Toshio Matsumo’s 1969 film A Funeral Parade of Roses gives a rare portrayal of Japanese gay subculture. Using a quasi-documentary approach the film investigates themes of sexuality, traditional hierarchies, censorship, drugs and the traditional role of film uniting in a dreaming and alluring portrayal of the existential experience.
Regarding the question of the traditional role of film it seems important to mention the role of Kabuki theatre in Japan. Kabuki’s all male theatre ethos meant that men would take on female roles not only on stage but in a all consuming manor, method acting per se. Not surprisingly Kabuki was outlawed in 1912 by Japans newly appointed power, the Japanese National Party on the view that the actors were encouraging and ‘naturalising’ effeminate behaviour and disturbing the traditional family unit…let the censorship begin!
A censorship on sexuality is what this film outwardly does not have. There is an open display of nudity, sex and drugs. This film may be claiming to glimpse into the gay ‘underworld’ however, I cannot help but be distracted by the pleasing avant-garde sheen. This film is indeed guilty of glamorising its subjects and making a spectacle of them as the Other (as is the viewer, which is perhaps what the film is getting at!). The drag queen subversion produced does not give the protagonists a greater sense of sexual freedom as they seem to take on the traditional submissive role of woman in sexual acts and otherwise in order to ‘live in drag’. The men at the center treat the queens as a currency in their economy, ‘a man loves a man as a queen.’
In the end the defiance of sexual norms and incest ends in death. The transsexuals behaviour is justified through violent pasts and a drug fueled present. Ultimately traditional values prevail and the protagonist is punished. However, besides this the film does attempt to portray gender as a mask in its avant-garde nature producing a vital part of the edifice that shakes the heterosexual binary.
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