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The issue of the Zainichi Koreans was one that interested Nagisa Oshima significantly, with him having shot the TV documentary “Forgotten Soldiers” in 1963 and the experimental short “Diary of Yunbogi” in 1965. Two events revolving around the problems of Koreans in Japan, the Kim Hiro and the Komatsugawa Incident, were also roots of inspiration for him, resulting in two films, “Death by Hanging” and “Three Resurrected Drunkards” both of which use irony, theatricality and intense avant-garde elements to portray his take on the subject.

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The overall directorial approach here becomes apparent from the beginning, as it shows three Japanese students at the beach, reenacting one of the most famous pictures of the Vietnam war, before they decide to strip to their underwear and go for a swim. While they are swimming, a hand emerges from the sand and steals their clothes,...

Before he would come to be known as one of cinema’s most controversial provocateurs with his most infamous title, 1976’s In the Realm of the Senses, Nagisa Oshima was heralded as one of the most influential voices in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. The decade prior showed the director contemplating urban youth issues, showcasing the moral quandaries of a new, disenchanted generation struggling to define notions of identity in Post WWII Japan. In the early 60s, Oshima spent most of his time working in television before returning to features predicated on lurid social issues usually involving a fascinating mixture of sexuality and crime. But 1968 saw the auteur tackling the treatment of Korean immigrants in Japan in two striking portraits, Three Resurrected Drunkards and the dark comedy Death by Hanging.

Based on an actual criminal case from a decade prior concerning a Korean immigrant who murdered two Japanese girls,...

You want radical? Look no further. Nagisa Oshima's near-legendary issue drama makes a wickedly frightening protest against the death penalty, but then proceeds into formal abstraction and the endorsement of a violent radical position. You can't find a political 'gauntlet picture' as jarring or as potent as this one. Death by Hanging Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 798 1968 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Kôshikei / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 16, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Do-yun Yu, Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe, Toshiro Ishido, Masao Adachi, Rokko Toura, Hosei Komatsu, Masao Matsuda, Akiko Koyama. Cinematography Yasuhiro Yoshioka Film Editor Sueko Shiraishi Original Music Hikaru Hayashi Written by Michinori Fukao. Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, Nagisa Oshima Produced by Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi, Nagisa Oshima Directed by Nagisa Oshima

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet. Nagisa Oshima is a radical's radical, a cinema stylist completely committed to his politics -- which...