"Japanese 'comfort girls' were the first line of invasion prior to World War II..."-Shohei ImamuraOf Imamura's late films, Zegen is the most like his early masterworks: epic, energetic, sexually impudent, and grotesquely funny. A satire about colonialism, commerce, and carnality, Zegen is based on the true story of a hairdresser, Iheiji Muraoka (Ken Ogata), sent to Manchuria to spy on the Russian army. A born entrepreneur, Muraoka set up a chain of brothels throughout Asia-a kind of fornication franchise-and became "the big Boss of the South Seas." As Imamura portrays him, the "zegen" is a decent but doltish and blindly patriotic businessman who views his development of a prostitution empire throughout Southeast Asia as the vanguard of Japan's military adventurism: "For the sake of a great cause, I procure women."-James Quandt