In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima achieves a profoundly modern dialectic, uniting Brechtian techniques with metaphysical introspection to create a profound and surreal dissertation on guilt and redemption, crime and punishment. Death by Hanging is probably the most powerful film ever made against capital punishment and a clear political indictment of Japanese racism against Koreans, based on a 1958 news story about a Korean boy accused of rape and murder. Opening with a bold challenge to the audience, "Are you for or against the death penalty?" it goes on to tell of R., the young Korean, who, though hanged, refuses to accept his guilt, and thus to die. Police officers feeling themselves compelled to convince him of his guilt, reenact his supposed crime, in their pantomime conjuring up a victim-a young Korean woman-and assaulting her with vigor. R. gradually learns the depths of his innocence, the police the depths of their guilt. The film is Brechtian throughout, in its disruption of narrative suspense, its absurd reenactments, its bold teachings; yet with the materialization of the Korean girl, it takes a soaring leap into metaphor.