When discussing postmodernism from a contemporary cultural standpoint, we tend to look at it as the expression of artistic chaos, where the rules of art are subverted in favour of more bizarre or unconventional works that seek to challenge what creativity should strive to be. However, what is often forgotten is that postmodernism didn’t start simply to be an excuse to do something different, but actually as a means to challenge structures outside of art, normally those associated with more socio-political issues that weren’t directly related to art themselves. Postmodernism essentially started as rebellion against cultural complacency, and a potent way of many artists in the early 1960s to start a dialogue with the broader social structures in a way that the modernists had laid the foundation for, but didn’t quite take as far as many of the most prominent postmodernist artists. Very few films from this era exemplify this better than The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (Japanese: 江分利満氏の優雅な生活), a wonderfully buoyant film that, on the surface, appears to be a well-meaning comedy about everyday life in 1960s Japan, but gradually grows into a darkly comical satire that demonstrates remarkable lucidity, even when directly addressing many issues at the time in a notably distinct and nonsensical way. Kihachi Okamoto’s film is a hauntingly funny glimpse into postwar Japanese society, made at a time when the discourse had shifted from celebrating the sacred traditions of the country by proving them as infallible and unimpeachable, to rebuilding it, attempting to return it to its former glory while weaving the march of time into the nation’s cultural fabric, rather than actively avoiding it. A bewildering work in every sense, but still absolutely worth looking into for anyone with a passing interesting in the postwar comedy or Japanese seriocomic realism, The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is quite a special film, particularly from the perspective of being an unflinching look into the collective cultural mentality that governed the decades after the war.

Eburi (Keiju Kobayashi) is the epitome of an everyman – he is a white-collar professional who leads a wonderfully unremarkable life, toiling during the day in his public-relations office job, and by night getting drunk with any colleague willing to take him up on the offer, normally neglecting his loving wife (Michiyo Aratama), who insists that he is a good husband and father, despite his very clear flaws and refusal to change his behaviour. However, one night Eburi’s drunken antics get the best of him, and he accidentally promises a pair of publishers that he will write them an article that will draw a massive readership. He soon realizes drunken thoughts don’t always translate to sober skills, and he’s suddenly at a loss at what to write. He first tries to use the imagination that he doesn’t have by writing a sweeping epic, which fails spectacularly before he even starts. As a last resort, he decides to write on the only subject he is an authority on – himself. Soon, “Eburiman-shi no yūgana seikatsu” (“The Refined Life of Mr. Everyman”) is born, with the main character being a heightened version of Eburi himself. The article is an instant success, which proves to be something of a problem for Eburi, who is now a national sensation, and impelled into carrying on writing. This proves to be something of a challenge because his life isn’t all that interesting – however, he gradually manages to find everyday minutiae to exploit for the sake of the stories, such as dramatizing the sudden death of his mother (Yuriko Hanabusa), the eccentric ramblings of her elderly father (Eijirō Tōno) and a variety of other situations that prove to be far more interesting than Eburi’s real life – but when he starts to lose sight of what is real and what are merely constructions of his imagination, he finds himself growing increasingly disillusioned with existence, alienated from existence with no clear resolution to be found anywhere, forced to wander aimlessly through this version of the life he’s built, caught somewhere between reality and heightened absurdity.

It’s not difficult to understand why The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman was overlooked upon its initial release and hasn’t quite found the widespread audience it deserves. Okamoto did not make a particularly easy film – early postmodernism is often the most puzzling of the artistic movement, since it has the incredulity towards broader, sacrosanct structures that would go on to define many of the greatest works, but were often delivered in more coherent forms, lacking the outright eccentricity and artistic abnormality that would go on to become definitive of later works. The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is a truly peculiar film, but certainly not one that isn’t entirely worthwhile, should one be willing to take this strange journey into a side of Japanese culture that really wasn’t seen so explicitly at the time, especially during the immediate post-war period. Narratively and tonally, Okamoto puts together something quite extraordinary – somehow possessing a buoyancy that is undercut with serious melancholy that hints towards some very serious emotional depth lurking beneath the film, we never quite know where this film is going to take us, which is all part of the joy of venturing into this story since so much of what makes it special is how surprising it tends to be. Expecting the unexpected is an apt way to approach a film like The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman, which wears its heart on its sleeve insofar as it does purport to be an accurate depiction of the postwar mentality, but still manages to be filled with a certain narrative incongruency. This certainly may be bewildering at first – which is entirely by design – but still eases us into this world, a labyrinthine blend of social realism and over-the-top character-driven comedy that is as bewitching as it is vaguely heartbreaking, especially in how the director is very clear in his intention to create something entertaining, without losing sight of the profound message at its core, and for viewers accustomed to such carefully-curated bursts of manic energy, there’s very little doubt that The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman will be quite an experience.

Precisely what it is that makes The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman so compelling is rooted within the two fundamental intentions of the movement when it was created – to challenge reality in a way that actually carried meaning (which separates a film like this to the wealth of surrealists works that would come afterwards, and with which postmodernism is mostly conflated), and to present a story in a way that disregards logic, albeit through employing a kind of controlled dismissal of conventions. Both elements are the basis for Okamoto’s work here, with the entire premise centring about the main character’s creation of the titular alter-ego, which is used as a launching point for some insightful discussions into the limits of reality. Metafictional storytelling is profoundly fascinating when done well – fiction about fiction has the potential to make incredibly moving statements that can both entertain viewers while provoking deep thought. Throughout The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman, the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to blur in a way that feels entirely natural and intentional. The entire point of this film is to question whether what we’re seeing depicted on screen is real, or fictional creating – but even more than that, Okamoto takes it a step further, creating something that harbours even more meaning – is Eburi’s life that interesting, or has he started to tailor his daily activities and behaviour in a way that makes his writing more interesting, so he can truthfully say what he has created is a true reflection on reality? The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman becomes quite a fascinating experience for the viewer, who is placed in an active role throughout the narrative, using our own discretion to determine the bounds of reality, as presented to us by a film that has the ultimate intention of dismantling expectations and presenting us with something quite different to what was produced at the time.

This brand of comedy may have become commonplace since, but The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is still quite a revolutionary work even by contemporary standards. There is a certain gleeful delight underpinning this film, almost as if Okamoto was fully aware of how he was making something that would polarize audiences and cause them to look deeper than many of his contemporaries at the time would have dared. Considering this film came just after the period in Japanese cinema where the most significant works were more subdued, graceful portrayals of the human condition that combined sentimental emotion with realist commentary, there is something to be said in calling the director a revolutionary. The more mainstream works have immense merit, especially as descriptors of everyday life – but it sometimes takes a film that subverts these expectations by refusing to abide by the unspoken rules to make us realize the value of the inverse, where bold and eccentric, socially-charged storytelling can also carry an enormous amount of meaning. Even without a working knowledge of Japanese social and political issues at the time, its easy to understand why The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is such an endearing piece, and while it may have been too ahead of its time (the de facto motto of the postmodernist movement), there’s never been a better time to look into this film than now, with its unique brand of comedy, its masterful control of genre, terrific performances and the powerful message being quite notable. This is not a particularly easy film and occasionally relishes in its upheaval of all logic, to the point where it may not be too much sense. However, when we deconstruct what Okamoto is saying with The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman, and decode his intentions, it becomes very clear that he put together a wildly original piece of metafictional filmmaking, a daring cultural odyssey that aims for the jugular, and manages to eviscerate society without being mean-spirited or too brash. Instead, it functions as an oddly sophisticated work of pioneering postmodernism that proves that Japan was once again ahead of the curve before it was even recognized as a feasible form of artistic expression.