I rave so much about Japanese art that it may seem like as far as I’m concerned, everything is the “best” or “most important” or “life-changing” or oh-so-much better than its Western counterpart. But getting down to it. Across all genres–what is the best, that is the one most important story told in recent years: the narrative of modern Japan? As an example of what I mean by this, in America for a long time it was Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Like it or not (I personally don’t), that’s basically the story of America. As far as post-War Japan goes, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a strong candidate. So is Barefoot Gen. But I have to put my money on the pop-culture phenomenon of Battle Royale.

The premise of Battle Royale is one of those so simple, and yet so insidious, you wish you had thought of it yourself. The boys and girls of a junior high school class are drugged, placed on an island, given weapons and forced to kill each other until only one remains. In a dystopian future this is used as social control: it illustrates the dog-eat-dog principle of society, and everyone is kept on edge. But of course, the battles are rare, and each individual class thinks it can’t happen here.

The film (Kinji Fukasaku, 2001) was adapted from a rather pulpy novel by Koushun Takami, and improves on it. The sinister false teacher who takes control of the class is played by peerless jack-of-all-trades Beat Takeshi. But it’s a film you can’t really watch more than once. It’s just what you’d expect: fourteen-year-olds killing each other, with a slight redemptive twist at the end. But even this ending is hardly satisfactory.

Battle Royale is a picture of youth with no options. Nothing–not being loving, attractive, popular, smart, cautious–will save you; and even conventional strength is useless because Kazuo Kiriyama, the psychopath who has lost all touch with human nature, is stronger (and one failure of the film is the reduction of his character: in the novel, Kazou is a clinical sociopath who, like Two-Face or the killer in No Country For Old Men, flips a coin to decide his actions). The rules of the game decree there is no real winner.

The “secret” of Battle Royale is that the real game is played not between individuals, but between each individual and society. The society you live in is literally trying to kill you. The only solution would be a total redefinition of all social values. Instead of playing society’s game, the youth is called on to rise up and effect this. Battle Royale’s victims are young because only the young stand a chance of setting things right: Chinese writer Lu Xun’s famous story Diary of a Madman ends with the words: “But perhaps there are children who have not yet eaten human flesh…Save the children.”