Asian Education on Film, Episode Twelve

Monster (怪物) (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2023)

The Taiwanese film I discussed last time, After School, offered a slightly corny treatment of themes of adolescent sexuality, transgression of gender norms, and so-called ‘boys love’. The 2023 Japanese film, Monster (or 怪物 / Kaibutsu), directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu (是枝 裕和), touches on somewhat similar themes in a rather more thoughtful and troubling way. Monster also carries echoes of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashomon, telling the same story from multiple perspectives so as to challenge our initial evaluation of its characters’ actions and motives. It also features the final film score by the late, great composer (and occasional actor), Sakamoto Ryuichi.

Monster is set in an anonymous town or small city. It’s not Tokyo or Osaka, but it could be almost anywhere. Over the landscape of abandoned railways, rusting industrial machinery and mould-stained concrete lingers the aura of gentle decay characteristic of contemporary Japan. The story initially seems to involve a case of bullying - the source of much recent moral panic in Japan - but other themes also emerge. These include the tension between the suffocating conformity of Japanese life and the individual search for meaning, a favourite theme Kurosawa, too (exemplified by his portrayal of bureaucracy in the 1952 film, Ikiru).

Like After School, this film, Monster, makes extensive use of flashback as a narrative device. But it does so to very different effect. After School relies on a conventional, mono-perspectival narrative, using flashback to evoke nostalgia and to dramatise the contrast between the homophobic 1990s and the tolerant progressivism of present-day Taiwan. But in Monster, flashback is used in the style of Rashomon to present multiple narratives of the same events. The effect is to disrupt the viewer’s initial assumptions about the key characters. As we experience that disruption, we begin to realise that stories told by those in authority may be self-serving fictions designed to deflect criticism and avoid trouble. We also realise how those fictions conceal and suppress the struggles of individuals - adults or children - for meaning and recognition. We’re confronted with the vision of an oppressively conformist society that stigmatises and ostracises individuals who disturb its superficial calm.

Watching the film: The film can be viewed in Japan on Amazon Prime (though in Japanese only, without subtitles). Outside Japan, a version with English subtitles should be available.

Further reading:

Andrea Gevurtz Arai (2016). The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford University Press.

Thomas P. Kasulis (2002). Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.