Taisho Roman – Fever Dreams of the Great Rectitude

Seijun Suzuki would wryly proclaim when considering the period of his birth. A new era born from the passing of Meiji, the Taisho period, with its elaborate, decadent fantasies, amounts to Japan’s own belle epoque–a short-lived age where Western thought, modernization, liberalism and arts would convene. Coined in reflective terms, “Taisho Roman” (short for romanticism) brings a nostalgia for the libertine prewar era that preceded the militaristic Showa and its flagrant imperialist displays. A time of juxtapositions amidst the proliferation of changing mores, social trends and attitudes—from the blending of Western and Japanese cultures to the rise of hedonistic ideals, Taisho democracy and the beginnings of ero guro—the all-too-brief epoch, which dates from 1912 to 1926, signified “great righteousness” or “rectitude.” Its tranquility, however, was abruptly upended with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, followed by a tide of ethnic and political violence, rising militarism and the death of the sickly Emperor Taisho in 1926. Drawing inspiration from the otherworldly writings of Kyoka Izumi, Hyakken Uchida, Kyusaku Yumeno and beyond, Taisho Roman presents films from some of Japan’s most radical and outré filmmakers—Shuji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto and Akio Jissoji—whose approach to the prosperous period is marked by creative, daring and distorted reimaginings. The results are ghostly works in iridescence, offering a nostalgia for a bygone age that never existed.