The title translates, roughly, "What the hell?"or "Why not?", and it gives a good idea of the approach Imamura takes to the historical epic in this sardoniclook at the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It is a sweeping epic, a broad canvas, as they say-startlinglyso, as viewed from the worm's eye perspective. Imamura takes his tone and his title from the so-calledeijanaika riots that took place in 1867: a brief flash of people-power as the Shogunate gave way to theMeiji Restoration. While the aristocracy fight the deadly sword of Business, the underclasses scurry aboutin an effort not to be crushed by the weight of the revolution. ("The world is cruel when it's changing,"mutters one observer.) It is among the plebes that we find Imamura, with his protagonists, Genji, awould-be farmer who has returned from six years in the West to find an unrecognizable Japan, and his wifeIne, now cavorting in a libidinal Edo sideshow. Theirs is an irrepressible energy, ribald and criminal, andmagical in the Shinto sense (as opposed to the refined Buddhist culture of the aristocracy). The climacticriot-dancing masses charging across the river which separates Edo's rich and poor districts, throwingflowers and shouting, "eijanaika"-is probably the most exhilarating picture of progress ever filmed, linkingsexual energy to the flow of history.