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A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs
日本春歌考
Directed by	Nagisa Oshima
Written by	Nagisa Oshima Mamoru Sasaki Tamura Tsutomu Toshio Tajima
Produced by	Masayuki Nakajima
Starring	Ichirō Araki Hiroshi Satō Kazuyoshi Kushida Kōji Iwabuchi Juzo Itami Akiko Koyama Nobuko Miyamoto Hideko Yoshida Hiroko Masuda Kazuko Tajima
Cinematography	Akira Takada
Edited by	Keiichi Uraoka
Music by	Hikaru Hayashi
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date	23 February 1967 (1967-Feb-23)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs or Sing a Song of Sex (Japanese: 日本春歌考, Hepburn: Nihon shunka-kō) is a 1967 Japanese avant-garde New Wave musical film directed by Nagisa Ōshima, who also co-wrote the script in collaboration with three writers and the actors. 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 in Harvard in 2008 as part of their "Nagisa Oshima and the Struggle for a Radical Cinema" Program.

Plot

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 five-part bawdy song. The four boys become smitten with the song, and it becomes the major musical theme of the film.

Cast

• 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

External links

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