5 Short Films by Shinya Tsukamoto

The moment his father brought home an 8mm movie camera, young Shinya Tsukamoto appropriated it as his own and began experimenting. Inspired by the kaiju (monster) movies he loved, the first proper movie he made with the home camera was about a man who becomes a monster and destroys Tokyo. Film became a passion for him and he continued making movies throughout his school years recruiting everyone he could find including his older brother. Despite the budget he had to work with, his movies were often feature-length with fully developed scripts. These he would show to various school classes. Eventually Tsukamoto became involved in school theater, and on leaving school formed his own shortlived stage company. His officially recognized body of work numbers eight movies before the more widely known Phantom of Regular Size.

Phantom of Regular Size (1986, 18 minutes)

More correctly translated as Monster of Regular Size, meaning human-sized monster, Phantom was the rough sketch of an idea that would be fleshed out to become Tetsuo the Iron Man. This was Tsukamoto finding his voice through experimentation, content to let story and narrative slide. 

  

The Adventures of Denchu Kozo (1987, 45 minutes)

 Into every generation an Electric Rod Boy is born: one boy in all the wold, a chosen one. He alone will have the power to bring light to a world in darkness. He is the Electric Rod Boy.

Some five or six years before Buffy, high-schooler Kai was the chosen one fighting punk rock vampires in this short movie that fuses early music video style to manga, Back to the Future (or maybe the Terminator), Godzilla, and Plymptoons. It's a marvel of demented editing, stop motion, and no-budget ingenuity. It's also the most pure fun of anything Shinya Tsukamoto has made, a bright comedy about a dark future.

Kai is an odd child, picked on at school for his deformity: an electric rod growing out of his back. Let me clear something up about that, it's not a lighting rod – not some short little stick. No, it's a freakin' street pole! Sharing his shirt collar and growing to tower over him. That's the kind of movie you're dealing with: one in which, during a fight, a stuffed toy dog flies into the room and vomits stuffing for no apparent reason.

Kai's schoolmate Momo is sweet on him. She's also a fighter and rescues him from bullies. One day while he shows off his prototype for a time machine, he is suddenly whisked to the future by another machine appearing out of nowhere. Arriving twenty-five years into the future he finds the world has been conquered by vampires who have enslaved humanity. They have devices that keep the world shrouded in darkness for short periods of time. They are about to make that state permanent with an amplifier that uses an untouched female virgin as a battery. Awaiting Kai's arrival is a foe of the vampires, a mysterious woman who wears a photo album on her head like a professor's mortarboard. She tells Kai that he is the chosen one who is meant to defeat the vampires.

While there's not much meaning to any of this it's got a fully developed storyline that's easy enough to follow if you're quick enough to keep up with the visuals – not an easy task. t's brisk and funny, and hard to take your eyes off of. Kai is a polite kid, not goofy but engagingly awkward, and there's a gentle bond between Kai and his future mentor. (Kei Fujiwara in a much more substantial role than she would play as the subway attacker in Tetsuo). Among other signature likes, Tsukamoto works his love of giant monsters into the movie with a giant vampire looming over a miniature tokyo while spewing atomic breath ala Gojira. First time I've ever seen dai-kaiju that was a gorgeous nude woman. There's also a running sendup of the archetypal masculine hero of cinema: Kai is anything but the he-man type yet the dialog is taken up with double-ententes about how the power of his rod is going to save the world.

Tokage (2003, 50 minutes)

Tokage was commissioned by television network NHK for a series in which the works of famous Japanese authors would be narrated on film, as captured by noteworthy directors. Tsukamoto was asked to direct the short story Lizard, by Banana Yoshimoto.

Lizard concerns a love affair between two healers who are unable to heal their own psychic wounds. The narrator is a counselor for disturbed children. He has fallen in love with a profoundly sad woman nicknamed Lizard who longs for oblivion. Lizard has an uncanny ability to diagnose and treat other people's illnesses. The story follows their mutual fumbling towards the point where they can share with each other their most personal stories. The relationship – two depressives in despair, who seek mutual healing – looks forward to Vital, which Tsukamoto would direct the next year. So do some of the themes raised by the story, like psychic abilities and the question of soul independent of body though these are lightly touched upon. Properly, the tale is about empathy and the wounds left by trauma. Also anticipating Vital, it's one of the director's bleakest works.

Shot on hi-def video, Tokage follows actress Ryo as she reads Yoshimoto's text. Our first sight of her is in a bedroom, and then the camera follows through through a succession of rooms in what we soon realize is an abandoned building. As the story unfolds and the two lovers reveal more of their inner selves, the rooms Ryo visits show more alarming states of disrepair until we find ourselves in a cafeteria still festooned with the streamers that once saw a celebration. Tsukamoto films under a variety of light sources, primarily natural – they filmed it in a single continuous shot at sundown.

Jewel Beetle (2005, 22 minutes)

Named for a beetle whose lustrous wings make it desirable for ornamentative purposes, Jewel Beetle concerns a yakuza leader and the mistress he keeps far away from society. The relationshoip is founded on sexual fulfillment but the two are genuinely fond of each other. The woman (never named) is restless as she is not allowed to wander away from her remote cabin. The 'Old Man' (as she calls him) fears for her future should he be killed, which is becoming likely, so he introduces her to his young protege. 

There are three sex scenes in the movie: the first is a fully clothed interlude between the yakuza head and the woman, that speaks of the playfulness of long familiarity; the second is again fully clothed, tender, a tentative moment between the mistress and the young man, a less-than-chaste kiss with the camera close and intimate on their sweat-dewed faces, chaperoned by the sound of rain; the third is tension-relieving naked animal pleasure. I wonder whether this might be the first depiction of female ejaculation in a non-pornographic film. All of the scenes of the woman inside her cabin are caressed in blue, purple, and pink lighting. Jewel Beetle echoes A Snake of June in that the tale is about a woman who comes to realize that she owns her own sexuality and can choose autonomy.

Jewel Beetle was Shinya Tsukamoto's contribution to an anthology film titled Fîmeiru (Female), featuring works by Ryuichi Hiroki, Suzuki Matsuo, Miwa Nishikawa, and Tetsuo Shinohara.

Haze (2005, 49 minutes)

Haze is an exercise in extreme claustrophobia and paranoia, in that order. A man awakens in the dark, in a maximally confined space that offers only the slightest options for movement. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. When it becomes apparent that the space is a maze, he attempts to find his way out amidst various hazards like pipes that grate along his teeth, nails protruding from the floor, and automated hammers that beat at him. All the while, he tortures himself with speculation: is he in hell? Has war broken out and he is in the hands of some enemy force? Has he been kidnapped by some rich sadist? The narrative is as closed in as the set, a limited film but a harrowing one that's impossible to look away from. Grimy, nasty, and terrifying, Haze is a darker exploration of an idea Tsukamoto first visited in Vital.

I have not yet seen either the short film that was entered in “Venice 70: Future Reloaded” or "Ayashiki bungô kaidan".