尚未設定 尚未設定

85愛的鼓勵 0訂閱站台

“ What makes Battle Royale so unique is the way it depicts the inherent conflict as existed between the adults and the youth.” Discuss.



Battle Royale, a Japanese blockbuster, directed by Kinji Fukasaku in 2000, has a interesting yet controversial plot. Its plotline has been discussed by a lot of medias and politicians, and was almost banned by Nihon Kokkai because of its violent story.

The story happens at the dawn of the new millennium, the unemployment rate exceeds 15%, and 0.8 million of students are refused to attend school lessons (toko kyohi), and the adults lost their confidence and fear of the adolescences, eventually they passed the Battle Royale (BR) Act. It is a survival programme that forcing the students of a same class to fight against each other, only the last one survives can be set free. Weapons will be distributed to the students and then they have to kill their classmates.

The screenplay revealed the contemporary Japan, and depicted some current problems of the Japanese Society. One of them is the inherent conflict between youth and adults. Due to the difference in values, both of them are becoming dissatisfied with each other, gradually turning into a contradictory situation.

Changed value represents different expectations. After the World War II, the post war generation was always being input with a same set of value, and was taught with uniformity. Youth are always expected as diligent, decent, obedience, filial, since the elder generation had been working like that and built the economic miracle, and then this role expectation was brought forward to the next generation. This uniformity was promoted for decades. However, as the impact of westernization, individualism was developed among the Shin-Shinjinruis, they started to doubt with the old value. They do not satisfied with the adults, referring to their parents’ generation. Along with the explosion of the economic bubble and the economic downturn, afterwards, their dissatisfaction becomes intolerant.

The youth rebels. They don’t want to be such kind of adults, being stressed, being pressured by the economy, bosses and even their family members. They don’t want to behave as what the adults want, and the adults also hate the “misbehaved” youth. “The youth are futile”, “They dressed like weirdoes”, “They are impolite” are what they think. Kitano Sensei (starring Beat Takeshi) is a typical example of this kind of adults, he got stabbed by his student, no one attends his lesson, and her daughter, Shiori also showed no respect and did not want to talk with him even in the phone. In the phone dialogue, she showed her hatred to Kitano’s identity as a teacher. He seemed to be very busy for his work and always went home late. He was also unable to see his dying wife in hospital. This conflict between family and career is always the problem that can’t be solved for Japanese Man, especially for sarariman, they have to spend their happy hours with customers. They can only back home when the child have slept. It’s easy to understand why Shiori thinks that the father doesn’t care about the family.

After all, nearly all the students of 9th grade in Kitano’s class were typical Japanese adolescences, they are experiencing the stress of entering Senior High School. Gakureki is important to the Japanese society, graduates from famous universities like Todai and Soudai are always easy to get good and stable jobs. However, before entering university, students must experience the great pressure of juken (juken zigoku), these jukens are reinforcing the students’ uniformity, so the rebelling youngsters started to hate the adults that execute power on them, just like Nobu. He chose the way of escapism (he didn’t go to school for months) and violence to express his dissatisfaction and stress. Some may use money instead, so that girls may engage in Enjo Kosai, and some may even torch their classmates (Ijime). Unluckily, some can’t withstand with the stress from adults may end up in suicide, just like the girl jumped down from the cliff with a boy. She refused the bag containing weapons from teacher, we can see that she doesn’t want to be given weapons (knowledge) to survive in the game (society) by the teacher. This may also lead to Toko Kyohi or Hikkikomori. Indeed is it the only way to survive by listening the adults? They thought the existing value used by adults is out-dated. Adults don’t notice the dangers that the world is changing, they are still in the sweet dream before the economic bubble break, they can’t adapt to the changing world, just like the father of main character, Nanahara Shuya (Fujihara Tatsuya), he can’t find a new job after he was fired and killed himself.

In the movie, the situation of conflict was described with its unique story. The group processes power can set rules and make the other groups obey, then the powerless ones must follow, even that is unreasonable. For example, the BR Act is opposing to humanity, but the students and their parents can’t complaint with that, the teacher complained, but got bullets in return. We can see that violence is one of the authorities’ mean to execute power. This obedience to power can be extended to teacher and student, government and people, and of course parents (adults) and children (youth). Also, adults think what they do is always good for the student (this is only what they think, the youth may not think so), just like the announcement of grid from Kitano, they tell the children to avoid from danger, and help them to equip in order to survive. The youth have to do it, even if they don’t want or can’t, just like Shuya and Noriko, they were forced to leave the dangerous zone even if they are wounded. This possession of power makes the relationship between parents and children to become poorer, as the children has to obey even though they hate them. Like Shuya’s view to his parents, he thinks that they are irresponsible, because they leave or suicide as they want in the scene of coast. Not only Shuya, many of a youth (like Mitsuko) are living in single parent families too. We can see that there will be no or bad communication between the 2 generations. From the scene that Shuya went to restaurant with his father, Shuya didn’t say a word, and he only listened to his father’s carp and left as his father’s want. Their communication was just in single-way, and they had no interaction. So it was easy to see why Kitano’s relationship with his daughter was so poor, because they have no chance to communicate. Youth want to grow up, they want to be adults, but they don’t want to become adults like that. In the coast scene, Shuya said he didn’t trust any adults, and he would keep fighting to become a real adult. This showed how their value was different from adults, and this was the conflict.

To conclude, Youth don’t like the adults, the adults don’t like the youth. Because of the difference in expectation of the other party and the cruelty of reality, the conflict enlarges, and then the adults execute their force to force the youth to follow, then the youth rebel by all means, and then the adults will execute greater power, thus forming the vicious cycle. When the youth are trying to avoid from being ruled by adults, some chose to take violent actions like Nobu, some chose to sublimate, some chose to escape. When the game or Battle Royale goes, students’ attitudes vary, some treated the game very seriously, some were escaping from it, and some were even confusing of what they really want (such as the boy accidentally killed by Shuya with an axe), but the director showed what was the correct attitude. Nakakawa Noriko (Maeda Aki), is the ideal youth to Kitano (the only one shines in the last painting by Takeshi Kitano), she was the only one of not hating Kitano, was the ones survived at last. The other survivor is Shuya. He just wanted to escape from the game at the very beginning, he didn’t want to hold weapons, but wanted to survive. After encountering dangers, he gradually knew what should he do. He held a sub-machinegun and even pulled the trigger of the gun at last to kill Kitano Sensei. We can see the director’s viewpoint, that is no matter how hard how stressful, we can’t escape from the society, we must be armed and stand out to fight, to change the world that we are not satisfying with. So he used the word “Hashire!”(“Run!”) in red and bigger fonts to end the movie, encouraging the youth not just to engage in escapism, but to be active and stand out to fight for their own utopia.