Portrait of Hell

The story is set in the Heian era. The painter Yoshihide and Horikawa, the lord who employs him, come up against each other. Horikawa is cruel and thinks of nobody but himself; the painter is Korean and dependent on the court. What the lord asks for is a picture the painter cannot make without seeing the thing itself. That demand carries the two of them to a certain point. The film takes up what art costs and how power makes use of it. The painter’s relation to his own work sits at the centre of the story. The work is adapted from a 1918 short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Tatsuya Nakadai and Kinnosuke Nakamura appear in Shirō Toyoda’s ninety five minute Japanese film, completed in 1969.