The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

The notoriously affronting 1987 documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On by Kazuo Hara was initiated by Shōhei Imamura, who introduced Hara (who had worked as an assistant cameraman on Vengeance is Mine and Eijanaika) to the documentary’s confrontational protagonist, the ageing veteran, Kenzo Okazaki. The film clearly follows in the tradition of Imamura’s own documentaries, In Search of Unreturned Soldiers (1971) and Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute (1975), which examine the failures of the Japanese Empire and uncovers the horrors of its colonial pursuits in South East Asia during the Pacific War.

Hara had once said:

“My personal view is formed by the views of two people, one of them being Shōhei Imamura, who said that films should depict people. And what he means by that is, people are cowardly, they’re lecherous, they’re cheap, they’re immoral—and that’s what makes them interesting. When you depict people, those are the aspects that you should depict, because it makes them more human.”

As much a portrait of Okazaki – who had survived the desperate battles in Papua New Guinea towards the end of the Second World War – as an investigative pursuit that seeks to uncover the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, Hara’s film observes Okazaki’s relentless – and increasingly violent and ethically dubious – pursuit of his former comrades. Uncovering harrowing truths about the execution of his comrades, Okazaki is driven to his limits, with the camera acting as both witness and perpetrator of a different kind. The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On forces the audience to confront the ethical questions of filmmaking through the tenuously see-sawing power relations between the subject, interviewer and filmmaker.

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (ゆきゆきて、神軍), dir. Kazuo Hara, Japan 1987, Japanese with English subtitles, 122 min.