‘The Naked Island’ is perhaps one of the finest pieces of celluloid ever committed and up until this point had practically been unavailable in any format outside it’s native Japan. This is a masterpiece of minimalist form that director Kaneto Shindo was to win the Grand Prix at the Moscow film festival for in 1961. It is my privilege to introduce you to the hardships of one small family and it’s beautiful presentation by Eureka Video’s Masters of Cinema label.
Shindo became a figure of excellence in the West with his marvellous and haunting docu-fictional tale
‘Children of Hiroshima’ in 1952, then in 1960 with this film, and then in 1964 and in 1968 with the ghost stories of
‘Onibaba’ and
‘Kuroneko’ (also being released through this label next month), although he made almost twenty movies during this period, and scripted over sixty others.
During this time he made ‘The Naked Island’ (Hadaka no shima), a small tale of simple peasant folk living on an island in the remote part Setonaikai archipelago. Here life follows a daily routine and the simplicity of water means life. Ironic too the meaning for life is all around them, only their crops will not take to salty water, so many daily trips to the mainland are required. Tirelessly they scull their way to the mainland back and forth filling buckets from the paddy fields overspill ditches, their closest source of fresh water, and taking them up the steep sides of the island that is their home to the crops that are so essential to their well-being.
These gruelling trips are almost shot in a documentary style and we feel all the more for it; here we see backbreaking work silently carried out by both Toyo (Nobuko Otowa who would later go on to work with Shindo again on ‘Onibaba’ and ‘Kuroneko’ and also become his wife) and Senta (Taiji Tonoyama). For every trip made to the mainland, a return with water is essential. While toiling in the rugged and almost arid land, their children Jiro (Masanori Horimoto) and Taro (Shinji Tanaka) tend to the meals and day-to-day chores. When Taro is away at school, Jiro goes looking for fish and other things that they can either eat or sell.
The idyllic existence they lead is shattered when one of their children takes ill. This is the real start of the drama of the movie, and a heartbreaking one too. For a movie that spends almost half it’s entire length showing two people trudging with a bent pole on their shoulders with two heavily filled water pails on it’s ends, filling, carrying and watering their meagre crops, this still manages to grip you throughout. The music by composer Hikaru Hayashi is melodic and simple giving a wonderful air of flutes to most of the proceedings.
One of the strange things about ‘The Naked Island’ is that if you took away the boats and ships in the background there is hardly anything to place the movie in a time frame, it could almost be today or 500 years ago, and it is just as poetic now as it was when it was made or even perhaps more so.
The Masters of Cinema label by Eureka Video are painstakingly presented showing the best in restoration preserving these fine films. This is no exception; the print looks and sounds wonderful, although there is barely a word of dialogue in the entire movie but there are clear subtitles for those few words and some seasonal captions too. Each DVD is produced with a handsome booklet, in this case, 24 pages filled to the brim, full of essays, interviews and marvellous pictures of the movie and its director.
On the extra front is a wonderful commentary from the aging director (who must be in his 90s by now) and his composer for the film, Hayashi. This commentary is great with tremendous insights from all those years ago and clear and crisp subtitling captures this. There is an introduction by filmmaker Alex Cox, indicating some of the political aspects of Shindo’s career, which is further examined in the booklet previously mentioned. Last but not least is a photo gallery.
Of note, Shindo was to later return with his cast to the island where this film was shot in his feature 'Sakura-tai Chiru' in 1988.
'The Naked Island' is out to own now and available via
AmazonUK , and as of yet no US release date has been given.
You can read more about the DVD in our
database .
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