I first noticed this film amongst the more popular Japanese films on Hulu, but I didn't pay much mind to it, cause I figured I could guess how it got there (being titled "Edo Porn" and all). But when I realized that this was a film by Kaneto Shindô (Onibaba, Kuroneko, The Naked Island), I couldn't pass up a chance to watch another one of his films.
This film is a portrait of the Japanese artist Hokusai, who I knew nothing about going in, but whom this film has piqued my interest in. He created the famous "Great Wave off Kanagawa". Apparently, he also created what could probably be considered the earliest example of tentacle porn. The sequence in the film where he draws that is... amazing.
This film starts off a generally well-made, albeit somewhat odd biopic of an eccentric man. In the last act however... I can understand the criticisms. There's a lot of Hokusai and his friend stumbling around - the actors in unconvincing 90-year-old man makeup doing their best half-crazy half-senile old man impressions. There's a lot of Hokusai talking to himself about death. Things get really strange, but I have to admit, that's kind of what I love about this film.
In a strange way, I think this is a good companion film to Kenji Mizoguchi's "Utamaro and His Five Women". That film is also about a famous Japanese woodblock printmaker of the same era, Utamaro, who is mentioned and briefly appears in "Edo Porn" as something of a rival of Hokusai. Made 35 years earlier, it's a completely different style of film, but, y'know, they're completely different styles of artists.
