Tsukamoto Takes the Ring: Tokyo Fist

First reaction: What...was that...?

Tsukamoto movies are endlessly engrossing yet incomprehensible. Visceral yet cerbral. Gritty yet polished and glossy. Personal yet with a strange formality and distance to them.

A bundle of contradictions.

In Tokyo Fist, story and plot do not coalesce. The more immediate concern seems to be the images and the feelings they evoke.

The same sound design and editing - kinetic and lightning-paced - utilized in the Tetsuo films seems to fit here, as boxing is also a bundle of contradictions - a formal, even balletic fighting form that emphasizes timing, posture and blocking a foe's advances, yet is also equally brutal and primal.

Tsukamoto's gaze seems aimed squarely at Japanese society which also has a very contradictory nature.

Unlike Tetsuo in which the social commentary was more subtle and subtextual, Tokyo Fist's commentary is more text than subtext. In fact it pretty much socks you in the face like a boxing glove.

The final act is...difficult to understand, at best and will likely require multiple viewings. For this first watch I'm going purely based on my emotional response: a mixture of disgust, bewilderment, but also somehow feeling uplifted.

The trio of characters presents a bizarre love triangle with salaryman-turned-boxer Tsuda vying for the affection of lover Hizuru, who tempted (sort of?) by pro boxer Kojima. Kojima and Tsuda were high school friends who made a pact to become boxers in the wake of a shared tragedy. Tsuda suppressed his rage and became a salaryman while Kojima, despite his training has become impotent and afraid to actually enter the ring.

The two friends are built up very well with Tsuda avoiding conflict and becoming a gentle soul because he seems to be somewhat aware of what could happen if he allows the beast inside him to be let loose.

Hizuru seems to represent the balance that neither Tsuda or Kojima can attain. But her balance is thrown off by being the center of the struggle between these two men.

So they both attempt to possess her, but fail to realize that she is her own person. Oftentimes Hizuru is seen watching the two men from the shadows, or peeking at their training bouts through a clouded window. Her view of the friends and their rivalry is always obscured, which seems to signify that her own ideas about the two men are not fully formed, nor can they be because she never gets the full picture.

And neither of the men are completely clear with her either, as they cannot be truthful to themselves or even with each other.

The finale then, crazy and over-the-top as it is, reflects the inability of Japanese society to address issues such as mental illness or anguish over the loss of a loved one. These things are pushed to the background as each of the characters attempts to push through rather than deal with it in a meaningful way.