YOICHI TAKABAYASHI’S ”Irezumi – Spirit of Tattoo” (”Sekka Tomurai Zashi”) is a romantically deceptive Japanese film about a young Tokyo secretary who, to please her middle- age lover, spends 
two years of her life having her back elaborately tattooed. A tattoo, like a diamond, is forever, but it can’t be hocked.
In ”Irezumi” it represents a number of things, including fidelity and the total submission of the tattooed woman to her lover, who can, of course, change his mind while she cannot.
”Irezumi” is not an easy movie to respond to initially. It has its share of what are crudely called ”howlers,” especially in its subtitles. It’s also difficult to fathom the extraordinary passivity of the beautiful Akane to her lover, a mild-mannered librarian who wears conservative business suits and a Burberry scarf, and in all ways is utterly ordinary except for his passion for tattooed skin.
Yet, as ”Irezumi” goes on, the film becomes increasingly involving and erotic until, finally, we accept its ellipses and rather large chunks of exposition that explain what happened before the movie started.
Next to Akane, the most important character in the film is Kyogoro, the elderly Kyoto tattooist who agrees to come out of retirement to execute one last work of art. As a psychiatrist might examine someone who wants a sex-change operation, the old man questions Akane at length about her motives, repeatedly making the point that the tattoo can’t guarantee happiness and may possibly ruin her life.
He further explains that the process is not only long and painful, but also that his methods are – well – unorthodox. Just how unorthodox, Akane doesn’t understand until her first session.
At that time, Kyogoro introduces her to his assistant, a handsome young man named Harutsune, whose function it is to lie naked under Akane, her back bare and her buttocks discreetly covered by a cloth, as the old man punctures her skin with tiny razor-sharp knives. Says the old man solemnly, ”A woman’s skin is most beautiful when it is embraced.” One might also think it would be difficult to execute a tattoo on a body that is writhing with such contradictory passions.
In no time at all, Akane has accepted this pain/pleasure routine and has become emotionally involved with the young man, though she never sees him outside the studio and never seems to think of leaving the lover for whom she is undergoing this transformation.
It’s not easy to describe ”Irezumi” without making it sound like more of a howler than it actually is. Mr. Takabayashi is more interested in esthetics than psychology. Freud has no place in this world. Though I’m not sure what the film’s concerns are, they are not to be analyzed in terms of character.
The film provides us with a glimpse into an ancient cultural system as it survives, in kinky shards, in contemporary Japan. In one of the film’s more arresting sequences, we see Kyogoro’s plain-faced daughter ironing clothes and watching television while, in the next room, Akane, Harutsune and Kyogoro continue their rigorous labors of love.
The performers, all unknown to me, are excellent, particularly Tasayo Utsunomiya as Akane. Mr. Takabayashi seems to be a serious romantic, his style being simultaneously rich, especially in his frequent use of flashbacks, and spare. I suspect too, that ”Irezumi” contains more wit and irony than we ever understand from the subtitles.
A Ritual IREZUMI – SPIRIT OF TATTOO, directed by Yoichi Takabayashi; screenplay ( Japanese with English subtitles) by Chiho Katsura, based on the novel by Baku Akae; photography by Hideo Fujii; music by Masaru Sato; produced by Yasuyoshi Tokuma and Masumi Kanamaru. At the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, Broadway, between 62d and 63d Streets. KyogoroTomisaburo Wakayama AkaneTasayo Utsunomiya FujiedaYusuke Takita HarutsuneMasaki Kyomoto KatsukoHarue Kyo HarunaNaomi Shiraishi HoriatsuTaiji Tonoyama
