Sing a Song of Sex

Produced byMasayuki NakajimaStarringCinematographyAkira TakadaEdited byKeiichi UraokaMusic byHikaru HayashiDistributed byShochiku103 minutesCountryJapanLanguageJapanese

Sing a Song of Sex, also called (more accurately) A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs is a 1967 Japanese avant-garde New Wave musical film directed by Nagisa Ōshima.^[1][2] Despite having four credited writers, the film was largely improvised.^[3] The story follows four high school seniors on their peripatetic outings across Tokyo. They have one fateful night of drinking and singing with their teacher, who "sings a song of sex," the main musical theme of the film. The film was screened at Harvard in 2008 as part of their "Nagisa Oshima and the Struggle for a Radical Cinema" Program.^[4]

Four high school students have travelled to Tokyo on a snowy day to take their university entrance exams. They are Nakamura (Ichiro Araki), Ueda (Kōji Iwabuchi), Hiroi (Kazuyoshi Kushida) and Maruyama (Hiroshi Sato).

The boys are not politically engaged and openly mock both an anti-Vietnam petition request and a political march against National Foundation Day (the accession date of the legendary first Emperor of Japan).

One of the boys during his exam espies a very pretty girl that he knows only as "Number 469" (her exam seat number), and the four become obsessed with her. They talk frequently about the girl and fantasize a plan to rape her. But even in their fantasies their desires are thwarted.

They also join one of their high school teachers, Ōtake, and three other high school girls, on a night of drinking and singing. Ōtake, drunk, sings a short bawdy song and explains that "bawdy songs represent the voices of the oppressed." The four boys become smitten with the song, and it becomes the major musical theme of the film.

The film's Japanese title (Hepburn: Nihon shunka-kō) is more accurately translated as A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs; however, the film has come to be mostly known as Sing a Song of Sex, due to its DVD release name.^[5][6]

• Ichirō Araki as Toyoaki Nakamura
• Hiroshi Satō as Kōji Maruyama
• Kazuyoshi Kushida as Katsumi Hiroi
• Kōji Iwabuchi as Hideo Ueda
• Juzo Itami as Ōtake (Teacher)
• Akiko Koyama as Takako Tanigawa (Teacher's lover)
• Nobuko Miyamoto as Sanae Satomi
• Hideko Yoshida as Sachiko Kaneda
• Hiroko Masuda as Satoko Ikeda
• Kazuko Tajima as Mayuko Fujiwara

The film is a musical in which music is not only sung by a variety of characters, but singing also becomes a competition, with one group of singers competing with another group as they sing against each other.

The main song of the film is Yosakoi Bushi, which the four protagonists often sing and improvise upon. This song is an example of shunka, a Japanese erotic folk song.^[7] The original lyrics are:

1. Let’s begin with the first case, ho, ho. When you do it with an only daughter, you have to get permission from her parents.

2. Let’s go on to the second case, ho, ho. When you do it with two sisters, you have to do it with the older sister first.

3. Let’s go on to the third case, ho, ho. When you do it with an ugly girl, you have to do it covering her with a wrapping cloth.

4. Let’s go on to the fourth case, ho, ho. When you do it on the second floor of someone else’s house, you have to do it without making a sound.

5. Let’s go on to the fifth case, ho, ho. When you do it with the same girl as usual, you have to do it like you normally do it.

6. Let’s go on to the sixth case, ho, ho. When you do it with an old acquaintance, you have to do it until you go weak in the knees.

7. Let’s go on to the seventh case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a pawnshop, you have to take it in and out.

8. Let’s go on to the eighth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a greengrocer, you have to lay your head on a squash.

9. Let’s go on to the ninth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a daughter of a school principal, you have to do it being ready to be expelled from the school.

10. Let’s go on to the tenth case, ho, ho. When you do it with a noble person, you have to do it in haori and hakama (traditional Japanese male formal clothing).

• Sing a Song of Sex at IMDb
• Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties an essay by Michael Koresky that touches on the film