Hideo Gosha: The Line Between Sleaze and Prestige Part 4 - The 1990s

Gosha went into the 1990s without missing a step. His career was on track. His production company was staying busy. He was still very much a viable filmmaker despite some big issues that would have slowed down most other artists in this situation. The passion he had for cinema kept him alive and going. It was one of the few things that he still had left at this point. He didn’t even have his health left to depend on. He was the old guard, in the same class of Imamura, Suzuki (Seijun), Kurosawa, and Ichikawa. Young guns like Kitano Takeshi and Itami Juzo were on the rise. Gosha didn’t have to struggle to work anymore but this was short-lived.

Following going semi-independent with Gosha Pro and attaining more control over his projects, he shifted to female-focused films. He kept the chanbara roots intact to a point while spreading into some erotic and historic arenas as well. Gosha still needed big studio support and continued to work with Shochiku, who had no qualms supporting his projects. Starting in the late 80s, producer Okuyama Kazuyoshi began working with him. 1989’s Four Days of Snow and Blood was a temporary bump in the road for his working relationship with Gosha. Kazuyoshi had to take control of the post-production after a blowup. Gosha had cancer and didn’t tell anyone yet. By the time 1991 rolled around, Shochiku and Kazuyoshi knew. Despite this setback, Gosha forced himself through the process. He was not up to his usual self and needed help directing the film. Kazuyoshi stepped in and pushed it through to the end. That film was Kagero. This proved to be one of his best reviewed films and biggest box office hits. So much so that Shochiku wanted a sequel but he declined. It was the final time he worked with Nakadai Tatsuya and Tamba Tetsuro.

His health declined even further. There was one more film left in him. 1992’s The Oil-Hell Murder, was another success but milder. It had mixed reactions but was still chosen as the official pick for the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Film. It didn’t make it through but having 2 movies get picked for this (the other being Onimasa) is a real accomplishment. This could have been a sympathy vote but it’s also a quality film. Again, he needed help directing and Kazuyoshi helped finish the film. Shortly after completing production, Hideo Gosha died on August 30, 1992. He was 63. The most prominent prodigies of Gosha are Miike Takashi, Anime director Kawajiri Yoshiaki (Ninja Scroll), and Chang Cheh.

Kagero, 1991 - Ghost Light Rin (Higuchi Kanako), professional gambler, reunites with her long lost little brother (Motoki Masahiro). He’s also a gambler but a shittier one. In a game, lost the restaurant where they grew up to a violent gang. She decides to take it back in a tournament for the deed. Her main opponent is Tsune the Immovable (Nakadai Tatsuya #NakadaiForever) representing the gang. He killed her father in front of her. Both remember that night vividly. She wins the restaurant back but her brother dies. Tsune the Immovable joins her side and fights the gang. She barely survives.

The Oil-Hell Murder, 1992 - Some police officers investigate a murder at an oil shop. Yohei (Tsutsumi Shin’ichi), a rebellious and angry youth, frequents brothels against the wishes of his mother, step-dad, brothers, and most importantly his non-biological aunt, Okichi (Higuchi Kanako). He wastes money and time with a prostitute he’s become attached to, Kogiku (Fujitani Miwako), but there’s a problem. Her father is a the head of the Oil Guild. Yohei’s family have next to nothing and owe alot to the guild. After a brief romantic getaway gone array, Yohei and Kogiku return home. She gets married and he gets a real job, at the lowest rung in the oil business. Okichi is comforting Yohei all the while, eventually reaching an erotic climax. She regrets it and Yohei gets rejected. He tries to have Okichi but can’t. She dies. He escapes.

The final Gosha films show a fascinating evolution. In the first phase of his career, the large focus was on realism with a dash of stylish flourish. These were simple, straight-forward stories about samurai fighting back against the man. As he grew as an artist, artificiality replaces the realism. The worlds got dreamier with a strange unclear sense of time. That grittiness carried through to the end. Even at the most hazy and beautiful, you can feel something is wrong. Ugly violence will breakout at some point. It’s bubbling under the surface. Much like the films of Fukasaku Kinji, an intensity builds up with every scene, every moment. This started with Three Outlaw Samurai. The 3 outlaws try to fight the upper class, the men at the top but ultimately fail. Even when they kill the baddest motherfucker but the Lord still fucks over the common people. The gritty, classism intensity is present into the final and 25th film, The Oil-Hell Murder.
Taboo eroticism, misguided anger, and getting abused by the people above you fuel this film. Yohei is troubled, to put it lightly. We never learn why but can infer that might have something dealing with his father’s death. His mother never appears to play an integral or even noticeable part of his life. He goes and does what he wants, living for the moment. If he wants to fuck, he’ll go to Kogiku. If he needs money, he’ll gamble. These are the only things that keep him going until his “aunt” Okichi re-enters his life. She’s trying to be the mother,he probably never had. She is honestly concerned with his well-being, giving him advice but to no avail. He’s damaged and foolish. Everything that goes wrong is his own fault but not necessarily due to him being in the wrong.

The world of Oil-Hell is the slippery, tight-knit world of the Oil Guild. Lamp oil, rapeseed oil, fish oil, egg oil, tea seed oil, poppy seed oil, etc this is serious business. Everyone there plays some part in the machine pumping out oil to the people. Okichi and Yohei’s families are on the lower end of society. They manage their own stores but are gravely indebted to the Oil Guild. Anyone involved in the oil business has to deal with them. They have a stranglehold over this niche corner. In essence, they are the royalty, serving as the corrupt Lord in earlier Gosha films. Yohei at the start, is a Travis Bickle in training. It’s a difficult task to make the protagonist have sociopath tendencies and yet still feel anything compassionate towards him. Similarly in Tracked, Gosha challenged the audience to like a serial killer and there he succeed. Here, is a similar case but he’s never as sympathetic as Sakane in Tracked. Yohei never has a moment of complete redemption. He has no back story, completely a walking id. Okichi tries to instill a sense of humanity in him and it works to a small degree. For her though, it makes her realize how boring her own life is. She takes care of the kids and cooks for her husband. Her existence is sexless and dull. Her metaphorical nephew adds a layer of damage and taboo. She seduced him, crossing into incest and danger. He willingly wants it but undoes his humanity and moral progress. He unravels into a worse version of himself than where he started out. There was no saving him.

The VHS transfer added to the sleazy, hazy atmosphere of this pseudo-tawdry tale. In the tradition of Stray Dog, Kagero, and Onibaba, this is a sweaty movie. The humidity explodes off the screen, AC is advised. Sweat isn’t the only fluid highly featured here. Gosha’s animalistic view of humanity is connected to fluids. He’s done this before but not to this extent. Sweat, semen, blood, and oil are each attached to passions and people’s lives. All of these are combined at the conclusion when we see what happened at the beginning crime scene. Yohei tries to rape Okichi, devolving into a slippery, brutal fight for survival. Nobody wins, as usual for Gosha.

Kagero is a different animal all together. Where Oil-Hell is a serious-minded tragedy, Kagero (Heat Wave) is a fun, convoluted chanbara. It’s the final chanbara he made, and his final truly great film. Similar to the earlier female focused chanbara, Death Shadows, it’s ridiculous, dark, emotional, and a fun time.

Ghost Light Rin

Ghost Light Rin is a reference to the Red Peony Gambler series. A multi-film series starting in Red Peony Gambler (1968) and ending in 1972 with Hibotan Bakuto: Jingi Tooshimasu. It’s not pinky violence but adjacent. Gosha takes the spirit of those episodic low budget film series and adds his specific flavor to the formula. That means, great action scenes and Nakadai #NakadaiForever are integral parts of the story. Nakadai does his reserved, aimless character here, as seen in Sword of Doom and Buraikan.
Focusing the story on a Rin and her familial struggle to reclaim her childhood home is different territory for Gosha. The Gosha touches are there but things are notably off compared to the rest of his films. He didn’t write it or have a story credit on it. This was penned by Takada Koji, who also wrote Gosha’s The Geisha (1983). It’s not bad but Takada has a very different feel. Takada’s script for Kagero is lighter and simpler than what Gosha would have done. The story makes some large leaps but never goes into Bandits Vs. Samurai Squadron level of overwrought plot threads. Rin isn’t as dynamic as his past female leads. She is independent-minded but still always help from father figures throughout the film. She can’t fully operate on her own but she’s also in a big stakes gambling tournament so it’s not like she’s helpless. At the end, she does raid the restaurant with sticks of dynamite and blows men to bits.

Her quest to reclaim her past and family drives the events. The specter of death hangs over her childhood. Tsune the Immovable killed her father in front of her when she was a child. She killed a bully, kicking her brother. Rin’s mother died before she had memories of her. The foster parents died years ago. This restaurant is the only thing she has that’s connected to her past. Much like Yohei, she has no past. She’s a professional gambler, that is the ultimate example of living in the moment. There is no planning ahead. It’s all chance. Her arc is driven by chance. The events aren’t necessarily connected but things happen by chance. Running into her brother, Tsune’s change of heart, the old man killing her assassin, and winning the tournament were all chance. Luck follows her around everywhere. Similarly, like some X-Men, Ghost Light Rin has luck based powers related acting in general goodwill.

Fujio Morita and Hideo Gosha

Hideo was more than a genre director. He had a distinct style and consistent crew, he was a genuine auteur. He elevated the basic chanbara samurai tale into a true film. He is apart of the Japanese New Wave to me. Other directors like Suzuki Seijun and Imamura Shohei, are still celebrated and get attention from the film community at large. However, in those cases, Suzuki and Imamura have good career stories. Suzuki was exiled from films for a decade and Imamura was a Cannes darling. Gosha was a consistently successful director with a few professional setbacks. There is no dramatic story of him going to court in a crazy lawsuit or winning the international festivals. The lack of writing and attention about his work sparked this idea. No one cares about him and his work, outside of Japan. There are 3 books on him. The first was written by his daughter, Gosha Tomoe. It’s only in Japanese. The others were released a few years ago by Robin Gatto. Those are only in French.

Gosha died too soon. If anyone reading these up to this point hasn’t watched anything he’s directed, many of his films are available easily.

Gosha on the set of Three Outlaw Samurai