The Thick-Walled Room (1956)

 Masaki Kobayashi's "The Thick-Walled Room"

Despite having made five films before 1956, Masaki Kobayashi's career only truly started as an auteur when he released "The Thick-Walled Room." Although his previous films were serviceable features, "The Thick Walled-Room" was Kobayashi's "true debut film, the first picture that shows fully the artistic profile that he would make his own," as film author Stephen Price puts it. Although it was filmed and completed in 1953, it wouldn't actually get its official release until 1956. This is because the Japanese government felt the film was overtly harsh on the American occupation and they didn't want to offend the Americans. 

The film centers on a group of B and C class war criminals locked in a detention facility. As they attempt to navigate the harsh conditions of their imprisonment by the American forces, the group of prisoners reflect on their traumas of the war. They also begin to collectivize, believing they were forced to commit war crimes by their government and commanding officers, whom they believe should be in prison rather than them.

One can definitely understand the controversy the film caused. The exclamations that Japanese war criminals are, in fact, innocent is enough to rile up those both critical of the war and the Americans who were occupying Japan. However, I don't think Kobayashi's sentiments are unfounded in any capacity. The men facing the most punishment and persecution for Japan's involvement in the war is not the government or officials that led it. Rather, it is the men who did what they were told. Obviously, its a bit of a controversial statement to say that someone committing war crimes because they were 'just following orders' is innocent. And that's not what I nor the film is saying. Rather, it is simply communicating the complexity or such a situation and how its not exactly black and white.

What "The Thick-Walled Room" does so well is communicate the sentiments of a post-war Japan. They were trapped by their recent dark past, unable to be free of both their shame and the oppressive American forces condemning them. Through this entrapment, they became bitter, resentful, and full of restless hatred. As one inmate points out in the film, they thought that being imprisoned would usher in a new philosophical perspective or sense of peace. But, as he points out, the contrary happened. They only became more deceitful, unable to determine what truth is any longer. The film is a portrait of a Japan dazed in the confusion of morality and social disorder, unable to escape their circumstances.