Page 141 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

128 Nightmare Japan

‘dove style violence’, sadists find pleasure through enforcing ‘The Law’.
As a result, sadists reify hierarchical structures founded upon the
imposition of their desires and wills against those who do not yearn for
such applications. This practice differs drastically from the masochist’s
craving, which can only be ‘satisfied’ by never being satisfied. Said
differently, masochism, and masochistic desire, depends upon an
agreement to inflict pleasure by simultaneously delivering a degree of the
pain or humiliation for which the masochist craves, and by establishing
an economy of desire founded upon the perpetual delay of gratification or
satiation. The ‘sadism’ implied by the term ‘sadomasochism’, then, is
illusory; it is not the enforcing of the sadist’s will, but rather a response to
the masochist’s desire. The masochist, in other words, is the one in
control.
Since their ontological formations are ‘entirely different’, ‘the
concurrence of sadism and masochism is fundamentally one of analogy
only’ (46); hence, the climactic showdown with Ichi for which Kakihara
longs is destined to disappoint his masochistic desires. Further,
Kakihara’s and Ichi’s antithetical subject positions allow Miike to
frustrate viewer expectations, a consistent directorial practice that has
established him as one of the most interesting visionaries in contemporary
world cinema. In addition, as Ichi and Kakihara’s incompatibility
necessarily restricts the degree of satisfaction Kakihara may obtain,
Kakihara can only find release through what Tom Mes correctly
understands as masturbatory actions (2003: 231), like impairing his own
hearing by inserting long spikes deep into his ears to eliminate the sounds
of Ichi’s unexpected sobs. Reminiscent of his severing of his own tongue
in a sarcastic gesture of ‘repentence’ for wrongly torturing a yakuza boss,
Kakihara’s self-maiming, a process culminating in his suicidal plunge
from a rooftop battlefield, amounts to little more than a quick, autoerotic
‘fix’. Throughout the film, Kakihara struggles to satiate masochistic
desires that, by their very definition, can never be fulfilled.