地下幻燈劇画 少女椿, Chika Gentō Gekiga: Shōjo Tsubaki
(1992) 48 min
Rated: NR (blood, excessive gore, nudity, sex, rape, animal death)
Country: Japan
Director: Hiroshi Harada
Starring: Minako Naka, Norihiko Morishita, Keinosuke Okamoto
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Set in early 20th century Japan, a girl named Midori is tricked into joining a freak show where she endures torment daily. Based on manga by Suehiro Maruo.
Synopsis:
The story is told through dialogue, narration with still and sometimes animated scenes. It is divided up into “songs”.
Prologue: Midori joins the fairground entertainers
A flower girl named Midori is under a dark bridge at night and offers a man passing by her flowers. The man tells her to go somewhere livelier. The girls tells him that her mother is sick and her father has gone away. The man promises to buy all her flowers. The girl returns home tells her sick mother, only to uncover her mother’s body and find rats eating her corpse beneath the futon cover.
Midori then decides to go to the address the man gave her. She ends up with the fairground people at a freak show. Midori’s narration tells that her life is hell and that she wishes to die many times. She can no longer go to school and moves place to place with the fair people.
Song One: Patience and Submission
Midori sees a beheaded chicken and vomits. Benitsu, the snake woman, laughs at her and tells her she will need a stronger stomach.
Midori wakes to find Benitsu having sex with Tokkuriji Muchisute the mummy man and Akaza the Giant. Midori leaves to find Mr. Arashi, the boss, having sex with and licking the eyeball of Kanabun, another performer. Midori runs away.
During the day she feeds some puppies. Kanabun secretly sees her feeding the puppies. Kanabun pulls out the puppies and kills them violently. The dog meat is used in a stew which Midori unknowingly eats before being told where the meat comes from. Midori cries out in anguish.
Later it is winter. Midori watches a train pass by and Benitsu mocks her for hoping that she can leave. She toils by washing the laundry. At night she is freezing cold and Muchisute harasses her while she sleeps and rapes her.
In the morning Midori is mending clothes and she watches as Kanabun, who appears female, urinates while standing. Kanabun turns around and mocks Midori by laughing and flashing his penis at her.
Midori goes into town for the day and returns to the circus at night. Benitsu slaps her for spending too long in town and Muchisute tells her to wash Hoichi whose body is all twisted up and worm-like. Another circus performer asks to be washed and Midori screams in horror and tries to run away but is stopped by the others and tied up naked. Midori’s voice-over says “I want to go to school”.
Midori has a dream where she’s searching for her father in an old building. Her body starts to twist unnaturally. She cries out but the other circus performers laugh at her cruelly. She wakes up to find she has a high fever. Mr. Arashi allows her to sleep for the day.
Midori feigns sleeping to overhear the conversations of the circus folk. Mr. Arashi claims they have no money and Benitsu angrily states that they haven’t been paid in three months. The group complains that they have no money to even move on. Akaza tells them they must try to find work on construction sites. Muchisute mentions that they will soon have a new attraction who does western-style magic. Akaza and Muchisute both blame Midori for the change in fortune.
Outside in the winter weather, Midori waves as a train passes by and cries.
Song Two: A Dwarf Emerges from the Dark
Masamitsu, the dwarf magician appears inside of a large glass bottle.
He slides out of the narrow opening easily much to the surprise of the other circus performers.
It is spring and Midori falls in love with Masamitsu because he is kind to her. She tells him that she would he happy to marry him.
Crowds of people gather under the circus tent to watch Masamitsu perform his bottle trick. The other circus performs grow jealous.
Mr. Arashi praises Masamitsu and Masamitsu in turn thanks Midori for assisting him on the stage at the performances. The rest of the group sulks and bitterly gossips among themselves.
Midori and Masamitsu have a photo taken together. As they walk along a seaside boardwalk, Midori asks Masamitsu how he does his bottle trick.
“Strange things happen in the night. During the day arrows fly. A contagious disease lurks in the shadows. In the afternoon it becomes fatal. But you have nothing to fear.”
Masamitsu asks Midori, “Do you understand?” and she replies that she does.
One day Midori is applying lipstick. Akaza and Muchisute complain that they feel Midori thinks she’s above them. They start to bully her and Akaza starts throwing her up in the air. Midori screams that she’ll tell Masamitsu. Akaza laughs and throws Midori up against the ceiling, but when she falls down Midori turns gigantic and crushes the other performers under her.
Akaza screams “what’s going on?” The others scream that Midori is now a monster.
Masamitsu appears and tells the others that Midori is right there. He points to a normal-sized Midori sitting in the corner. Akaza turns to punch Masamitsu but finds that he cannot. Instead all of the performers line up at Masamitsu’s command and perform all of the household chores that are normally given to Midori. Masamitsu tells Midori to take some money and go have fun.
Masamitsu and Mr. Arashi talk about profits and Masamitsu tells Arashi to give more to the performers and that he will handle everything.
While Midori is out and eating konpeito, Muchisute approaches her and apologizes for earlier behavior.
He claims that he is in love with her. Masamitsu watches him come close to Midori. As Muchisute walks away, he tells himself that Midori belongs to him instead of Masamitsu.
Muchisute sees a rotting arm on the ground covered in ants. Muchisute then falls into a deep sand trap and cannot get out as he lacks arms. Masamitsu disguised as Muchisute taunts him and tells Muchisute he will never have Midori.
Muchisute is later found dead after having swallowed mud.
Midori, seeing this, runs in fear. Masamitsu catches up to her and asks her if she saw what he did to Muchisute. Masamitsu tells her that he did it for her sake and that Muchisute deserved to die.
One day a man asks to see Midori. he is a famous filmmaker and promises to put her in the starring role of his new film. Masamitsu tears up the mans business card in front of them. He says he’s Midori’s guardian and must think of her future.
Masamitsu comes to Midori and asks her to prepare for the upcoming show. He finds she has put the card back together. He brushes the card away, hits Midori against a mirror and then imprisons her in the large bottle.
Masamitsu appears on stage with a large bottle. The crowd jeers at him as he hesitates for a moment. In anger Masamitsu causes the lightbulbs to burst in their sockets causing a fire.
He causes the crowd to change shape. Each person twisting, bursting and screaming in pain.
It is a scene of chaos, blood and anguish. Police try to enter the scene and Midori suddenly appears outside of the bottle.
In the aftermath, Masamitsu is lying exhausted on a futon, his nose bleeding. The aforementioned carnage was seemingly an illusion as everyone’s bodies were returned to normal.
Masamitsu decides to leave the performers. He tells Midori he won’t let anyone else have her. Midori tells him she doesn’t want to travel, she just wants to go home.
Final Song: Under the Cherry Blossom.
Masamitsu tells Midori to open her eyes and walk straight forward. She runs and sees Tokyo appear. She finds her house among the other buildings. Inside wait her father and mother at a dinner table. Her mother gives her food for her school trip the next day. The family fall asleep in their futons on the floor.
Masamitsu asks Midori to come with him and she agrees.
Meanwhile at the circus, Mr. Arashi ran off with the remaining money. Benitsu decides she will leave. Kanabun cuts his hair while crying.
Masamitsu and Midori bid farewell to the other performers. Kanabun runs out to wish Midori farewell with his hair cut as a boy and wearing pants.
Masamitsu and Midori wait under spring cherry blossom petals.
Masamitsu tells Midori to wait as he goes to get food and walks off. When Masamitsu starts to return, a thief with a knife appears. He stabs Masamitsu, killing him.
As the day winds down, Midori starts to worry and runs around the town looking for Masamitsu. She sees the group including Masamitsu together laughing at her.
Her eyes fill with tears. She swings a large stick at them, wishing them dead. She cries out as they vanish into nothing.
Illusion.
The film ends.
Review:
Midori is a film with an emphasis on despair and hopelessness. The themes of bullying and control is present throughout. Midori is a simple innocent flower girl who is tricked into a hellish torture only to be thrown crumbs of hope occasionally, then pulled back into the world she suffers in.
There is no relief for audience or Midori, only the ending of the film. So it merely a cycle for Midori without end.
From a animated standpoint, the film is well drawn with stark or muted color highlighting feelings of desolation, fear and even occassional hope. There is limited amount of movement in the animated portions mimicking the Kamishibai origins of the story.
The subject matter is unpleasant and can be distressing for some audiences. Though the runtime under an hour the storytelling is fairly quickly paced and much happens during this time span.
I, personally, view the film as more of an art piece and passion project of one man and his interest in the source manga material. It absolutely has concepts of suffering that many people face daily and can’t escape from. That’s the true horror of this film.
The disturbing aspect is less about a fantasy circus and more about human trafficking, rape, pedophilia and slavery. Midori is not exactly chained up, but she is kept constantly in the circus because she has no other place to go and is physically and mentally abused to the point of submission.
Notes: Hiroshi Harada is the director but also wrote the screenplay and drew the entire film himself. It took him 5 years to create this film. The film cannot be shown in Japan uncensored, so Harada chose to not release it in Japan.
