2. MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS
3.2. Evaluación de riesgos
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Shinya Tsukamoto is still often referred to as
"the cyberpunk director. " His films are gen
erally seen as being all about grotesque trans
formations in which flesh fuses with metal and human beings mutate into giant scrap heaps, cannon-firing their way through the Tokyo technopolis.
The cyberpunk influence is one that Tsuka
moto himself readily acknowledges, but it's odd that his films are still most commonly referred to in this way when in fact only two of them deal with the topic. Though it's not an entirely fair representation, the predominance of this image is a testament to the impact those two early films made, an impact that was felt on an international scale.
As a Tokyo native, the experience of life in the megalopolis would come to infuse Shinya Tsukamoto's work. Born in 1 960 in Shibuya Ward, young Shinya grew up on an exclusive diet of kaifii monster movies.
"When I was a little kid, my mother would take me to the cinema, and the monster films were the first films I saw. Seeing this big monster on a big screen really impressed me. I became really fascinated with monster movies as a result."
Inevitably, the kaifii films would have a
strong influence on his work. This influence is seen not only in his breakthrough film Tetsuo:
The Iron Man, whose protagonist transforms into a sluggish heap of metal whose design rep
licates the burly forms of the reptilian kaifii, but also in the experimental shorts Tsukamoto made on 8mm as a teenager. Early trials like Genshi
san ( 1 974) [trans: Mister primitive] and Kyodai Gokiburi Monogatari ( 1 9 7 5 ) [trans: Giant cock
roach story] , made with the camera he had bor
rowed from his father, were Tsukamoto's own attempts at making monster movies. When he founded his own independent theater company as a student, he named the group Kaij u Theater and bruit himself a stage in the shape of a sea monster.
"Our company's style was like 1960s or 1970s underground theater. Ours weren't really stage plays; we would go outside and perform on the street. Our first play was in a small park near school. I started making Smm films at age 14 and then I started doing theater at age 17. To me, those underground plays were like Smm theater, but the difference is that you're not constrained to a frame. When you're a teen·
ager you are more sensitive and you feel that theater appeals more directly to an audience than filmmaking does."
143
Directing, writing, and performing, Tsu
kamoto formed a repertory company of actors and collaborators around him, many of whom would go on to work on his films, like actress Kei Fujiwara, who would become Tsukamoto's lead actress, assistant director, and second di
rector of photography on Tetsuo. Tsukamoto's collaborations with actor Tomorowo Taguchi continue even to this day.
Throughout the '70s, the budding director continued to combine 8mm filmmaking with experimental theater, in some instances making films of 90 minutes or even two hours in length.
But the creative expression stopped when he graduated from art school and found a job di
recting television commercials. He became the employee of a company, a salaryman who took the overcrowded train to work every morning and back home again at night. "When he even
tually returned to independent filmmaking in the latter half of the '80s, this experience would have a profound effect on his work.
In 1 98 6, seven years after he'd last made an 8mm film, Tsukamoto picked up his camera again and made an additional two shorts: The Phantom of Regular Size and, the following year, The Adventure of Denchu Kozo. Though still par
tially inspired by the kaifu films as the former's title witnessed, the films were closer to the realm of cyberpunk and science fiction. Having
1979
by now been exposed to Western science fiction films, with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner ( 1 98 2 ) and David Cronenberg's Videodrome ( 1 98 3 ) making a particularly strong impact, the focus of his work widened somewhat. Often regarded as test runs for Tetsuo, The Phantom of Regular Size concerned a man transformed into a human cannon, while The Adventure ofDenchu Kozo fea
tured a young man shunned by his environment on account of the electric rod growing out of his back. The premises of the two shorts would form the basis of Tetsuo: The Iron Man, which Tsukamoto began filming the same year as Den
chu Kozo, but which would take him almost two years to complete.
The Phantom of Regular Size won Tsukamoto his first critical notice, while a jury that included Nagisa Oshima awarded him the Grand Prix at the PIA Film Festival for The Adventure of Den
chu Kozo. His confidence bolstered, the young director set out to make Tetsuo with the inten
tion of getting it seen by a wider audience. With 8mm films being almost impossible to exhibit, Tsukamoto bought a secondhand 1 6mm camera to shoot Tetsuo, the story of a man who trans
forms into a grotesque heap of metal after a hit
and-run accident. Financed with money from his day job in advertising, Tetsuo was in every way a handmade film, abundantly employing such "primitive" special effects as stop motion
1992
Filmography
1974 • Hasu no Hana Tobe • Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
• Genshi-san [short]
1975
• Kyodai Gokiburi Monogatari [short] (Futsii Saizu no Kaijin) [short]
1987
• Jigokumachi Shoben Geshuku
ni Te Tondayo 1991
• Bullet Ballet (Baretto Bare) 1999
The Adventure af Denchu Kaza
and using scotch tape to stick electronic parts from discarded TV sets to actor Tomorowo Taguchi's face. But shot in black and white and using strongly expressionistic lighting, the re
sult was incredibly effective.
"I didn't have any money to do it differently. I couldn't use effects like in Hollywood. If a gun grows out of someone's body, we couldn't use computer graphics, so we had to do it frame by frame with the gun appearing bit by bit from the body. But I like the 'realness' of this way of working, so even today I find it hard to let go of this handmade approach, even though I can use more advanced effects techniques now."
To complement his images of mutating metal, Tsukamoto wanted a soundtrack that would resonate with the subject and found a suitable partner in experimental noise musi
cian Chii Ishikawa, who would go on to become Tsukamoto's regular composer.
Bullet Ballet
"I already had the Idea of using the sound of beating Iron for Tetsuo's soundtrack, sampling that noise and using It as music. But I didn't know any musicians, so I asked a producer and he Introduced me to several people. Ishikawa was the second person whose work I listened to. The first guy's music was too different from what I wanted, so I tried another tape and that was Ishikawa. His tape was exactly like the sound of beating Iron I'd envisioned and I really liked It. So I asked him If he would be Interest
ed In doing the music for the film and told him I wanted to work with him at all cost. That's how we met. In the beginning he had no Idea how to approach making music for films. So he said he would just make the music and I could use the parts of It I liked. He made several long pieces of music in different styles that I could choose from. Today we work differently.
What I ask of him now Is different and more complicated because the films themselves
have changed over the years. He puts a lot of concentration and effort into each song, and he approaches the combination of sound and Images with a lot more care.
"If I were to really make a film that is com
pletely different from my other stuff and I think it really won't fit with his music, in that case there is the possibility that I would ask a dif
ferent composer. But until now, even if the film is not related to metal, I've always thought his music would fit. So I've always asked him to do the music. Even if I'm very demanding or ask him to do something new, the results are always really satisfying. If I throw him one ball, he'll throw me back several more. Maybe it's difficult for him at times, but for me it's a great joy to work with him."
The lengthy production time of the film had left its traces on Tsukamoto. His cast and crew had quit in despair and, as the director admitted
in an interview in the French film magazine HK, he was on the verge of burning the negative in the hope of exorcising all the bad experiences.
In addition, few Japanese media were even in
terested in his 67 -minute black-and-white film.
All this would change drastically when Tet
suo was invited to the Fantastic Film Festival in Rome, Italy, in late 1 989. Playing without subti
tles (Tsukamoto had no money for a translation) to an audience that included Chilean surreal
ist filmmaker Alejandro J odorowsky, the film took the festival by storm and snatched the top pnze.
"The foreign acclaim was crucial in allowing me to continue directing because it changed how
Tetsuo's international success would prove to be the breakthrough for contemporary Japanese film on the international scene. It had already been six years since the Palme d'Or in Cannes for Sh6hei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama Bushiko), and Japanese cinema had all but disappeared from the Western radar. Tetsuo, which went on to play at numerous festivals gar
nering just as many foreign distribution deals, put Japan back on the map and paved the way for the international breakthrough of Takeshi Kitano a few years later, as well as for the nu
merous festival successes for Japanese films in the latter half of the '90s. With Tetsuo, the new generation of Japanese filmmakers arrived on the international scene.
Shinya Tsukamoto • 147
At home too, the film did well. Although only shown at late-night screenings, the film attracted sell-out crowds as a result of the pub
licity devoted to its award victory. This in turn attracted the interest of the industry, landing Tsukamoto his first commission when Shochiku studios invited him to adapt the short manga story Hiruko the Goblin.
Tsukamoto wrote the script himself, greatly expanding the slim storyline to fit in an archae
ologist character, played by singer Kenji Sawa
da, who faces off against the powers of hell in a school basement. Shot in color with a profes
sional cast and crew, Hiruko was more conven
tional in style and subject than Tetsuo, resulting in disappointing reactions from fans of the di
rector's breakthrough film.
Disappointments didn't last long, however.
After finishing Hiruko, Tsukamoto launched into production of the sequel to Tetsuo without skipping a beat. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer had al
ready been in the planning stages when the op
portunity to make Hiruko presented itself, and backed by money from entertainment conglom
erate Toshiba EMI, the film was in theaters a mere year after Hiruko.
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer essentially replays the basic scenario of its predecessor, with an un
witting everyman gradually transforming into a monstrous mechanical contraption. Tsukamoto had expanded the situation to include more plot and a much more deliberate, focused thematic substance. Tetsuo was largely a film made on instinct, with a variety of pop-cultural influ
ences and a strong sense of eroticism weighing heavier than the actual investigation of thematic implications. Tetsuo II was made in a much more contemplative manner, allowing for the emer
gence of what would become the director's re
curring thematic concerns: contemporary city life and how it has detached us from our own physical sensations. Another enormously im
portant characteristic established by Tetsuo II
(although already present to a lesser extent in the first film) is the central position of the
fam-ily unit in the narrative. The disruption of this unit would become the premise for the plots of all his subsequent films.
These motifs and concerns were never clearer nor more succinctly explored than in his following film Tokyo Fist ( 1 99 5 ) , in many ways the epitome of Tsukamoto's work. Revolving around a young couple broken apart by the in
trusion of an old acquaintance of the husband's, the film featured numerous bloody and intense bouts of boxing and co-starred Tsukamoto's younger brother Koji as the interloper.
"When Koji was 18 he was a boxer. He had one professional fight and got damaged pretty badly, so he immediately gave it up. He was still involved with boxing as a trainer, but he didn't fight again. Then when he passed thirty he got this idea into his head that he wanted to get up into the ring again, so my mother became very worried about him. That's when I got the idea that instead of getting into the ring for real, he could get into the ring in my film. That way everybody was happy: I had a new story to tell, he could be in the ring, and my mother could be at ease."
With boxing and physical training replac
ing the metallic mutations of the Tetsuo films, Tokyo Fist dispensed entirely with the element of science fiction. Tsukamoto concentrated on treating his very worldly, contemporary themes in a worldly, contemporary setting, thus allow
ing them to come to their full maturation and significance.
"There hasn't been a war in Japan in over fifty years, which is of course a good thing. But the result is that people have gotten used to peace and have fallen half asleep. One thing I want to achieve with my films is to wake them up. To smash them over the skull with a metal hammer. But I have to do that to myself, too. I have a tendency to take it easy in life, and it's only through making movies that I feel awake
and alive. I want to warn people that being too complacent and taking things for granted is dangerous. Of course, I'm not telling people that they should start a new war, but I want them to better appreciate the peace that they have. They should be aware of how fortunate they are and not take things for granted."
Tsukamoto's films revolve around such peo
ple who take things for granted, many of them salarymen (as in the Tetsuo films, Tokyo Fist, and Bullet Ballet). Living their lives on autopilot, riding the waves of duty and routine, they have become detached from their own sensations.
They live in the megalopolis of Tokyo, which has banished any signs of decay from its gleam
ing streets. For Tsukamoto it's this decay that holds the key to life . Pain, destruction, and confrontation with death remind one of what it feels like to be alive, much more than going through the daily grind does. To this end, Tsu
kamoto puts his characters through the most terrible ordeals in order to remind them of how it feels to be alive. The physical transfor
mations in the Tetsuo films find much more resonance in the insurance salesman who takes up boxing and has himself beaten to a pulp in Tokyo Fist, in the housewife who rediscovers her femininity and conquers disease through being the victim of sexual blackmail in A Snake of June, and in the upper-class doctor in Gemini, who is forced to spend weeks at the bottom of a dried-up well with only a few bowls of rice to eat, and who is thereby reduced to the spitting image of the dirt-covered slum dwellers he re
fuses to treat.
With this belief that in destruction lies re
birth and that luxury is false comfort, Tsuka
moto's films are remarkably close to those of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Remarkably, because the two filmmakers are such stylistic opposites few have ever noticed the link. Both men's work in turn was prefigured by that of Kinji Fukasaku, who also regarded the destruction of old values as a liberation and viewed the reconstruction of
Ja-pan's cities into gleaming masses of tower blocks as a lie that covered up the decaying truth.
Tokyo Fist is, as noted, perhaps the purest expression of these themes within Tsukamoto's body of work. What makes it stand out even more is that this is not all it treats. Tokyo Fist also sees the emergence of a strong current of feminism or female empowerment in the director's films. In its scant 87 minutes, Tokyo Fist focuses not only on the battle between two men, but gives equal opportunities for self-development to the female factor in the equation. The insurance salesman's wife seems to be merely the catalyst for the fight between two men, and this is certainly how the men treat her. But while the testosterone
charged boys pound each other into submission, the woman goes her own way and achieves physi
cal and spiritual enlightenment.
"I don't know why exactly, but when I look at my mother, who is part of a previous genera
tion in which a woman's situation was weaker and aimed at supporting the man, I feel com
passion for her and I get this urge to be sup
portive of women."
This feminist trope would reappear in all his subsequent films. In Bullet Ballet a young woman joins a gang of young street punks only because it serves her own needs. In Gemini, which again features two men fighting over a woman, the fe
male protagonist goes through a transformation and a self-discovery that is as profound as the men's. A Snake of June is perhaps the culmina
tion, revolving as it does around one woman's complete individual liberation, even from a po
tentially lethal disease.
With Tokyo Fist also came Shinya Tsukamo
to's first attempt at playing a lead role. Having played the villain in Tetsuo and Tetsuo II and ap
peared in films by Kaizo Hayashi and Naoto Takenaka, his acting work had always been in secondary parts. Playing Tokyo Fist's insurance salesman protagonist, Tsukamoto acquitted himself well in the lead.
Shinya Tsukamoto · 149
Shinya Tsukamoto
"For me, acting is like very seriously engaging in a hobby. I like all aspects of filmmaking, including acting, but it goes back further. As a boy I used to be rather shy and not very good at dealing with other people. It was only when I entered a theater group and started appear
ing in school plays that I learned how to relate to people and be more socially adept. Another thing is that I don't have a background as an assistant director. I never saw other directors at work, so as an actor I get a chance to do that after all, which is an interesting experi
ence. But I only act in the films of directors I like."
Tsukamoto went on to work with such direc
tors as Shunichi Nagasaki (Some Kinda LovelRo
mansu and Dogs), Takashi Miike (Dead or Alive