Oshima Quotes

Her skin retained a faint warmth, but it was already fading away. ~ Haruki Murakami

That's something you'll have to decide for yourself.. I think you have a right to live however you want. Whether you're fifteen or fifty-one, what does it matter? But unfortunately society doesn't agree.
~Oshima, page 198 ~ Haruki Murakami

I do not like to be called a samurai, but I admit that I have an image of myself as a fighter. I would like to fight against all authorities and powers. ~ Nagisa Oshima

People need to cling to something," Oshima says. "They have to. You're doing the same, even though you don't realise it. ~ Haruki Murakami

The world of the grotesque is the darkness within us. Well before Freud and Jung shined a light on the workings of the subconscious, this correlation between darkness and our subconscious, these two forms of darkness, was obvious to people. It wasn't a metaphor, even. If you trace it back further, it wasn't even a correlation. Until Edison invented the electric light, most of the world was totally covered in darkness. The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two. They were directly linked. Like this." Oshima brings his two hands together tightly. "But today things are different. The darkness in the outside world has vanished, but the darkness in our hearts remains, virtually unchanged. Just like an iceberg, what we label the ego or consciousness is, for the most part, sunk in darkness. And that estrangement sometimes creates a deep contradiction or confusion within us. ~ Haruki Murakami

Hoshino found Oshima an appealing young man. Intelligent, well groomed, obviously from a good family. And quite kind. He's got to be gay, right? Not that Hoshino cared. To each his own, was his thinking. Some men talk with stones, and some men sleep with other men. ~ Haruki Murakami

But people need to cling to something," Oshima says. "They have to. You're doing the same, even though you don't realize it. It's like Goethe said: Everything's a metaphor. ~ Haruki Murakami

like anyone bringing up the past." "What's the name of the song?" "'Kafka on the Shore.'" Oshima says. "'Kafka on the Shore'?" "That's correct, Kafka Tamura. ~ Haruki Murakami

Nothing that is expressed is obscene. What is obscene is what is hidden. ~ Nagisa Oshima

Perhaps," Oshima says, as if fed up. "Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free." "Including you?" "Yeah. I prefer being unfree, too. Up to a point. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true - all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. ~ Haruki Murakami

Oshima once used the term hollow men. Well, that's exactly what I've become. There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying. There's no direction where I am, no sky, no ground. ~ Haruki Murakami

Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother, he said." Once I've spoken this, put this thought into concrete words, a hollow feeling grabs hold of me. And inside that hollow, my heart pounds out a vacant, metallic rhythm. Expression unchanged, Oshima gazes at me for a long time. "So he said that someday you would kill your father with your own hands, that you would sleep with your mother." I nod a few more times. "The same prophecy made about Oedipus. Though of course you knew that." I nod. "But that's not all. There's an extra ingredient he threw into the mix. I have a sister six years older than me, and my father said I would sleep with her, too." "Your father actually said this to you?" "Yeah. I was still in elementary school then, and didn't know what he meant by 'be with.' It was only a few years later that I caught on." Oshima doesn't say anything. "My father told me there was nothing I could do to escape this fate. That prophecy is like a timing device buried inside my genes, and nothing can ever change it. I will kill my father and be with my mother and sister. ~ Haruki Murakami