BUSU

Ichikawa Jun’s first feature film, BUSU (1987) was conceived as a vehicle for Tomita Yasuko, an idol singer and actress then at the height of her fame. Translated as “ugly,” busu refers to Tomita’s character Mugiko, who attends high school by day and works at a geisha house by night. Despite her plain clothes and helmet of frizzy hair, she is still Tomita Yasuko - the girl who launched a thousand magazine covers. It is Mugiko’s heart, as Ichikawa always explains in interviews, that is busu. She is not “ugly-hearted” in the usual ways of movie baddies, however. Instead she has shut herself off from human contact - she is against the world and alone in it. Coming from a provincial town to stay at a geisha house in Tokyo’s Kagurazaka district, she exudes sullen defiance. Introduced to her new high school classmates, she barely utters a word - and is greeted with derision. She could hardly care less. At the geisha house, where a sharp-tongued okamisan (mistress - played by Okusu Michiyo) presides, she works as personal servant to the house’s stars. In the feudal pecking order of the geisha, she is the lowest of the low - but she is determined to somehow move up. At school, a handsome boy in her class who is an amateur boxer (Takashima Masahiro) defends her against her classmates’ taunts - and sees her as more than a poor, hapless thing to be rescued. The narrative lines thus seem clear: after the usual setbacks, Mugiko will win the respect of the okamisan and the love of Tsuda. The film, however, takes quite another tack - the road to acceptance and happiness is not only rough, but twistier then one would have thought. Much of the film’s third act concerns Mugiko’s decision to stage the climactic scene of Yayoya Oshichi, a kabuki play based on the true story of a teenaged girl who, in 1683, committed arson to be reunited with a boy she loved. Her punishment was death at the stake. For Mugiko the punishment for failure is not a public burning, but humiliation. She practices as though her life depends on it - and it does. Do you think you know the ending? Don’t be so sure. But like the rest of the film, it stays true to Mugiko’s character. Busu to the last.