Loneliness and Search for Companion in 2000s Japanese Cinema: A Study on Pulse and Battle Royale
An analysis of Japanese films during the period of The Lost Decade.
A lot has been going on in such a short time yet it feels like a lifetime. This past year I’ve gone through a tempestuous voyage on the way to the university’s entrance test. I’m glad to say that for the short period I’d be taking a break in, I could finally write some more nonsense again. It’s been a while and my English has deteriorated badly, so please kindly excuse it and correct it if you’d like :)
Films from Japan in the late 1990s to early 2000s have developed a genre of their own. It has become a surge of a new wave with the birth of several indie auteurs, such as Hirokazu Koreeda with his simplistic yet realistic approach, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s eerie and mysterious directions, and also Hideaki Anno’s youthful, vibrant take on his coming-of-age films. Recently, I’ve started binging many Japanese films from that period, and whilst the genres differ, I noticed a thing or two resemblances that bind these movies together. Today’s two films I’ll focus on are Battle Royale (2000) by Kinji Fukasaku and Pulse (2001) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Although the viewing experiences I had watching these two were significantly different, the film tackles almost the same subject in its fundamentals.
Battle Royale sets in a near-future dystopian where teenagers no longer have morals and manners. Of those teenagers, 42 of them then got transferred to a deserted island where they must kill each other to survive the game. The story revolves around two main protagonists, Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) and Noriko Nakagawa (Aki Maeda). On the one hand, Pulse sets in the early stage of the internet’s presence in Japan, in which a group of adults witnesses frightening visions from the software transferred across the internet. In Pulse, peoples’ search for connection via the internet dooms them to eternal isolation. Whoever stumbled upon those visions will be brought into a room with a door sealed by red tape known as “the forbidden room.” Inside it, terrifying visions and ghosts confronted people who enter it and caused them to lose their will to live, pushing them to commit suicide. It consists of two plotlines. One follows Michi Kudo (Kumiko Aso), a florist who just moved to Tokyo and the other follows Ryosuke Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato), a university student who was keen on solving the mystery behind the software.
Searching for Companion in a Dystopian World
The main characters in both movies were bound by their desire to connect within different circumstances. In Battle Royale, Shuya lost his best friend, Yoshitoki Kuninobu (Yukihiro Kotani) earlier in the film. He then met and teamed up with Noriko in the game. Signs of them having a crush on each other were shown when Noriko offered Shuya a piece of cookies that she brought on the bus. But only in the game that we got to see them connect and interact deeply. In Pulse, both main characters were strangers at first. They met in the middle of the film when Michi fell asleep in a car while Ryosuke offered her a drink. Many of the populates were already gone by then and they were the only ones left in the world. Both of the main characters united with each other in a state of crisis and when the existence of one another is needed. In a state of urgency, we seek help from other people, and the friendship that binds us is often more robust than in different circumstances.
One of the tritagonists in Battle Royale, Shogo Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), was a winner in the previous edition of the game. There, he lost his lover, Keiko Onuki, at the last moment of the game. Before she died, she gave Kawada an ambiguous smile. “Thank you,” was her last word to Kawada, but he didn’t seem to grasp the meaning of it. Thus, he came back, dying to find out the meaning of those last words. During those years he longed for an answer in isolation and his actions solidified what it would be like to live in an isolated, dystopian world. One would choose to confront even their worst traumas rather than be alone and filled with uncertainty.
The world of Battle Royale sums up the totalitarian government that revolves around a cult following of an arrogant leader accompanied by strict moral codes. Teenagers with no manners were disposed of and considered useless to society. In Pulse, the world sets in a more modern era that welcomes the inception of the internet and newer technology as a form of communication. It resembles the world in Sion Sono’s Suicide Club (2001). Released in the same year, it also follows a society that communicates through the screen, with loneliness and depression as its consequence. Both protagonists in Pulse and Battle Royale were the few surviving in those worlds.
The Lost Decade and Its Effect on Japanese Cinema
It is common knowledge that the suicide rate in Japan is one of the highest in the world. However, those numbers skyrocketed between 1995 and the early 2000s. Many factors influenced this phenomenon, one of which is what is known as the “Lost Decade” (失われた十年, Ushinawareta Jūnen). The Lost Decade is a phenomenon of economic stagnation experienced by Japan in the early 1990s. This phenomenon was caused by Japan’s mechanism policy which allows excessive loan quotas compared to banks around the world. Japan’s banks lent more while disregarding the borrower’s quality, resulting in inflation to the economic bubble to monstrous proportion. This blow resulted in so many aspects of life among the Japanese population. Wages have stagnated rapidly since its peak in 1997, and it has fallen around 13% until now. Many permanent workers were replaced by temporary workers to adjust companies’ budgets, giving them more labor and fewer benefits. This economic recession is thought to have led to this dramatic increase in suicides (Watanabe et al. 2006). Watanabe et al. (2006) indicated that unemployment and personal bankruptcy were associated with this increase.
This event also impacted Japan’s filmography style. It has become somewhat of a mixture between the morality of the Japanese Golden Age (Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi) and the stylistic approach of the New Wave (Teshigahara, Seijun Suzuki, Oshima). In this era, movies focused a lot more on their characters’ study, often on their understanding of themselves through isolation–often linked with depression and suicide–while finding the meaning of life in love and friendships. Hence, teenagers and young adults become the central focus of many movies around this period.
I’ll Go Wherever You Go
The ending of these films is where I got my idea for writing this essay. Both films end on an optimistic note, yet the reality says otherwise. By the end, the protagonists are the only ones left surviving in a world full of hopelessness.
Battle Royale ends with three survivors left–Kawada, Shuya, and Noriko–fleeting on a boat to leave the mortuary-turned-island. Kawada was on the brink of death by then, and as he lays down with cigarettes in his hand, he finally found an answer to his deceased lover’s smile.
“In the end, I’m glad I found a true friend.”
Pulse’s ending was thematically similar. Ryosuke encountered the ghost earlier and lost his will to live. He and Michi then got into a boat leaving the city. As Ryosuke got into his final minutes of life, Michi conversed with the captain, asking whether she made the right decision by continuing her journey.
“Death comes to us all. If so, maybe we would’ve been happier if we had gone with the rest. But we choose to keep going into the future.”
Michi begins to question life. Life in a speck of ship cruising across a large lonely sea, nothing to be seen, and nothing to be known. Michi then entered the forbidden room, acknowledging her fate, to accompany Ryosuke in his final moments. Slowly, Ryosuke then evaporates into nothingness, leaving Michi alone.
“Now, I’m alone with my last friend in the world. And I’ve found happiness.”
They were left on a ship like a lone fish in a vast expanse of water. Despite its hopeless end, Pulse and Battle Royale embraced life as it is. To run as far as you can and survive no matter how hard it is to make it out there. Shuya and Noriko continued their lives as fugitives, and Michi was left stranded in the sea with nowhere to go. However, they have finally found happiness. They have found their true friend to accompany them on their journey, and sometimes that’s all it takes for one to survive in this world.
