Director Nagisa Oshima's reflections on the failure of Japanese left-wing radicalism during the 1950s. Having let go of their activist pasts years before, a group of former revolutionaries are reunited at the wedding of one of their own. Everything passes off quietly until the last arrival begins accusing his former comrades of betraying the movement for personal gain. With all vestiges of civility pushed aside, the wedding rapidly degenerates into a brawl, as old wounds and rivalries resurface.

The more than 40 writings that make up this intellectual autobiography reveal a rare conjunction of personal candor and political commitment. Nagisa Oshima is generally regarded as the most important Japanese film. director after Kurosawa and is one of Japan's most productive and celebrated postwar artists. His early films represent the Japanese New Wave at its zenith, and the films he has made since (including In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) have won international acclaim. The more than 40 writings that make up this intellectual autobiography reveal a rare conjunction of personal candor and political commitment. Entertaining, concise, disarmingingly insightful, they trace in vivid and carefully articulated detail the development of Oshima's theory and practice.The writings are arranged in chronological order and cover the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Following a historical overview of the contemporary Japanese cinema, a substantial section articulates the theoretical and political rationale of 0shima's film production. Among many other topics considered in his essays, Oshima questions the economics of film production, the ethics of the documentary film, censorship (both political and sexual), and the relation of aesthetics and social taboos.