Night of the Felines – 88 Films

Director: Noboru Tanaka
Screenplay: Akira Nakano
Starring: Tomoko Katsura, Ken Yoshizawa, Hidemi Hara, Keiko Maki, Hidetoshi Kageyama, Akemi Yamaguchi
Country: Japan
Running Time: 68 min
Year: 1972
BBFC Certificate: 18

88 Films continue to cast light on Nikkatsu’s previously under-appreciated (at least in the West) Roman Porno line by releasing Noboru Tanaka’s Night of the Felines (a.k.a. Mesuneko-tachi no yoru) on Blu-ray. I got hold of a copy to share my thoughts.

Noboru is considered by many critics to be one of the best of the Roman Porno directors. His work includes the Showa trilogy, comprising of A Woman Called Sada Abe (aka Sada Abe: Docu-Drama) (1975), Watcher in the Attic (1976), and Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture! (1977). Night of the Felines was his second film and it’s highly regarded enough to have appeared in Kinema Junpo’s list of the greatest Japanese films of all time, in 2009.

Night of the Felines explores the sexual dynamics within a Shinjuku Turkish bath (or ‘soapland’ as they’re often called today). Though following the activities of a number of girls there, the film primarily focuses on Masako (Tomoko Katsura), a sex worker, and her intricate relationships, particularly her sexual entanglement with her neighbour, Mr. Honda (Ken Yoshizawa).

The narrative explores the ripple effects when his seemingly homosexual friend, Makoto (Hidetoshi Kageyama) becomes involved with a young woman, creating a web of desire and emotional conflict.

Night of the Felines is an unusual film that I enjoyed a great deal. Whilst there are some bizarre things going on, usually in the bedroom (or rather bathhouse), this is a surprisingly naturalistic drama about sex workers that respects the women without damning or ridiculing them and without making them out to be tragic victims. It’s too idealistic, perhaps, but refreshingly positive.

Supposedly, the film was originally intended to be made in a semi-documentary style, examining the lives of the women that worked in Turkish baths in Japan. Whilst the end result doesn’t go that far, its loose, laid-back style does provide a fly-on-the-wall feel, even if it’s not what you’d normally call a docudrama.

There’s a great deal of visual poetry here too. For example, an umbrella is symbolically used in several scenes, including a shockingly tragic but elegantly visualised sequence. The very end of the film has an understated beauty too, making wonderful use of shutters opening in the city as the night is over and a new day has begun. The film is eloquently edited, in general. Reportedly, Noboru always planned to make the film more of a visual poem than a narrative feature.

Indeed, the plot is rather thin here. The only thread that’s particularly developed is that which follows the issues faced by Makoto. This storyline offers a fairly progressive look at sexuality. Makoto is an effeminate young man, who’s been making a living by offering compensated dates to middle-aged men. He falls in love with a girl for the first time but is afraid of having sex with her, having only been with men in the past.

The film looks at troubled masculinity too. We have very few of the virile male characters you might expect in a film about the sex industry. The most outwardly ‘manly’ protagonist, Honda, could be seen as being coded bi through his scenes with Makoto and he prefers to watch most of the time anyway.

There are several unusual touches and seemingly irrelevant scenes throughout the film. Some show different sexual kinks but others are just there (such as Honda’s bizarre way of eating cabbage). These fit Noboru’s poetic vision. There’s a lot of water symbolism throughout the film, for instance, and one scene has a strange man, who never appears again, drinking from an upturned umbrella.

There is some humour here too, but not as much as I’d been led to believe from some of the reviews I’d read about the film. This serves not only to lighten the tone (before the more tragic final act) but to breathe life into the film and make it feel more natural.

Though you see a lot of naked flesh and a couple of sex scenes, this is quite far from what most people would expect from a traditional ‘porno’. Most of the acts the women deliver for their clients are unusual and quirky rather than erotic. Instead, the film is about the characters in and around the Turkish baths. As such, those put off by the idea of watching a Roman Porno might find this a pleasant surprise.

The film looks great too, with bold use of colours, careful framing and plenty of camera movement to vitalise the gently rolling plot.

Before I tie things up, I must bring up the score by Kôichi Sakata. I loved the music here, which blends jazz with more flowing, plaintive cues. The use of the latter is particularly poignant in the final moments of the film.

Elegantly directed, beautifully shot and pleasingly scored, Night of the Felines is an unusual but quietly charming and occasionally moving film that’s truly one-of-a-kind. I didn’t always know what to make of it but I fell in love with it all the same.

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