Iheiji Muraoka (Ken Ogata) had plans to be a shopkeeper. However, as he begins to learn that the Japanese armed forces will soon advance across Asia, he instead goes into business as a brothel owner. After all, an army moves on its stomach, but it often stays ready to fight based on its desire.

This is one of Shôhei Imamura's later movies, but still rich with the black humor and desire to explore the hidden castes and stories of Japan.

Muraoka became Zegen, quite literally the most powerful seller of women in modern Japanese history, known as "The Boss of the South Seas." Yet beyond the monetary and carnal rewards of this vice, he saw the business of turning out women as an almost patriotic duty.

At the close of this film, as the Japanese forces return to Malaysia, Muraoka rushes to greet them, seeing them as the children of the men that he had worked with to keep Japan strong. He is shoved down by a commanding officer who does not even recognize the old man's attempts at speaking Japanese. In the end, despite his fanatic devotion and the ruin of so many lives, he himself has been rendered meaningless.

Zegen is a dark satire with adventure, comedy and drama elements directed by veteran Imamura Shohei. The movie tells the story of a Japanese man living abroad for more than forty years. He escapes from a ship where he has done tough manual labour with two friends for several years to seek a better life in Hong Kong. He initially becomes a shopkeeper and hairdresser before he gets hired as a spy who is sent to Manchuria. His mission ends in a disaster and he returns to Hong Kong as a disillusioned man. Brainwashed with patriotistic propaganda, he decides to free a group of Japanese women who have been kidnapped by pirates to work as prostitutes. He aspires to change their lives for the better but soon realizes that they need to continue to work as prostitutes to make ends meet. The protagonist soon becomes a pimp who builds Japanese brothels all across Asia while waiting for his empire's army to conquer the continent. When he faces increased opposition from locals and his lover leaves him for a Chinese pirate, he decides to impregnate as many prostitutes as possible in order to populate foreign countries with Japanese children. His ambitious dream approaches reality when he retreats to Malaysia with his many children and witnesses how Japanese troops conquer the idyllic island he is living on.

Zegen makes me think of the epic adventure story Papillon due to its diversified story taking place over several decades, its intriguingly adventurous locations and colourful characters. This movie here is however a satire rather than a drama. It shows how a simple labourer gets brainwashed and becomes a zealous patriot who is completely detached from reality. This is one of the few Japanese movies that seems to criticize its country's megalomaniac ambitions during Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Second World War. The movie covers numerous genres as we get a vibrant mixture of adventure, comedy and drama. Due to the fact that half of the movie takes place in brothels, the film features much nudity and shouldn't be watched by children or teenagers. However, the nudity isn't simply used to show some skin but to portray what life in brothels actually was like. The movie is so creative, detailed and surprising that it would have deserved to be adapated into a television series or even a novel series.

In the end, Zegen is a satire with vibrant characters, stunning locations and a quirky plot that comes around with quite a few surprises. Despite a few minor lengths in the second half, this movie is so creative, detailed and entertaining that it almost requests multiple views. Anyone who likes historic adventure movies such as Papillon should definitely give Imamura Shohei's timeless masterpiece Zegen a chance.

This movie is black satire of Japanese imperial ambitions in the 20th century. In Meiji era Japan (1868-1910),the Japanese state sought to establish itself as an empire as a way to both catch up to and remain free from the West. These activities also lay the foundation for the disasters to come mid-century. This movie satirizes those efforts from a mid-1980s perspective, giving it an obvious subtext of being a commentary on the efforts of late 20th century Japanese businessmen abroad as well. The "hero" is a businessman who, realizing that the Japanese armed forces will likely soon be advancing across Asia, decides that they will require brothels wherever they go as well and so sets up shop in Southeast Asia. A very black comedy from one of Japan's finest film satirists (cf. "Pigs and Battleships," "The Pornographers") best known abroad ca. 1999 for "The Eel" and "Black Rain" (the film based on the novel about Hiroshima, not the Michael Douglas flick).