Coup d’état

The culminating film in the trilogy formed by Eros + Massacre and Heroic Purgatory, Yoshida’s 16th feature is a spellbinding portrait of notorious militarist Ikki Kita, whose 1936 attempt at staging a coup against the Japanese government would later serve as inspiration to the similarly controversial nationalist writer Yukio Mishima some years later. The first of Yoshida’s features to forego a widescreen aspect ratio, Coup d’état finds him using the more claustrophobic visual format to his advantage, forging an indelible evocation of Ikki’s escalating paranoia in the lead-up to the coup attempt for which he would become infamous. Upon completing this film, Yoshida would declare his work in cinema finished, and would retire from making feature films for more than a decade. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.