Akira Nagai, known from narratives like Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High (2017), After The Rain (2018), and Character (2021), takes on the adaptation of Katsuhiro Go’s celebrated novel Bakudan (2022).

Since his debut, Go impressed audiences and critics alike – the awards speak for themselves – not only by his ability to arouse cinematic imagery in the reader’s mind with his signifiers, but also by effectively instrumentalizing the structural friction between the societal field and the subject and exploring, with compelling finesse, the dark fantasies and desires produced by a repressive societal field. To successfully adapt Go’s novel, one must not only do right by the image his signifiers conjure, but also by bringing his thematical preoccupation in an engaging and confrontational way to life. Did Nagai fulfill his task? In short, yes.       

Nagai’s narrative commences on the fifth of October, at 9:45 in the morning. The questioning of a person (Jiro Sato) who claims to be Suzuki Tagosaku, is underway. He was brought in for questioning after he, intoxicated, kicked a vending machine selling alcoholic beverages and punched the shop owner.    

Police officer Isao Todoroki (Shota Sometani) tells him that the shop-owner won’t press any charges if he covers the costs. Suzuki, however, has no money. Instead, he proposes that he could offer his services to him if he could persuade the victim. He has a sixth sense, the ability to predict an incident before it happens. Immediately, he teasingly predicts that something will happen at ten o’clock in Akihabara. While the officer harbours some doubts about the prediction, any doubt is washed away when an explosion shatters a shop in Akihabara at ten sharp. Tagosaku, then, tells that the officers that more explosions will occur.  

Suzuki=Bakudan, as psychological thriller, puts the game of verbal chess Tagosaku plays with various police officers on the forefront. Much like Todoroki, the spectator easily comes to the conclusion that Tagosaku, rather than having a sixth sense, is in some way responsible for all the time-bombs. This conclusion, of course, results in the formulation of the narrative’s central riddle: why does he target the Other?

As Tagosaku’s main weapon is his speech, we are led to find an answer in the sea of signifiers he produces. We must assume that our suspect does not merely utilizes his speech to manipulate and tease the Other – a way of speaking that eroticizes the unsaid, but that his speech functions as a frame of fiction that in some way or another divulges his truth. If we take his signifiers seriously, we can only assume that his radically castrated position – i.e. being someone without any value and worth within the societal field – lies at the basis of his attack on society. Or, as Todoroki puts it, Tagosaku frames himself to the Other of the law as “a broke, dissolute middle-aged man with a dead conscience”.

However, the spectator feels that, despite Tagosaku establishing such image of himself, the riddle of the logic of the bombings remains unanswered. He successfully plays with the Other – the representatives of the law and the spectator – by virtue of the fact that he keeps his ultimate aim opaque. Luckily, as Tagosaku keeps speaking, keeps producing signifiers, the spectator is able to slowly gain a grasp on the thematical sense of his speech. And, as our grasp grows – the associative combination of spoken signifiers and elements of evidence produces meaning, the tensive pace heightens, thrusting the spectator, before he fully well realizes it, into a thrilling high-stakes rollercoaster with many unexpected turns and twists.   

Yet, what kind of assumptions can we, as spectator, make concerning the logic of the bombings? What kind of interpretation does the concatenation of image-signifiers and signifiers within Suzuki=Bakudan can we make?

The story Tagosaku tells to detective Yuki Ise (Kanichiro Sato) concerning the murder of Minori-chan and the false accusations he was subjected to seems to indicate that the bombings might be motivated by a kind of anger towards the Other – the Other which derives enjoyment from prejudices, fabrications, and premature accusations, and inability of the apparatus of the law to curb this joyous excess.  

Tagosaku’s sudden introduction of ranking the value of lives of other people re-emphasizes his focus on the implication of the overvaluation of the image within the societal field – we, as subjects, encounter others, first and foremost, as images; images to be evaluated and finalized via the way we subjectified the societal Other. The symbolic structure of the law cannot subdue the subjective and inter-personal ravage caused by the imaginary because the symbolic establishes its playground and, as such, keeps it operative. The law forms, in a certain sense, the prerequisite for imaginary excess, for exploiting others as image-objects for our own pleasure, stabilizing our own ego with judgemental pleasure, and establishing bonds merely on the basis of exchanging superficial pleasure – pleasure more than ever mediated by social media.  

Tagosaku’s speech also touches upon the cold a-subjective nature of the societal law and the structural failure of societal systems that strictly abide by the rules. The Other of the law does not deal with subjects, but with collections of written and spoken signifiers. It is a calculative machine of ones and zeros that cannot take subjectivity into account and does not care if one falls between the meshes of its strict calculative net.   

The name of Yuko Hasebe (Masaya Kato), playfully introduced by Tagosaku to Kiyomiya (Atsuro Watabe) of the First Investigation Division, seemingly corroborates this line of thought – he has a bone to pick with the police as institution. Hasebe, a veteran detective devoted to helping his juniors rise the ranks, committed suicide three months after his shameful misconduct came to light. The spectator is not only led to wonder whether Suzuki is linked to Hasebe or not, but also about the reason why he puts this scandal on the plate of the detectives.   

That Tagosaku targets the ravage caused by the overvaluation of the image and pleasure is also corroborated by the locations of the bombings. The initial explosion near Akihabara Radio Kaikan hits the heart of the holy land of Otaku culture and rips the Valhalla of consumption of imaginary connections apart. The attack on Tokyo Dome City hits a place that is structured around consumption, the consumption of pleasure. By targeting the newspaper distribution company in Kudan-shita, Tagosaku aims to expose the fact that newspaper companies are complicit in over-emphasizing the imaginary within the societal field – news, rather than to inform, seeks to please; newspaper sell narratives to provide pleasure (i.e. frustration, anger, surprise, …) by catering to prejudices, fabrications, and premature accusations.

The spectator might feel that the fourth bombing place does not fit the thematical thread he has spun. However, it is not difficult for audiences to connect the twisted game he plays with Kiyomiya and the Other of the law with his comments about the symbolic structure offering the subject the necessary frame to attack and dismiss the other, with the emphasis he puts on the societally-induced urge to judge the value of subject’s lives in accordance with the self-serving idea of societal worth.   

Nagai subtly presents the inner-workings of the police-force as an example of what Tagosaku, via his signifiers, attacks. Behind the face of the protectors of the law, within the corridors of its buildings, a sprawling tangle of interpersonal tensions slithers – the structurally-induced rivalry with peers and seniors and the disdain that drips down from upper ranks to besmirch officers of lower rank and other branches. Officer Taito Yabuki (Ryota Bando) is presented to the audiences as a subject whose frustration with the disdaining and condescending gaze of HQ fuels his passionate wish to rise the ranks (Narra-note 1). Sara Koda (Sairi Ito), another victim of said gaze, on the other hand, transforms her frustration into devote support for Yabuki’s attempt to fracture that gaze and make a name for himself.  

The meaning the spectator produces by putting all the various signifying elements that Tagosaku introduces together allows for a more radical reading – a reading that goes beyond the simple opposition good and evil.  In our view, Tagosaku, by teasing and playing with his adversaries, he seeks to materialize unconscious vindictive fantasies that anyone within the societal field, without any exception, has produced. The bombings are, in a certain sense, the realization of the defensive phantasmatic response each of us, at some point in our life, have had to the frustrations of the daily life, the frustration aroused by not receiving recognition within this societal network of signifiers, signifying acts, bodies, and egos, of being repeatedly or continuously erased as subject by the Other within the societal field. 

The appeal of Suzuki=Bakudan does, thus, not merely lie in the thrilling high-stakes game of verbal chess it delivers, but also in the fact that, as the game unfolds, it sketches out a certain phantasmatic truth that clings to all subjects (Lighting-note 1). The societal critique Nagai delivers is, in essence, a critique directed at the subject, those subjects who let their signifiers and acts be animated by the capitalistic imperative to enjoy.   

The composition of Suzuki=Bakudan stands out due to its engaging and energetic rhythm, a rhythm completely in service of the narrative flow of suspense. We would, in fact, argue that Nagai’s composition is structured around a readiness for dynamism. Nagai relies on shaky dynamism not merely to support the performances of his cast – a frame of documentary realism to emphasize the naturalism of their enunciations and interactions, but also to introduce a minimum of anticipatory tension that can, by suddenly energizing dynamism and the compositional rhythm, increase at any given turn.  

Nagai also interweaves static long takes within his composition to emphasize the facial expressions as well as the flow of enunciations. Or, to put it differently, Nagai often grants his cast the necessary space and time – granting them the frame – to breathe life into their character with their physical presence and the delivery of their speech. Jiro Sato takes every opportunity, every frame, to keep the spectator invested into his character – in the way he realizes his character as a teasing mysterious puzzle waiting to be solved.

The spectator, faced with Jiro Sato’s pitch-perfect performance, cannot but hang on his every word. In this respect, we must consider his performance as the filmic hook, the main element that pulls the spectator into the narrative and ensures that he can joyously let himself float on the extremely well-structured flow of suspense.

Suzuki=Bakudan does not only take the spectator on a thrilling ride, a high-stakes chess game with signifiers as rooks, but also brutally confronts him with the effects of the over-emphasis of pleasure and consumption within social interactions on the subject, a driven by his demand for symbolic recognition. Thanks to Jiro Sato’s pitch-perfect performance, Akira Nagai succeeds in delivering one of the most thrilling societal critiques in recent memory. 

Notes

Narra-note 1: Yabuki’s frustration, which fuels his passionate wish, also has a personal dimension as he feels that his intel got Ise promoted to detective. The disdaining gaze, in this sense, confronts him with the fact how hierarchical reality of the police-apparatus has shortchanged him.

Lighting-note 1: One could interpret thedarkish lighting and the subdued muted colour-schemes in two different yet interrelated ways: this darkness echoes the darkness that lingers within the societal field as well as the darkness that lurks within us.