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Legend of the cat monster (1983) by Obayashi Nobuhiko

In the 70s, it was not possible to broadcast films on television in Japan within four to five years of their theatrical release. This led to the development of TV movies, which were made specifically for direct broadcast on television. The huge success of Saturday Wide Theater, which ran from 1977 to 2018, formed the basis for a new series: Tuesday Suspense Theater. This series, which aired on Nippon TV every Tuesday evening between 1981 and 2005, offered a weekly "two-hour drama slot." Inspired by American television, this format focused on the drama genre and had to meet four main criteria:

One of the films shown in this series was Legend of the Cat Monster (1983), by Obayashi Nobuhiko. Aired on August 30, 1983, this was the 100th edition of Tuesday Suspense Theater, and the director’s 9th feature film. Despite the obvious budget constraints and thus an “Obayashi on a chain,” this film shows Obayashi’s determination to keep experimenting. While less playful and absurdist than his cult classic House (but with a spooky cat!), this film is a melancholic view on the nature of art, memory, and the longing for the past.

The story begins with Photographer Tachihara, played by Minegishi Toru, taking a picture of Ryuzoji Akiko (played by mother-daughter duo Irie Takako and Irie Wakaba), an actress from the golden age of cinema in Japan in the 1950s, but who after 30 years looks exactly the same as when she suddenly withdrew herself from a film production, and retreated to her private island with director Mizumori (Oizumi Akira). This bizarre news gives a small group of film producers the idea to have the young Ryohei (Emoto Akira) write a script for a film. The goal of this film is to give Akiko a big comeback. Ryohei temporarily moves in with akiko to work on the script, leaving his home and his girlfriend behind, but he soon becomes caught up in an obsession with his task.

The story strongly reminds people of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, in which a forgotten movie star is also stuck in the illusion of her former fame. I have not seen this movie myself, but the references are not only in the plot. Although Obayashi is a huge fan of film, he is not the type of filmmaker who fills his work with homages to other makers. Still, the names of Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille, Buster Keaton and Greta Garbo appear in this film. This leaves little doubt about the inspiration of Sunset Boulevard on Legend of the cat monster. But the film does not only take inspiration from this, it also takes inspiration from real life. The film talks about a golden age in Japanese cinema, which took place between the 50s and 70s. During this time, directors such as Kurosawa Akira, Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujirō made hugely successful works that were recognized not only in Japan, but also worldwide. However, this splendor began to decline in the 80s. The rise of television undermined the film industry (this also led to the creation of TV series such as Tuesday Suspense Theater), although pink films (sexual films produced in Japan) were still successful for a while, the adult video industry later also took a huge bite out of this. All this, except for the pink films, is reflected in Legend of the cat monster, which is set on 2 fictional islands: Akiko's private island, and a film production island, where supposedly all films made in Japan are recorded, but which is on the verge of extinction in the early 80s. A microcosm of Japanese cinema.

Another reference to real life is the casting of actress Irie Takako as the ghostly feline Akiko. Irie appeared in several films in the 1950s as bakaneko (supernatural cats in Japanese folklore), and became famous for it. Although Akiko’s role is played by her daughter Wakaba Irie for most of the film, she fulfills a similar role to the character. An actress from the golden age of Japanese cinema who returns in the 1980s. Irie Takako herself did not appear in films between 1962 and 1979.

Interestingly, the bakaneko figure in this film does not feel like the antagonist, but more like a thematic device. In Japanese folklore, cats are often associated with spirits and curses, which reflect unresolved emotions. Perhaps Akiko’s identity as a bakaneko symbolizes her being trapped in the legend of her film history, and the difficulty she experiences in moving forward. This identity, and the black cat she carries with her on several occasions, may also serve as a display of her personality; graceful, but also predatory, especially towards the writer Ryohei, whom she confuses throughout the film with her old love Tamura Joji, and with whom she becomes obsessed.

The film is centered around the dual nature of memory: it can preserve beautiful memories, but it can also hold people in the past. Akiko’s timelessness is both a gift and a curse for her, and the story critiques society’s fixation on eternal fame. I think the paparazzi are also being criticized, based on the scene in which Ryohei’s girlfriend, Ryoko (played by Fubuki Jun), finds the body of photographer Tachihara wrapped in a roll of film being rinsed out of his mouth. The young Akiko can be seen in this roll of film, making catlike movements towards the camera. This scene is probably a reference to the short experimental horror An Eater from 1963 by director Fujino Kazufumi, in collaboration with Obayashi himself. For this film they received the special jury prize at the Belgian international experimental film festival. I suspect that the film was also a basis/inspiration for the film House, looking at the scene in which an eyeball moves in someone’s mouth.

I found Legend of the Cat Monster to be a very interesting film, largely because this is a lesser-known work by Obayashi, as it never got an international release, and I was only able to watch it thanks to an archive page on YouTube. For this, the uploader commissioned people to make a (somewhat flawed) fan translation. This subtitling made the film difficult to follow at times, not only because of the occasional poor sentence structure, but also because it is a translation from the Japanese language in the 80s, and is therefore full of statements and references that I, as a Dutch person in 2024, was not familiar with. Still, this minimally affected my experience of the film. This fact actually gave me a nice challenge in my research, since there is virtually nothing online about this film in Dutch or English. Browsing through Japanese forums from years ago gave me a lot of background information that I would never have been able to find otherwise.

I think that Obayashi was able to find a nice balance between the surreal and the emotional with this film. For example, within all the Obayashi strangeness, there is a scene in which Akiko is confronted with the reality of her existence. The fact that she is no longer the radiant actress with a bright future. This is a small fragment of the film in which all the bizarre events are put aside for a moment (apart from the fact that Akiko suddenly looks 30 years older).

Still, although I consider this a good movie, it doesn't come close to House. Partly because this movie was harder to understand for me, but also because of some too long-winded scenes and some choices in the story. For example, at the beginning of the movie there is a story about the two people who suddenly withdrew from a film production (Akiko and the director Mizumori), but then it turns out that there were actually three. This could have been a big mystery that guides the plot from then on, but right after this revelation you get to see the scene in which Akiko kills the third person, Tanumi Joji. Unfortunately, all the mystery is gone here. In my opinion, this secret could have been kept longer, so that the obsession that Akiko has with Ryohei, who looks exactly like Joji (and is played by the same actor), remains a mystery for longer.

Another disappointment came after a scene that I experienced as the height of the film’s tension. In this scene, Akiko, Ryohei, Ryoko and Mizumori are sitting around a table, with a bizarre fish head meal in the middle (a meal that is used to show that Akiko is stuck in the 1950s, as she mentions that Hollywood stars always ate this meal during the golden age) and a large flame. By combining this seemingly mundane activity (dining) with this bizarre meal and the oppressive image of the fire, which is the symbol for the increasing tension, Obayashi emphasizes the emotional and psychological discomfort of the characters, especially that of Ryoko. The flames infiltrate the close-ups of Ryohei and Ryoko. I found this to be a very strong image, which made the next scene confusing for me. Ryoko faints at the table (presumably poisoned) and a scene follows in which Mizumori punishes her with whippings for invading the private island. This scene is shot in beautiful slo-mo, but it feels out of place, especially when Mizumori comes and then says “Akiko, I’ve loved you for 40 years, but I’ve finally lost my virginity.” Maybe I don’t fully understand the scene, but I considered this to be an odd move by Obayashi, one that felt unnecessarily perverse to me and came out of nowhere.

My favorite bit of surrealism in the film is the almost never discussed fact that to get to and from the island, the photographer simply walks in and out of the ocean. Multiple times. For added comedic effect, he occasionally shows up covered in seaweed.

Yet, despite all the surreality and mischief that goes on in this film, the question Legend of the Cat Monster poses is clear. How addictive can art be? Does an artist make art for himself, more than for others? At some point early in the film, Ryoko asks Ryohei if he likes movies more than her, a question she quickly backs away from, and to which she receives no answer. Then, later in the film, Akiko accuses him of writing for himself, not for her. The twist is fascinating: his obsession, which at first seemed mutual with Akiko’s obsession with him, is not with her, but with his work. And not just his work, but with his identity as an artist. This becomes painfully clear when it turns out that his "script" is nothing more than his own name, repeated endlessly on paper after paper.

Never ask a man what his salary is, a woman how old she is, and never ask your boyfriend if he likes you or movies more.