Adaptation of Hanawa Kazuichi’s autobiographical manga about the three years he spent in Hidaka Prison for ‘violating the explosives law’. (He collected replica guns and took part in simulated battles.) Sai has slightly heightened the original’s humour but resisted any temptation to add violence, melodrama or gratuitous bodily fluids. He respects the book’s chapter structure, exploring the daily routines and codes of prison life from the perspective of the cell Hanawa shares with four other ‘hardened criminals’: meals, laundry, baths, exercise, cleaning and making tissue-box holders in the prison workshop. For Hanawa (Yamazaki Tsutomu, best known for Tampopo, here giving his most restrained performance), the epiphany comes during a period of solitary confinement. The pervasive irony is that this placid enclave is a haven from the conflicts explored in all of Sai’s other films.
