Japanese Metafiction: The Don Quixotesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell by Sion Sono José CarLos CaBRrEyO Universidad de Lima HEN DID THE KNIGHT of the Sorrowful Face first make the journey to Japan? Norio Shimizu (4) recounts char, in 1613, two ( years before Miguel de Cervantes published the second part of the advencures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Christianity was banned in Japan and trade with Spain was subsequently halted. ‘Ihe policy of volun- tary isolationism was broadened and solidified in 1641, which meant “a near toral closing off of the country to the rest of the world and consequently a lack of knowledge of Western styles, philosophies, and, nacurally, artistic and literary movements” (Cid Lucas 216). This isolationism lasted until approxi- mately the middle of the rth century. Only toward che end of that century were authors such as Goethe and Dante translated, in addition co the first translations into Japanese of the Spanish classic Dom Quixote, though based on English translations, and in some cases with illustrations showing Don Quixote dressed in samurai armor. The first Japanese translations directly from the original Spanish version of the novel began to appear in 1948 (Shimizu 5). The word “Quixote” even appeats in Kéjien, the famous Japanese dictionary, wich the following def nition: “Idealist, imaginative. An individual who, ignoring reality, launches him/herself imprudently into action, moved by a presumptuous and fancas- tical sense of justice” (Cid Lucas 215). Fernando Cid Lucas states that the Knight of the Sorrowful Face is pres- ent in Japanese culture in many forms: a chain of stores named Quixote, a 75% “The Don Quixoresque Fantasies of Wy Don't You Play in Hell 1986 anime film entitled Zukkoke Knight, the 1990s Sega videogame series called Clockwork Knight, incerpretations by the Kabuki theater actor Mat- sumoto Koshiro of Don Quixote in the musical The Man of La Mancha, and the films of Akira Kurosawa. Cid Lucas also states that the legendary filmmaker, who was inspired by the works of another Renaissance master, ‘William Shakespeare, to create films such as Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jé, 1957) and Ran (1985), demonstrates echoes of Cervantes’s famous character in Seven Samurai. In chis regard, in an interview published in the Revista de Estudios Cer- vantings, Anconio Santos tells us: “I believe chac nobody could have imag- ined a better adaptation of Don Quixote than Kurosawa’s—can you imagine asamurai Don Quixote played by Toshiro Mifune with Daisuke Kato (the fat one from Seven Samurai) as Sancho Panza? It would have been glorious!” And the professor from the Universidad de Cantabria has good reasons to think that the great Mifune would have embodied Don Quixote, particu- latly if we consider that ie was he who played an unparalleled Kikuchiyo in the mythical film Seven Samurai. And the fact is, there is much of Quixote in that role. To begin with, Kikuchiyo, similar co Alonso Quijano, is not a real samurai; he does not come from a family that is involved in that tradition (rather, he is the son of humble farmers), but ir is his desire to be a samurai that dubs him a knight. Similar to Don Quixote, his behavior does not re- semble that of a true samurai, which makes him che object of ridicule among his peers, given that he appears more as the caricature of a samurai than an authentic samurai, Both “errant knights” even use similar weapons, weapons - that are old and in disuse in La Mancha and disproportionate in Japan, both certainly of little use in combat. (Cid Lucas 223) The 20th century also produced many references about the reflexive nature of Don Quixote in Japanese literature. In 1928, the writer Edogawa Rampo published the novel Jyju (known in English as The Beast in the Shad- ows), in which the protagonist is a crime fiction writer engaged in a love tri- angle with a woman and a man who is also a novelist. The manner in which the narrator refers to the works of his romantic opponent brings to mind Cervantes’s descriptions of how Don Quixote imitated the characters in the novels he so obsessively read, The knight-errant and the crime fiction writer experience life similarly to the pages of a novel: whe was the kind of man you would call a 'fantasist about the criminal life’ In the gory pages of his manuscripts, he lived a criminal life wich the same passion a brutal killer feels whe he commits murder When IJosé Cantos Casanjo 7 was told that he had stopped writing novels and disappeared, I secretly imagined that he had pethaps sec up a base in the jumbled back streets of Asakusa and begun co put his fantasies inco action, much as he often de- scribed in his fiction. Would he be able to carry it out? Not six months had passed when he appeared before me as someone who did indeed intend to put his fantasies into action. (Rampo; Kindle edition) As far back as the year 1005, though, we find Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari), a work containing dialogues thac presaged those Cervantes would compose centuries later. The young character Tamazakura finds that the work The Tale of Sumiyoshi reflects her own experience: For her part, Tamazakura, who had never seen any of these books be- fore, enthusiastically attempted to read and copy them day and night. Young characters abotinded in the stories. She felc, however, that none of these characters, whether fictitious or real, resembled her, judging herself to be a heroine never before known to history. ‘The protagonist of The Tale of Sumiyoshi, For example, who in her time and even much later had awoken such interest among renders, seemed to her an extraor- dinary woman. However, Tamazakura could not help but recall the ver rible experience she herself had with Tsukushi upon reading about how Sumiyoshi was about to fall into the trap of Kazoe. (Shikibu in Rubio 427) Meanwhile, the characters Genji and Tamazakura reflect on the limits be- tween truth and lies, just as Don Quixote does in Chapter 3 of the second part of Cervantes’s novel with regard to what Cide Hamere Benengeli wrore about him in the first part of the book. The dialogue from Chapter 25 of ‘The Tale of Genji, called “Hotaru” (“Lightning Bugs”) provides an example about this: The cruth, however, is that, if it were noe for these old stories, we wouldn’t have a way to distract ourselves from the intolerable vedium of the days. I should also adinie that there are some among them that reveal feelings that can become real and unfold in a believable manner. ‘We know thac they are not real, but even so, it is impossible to prevent the heart from being moved for no reason, For example, when we read about an enchanting princess tormented by sad thoughts, some of our emotionsare swept along out of compassion toward her. However, there_ Tit Don Qiecresque Fantasies of Why Doo't You Play in Hell are also other stories that seem too fantastical and extravaganc to be real. Alchough, at frse, they arcract us becatise they aze well constructed and surprise us, when we reread them slowly, they cease co please us. Not long ago, I had the chance to listen to some women read stories to my daughter, [realized then that there are people in this world who know very well how to invent stories, though who knows if ic is because che lips of those who tell them are accustomed to lying. Don't you think? Yes, it could be, said Tamazakura. Although maybe those who tell them are capable of distinguishing lies from reality. For my pare, those stories always seemed true to me. (Shikibu in Rubio 427-428) Additionally, The Sarashina Diary (Sarashina Nikkei), written in the 1 cen- ‘tary, isa tale in which the main character engages in Quixotesque behaviors such as attempting to live similarly to the characters about whom he reads (Rubio 257). Even in the x5" century, there are the geiko monogatari, also known as “tales of imitation or pseudoclassics,” which, according to Rubio, parodied the monogatari! gente just as Don Quixote did with novels of chiv- ary: Humor, the grotesque, and the digression from love to sexuality found fertile terrain in chese stories. It was a situation comparable to that pro- duced at the end of the European Middle Ages, when the saturation of the novels of chivalry produced countless imitations of the classics of the genre in the 16 century up until the great parody by Miguel de Cervantes. (Rubio 261) Despite the metafictional approaches that appeared in Japanese literature even before the appearance of the classic by Cervantes, the mark of Don Quixote in contemporary Japanese prose is unavoidable. For instance, many literary scholars have found similarities beeween Cervantes's novel and those by Haruki Murakami. After Dark (2004), as do other of his books, resembles Don Quizcote in the manner in which it plays with dreams and realicy or fan- tasy and reality, Benito Garcta recalls that this literary text contains an carly use of the first person plural: ‘The face that the land is capable of interacting wich the protagonist is nartated nacurally and without astonishment, This supposes the intro- 1 According to Rubio, it is a “tale about things" (relato de cosas), a “tradi- tional nacrative style with an accent on its oral origins” (685).Jost Cantos Casreso 7 duction of a technique of magical realism in Japanese fiction, which the author uses in conjunction with a peculiar technique chat increases the level of implication of the reader in the fictional pact: the use of the first. person plural by the narrator, a technique that has not received sufi- cient attention in the basic treatises on narratology. Itis not a technique that is new to the form, given that an example of this grammatical per- son is found in Don Quixote: “In the First Part of this history we left che valiant Biscayan and the renowned Don Quixoce with drawn swords uplifted, ready to deliver ewo such furious slashing blows chat if they had fallen full and fair they would ac lease have split and cleft them asunder from top co toe and laid them open like a pomegranate; and at this so critical poine the delightful history came to a stop and stood cut short without any intimation from the author where what was missing was to be found (I, 65). As we can observe, this technique allows the author to enable the reader to be conscious about the process of fictionalization in this game of various soutces that Cervantes employed in his magnum opus. It supposes granting a certain level of participation ro the narra- ree, who is effectively forced to abandon the story and follow the narra- tor wherever he wishes to take him, In Murakami, the technique has a similar effect, though on a larger scale: it submerges the narrate in the process of narration itself, experiencing exactly the same sensations as the narrator, Wheieas in Don Quisore the first person plural informed the narrate ofa change in the story or in che materials that the narrator was employing, in Affer Dark, the technique provides the narratee with a physical presence in the tale, as chough he was part of the narrator, placing him at his level. (Garcia 227-228) Meanwhile, Hiroki Tomita indicates that writers such as Kenzaburo Oc and Yoshinori Shimizu make direct reference to Don Quixote in their works and utilize the same meratextual methods: However, we also find some authors who are careful and attentive read~ exs of Don Quixote, and itis possible to identify a significant influence of Cervantes work in their writing, This is no longer a mere influence but authentic emulation on the part of these authors at the level of metafic- tion. (835) In the novel by Oc entitled The Infant with a Melancholic Face (2002), a female character compares her relationship with the writer Kogito Choko80 ‘ont Quixatesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell (whom sheis researching to write a monograph about him) with that of Don Quixote and his squire, calling herself “Sancha” (Tomita 836). Meanwhile, Yoshinori Shimizu, a novelise known for his genre crossing and parodic or satirical pastiches (Tomita 839-840), presents various intertextual games in ‘The Descendant of Don Quixote (2007), a tale composed of episodes that is similar to the classic Spanish novel whose structure resembles the mecha- nism of Russians dolls. The first-person narrator is said to be writing a novel called “Miguel” which is about an elderly author who wishes co write the third part of che novel by Cervantes, goes crazy attempting to do so, and begins to chink that he himself is che one-armed man of Lepanto (el manco de Lepanto), Upon entering an asylum, he interacts with a professor who is convinced that he is William Shakespeare. Cervantes himself also appears to the narrator and speaks to him when he cannot finish writing the novel “Miguel.” Tomita states: ‘The Descendant of Don Quixote by Yoshinori Shimizu absorbs the entire structure of Don Quixose and that of its apocryphal second part by Avel- Janeda, becoming a literary crystallization of the discussion regarding parody, The novel by Shimizu includes considerations about the recep- tion of the Spanish work through translations and the historical context that gave rise to Don Quixote. Meanwhile, readers who took the narra- tor'’s “I” to be Shimizu are situated on the same level on which the char- acters in the second part of Don Quixote discuss upon reading the story of the knighe of La Mancha within that work. In this manner, we find ourselves faced with a work that is as complex as it is marvelous, which allows us to experience the structure of metafiction. (Tomita 842) Don Quixote is present in the Japanese novel as a character and as.a mode of constructing fiction, In the latter sense, another ceneral figure in Japanese literacure who approaches many of the narrative experiments em- ployed by Cervantes is Yasucaka Tsutsui, the author of books such as Paprika (1993) and stories including collections in Spanish such as Salmonella Men on Planet Porno and orher stories [Flombres salmonella en el planeta Porno y otros cuentos] (2010) and 4m Naked [Estoy desnudo] (2022). According to Fernando Iwasaki, the Asian writer is a “guru of metafiction? together with Borges, Calvino, Barth, Fowles and Vonnegut, among other authors (pro- logue to Tsutsui, Paprika 10). Toutsui’s writing is characterized by that which “in Japanese is called dotabata kigeki, ot slapstick in English” (Alvarez Cre-José Cantos Casrejo Br spo, interview published in Tsutsui 2010, 171), For Iwasaki, Japanese humor is deeply influenced by a form of Japanese parodic theater known as kydgen: ‘These brusque ruptures in the plot—frequently comic, vulgar, and even surrealise—are typical of manga because they have their remove ancestors in Aydgen theater, short and comic parodic performances set between two dramatic and tragic moments of Noh theater. To me, Ye- sutaka Tsutsui has constructed stupendous novels and stories based on the digressive and bizarre episodes of kydgen, and their influence can be observed in Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami. (Iwasaki, Pro- Jogue to Tsutsui, Paprika 11) What is certain is thar, ifthe theatrical roots of Tsutsui’s prose are indeed apparent, then we find in his work links to that confusion between reality and fantasy that is so characteristic of Don Quixote, such as in the story “The Daba Daba Tree.” in which some characters appear to manipulate their sleep states as though they were creating a fiction in accordance with their most repressed desires, fusing those states with reality, to such an extreme that the characters come to be conscious that they are parc of another person’s dream. ‘The story “The Crash of the Crazy Bus” which tells of che manner in which different male characters bother or approach @ young woman inside a bus, is practically incerrupced in the same manner as the fight becween Don Quix- ote and the Biscayan in the first part of Cervantes’ novel: And, well, friends, from this moment forward, it no longer makes sense to continue che story, as much as I may try. The cale ends here, (Teutsui, 1 Am Naked 197) Yasuraka Tsutsui’ stories have been adapted into not only manga bat also anime, such as Paprika (Papuriita, 2006) by Satoshi Kon, a filmmaker who also leans toward portrayals of “film within film” and the interplay of parallel worlds in his anime entitled Perféct Blue (Pafekicto buru, 1997). How- ever, returning to the field of manga, the legendary author Osamu Tezuka represents himself in his own works as Astro Boy, explaining, for example, the details of how he created that famous robotic character. Additionally, he does so with the same skill with which Cervantes makes reference to himself through a character in the chapter of the scrutiny and burning of the books in Dom Quixote. Similacly, che scriptwriter Tsugumi Ohba and illuscracor ‘Takeshi Obata create their alter egos in Bakwman, a “manga within a manga”82 ‘The Don Quixotergue Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell starring ewo boys who dream of becoming famous through their writing and drawing manga. Rerurning to film, beyond the Quixotesque echoes of some characters in Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa demonstrates additional metafictional pre- occupations similar to those of Cervantes in Rashomon (Rashémon, 1950), film in which the characters’ contradictory perspectives on the same crimi- nal act speak to the thin line between reality and fiction. The filmmakers of the Japanese New Wave, which arose in the 1950s and is also known as mu- beru bagu, were guided in some cases by mise en abime. This is the case with Shéhei Imamura’ The Pornographers (Erogotoshi-tachi yori: Jinruigaku nytt mon, 1966), which shows charactets who ate ensconced in erotic filmmaking and similar businesses; and Seijun Suzuki, who violates the conventions of yakuza films altering the raccard with suggestive symbols in the style of mod- ern Buropean film (nouvelle vague, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Busuel, etc.) in Branded to Kill (Koroshi no Rakin, 1967); ox hybridizing it wich the traits of musicals and westerns in Tokyo Drifter (Tokio Nagaremono, 1966). Even the gente films of those years contain a multiplicity of references to other films, such as the pastiches created by the filmmaker Jun Fukuda in his films wieh giant monsters (the kai eigas). He has made films that imitate shamelessly, from scenes of dueling cowboys out of spaghetti westerns (Godzilla vs, Me- chagodzilla or Gojira tai Mekagojira, 1974) to the televised images of lucha libre or soccer games (Son of Godzilla ot Kaijtish no hessen: Gojira no musuko, 1967). Recent Japanese cinema has given usa range of filmmakers with an in- terest in cinematic reflexivity, ranging from Hirokazu Koreeda of After Life (Wandafuura raif, 1998), which shows characters recreating thei most pre- cious memories in films, to Takashi Miike, pechaps the most metafictional filmmaker of contemporaty Japanese cinema. He moves progressively and in a sucreal manner from a love story to sophisticated hossor in Audition (Odishon, 1999), introduces the graphic and shocking violence of manga within the world of yakuza films in Fudoh: The New Generation (Gokudé sen- _golushi: Fudd, 1996) and Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, 2001), or also combines them through bizarre humor with subplots involving vampires, zombies, or aij eiga in Yakuwca Apocalypse (Gokudou daisensou, 2015). In his simultane ously comic and extreme aspects, Mike appears as a hyperbolic successor to Cervantes, who also represented che body cruelly, chough with che ineention of mocking in a carnivalesque spirie other genre conventions—those belong- ing to novels of chivalry.José Cartos Caprio 33 INFERNAL MISE EN ABIME The notion of Don Quixote as metafictional ghost wandering in the land of the rising sun is not surprising. According to Lauro Zavala, metafiction is one of the traits of modern fiction, and Don Quixote (che first part published in 1605 and the second in 1615) is among its most emblematic representa- tions (Zavala 191). For Zavala, if we combine the modes in which different authors understand metafiction, then we arrive ac the following definition: “narrative writing whose central interest consists of putting in evidence, in a lucid manner, che conventions of language and literature” (Zavala 203). ‘As noted in the above paragraphs, however, metafiction is as recurrent in literacure as itis in film. If we delve into the vasied Japanese contemporaty films of this new decade, we find. a movie, Why Don’t You Play in Hell (2013) by Sion Sono, that combines three main stories. This film not only demon- strates but also broadens the manner in which the metafictional spirit of the classic by Cervantes emerges onscreen, One story is about Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), a film director's apprentice with a thin, lanky body similar to chat of Don Quixote who is the leader of the Fuck Bombers, a group of young people who dream of making great film and who pray at the altar ofa “God of Cinema’ that they may achieve that dream. Another story addresses the confrontation becween two yakuza clans, one led by Taizo Muto (Jun Kun- imura) and another by Ikegami (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi), who is romantically obsessed with Taizo Muto’s daughter, Mitsuko (Fumi Nikaidé), the star of a toothpaste commercial. In the third story, fate leads Mitsuko to meet a young man named Koji (Gen Hoshino), who, similar to Ikegami, professes his platonic love for her ever since seeing her in advertisements. This fateful encounter leads to problems for her with the yakuza of the Muto clan. Inwhat manner is Why Don't You Play in Hell linked to the novel by Cer- vantes? To answer this question, we can analyze how both stories deploy their respective metafictional strategies, caking as a point of reference the definition by Lauro Zavala in his book Irontas de la ficcién y la metaficcién en cine y litera- tura [Ivonies of Fiction and Metafiction in Film and Literature). One of these strategies is the aforementioned mise en abime, which, according to Robere Stam, refers to an “infinice regress of mirror reflections to denote the literary, paintetly, or filmic process by which a passage, a section, or a sequence plays our in miniature the processes of the text as a whole” (Scam XIV). Under this dynamic of film “within film, of painting “within painting,” or literature “within literature” we find films such as Fransois’Truffaue’s Day for Night (La nuit américaine, 1973), which portrays the filming of a feature film; a literary work such as Enrique Vila-Matas’ El mal de Montano (2002), with its nara8s ‘The Don Quixotesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell tor/twriter character who suffers from an illness that makes him obsessed with. literature; or a painting such as Jan van Eyck’s “Portrait of Giovanni Amolfini and his wife,” which contains in the background a mitror that reflects the chatacters who are in the foreground of the painting. Just as Don Quixore focuses on Alonso Quijano’s desire to experience reality as a fiction inspired by the novels of chivalry chat he has read, Why Don't You Play in Hell portcays the ambition of Hirata and his Fuck Bombers co passionately give their entire lives over to the dream of creating a fearure film. Both texts, literary and cinematic, portray protagonists who are moved bya passion that denies reality through a narrative fantasy. What is interest- ing is that, in both cases, characters assume this fantasy through a surrender to the gods. In Why Don’t You Play in Hell, Hirata leaves a letter in the mail- box of a temple thar states the following: “Dear God of Movies, help me to make a great film. Call me, Hirata.” Hirara is a character guided by a type of religious belief to build a cin- ematic world in che same manner in which Don Quixote is propelled by his faith in God and his desire to live similarly to che Christian gentlemen he reads about in books. In the passage of the novel dedicated to the Princess Micomicona, the gencleman knight tells her that he will restore her to che throne with the help of God and his arm: wand so, lady, you may from this day forth lay aside the melancholy that discresses you, and let your failing hopes gather new life and strength, for with the help of God and of my arm you will soon see yourself re- stored to your kingdom, and seated upon the throne of your ancient and mighty realm, notwithstanding and despite of the felons who would gainsay ic. (I, 29) In other chapters, Don Quixote entrusts himself not only to God and his arm but also to Duleinea del Toboso: God, my lady, and my arm stand me in good stead, I shall see your face, and you shall see that Lam noe the vanquished Don Quixote you take me to be. (II, 14) In like manner, Hirata not only appeals to God but is also a body char- acterized by intene and apprehension,* by a very intense love for fiction and 2 — For Jacques Fontanille, zzent is “to perceive a presence more or less in- tensely” (2006, 14). He states chat affect is the intensity that charactezizes the linkJosé Cartos CanRejo 85 an obsession centered on it, which leads him to attempe to focus his film project on a pragmatic dimension: manipulating the Mutzo clan so that he can give the necessary directions for the filming of a movie about a confron- tation between yakuza or carcying in his arms the reels of the film that will immortalize his work toward the end of the movie. Regardless, the supposed presence of the divine is the backdrop that allows both characters to experi- ence reality as fiction, as Cervantes’s protagonist states when he tells Sancho the following about his desire to be the governor of an island: “Leave it to God, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for all will be and per- haps berter than you think; no leaf on the tree stirs but by God's will.” (Hs) Devotion to God by a Don Quixote who imitates che fictional charac- certs of chivalric texts is also framed within the so-called madal codes (Fonea- nille 2001, 186), which are sustained chrough passional contagion. The main character's love of God is transmitted to Sancho Panza, who assumes this consideration as companion on chivalrous adventures. The character ex- presses this in a passage in the novel: “and if I had no other meric save that T believe, as I always do, firmly and truly in God, and all the holy Roman Catholic Church holds and believes” (If, 8). In his quest to liken himself co the characters in novels of chivalry, Don Quixote must have a squire, chus emulating his idol, Amadis de Gaula, who had Gandalin. For Hirata, making films implies having a partner to accompany him on his filmmaking adyen- tures, Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi) appears in that role, When Hirata meets the between the body and the world: “This tension toward the world, is a matter of intentional intent” (15). Meanwhile, “position, area, and quantity characterize, on the other hand, che limits and the properties of the domain of pertinence, that is to say, those of apprebension” (15). Hence, to summarize, Fontanille posits that presence is the object of two semiotic operations by the body proper: intent, which is character- ized by greater or lesser intensity, and apprebension, which is more or less extended. According to Claude Zilberberg (455), intensity is manifested through two sub-di- mensions: tempo (velocity, which is more intense if it is quick and less intense if it is slow) and tonicity (accent, more intense when tonal, less intense when atonal). With regard to its extension, he states that “it has as’a generative tension the pair [concen- trated vs, diffuse); it incorporates two sub-dimensions: temporality and spatiality” (450). Regarding temporality, that which is brief is concentrated (less excended,) and the long is diffuse (more extended.) Regarding spatiality, that which is closed is concentrated, less extended (for example, che close-up in a film): reversely, che open is diffuse, more extended (for example, the general long shot in a film.)86 The Don Quixatesquie Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell leader of a gang, he tells him: “You will be my action stax” At another point in the film, he assures him that he will be “the Japanese Bruce Lee” “The alter ego of Alonso Quijano views in his companion che marks of the prototype of a fictional character, that of the squire in novels of chivalry, and Hirata sees in Sasaki che ideal interpreter easily assimilated to the mythi- cal characters of film and the martial arts. These couples of master-squire tha appear in Don Quixote and Why Don't You Play in Hell are split into two thematic roles! that remain pervasive throughout the stories, one in which the protagonist fills the role of the /dreamer/ and the other in which his companion assumes the role of the /realist/. If Sancho Panza tealizes that he is facing a windmill, then the gentleman knight perceives a giant. Where one hears bleating, the other hears equine and musical sounds: “How canst thou say that!” answered Don Quixote; “dost thou not hear the neighing of che sceeds, the braying of the trumpets, the roll of the drums?” “hear nothingbut a great bleating of ewes and sheep” said Sancho. (1,18) ‘The ever-smiling Hirava, who lives with the incessant fantasy of ditect- ing a great film, comes into conflice wich the harsh Sasaki, who believes that creating a full-lengch feacure is a mere utopia, In.a scene during which they talk about this film, the latter refers to it as “a shitty movie” and renounces the project, ridding himself of the yellow and black suit and Bruce Lee’s nunchaku characteristics in he film Game of Death (Robert Clouse, 1978). He also states: “How long did God say it would cake to make chis film? [...] "Ten years have gone by, and we are still making amateur films [...]. And chose cameras! Now they're video” (the Fuck Bombers work with analog cameras and film). Sasaki resembles Sancho Panza, and he is conscious of the ob- stacles that Hiraca faces in achieving his cinematic dream and his staunch adherence to the past, with its old cameras from before the digital boom. However, he remains submerged in his fantasy, similar to Don Quixote, al lowing ws to associate him to a godlike subject in statements such as “You'll anger the film gods” “God of Film, kill thae poor bastard [Sasaki],” and “My 3 For Greimas and Courtés, the concept of the cole in narrative and discur- sive semiotics becomes a “synonym of “fanction’ (in che common sense of the term) [.] the thematic roles constitute the accantial model of the themes or thematic at- cas” (344). Itis common for thematic roles to be set apart with backslashes on either side, For example, it can be argued that Don Quixote assumes the thematic roles of /vigilante/, Jadvenurer/, /oral narrator/, etcJost Cantos Caprejo desire is to make another master work, not commercial film {...] sacred shit, divine shit” Don Quixote approaches novels of chivalry as though they were sacred texts dictating how he should lead his life, and Hirata finds in film a sacred manner of existing in the world.* They draw upon a god (whether ic is that invoked by errant knights or that of film) that becomes a figure employed as part of a recreated religion,’ adjusted by them to the insent of the fiction that they read or wish to creare. In terms of Hirata, this is demonstrated by the fact that he affirms the existence of a God of Film with an altar that resembles that used in Shincoism. In terms of Cervantes’s character, this is made palpable by the fact that the character of the priest, with the help of the barber, in one of the early and most famous chapters in the Spanish novel, perceives the manner in which Don Quixote buries himself in reading nov- 4 The religious link between a character and fiction is a link that appears in other contemporary Japanese films such as Gut (Amir Naderi, 2011), in which the protagonist, obsessed wieh reasserting film as an are and attacking commercial cinema, feels a divine contact upon touching the geaves of deceased directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiru Ozu, He cures the wounds chat he suffers because of blows that he received by some men in exchange for money (to paya debt to a yakuza clan) by projecting the light of his favorite films onto his own bruised body, 5 This is not susprising, given that Matteo Boscarol detects in other films by Sion Sono such as Suicide Club (Jisatsu sdkura, 2001) and Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi, 2008) a view of religion as a sect, which is similar to the sacred view of film in Why Don't You Play in Hell. According to Boscarol, “it is important to note that because religion and sectarianism are nearly synonymous for Sono, at least in terms of the manner in which his works are oriented and develop” (43). For C! Fujiwara, sects are a recurring figure in contemporary Japanese cinema, which is evi- denced in other titles such as The Soup, One Morning (Aru asa, soup wa, 2005) by Taumi Takashi, Canary (Kanaria, 2004) by Akihiko Shiota, and United Red Army (itsuroku Rengo Sekiguri, 2007) by Koji Wakamatsu: “Sects play a role in several recent Japanese films, representing the psychological intensity of the impulse to sac- rifice one’s own individuality in favor of social cohesion, in the context of the impze- cise, poorly developed, and insolvent nature of relations in society generally” (30). In the case of the novel by Cervantes, Eloy Caballero states that the Christian faith that the knight-errant professes is not “pure.” For example, it is mixed with elements not unlike pagan mythology: “For example, after his beating by the Galician muletcers, he blames his bad forcune, accusing the god of battles of obligating him to face foes who, similar to the muleteers who battered him, are not armed gentlemen, Addi- cionally, before a fight in Sierra Morena, he remembers the rustic gods, their lecher- ‘ous satyrs, and the nymphs whom they pursued in vain” (20145 Kindle edition). is38 ‘The Don Quixoresgue Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell els of chivalry as a transgression and hence decides to set fire vo some of the books that he believes are brainwashing Alonso Quijano. “The fire in Don Quixote is not only a figure that suggests authoricy, rep- resented by the priesc in the famous chapeer on the burning of the books, but also an instrument that serves as a modal object of value of that character to destroy the qualities of fiction thar make the protagonist crazy. In this manner, Why Don't You Play in Hell contains this same contestatory spirit of Don Quixote, who is confronted with adult or hierarchical figures that do not understand that he experiences life as fiction because, deep down, the gentle- man knight with his aged body possesses the soul of a child, completely be- lieving in a fictional fantasy wichout distinguishing its borders wich reality. "Toward the end of the film by Sion Sono, police gunfire bloodily ineerrupes the filming of the epic yalatza confroncation by Hirata and his partners. The police play the same thematic /repressor/ role as does Cervantes’ priest. Inboth texts, fire possesses its traditional symbolic function asa purifier, wich the particularity that the priest in the Cervantes novel and the police in Sono’ film understand that the reality hac they inhabic should be cleansed of any sort of staging, whether thar which conceives of che world asa land of knightly adventures of that which uses the urban space as a film ser. Staging ficcion isa sacrilege that should be met with a bonfire to condemn books or the actors in a film.§ This does not erase the fact that Don Quixote and Hirata require some powerful subjects to live reality as fiction, only that it occurs primarily in an economic sense. In the encounter with the dukes in the second part of ss novel, these noblemen invest in numerous theattical resources 6 Eloy Caballero believes chat the chapter involving the burning of the books presents 2 figurative critique of an inquisitor Catholicism thatis liable ro burn all chat ic perceives as heretical. In this sense, he claims that the knightly notions that so obsessed Don Quixote offer a glimpse of a freedom of conscience that is characteristic of Protestantism: "The burning of the books of chivalry, which were che escapist fiction of the era and the reading of which brainwashed Alonso Quijano, has teadicionally been interpreted as another metaphorical critique by Cervantes of the Catholic church, which was closed and solidly in defense of the Council of Trent, ready co butn anything that smelled of heresy. From this perspective, the chivalrous ideas could represent the Protestant current, or at least chat of respect for freedom of conscience as advocated by Ricote. Don Quixote would thus be a reader of reforsn- ise books that made him lose his Catholic faith, and hence, as he goes out to defend the ideas that have driven him crazy, he would also be a paladin of Luther or atleast Erasmus who wanders undercover in ultra-papal post-Trent Spain. If this hypothesis wore correct, then Cervantes would be safe” (2014; Kindle edition).Jos# Cantos Canrsjo 8 to make the gentleman knight and his squire feel as though they actually live in a literary and knightly world. For his pare, the character of Muto in Why Don't You Play in Hell finances cameras and lighting equipment co bring about the film that will be authentically directed by Hiraca, achieving not only his dream of seeing his daughter star in a film but also the direceor’s dream of bringing to life his first feacure film. ‘The dukes and Muto nout- ish great deliriums, and they do so inspired by written or audiovisual texts, respectively. If the dukes create for Don Quixote and Sancho Panza a stag- ing based on readings of the first book of Cervantes’s most popular novel, then the leader of the yakuza clan facilitates the making of a film as an act of nostalgia for the televised images of his daugheer in her days as a star in advertisements. The nobles and yakuza are essential actors because they play the role of helpful subjects for characters who wish to experience reality as though ie were not realicy. ‘THEMATIZATION OF THE READER/DIRECTOR Two major metafictional strategies can be identified in Dori Quixote and Why Don't You Play in Hell: the themnatization of the reader (Zavala 278) and the thematization of the director (Zavala 2.49), respectively. In both cases, we Se i they lose their grip on sanity. In the first chapter of the novel by Cervantes, one reads with regard to Don Quixote and the novels of chivalry that “he became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too lite sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him tolose his mind, His fancasy filled with everything he had read in his books...” (2). Iv is liter- ary insanity that leads him to delight obsessively in the adventures of errant knights and to act like them in the world outside of books. Tn time, Sasaki himself comes to perceive Hirata’s insanity. Upon recog- nizing himself as a director, he recalls that he made a film about hard-boiled eggsin his adolescence, stating, “as usual, that day [was making a film {about awaramong hard-boiled eggs] [..]. We Fuck Bombers made the craziest lms inall of Japan.” Similar to the gencleman knight, Hirata occupies all his time and space building a fiction and in a regular, constant, and methodical man- ner, that is, in terms of programmiing (Landowski 81). In this respect, Don Quixote is the precursor of a type of character who is charactetistic of contemporary film, the borderline, defined by Gérard Im- bert as follows:90 The Don Qutxotesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell The borderline subject is a subject of rupture with the system—disin- tegrated—adrift, withour spatial and temporal reference points. ‘This subject is not forcibly marginalized in the socioeconomic sense of the world but is situated at the edges and can fall into anomie (behavior ac the margins of norms) and, eventually, at the exeremes (risky behaviors). He or she is characterized by chaotic interpersonal relations and easily uncontrolled behavior, existing in unstable moods, in a continual emo- tional vertigo: he has lost the notion of limits... Ie can be a pathology corresponding to a personality disorder that is psycho-neurological in origin—"borderline personality disorder” the experts call ic—but I pre- fer to use the term in its trivial sense of aloss of limits, similar co an entre- deux stave becween reason and lack of reason. (Imbert 266) Inthe novel, Quixote is referred to asa subject who travels between san- ity and insanity. In the first part of the novel, he views reality as a chivalric novel, whereas Sancho Panza perceives reality as it is. In the second part, however, these perceptions shift between the ewo, which leads to Don Quix- ote’s total recovery of his sanity just moments before his death in the last chapter. Similarly, che Knight of the Sorrowful Face does not feel chat he belongs to a “village of La Mancha’ of the early Renaissance period but to some land of medieval knights. The act of placing himself in risky situations also implies a borderline traie in cerms of being on the margins of the norm, as in the chapter regarding the adventure of the galley slaves. In this chapter, he justifies his intention to liberate the chained men, recalling the “the order of knighthood” upon which he swore to help op- pressed people: All which presents itself now to my mind, urging, persuading, and even compelling me to demonstrate in your case the purpose for which Heav- en sent me into the world and caused me co make profession of the order of chivalry to which I belong, and the vow I took therein to give aid to those in need and under the oppression of che scrong. (I, 22) Following an “order of knighthood” that only exists in the pages of the books that he reads, Quixote faces the commissary charged with guarding the galley slaves and succeeds in liberating them. However, the slaves view the attempt to free them as madness on the part of Alonso Quijano’ alter- ego.’ The slave Ginés de Pasamonte is described by the narratoras being aware that Don Quixote is insane, and hence, in response, Don Quixote is pelted with rocks and robbed:Jost Cantos Casreyo 91 Pasamonce, who was anything but meek (being by this time choroughly convinced that Don Quixote was not quite right in his head as he had committed such a vagary as to set them free), finding himself abused in this fashion, gave the wink to his companions, and falling back they be- gan to shower stones on Don Quixote ar such a rave that he was quite tunable co protect himself with his buckles, and poor Rocinante no more heeded the spur than if he had been made of brass. Sancho planted him- self behind his ass, and with him sheltered himself from the hailstorm that poured on both of them, Don Quixote was unable to shield himself so well bue that more pebbles than I could count struck him full on che body with such force chat they brought hima to the ground; and che in- stant he fell the student pounced upon him, snatched the basin from his head, and with ie struck three or four blows on his shoulders, and as many more on the ground, knocking it almost co pieces. ‘They then stripped him of a jacket that he wore over his armour, and they would have stripped off his stockings if his greaves had not prevented them. From Sancho they took his coat, leaving him in his shire-sleeves; and dividing among themselves the remaining spoils of the battle, they went each one his own way, more solicitous aboue keeping clear of the Holy Brother- hood they dreaded, than about burdening themselves with the chain, or going to present themselves before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso. The ass and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote, were all chat were left upon the spot; the ass with drooping head, serious, shaking his ears from time to time as ifhe thought the storm of stones that assailed them was not yet over; Rocinante stretched beside his master, for he too had been brought to the ground bya stone; Sancho stripped, and erembling with fear of the Holy Brotherhood; and Don Quixote fuming to find himself so served by the very persons for whom he had done so much. (1, 22) ‘The galley slaves ate aware of Don Quixote’s borderline character, and hence, they treac him with ridicule and violence. This is the same situation faced by Hirata, Sasaki, and the Fuck Bombers as chey film a martial asts scene in a park. They are dressed as fictional characters and are made fun of by children playing soccer nearby, one of whom shouts, “look at that idiot!” Hirata is the object of sarcasm and verbal aggression merely because, similar to Don Quixote, he is a borderline individual who demonstrates his love for staging fiction amid.a distant and indifferent reality Ie is also because he conftonts the norm, negotiating with a yakuza clan or allying himself with a gang member as a teenager to make the film that he dreams of making.2 The Don Quixatesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell Alchough a member of the group strikes him, Hiraca tells them that chey are “great asking his Fuck Bombers to get a shot and begin recording, He expe- riences cinema to the extreme in the same manner in which Don Quixote experiences the fictional world of literary works as real. PARALLEL OR SIMULTANEOUS WORLDS Another of the metafictional strategies described by Lauro Zavala (250-258) is that of parallel or simultaneous worlds. In a way, what Don Quixote and Why Don's You Play in Hell have demonstrated is that both tales counterpose owo things: fiction—whether read or watched (chivalry and cinematogra- phy)—and staging, versus reality as configured in the text, which denies and contradicts that fiction, In this manner, as worlds chat are opposed by focusing, respectively, on what is (che reality represented) and what seems (fiction, which is contrary co that), the veridictory square of Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Coureés can help us understand them based on how they ate arranged in the follow- ing graphic proposed by Desiderio Blanco (127): {being seeming} [being/seeming] {sccming being] Evident truth. Verified truth EVIDENCE TRUTH AUTHENTICITY {bcing.non- {seeming. seeming] ; non-being] HIDDEN Seeming | MIRAGE [bcing/non- {sceming/ seeming) non-being] SECRET ILLUSION [non-seeming. , ‘ [non-being being] Non - seeming Non-being | sceming) MYSTERY SIMULACRUM Tnon-sceniing.non-being) _[non-sceming/non-being) __{noa-being.non-sceming] FALSE APPEARANCE FALSENESS FALSE MYSTERY ImacE 1. D. Blanco, Semidtica del texto filmico (Lima: Univ. de Lima), 2003, pez.Jost Cantos CapRejo 93 “The relationship between the yakuza clan leader Ikegami and the idol- ized Mitsuko, daughter of Taizo Muto, is the same as that established by Don Quixote with his beloved Dulcinea, Cervantes’s character perceives her by locating her at the coordinate of “fusion” [seeming non-being]. In other words, che Lady of Toboso “is not what she seems.” In the mind of the gentle- man knighe, she maintains an appearance that is comparable to the beauty of the muses in novels of chivalry (a beauty that is similar to that of Oriana, the character created by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in his aforementioned classic of chivalric literature) and hence does not correspond to what is, to veality. She is simply the imaginary mask of Aldonza Lorenzo, a character better captured by Sancho Panza in terms of “Auchenticity” (seeming.being] as someone who “is what she seems” describing her as a manly and robust woman: “[ know her well? said Sancho, “and let me tell you she can fling a crow- bar as well as the lustiese lad in all the town. Giver of all good! bur she is a brave lass, and a right and stout one, and fit to be helpmate to any knight-etrant that is or is to be, who may make her his lady: the whore- son wench, what sting she has and what a voice! I can tell you one day she posted herself on the top of the belfry of the village to call some la- bouters of theirs that were in a ploughed field of her father's, and though they were better than halfa league off they heard her as well as if they were at the foot of the towers and che best of her is that she is not 2 bie prudish, for she has plenty of affabilicy, and jokes with everybody, and has a grin and a jest for everything, So, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance, I say you not only may and ought to do mad freaks for her sake, but you have a good right to give way co despair and hang your- self; and no one who knows of it but will say you did well, chough the devil should rake you; and I wish I were on my road already, simply to see her, for it is many a day since I saw her, and she must be altered by this time, for going about the fields always, and the sun and the air spoil women’s looks greatly, But I must own the cruth to your worship, Senor Don Quixote; until now I have been under a great mistake, for I be- lieved truly and honestly that the lady Dulcinea must be some princess your worship was in love with, or some person great enough to deserve the rich presents you have sent her, such as the Biscayan and the gal- ley slaves, and many more no doubr, for your worship must have won many victories in the time when I was not yet your squire. But all chings considered, whar good can it do the lady Aldonza Lorenzo, I mean the34 The Don Quixotesgue Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell lady Duleinea del 'Toboso, to. have the vanquished your worship sends ot will send coming to het and going down on their knees before her? Because may be when they came she'd be hackling flax or threshing on the threshing floor, and they'd be ashamed to see her, and she'd laugh, or resent the present.” (I, 25) Sancho Panza’s description bluntly indicates that Aldonza Lorenzo is not a character in realicy, saying, “until now I have been under a great mis- take, for I believed truly and honestly thar the lady Dulcinca must be some princess your worship was in love with, or some person great enough co de- serve the rich presents you have sent her” (I, 25) Unlike the Knight of the Sorrowful Face, the squire is conscious of the “true identity” of the Lady of Toboso. In this sense, if Aldonza Lorenzo belongs to the “teal world” and Dul- cinea del Toboso belongs to che imaginary world of chivalric literature, then the young and rebellious Mitsuko is opposed to the young and sweet Mit- suko as imagined with romantic fervor by Ikegami. In the film by Sion Sono, ic is not a book that produces the idealized conception of a woman but a television screen. In one of the first sequences in the film, Tkegami notes the difference between the Mitsuko who functions asa “reflection”—as a character who is not what she appears to be: a girl on television wich a sweet expression and an innocent dance—and the Mitsuko who reveals herself to be very differ- ent from this, with a stern gaze and an authoritative voice (“What the hell did you do to our floor, Clean it up” she tells che yakuza), to the extent that she is unaffected by the river of blood thar her mother leaves after attacking some members of the opposing clan. The true Mirsuko develops a /violent/ thematic role chat resembles not only that of the virile Japanese gangsters but also chat of the masculine Aldonza Lorenzo. The link that Don Quixote and Ikegami establish through the women whom they idealize not only spans the opposition between the “real” world and the “fictional” world of a book or a television commercial but also in- volves a link between what is lived and what is dreamed. In Jater scenes in Why Don't You Play in Hell, tkegami experiences a dream in which Mitsuko dances as she does in the toothpaste commercial, in a shadowy setting and in a low key while he clownishly imitates her movements and gestures. In Cervantes’s novel, dreams are commonly contaminated by fiction, as in the chapter about the wineskins, which he attacks with his sword in a sleepwalk- ing state as though they were enemies straight out of a tale of chivalry; orJosé Cantos CaBriyo 9s in the Cave of Montesinos, in which he falls asleep and imagines himself interacting with a gallery of characters typical of the literature with which, he is obsessed. The dream Don Quixote recounts upon leaving the Cave of Montesinos hhas hallucinatory, lysergic echoes but cannot capture the fictional world of chivalry that he perceives around him. This same fictional contamination is present in the sequence from Why Don’t You Play in Hellin which Koji, who is in love with Mitsuko, accidentally consumes cocaine and then sees her fighting with her sword surrounded by psychedelically colored images. In his hallucination, Miesuko appears as an idealized figure of the yakuza genre, one of the most popular in Japanese cinema. The representation of the feminine in Don Quixote and Why Don’t You Play in Hell can be synthesized in a semi-symbolic system.’ the plane of ex pression counterposes (using a “vs.” —versus— sign) a feminine figure of the modality of what eruly i (Aldonza Lorenzo/young Mirsuko) with a femi- nine figure of the modality of what seevas (Dulcinea del Toboso/Mitsuko as achild), juse as on the plane of content, with respect to these characters, the issue of /masculinity/ is contrasted (also using the “vs.” sign) to /femininity/ and that of /fiction/ (chivalric tales or advertisements) to that of /reality/: ‘Woman who /is/ vs. Woman who /seems/ /Masculinity/ vs. /Femininiey/ /Reality/ vs. /Fiction/ However, it is not only the female figures who confuse male subjects! perceptions of the worlds of what is and what seems in both texts. The fic tional contamination generated by a book or a film in the “real” world that the characters inhabit also affects the apprehension of time: they do not per- ceive itas a close extension thatis anchored to the present but as.a distant ex- tension that is fixed in the past. This affects their snrene, with a great intensity 7 According to Joseph Courtés, a semi-symbolic relationship is established in the field of semiotics “between the two planes of the visual language that is stud- ied. Unlike the symbol, which acts in a term-to-term relationship between the two clements of a different nature... for example, the ‘scale’ is a symbol of juscice’—the semi-symbolic is established not from unit to unit, but category to category” (41). “These categories, which correspond to the plane of expression and the plane of con- tent, are charted on this page to analyze the representation of the characters of Dul- cinea del Toboso/Aldonza Lorenzo and Mitsuko.96 The Don Quixotesque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell produced by antique objects. Don Quixote experiences “another time” in which men can be knighted and wear armor. This is described in the novel's opening chapter, which explains that the character Alonso Quijano, similar to his own favorite characters, sought to achieve the figurative role of /errant night/ by outfitting himself with old and dirty weapons that belonged to his great-grandfachers: “The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a cor- ner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished i as best he could, buc he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, how- ever, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. Te is teue that, in order to see if it was strong and fit 0 stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set co work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its scrength; and then, not cating to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction, (I, 1) This use of aneique objects allows Don Quixote to apparently achieve his fancasy of being a character from a book. Additionally, this is the same attitude that Hiraca assumes by preferring to make his films on an 8-milli- meter camera instead of the digital cameras commonly used in this century. “This attitude also grips Ikegami, who, once he becomes the new leader of his yakuza clan, tells his subordinates that they should no longer wear mod- ern and foreign clothing buc kimonos (in the style of some characters of the yakuza genre): “Goodbye to foreign clothing [...] We will live in a castle, all dressed in kimonos” Don Quixote anticipates this film, in which characters who love fiction do so out of an affection for the past, in which the present is “disphoric? valued negatively, and yesterday is “euphoric,” valued positively. FICTIONAL CITATIONS One of the metafictional strategies to which Lauro Zavala refers in his typol- ogy is textual citation (239), something that is also present in film. One of the most famous passages in Don Quixote is that of the priest and the barberJosé Cantos Capreyo 7 burning books, in which Cervantes makes a reference to himself and his ear- lier work, La Galatea: “The author of that book, too” said che curate, “is a great friend of mine, and his verses from his own mouth are the admiration of all who hear them, for such is the sweetness of his voice that he enchants when he chants them: it gives rather too much of its eclogues, but what is good was never yet plentiful: let it be kepr with chose that have been set apart, But what book is chat next ic?” “The ‘Galatea’ of Miguel de Cervantes,’ said the barber. “That Cervantes has been for many years a great friend of mine, and to my knowledge he has had more experience in reverses than in verses. His book has some good invention in ir, it presents us with something bur brings nothing to a conclusion: we must wait for the Second Patt it promises: perhaps with amendment it may succeed in winning the full measure of grace that is now denied it; and in the mean time do you, senor gossip, keep it shut up in your own quarters.” (I, 6) Cervantes used his novel co simultaneously refer to an earlier work and present himself as a distant figure with which the priest has a special friend- ship, This intertextual device employed in the literary work is a device that Sion Sono also employs as a textual citation when a previous film that he directed called The Room (Heya, 1993) is shown in a movie theater where the Fuck Bombers’ old mentor, Ono (Mickey Curtis), works as a projectionist. Given that Why Don’t You Play in Hell isa film that, similar to Don Quixote, celebrates fiction and its worlds, they become modes through which their creators comically perceive their earlier works. However, in the case of the Spanish novel, the comic reference is based on a critique thar is inserted in the work about La Galatea, based on his fucure, a “part two,” whereas in the case of the Japanese film and the old black-and-white tape of The Room, the reference reflects the fact that the young Fuck Bombers dream of making 2 feature just as Sion Sono did in the 1990s with his early works. This enthusi- asm for creating fiction is observed later, in the projection of that film, when Ono tells them, “make sure you make a great film” and Hirata throws the nunchaku and the Bruce Lee costume to Sasaki so that he can act in the near future, “Make a damned good film, even if it is just one.” the projectionise states.98 ‘The Don Quixorerque Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell GENRE AS THE OBJECT OF RIDICULE Don Quixote addresses the conventions of chivalric literature in multiple ‘ways to comically violate them. This search zo shatter the clichés upon which the genre is constructed is also employed in Why Don’t You Play in Hell with respect to yakuza films, an emblematic form of Japanese cinema, Don Quixote wtilizes yet another metafictional strategy described by Lauro Zavala, which is the parody of (extra) literary genre (Zavala 259), be- cause the book itself becomes a comic version of novels of chivalry. The hu- morous treatment of the gente of which these rexts are a part, making fun of them, is connected with its condition as a pre-cinematic? phenomenon and a predecessor of slapsticks, The chapter in which the gentleman knight performs absurd and ridiculous pirouettes to parody the retreat of Amadis de Gaula as he becomes Beltenebros in a solemn passage of the work by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo recalls the gags (visual jokes) of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the first decades of film. And pulling off his breeches in all haste he stripped himself to his skin and his shirt, and then, without more ado, he cut a couple of gambados in the ait, and a couple of somersaults, heels over head, making such a display that, not to see it a second time, Sancho wheeled Rocinante round, and felt easy, and satisfied in his mind that he could swear he had lef his master mad; and so we will leave him to follow his road until his return, which was a quick one. (I, 25) Thus, in the following chapter, the narrator comments that these ridiculous movements seek to imitate those of the characters from novels of chivalry: Returning to the proceedings of him of the Rueful Countenance when he found himself alone, the history says that when Don Quixote had completed the performance of the somersaults or capers, naked from the waist down and clothed from the waist up, and saw that Sancho had gone off without waiting to see any more crazy feats, he climbed up to the top of a high tock, and there set himself to consider what he had sev- eral times before considered withoue ever coming to any conclusion on 8 According to Dario Villanueva, the term pre-cinenta, “in a fundamentally aesthetic and artistic dimension, refers to the analysis of the structures and formal resources found in films and that also appear in wrieten works of literature prior to the discovery of the Lumire brothers” (52).| i | the point, namely whether it would be better and more to his purpose to imitate the outrageous madness of Roland, or the melancholy madness of Amadis. (I, 26) Just as the novel by Cervantes takes a comedic approach to chivalric texts, Why Don’t You Play in Hell does the same with the yakuza genre. This derives from some codes that were specific to the samurai and were subse- quently assumed by Japanese gangsters. One such code that is akin to the sensibility of the Quixote is what is known as the jingi, which, according to Mark Schilling, idealizes che figure of the yakuza represented as a vigilante: [uu] they did adhere to a cercain code, called jingi (chivalry, that sec them apart from straight society... In che popular imagination, certain exem plars of the jing: code achieved a romantic outlaw status as friends of the weak, enemies of the strong, (20) Whether it occurs in yakuza films, the acting in many Japanese movies can appear exaggerated and artificial, though it is not necessarily meant to be comedic, The reason is the influence of certain traditional aspects of era- ditional theater, as Carlos Rubio explains: Hence, the impression of comic artificiality that the spectacle of a Japa- nese play or a Chinese opera can cause in our dramatic sensibility, How- ever, itis precisely this artificiality, this deliberate distance from realism, this stylization of mime chat fascinaces the Oriental spectator. (28s) However, it should be noted that the “comical artificiality” that Rubio mentions in some cases had an openly humoristic manifestation in kyégen theater, a form that, as noted above, was performed during intermission in Noh theater and resembles satirical Greek dramas and Spanish ensremeses (interlude plays): Even today, a Nob performance often includes three works—some five or six hours—duting whose two incermissions works of Aydgen are inter- spersed. These kydgen works are composed of separate and autonomous works that are no different in function and nature from the sativical dramas interspersed in the trilogies of Greek tragedies or, for lack of a more precise reference point, our entremeses, which the Diccionario de ‘Autoridades (1735) has defined as “a brief performance, funny and bur-too The Don Quixoresqute Fantasies of Why Don't You Play in Hell esque, that is placed between two acts of a comedy to add variety or to entertain and please the audience.” This definition successfully captures the Aydgen, whose aim was precisely to provide entercainment before and after an intense and somber Noh... through the stylized use of vocal forms, singing, music, pantomime, and the control of space, the kydgen conserves something of the formal elegance of the Nob. And that is all... In them, there do not appear to be traces of Buddhist philosophy; on the contrary, they ate iconoclastic works. (301-302) In this sense, the character of Ikegami resembles the iconoclastic rep- resencations of the ydgen, which frequently poked fun at authority figures through the use of exaggerated gestures. In che film by Sono, this can be ob- served in Ikegami’s ridiculous dance in front of the poster of Mitsuo, imi- tating her. He is the comical version ofa yakuza who often has a terrible and violent image, such as thar of Bunta Sugawara (Isamu Okita) in Street Mob- ster (Gendai yakuza; hito-kiri yota, 1972), directed by Kinji Fukasaku, or that of Aniki Yamamoto (Takeshi Kitano) in Brother (2000), directed by Kitano. Hence, it is not surprising that Don Quixote would serve as. a precursor to the film by Sion Sono, as a work of fiction that is inspired by theatrical resources to parody a genre. The general history of che Gentleman of the Sor- rowful Face and his squire is interspersed with tales (as though they were the aforementioned eniremeses), and the argument of a character who has gone crazy from reading, as Héctor Urzdiz indicares, is based on the entremés by an anonymous author entitled Los romances: ‘There is a known theatrical source proposed for the genesis of the Quix- ote that we cannot fail to mention, though it is very contentious due to the absence of dates for it and its anonymity. This is the entremés known as Los romances, a brief piece about a farmer, Bartolo, who goes crazy from continually reading El romancero and comes to believe that he is Valdovinos... che figures of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and even Sansén Carrasco, ro a lesser degree, have their origins in the commedia dell'arte, which nacerally is also linked to the Spanish entremés. (471) He states that Cervantes, who also authored exemplary novels, entveme- ses, comedies, and tragedies, created in Don Quixote episodes in which the behavior of the characters is openly theatrical, performing the thematic role of /dramatic actors/:José Cartos CaaKejo ro ‘We can even recall the theatricality of episodes such as that involving the Princess Micomicona, the representations in the castle of the Dukes, and particularly that of the cart of The Assembly of Death and Master Peter's Purppet Show. (474) Don Quixote and Ikegami are characters who represent mockery of the figures of the knight-errant and the yakuza, respectively, and they do so wich a theatrical attitude. Hence, it is no coincidence that, amid these ruptures of gente clichés, Why Don't You Play in Hell lends a masculine power that is characteristic of a yakuza to Mitsuko. In other genres in traditional Japa- nese cinema, the female characters live in the shadows of men. A constant in yakuza cinema is the portrayal of women as submissive, mistreated, and converted into purely sexual objects. Mitsuko is an exception in a film that depicts the world of the yakuza: using a sword and with aggressive skill, she murders members of the clan led by Ilcegawa. Her mother, Shizue (Tomoch- ika), is portrayed in a similar fashion, killing various yakuza in the style of Junko Fuji (Sumiko Fuji) in Lady Yakuza (Hiboran bakuto, 1968) by Késakex Yamashita or Kyoko Enami in Tard Yuge's Woman Gambler (Onna tobaku- chi, 1967). These strong and violent female characters are the equivalents of the strong women before them who also challenged the “phallocentrism” of the western, such as Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) in Duel in the sun (King Vidor, 1946) or Vienna (Joan Crawford) in Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954). REFLEXIVITY AND DEaTH The strategy known as autotextual reference (Zavala 259) prevails in Don Quixote, given that it is a work that constantly recognizes its own status as a natrative artifice structured in chapters, as in the first lines of the second pare of the novel: Cide Hamete Benengeli, in che Second Part of this history, and third sally of Don Quixote, says that the curate and the barber remained near- lyamonth without seeing him [...] This gave great satisfaction to the cu- rate and the barber, for they concluded they had taken the tight course in carrying him off enchanted on the ox-cart, as has been described in the First Part of this great as well as accurate history, in the last chapter thereof. (II, 1)ro The Don Quixoterque Fantasies of Why Dow'e You Play in Hell ‘The most evident auto-textual reference present in Why Don't You Play in Hell occurs at the end of the film. As Hirata frantically runs away from po- lice gunfire with reels of film in his arms, clutching them like a sacted object, wwe see a hallucination of his in which his film crew has survived the attack by the police and received thunderous applause in a movie theater that has screened everything filmed by Hirata and che Fuck Bombers, The film then ends with the image of Hirata, whose cuphoria continues to grow, until a voice cries “cut” and he is seen exiting the field of vision. ‘The word “cut” often used in shooting or recording film to indicate the end of a camera take, leads us to identify in Don Quixote a narrative seruc- cure that we shall call errant metafiction,? a structure that is very frequently employed in contemporary films such as that by Sion Sono. This structure is, charactetized by three phases: 1) The appearance of the sidekick: To feel like a knight-errant, Don Quix- ote needs a squire with whom to begin his adventures, and he locates Sancho Panza. Similarly, Hirata finds in Sasaki che incarnation of che “fe- tish actor” who will accompany him in his unfalvering struggle to create the film that will immortalize him and his partners, the self-styled Fick Bombers, 2) The adventure berween two worlds: Quixote as a subject who travels, wandering, adrift beeween two worlds, that of the literary and knightly fantasy that is avidly pur into practice and that of the reality that con- tradicts this and is initially perceived by Sancho Panza, a forerunner of a Hiraca, who thinks of che world as film and is contrasted to the realistic world perceived by Sasaki. Over time, the latter character becomes aware that his comrade has been possessed by crazy ideas, such as, attempting to make an analog feature-length film (using old-fashioned technology) instead of a digital film. Although Hirata and Don Quixote ate certain of what they wish to achieve through cheit advencures, whether memorable knightly feats or directing a great film, what matters most in the story is the journey that they undertake and not its ends. Their wandering, con- taminated by fiction, is more interesting than the prized object that they seek. 9 This article expands on che approach that the author initially proposed in the last chapter of the book Metaficidn: de Don Quijote al cine contemporaneo [Meta fiction: From Don Quiscote to Contemporary Cinema] (Cabrejo 144-145).José Cantos Casnejo 103 3) The death of fiction: At the end of the novel by Cervantes, Don Quix- ote apparently recovers his sanity and distances himself from his adven- tures as a supposed knight-errant, subsequently meeting his demise. Hi- rata, before the voice calls “cue” disappears, or “dies as a character,” upon concluding the filming of the final scene. These tales do not uphold the notion that “the show must go on” bue rather the idea that its end re- lects a reality that has been decontaminated from the fiction that was experienced as true by their protagonists. This return to che “real” world ultimately claims their lives. Cervantes's novel continues to be an essential point of reference nor only for ‘Western narratives but also for forms of storytelling in liveracure and film in other lands, lands that may seem distant, exocic, or Oriental but thac are, above all, and with quixotic passion, lovers of fiction. Works Cited, Alvarez Crespo, Jesits Carlos. “Entrevista a Yasutaka Tsutsui.” Hombres sal- amonela en el planeta Porno y otros cuentos, Girona: Atalanta, 2010. 171- 182, Blanco, Desiderio. Semidtica del texto filmico. Lima: Universidad de Lima, 2003. Boscarol, Matteo. “Mi chiamo Koike, vendo droga religione’ Sette, simboli religiosi e pratiche di liberazione.” I signore del caos: Sono Sion. 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