But is it art…?

The west’s first real exposure to Japanese celebrity comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto was the film Dai-Nipponjin (“Big Man Japan”), a mockumentary about one of the last of a line of once-respected monster-slayers. Now viewed as something of a joke, the hero has the power to become 100ft tall, so that he can battle the giant monsters that occasionally threaten urban Japan. The film pokes fond fun at classic Kaiju (“Monster”) movie classics like Godzilla and Megaman, satirising modern Japanese society at the same time. The understated humour and surrealism of the movie aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Matsumoto has now made his second movie, Shinboru (“Symbol”). He’s being fairly tight-lipped about it, but the trailer at least is very strange, and impressively creepy. Check it out and see for yourself:

From the little that Matsumoto has said, the film is going to consist of two or more intertwined strands. One, featured in the clip above, involves a man waking up in a strange exit-less white room with a penis-shape on the wall. Gradually, seemingly-random objects are introduced into the room, and the man begins constructing increasingly unlikely machines from them, a la the Mousetrap boardgame, in an effort to escape. Another strand involves a Mexican wrestler called Escargot Man, who is getting ready for a major fight. His impassive preparations worry his family, who cluster around him. Where Barking Man from the trailer fits in, we can only guess.

Matsumoto has the same sort of profile in Japan that Rowan Atkinson and Jerry Seinfeld enjoy in the UK and US. He’s a household name who can still win prime-time audiences. From what we know so far, it’s impossible to tell if Shinboru is going to be a masterpiece of strange comedy, or if Matsumoto has just flipped at last. Obviously, I hope it’s the former.