He who must not be depicted

No, not Mohammad:

The third in a trilogy of films by the Russian director Alexander Sokurov that has already depicted pivotal moments in the lives of Hitler and Lenin, The Sun dramatises Japan's defeated wartime emperor Hirohito's fateful meeting with General Douglas MacArthur. Such is the sensitivity in Japan concerning the depiction of the imperial family on film that a movie that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2005, and was released in the UK last summer, has only lately found a Japanese distributor, who will be giving The Sun a limited Tokyo release "some time later this year". . .

The Sun, which examines the emperor's passage from divinity to constitutional monarch, and how he escaped being executed as a war criminal, largely takes the traditional airbrushed historical view of Hirohito . . .

However, it is not Sokurov's take on Hirohito that is stirring up controversy in Japan, but that an actor has dared to depict the emperor at all. There is a taboo in Japan about playing a man who was considered to be a living god . . . Sokurov, who first considered using a non-Japanese actor in the part, acknowledges the difficulty. "We met with historians and scholars who all said we wouldn't find a Japanese actor to play the emperor," he says. In the event, Sokurov found the 46-year-old comedian Issei Ogata.

Posted by David on February 10, 2006 3:55 PM