is a 1966 Japanese

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

directed by

Yukio Mishima , born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Nationalism, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was ...

. It is based on Mishima's

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Patriotism Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or histor ...

", published in 1960.

Opening scroll

''In February 1936, Tokyo was placed under

martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...

following a coup d'etat executed by a group of young officers. They maintained that they were far more loyal to the emperor than the corrupt cabinet members they murdered. Lieutenant Takeyama was a member of this secret society, but it was decided that he should not participate in this coup d'etat. The others did not want to implicate him, because they knew how much he loved Reiko, his beautiful young bride. It seemed at first that the coup had been successful, but in a few days people began to look on it as a minor uprising soon to be quelled by an imperial injunction. Lieutenant Takeyama was still a member of the palace guard. The time when he would have to fight against his comrade-in-arms, to execute his closest friends as rebels, was drawing near. ''The Rite of Love and Death'' takes place on the Japanese

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...

stage.''

Plot

Chapter 1: Reiko

''Reiko, the lieutenant's wife has seen in her husband's face his resolution to die as he leaves for the palace on the snowy morning following the coup d'etat. If he should fail to return alive, she is determined to follow him in death. As she gathers the keepsakes she will leave behind for her parents and friends, she calls up tender memories of her husband's love...'' While sitting under a

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

painting that displays the phrase "wholehearted sincerity" Reiko waits for the lieutenant to return to his abode. She paints a message saying "keepsakes from Reiko" and gathers her cherished figurines. She is aware that when he returns home they are to die together but the agonizing fear is sent away by the eternal bliss of their love. She conjures up the happy memories of their marriage and life together. In her mind, she sees the warm caress of his hands and is warmed by their memory.

Chapter 2: The Lieutenant's Return

''Then at midnight, the snow still falling, Lieutenant Takeyama suddenly appears at the door. The guard has been changed and he explains that he is free until morning, when he must go to kill his comrade-in-arms. "But I just can't do it! I can't!" Takeyama, a dedicated soldier, cannot bear the thought of killing his close friends if he wishes to remain loyal to the emperor. The contradiction appalls him. As the descendant of a

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

family, the only honorable course left him is to die by morning to commit

hara-kiri , sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people d ...

. "I know how you feel" Reiko says quietly. "And I will follow you wherever you go." Takeyama is overjoyed. "Thank you. We'll go together to another world then. But please let me die first and then you follow. I mustn't fail." Their involuntary smiles reflect an unfathomable mutual trust. Death is no longer terrifying. Reiko feels as she did on her wedding night.'' After participating in the Ni Ni Roku Incident of February 1936, Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama has been given orders to execute some of his fellow mutineers. Realizing he can not do it, he tells his wife of his plan to commit suicide. She agrees with him and they plan to commit it together.

Chapter 3: The Final Love

''This is as pure and passionate as a ritual conducted before the gods. They are able for the first time in their lives to reveal unabashedly their most secret desires and passions. First the Lieutenant and then Reiko, who has lost all her shyness in the face of death, bids loving farewell to every smallest detail of the other's flesh.'' Accepting that they are about to die, Reiko and the Lieutenant make love. They are sent together in the deepest of ecstasies. As they copulate, Reiko kisses the flesh of the Lieutenant and many sensual shots show closeups of their naked bodies entwined. It's an abstract montage of faces, arms, and torsos in sometimes extreme close-up, recalling slightly Teshigahara. The scene ends with them both reclined naked like Grecian statues.

Chapter 4: The Lieutenant commits Hara-kiri

The lieutenant commits

with the assistance of his wife Reiko. As he stabs himself with the sword, spit forms in his mouth and his stomach lets loose a torrent of blood and entrails.

Chapter 5: Reiko commits suicide

Reiko now prepares herself to follow her husband into the next life. She puts on her lipstick and then sits next to her husband's corpse. She holds the knife with a smile on her face, glad to be reunited with her husband. The film ends with a shot of the dead couple in embrace.

Style

''Patriotism'' is a silent, thirty-minute

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

film with long expository intertitles elaborating on the story and its historical background. It contains visual references to

Noh theatre is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...

, as Mishima admired the traditional style and wrote several plays in the genre. Set in a single room, it is composed of static wide shots and lingering close-ups, most of which obscure Mishima's eyes. It is arresting visually: with cinematographer Watanabe Kimio, Mishima achieves an extremely sharp contrast of black and white, emblazoned by the ensuing copious amounts of blood, and the whiteness of the Noh stage and Reiko's ceremonial kimono, respectively. The hanging painting that displays "Wholesome sincerity" also acts as a major visual element of the film's visual style, determining angle, lighting, actor positions. Like the entire film itself, it remains mute but steady, fixed in its resolve. It serves to remind the viewer of the devotion between Reiko and the Lieutenant and also their devotion to their nation and to the ritual hara-kiri.

Themes

The film is about the death of militarism in postwar Japan and seeks to contrast the suicide of the 1936 officers to Mishima's postwar interpretation. It can be seen as a foreshadowing of his own ill-fated suicide. Ritual suicide is explored in many of Mishima's works. Following Mishima's death aesthetics, the excruciating gorey shots of death make the point, so that an overwhelming sense of life, beauty, discipline, love, and death come together.

Cast

as Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama * Yoshiko Tsuruoka as Reiko

Release

''Patriotism'' was originally distributed in Japan by Japan Art Theatre Guild on 12 April 1966. It was released theatrically again by

Toho is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer an ...

and Japan Art Theatre Guild on 15 June 1966. The film was shot in two days in secret, and after a private screening, then submitted for a French film festival. On November 25, 1970, Mishima committed seppuku after delivering a speech intended to inspire a

coup d'état A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...

. After Mishima's suicide his widow Yōko requested that all existing copies of the film be destroyed. But in 2005 the original negatives were discovered in perfect condition, in a tea box at a warehouse at their home in Tokyo. The film was released on DVD in Japan in 2006 and then in the US by the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

in 2008.

In other media

The band

Laibach Laibach () is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with the industrial, martial, and neo-classical genres. Formed in the mining town of Trbovlje (at the time in Yugoslavia) in 1980, Laibach represents the musical wing of the Neue Slo ...

used a clip from this film in their music video "Le Privileges des morts" from the album '' Kapital'' interspersed alongside

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran� ...

's '' Alphaville''.

References

Sources

External links

* *
''Patriotism: The Word Made Flesh''
an essay by

Tony Rayns Antony Rayns (born 1948) is a British writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter. He wrote for the underground publication ''Cinema Rising'' (its name inspired by Kenneth Anger's '' Scorpio Rising'') before contributing to ...

at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patriotism (Film) 1966 drama films 1966 films 1966 short films 1960s Japanese films 1960s Japanese-language films Films about coups d'état Films about suicide Films based on works by Yukio Mishima Japanese drama films Japanese short films Japanese splatter films Works by Yukio Mishima