Gate of Flesh

It’s not that I’ve let my heart turn to stone, but I no longer have any tears to shed. Who was it that turned me into this kind of woman… When the war ended, Tokyo became a city of savages. It was kill or be killed in the battle for survival, and the weak lost out.

– Maya in Gate of Flesh

We are only temporarily set at ease by the opening shots of Suzuki Seijun’s explosive, avant-garde Nikutai no mon (Gate of Flesh, 1964), in which pristine skyscrapers and bleary-eyed sunsets quickly give way to utter carnage. Welcome – and beware! warns the inscription on the gate our heroine stumbles through, as a commotion nearby centres a poorly disguised cadaver: “Clear the path! Dead man coming through!” we are cautioned. This is the hellscape of postwar Tokyo. 

The camera hovers above the scene in an attempt to protect us from the mayhem, but we are quickly dropped into the mud as we follow poor Maya (Nogawa Yumiko) through the roughshod market, filmed at a low angle to emphasise her vulnerability and the chaos of the streets. Potato sellers scream about their hot goods, sweet and filling, “you’ll never starve again” – are they talking about food? Desperately, Maya tries to steal a potato but is quickly caught by a yakuza crime syndicate member and harshly beaten as a wide-eyed crowd gathers around; the useless American GIs do not intervene. She is rescued by Sen (Kasai Satoko), a sex worker, and quickly follows after her, begging for work. And so she is inducted into their pimp-less ensemble of independent sex workers, each woman helpfully colour-coded in a monochromatic uniform: Sen a blazing hot red, Maya a youthful green, Mino (Matsuo Kayo) a sickly purple, and Roku (Ishii Tomiko) a cheerful yellow. There is also Machiko (Tominaga Misako), whose strategically formal black kimono immediately stands out from the rest of the group, as though in her austere presentation she refuses to yield to the urban destruction of the burned-out building in which she squats with the rest. Unlike the others, Machiko was once married, and still seems to yearn for a return to that romantic life – her manner and clothing represent a foolish daydream of a nostalgic past, that can never exist again. 

Despite the despair of a crumbling society that has pushed these women into sex work, they are strikingly confident and proud. Unchained by pimps, they have a free market on all the weak-willed men in their territory, without being indebted to an exploitative boss at the end of the day. Like the potatoes, they are direct “product to consumer”. They are businesswomen, proud of their initiative, gleeful in the lifestyles their money affords them amidst the squalor. They protect each other and are in turn protected by the yakuza from the ever-present threat of the American Military Police. They find their own clients and keep all profits with no rules, except for one: “never give it to a guy for free.” In keeping with their business tenets, the “merchandise” of their bodies will lose market value if they allow them to be used for no profit. At least, that is the outward motivation presented to Maya, though we suspect there is a darker reason for this rule beyond simple capital. Another warning: Ofuku, a former group member, is tied up – naked, beaten, hair cut – to a boardwalk in the canal; a public humiliation as punishment for breaking the rule; she slept with a man for free.

Into this den of feminine power stumbles Ibuki (Shishido Jō), a hulking beast of Japanese masculinity. Wounded after stabbing a GI, he seeks respite with the women and thereafter upsets the balance of power. His brutishness, hatred for Americans, criminality and musculature quickly has the whole coven swooning over him. Though each attempts to seduce him, he seems to desire a more traditional type of woman. After Machiko is caught sleeping with a man for free, she is strung up and beaten savagely – now is Maya’s first chance to fall seemingly mad with animal bloodlust, beating her until she cannot stand – but Ibuki is sympathetic, chiding the others as they mutilate Machiko with a razor. Much later, it seems Maya was envious after all, finally realising her love for Ibuki in the film’s closing act as she hallucinates her deceased brother and comingles the two in her mind.

Gate of Flesh is directly influenced by the novel of the same name, written by author Tamura Tajiro in 1947. There is also one prior adaptation, the 1948 film,¹ and several subsequent film and screen adaptations. Unlike Suzuki’s film, the 1948 version was created under the strict rules of the US occupation’s censorship, which did not allow occupying Americans to be portrayed at all.² In contrast, Suzuki’s films are filled with Americans, who are depicted as cruel, stupid and senseless. They deface Tokyo with violent law-keeping, gunning down men for petty crime while themselves committing heinous acts of rape unpunished. They are savages encircling a wounded animal, exploiting opportunity. When confronted with their own violence, they sheepishly mutter “nothing to do with me” and turn a blind eye, while women are left destroyed, and men bleeding. I have never seen a film so disgusted by the American occupational presence. 

Though it is implied that the sex workers find American men among their clients, it is never shown onscreen, implying that there is no fiscal dependence on the US dollar. One notable figure, an African-American pastor (Chico Lourant), is sympathetic; he urges Maya to return to church and not to give herself to savagery and hedonism. Finally, Maya loses her composure, dragging him to the eerie church alone on a ghostly green hill. There she rips off her clothes and drags him down while he weakly begs “no, Maya, no!”, tearing off his cross and raping him there. This is her final victory: she has spat apple on those proper women, she has gorged on beef and now has conquered the conqueror, the man with the audacity to preach virtues at her while doing nothing improve her livelihood. She has shown him exactly how much his American church means in Tokyo: it is nothing and it will be defiled. Here, sex work and occupation are closely linked: with the acts of self-autonomy against the oppressor being chastised by the one who represents the ideological justification of the coloniser. Even so, this is a difficult scene, as Maya strips the bodily autonomy from a man who simultaneously permits and is a victim of the American machine.

Tokyo is as vibrant in Gate of Flesh as any human character: a bright and colourful dystopia, shot with vim and vigour; the story is more a pastiche of blood and sex than a cohesive tale. So brutal is the violence and so dirty are the male and female bodies that all people eventually slip into the role of objects: those who are violent and those who receive violence. They are merchandised like the “boiled potato”, actors and reactors, the weak and the strong. As with all of Nikkatsu’s filmography, Gate of Flesh was shot on a tight schedule of under one month,³ with sets from other films being hastily repurposed, lending the film a surreal quality of theatrical artifice. Images pop in Eastmancolor, but realism cuts through the stage-like backgrounds. A cow is butchered for real without any pretence, while a grey, painted church looms like a ghost in another world. This blend of theatre and realism is not unusual for Japanese cinema of this era, though in Gate of Flesh it works to produce a strong sense of nauseous unease throughout, as ideals of autonomy are swallowed by the need for survival. As the film closes, and Maya is left enlightened by human feelings of love, she can no longer function with her body as a product. Her flesh is beaten by the other women, but her mind is now free. Nevertheless, as the US flag is hoisted in the distance against the setting sun, she is left exactly as we found her: alone, hungry and helpless.

Nikutai no mon/Gate of Flesh (1964 Japan 90 mins)

Prod Co: Nikkatsu Prod: Iwai Kaneo Dir: Suzuki Seijun Scr: Tamura Taijiro, Tanada Goro Phot: Mine Shigeyoshi Ed: Suzuki Akira Mus: Yamamoto Naozumi Prod Des: Kimura Takeo 

Cast: Nogawa Yumiko, Kasai Satoko, Matsuo Kayo, Ishii Tomiko, Tominaga Misako, Shishido Jō, Chico Lourant, Wada Kōji, Noro Keisuke, Tamagawa Isao

Endnotes