The Naked Island

Nobuko Otowa

Kaneto Shindo's The Naked Island, released in 1960, is a mesmerizing masterpiece. Largely shorn of dialogue, the picture focuses on a farming family of four eking out a living on a small denuded Japanese island. The family mostly raises yams and potatoes on a terraced hill. Because of the lack of rain and foliage on their isle, the unnamed couple have to row to the mainland several times each spring and summer day to fetch water. They then have to tote the buckets of water up a torturously steep hill to douse their plants. The first third of the film establishes the daily rhythm and challenges of the couple's meagre existence. The kids pitch in except when the eldest gets to travel to school and slack off. The perseverance of the family is stirring in a Sisyphean way: their life is a hard and repetitive struggle, but, at least like Camus' Sisyphus, they are able to derive a smidgin of joy as they toil.

The first third of the film ends with a resounding slap of reality that reminds us that, though the film is set in the modern era, the couple lives just as their forebears have for centuries; with much the same values and attitudes. The remainder of the film documents a trying year in the life of the family. Changes of seasons bring new and different chores along with rituals and celebrations. It is these bonding rituals that help the family heal after tragedy strikes. Because of its lack of dialogue, characterization, and plot, a film like The Naked Island needs to be technically assured to be even tolerable. The film is technically superb in every detail. Kiyomi Kuroda's cinematography presents a natural landscape that is both sumptuous and daunting. Shindo mostly shoots his two main players from a low angle, emphasizing the toll taken by their everyday struggles. Opening and closing aerial reorients the viewer. We realize that the totality of the family's world is but a dot in a vast world.

Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama, who play the couple, carry the film on their shoulders. It is obvious that they are really doing their own stunts and this gives their performances a stunning verisimilitude. You see and feel their struggle. As Sheila O'Malley has sagely noted, acting is doing and The Naked Island is a prime example of committed performances in which gesture merges with behavior. Apparently the hardships experienced by Ms. Otowa did not embitter her towards Mr. Shindo for she became his third and final wife in 1978. I also must shower superlatives on the score by the great Hikaru Hayashi who composed over thirty operas and over a hundred film scores. It is evocative without ever bogging down into sentimentality, much like The Naked Island as a whole.

The first film I ever saw directed by Kaneto Shindo was his 1964 horror masterpiece Onibaba which I viewed at the Roxie theater in San Francisco. This was in 1987 or so and, happily, the Roxie is still in business today. Kaneto Shindo lived till he was 100 and directed 48 films, most of which remain unseen in the USA. Of his other films, I've only seen 1968's Kuroneko, a good, if not outstanding, period horror film, but The Naked Island will spur me to seek out more of his oeuvre.