\n\tThe film\u2019s path to Japanese screens has been tortured in the extreme \u2014 and in many ways, it\u2019s a marvel that it even exists. Co-written and directed by Schrader less than a decade after he became a Hollywood name for scripting Taxi Driver, the film was backed by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas\u2019 Zoetrope Pictures during one of its most active periods. Shot entirely in Japan with an all-Japanese cast, the movie vividly explores the life and ideas of the country\u2019s most controversial literary iconoclast, Yukio Mishima, the novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times before taking his own life by ritual suicide after leading a failed attempt to restore Japan\u2019s emperor to power via coup d\u2019\u00e9tat. A staggeringly original work of literary adaptation, the film interweaves episodes from Mishima\u2019s life with stylized dramatizations of moments from his books, as an aching Philip Glass score serves as cinematic connective tissue.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film has been a critical sensation ever since its release. It won the Best Artistic Contribution award at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, and Roger Ebert later called it \u201cthe most unconventional biopic I\u2019ve ever seen, and one of the best.\u201d The Criterion Collection restored and reissued the film in 2008, ensuring its cult classic status, while directors from Martin Scorsese to Guillermo del Toro have publicly cited it as Schrader\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n
But it was an unmistakable flop in its day, and in no small part because of its forbidding reception in Japan.<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite being co-financed by the country\u2019s leading studio, Toho Towa, and starring revered local actor Ken Ogata in the title role, the film\u2019s theatrical ambitions in Japan were derailed before it ever had a chance to reach the public. By the mid-1980s, Mishima\u2019s standing in Japan remained deeply conflicted: revered in literary circles as a stylist of rare brilliance and a frequent Nobel contender, but also mythologized by the far right as a martyr for imperial restoration. His lurid end \u2014 public seppuku after the failed coup attempt in 1970 \u2014 left him both an enduring cultural icon and a radioactive subject.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBFI<\/p>\n
\n\tThe movie\u2019s frank depiction of Mishima\u2019s bisexual obsessions and radical political drive, not to mention the involvement of foreign filmmakers like Schrader, Coppola and Lucas, drew a boycott from Mishima\u2019s widow and incensed the ultra-right-wing political groups that continued to lionize him. Tokyo theaters reportedly received threats of violence, and Toho quickly withdrew its support for a domestic release. The film was also pulled from that year\u2019s Tokyo International Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tTo this day, the specter of those initial threats, and the political sensitivities they exposed, has kept distributors and festival programmers cowed. Although the film has occasionally surfaced in academic settings, it has remained officially unseen by general Japanese audiences.<\/p>\n \n\tSources close to the Tokyo Film Festival told The Hollywood Reporter Wednesday that a screening of Mishima at this year\u2019s edition, running Oct. 27 to Nov. 7, has been set for Oct. 30. They said Schrader has expressed interest in returning to Japan to discuss the film at the festival, but his attendance is still uncertain, and perceived sensitivities could make promoting the screening \u201cdifficult\u201d for organizers. The decision to finally screen the film was made in light of this year\u2019s 100-year anniversary of Mishima\u2019s birth in 1925, they said. <\/p>\n \n\tOver the years, Schrader, now 79, has repeatedly said he considers Mishima his finest work as a director (while Taxi Driver remains his favorite as a screenwriter). Reflecting on his 50-year career at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, where he received an honorary Golden Lion, he said: \u201cMy favorite is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, just because it\u2019s the damnedest thing. I still can\u2019t believe I ever made that film.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If all goes according to plan, a most curious lacuna of Japanese cinema history could soon come to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[337,146,85,399,46,397,1776],"class_list":{"0":"post-49078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-tokyo-international-film-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}