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']]}Oshima Nagisa’s 1999 film Gohatto is about desire and suspicion within the ranks of the Shinsengumi during the bakumatsu period. The story follows a love triangle between pale-skinned beauty Kano Sozaburo (Matsuda Ryuhei) and Tashiro Hyozo (Asano Tadanobu) but is told mostly through the perspective of Captain Hijikata, played by Kitano Takeshi. Set in 1865, during the twilight of the Shinsengumi and Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu), the film is a nostalgic love letter to the last days of feudal Japan, an examination of the destructive effects of desire within the brotherhood of the Shinsengumi, and an allegorical criticism of the efforts of modern Japanese society to repress the desires of the individual for the sake of the majority. It was Oshima’s first film in 13 years and revolved around the highly controversial practice of homosexuality (shūdō: the way of youths) among the samurai class.
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