Blood-Stained Cities

Cinema, Space and Violence in Japan.

Abstract

This article examines how the city becomes a site of social and political tension in Postwar Japan through an analysis of Gate of Flesh (Suzuki Seijun, 1964) and Ecstasy of the Angels (Wakamatsu Koji, 1972). In both films, the city emerges as a living, conflict-ridden space, far removed from any idealized representation. It bears the visible and invisible traces of war, the U.S. occupation, and pervasive structural violence. Drawing on the framework of cultural memory studies, this article shows how cinema transforms physical ruins into symbols of psychological fracture, while also reimagining them as spaces of resistance, denunciation, and reappropriation. In this process, the city becomes an active character —assaulted, inhabited, and re-signified by its protagonists— rather than a mere backdrop for the action.