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In this period recreation, Imamura’s film tells a story of a carnival huckster on the payroll of both the Emperor and the Shogun dynasty, who, along with his backwoods girlfriend, is swept up in the lower-class riots that plunged Japan into the 20th century.
This article appears in December 3 • 1999.
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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years. More by Marjorie Baumgarten
