Pigs and Battleships

An angry proclamation against both the lingering and parasitic US occupation and the true nature of the Japanese character, which Imamura saw as one characterised not by its subservience but, increasingly, by its venal ambition. Imamura’s fifth film and his first made with creative freedom (a freedom that Imamura exercised to such a degree that the studio subsequently banned him from making another film for two years) centres upon the desperate power struggles between small-time gangsters in the port-town of Yokosuka.

Drawn from his own personal experiences as a black market peddler in Tokyo’s red light district in the immediate post-war years, Imamura dives headlong into Yokosuka’s underbelly from the narrow back alleys to the cramped brothels, as cinematographer Shinsaku Himeda’s snaking camera brushes shoulders with pigs, pimps, prostitutes and just about everyone in-between.

At the heart of Imamura’s film sits a young couple - an energetic if decidedly foolish young hood named Kinta, and the headstrong, if slightly naive Haruko. As Kinta attempts to rise the ranks of the sub-Yakuza gang he’s part of and Haruko attempts to realise a vision of a better life, the two find themselves encircled by violence and manipulation, and beset on all sides by gangsters and soldiers, imperialism and black-market democracy.

A riotous portrait of post-war Japan shot in immaculately composed CinemaScope, Pigs and Battleships was an unruly watershed both in form and content and marked Shōhei Imamura’s arrival as a major voice in Japanese cinema.

Pigs and Battleships (豚と軍艦), dir. Shōhei Imamura, Japan 1962, Japanese with English subtitles, 108 min.