🎞 Asian cinema; Japanese film 🇯🇵
Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (1973)❗️Bohachi?
First, the so-called Bohachi originates in Chinese, which means forgetting the eight virtues of propriety, righteousness, honesty, shame, filial piety, fraternity, loyalty, and faith. Simply, it means stupid today. It also means Yukaku in Japanese, which means the red-light district -a district for brothels - or a client at a brothel. Thus, the film title means all denotations. In other words, the truth of the word is realized when we know the meanings in both Chinese and Japanese.
▪️Manga / Comic / Graphic Novel to Film Adaptation
The authors of the original manga published in the early 1970s are Kazuo Koike (he’s best known for Lone Wolf and Cub; 1936-2019) and the painter is Goseki Kojima (1928-2000). I read the original manga and saw the film adaptation several times. In general, the film is faithful to the original both in narrative and graphics. Like many faithful film adaptations, it’s mainly about omission and reshuffling of plot points without changing the narrative content. The former is the dominant one. Anyway, the film version contains the whole story of the original manga.
Such as, in the first sequence of the manga the protagonist, a lone samurai, a ronin, Shinou Ashita, kills four thugs on the beach. The subsequent sequence is also omitted in the film, in which Shinou Ashita first encounters a bunch of Bohachi operatives – one of them is Himejirou, who is a character who becomes a partner of the protagonist later - from the yukaku, Shinagawa (simply, it’s unified in the film as Yoshiwara) on the hill road at night while they are chasing a victimized girl, a candidate ‘doll’ for prostitution. The number two of the triad, Kesazou Shirakubi, also appears in the sequence in the manga before Shinou Ashita’s interview to join the Bohachi triad. Moreover, due to this major omission, the opening scene in which Shinou Ashita eliminates all samurais from the town magistrate is originally positioned after the sequence of the Bohachi interview/tests. The boss of the triad, the entire red-light district, the monopolist of the Edo-era prostitution business, Shirobei Daimon, appears when Shinou Ashita wakes up on the futon after the battle, drowning in the sea, yet in the film, Shirobei Daimon stops the battle between Shinou Ashita and samurais from the town magistrate. It proved that omission in adaptation inevitably results in a reshuffling of the plot points purely in its order due to maximizing its impact and efficiency. Furthermore, the principle is shared between manga and film, while each frame of the graphic novel is equal to each shot of the film. And this narrative stream flows through our minds and memories. As a result, the faithfulness or effectiveness of the film adaptation is more easily confirmed than any literal novel in a comic-to-film adaptation.
Other obvious changes in adaptation should be mentioned here. For instance, manga, reveals the backstory of Shinou Ashita in his toxication of opium in the last sequence. It says his father was a reformer, as Hanshi, which means on the estate of the daimyo, his father tried to eliminate corruption of the daimyo, yet his failure led to nine familial exterminations. Consequently, Shinou was adapted by Yobawarimono, a dog collector of Daimyo, for dog hunting. Another difference is that the film version omits the climax-aftermath of the original manga, yet this is precise for being a film adaptation because one of the major principles of film narrative is that we must end a scene before it turns into good or bad. Thus, a cut point is not only a shift between the thoughts of characters, but it also corresponds to a shift between plots. Cutting before a situation turns bad or negative is especially critical for any happy ending. Hence, the film ends before Shinou Ashita is frozen to death the next morning amid the final confrontation while the original manga reveals his death. Furthermore, in both endings, his invincibility is still equally maintained and glorified with the visual revelation of his death or without it. In film, it was precisely dealt with, because the audience simply tends not to see any demise of the protagonist. We follow even though we know his demise.
Among the major changes, the character setting was subject to a minor change, in which, the four female Bohachi fighters are straight in the original, yet they’re bisexual in the film version. It still doesn’t change anything in the narrative.
▪️ Historical Accuracy
One of the significant, unchallenged, and successful historical revisionism or propaganda of the biblical scale in history is sexualism. Which, is as if human history is dominantly for masculinity or in the tradition of the patrimonial system from the beginning. On the contrary, the truth is that the patrimonial system or masculinity - son preference - against matrilineality has only five and six thousand years, while the preceding several ten thousand and hundred thousand of history belong to matrilineality. Hence, Japan is the same, but it is still unclear exactly when the shift between matrilineality and masculinity occurred in Japanese history. The manga and film are staged in the Edo-era in which the patrimonial system went to its extreme.
Although the so-called samurai are often depicted as salary earners of today in general, they are landlords with military duties. Hence, correctly, they were military officers. This is still not depicted in any film. This film also falls in this category. In the patrimonial system, a father could kill his son while samurais killed the bourgeoisie at their disposal in the feudalist era. How about aristocrats? They were originally peasants and became landlords because, in the primitive tribal era, chiefs of tribes equally engaged in hunting economy and agriculture. A nation or country was gradually formed by conquering and enslaving other weaker tribes. Hence, aristocrats were the most powerful families who ruled conquered tribes.
The prostitution system in the film is accurately depicted in general, while the system was prosperous in the era. It vacuumed from impoverished peasants and samurai families (in fact, urban cities were significantly impoverished. Thus, the poor girls for prostitution were mainly from cities, in contrast to our ordinary false notions) as a consequence of the chronic famines that plagued the era and their heavy taxation – ‘kill the goose and get eggs’ - by the general Tokugawa. And the entire feudalist military, including police functions, was not for serving any people for the public interest, but to rob more land and property for their superiors. Their warmongering, shortsighted lifestyle was necessary to be comforted by providing brothels not mainly for any construction projects depicted in the film. It was to satisfy the hedonism of samurais who floated around in urban areas. As a result, the red-light districts were authorized and established in Yoshiwara (Edo/Tokyo), Shimabara (Kyoto), Hyotan-machi, Fushimi(yi)machi (Osaka), and Maruyama (Nagasaki). Smaller brothels were set up in inn stations which were called Shuku-eki nationwide in the Edo era. The authorities arrested private prostitutes for increasing numbers of publicly authorized sex workers in Yoshiwara and Shimabara. Thus, it was not for public order. Hence, the collusion between the antagonist Shirobei Daimon and the authorities is in the historical context, while the brothels were profitable revenue sources for the authorities and landing destinations for retired military officials who ‘went into business as advisors and bodyguards’ subsequently. As a result, like reality, Shirobei Daimon hires Ashita Shinou to kill competitors to maximize his gains while his business is protected by the authorities. In the manga, the dual purpose of the authorities to ignore some private prostitutes against Shirobei Daimon is to lower the average price of prostitution. However, this falls into typical capitalist economics, as not only does the introduction of cheaper labor lower the average wage, but, also, the introduction of expensive labor can equally lower the average wage in the end. Why? It should be dynamically understood. It’s simply due to an acceleration of the competition between expensive and cheap labor. Expensive workers are forced to work more intensely or extensively, thus lowering the wage, as cheaper laborers are also forced to further lower the wage to compete with them to make a living. Yes, it will be hell.
📌 Conclusion
In short, Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (1973) is not only a faithful adaptation of the manga, Bohachi Bushido by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, but it is also historically accurate in the whole context of brothels in the Edo-era. Highly recommended for the 4K Ultra-HD restoration.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to the professional film writer Ryota Nakanishi as author and a link to www.ryotanakanishi.com is provided.
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