Film Review - Crazed Fruit

Images courtesy of Nikkatsu.

Ko Nakahira’s film, Crazed Fruit is an adaptation of a popular book by the same name. It was written by author Shintaro Ishihara, one of his adapted novels which he had sold rights to Nikkatsu along with another novel of his called “Season of the Sun”. These two films constitute the first two in what is known as the Sun Tribe (Taiyouzoku) genre, which is generally considered to be the precursor to the Japanese new wave. 

A ‘wave’ is an apt metaphor for describing this film, because it feels dynamic for its time.

Its story centres around a group of rich young men, where a boy named Natsuhisa falls into a love triangle with a young woman named Eri and his older brother, Haruji. The direction and cinematography works towards an appropriately expressive, dramatic image composition: track-ins that mirror the magnetism of a first relationship, dutch-angle closeups to convey the tension in an argument about society.

Ishihara’s novel, by the account of Criterion’s Michael Raine, had a stronger and more moralising tone than the film. The story of a young man’s innocence and filial piety dashed by a series of illegitimate trysts bears the implicit lament of how aimless he felt his contemporary Japanese society was. To wit, Ishihara would go on to become an extreme-right politician, whose worldview broadly included a nativistic rebuttal of the globalised, post-WWII political world, similar to that of his colleagues such as Yukio Mishima. 

It is notable that Japan was only just free of the American occupation and self-censorship was still extremely common from the studios at the time of the film’s release. It’s possible that, like Mishima, Ishihara thought more strongly that the American occupation of Japan created a consumeristic, moral void. The nihilistic world that Ishihara creates for these bored youths in Crazed Fruit echoes these sentiments. There are occasions where the exposition of such a world can become preachy and explicit, however the natural chemistry of the actors makes it bearable.

I give special note to the supporting performance of Masumi Okada as Frank, the slick, womanising Half-American member of the crew. First, it is one of Okada’s first roles in film, leading to a lifelong acting career and becoming the producer of the Battle Royale series. Additionally, his character is an immediate post-war example of the codification of American “Hafu” (Half-Japanese) into Japanese society and so for Japanese media studies, his role is important to watch. He is portrayed as existing independently from the rest of his friends, but he ultimately acts in defence of the group’s (and Japan’s) best interest. He chooses shochu from the ritzy dive bar when the rest of his friends will choose something more cosmopolitan. He will disappear when a couple of wrestlers come looking to fight him at the fair, but when the group beats them up he’ll appear with a bunch of food and gifts to share. 

While there is much to talk about for this film’s context, Nakahira keeps the narrative in focus with contemporary editing and exciting cinematography so that Crazed Fruit can shine.

Check out Belanco’s Blog and Letterboxd.

Crazed Fruit is playing as part of ACMI’s Days of Summer program, Saturday 17 Dec 2022 to Tuesday 14 Feb 2023. For tickets and more info, click here.