20世纪60年代，安保运动如火如荼，日本社会动荡不安。这份躁动肆意延伸，继而连家庭亲人间也无法避免。青年左兵（吉沢健 饰）是全共斗的一名成员，时常活跃在革命运动的第一线。而他的哥哥则是一名警察，不同的阶级立场令流着相同血液的兄弟俩时常发生争吵。某个晚上，愤怒的哥哥对左兵拳脚相向，嫂子袖里（武藤洋子 饰）从旁奋力阻拦，却无意间枪杀了丈夫。
在此之后，左兵将哥哥伪装成自杀的场面，随后带着袖里逃亡。逃亡期间，袖里为自责所折磨，痛苦不堪，这两个同病相怜的人儿最终坠入爱河。一路向北的逃亡之旅，不知何时是一个终点……

*Shinjuku Mad* was one of
Koji Wakamatsu's six films from 1970. Grim and gritty, stark and steady, burdened with anti-moralizing, generously padded with sex, and totally redeemed by a soundtrack that needs to be released NOW. I knew nothing about this film, loading it up on to my laptop, and every last one of this film's sixty-sixty minutes kept me riveted.
Bear with me. The film opens with the band cycling through a jazzy rave-up, the black and images depict dead Japanese throughout a modern city. From the alleyways of the slums, to center of the park, you catch glimpses of bodies everywhere. This introduction is capped off by a lingering shot of a blood-soaked naked woman, face down. By this point, the band has reached a sort of peak. There's a cut, the band changes the direction of the song a bit, and then we're treated to a series of exterior shots from downtown, the lunch hour, maybe. You see a lot of storefronts and stairwells, people moving about. All of the people in these splices are done in negative image.
What follows can only be described as harrowing. After the credits, the reel switches to color. We're treated to the on-screen stabbing of a young man in a toga, his attackers strip his special lady-friend of her toga, spend about two minutes smearing her breasts with still-warm blood, and then take turns raping her. She doesn't seem to put up much of a fight. The scene is lensed with all of the enthusiasm of a television spot for a whole foods market.
Well, that's a fucked up way to start a movie. If you're still reading, I'll have you know the brutality eases up a little, but the camera's tendency to seek out each scene's more lurid details is relentless. The band never lets up, either. Another constant feature of the film is the protagonist's alienation from society. That's a pretty dated-concept, in a way. This film is cashing in on what could loosely be called the Existential demographic in 1970's Japan. Parts of it could have been written by Oe. Others by Mishima. It definitely, at times, addresses a bit of that lingering air of revolution, but more on that later.
The father of the kid stabbed in Technicolor shows up in the nest reel, in the same apartment his son was murdered in. This confused, grieving father asks a totally baked Shoko Asahara for information about the events leading up to his son's death. The long-haired no-goodnik is toking on a Sharpie-sized doobie. He gets so fucking high he passes out and the dad is left there in the empty apartment, getting a major contact-buzz.
So, the plot is basically that kind of exchange in larger and larger settings, intercut with glorious shots of the disillusioned father walking through industrial slums. The father, searching for the "Why" to his son's death goes on his quest and pisses just about everyone he comes into contact with off. He goes into subway stations and totally kills some beatniks' buzzes. Then he bullies a Hare Krishna ROCK AND ROLL SUPERSTAR and his belly-dancing percussionist at a park. Then he heads off to a bar, and we're treated to what must have been Tokyo's Greatest Garage Band getting low-down and sleazy here. This scene pretty much sums up what the film is about. As you dig the scuzz and the fuzz, the camera catches all manner of degeneracy and wanton reefer-use. And the bar has no less than three groups of people making out. And they get excessive with the groping.
Eventually, the father catches the ringleader of the vicious band of murderer-rapists. "Shinjuku Mad," is his name. After an unbelievably long and convoluted exchange between the protagonist and Shinjuku Mad, it comes out that Mad and the boys are rebelling against all of Japan. It's open season on everyone but them. His son was only a casualty, nothing personal. Their intent is to go on rebelling against society through random acts of violence against people and property.
After going through all the trouble of finding Shinjuku Mad, the old man's mind is blown by revolution for revolution's sake. After a few pummellings, he manages to turn the fight around. He winds up leaving with a nude girl that had been tied to a post for the entire scene.
He goes back to the apartment his son was murdered in to find his special lady-friend naked with six other dope-smoking cats grooving on free love and blue balls.
He decides he's happier with Shinjuku Mad alive and kicking, the band is at another one of its high points, and the camera pans out to the railroad yard, telephones wires, and the bare sides of modern buildings.
That was Japan, thirty-seven years ago.

原本计划私奔的一对男女，最终被游击队抓回，蒙住眼睛、全身捆绑带到了一片荒郊野外。四周静谧无声，使他们觉得自己被困在一间漆黑的地下室内。组织成员对他们百般戏弄与虐待，男子窥准时机，裸身逃亡；女人则被组织悬在十字架上，等待仪式性的惩罚。为了营救爱人，男人不久后折返，对游击队成员乃至虐待成性的老大展开不可饶恕的杀戮。寂静旷野，血腥弥漫……

全編激しい撃ち合いシーンによって構成された若松孝二監督の異色作。組を抜け、愛人と駆け落ちしようとしたチンピラが、拷問を受けた末に指を詰められる。数年後、No.1の殺し屋へと成長した彼は、復讐のため麻薬の取り引き現場を襲撃するが…。

詩人としても活動し、肺炎により4月26日に74歳で死去した福間。遺作となった「きのう生まれたわけじゃない」では、学校に行かない中学2年生の七海と、妻を亡くした元船乗りの老人・寺田の心の交流が描かれる。