Beautiful Mystery

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Beautiful Mystery
Japanese film poster
Japanese巨根伝説 美しき謎
Directed byGenji Nakamura [ja].
Screenplay byRokurō Mochizuki
Starring
CinematographyHideo Ito
Edited byMakoto Sawada
Music byPink Box
Production
companies
  • ENK
  • YU
Release date
1983
Running time
61 minutes
LanguageJapanese

Beautiful Mystery (

gay pornographic films
in Japan.

Synopsis

First-year university student Shinohara Itsuro joins an all-male

crossdressers at a gay bar
.

Cast

Production and release

The film satirizes the life and politics of author and nationalist Yukio Mishima (pictured).

The film was directed by

gay pornographic films in Japan.[2][3] In North America, an English-language subtitled version of the film was released by distributor Water Bearer Films in 1993.[4]

Beautiful Mystery is a pink film, a genre of Japanese softcore pornographic films that often include exploitation and experimental elements.[5] The film is a satire of Japanese author and nationalist Yukio Mishima and his private militia the Tatenokai, who in 1970 launched a failed coup attempt which ended in Mishima's death by seppuku.[1][6] The fictionalized society's focus on physical fitness in particular echoes Sun and Steel, Mishima's 1968 essay on bodybuilding and martial arts.[7]

Reception

Reviewing the film for Variety, critic Dennis Harvey commended the film's performances and script as functioning "on more than a purely titillating plane", but criticized its "too-farcical" ending scene.[1] Gavin Walker of the socialist magazine Jacobin called the film "perhaps the greatest critical response" to both "Mishima's own work and to the portentous unintentional comedy that runs through far-right appropriations of Mishima".[7] Time Out praised the film as "ribald" and "highly entertaining", noting that it is "amazing that [the film] was made at a time when discussion of Mishima's sexuality was a virtual taboo in Japan".[6]

Further reading

  • Grossman, Andrew (January 2020). "Beautiful Publicity: An Introduction to Queer Asian Film".
    S2CID 28994465
    .

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Harvey, Dennis (10 March 1996). "Beautiful Mystery". Variety. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  2. ^ "巨根伝説 美しき謎". gaycinema.info (in Japanese). ENK Promotion. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  3. ISBN 9781903254530
    .
  4. ^ "Beautiful Mystery". TLA Video. Archived from the original on 4 September 2015. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  5. ISBN 9781573448826
    .
  6. ^ a b "Beautiful Mystery – Legend of Big Horn". Time Out. 10 September 2012. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  7. ^ a b Walker, Gavin (25 November 2020). "The Political Afterlives of Yukio Mishima, Japan's Most Controversial Intellectual And Global Icon Of The Far Right". Jacobin. Retrieved 23 June 2022.

External links

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