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November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 85
THE BUDDHIST TRILOGY
THIS TRANSIENT LIFE/ MANDALA/POEM
Jissoji Akio; Japan 1970-72; Arrow Academy; Region
B Blu-ray; Certificate 18; 143/132/119 minutes;
1.37:1/1.85:1/2.35:1. Extras: 137-minute extended cut of
Poem; Jissoji’s 1974 feature Asaki Yumemishi/It Was a Faint
Dream (120 minutes); theatrical trailers; introductions
and partial commentaries by David Desser; booklet
with writing by Tom Mes, Anton Bitel, Espen Bale.
Reviewed by Tony Rayns
Jissoji Akio (1937-2006) is an enigma, known
equally for above-average TV sci-fi in the
60s, arthouse features in the 70s, and latterly
horror/sfx movies. This set is the first time
any of his serious work has been released in
the West, although enterprising fan-subtitlers
have had a crack at the first two films in the
trilogy. You need to scour the small-print to
find out that the set also includes the fourth
feature that Jissoji made with Art Theater
Guild support (Asaki Yumemishi/It Was a Faint
Dream, 1974), and even the small-print doesn’t
tell you that a bonus ‘director’s cut’ of Poem
(Uta, 1972) is hidden away on the third disc.
In the least contentious of his many
contributions to the discs, David Desser provides
a summary of the Art Theater Guild’s history
as his introduction to Poem. The ATG was an
association of independent cinemas around
Japan formed in 1961 to buy and exhibit the
‘new wave’ films from Europe which were being
overlooked by Towa, long established as the
premier importer of foreign arthouse titles. From
the mid-60s, as the old studio system crumbled
and directors like Imamura Shohei and Oshima
Nagisa reinvented themselves as independent
filmmakers, ATG began raising funds to help such
directors finance their films; no film was ever
wholly produced by ATG, so the directors had to
find the rest of their minimal budgets themselves.
It got harder as Japan’s left went into eclipse, but
ATG kept helping directors into the mid-80s.
Jissoji came into the ATG fold when a medium-
length film he’d made for TV (from a script by
Oshima) was distributed by ATG with Oshima’s
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969). All three films
in his ‘Buddhist Trilogy’ are strongly inflected
by the same political despair that led Oshima to
abandon independent filmmaking after 1972, but
their Buddhist perspective (more philosophical
than religious) frames the issues very differently.
Some critics claim that the films question the
relevance of Buddhism in the modern world, but
the opposite is true: they actually focus on human
fallibility and self-delusion, not on any supposed
shortcomings in Buddhist philosophy. All three
films are set largely in old, traditional houses in
the Kansai region, near Kyoto, and all three are
marked by their innovative and idiosyncratic
film language (framing, editing, sound design).
This Transient Life (Mujo, 1970) centres
on Masao, dissident son of a stern, wealthy
businessman, who is fascinated by Buddhist art
and cosmology but drawn more to images of hell
than to the “boring” concept of nirvana – he has
a rampant libido. He seduces and impregnates
his sister Yuki, arranges for her to marry the
houseboy to give the child a father, and leaves to
apprentice under a master sculptor of Buddhist
statues in Kyoto. The script (by Ishido Toshiro,
writer of the entire trilogy) doesn’t question
Masao’s aggressive misogyny – rape and what the
BBFC calls “strong sexual threat” are constants
in all three films – but it does provide sounding-
boards for his nihilism in the persons of a local
priest and his master in Kyoto. Masao consolidates
his passage to hell by becoming a murderer.
The often confusing Mandala (1971) plays like
a kind of sequel to Oshima’s The Man Who Left
His Will on Film (1970). Two ex-student radicals
and their girlfriends are conscripted into a bizarre
utopian cult whose leader Maki has promiscuous
interests in hellfire Buddhism, ‘primitive’
Shintoism, homosexuality, rape and agriculture.
(This mish-mash draws on real-life Japanese
cults of the period, from documentarist Ogawa
Shinsuke’s retreat into collective rice-farming
after a decade of failed political activism to
novelist Mishima’s toy-soldier private army, with
added references to the butoh dance and fringe
theatre styles of the late 60s.) Things work out
pretty badly, what with numerous rapes, deranged
fertility rites and a vision of mass suicide, and
there are strong hints that the sole survivor
will embark on a right-wing terrorist path.
Poem (Uta, 1972) is much less florid, focusing
on Jun, the ascetic houseboy in the mansion
of a retired, absent patriarch, who spends all
his free time practising Buddhist calligraphy;
he is devoted to the family and its imperilled
estates, but may or may not know that he’s
actually the patriarch’s illegitimate son. The
wayward behaviour of the two legit sons,
one a shyster lawyer, the other a dissolute
scumbag, eventually pushes Jun over the
edge; he starves himself to death and goes out
haunted by visions of a mendicant monk.
All three films look knockout – as does the
bonus feature It Was a Faint Dream (1974), set in
the 13th century, a highly aestheticised variation
on Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu (1952) – and the
sound design, which uses meditation sounds
(bell-clangs, wooden clap-blocks) to stress non-
sacred moments plus non-diegetic ticking clocks
to connote time’s winged chariot hurrying
near, could well be the most ambitious of its
day. The set’s only serious let-down is Desser’s
work as commentator, spoken as if to a group
of particularly dim undergraduates: it shows
minimal grasp of the Buddhist elements, none
at all of the musical elements (eg, Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons in Poem) and offers clunky
descriptions of the scenes and film language.
Jissoji Akio’s transgressive,
despairing films, never before
released in the West, make
for a stunning experience
Face off: Tamura Ryo as Masao in This Transient Life
Some critics claim that the
films question the relevance of
Buddhism in the modern world,
but the opposite is true
THE ROAD TO HELL
Rediscovery
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