Haruhiko Shono

Performed live on September 15th, 1985 on the SONY JumboTRON at Tsukuba Expo, Tukuba, Japan

Tokyo at the beginning of the 21st century, its inhabitants and artists. An observation and diagnosis of the modern Japanese metropolis: the singularity of unusual creative individuals is merely a response to the majority Japanese society. Even this can appear as an eccentric work of art. So where do the borders lie? A psychologist talks about the autistic way of life burgeoning in the dense population of the country. A noise musician speaks of her inspiration from sado-masochistic bondage as an art form. A programmer specializing in computer games assures us: I can distinguish our world and “the other side”! Why are the robots in Japanese comic books almost always affable and positive characters? Will “love hotels”, the unique designer havens for sexual experiences, become extinct in the future? Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki sees noise as one of the fundamental aspects of Tokyo life.

A cold war that's turning hot between the Empire and the Republic is the background against which we witness the acts of characters who are at the mercy of their leaders' whims, and interwoven among these events are hallucinations--some served up in good trips and some in bad--produced by an electromagnetic radiation device called Sensorama. Together these elements spin out a tale of high drama. It's finally here! A stunning non-stop, full-CG movie that blows away preconceptions.