The Japanese New Wave & Censorship Battles
Japanese Film & Television
Chapter 6 · The Japanese New Wave & Censorship Battles
A Movement Born From Studio Branding
"Nuberu bagu" borrows its name directly from the French Nouvelle vague, a contemporaneous movement that was similarly tearing up the established conventions of its own national cinema — but the Japanese New Wave's own real origin is genuinely more corporate than that name suggests. Around 1960, Shochiku itself marketed the debuts of three young in-house directors — Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, and Kiju Yoshida — as the launch of the "Shochiku Nuberu bagu." All three directors went on to leave the studio under real, acrimonious circumstances, taking the movement independent.
What the New Wave Actually Confronted
Once free of studio oversight, these filmmakers rejected classical Japanese cinema's own established conventions in favor of formally and thematically challenging work, arriving during a period of real national social unrest. The films took on subject matter Japanese cinema had largely avoided: sexual violence, political radicalism, youth delinquency, discrimination against Korean residents of Japan, queerness, and the still-raw aftermath of the Second World War.
The movement's most prolific figure, and its most overtly political — the director whose own later work triggered the real censorship battle covered below.
One of the New Wave's other major names, working in a genuinely less overtly political register than Oshima or several directors who emerged later in the decade.
The Real Censorship Battle: In the Realm of the Senses, 1976
Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no Corrida, 1976) pushed the New Wave's confrontational instincts about as far as they could go, and the Japanese government responded with a real obscenity prosecution — though not, technically, over the film itself. The charges were brought over a companion book of film stills and script notes published by San'ichishobo, filed against both Oshima and the publisher in 1976.
Oshima and the publisher were found not guilty in 1979. The government appealed, and the Tokyo High Court upheld the acquittal in 1982. In his own testimony, Oshima argued: "Nothing that is expressed is obscene. What is obscene is what is hidden." The presiding judge accepted his broader argument that obscenity itself resists any workable legal definition.
Questions to Sit With
A movement that began as studio marketing ended up producing some of Japanese cinema's most genuinely rebellious work. Does that corporate origin change how you think about the New Wave's own later, more independent output?
Oshima's own courtroom line — "What is obscene is what is hidden" — won him the case. Do you find that argument genuinely persuasive as a legal principle, or more as a clever piece of rhetoric?
The film is still censored in Japan decades after Oshima's own legal victory. What does that gap tell you about the real difference between winning a legal argument and actually changing a practical outcome?
Quick Reference — Chapter 6
- The Japanese New Wave began as Shochiku's own studio branding for three young directors around 1960, before all three left the studio independently
- New Wave films confronted subjects classical Japanese cinema had largely avoided — sexual violence, radicalism, delinquency, discrimination, queerness, and WWII's aftermath
- Oshima's obscenity charges over In the Realm of the Senses (1976) targeted a companion book, not the film itself; he and the publisher were acquitted in 1979, upheld on appeal in 1982
- Despite that legal win, the film remains censored in Japan to this day, with explicit sequences still fogged or mosaicked in every screening