Fires on the Plain

In 1951, Ooka Shohei published his eponymous novel on the unspeakable deeds too many soldiers committed in the final weeks of Imperial Japan – some merely to stay alive, others simply because they could. Ooka had been called up to serve in ’44, in the Philippines – what he describes in Nobi is first-hand experience. While staying surprisingly true to the novel’s essence, Tsukamoto made this cautionary tale of a collective collapse of all moral faculties very much his own – Fires on the Plain is at the same time a painting of Buddhist hell in garish colors laid on with deft, broad brush strokes, as well as a Surrealist satire on human foibles delivered in campy tones, shrill and grating. In this poisoned pastoral, bodies rot, limbs fly, men are mown down en masse and comrades become dinner in the blink of an eye; here, every bastard is a king – whose reign is measured in seconds, tops.