Bad Company

It is 1980. Sadatomo is at a secondary school in a small town. His parents barely take any notice of him. The strict teacher Kobayashi has hung up a `humanity index’ in the classroom, divided into the categories ‘delinquents’, ‘scum’ and ‘people’. In each category he has hung name-cards of pupils. One day Kobayashi finds out that Sadatomo and his friends have stolen some things from a shop for fun. Their fathers are informed and as punishment, the children have to write a ‘self-critical’ essay of no less than thirty pages. For the first time, Sadatomo is beaten by his father. Shocked, he writes a piece entitled ‘I am an onion’, in which the teacher thinks he can detect a first sign of humanity. That is the start of a confusing situation in which it gets hard to distinguish lies, truth, justified self-criticism and opportunist wheeler dealing, even for the boys.Furumaya manages to turn everyday events into alienating scenes where the weight of psychological oppression becomes tangible. It is precisely at the moments when nothing seems to happen, that Furumaya’s great ability to observe becomes apparent and he reveals a fine insight into children’s psyches.