Battle Royale (1999)

Written by: Koushun Takami

You might wonder why the hell I would quote a Bruce Springsteen song for a Japanese novel about middle school kids. Well, that song actually plays a pretty pivotal role in the book, as you’ll see later.

Back in 2000, hardly anybody had heard of Battle Royale, unless we were talking about wrestling. It was a pretty underground import from Japan that would NEVER get a big American release. I heard about it from a friend who heard about it from a friend who may or may not have seen it. I ended up seeing the movie because the folks at the Alamo got a hold of a copy of it and KNEW that no one else in America would probably have the balls to play it.

You see, Battle Royale is about a government program that randomly chooses a middle school class to send to an island. They are each handed a weapon and provisions meant to only last a day or two.

The only rule: only one can survive.

In a ‘post-Columbine’ America, that would NOT fly. No one wants to watch a movie about kids being forced to kill each other. Those Japanese must be SICK!

It ended up being one of the best movies that I saw that year. And the people who said that they would never watch it have no idea what they’re missing. It’s not just about kids killing kids.

But we’ll get to that.

Not long after seeing the movie at the Alamo, I searched and searched on E-Bay and finally found a copy that I could actually watch on our crappy tv system over here. It took a while, but I finally had a copy of what was quite possibly the most controversial movie ever made.

Now, let’s jump ahead to present day.

Not only was I able to buy the original novel at a Barnes & Noble, but you can find the manga (which came out just before the movie) there, too. The movie is available in a super-duper special monkey edition at Best Buy. One of the actresses has been in a big-budget American movie. There’s even a re-make in the works at New Line!

My, how times have changed.

How could this have happened? How could America suddenly be ready for Battle Royale?

I didn’t understand at all…until I read the book. Then it all made sense. Even all of the political overtones of the movie couldn’t prepare me for what went on in the book.

Koushun Takami has created a world not too far removed from either Japan of his time (which was just 1999) or the America of today. It has a government that has had some pretty terrible ideas, but it keeps those ideas going because, if they stopped, it would mean that they were wrong to begin with. They also need to keep the people fearful of their government. When Shogo, Shuya and Noriko talk about ‘tearing this fucking country down,’ you can hear people in our country now saying those exact same words.

But let’s back up a bit.

The book (and movie) is mainly about Shuya and Noriko. Shuya watched his best friend get killed in front of him and now has vowed to protect the girl his friend loved, Noriko. She, of course, has been in love with Shuya (great athlete and ‘amazing guitarist’) for a while. They meet up with Shogo and form a tenuous cease-fire. But can they trust him? Is he really becoming friends with them? Or is he just playing them to help him survive?

Along the way, we get to know every single one of the students. We share their pains and revelations. We know exactly what’s going through their minds before they are killed and how they feel about the person who kills them. These are normal kids with normal problems thrown into a horrible situation where they HAVE TO KILL. Some of them are up for it, some of them aren’t. And you can see a part of yourself in each one of them.

But it’s the central trio that we really care about. We want them to meet up with as many of their friends as possible so that they can all escape. We want Shuya and Noriko to finally figure out how they really feel about each other. And, most of all, we want them to get away. We want them to tear that fucking country down.

One thing that was especially convincing to me was Takami’s feelings on rock and roll. It seems trite now because rock music has pervaded everyone and is so mainstream that it doesn’t seem the slightest bit revolutionary. But there was a time when that music could change the world. It was so different from anything that came before it and it made people stop and wonder what the fuck was going on. The lyrics called for change. There were love songs, but they were different. Everything wasn’t wine and roses. There was something underneath that was almost foreboding.

And it took someone who isn’t able to get it as easily to finally put it back in that perspective. When Shuya talks about the forbidden music, there’s something in his words that made me remember why I love rock and roll so much. He talks about ‘Born To Run’ and ‘Imagine’ as if they’re hymns that could bring about the revolution that they all need. There was a time when people talked about it like that in America.

I bought this book because I wanted something to read for the rest of the trip. It’s a little over 600 pages, so I thought that it would last me that long.

I ended up not being able to put it down. I was in New York City, one of the most exciting cities in the world, and I just wanted to go to a park and read for hours on end.

I finished it in about three weeks.

The writing is a little clunky at times (‘Go to the place we talked about rock!’), but I blame that on it being translated. Japanese is, from what I understand, a bit of a stilted language, and translating it into English isn’t the easiest thing to do. So forgive it that and get over the fact that the violence is VERY graphic (you thought the movie was graphic…wait until you read this) and I think you’ll like this book a lot. It may be about Japan, but I think there’s almost more America in it these days.