18 Roughs

Black and white, 35 mm
Japan, 1963, 108 min
Section: Shochiku Nouvelle Vague

Synopsis

A drama about a clash between a responsible lodging house caretaker and a collective protagonist in the form of a pack of adolescents. Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob. The frustrated caretaker is ready to give up on them but is kept there by the lovely Nobu, the daughter of the barman at his regular evening spot. After taking a trip to the city together and painting the town red, one of the unidentified youngsters rapes Nobu at the dormitory. Not wanting to have to bear the pressure from those around her, the shocked girl moves to another city. Shimazaki doesn’t manage to find out who the culprit is, but he is firmly decided on bringing Nobu back and showing her just how much he cares...

About the director

Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (b. 1933, Fukui), the least conspicuous artist of the Japanese New Wave, studied French at Tokyo University, and the influence of French cinematography was distinctly evident in his pictures. In 1955, he won a competition to become a director’s assistant, and graduated from the school of the renowned director Kinoshita, like his predecessor Masaki Kobayashi. When the Shochiku studio decided to give young directors a chance, Yoshida found himself, along with Oshima and Shinoda, at the epicentre of events. His films dealing with alienation and isolation and pervaded by sex and senseless violence, however, soon deprived him of the goodwill of the studio’s chiefs. In 1964 he set up his own independent production company, which created one of the milestones of Japanese cinematography at the turn of the 1960s – the controversial and multilayered Eros Plus Massacre (Erosu purasu gyakusatsu, 1969).