In the Realm of the Senses
Oshima varied his style dramatically to serve the needs of specific films – long takes in "Night and Fog in Japan" (1960), a blizzard of quick jump cuts in "Violence at Noon" (1966), nearly neo-realistic in "Boy" ("Shonen", 1969), or a raw exploration of American b-movie sensibilities in "Cruel Story of Youth". Again and again, Oshima introduced a critical stance that would transgress social norms by exploring why certain dysfunctions are tolerated – witness the familial dysfunctions of "Boy" and 1971's "The Ceremony" or the examinations of racism in "Death by Hanging" and "Three Resurrected Drunkards" (both 1968), and why some are not, at least openly – the entanglements of sex, power and violence explicitly depicted in "In the Realm of the Senses" (1976), or gay undercurrents located within samurai culture (a well-documented subject in publications, but not in film) in 1999's otherwise atypically serene "Taboo" ("Gohatto").