:05:01
At the beginning the game was familiar:
:05:03
a kind of anti-ecological beating where the idea was to kill off
as soon as they showed the white of their eyes
:05:07
creatures that were either prairie dogs or baby seals,
I can't be sure which.
:05:13
Now here's the Japanese variation.
:05:15
Instead of the critters, there's some vaguely human heads
identified by a label:
:05:21
at the top the chairman of the board,
:05:23
in front of him the vice president and the directors,
:05:26
in the front row the section heads
and the personnel manager.
:05:30
The guy I filmedwho was smashing up
the hierarchy with an enviable energy
:05:35
confided in me that for him the game was not at all allegorical,
that he was thinking very precisely of his superiors.
:05:40
No doubt that's why the puppet representing the personnel manager
has been clubbed so often and so hard that it's out of commission,
:05:47
and why it had to be replaced again by a baby seal.
:05:56
Hayao Yamaneko invents video games with his machine.
:05:58
To please me he puts in my best beloved animals:
the cat and the owl.
:06:11
He claims that electronic texture is the only one that can deal
with sentiment, memory, and imagination.
:06:18
Mizoguchi's Arsène Lupin for example,
or the no less imaginary burakumin.
:06:23
How one claim to show a category of Japanese who do not exist?
:06:28
Yes they're there; I saw them in Osaka hiring themselves
out by the day, sleeping on the ground.
:06:33
Ever since the middle ages they've been doomed
to grubby and back-breaking jobs.
:06:37
But since the Meiji era, officially nothing sets them apart,
and their real nameetais a taboo word, not to be pronounced.
:06:45
They are non-persons.
How can they be shown, except as non-images?
:06:59
Video games are the first stage in a plan for machines to help the human race,