Akutaro's young rebel, Togo Konno (Ken Yamanouchi), is an early incarnation of the Suzuki nihilist (see Elegy to Violence, December 20) and tamer for it. In this period (circa 1910) equivalent of Rebel Without a Cause, dazzling filmmaking traces Togo's growth from an irrepressible bad boy whistling Carmen to an intensely romantic teenage tough. As his sexuality blossoms, Togo comes up against the absurd, protofascist disciplinary code of his peers, who have adopted the hypocrisies of the adults around them as a weapon. Still, he persists in his new-found sexual pleasure, first in a humorously staged love scene that is neither fantasy nor reality, then in an affair with the daughter of the local doctor. Their doomed love climaxes in a spectacular sequence in which Togo carries Emiko through the waters of a threatening flood. Like Togo, who aspires to write trash ("literature for fools"), Suzuki himself is a Japanese movie brat (he was fired by Nikkatsu Studio in 1968 for making "incomprehensible films"). His brackish, jazz-like direction feeds melodrama with anger, humor, and genuine sadness.