‘Neo-documentarism’ in Funeral

Parade of Roses: the new realism of

Matsumoto Toshio

M I K A KO

During the 1960s a new generation of Japanese filmmakers vigorously

debated the prospects for Japanese cinema in film journals such as Kiroku
Eiga and Eiga Hyōron. As Aaron Gerow points out, it was ‘quite
common’ to be ‘both a critic and a filmmaker’ at this time, and many
filmmakers sought not only to theorize the potentialities of Japanese
1 Aaron Gerow, Interview with filmmaking but also to put theory into practice in their own filmmaking.1
Matsumoto, Documentary Box 9
However, apart from those of Oshima Nagisa, the critical and theoretical
(1996), available online in
Japanese and English, <http:// writings of most of these Japanese filmmakers have remained relatively
www.yidff.jp/docbox/9/box9-2-e. unknown outside Japan. In this respect, the recent essay by Yuriko
html> accessed 6 June 2009.
Furuhata on Matsuda Masao’s fûkeiron (or theory of landscape) and the
landscape film is notable for the way in which it has drawn attention to the
important relationship between theoretical writing and filmmaking
2 Yuriko Furuhata, ‘Returning to practice in Japan at the end of the 1960s.2 I shall attempt here to highlight
actuality: fûkeiron and landscape
another film critic/director, Matsumoto Toshio, and his theorization of
film’, Screen, vol. 48, no. 3
(2007), pp. 345–62.
‘neo-documentarism’. More specifically I shall explore how Matsumoto
sought to apply his theorization of ‘neo-documentarism’, or ‘new
realism’, in the production of his narrative feature, Bara no Sōretsu/
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969). In this essay I shall indicate the way in
which Matsumoto’s realism, as evidenced in this film, set out not only to
investigate the visible and invisible ‘realities’ of Japan during a period
characterized by student radicalism and a flourishing underground culture
but to address the ‘independent value of cinema more distinctly as another
3 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. reality’.3

376 Screen 52:3 Autumn 2011

© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/screen/hjr022
 Matsumoto is a pioneer of avant-garde documentary and experimental
4 Abé Mark Nornes, ‘The postwar film and video art in Japan, and started making short documentaries and
documentary trace: groping in the PR films in the 1950s. At the same time he was also an influential and
dark’, Positions: East Asia Cultures
Critique, vol. 10, no. 1 (2002),
polemical film critic and theorist, who with his contemporaries, among
pp. 43, 45. them Oshima Nagisa, Yoshida Yoshishige and Teshigahara Hiroshi, was a
5 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Zenei central figure in Japanese film culture of the 1950s and 1960s. As Mark
kirokueiga-ron’ [‘A discussion on
avant-garde documentary film’], in
Nornes notes, Matsumoto’s critical writings made a significant
Eizō no hakken (1963) [Discovery of contribution to ‘a critical turbulence that would shake the foundations of
Images: Avant-garde and the film world in the next decade’ and a collection of essays, published in
Documentary] (Tokyo: Seiryū
Shuppan, 2005), p. 63.
1963, became ‘a bible for the new cohort of artists’.4
6 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Neo- In 1958 Matsumoto published a kind of manifesto calling for ‘neo-
dokyumentarizumu towa nanika’ documentarism’.5 For Matsumoto, ‘neo-documentarism’ was neither a
[‘What is neo-documentarism?’], in
Eizō no hakken, p. 77.
genre nor a subgenre of documentary. Rather it referred to a ‘method’, or a
7 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. new kind of realism that would be made possible by merging the styles of
8 Ibid. the documentary and the avant garde. Matsumoto noted that conventional
9 Ibid.
10 Nornes, ‘The postwar documentary
documentary films tended to focus on the observation of external realities
trace’, p. 45. For instance, without fully addressing internal or psychic realities. He also argued that
Matsumoto was critical of the conventional documentaries relied too much on ‘theme’ or ‘subject’ to
independent production movement
of the 1950s, in which leftwing
determine the reality of film to which the ‘form’ is subordinated.6 This, he
filmmakers such as Imai Tadashi suggested, was related to their dependence upon temporal context, which
and Yamamoto Satsuo were key meant that many documentaries would become outdated once their
figures. He saw them as examples
of those filmmakers who make
historical moment had passed.7 This argument may also be linked to
democratic or communist-oriented Matsumoto’s views on the relationship between art and politics more
films without addressing their own generally and his criticisms of the conventional documentary film for
guilt or complicity with war. See
Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Darakushita
subordinating art to politics and for suppressing the subjectivity of the
Riarizumu’ [‘Corrupted realism’], in artists, or filmmakers, who made them. For Matsumoto, such an attitude
Eizō no hakken, and ‘Oshima permitted filmmakers to collaborate with Japan’s military and imperial
Nagisa yo, kimi wa machigatteiru’
[‘Oshima Nagisa, you are wrong’],
regime during World War II. Yet, at the end of the war, the filmmakers
in Eiga Hyōron, October 1968. who had been involved in making propaganda films were able to go on
11 For the detailed discussion on and make democratic films without interrogating their own responsibility
Hanada’s influence on Matsumoto,
see Furuhata Yuriko, ‘Refiguring
for these or for their complicity with Japanese militarism. Matsumoto
actuality: Japan’s film theory and argued that ‘both during and after the war, they made films according to
avant-garde documentary the dominant trends in society or government without thoroughly
movement, 1950s–1960’
(Dissertation: Brown University,
investigating their own position within this’.8 He then linked this attitude
2009). to the question of realism, arguing that ‘there was no difference between
12 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. the realism of militarist film fanning war sentiment and the realism of
Using the works of Salvador Dali as
an example, Hanada Kiyoteru
postwar democratic motion pictures’.9 As Nornes suggests, Matsumoto
argued in 1950 that surrealist was sceptical about any commitment to conventional realism, not only for
artists tended not to be concerned its subordination of the artist’s subjectivity to politics but for its inevitable
with the external world that always
shapes our internal world. He then
involvement in ‘a veiling of politics’.10
argued that the method of avant- On the other hand, unlike documentary films focused on external
garde art that had been used to reality, Matsumoto believed that the avant garde, as in surrealism and
embody our internal world should
also be used for an embodiment of
expressionism, was concerned with the exploration of the world of
the actuality of the external world. subjective experience and the unconscious. However, like Hanada
See Hanada Kiyoteru, Abangyarudo Kiyoteru, a theoretical leader of avant-garde arts in postwar Japan to
geijutsu [Avant-garde Art] (Tokyo:
Kōdansha Bungei Bunko, 1994),
whom he owed a considerable debt,11 Matsumoto pointed out that the
p. 138. avant garde tended to ‘get stuck in a closed world’.12 While praising its

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377
 ‘uninhibited, imaginative world’, Matsumoto was also critical of the avant
garde (here he refers to surrealism) for separating internal reality from the
external world and for ignoring the fact that ‘what is hidden in or what
emerges, distorted and converted, from unconsciousness is all determined
13 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Kakusareta by hidden and repressed strains that exist in external reality’.13 In other
sekai no kiroku’ [‘The document of
words, for Matsumoto the interior is an extension of the exterior and there
the hidden world’], in Eizō no
hakken, p. 98.
is nothing that distinguishes them in any clear or absolute manner.14
14 Ibid. Similarly he argued that while they might look completely different,
documentary and avant-garde films do, in fact, overlap. Using the work of
Luis Buñuel as an example, Matsumoto suggested that the method of the
avant garde which uncovers the irrational form of the subjective world
may be useful in documentary for revealing the irrational and hidden
15 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Eigageijutsu reality of the external world.15 He noted that a deep understanding of the
no gendaiteki shiza’ [‘Contemporary
psychic realities is required for a full comprehension of the external world,
standpoint of the film art’], in Eizō
no hakken, p. 25.
and vice versa.16 He continued to argue that it is only by directly
16 Ibid., p. 59. addressing the dialectical interplay of the internal and the external worlds
that the reality of film and the subjective expression of reality could be
17 Ibid., p. 61. combined successfully.17 What Matsumoto envisaged, therefore, was the
potential for a new form of cinema to emerge at ‘the point of collision’
between ‘the limitations and strong points’ of two apparently distinct
forms, involving the productive collision between a documentary
18 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. approach to reality and an avant-garde approach to subjectivity.18 In this
respect, in calling for ‘neo-documentarism’ Matsumoto was not simply
proposing to deal with external and internal (unconscious) realities, or the
artists’ subjectivity, side by side but to explore the ways in which the two
are intertwined. He believed that by bringing documentary and the avant
garde into dialectical confrontation, or moment of mutual negation, with
19 Matsumoto, ‘Zenei kirokueiga-ron’,
p. 59. The word ‘Aufhebung’ has a
each other, a new realism would emerge in a kind of Hegelian Aufhebung
double meaning of both ‘denial’ and or synthesis.19 Challenging perceptual stereotypes, the ‘neo-
‘preservation’ in the original documentarism’ would then resort to both orthodox documentary and
German. Hegel used and exploited
this duality of meaning to describe
avant-garde conventions in order to achieve a new kind of cinema capable
the dialectical process and explain of documenting the internal realities determined by external physical
what happens when thesis and realities, and the external realities mediated by, or expressed through, the
antithesis interact. Aufheben
means, most basically, to combine
subjectivities of the filmmaker.
two contradicting and opposing Matsumoto, therefore, was concerned with the tripartite relationship
things and lead them to the higher between external reality, the ‘reality’ of cinematic conventions and the
level.
20 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto.
subjectivity of the artist, or the relations amongst ‘the objective reality, the
21 Hanada wrote, ‘Can avant-garde world of expression, and the filmmaker’s subjective manipulation’.20
artists acquire the eyes of Moreover, in refusing to subordinate art to politics, Matsumoto did not
politicians? Yes, of course avant-
garde artists can instantly be
adopt an attitude of ‘art for art’s sake’. Rather he saw the potential political
transformed into politicians – if radicalism involved in avant-garde or ‘neo-documentarist’ approaches to
they start directing their eyes to the filmmaking. In this way he took up and elaborated a position articulated
external world in the same way as
they look at their internal world.’
by Hanada, who proposed the amalgamation of the artistic and political
Needless to say, by ‘politicians’ avant garde in the 1950s.21 However, while Hanada had envisioned a
Hanada means those pursuing ‘dialectic unity of avant-garde art and socialist realism’, Matsumoto
radical politics. See Hanada,
Abangyarudo geijutsu, p. 143 (my
criticized socialist realism for its stereotyped ideas and for its indifference
translation). towards the methodological potential of amalgamating internal and

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22 Matsumoto, ‘Zenei kirokueiga-ron’, external realities.22 For Matsumoto, socialist realism shared this problem
p. 62.
with conventional documentary realism, causing both uncritically to
23 Ibid. subordinate film to political or other social ‘themes’.23 Moreover, as
24 Nornes, ‘The postwar documentary
trace’, p. 45. Like many other
Nornes points out, their agenda of filmmaking ‘for the people’
leftwing intellectuals and artists, hypocritically ‘hid an authoritarianism Matsumoto associated with a
Matsumoto became dissatisfied Stalinism at the heart of the JCP’ (Japanese Communist Party) or the old
with the JCP in the 1950s. He was
very critical, especially after June
Left.24 Instead of socialist realism, what Matsumoto argued for in the
1960 when its leadership did not name of ‘neo-documentarism’ was therefore a coming together of the
support the attempts of radical political and artistic avant gardes that was similar to the ‘political avant
students to storm parliament in
protest against the revision of the
garde’ later called for by Peter Wollen,25 which could maintain the ‘logic
US–Japan security treaty. See, for of political engagement’ while simultaneously deconstructing the
instance, Matsumoto Toshio, dominant ideologies and sensibilities through a formal radicalism.26
‘Seijiteki zenei ni dokyumentaristo
no me o’ [‘Eyes of documentarist for
Matsumoto made several short avant-garde documentaries or ‘cine-
Vanguard Party’], Kirokueiga, poems’, such as Ginrin/Silver Wheel (1955), Anpo Jōyaku/Security Treaty
September 1960, pp. 28–30. On his (1959), Nishijin/The Weavers of Nishijin (1961) and Ishi no uta/The Song
relationship with the JCP, see also
Sato Yoh, ‘Interview with
of Stone (1963) in the 1950s and 1960s that tested his theories of ‘neo-
Matsumoto Toshio’, Eizōgaku, no. documentarism’. Security Treaty was, as Nornes points out, ‘a collage
21 (2007). film combining found footage, documentary imagery, photographs and
25 Peter Wollen, ‘The two avant-
gardes’, in Readings and Writings:
drawings related to the 1960 security treaty between Japan and the United
Semiotic Counter-Strategies States’.27 Along with striking visual experimentation, such as the
(London: Verso, 1982). mutilation of still photographs and spitting on the projected moving
26 See Matsumoto Toshio, ‘“Haisen”
to “sengo” no fuzai’ [‘Absence of
images, the film mobilizes some intriguing collages of image and sound.
“defeat” and “postwar”’], in Eizō no A shot of members of Japan’s SDF (Self Defence Force), each holding a
hakken, p. 188. bazooka, for example, is accompanied by an ironic commentary quoting
27 Nornes, ‘The postwar documentary
trace’, p. 45. The film Security
the Japanese government’s claims that ‘we won’t equip military forces of
Treaty was a propaganda film any kind’ and ‘the SDF is not an army’. The film also ends with a
sponsored by Sōhyō (The General surrealistic image of a nuclear explosion while the fierce bawling of a
Council of Trade Unions of Japan)
to oppose the Japan–US Security
baby is heard on the soundtrack.28 The Weavers of Nishijin features the
Treaty which was due to be traditional Nishijin textile industry of Kyoto, and while the film’s visual
renewed in 1960. There was a images are poetic, the film subverts conventional touristic imagery by
nationwide anti-renewal
movement involving students,
imbuing them with a sense of stagnation and depression (following the
workers and ordinary citizens. failure of the anti-US–Japan security treaty movement), implicitly
Despite this opposition, the criticizing the capitalist exploitation of labour involved in textile
renewal of the treaty was
railroaded through parliament by
production. The Song of Stone consists of hundreds of still photographs
the then prime minister Kishi taken by a Life photographer in stone pits in Japan, accompanied by a
Nobuske and his Liberal Democratic soundtrack of electronic and percussive sounds along with occasional
Party government. I would like to
thank the Yamagata International
commentaries about stones and the people who work with them.29
Documentary Festival Tokyo Office Although only Security Treaty is explicitly ‘political’, these short films, as
for allowing me to watch Security Nornes suggests, do demonstrate how Matsumoto’s work sought to
Treaty.
28 Matsumoto’s Security Treaty
confound ‘any easy distinction between documentary and the avant-
triggered great controversy. While garde’ and bring together ‘the realism of non-fiction film together with
some acclaimed it for its stylistic moments of shocking surrealism’.30 These aesthetic strategies were then
innovation and potential for
political radicalism, it was also
further developed in his first narrative feature film, Funeral Parade of
severely criticized as a Roses, in which temporal relations prove to be highly complicated, there is
manifestation of elitism leaving a heavy reliance upon intertextual quotation, and the boundaries between
behind or alienating the mass
audience. See, for instance, Kisaki
the ‘fictional’ and the ‘real’ are effectively blurred. However, this does not
Keiichirō, ‘Zenei erı̄to no taishū consist of a purely ‘formal’ experimentation. Matsumoto instead seeks to

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379
 sogai’ [‘Alienation of the mass by enact his ideas concerning ‘neo-documentarism’ not only to achieve the
avant-garde elite’], Kirokueiga, ‘new realism’ created by a dialectic confrontation between documentary
January 1962, pp. 24–26, and
and avant-garde conventions but also to explore its methodological
‘Geijutsu no zenei ni okeru taishū
fuzai’ [‘Absence of the mass in potential for interrogating the political tensions of the period in a way that
artistic avant-garde’], Kirokueiga, does justice to both visible and invisible social realities and avoids
May 1962, pp. 18–21. Various
subordinating film’s own independent reality to political imperatives.
reviews of the film were also
published as a special feature of Funeral Parade of Roses is a modern and twisted version of Oedipus
‘Kirokueiga, Tokushū: Eiga Rex. In this modern version Oedipus does not live in ancient Greece but in
Anpojōyaku o hihansuru’ [‘Special
the vibrant underground and gay subcultural scene of late 1960s Tokyo.
feature: criticizing Security Treaty’],
Kirokueiga, November The story revolves around the main character Eddie, a young and popular
1959, pp. 24–32. gay man working in a gay bar in central Tokyo, and the love-triangle
29 One of the most famous cinematic
involving Eddie, the owner of the bar, Gonda, and the drag queen, Leda,
works using still images is
undoubtedly Chris Marker’s La who runs the place. Though temporal relations are complex (and
Jetée (1963). Although it is well involve the replaying of some scenes), a series of flashbacks reveals the
known that Marker commended
traumas of Eddie’s past, including his abandonment by his father and
Matsumoto’s The Song of Stone, it
was unlikely that Marker knew his killing of his mother. The triangular relationship is resolved by the
about the film before 1964, when it suicide of Leda; yet the happiness of the remaining two lovers is quickly
was first shown in Europe at the
transformed into a gruesome and tragic end. Gonda and Eddie turn out to
Tours International Short-Film
Festival. However, it at least be a real father and son. On realizing that they have committed incest,
suggests a degree of shared Gonda stabs himself to death while Eddie sticks a knife into his own eyes.
cultural purpose.
Although the narrative of Funeral Parade of Roses is constructed
30 Nornes, ‘The postwar documentary
trace’, p. 46. around Eddie, it does not employ a conventional chronological structure.
Jonathan M. Hall pertinently points out that the narrative structure of
the film puzzles spectators and forces upon them ‘a daisy-chain of
unending questions, each resolved only when a yet larger question opens
31 Jonathan Mark Hall, ‘Unwilling up’.31 The director Matsumoto suggests that the striking characteristic of
subjects: psychoanalysis and
the film is its ‘mosaic’-like style,32 constructed in various ways throughout
Japanese modernity’ (Dissertation:
University of California, 2003),
the film. The film’s narrative is fragmented, involving the frequent
p. 123. insertion of flashbacks, intertitles and interviews, the use of jump-cuts,
32 Director’s commentary included on
and the insertion of shots and scenes which may or may not belong to the
the DVD of Funeral Parade of Roses.
film’s diegesis. In the middle of the film, for instance, we see a two-
minute scene of abstract images. In the previous scene Eddie is seen on the
street, but this provides no orientation for the abstract shots that follow. In
a later scene it is revealed that the abstract images are, in fact, part of an
33 Fūten is similar in meaning to experimental film that Eddie is watching with his fūten (hippy) friends.33
‘hippy’ and also shares some of its
The insertion of nearly two minutes of abstract film, although part of the
negative connotations. While it
originally referred to the mentally diegesis of the film, disrupts this diegesis and clearly ‘exceeds’ what the
ill, in the mid 1960s the term came narrative requires at this point. Similarly, repeated flashbacks revealing
to be associated with young people
Eddie’s traumatic past prevent a linear development of the narrative and
hanging around Shinjuku station
with long hair, bell-bottom trousers
complicate the temporal orientation of the spectator.
and distinctive sunglasses. The film also quotes various materials from literature, theatre and other
films, including Matsumoto’s own work. The abstract film sequence
described above, for instance, is actually from Matsumoto’s own short
film Extasis, produced in the same year. Funeral Parade of Roses starts
with a quotation from Charles Baudelaire’s poem
‘L’Héautontimorouménos’ (from Les Fleurs du mal), which appears as
intertitles that read ‘I am the wound and the knife, both the torturer and he

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380
Fig. 1. Trading comic-book insults.
Bara no Sōretsu/Funeral Parade of
Roses (Matsumoto Toshio, 1969).

who is flayed’. In addition to these direct quotations, the film refers to

Kabuki theatre in the form of parody, with a lover’s spat between Leda
and Gonda presented in an overtly theatrical manner. The fight between
Eddie and Leda also parodies the Western gun duel while simultaneously
borrowing elements from cartoons, with the swear-words uttered by Eddie
and Leda not heard but shown in comic-book word balloons (figure 1).
Quotations from other films, such as those of Resnais and Charlie
Chaplin, are also evident throughout the film.
However, a possible key to understanding the way in which ‘neo-
documentarism’ is implemented in the film is the way in which it brings
together, and fuses, different kinds of cinematic and artistic conventions.
Elements of documentary style, avant-garde and experimental techniques,
abstract and surrealist conventions are merged in such a way as to blur the
distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’. In one scene, for
instance, Eddie makes love with an American soldier stationed in Japan.
As a result of the use of extreme closeup, the love scene looks rather
abstract and overtly performative. Yet although the closeup, as Furuhata
34 Furuhata, Refiguring Actuality, points out, ‘defamiliarizes the referent’,34 it also presents a realistic, quasi-
p. 61. tactile image of the skin of two people pressing close to each other. The
scene shifts to another level of reality when a closeup of Eddie gasping is
cut into an extradiegetic shot showing the filming of this love scene by
Matsumoto and his assistants. In other words, the filming of the fictional
scene becomes a part of the fictional film, though it is not a part of the
actual diegesis (or fictional world). The scene is followed by an interview
with the real-life drag queen Usagi, who plays Leda, commenting both on
her life and on the love scene between Eddie and the American soldier.
The confusion between the diegetic and the nondiegetic aspects of the
film introduced by the insertion of a reference to the film’s own
‘conditions of production’ is thus further complicated. Later in the film
there is also an interview with Peter, who plays Eddie, commenting on the
similarity between himself and the character he plays. The film also
includes more informal interviews with young gays and drug users. These
appear to be actual documentary interviews and indicate how the film is

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381
 ‘documenting’ the social and sexual upheavals of the period. However,
the film’s ‘neo-documentarist’ combination of conventional documentary
techniques with avant-garde selfconsciousness about the filmmaking
process further marks and blurs, inscribes and erases, the boundaries
between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’ within the film.
This blurring of distinctions is also highlighted by the fact that apart
from Eddie’s lover/father Gonda and a few others, most of the characters
in the film are played by non-professionals and members of the gay and
crossdressing community. This includes Peter (playing the lead
protagonist Eddie), who is a well-known character from the Tokyo (gay)
35 Peter, aka Ikehata Shinnosuke, was nightclub scene of the time,35 and some prominent television
sixteen years old when he was
commentators, photographers and news reporters also appear in the film
scouted for, and appeared in,
Funeral Parade of Roses. While
as themselves. At the end of the film, the scene in which Eddie stabs his
commonly regarded as gay, he did eyes is followed by a medium shot of Yodogawa Nagaharu, a famous
not publicly declare his bisexuality
Japanese film critic known for his commentary at the end of a weekly film
until 2007. He is now known by two
names: Peter as an entertainer and
screening on television, Doyō Yōga Gekijō (‘Saturday Foreign Film
singer, and Ikehata Shinnosuke as Theatre’). The scene assumes that Funeral Parade of Roses has just been
an actor. See Ikehata Shinnosuke,
shown on the programme, and Yodogawa makes a short comment on the
Peter: Korega jinsei [Peter: This is
My Life] (Tokyo: Nihon Terebi Hosō,
film exactly as he does on television, concluding with his well-known
1993). phrase, ‘Don’t miss the next week’s film. Goodbye, goodbye and
goodbye.’ While this may be seen as quotation or parody of popular
television, it also points to the erosion of boundaries between the diegetic
and nondiegetic within the film. Similarly there is a scene in the film
where we see a group of weird people in black wearing either white
medical masks or gas masks and holding a box of funeral ashes, walking
slowly through the crowd in central Tokyo (figure 2). This particular
group is called ‘Zero-jigen’ and was one of the most radical avant-garde
performance groups of the late 1960s, frequently engaging in
‘happenings’ or ‘ritual performances’ in central Tokyo. The Zero-jigen
performers were not, of course, in the film by chance; they were hired to
act (or perform) as themselves for the film. Thus the scene achieves an
unusual fusion of fiction (the world to which Eddie belongs),
documentary (as it documents performance and the camera captures the

Fig. 2. Avant-garde performance

group Zero-jigen. Bara no Sōretsu/
Funeral Parade of Roses
(Matsumoto Toshio, 1969).

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382
 actual reactions of passers-by to the performance), and fantasy (the
surrealistic urban space created by Zero-jigen’s performance).
In the 1960s, avant-garde and angura (underground) culture flourished
in Japan. Along with cinema, this radical artistic trend was most evident in
the alternative theatre and performances associated with, for instance,
Terayama Shūji (who was also a filmmaker), Kara Jūrō and Hijikata
Tatsumi. One of the most important characteristics of angura theatre and
performance art was, as Perter Eckersall suggests, the often extraordinary
36 Peter Eckersall, Theorizing the and extreme physical modes of performance,36 investigating the
Angura Space: Avant-garde
importance of the corporeality of the actor’s physical body as well as its
Performance and Politics in Japan,
1960–2000 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). radical and transgressive potential.37 As discussed, Funeral Parade of
37 Ibid. Roses documents Zero-jigen’s street performances in which their bodies
and peculiar corporeal aesthetics, along with their relationship to urban
space, create an explosive eccentricity. Moreover, although Peter, unlike
Hijikata and Kara, was an untrained actor, he nonetheless possessed a
publicly marked ‘eccentric’ or ‘queer’ body. In this respect, the expressive
power of Eddie’s/Peter’s actorial body in Funeral Parade of Roses may
also be indicative of a particular sociohistorical moment and artistic trend
in 1960s Japan for which excessive and eccentric corporeality was
deemed to be a significant expressive modality. In a sense, as Gerow
suggests in relation to Matsumoto’s experimental film For My Crushed
Right Eye, made in the same year, Funeral Parade of Roses also portrays
38 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. and expresses ‘an era’ rather than ‘representing’ any specific object.38
Matsumoto merged documentary and avant-garde style in Funeral
Parade of Roses as a way of putting his own theorization of ‘neo-
documentarism’ into practice. Stylistic features such as fragmented
narrative, cinematic selfconsciousness and the tension between
documentary and fiction are not, of course, exclusive to Matsumoto. The
director was influenced by the European modernist art cinema associated
with filmmakers such as Alain Resnais, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard
39 Matsumoto, ‘Zenei kirokueiga-ron’,
and Chris Marker. Matsumoto always held Buñuel’s works in high esteem
p. 59. and was inspired by his ability simultaneously to uncover the irrationality
40 In the film, one of the Eddie’s fūten of human beings and the absurdity of the external world.39 His affinity to
friends quotes Mekas’s remark that
‘All existing knowledge and
American underground cinema and the works of Jonas Mekas, Kenneth
definitions of cinema have been Anger, Jack Smith, Carl Linder and Andy Warhol is also apparent.40
erased. All doors are now open.’ Funeral Parade of Roses echoes with the work of these American
41 Matsumoto Toshio ‘Kanōsei wa
doko ni arunoka: 60nendai no
underground filmmakers both in terms of their opposition to the
abangyarudo tachi’ [‘Where are ‘dominant system’ of filmmaking and their rejection of social, sexual and
potentials? – avant-gardes in cultural conformity. Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963), for example,
1960s’], Eiga Hyōron, February
1967, p. 26. Matsumo noted that
shares both thematic and stylistic features with Funeral Parade of Roses in
although there were attempts to the way in which it documents a group of homosexuals and drag queens
show Anger’s Scorpio Rising at and employs solarization and extreme closeup to defamilarize the image.
underground film festivals in Japan
in 1966 and 1967, on both
The use of collage techniques and a confrontational exhibition of
occasions it was seized by customs underground culture and homoerotic imagery may also be found in the
due to censorship problems. It was work of Anger. Commenting on Anger’s Scorpio Rising, Matsumoto
at the preview for customs in 1966
that Matsumoto was able to watch
praised the film for expressing the ‘depressive mood of the period in
the film. frantic images in which pathos and logic confront each other in tension’.41

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 He also suggested that Anger’s work was not only avant garde but also
documentary in character, given how it sought to reveal the consciousness
of both the characters and the period through a succession of
42 Ibid. ‘documented’ actions.42 Matsumoto was also, of course, a contemporary
of the Japanese new wave and avant-garde filmmakers of the 1960s. As
Furuhata suggests, directors such as Oshima Nagisa, Teshigahara Hiroshi
and Wakamatsu Kōji often highlight in their works ‘the tension
between actuality-effect constructed by the mainstream media and the
43 Furuhata, Refiguring Actuality, avant-garde effects of defamiliarization’.43 It may be for this reason that
p. 68.
Matsuda Masao (with an element of sarcasm) refers to Funeral Parade of
Roses as a ‘world exposition of images’, given the range of references
44 Matsuda Masao, ‘Bara no Sōretsu: the film makes to other films made both within and outside of Japan.44
Eizō no bankokuhakurankai’
From a more positive perspective, however, Funeral Parade of Roses may
[‘Funeral Parade of Roses: the world
exposition of images’], in Bara to be seen to belong to, and bring together elements of, both a more
mumeisha [Rose and the Nameless] general international avant-garde artistic movement and underground
(Tokyo: Hōga Shoten, 1970), p. 150.
subculture and a more culturally specific mode of radical filmmaking
associated with young directors in Japan.
Along with the ‘neo-documentarist’ aesthetic devices employed, it is
also important to consider what kinds of social reality are explored or
depicted in this new realism. Along with many other places, Japan
witnessed a significant paradigm shift in the 1960s. The radical student
movement of the period, for example, aggressively challenged the ‘old
political system’ that had been sustained under the mask of postwar
democracy. An underground counterculture also flourished, breaking
away from, and challenging, traditional social and moral values. Funeral
Parade of Roses, therefore, incorporates scenes relating to both the student
movement and the counterculture, such as that of the fūten and Zero-jigen,
thereby ‘documenting’ through both traditional and more abstract
techniques the youth rebellion of this period (of which the film is itself a
part). The film thus not only challenges the conventional mode of
filmmaking through its merging of documentary and avant-garde style but
also questions and challenges traditional social and sexual norms in
various other ways.
First of all, the film questions the conventional norms of ‘heterosexuality’
and ‘gender’. Funeral Parade of Roses is one of the first Japanese
films to feature homosexuality and, in so doing, to ‘denaturalize’
heterosexuality. The film’s emphasis on crossdressing also suggests the
constructedness of gender roles. As Judith Butler argues, crossdressing
‘implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself as well as its
45 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: contingency’.45 There is a scene in which Eddie puts on makeup that
Feminism and the Subversion of reveals the process of becoming a ‘woman’ or constructing ‘femininity’.
Identity (New York, NY: Routledge,
1990), p. 137.
Similarly, the disruption of our deep-rooted conceptions of gender is also
apparent. This can be seen in the scene at the very beginning of the film in
which Eddie is shown taking a shower. We see first a closeup of Eddie’s
feminine face, wearing makeup. The camera then moves down to show his
firm bottom and moves up again to slowly reveal his flat chest. This not
only subverts the perceptions of gender and sexuality established in the

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384
 previous scene of lovemaking between Gonda and Eddie, in which
Eddie’s apparent femininity is suggested through the use of makeup,
gesture and expression, but also testifies to the performativity and
arbitrariness of gender and our reliance upon traditionally constructed
46 In this sense, the film’s treatment of markers for the definition of gender and sexuality.46
gender and sexuality carries echoes
It is important to note that Eddie’s gender ambiguity is not so much
of Susan Sontag’s early work on
‘camp’, in Against Interpretation
characterized by his femininity as his aura of androgyny, which may be
(New York, NY: Dell, largely attributable to the actor who plays him (figure 3).47 While Peter
1966), pp. 275–92. The idea of
was scouted for the role of Eddie at a gay bar where he worked part-time,
‘camp’ may also be linked to
Funeral Parade of Roses as a whole.
he was (and is) not strictly a drag queen or crossdresser. Before appearing
However, while Sontag suggested in Funeral Parade of Roses he did not conceive of himself as a drag
that ‘Camp’ elevated ‘style’ over
queen, though he occasionally used makeup when working. It was in this
‘content’ and was apolitical, in
Matsumoto’s case the style is
film that he wore a dress and a skirt for the first time. Trained as a
intertwined with both the politics of successor to his father, who was a prominent traditional Japanese dancer
realism and the student politics of
of female roles, the use of makeup or female clothing for acting did not
the 1960s.
47 As Sontag associates androgyny
necessarily invoke a specific gender identity for Peter. After appearing in
with a ‘camp’ sensibility, Eddie’s the film he made his singing debut as a ‘peculiar beauteous boy-singer’,
androgynous looks also contribute
extending the image he had now established. Recalling this period, Peter
to the way in which the film may be
seen as ‘camp’.
writes in his autobiography that the ‘Peter who debuted was exactly the
same as the protagonist of Funeral Parade of Roses’ and ‘I was acting the
48 Ikehata Shinnosuke, Peter: Korega “role” of Peter created for me’.48 This suggests that while the androgynous
jinsei, pp. 73, 115.
aura surrounding Peter (as discovered in a gay bar by Matsumoto) is
certainly translated into, or exceeds, the acting mask of Eddie, the film
also blurs the distinction between the ‘real’ Peter’s persona prior to the
film and his fictionalization or construction as perfomed in/by the film
(which then fed back into the ‘Peter–singer–actor’ persona that was in
large part derived from the character of Eddie in Matsumoto’s film).
In this respect there is a suggestive scene in which Eddie runs into a
small art exhibition. In a dimly lit small room, paintings of various masks

Fig. 3. The aura of androgyny. Bara

no Sōretsu/Funeral Parade of Roses
(Matsumoto Toshio, 1969).

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385
 are displayed while a recitation of an essay explaining the relationship
between masks and human faces plays as background commentary.
Commenting on this scene, Matsumoto says that the theme of masks is
interwoven with the issue of gender and sexuality in the way in which the
film deals with a young gay man living as a woman. It also points to the
intricate relationship between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’, however,
which may not be so easily distinguished from each other, or which at
least affect each other in complex ways. Moreover, the issue evoked by the
idea of the ‘mask’ also links to Matsumoto’s concern with realism or,
more specifically, with what he refers to as ‘a tripartite relationship among
objective reality, the world of expression, and the filmmaker’s subjective
49 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. manipulation’.49 In an essay on masks, Matsumoto argues that ‘a mask is
not a veil but a transfiguring media. It not only covers the face but also
50 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Kamen kō’ actively presents another face.’50 He suggests that, for filmmakers, their
[‘Some thoughts on masks’], in
acts of expression, or films, are also masks.51 It could be argued, then, that
Genshi no bigaku [Aesthetics of
Optical Illusion] (Tokyo: Film Art,
the object or referent of the film is a face under the mask, while the mask is
1976), p. 254 (my translation). a film through which the artist’s subjectivity achieves a form of authorial
51 Ibid., p. 262.
expression. In other words, while the mask may or may not reflect what is
underneath, it will reveal the author, particularly how she/he sees the
object and expresses what she/he sees. In this respect, Matsumoto’s
writing on Alain Resnais’s short documentary Guernica (1950), to which
he owes some inspiration for his theorization of ‘neo-documentarism’, is
suggestive:
In fact, although Alain Resnais makes Picasso’s Guernica a direct
subject of the film, he does not rely on the material strength of the
painting itself. The image captured by each shot, of course, represents
Picasso’s painting. However it is, strictly speaking, the Picasso seen by
Resnais or Resnais looking at the Picasso and therefore it is no longer
Picasso’s painting. This is why the emotional impact that you receive
from the film has been transformed into ‘something different’ from
what you get from the painting. In other words, the simplistic notion of
‘document’ is already denied here in the film. While pointing the lens
(of the camera) at the outer world, its focal point is undeniably focused
on the inner world of Resnais. He did not try to show but to see the
Picasso, and what he recorded was nothing more or less than the vision
52 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Zenei that he saw.52
kirokueiga-ron’, p. 55 (my
translation). Commenting on the symbolic use of roses in the film and the film’s title,
Matsumoto once said that these roses were ‘artificial’. He then links this
53 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Watashi wa artificiality with that of drag queens as an ‘artificial gender’.53 Although,
gei-bōi no sekai ni nani o miruka: unlike Butler, Matsumoto appeared to consider the female gender
Bara no Sōretsu o tsukuru riyū’
[‘What I see in the world of gay
mimicked by a drag queen as somehow authentic rather than performative,
boys: reasons for making The the film nonetheless questions the conventional dualism that divides men
Funeral Parade of Roses’], Eiga and women. What is also important here is that while conceiving of drag
Geijutsu, April 1969, p. 71.
queens as an artificial or false gender, the film does not treat their
existence as fake; in one scene, Eddie’s colleague in the bar claims that,
unlike those who work in the fake gay bar, they are ‘authentic’ and ‘real’.

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 Moreover, crossdressers may not be ‘real’ women but they possess their
own distinct reality as ‘drags’. The charismatic and androgynous persona
of the actor Peter not only transgresses orthodoxies of gender and
sexuality but also highlights the independence and beauty of drag queens,
which does not rely on how well they imitate women. As he sees a parallel
between drag queens and filmmakers, this may, in turn, be linked to
Matsumoto’s theorization of ‘neo-documentarism’, in which he argued
that cinematic realism is not simply a matter of the film’s relationship with
‘reality’ but also the independent and artistic value of cinema in creating
another reality for itself. As he has explained:
The problem was that in those days a good documentary was defined as
something that, first of all, had a poignant subject, and then was socially
or politically controversial. In other words, something that had
information value even before the film was shot. … I asked how one
could establish the value of the work in the expressive power and reality
of cinema as cinema itself, instead of leaning on a comparison between
the film and reality. As long as the film is confined to being a means or
tool of representationally transmitting reality, it can be journalism or
propaganda but not art. In so far as we demand artistic emotions from
film, we should present the independent value of cinema more
54 Ibid. distinctly as another reality.54
Thus the way in which he treats crossdressers, whose attractiveness and
beauty do not rely on their reference (to women) but possess their own
independent reality, may be associated with Matsumoto’s search for a
reality of cinema as an art as well as an expression of the artist’s
subjectivity.
While homosexuality and transvestitism challenge the conventional
norms of gender and sexuality, the revolt against tradition is also evident
in the way in which Eddie and his rival, Leda, are represented in the film.
Eddie is young and wears fashionable modern clothes while Leda (who,
while not old, is older than Eddie) always presents himself as a traditional
Japanese woman wearing a kimono. When, towards the end of the film,
Leda commits suicide, Eddie not only gets the man he wanted but takes
over the bar. Although Eddie is not a politically motivated character he
may, in some sense, be seen as allegorizing the radical student movement
of that time; that is, to be functioning as a symbol of modern youth kicking
out, or overcoming, ‘old’ Japan.
In this respect, the film’s narrative of the ‘death of the father’ takes on
an added dimension, with the ‘father’ symbolizing three versions of the
‘old’. First, it symbolizes the old Japan that reemerged as a form of
political reaction and conservatism in the 1950s (and against which the
student movement was rebelling). Second, it is the ‘old’ Left – the
Japanese Communist Party with which the earlier student movement had
identified but had subsequently become dissatisfied. And third, the last
symbolic father being killed is the previous generation of Japanese
cinema, or the ‘old’ realism, represented both by narrative cinema

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387
 produced in the major studio system as well as by the conventional
documentary films that Matsumoto criticized for relying too much on
information and subject matter, and for underestimating the value of film
55 Matsumoto’s criticism was as a form of ‘art’.55
directed not to any particular
The film, in a sense, may be linked to a postmodern cultural practice of
filmmakers of the ‘older generation’
but to the system in which
resistance. Matsumoto points out that the cinematic strategy that he
Japanese film production and employed in Funeral Parade of Roses may connect with the concept of
distribution were dominated by five
the postmodern that appeared later.56 Indeed, the aesthetic characteristics
major studios. Matsumoto saw the
emergence of a non-commercial
of postmodern art and film, such as the blurring of generic boundaries,
and artistically radical (avant- eclecticism, collage, use of quotation, pastiche and parody, are all evident.
garde) cinema as the means
However, if Funeral Parade of Roses may be seen as postmodern, it is
towards the destruction of the
established system of filmmaking.
more in terms of what Hal Foster refers to as a radical ‘postmodernism of
See Oshima Nagisa and resistance’, which challenges the status quo, than a ‘postmodernism of
Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Taidan: Ware
reaction’, which is associated with nostalgia for the past.57 Matsumoto
ware wa machigatteita darōka’
[‘Talk: have we been wrong?’], Eiga
argues that ‘more than criticizing the modern on the basis of the
Hyōron, November 1968, pp. 27, 28. premodern, the concept in Funeral of Roses [sic] was to advance and
56 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto.
rupture it by investigating it thoroughly’.58 Thus the rejection of the
57 Hal Foster ‘Postmodernism: a
preface’, in Hal Foster (ed.), The
established and well-ordered world governed by modern institutions and
Anti-Aesthetic: Essay on clear-cut oppositions (such as the dualisms that neatly divide fact from
Postmodern Culture (Port fiction, men from women, objective from subjective) was his way of
Townshed: Bay Press, 1983), xii.
58 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto.
‘bringing modernity into question’59 and shaking the existing order at its
59 Ibid. foundations.60
60 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Konton ga Made at the height of the radical students’ movement that emerged in
imisuru mono’ [‘The meanings of
chaos’], in Gendai nihon eiga- ron
the wake of the renewal of the Japan–US security treaty, Funeral Parade
taikei: Gensō to seiji no aida of Roses was criticized for not being overtly political. Certainly the film
[Collection of Essays on does not engage with the specific political concerns of that time, such as
Contemporary Japanese Cinema:
Between Illusion and Politics]
the security treaty. While issues relating to the student movement and the
(Tokyo: Tōkisha, 1971). Vietnam War are touched upon, these are treated in a rather episodic
manner. Yet, as discussed above, rebellion against the old is implied in the
film’s use of allegory as well as in its employment of a cinematic form that
refuses conventional realism. As Matsumoto himself suggested, a
filmmaker does not necessarily ‘narrate his/her concern with the period in
61 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Sonzai no a direct manner’.61 Rather than dealing with an explicit political agenda,
keijijōgaku’ [‘Metaphysics of the
Matsumoto sought to undermine the notion of modernity itself, and of the
existence’], in Eizō no hakken,
p. 183.
modern systems of thought that, by underpinning the political
establishment, regulate ‘our thought, feelings, and culture in invisible
62 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. ways’.62 This is also an explanation of how the politics of Matsumoto’s
new realism emerged as a critique of conventional realism, which he
regarded as collusive with Japanese wartime militarism.
However, although Eddie may allegorize the ‘new’ – the new Japan, the
new Left and the new realism – his symbolic status is clearly ambiguous.
As repeated flashbacks to his traumatic history suggest, he is also haunted
by the past. Moreover, it is important to note that, while indirectly killing
his father at the end of the film, Eddie has missed his absent father. He also
unwittingly desired, and was seduced by, his father as a sexual partner – a
liaison that leads to the film’s tragic end. In this respect, Eddie may also
allegorize a growing sense of the failure of the radical 1960s student

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388
 activism to overthrow the old order in the face of growing economic
prosperity and political reaction and of its absorption into the cultural
mainstream. Similarly, while Matsumoto was optimistic about the
potential and power of the avant garde, he was also aware that the avant
garde could be coopted, commodified and subsequently deprived of its
subversive power.63 In this way the film’s enthusiasm for the new is
tempered by a consciousness of the difficulty of overcoming the old
social, sexual and artistic order and an awareness of the tragic
consequences of failing to make a satisfactory break with the old.
63 Matsumoto Toshio, ‘Kizuguchi to Matsumoto links some of these problems to underground gay culture.
yaiba’ [‘Wound and knife’], Art
He considered homosexuality and ‘sexual deviancy’ to be ‘anti-social’,
Theatre, no. 70 (1969), p. 17.
64 Matsumoto, ‘Watashi wa gei-bōi ‘poisoning’ the natural order of things,64 though used the word ‘anti-
no sekai ni nani o miruka’, p. 68. social’ in a positive way, as an ‘oppositional force’ challenging the
established norm. However, he also pointed out that in Japan such
potentially oppositional currents often became incorporated into the
65 Ibid., p. 69. mainstream, becoming a sort of pseudo-opposition.65 Yet Matsumoto also
argues that the subsumption of radicalism into the mainstream would
encounter opposition, leading to a kind of catastrophe that, in turn, would
66 Matsumoto, ‘Kizuguchi to yaiba’, disturb our mundane life.66 In this respect, although the film’s ending may
p. 70. be regarded as tragic, the appearance of Eddie with his stabbed eyes on a
crowded street in central Tokyo in broad daylight (figure 4) may be seen
as a refusal to submit to the normal requirements of urban space and the
public sphere in general (as, for instance, in Zero-jigen’s performances).
Retrospectively, however, the film’s ending is also suggestive of what
would happen to student activism in the 1970s: facing the waning of
political resistance, some radicals moved in the direction of extreme and
violent militancy. These radicals may have wished to continue to be an
oppositional ‘poison’ to established society, and indeed, their violence
shocked the public; yet, as in Funeral Parade of Roses, it was also self-
defeating, and involved a loss of ‘vision’.
Funeral Parade of Roses explores both the visible and invisible realities
of Japan in the transitional period of the late 1960s. On the one hand it
documents the youth rebellion of that time of which it itself was a part; on

Fig. 4. Defying the requirements of

urban space. Bara no Sōretsu/
Funeral Parade of Roses
(Matsumoto Toshio, 1969).

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389
 the other hand, allegorically, it communicates what Matsumoto calls the
‘deep sense of depression of the era’. However, he explores not only these
sociocultural realities of Japan in the late 1960s, but by merging
documentary style and avant-garde convention his work also critically
investigates the reality of cinema both as a medium of representation and
as an art. Moreover, as Hall suggests, Matsumoto uses the Oedipus story
67 Hall, Unwilling Subjects, p. 128. as a structure to implant his own expressive (and oppositional) impulse.67
In this respect, Funeral Parade of Roses may be seen, as Matsumoto
suggests, as an implementation of his own art (or film) theory by linking
the facticity of filmmaking with more challenging dimensions of
68 Matsumoto, ‘Kizuguchi to yaiba’, homosexual underground culture,68 as well as by exploring what he calls
p. 72.
‘the objective reality, the world of expression, and the filmmaker’s
69 Gerow, Interview with Matsumoto. subjective manipulation’.69

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