Nagisa Oshima's resolute condemnation of capital punishment and institutional racism is laid out in Death by Hanging, based on a real life case of Ri Chin'u, an ethnic Korean who murdered 2 Japanese school girls in 1958. The film concerns the botched execution of a young ethnic Korean man, known only as R (Yung-do Yoon) where he doesn't die from hanging and losing his memories and Japanese state officials' attempt to make him realize his crimes again, as they can't execute a man who doesn't recognize his guilt. In the process of proving R his guilt, the film exposes the state violence and Japanese colonialist past and asks pointed questions where executioners themselves are guilty and whether they have the authority to kill the accused.
After the hanging and R survives, the officials, consisting of a military general, a catholic priest, an education officer, a hangman, a prosecutor, debate the legality of attempting another execution. To their displeasure, R became conscious but doesn't remember who he is or what he has done. In order to execute him again, they have to make R conscious of his guilt. In a series of bizarre and darkly comical reenactments by themselves, the film becomes a Brechtian experimental theater, first within the confines of a staged death chamber where hanging takes place which Oshima narrates in detail in the beginning like a documentarian. After several failed attempts to get R recognize his crimes and him being Korean living in Japan as ethnic minority, the officials have to delve into his ethnicity and background, thus digging up the dreadful conditions of the lives of ethnic minorities living under the institutionalized racism day in and day out. Their grotesque caricatures of Koreans are carried out in reenactment and their superiority complex as colonizers is pronounced.
R's sister (played by Oshima's wife, Akiko Koyama) manifests in front of the officials, who one by one sees her, as she tries to convince R as a nationalistic communist of North Korea, but fails to convince him. She ends up being hanged by the officials. R finally accepts being himself but refuses to acknowledge his crimes because the murderous imperial Japanese power has no legitimacy to impose capital punishment on anyone. The prosecutor finally tells him that if he doesn't feel guilty of his crime, he can leave. Upon opening the door, the bright light from outside overtakes R and he realizes he has no prospects in Japanese society as an ethnic Korean and chooses to be hanged the second time.
Death by Hanging is a complex film, questioning the legitimacy of capital punishment, especially by Japanese government considering all the atrocities committed during the war and occupation of much of the South East Asia, Osmhima, a long time advocate of rights of ethnic Koreans living in Japan, is unafraid of exposing the hypocrisy of the state.
