TERAYAMA SHUJI

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The film reveals its autobiographical foundation from the onset. The setting is a village at the foot of Mt. Osore in Aomori, where Terayama was raised. Renamed 'Terror Mountain' in the film, Osorezan is famous for both its strong sulfur smell and for the existence of itako, female shamans who act as mediums to communicate with the dead. The village and its inhabitants are presented through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy who is being raised alone by his mother. The boy (nameless, as are all the film's characters) suffers from typical adolescent angst, but finds little understanding from his overbearing mother. Desperate, the boy visits an itako to speak to his deceased father, but finds little solace.

The life of the villagers is dominated by the inherited weight of rural tradition, something Terayama considers dangerous. Superstition abounds in the village. A young unmarried woman giving birth has rules barked at her by a gaggle of black-clad old women peering in from the doorway; she suffers a miscarriage, and as a result is tormented by the women. Such superstitions are used as a metaphor for the burden of the past in present-day Japanese consciousness. Traditions are carried out, yet nobody can actually explain why. Conformity is critical to the point that every house in the village is governed by the time of the family clock.

Standing in opposition to this conformity is a traveling circus that has arrived in the village. The life of the circus members is equally as ritualistic, though unlike the obscure nature of those in the village, theirs are often about sex, violence, work, and play. The boy, peering through the tent flap, sees his first example of hedonistic behavior in the form of an all-out orgy, which causes him to flee in terror.

Falling in love with the married woman next door, the boy asks her to elope, offering them the chance to escape the oppressiveness of their village lives. At their moment of escape, the narrative suddenly stops and we are in Tokyo where the director has been showing this film to friends and colleagues. The director (clearly Terayama) worries that in choosing to make a film about his past he might end up exploiting his childhood and creating little more than a cheap spectacle. At a smoke filled bar his art-critic friend assures him that he must go on with the film, adding, "if one isn't freed from one's own memory, then one isn't free." The director, still living with his mother, meets his teenage self and decides to return with him to re-correct the mistakes of his past.

This time around, things are slightly different in the village. Accompanying his younger self, the events this time are somewhat more akin to the truth. His mother now physically prevents him from eloping, and the woman he loved has run off with a lover. The young unmarried woman gives birth, but drowns her baby and runs off to the city. Witnessing this, the director convinces the boy that the mother is at the root of all these problems and that he must kill her. By doing this, he will be free to escape his own history. This odd twist on the Oedipal fantasy is further enhanced when, on his way to kill his mother, the boy meets the woman who had fled the village, now returned as a prostitute. Against his will, she takes his virginity in a lengthy scene that mirrors the one in THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS, though instead of a brothel the scene takes place in a temple. Whereas Eimei suffered from his mother's absence, here the boy is smothered by her overbearing presence.

Terayama stated in a 1977 interview that "if we wish to free ourselves, wipe out the history of humanity inside of us and the history of society around us, we must begin by getting rid of our personal memories." That the boy berates his adult self by accusing him of distorting his youth shows how difficult it was for Terayama to reconcile his fantasies with reality. As the final shot of the film proves, the line between the two is often blurred.