I have finished reading ‘A Lateral View: Essays on Contemporary Japan’ by Donald Richie. Although i feel more intelligent and justifiably opinionated about the quotidian aspects of japan than ever before, i fear i’m still behind the times. Essays from the eighties don’t really qualify as contemporary anymore. When did that happen? At some point over the last few years? When Michael Jackson died? I actually don’t care. The book still seemed valid to me. I enjoyed reading; it was smart and careful, if sometimes a little stiff. Richie embedded himself in the avant garde japanese filmmakers of Japan in the 50’s and 60’s. He is an expert on Kurosawa and others and he even made some films of his own. Above is his snuff masterpiece. It makes a lot of sense after reading his essay on Japanese pornographic film ‘The Japanese Eroduction’—”Yet this is precisely what the eroduction does. With a truly compulsive insistence, it monomaniacally maintains that…woman are evil, that men are their prey, and that sex is their instrument”. Sounds like a good summary of Lars Von Triers recent film. Richie felt that in these erotic films the tortures suffered by woman are viewed as a justified preemptive strike by the men–”they are doing in the woman before the woman have a chance to do them in”. I suppose the film above is his retaliation. NOTE: contains nudity, sexualised murder and incense in anus. Perennial thanks to the worlds greatest digital archive, UBUWEB, and to J. Gatto and M. Villalba for the book!