In the Realm of the Senses

In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida), by the always provocative Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, remains one of the most controversial films of all time. Based on a true incident, it graphically depicts the all-consuming, transcendent—but ultimately destructive—love of a man and a woman (Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda) 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, still censored in its own country.

Japan
1976
102 minutes
Color
1.66:1
Japanese
Spine #466

Special Features

Restored high-definition digital transfer of the complete, uncensored version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary from 2009 featuring film critic Tony Rayns
Interview from 2009 with actor Tatsuya Fuji
A 1976 interview with director Nagisa Oshima and actors Fuji and Eiko Matsuda, and a 2003 program featuring interviews with consulting producer Hayao Shibata, line producer Koji Wakamatsu, assistant director Yoichi Sai, and film distributor Yoko Asakura
Deleted footage and U.S. trailer
PLUS: An essay by Japanese film scholar Donald Richie and, for the Blu-ray edition, a reprinted interview with Oshima

New cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

Digital Options

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Special Features

Restored high-definition digital transfer of the complete, uncensored version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary from 2009 featuring film critic Tony Rayns
Interview from 2009 with actor Tatsuya Fuji
A 1976 interview with director Nagisa Oshima and actors Fuji and Eiko Matsuda, and a 2003 program featuring interviews with consulting producer Hayao Shibata, line producer Koji Wakamatsu, assistant director Yoichi Sai, and film distributor Yoko Asakura
Deleted footage and U.S. trailer
PLUS: An essay by Japanese film scholar Donald Richie and, for the Blu-ray edition, a reprinted interview with Oshima

New cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Cast & Credits

Cast

Eiko Matsuda: Sada Abe
Tatsuya Fuji: Kichizo
Aoi Nakajima: Toku
Yasuko Matsui: Inn manager
Meika Seri: Yoshidaya maid
Kanae Kobayashi: Old maid
Taiji Tonoyama: Old beggar
Kyôji Kokonoe: Patron

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
Editing: Patrick Sauvion
Sound: Tetsuo Yasuda
Costumes: Jusho Toda
Costumes: Masahiro Kato
Makeup: Koji Takemura

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Nagisa Oshima

Writer, Director

Japanese cinema’s preeminent taboo buster, Nagisa Oshima directed, between 1959 and 1999, more than twenty groundbreaking features. For Oshima, film was a form of activism, a way of shaking up the status quo. Uninterested in the traditional Japanese cinema of such popular filmmakers as Kurosawa, Ozu, and Naruse, Oshima focused not on classical themes of good and evil or domesticity but on outcasts, gangsters, murderers, rapists, sexual deviants, and the politically marginalized. He began as a studio filmmaker, and had a hit with the jazzy Cruel Story of Youth (1960), but left Shochiku when the powers that be there pulled his politically incendiary Night and Fog in Japan (1960) from circulation. Oshima then struck out on his own, becoming an independent director and even starting a production company, Sozo-sha, where he made such popular and aesthetically diverse films as the pinku eiga, or “pink film,” Pleasures of the Flesh (1965); Violence at Noon (1966), which contains more than two thousand cuts; Sing a Song of Sex (1967), a dreamlike investigation of libidinous, politically confused youth; and Death by Hanging (1969), a surreal, meditative film about social injustice. With his late-seventies international coproductions, the sexually graphic In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and the visually raw ghost story Empire of Passion (1978), Oshima became an art-house sensation in Europe and the U.S., riling moviegoers there much as he had at home. Made in 1999, Oshima’s final film, Taboo, a portrait of homosexual longing among samurai, is the perfect expression of his continued desire to provoke.