Disturbing the peace to dispel the fog of war

Kazuo Hara's 'The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On' still has the power to unsettle

- Uday Bhatia

One of the first things we notice in The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is a slogan painted on a car belonging to anarchist Kenzō Okuzaki: "To kill ex-prime minister Kakuei Tanaka". A few minutes later, Okuzaki, 62, officiating as the go-between at a wedding, tells the guests how he killed a broker, shot a sling at Emperor Hirohito and went to jail. "Nation is a wall between men," he says. "I also consider family a wall... it's against the divine law. So I intend to continue attacking it."

As character introductions go, this one is perfect. Every bit of behaviour Okuzaki exhibits in Kazuo Hara's 1987 documentary is hinted at here: the directness, the dissident mentality, the complete disregard of propriety and occasion, the ever-present threat of violence. I can't think of another character in cinema quite like him, this gaunt old man promising violence while trying to right historic wrongs.

In the end days of World War II, Okuzaki served in the emperor's army, stationed on an island in New Guinea. He was one of the few in his unit who made it out alive, a guilt he carried with him all his life. After the war, he started looking into the events leading up to the deaths of Nomura and Yoshizawa, members of his unit who faced the firing squad for desertion. Even this official explanation arrives in fragments, as Okuzaki confronts one survivor after another, probing for the slightest incriminating detail. Under his unflagging barrage of questions, further disturbing possibilities emerge: that the order to execute was given after the war had ended—which made it a crime—and that it may have been a cover up for cannibalism.