The first independently produced film by Kyoto-born director Ōshima, The Catch (1961) set the tone for what would become his future themes: racism and violence, either institutional or individual. Filmed in long shots and with minimal camera movements, the film, which adapts a short story of the same name by Kenzaburo Oe, tells the brutal story of an African American prisoner of war who is held hostage in a small village.

During the summer of 1945, an American airplane crashes in a rural part of Japan. The villagers capture the surviving pilot (Hugh Hurd) and lock him in a barn, awaiting official instructions on how to proceed. While they wait, latent conflicts in the community come to the surface. The writer Kenzaburo Oe was a notable critic of Japanese authoritarian traditions and nationalism, and his work reflects an ongoing effort to deal with memories of the Second World War, the atomic bomb, and the social traumas arising from Japanese militarism. In the film, while they await the arrival of the military police to take their “catch” away, the villagers make him a scapegoat for all of their problems. Takano, the authoritarian, abusive ruler of the local area, takes advantage of the villagers’ anger and frustrations as they blame the prisoner, in order to distract from his own misdeeds. The director Nagisa Ōshima, known for his provocative films, here explores the moral dissolution of the group of villagers who capture and imprison the American pilot. The tension rises gradually, revealing the darkest instincts of people pushed to the limit.

The Catch is not, indeed, only a film about the Second World War, but a study of human nature in any extreme circumstances, where morality is stretched to breaking point. The plot looks closely at the interactions between this prisoner of war and the local inhabitants, exposing the prejudices and tensions that arise. The American prisoner, besides being an “enemy”, is also perceived as a threat for being a Black man in a homogenous and xenophobic society. Ōshima does not gloss over this issue: prejudice is exposed as the product of ignorance, creating a cycle of oppression that is only intensified by the context of war. Brutality is not only present in physical acts, but also in cinematography that reveals a collective moral deterioration. To begin with, the villagers see the prisoner as an outside threat, but bit by bit they find themselves involved in a spiral of violence that reveals the fissures and contradictions within their own community.

Ōshima eschews simplification when building his characters, helping us to explore a kind of moral ambiguity. The prisoner, while suffering discrimination and violence, also carries his own complexities and traumas. The villagers, in turn, are divided between a desire for security and the temptation to explore the “other” as a symbol of all that is unknown and, therefore, frightening. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the village and its domestic settings intensifies that tension, generating a kind of microcosm where the war outside is replicated on an intimate scale. Here, prisoner and villagers alike are dehumanised, as they are all consumed by the same conflict.

Ōshima’s visual style in The Catch reflects the dark, raw atmosphere of the story, making use of black-and-white cinematography to accentuate the contrast between the prisoner and the locals, and adopting an introspective, still rhythm that enhances the narrative oppression and suspense. Ōshima conjures an immersive, almost anguished experience in which silence emphasises latent tension. This minimalism makes the narrative even more intimate, bringing the viewer closer to the raw interactions between these complex characters. The film thus touches on the allegorical feel one would expect of a work about the persistent fascism in Japanese society, challenging us to confront our own notions of morality and humanity. At the same time, it exposes the destructive impact of racism and violence, in a merciless portrait of a society divided between the need for survival and the impulse to subjugate the other.

At the end of The Catch, children take on an important role in the story and in Ōshima’s critique, being presented as ambivalent, innocent and cruel all at once, thus reflecting the complexity of the adult society around them. One the one hand, they witness the prisoner’s suffering and take part in guarding him, often reproducing the hostile behaviour of their elders. On the other, they demonstrate an authentic curiosity that contrasts with the fear and suspicion of the adults, pointing towards an interest in dialogue and empathy that is soon suppressed by their social environment. Ōshima thus offers a caustic critique of our capacity for dehumanising the other and justifying barbarity through the ideologies of power and fear.