The so-called "sun tribe" films, adapted from Shintaro Ishihara's novels about the anarchic behavior of well-off, ego-driven youths in the postwar boom, were Japan's Rebel Without a Cause, and famously paved the way for the Japanese New Wave. But before that, they caused a firestorm of controversy in Japanese society. The moralists came out in full force for Ichikawa's Punishment Room, which tells of a university student, Katsumi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), whose hatred for his ineffectual bourgeois parents is taken out in sexual nihilism. He drugs his date (Ayako Wakao), then rapes her; she falls in love with him, and he cruelly rejects her. Retribution comes from his fellow students in the eponymous chamber. Punishment Room hasn't shown here since 1978; since then, we have explored the "sun tribe" genre (in films such as Crazed Fruit) and its influence on directors such as Masumura and Oshima. As James Quandt notes today, "Disturbing, potent, and superbly shot, Punishment Room suddenly looks like a key work of fifties Japanese cinema."