少女椿

  本来打算给五星，但又觉得有些人看这部电影，看的是浮世炎凉下的真实存在过的人间地狱图景，有的人看的是情色猎奇，有的人看的是性虐变态。不得不说，这不是一部适合每个人看的电影。所以减了一星。
  有的人说这纯粹是为了恶心而恶心，剧中充满了各式各样变态，解剖，嗜杀，异形，肢解，扭曲的图景，就像是故意而为之，整篇近乎没有一处是正常的景色。
  然而就像是白夜行中：“有的人活在太阳底下，有的人却只能一辈子活在黑夜。”活在太阳底下的人群永远也没有资格否认光明地下，裂缝之中的黑暗地狱的存在。地狱是真实存在的，活在每一个有人类存在的角落，任何时代，任何政权之下。
  因为，人性本恶。有的人能抑制住恶的因子，便开出了善之花。有的人放任，甚至恨不得浇上一把烂泥，任由其腐败滋生，最好还能添上一份佐料，滋上一点肥土，细菌连同蛆虫繁殖成茂密的树林，那便是再好不过。
  那种破败荒凉，和剧中的东京浅草盛世的对比，像极了战后战前的日本。
  作者丸尾末广生于50年代，正是日本战后极度萧条时期。战前的繁华一去不复返，道路店门紧闭，资产入不敷出，街道人烟萧条。法律基本成了一纸空文，在"生存"两字之下,道德被践踏得如同蝼蚁。早年的日本，在太宰治的《人间失格》《维庸之妻》等中都有一定程度的描写，在此不多累诉。
  时代在一定程度造就了天才。人类就算再怎么运用夸张畸形的表现手法，都无法突破已有的认知界限。如果不是真实存在，甚至亲身经历，这场地下幻灯剧画，又怎会如此残忍又透彻。

An old friend of mine and an avid collector of 16 and 35mm film prints follows a very strict regime when watching movies: "The celluloid must run through a projector in a theater with a big screen and a crowd, the way those movies were meant to be seen. Watching video copies of them on a couch at home doesn't count. It doesn't provide the true experience of the work in question. You can't say that you have seen a film if you've just watched a video of it."

This is fair enough for most films. But Hiroshi Harada, the director of Shojo Tsubaki (let's stay with the original title for the time being) sets the bar much, much higher. He doesn't even allow his film to be shown in movie theaters in Japan, yet alone let them be consumed on video or DVD.

For his screenings, he created incredibly elaborate "freak show" events which encompass live theater, live music, acrobatic acts, wild stage settings, freaky characters let loose on the audience... and a lot of secrecy. His flyers announcing shows and even those looking for performers were deliberately confusing - nobody was supposed to know what was really going on. In the early years, which means the early 1990s after the film's premiere in 1992, he wouldn't even want anyone to know what kind of show Shojo Tsubaki was at all: a movie, an anime, live theater?

"It would have been not interesting if I had given all that info in advance." Harada wrote me in a recent e-mail. "I wanted surprise. The audience suddenly encountering something totally unexpected - that was the point."

Now, what is Shojo Tsubaki? Well, it's animated, it's on celluloid, it is about a poor young girl who lives a hard life in a freak show circus, and its scenes often switch from being extremely kawaii to extremely graphic, violent, and at times oozing into the territory of far-out sexual fetishism. Sex among disfigured freaks, eye-ball-licking, rape by a disgusting, diseased... it's all there. And yet, Midori, the main character, does find true love here... and then things turn violent again... You never know where the movie is heading. You can't even guess what dangers or pleasures might be coming Midori's way from one second to the next.

Shojo Tsubaki is set in the early years of the Showa emperor's reign, the late 1920s in the Western calender. The original inspiration for the film dates from around the same time: a kami shibai performance going under the same title. Kami shibai translates to 'paper play' or 'picture show' and it dates back to the middle ages. A storyteller would tell a fantastical story in busy market places or wherever else he could find an audience, illustrating his story with a series of drawings. Often, his story was written on the back of the cardboards displaying the pictures to make it easier to do the performance and also to enable the storyteller to sell copies of his act afterwards.

Shojo Tsubaki (which literally means Camelia Girl) is said to have been originally created by a legendary kami shibai performer from the 1920s working under the name Seiun. It was a lengthy performance back then, consisting of 21 chapters and lasting for several hours. One of those original sets of pictures still survives and the play actually has been performed at times as part of the Shojo Tsubaki film events.

The paper play tells the story of a poor family whose father went too far into gambling debts. He runs away and lets the others fend for themselves. Midori, his daughter, goes into the business of flower selling. It's a sad job and one day she is kidnapped by two men and sold to a travelling girl's revue theater where she performs under the name Tsubaki Midori.

In the early 1980s, underground manga artist Suehiro Maruo began to turn the old kami shibai into one of his own disturbing picture stories. The earliest evidence I could dig up was in his 1982 book Das Ungetum der Rosenstck in which the beginning of his unique take on the Midori story is shaping up. The title of the book is of course some sort of flawed German. Though his grasp of the language might have been lacking, Maruo was deeply influenced by 1920s German expressionism and his heroes were Nosferatu, Marlene Dietrich and Doctor Caligari. They all figure prominently in the book - and the drawing style is a fascinating mix of Weimar German influences and vintage Japanese. Truly mesmerizing stuff.

In 1984, Maruo eventually had his final book-length manga of Shojo Tsubaki out in the stores. As already outlined in his Shojo Tsubaki chapter of Das Ungetum, the old kami shibai became now something new altogether... a full blown girl-in-the-freakshow story freely mixing cuteness, violence, perversity and a painstaking accuracy in the depiction of 1920s Japan and its outlaw characters to mindblowing impact.

Enter Harada. He was a young overworked pen-and-inker in the animation industry in 1970's Japan and he hated it. He realized that artistic ambition and the need to sustain oneself had always been a great conflict artists had to fight out with themselves ... but the animation industry didn't even give him the freedom to choose one or the other. The boss told the guys on the drawing boards what to do and they just had to hurry on with their mindnumbing work. He wanted out of the system and he did manage eventually to get out. He quit his job and premiered his first independent animated production City Nocturne in 1979. In 1985, he had 2 new animated works ready for release: Eternal Paradise (Kagirinaki Rakuen) and Lullaby to the Big Sleep (Nido to Mezamenu Komori Uta). The latter, shot on Super 8 and 27 minutes long, told of the adventures of a young boy getting sucked into the violent demonstrations held by leftist groups resisting the construction of Narita Airport. It played the Pia Film Festival in Tokyo, the main showcase for young Japanese independent cinema. Jury member and punk / biker movie director Sogo Ishii loved it and thanks to his lobbying, Harada won a major festival award.

Lullaby had already strong Maruo-esque tendencies: an unpredictable, sexually-charged story, experimental techniques and a main character who underwent a wide variety of forms of bizarre abuse. Even the drawing style appears to be heavily inspired by Maruo. So it seems almost logical that Harada choose a real Maruo as his next project: Shojo Tsubaki.

Knowing that this would demand much bigger resources than his previous films, he went back to the studios and tried to find financing. None was to be found at all. The subject matter of Maruo's book simply scared all potential investors away. Undeterred, Harada sacrificed his life savings, even went to money lending outfits to keep going. Maruo himself had told him "to make the film any way he wanted", as Harada told me. They did stay in close contact during the production period, though, with Maruo providing readings of old-fashioned kanji he had used in his book, advising on what colors to use for scenes and otherwise providing a great influx of ideas - some of which Harada then used. Maruo also lent his original source material to Harada, photo books on Tokyo of the period for example.

Harada started the great work in 1987 - and then continued drawing for 5 years, all by himself. Every single image of the movie was drawn by just one man alone! Harada did however receive a great deal of volunteer support from the Tokyo underground scene of the time for the final completion of his work: from musicians who provided the soundtrack, animators, people at independent documentary film studios, theater groups, even S/M clubs.

In 1992, the premiere of Shojo Tsubaki was held as a giant spectacle in a red tent on the grounds of Mitake Jinja, a Tokyo Shinto Shrine. Amidst strange decorations and exhibits, undergound theater group Aka Neko Za (Red Cat Theater) staged acts which are also performed by the freaks in the movie, and smoke was blown into the audience.

Here's what was projected onto the big screen: To a collage of violent freak show images, an announcer screams out what kind of an incredible story the audience is about to witness - in rhyming vintage carney lingo which almost no young Japanese would be able to understand. Then Midori, a poor girl about the age of 12, selling flowers in 1920s Tokyo. One of her regular customers is a strange man she calls "Mister Bowler Hat" due to the hat he wears. One night, she comes back home and finds her mother dead in her bed, rats already feading on her corpse. She runs away... With nowhere to go she turns to "Mr. Bowler Hat", who turns out to be a freak show impressario going under the name of Mr. Arashi. She joins his travelling circus... and right from the beginning becomes the focus of endless abuse by the real freaks, grotesquely disfigured perverts with bizarre fetishes and giant egos to boot. Relief comes in the form of Wonder Masanitsu, a magician who can squeeze his entire body through the tiny opening of a glass bottle. She falls in love with him but Masanitsu has powerful dark sides too...

It's an animation film, for sure, but the animation is extremely limited. In many instances, it's just a series of drawings, held together by music and dialogues... a modern-day kami shibai. Which of course is quite fitting to the origins of the tale and the time it takes place in.

More screenings of the film followed in rapid succession. Harada himself developed a new modus operandus of screening the work which made it even more difficult to access: he handed audience members who had made a reservation a map of a residential neighborhood. The people had to follow cryptic signs like dolls placed on street corners or folks in strange attire standing by the street to evenutally find an unassuming building and enter its basement. There they were handed candles and had to make their way through a dark labyrinth of corridors and rooms before they could enter the actual venue. Couples were separated, smoke was blown in, fans blew paper snippets resembling cherry blossom petals. While the film ran, theater group members threw objects at the audience that were also thrown around on screen...

In 1994, the film had its international premiere at the Orleans Biennale in France. It has since been shown at a number of Western festivals under a variety of titles like The Girl in the Freak Show or Midori - The Girl in the Freak Show, though without any of the trappings that come with the film in Japan. Harada wouldn't have been able to stage anything similar in a foreign country. The Japanese shows were difficult enough to arrange. Still, Midori stood her ground up on the Western screens, despite being all alone with the vicious freaks in the movie and the quiet lurkers in the seats. Poor girl... so many cruel things have been done to her...

That the film is now available on DVD in France under the title Midori with subtitles in 5 European languages for private home viewing might be the worst abuse Midori ever encountered, though. At home in Japan, however, the film can still be seen only on the rare occasions of a real full-blown freak event, the way it was meant to be seen....

发现关于这部的影评甚少，基调又千篇一律。无非是暗黑的社会，凄楚的少女。其实除了剧情推动这些悲苦的主线，于我看来还有些别的。

讨论剧情前先感叹些关乎于观感的问题。画风、配乐向来是入我眼的动画的必备要素。虽然透着浓浓的时代感，可是有一种伊藤润二漩涡般的代入感，与电影效果交相呼应的就是最好画风，堪称完美。特别是当椿奔跑在一灯法师制造的幻境里，奔跑着寻觅印象中的街景，记忆中的家，回忆里的父母时，布景特别像纸版画，有着模糊的震动感，只有椿在画面中是有颜色的。再配上不断奔跑的脚步声，到家门口放缓的静谧感。现代大片中制作美好回忆与凄冷现实的强烈反差感也不过如此。

谈谈剧情。既然我把这部动画定义为爱情片，就先来说说爱情。观影前，先百度了一下影片介绍，看到一些评论说整部电影唯一温馨的就是椿和一灯法师相爱的时刻。我能说如果非要让我快进一个片段，就是这段么，不是因为我太暗黑或太冷漠，而是不忍心。这里说爱情，不如说是一种精神上的毒药，就像一个在外喝酒应酬活的像孙子的男人回家像大爷一样打自己的女人，而这个被生活和男人冷漠以待的女人通常会抱怨但绝不会离开。这里的类比虽然不恰当，可是同样你会把这认为是爱么。绝望的人又不甘愿于绝望的生活，对那种被需要的沉溺是有毒的。

说说我们的女主角，纯情可人被生活不幸虐待依然满怀希望的椿。直到最后一灯法师死去，她又回到了无尽循环的命运中。这应该是大多数人多椿的认知。表面上剧中的椿一次又一次透露出期待的眼神，比如对那个陌生的怪人团团主，比如对给她名片的陌生人，再比如一灯法师制造的离开以后的幻境，椿真的是在一切幻想都破灭，最后崩溃痛哭中才堕落绝望了么？其实应该更早，这三个哪个不是戏剧性的突如其来的希望，所以真实么？而一切不过是椿自己给自己带着希望的幻想。
再看椿在认识一灯法师后除了娇羞以外，人物所表达的第一句话是这句。

你可以说这是一个心灵肉体被玷污了的女孩子对自己的经历所表达出的自卑，然而我们的椿在说出第一句为人物发声的话之前，已经是有两次和法师缠绵的镜头了，更多的是动情和享受，虽然没有裸露的镜头，可是我更愿意说这才是妙思。电影里的每个配角都是变态，变态的极其纯粹，极其裸露，甚至一丝不挂。可是两个主角都是看起来再正常不过的人类，他们彼此接触时看似包裹着外衣，毫不裸露，可是正常的人却各有各的变态。所以到这里你还认为直到最后一刻椿的内心才崩溃痛苦的么？
说到这里我要说我在片中最喜欢的人物一灯法师。前面说正常人各有各的变态，虽然他长得极其油腻，和我们美少女椿真的是不太般配，可是却是最有光芒的人物，带着小人物的爱与卑微。我愿意相信他是爱椿的，为什么？最后死前落地时的那个苹果里椿永远都不会再回头的背影和回荡着的银铃般的笑声（真的是银铃般！虽然知道是回忆椿开心时的模样，可是猛一听真吓人！）

如果以爱为前提，那么一灯法师的一切行为是不是很好解释。戏团的人欺负椿的时候，他制造了让椿变大的幻术。绷带男试图接近椿的时候，他直接让他去死。有人要挖掘椿当明星的时候，他当场发怒。我们看椿三次的反应都是什么？惊吓，害怕，委屈。一灯法师在面对椿的这些反应又是什么，哄，哄，哄。有人欺负你，不许。有人接近你，不许。甚至是当你有了更好的机会，不许，不可以，你只可以做我希望你做的，接受我让你接受的。当一切用哄难以实现的时候，一灯法师最后用的是什么？幻术啊，制造了一个幻术。这不就是骗么。整部电影最有批判性的一句话就是一灯法师指着观众说的

你看他其实才是清醒的那个人吧？在爱里卑微的人，用柔情和霸占掩饰自己的自卑，他何尝不是指责着他自己。是不是和我们大多数人很像。可是我为什么喜欢他呢，不仅因为那个苹果，还因为些别的细节，让我愿意相信他心中是有那么一点点美好和爱的。再来看看椿吧，说到现在你还觉得椿是爱一灯法师的么，说是恰好出现的一个人更恰当吧。所以我说这是我最不忍心看的一段。甜蜜外衣里的残忍比赤裸裸的残忍更残忍。

 最后说说结局吧。如果站在椿的角度看，要我说这是个完美结局。很多人看待作品的时候都觉得憧憬被现实打碎太值得同情了！那现实中呢，我们会说在现实里带着希望生存的人最棒，其次是活在现实里的人，最后是活在憧憬里的人。这类人少数是思想的先驱者，大多数是精神病患者。我一度以为结尾可能是椿重新落入戏团的折磨中从此一蹶不振。可是椿拿起了武器打破了幻境，里面有制造美好幻境的法师和欺侮她的人。她只是变得现实了，脱离了外在和精神的双重幻境，这难道不是最好的结局么。

不得不提的一点是：结尾处的椿在一点点证实这一切都只是幻境的时候，有个一直打喷嚏的人，开始不理解，后来觉得这不正是最好的旁白么。
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