Volatile space, Takemitsu and the material contagions of Harakiri

Sometimes the very best essays are the ones that reveal their flaws with the greatest clarity. Cynthia Contrerasââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ analysis of Kobayashi Masakiââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s film, Harakiri (Japan, 1962), titled ââ"šÂ¬Ã…"Kobayashi's Widescreen Aestheticââ"šÂ¬Ã‚Â, represents a limit case in the application of some key methods of art history and the study of visual culture to the analysis of film.[1] In a lucid and scholarly account, Contreras peels back the layers of Kobayashiââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s architectural sets like a palimpsest to reveal a construction of pictorial space reminiscent of what she calls an ââ"šÂ¬Ã…"Asian visual legacyââ"šÂ¬Ã‚ (p. 243) of scroll painting, Buddhist mandalas and the kabuki stage. These insights open up another world of the cultural specificity of Japanese visuality that a non-Japanese viewer may totally take for granted. However, at the same time as the reader is enlightened by these excavations, the film as a film ââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ what brings it alive on the screen in one of the most exhilarating achievements of 1960s Japanese cinema ââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ slips through the cracks of Contrerasââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ approach. Energetically, as it is lived moment by moment in its tensile performances, its volatile spatial dynamics and its poised, meticulously articulated sound track, Harakiri is a film that brings space alive, that forges its layered architectural sets in the crucible of a taut, electrifying dramaturgy into something profoundly cinematic that a visual culture analysis can never fully address. To understand how the film achieves this, we need to refigure the ways we think about space itself, to develop a performative understanding of mise en scÃÆ'Ã"šÃ‚¨ne, and to examine the pivotal role of the film scores of Takemitsu Toru in firing this crucible.