Hope You Like Me: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s Biker Musical Melodrama His Motorbike, Her Island

HIS MOTORBIKE, HER ISLAND / Kare no ōtobai, kanojo no shima 
(Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1986, Japan, 90 minutes) 

Welcome to my island 
Hope you like me, you ain't leaving. 
–Caroline Polachek (2023) 

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, who passed away in 2020 at 82, was one of Japan's foremost antiwar filmmakers, a master of the experimental short film (for both theatrical and advertising purposes), and the go-for-broke genius behind the most bonkers horror-comedy musical ever made–though Miike Takashi's multimedia zom-com Happiness of the Katakuris comes close. 

That's only a sampling of Ôbayashi's many talents, but most people probably know him best for House, aka Hausu, one of the Criterion Collection's crown jewels, to the extent that they've also produced a perennially popular, bright orange, cat-face t-shirt. I doubt we'll see a t-shirt for, say, Au Hasard Balthazar any time soon, but I swear I would wear it if they produced one. 

I'm unaware of any antiwar messaging embedded in His Motorbike, Her Island, his 17th motion picture, but Ôbayashi was an endlessly inventive filmmaker, and I wouldn't put it past him.

Nor is the film thoroughly experimental, though it incorporates avant-garde techniques–freeze frames, jump cuts, varied aspect ratios, and rhythmic shifts from black and white to color. 

In an archival interview included with the new release, Obayashi acknowledges that he added the cuts simply to get the run time under 90 minutes in order to screen as part of a bill with director/producer Haruki Kadokawa's crime thriller Cabaret. 

All told, it's one of his most accessible efforts, though still unconventional by most any standard, then and now. In Ôbayashi's nouvelle vague-inspired take on the Japanese biker movie, future v-cinema star and Miike favorite Riki Takeuchi (Dead or Alive), in his feature debut, plays Koh Hashimoto, a music student, part-time delivery driver, and motorbike obsessive in Obayashi's native Onomichi. There's a girl in Koh's life, his boss's younger sister, Fuyumi (Noriko Watanabe), but his bike always, always comes first. 

Though screenwriter Ikuo Sekimoto drew from Yoshio Kataoka's 1977 novel, the way Koh consistently refers to his bike as a Kawasaki W3 plays like the handiwork of a man who made thousands of television commercials. 

Koh, in other words, comes across like a pitchman. It's funny, but not in a way that makes him seem like the butt of a filmmaker's joke–though he's a fairly single-minded fellow–and I may be reading more into it than I should, but the fact that it's a Japanese make rather than an American one, like Harley Davidson, feels like home-country pride on Ôbayashi's part, though Japanese biker films do tend to favor Kawasaki, Honda, and Suzuki.

In his opening narration, Koh declares, "My day-to-day life at the time was a complete mess," indicating that the film will recreate past events. He goes on to describe his dreams as "monochrome," a partial explanation for the extensive use of B&W, but not a complete one since Ôbayashi often switches between the two within sequences in a way that seems more stylistic than thematic. He admits as much in the archival interview, explaining that an all-B&W film might have seemed pretentious or nostalgic, so he considered using B&W for past and color for present, but in the end he opted for a more random scheme, much like a B&W manga with the occasional color panel. 

After Kho gets in a scuffle with his boss, Hidemasa (Tomokazu Miura), who insists that he formalize his makeout sessions with Fuyumi, Koh decides he would rather spend time alone with his motorbike, which excites him more, so he visits an island in the Inland Sea where he meets Miyoko (Kiwako Harada, older sister of Tomoyo Harada who appeared in several Ôbayashi films, including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time). She admires his bike and snaps a few pictures. It's a fleeting encounter, but she makes an impression.

When he returns, Kho takes up with Fuyumi again, but without much enthusiasm. 

During a night-time biking excursion, they pass a nude couple on a bike–a possible reference to the cover of Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 album Anywhere. Fuyumi looks shocked, but Koh, inspired, asks her to take off her clothes. This makes her deeply uncomfortable, but she strips down to her lingerie. Later, they have sex, but she cries before and after. Not exactly a great start to a relationship.

On another break that establishes his loner tendencies as much as his unhappiness with Fuyumi, Koh visits a mountain spa, where a nudie cutie catches his eye. When she turns around, he realizes it's Miyoko, aka Miiyo.

She's everything Fuyumi isn't, and he's smitten. She's ebullient, uninhibited, and recalls Jennifer Connelly with her flowing black hair and thick brows. After the bath, he gives her a ride back to the inn where she's staying.

He's finally ready to break up with Fuyumi, which leads to a joust with Hidemasa, a fellow motorbike enthusiast. Kho wins the fight, which Ôbayashi depicts in quick, abstract cuts. Later, he drops by local speakeasy Michikusa to blow off some steam with Ogawa (Ryōichi Takayanagi), his best friend. 

To his surprise, they run into Fuyumi, who sings a sad song from the stage. Ogawa doesn't understand why he would break up with such a sweet girl. "All she knew was crying and cooking," Koh sniffs, and indeed, she cries the entire time before running off the stage. Unlike Koh, the widower in Miike's Audition would have been thrilled to meet such a delicate flower.

Finally single, Koh is thrilled to receive a letter and photographs from Miiyo (they would probably be texting today). During their first phone conversation, he gets out his guitar and sings her a song, the first indication that he's also a songwriter, and the second that this film doubles as a musical. Miiyo invites him to visit her island. "I felt very close to this strange girl," he says in voiceover. 

That night, Koh dines with her and her grandfather (Takahiro Tamura), who admits that he spoiled her, before joining them for the Obon Festival where the islanders sing and dance in traditional garb to honor the dead. 

Back in town with Miiyo, Kho visits Michikusa to find that things have changed. Fuyumi, of all people, is now the house vocalist. No longer dressed in loose, girlish clothing, she wears a fitted red dress and a more sophisticated hairstyle. Miiyo, who shares her interest in singing, goes on stage to perform Koh's song, "Sunshine Girl." (Harada also sings the film's theme song, "Living for Your Love.") Instead of getting jealous, Fuyumi marvels, "She's a great girl." Ôbayashi never explains this shift in confidence, but suggests that the breakup with Koh freed something in her. 

Though he once told Miiyo, "Don't be jealous. You’re no match for S3 horsepower," she was, in fact, jealous, and so, unbeknownst to him, she reached out to Ogawa who helped her to secure a midsize license. Now she can go out riding with Koh, Hidemasa, and his other biker friends. 

Koh doesn't know what to think about this development, and fears she'll get hurt, though she impresses his biker buddies--"She's a motorbike prodigy!"--as she takes one lap after another. She next sets her sights on a 750cc license. 

Though Koh harbors chauvinist tendencies, Miiyo can be reckless. She always wears a helmet, but loves to race around in the rain. Then again, she and Koh live in a damp region. He gets so upset during one excursion, that he slaps her and calls her an idiot. She slaps him back and adds a few punches for good measure. (Fortunately, he only does that once.) "You're gonna die," he laments. Instead, she disappears–taking his bike with her. 

Until that point, Ôbayashi has leaned as heavily on the film's action set pieces as its melodrama, but things don't converge the way that combination might suggest. The film isn't a narrative version, for instance, of Jan and Dean's classic 1963 teen-tragedy single "Dead Man's Curve." 

In her very good commentary track, Samm Deighan explores the 22-year-old Miiyo's death drive, an understandable reaction, though I didn't see it that way. She's such a bright and lively presence that I didn't sense any desire to die, though the scenario isn't worlds away from David Cronenberg's Crash or Julia Ducournau's Titane. It's hardly that extreme, and there's no body horror, but both Koh and Miiyo relate to their bikes in a sexual way, even if Ôbayashi handles this with more PG-rated subtlety than not. 

Not long before Miiyo disappears, for instance, she embraces Koh's bike–in the rain, of course–as if it were a human being or an extension of his body, which isn't too far off the mark (she's also wearing a wet white t-shirt without a bra, bringing yet more sexuality to an-already charged scenario). And when she's racing around, she's in her element to the extent that it's quite possibly a turn-on. If she gets hurt, in other words, it was worth the risk, which isn't the same as wanting to die, though Sekimoto's screenplay suggests that she's going to and that it will have been worth it. 

Someone dies at the end of His Motorbike, Her Island, so it's a tragedy for them, but Koh and Miiyo remain intact, or at least that's how I read things. There's just enough ambiguity to suggest that the final sequence is a daydream or a fantasy, though the film lacks the supernatural phenomena, like possession and time travel, frequently associated with Ôbayashi's work. 

Mostly, the film is a good time with fun characters--initial boorishness aside, Koh can be quite the charmer--and that includes Fuyumi and Ogawa, who also come into their own. Biker movies tend to exclude women, to make them bystanders, or to push them to the front as in 1970's Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss with the immortal Meiko Kaji, but Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's unique take splits the difference. It's only when Koh meets a woman who loves bikes as much as he does that he can truly love another human being. 

It's fitting then that, once reunited with both Miiyo and his bike, a life dominated by monochrome dreams finally springs to full, vibrant color. 

His Motorbike, Her Island is out now on a Cult Epics Blu-ray loaded with extras. Beyond the informative commentary track and illuminating interview, the release includes visual essays on the Japanese biker movie and Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's hometown. Images from Hollywood Theatre (Kiwako Harada), The Criterion Collection (House t-shirt), DVD Beaver (Riki Takeuchi), the IMDb (Takeuchi and Harada), The Cinematheque (Noriko Watanabe), an X/Twitter (Tomokazu Miura with Takeuchi and Harada).