Tobose

O-bon weekend, 2005. Overtone 2.5 khz.

The spirits of the dead are wandering up and down the streets and shopping arcades of Japan. Some mill about Station Square, as if they all missed the last train home, mingling with the homeless, the Pakistani, and the Africans. The dead are the new minority, it seems. Nothing to do but wait to join them. But it’s the 15th. A Sunday, no less. The urge to surrender vibe is all around.

Over in Asakusa, near Yoshiwara pimps, the cardboard coffins of Sanya, and incense from Some Old Temple, the recently deceased spirit of Teruo Ishii is feeling a little bit randy. He uses his new spectral powers to see women without their clothes on near the Kaminarimon. He frames every stolen panty shot like a pro, and all the tits are Playboy perfect.

They are going to be showing Submersion of Japan, along with Ishii’s Abarshiri Prison sequel one million at the Meigaza next week. We are going to stock up on some Draft One and go to the show, sure  to pour a full can of brew  into the dark smoky allies in honor of our fallen King of Eiga Kantoku.

Tom Mess - having no ideas - may have had no idea, but I knew Ishii was terminal with cancer for a while now and felt this one coming.

Weird Ishii vapors in the air recently: an email from Chuck Stephens in Bangok, talkin’ bout Hideo Gosha (“the more I watch his films, the more they look like the dread Teruo Ishii -- fuzzy watercolor palette, lots of raped whores,” he says. Chuck, write a book or a bible sometime soon) the release of Jigoku on US DVD, the Executioner films lined up for October from Ventura, and of course, the new DVD box from Toei, the poster for which posted on an earlier entry below.

Yoshiki, who designed the darned thing, was told that Ishii put one of the posters up by his hospital bedside, and then regaled the nurses with tales of how big he was (“What? Like 7 inches?” I ask, trying to channel Eiji Go talking to Sonny Chiba in The Executioner).

Ishii came closer to anyone else in nailing down that that sticky sweet cold steel of an imperial-issued katana in your face while someone licks your eyeball ero-guro feel of the Meiji and Taisho era. Others merely dabbled in it, like Masumura for example. But the world of Kool Aid blood, tekiya punishment lynch, and tied-up wife hanging from the rafters was where Ishii lived, all of it as Japanese as eating with little sticks. The nonsense of those daffy times is in all his films to some extent, even the ones totally mad and bad. But I love them all, and will single out Porno Jidai Geki – Bohachi Bushido and the Chiba Jigoku-ken movies as favorites. Why?

We all had this idea in our heads that the Japper-knees made the nuttiest movies in the world. But it was Ishii who actually made them that way.

So don’t watch his films or write about them like you were a fucking robot looking down a microscope, or doing your taxes, OK? You are here only because of sex and violence anyways. So you might as well take some inspiration from the only guy who actually does deserve the title of God of Fuck.

Teruo Ishii.

---------------------------------------

Overtone 9.9 khz.

Ameyokocho on a whim. The only way to go. The place was fine in winter, but in high summer, it smells like the boat must have reeked at the end of Jaws. Designer clothes and bogus import perfumes mingle with eels and tuna heads in melting ice. Bootleg DVD vendors, the first I’ve ever seen in Tokyo, stand near the gates of Ueno station. Top of the pops: Kamikaze Girls for peanuts. Meanwhile, my new imitation diamond watch has the scent of dried squid all the way back to Shinjuku and even now.

At Takadanobaba, there’s a fine fat otaku stuck in the spiders’ web of the ticket gate. Maki spots him first, “Moe-kei,” she giggles. He’s trying to figure out how to make it through the short corridor with three huge shopping bags all filled with dojinshi.

He’s probably still there now.

Comments

[Joseph Luster]

http://www.asianfilms.org/japan/images/hell.jpg

If he's there now, he's fucking running shit.

[MattP]

Ishii-san will be greatly missed, that's for sure. And, by the way, is it just me or am I seeing a tiny poison dart thrown in the direction of a certain dutch writer of things japanese, up there? It could be me. Sometimes I see things.