Hired to make a vehicle for hot young star Hashizo Okawa (much as Imamura was commissioned to showcase Frank Nagai in Nishi Ginza Station), Oshima settled on a true story, familiar to every Japanese student: that of a 1637 rebellion in which starving Christian peasants, oppressed by landowners and samurai alike, rose up, led by a teenaged boy called Shiro, against the Shogunate. No surprise that Oshima fashioned this historical pageant – a genre seemingly at odds with his sensibility – into a lightly-veiled comment on the contemporary rebellion of Japanese youth against the country’s repressive rulers. (The persecution of the Christians is shockingly depicted, so determined is Oshima on emphasizing their martyrdom.) Oshima aims at making a popular historical epic, but his rebellious ways turn Shiro Amakusa into a fascinating succession of subversions. “No classes, no tyranny, our ideal,” the Christian rebels proclaim, giving voice to Oshima’s own beliefs. This would be Oshima’s last samurai film before Gohatto and he makes the most of it with long takes in CinemaScope, some astonishing tracking shots, scenes daringly lit only by fire, an insistent music score (that sometimes sounds like Schnittke!), and a young actor who storms the screen, even when kept in the background of several compositions. (Veteran Rentaro Mikuni stars as a treacherous artist.) “Blatantly subversive” (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).