the Russo-Japanese War, the actions of nefarious efforts of government inspectors at the school who are imposing authoritarian views, and also the malign presence of a corrupt conservative politician using the burakumin minority as a scapegoat for problems while exploiting them for money. These are all a swirling around the main character and offering valid threats that build up over the narrative.
Hope comes via education as Ushimatsu’s hero Rentaro Inoko (an excellent Hidekazu Majima), a fiery author of burakumin origin, offers another father figure who loosens the tight grip that the teacher keeps a hold of his past. Audiences will feel it, too, through scenes of impassioned rhetoric where Inoko bravely and defiantly declares his heritage and the necessity for equality and thinking for one’s self in public. It is quite moving considering the context and the drama becomes really affecting as we see the effect it has on the young man who questions whether he should stick to his father’s commandment and live a life labouring under a prejudice we can see is illogical or risk it all and stand up for justice.
I’ll leave that for viewers to discover but will say that while the ending obviates taking on the forces of oppression with full force, it does offer a hopeful message that change is possible.
In the central role, Shotaro Mamiya is extremely good as he has a purity and simplicity to him for the audience to empathise with at the start. He grows in emotional depth as his character goes through a lot of internal conflict and the finale offers a series of emotional crescendos that have the power to move audiences to tears.
Beyond the well-realised world and character building that have the potential to teach audiences something of Japan’s history, the direction is good. The visual elements are engaging to look at with great staging, framing, and period details/sets that carry viewers back in time.
Director Kazuo Maeda’s film, made to mark the centenary of the Buraku rights organisation Zenkoku Suiheisha (National Levelers’ Association), is just the latest take on the book as it has been adapted for the screen a number of times already, most notably with Keisuke Kinoshita with Apostasy (1948) and then by Kon Ichikawa with The Outcast (1962). While I cannot comment on those film, I can say that this latest version is a handsomely-mounted historical film that is earnest in its calls for equality through its juxtaposition of its good main character facing the violence of bigots with an outdated mindset.