taboo is not the most accurate translation of the original title of this film. gohatto is an old term that actually means 'against the law' or 'against the laws', which seems to me to be more in line with the vision and will of ōshima, who said in an interview that he 'would like to fight against all kinds of authority and power'. in other words, he would like to achieve a certain freedom.

according to him, 'the biggest obstacle to development in japan has always been our family system. the extraordinary power placed in the hands of the father is a return to feudalism, which was enshrined in law even after the opening up of japan in the meiji period.'

these two statements make it immediately clear what runs through ōshima's life and cinema: a highly critical view of the patriarchal system — hierarchy, male authority, rigid gender norms — one of the pillars of japanese feudal society.

the film is based on two short stories by ryōtarō shiba (an author who, i believe, has not yet been translated into portuguese), one set at the end of the edo period, during which gohatto is set, and the other at the beginning of the meiji period, which marked the beginning of japan's attempts to modernise.

in gohatto, we find ourselves on the threshold of victory and defeat, in a time of tension, uncertainty, ambiguity and transition.

when the tokugawa shogunate (feudal military dictatorship) takes control of the nation, a samurai militia in its service begins to recruit new members. one of them is sozaburo kano (or kano sozaburo, if we respect the traditional japanese order in which the surname precedes the first name), a character who immediately begins to create a visual rupture by refusing to cut his highlighted hair, not conforming to the aesthetics of the group. this is one of his first acts of resistance, immediately creating a tension between the individual and the collective.

his androgyny distinguishes him from other traditional samurai — samurai have always been portrayed as figures assuming a traditional, idealised masculinity

but also aligns him with a cultural tradition that valued ambiguity and gender fluidity: wakashū — a concept that brought together several elements: an age category that placed boys between childhood and maturity; a social role of the teenager who occupied subordinate positions such as apprentice or protégé; and the concept of 'youthful beauty' that was seen as a legitimate object of homosexual desire, known as wakashūdo, 'the attraction or preference for young boys'.

because homosexual relations were only accepted between adults and boys who were still wakashū, their guardians sometimes postponed the ceremony of transition to adulthood beyond the socially accepted limit (which was usually 20 years of age).

in this case, it is sozaburo who makes the decision to postpone the transition — probably because he knows the effect he has on the other samurai. the desire they feel for him exposes their weaknesses, disrupts the hierarchy, tests the ideals and codes of honour they so fervently follow, which are (or should be) supposed to be perfect and therefore unshakable.

and now i remember a line from sylvia plath's poem the munich mannequins: 'perfection is terrible, it can't have children.'

plath knows, and so does ōshima, that order, duty, norms and prohibitions limit, condition, and even drive to madness, but they are not insurmountable. perfection fails. and it always fails. the search for perfection, or perfection itself, is inherently sterile, it does not allow for vitality, creativity. it is a kind of death.

sozaburo is also a kind of death — or several of them — a force that causes order to crumble from within.

and i can't help but think of the vampirisation of the new — in a (samurai) society that, by valuing and exploiting beauty and youth (of sozaburo and the wakashū like him), uses them in a way that ultimately leads everyone to ruin and sacrifice. youth as a perpetual victim of adult corruption. and also as a mirror, exposing the humiliation of impermanence. desire as a trigger to explode (or implode) rules and precepts. it's a vicious circle, and we're all part of the problem.

sozaburo transforms his beauty into resistance and provocation, forcing a confrontation with the transience and fragility of established orders, of life. catalyst, existential crisis, sozaburo is conflict within conflict within conflict, mise en abyme, semantic overload.