Making of Shōnen and Nagisa Oshima’s Radical Approach to Filmmaking
Behind the Scenes of a Groundbreaking Film That Shaped Japanese Cinema
In this article, I will discuss the production background of Shōnen (Boy, 1969), a key work that propelled Nagisa Oshima to global recognition.
Although the content of this film and Nagisa Oshima himself are widely known in the West, few opportunities exist to learn about the production background, largely because so few related texts have been translated. As a result, it can be difficult to grasp why Oshima is regarded as such an important director in Japan.
Going forward, I plan to focus on these kinds of topics—including behind-the-scenes aspects of Japanese cinema—in this section. I hope it will serve as a stepping stone for readers interested in Japanese film, helping them gain a deeper understanding.
Let’s begin with the situation in the Japanese film industry at that time. In those days, roughly 90% of Japanese films were conceived by first deciding which star actor the company wanted to feature, and then determining what role that star actor would play. Moreover, many directors and other production staff were salaried employees of large corporations, typically having graduated from university.
Naturally, these corporate employees had no choice but to follow the decisions made by their higher-ups. Even if they had their own vision for a film, they usually had no chance to realize it. Oshima started out at Shochiku (one of the major studios of the time) in 1954, but he was skeptical about this production system from quite early on.
Over the course of his career, Oshima consistently pursued a different method: he would solidify the concept of the film he wanted to make, draft a script, and only then begin searching for actors. However, this approach was not possible at large studios, so in 1961 he left Shochiku and founded an independent production company called Sōzōsha.
Freeing himself from numerous constraints, Oshima found that professional actors often did not match his envisioned characters. This led him increasingly to cast amateurs with no acting background.
Shōnen was intended as a commemorative work marking the tenth anniversary of Oshima’s career as a director. It is based on a real-life 1966 incident known as the “Atariya scam using children.”
The term “Atariya (当たり屋)” refers to a criminal scheme in which someone intentionally jumps out in front of a car, gets hit, and then extorts excessive medical or settlement fees. During Japan’s postwar economic boom, as cars became more common on city streets, these Atariya emerged. But because they were primarily perpetrated around Osaka in the 1960s and did not attract widespread social attention, few people knew about them.
That changed in 1966, when a family began using their child in Atariya. They supported themselves by traveling from place to place across the country, repeatedly staging such incidents. Media coverage began in early September of 1966; the family was arrested just three days later, but during that short window, the story dominated the news.
Interest in the case cooled rapidly within two weeks, and it soon ceased to be reported at all.
At the time, Oshima had just finished Violence at Noon (Hakuchū no Tōrima, 1966) and was editing Tales of the Ninja (Ninja Bugeichō, 1967). Yet he was so deeply shocked by the “Atariya scam using children” story—particularly moved by the fate of the boy—that he immediately felt it should be the subject of a film. Indeed, he began developing the concept with three close collaborators in less than ten days after the incident had been resolved.
The script for Shōnen, written by Oshima’s longtime partner in filmmaking, Tamura Tsutomu, was highly acclaimed even in its draft stage. However, no major studio was willing to fund the project, not even Shochiku, Oshima’s original employer. The company that finally extended a helping hand was the Art Theatre Guild (ATG).
I will discuss ATG in more detail elsewhere, but in short, it was a film company born of a rebellion against the mainstream methods of large studios, with the aim of producing art-house films. One of its defining features was a focus on low-budget films, referred to as “10 million yen films”. ATG would cover half of the production costs (5 million yen), while the production team itself had to shoulder the remaining half plus any overage.
Having already partnered successfully with ATG for Death by Hanging (Kōshikei, 1968), Oshima was granted permission to make Shōnen—even though it took two years from initial concept to the start of filming. Yet a serious problem arose.
Shōnen was poised to be the first ATG “10 million yen films” shot in color, and Oshima also planned extensive location shooting all over Japan, retracing the footsteps of the original incident. Actual filming began in Kōchi, then moved on to Niihama, Onomichi, Kurashiki, Kitakyushu, Matsue, Kinosaki, Tango, Fukui, the San’in region, Takasaki, Yamagata, Akita, Wakkanai, Hakodate, Otaru, Sapporo, and Osaka—a roughly 7,400 km journey by train.
Naturally, the 10 million yen budget was nowhere near sufficient.
Still, driven by their passion to complete this ambitious work, Oshima and his team pulled off what was essentially a miracle. To make a long period of location shooting possible, they slashed the lodging costs for each staff member to around 60–70% of the usual rates.
Moreover, the entire production consisted of only fifteen people who worked across various roles and traveled from place to place together. Filming lasted from October 8 until February 2 of the following year—about four months in total—and they successfully wrapped all shooting.
In the end, production costs reached roughly twice the original budget. However, Oshima later remarked that “in practical terms, it was a 50 million yen-scale movie.” It cost only about half that in the end largely because local residents cooperated so generously, empathizing with Oshima’s vision. One could say that Shōnen was realized thanks to the goodwill of people in the regions where it was filmed.
At the time, shooting on location in Tokyo was already common, so local cooperation was not a given. But in rural areas, on-location filming was still a novelty. Many people were curious and eager to help, and the prevalence of young people in rural areas at the time also played a role. Because of this, Shōnen managed to be completed.
Deeply grateful for this support, Oshima decided to undertake a nationwide preview campaign before the official release of Shōnen, bringing the completed film to the local communities that had assisted with production. However, ATG’s distribution network was almost nonexistent outside large cities. If the film were released under normal circumstances, the people in those rural areas would have no chance to see it.
Therefore, Oshima made the unprecedented decision to hold preview screenings in towns where ATG’s films would not normally run, traveling around the country himself. Yet his own production company did not have the budget to organize these screenings. They had to find hosts who could cover venue fees, travel expenses, and other costs.
Incredibly, within just one month of announcing this plan, more than twenty towns had signed up to sponsor these preview events, with local residents—unrelated to the film industry—volunteering to raise funds and welcome Oshima.
As a result, from June 4 to July 11, 1969, approximately 43,000 people were able to see Shōnen in these advance screenings before its official release on July 26.
Not only does Shōnen have great thematic depth, but its production also encompassed many innovations. It was the first film to demonstrate that new methods of filmmaking—ones that would have been impossible for a major studio—could indeed succeed.
Of course, in film (and all forms of content), the quality of the work itself is paramount. However, by knowing the behind-the-scenes history that is not often discussed, we can arrive at a deeper level of understanding. Shōnen is a prime example of how a film’s significance can be illuminated by exploring the context in which it was made.