While Sabu or Hiroyuki Tanaka’s directorial debut, Dangan Runner (1996), a direct-to-video release failed to make an impact nor find an audience upon release, the release of the film on blu-ray by Third Windows Films allowed many people to rediscover and reevaluate this crude overlooked gem.

Another happy consequence of this renewed interest in Dangan Runner was that audiences also sought to explore more of Sabu’s early work. Postman Blues, a film released merely one year after Dangan Runner, is a worthy starting point for such deep-dive in Sabu’s quirky worlds.

One day, Sawaki (Shinichi Tsutsumi), a depressed postman, is tasked to deliver a letter to someone who is called Shuji Noguchi (Keisuke Horibe). Yet, much to his surprise, Noguchi, peeking through the gap of his front door, refuses the letter – ‘I didn’t ask for anything’. However, seeing his stern face, Sawaki, realizing he might be a former classmate from high school, calls out his name and the name of his former high-school. Noguchi, realizing the postman is a former classmate, invites him in – a freshly cut finger lies on the table, Noguchi’s hand dripping blood. After talking a bit about each other’s life – often spying outside to confirm the presence of the police who are surveilling him, Noguchi executes his nifty plan: planting the package that would compromise him in Sawaki’s postbag. Unbeknownst to Sawaki, his meeting with his small-time yakuza Noguchi, causes the police to mistake him for a drugs runner.

With Postman Blues, Sabu proves, once again, how easy it is for him to give the mundane a pleasant light-hearted twist of absurdity. Sabu succeeds in pleasing the spectator with such fluidly interwoven quirky moments by creating well-defined characters and engaging conversational patterns and by thoughtfully introducing visual and narrative elements that playfully ripple the mundane frame and, thus, takes the spectator by surprise (Comedy-note 1).

For his narrative, Sabu turns to these quirky elements to expose the absurdity of (mis-)interpretation, of the natural impulse of sewing elements together into a story that fits the expectations of the observer and corroborates his pre-established framework of meaning. Sabu, moreover, illustrates that reality is only given to the subject via the interpretive act – by perceiving signifiers and concatenating them together to produce signified – and reveals, by delivering pleasant moments of interpretative absurdity, that reality has much more affinity with fantasy than we readily assume (Narra-note 1).  

To make his point, Sabu litters Sawaki’s trajectory with meetings (e.g. the terminally ill hitman fast-draw Joe (Ren Osugi)) and events (e.g. Noguchi’s finger in his bag) that do not work in his favour, dubious occurrences that produce, at least from the perspective of the spying instance of the law, proof of the criminal truth Sawaki hides under his mundane postman uniform. The director also takes the opportunity to utilize Sawaki’s encounters to offer interesting narrative digressions (i.e. Joe’s relation to Ran (Ryoko Takizawa), Noguchi’s situation within the Minato-gumi) to deepen the world of crime our postman is not really a part of.

The opening hour of the Postman Blues, however, does not merely please the spectator with absurd disturbances of the mundane, but also with its witty manner of critique the contemporary societal field. The character of Noguchi is not only utilized by Sabu to expose the consumerist trap that structures contemporary society but also critique the capitalistic logic that gives society its orientation. Noguchi is shown to be someone who tries to escape the capitalistic finality for the middle to lower class – i.e. to become a mere slave to capital, nothing more than a replaceable cog within a puffing machine, within a prison-like space where names have no place and no one can leave his symbolic mark, yet merely interchanges realities – from mundane to the underworld – to ultimately endanger himself by attempting to realize the impossible zenith of consumerism: become the master of producing jouissance (Narra-note 2). He tries to escape the capitalistic machine by trying to produce its impossible transgressive fantasy as truth – another a victim of the system.

The spectator quickly surmises that Noguchi seeks his hail in ‘transgressive’ enjoyment to escape the subjective state that defines Sawaki. Sawaki is the victim of letting the capitalistic social system hollow his subjectivity out and douse his desire. He allowed himself to become mere nameless cog within the societal machine. However, he is not without enjoyment. While he does not produce enjoyment by transgressing the law like Noguchi, he generates it by drowning himself in alcohol, by turning himself into a self-pitying consumer of alcohol to ‘celebrate’ his miserable reality and his inability to break out of the de-subjectifying chains of society.  

Sawaki eventually does commit some transgressions – i.e. stealing money out of an undelivered envelope, ripping post apart, and reading other people’s mail. The act of theft – a little act of rebellious deviance against the societal system – breathes some enjoyment into his bodily presence, yet is, first and foremost, exploited to acquire more alcohol and, thus, extend the time that he can, at the level of fantasy, escape the depressing impact of his prison-like reality (Narra-note 3).

Yet, his transgression leads to an encounter that, at least temporarily, alleviates his depressed state and short-circuit the circuit of medicative alcohol consumption: he falls in love with Sayoko (Kyoko Toyama), a terminally ill patient whose suicidal letter to her estranged aunt he sneakily read. Yet, is love – that what breathe life into the still waters of the libido, the ultimate way out of the capitalistic system? Or is there something more radical needed?

The composition of Postman Blues proves that Sabu is a director that fully understands the symbolic dimension of the compositional act (Cine-note 1). He knows how to use compositional pace, shot-perspectives, shot-types, diegetic sounds, to create deliciously evocative moments. To put it a bit more psychoanalytically, he understands and, thus, exploits the fact that the image is a collection of signifiers – composition is signifying – and the concatenation of shot is an ongoing act of enunciating.

While the entire composition is littered with moments that corroborate his understanding and ability, the opening sequence, which cannot but pull the spectator into his narrative, proves his talent most explicitly. Sabu’s cutting contrasts sounds (e.g. the cart rolling in the corridor, sorting letters, a bicycle riding through the streets, putting envelopes in the mailbox, …) that, temporarily speaking, create a subtle yet pleasant rhythm. By increasing the pace of the cutting and letting one sound (i.e. the squeaking related to pedalling) penetrate other images, he creates a moment that evokes Sawaki’s subjective state of exhaustion. 

Postman Blues is a narrative that delivers everything in perfect measure – drama, comedy, and romance. Sabu’s narrative excels not only due to his thoughtful approach to composition and editing, but also because he succeeds in delivering characters that speak to the spectator and breathe life into all the various emotional dimensions of the narrative. If you have not seen Postman Blues yet, put this masterclass of genre-blending immediately on your to-watch list. 

Notes

Narra-note 1: Sabu also shows, via the character of Joe, that the subject, in presenting his ego to the Other via speech, always seeks to hide cracks in the images and remove the blemishes that smudge it.

Narra-note 2: As he cannot cancel out the societal field, his search for enjoyment can only end in death or prison.

Narra-note 3: The spectator, eventually, realizes that Noguchi and Sawaki are more alike than at first glance. Both are victim of a societal system in need for mere cogs and both consume substances to counteract reality.

Noguchi actively turns his back away from the mundane societal system to pursue a life of crime, yet encounters a radicalized hierarchical dynamic that demands pinkie fingers and, in certain cases, even death. Sawaki drinks to forget his inability to act as a subject within the confines of the societal prison.

General-note 1: The film is also full of references. Sabu references Leon the professional, Al Pacino, … etc and also delivers a tongue-in-the check reference to Sabu’s cult classic Dangan Runner (1996).

Comedy-note 1: Noguchi’s statement that he is a yakuza and his glance at a poster featuring Ken Takakura playfully exposes the performative quality of him being a yakuza.

Cine-note 1: His skill at utilizing the cut also manifests itself at the level of him not using it – of favouring long(er) takes for certain moments within his composition.