“The Man Who Left His Will on Film” (東京戦争戦後秘話), Original Japanese First-Release Movie Poster 1970, Nagisa Oshima / ATG, B2 Size (c. 51 × 73 cm) M177

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster produced for the first Japanese release of Nagisa Oshima’s The Man Who Left His Will on Film in 1970. Released in Japan as 東京戦争戦後秘話 (Tokyo Sensō Sengo Hiwa), the film is one of the most intellectually radical works of the Japanese New Wave and an important production associated with the Art Theatre Guild (ATG).

Directed by Nagisa Oshima and produced during one of the most politically charged periods of post-war Japanese cinema, the film uses the story of a group of radical student filmmakers to explore memory, political commitment, suicide, cinema, voyeurism and the unstable boundary between lived reality and recorded image.

The result is less a conventional narrative than a deeply self-reflexive film about the act of filmmaking itself.

Poster design

The poster is an exceptional example of 1970s Japanese avant-garde film graphics, perfectly suited to Oshima’s fractured and self-conscious approach to cinema.

The upper half is dominated by a monumental black-and-white close-up of a filmmaker staring through a motion-picture camera. The camera almost merges with the face behind it, making it difficult to separate the observer from the mechanical apparatus through which he sees.

This is not simply promotional imagery—it goes directly to the central question of the film:

What happens when the camera becomes the mediator between experience, memory and truth?

Beneath the camera is a striking semi-transparent female figure seated and looking upward. Her body is filled with a superimposed image of a narrow Tokyo streetscape, creating an extraordinary double-exposure effect in which the human form and the city become inseparable.

The imagery suggests that Tokyo is not merely the setting of the film but something projected into, remembered through and physically carried by its characters.

The palette is deliberately restrained: charcoal black, smoky grey, faded photographic blue and raw cream paper, interrupted only by small passages of yellow, red and indigo typography.

The result is severe, cerebral and highly sophisticated.

The title

Across the lower section appears the Japanese title in large, jagged brush lettering:

東京戦争戦後秘話

The calligraphy has an intentionally rough, almost improvised quality, rejecting the polished commercial typography of mainstream cinema advertising.

The title may be translated approximately as:

“Secret History of the Post-Tokyo War”

while the internationally used English title:

THE MAN WHO LEFT HIS WILL ON FILM

appears vertically through the composition.

Directly above the title is the red line:

「映画で遺書を残して死んだ男の物語」

— “The story of a man who died leaving his will on film.”

This line encapsulates the film’s premise while retaining the ambiguity that defines the work.

Film background

The story centres on a young radical filmmaker who becomes obsessed with footage apparently left behind by a colleague who has died.

As he attempts to understand the meaning of the images, the boundaries between memory, actuality, political action and cinematic reconstruction begin to collapse.

The film repeatedly questions whether the images being viewed are genuine records of events, reconstructions, projections of memory—or something that exists only through the act of filming.

Oshima deliberately destabilises the viewer.

Instead of using cinema to offer certainty, he uses it to undermine certainty.

The film asks whether a camera can preserve truth, whether political action can be meaningfully represented, and whether memory itself is fundamentally shaped by the images through which we attempt to retrieve it.

Nagisa Oshima

By 1970, Nagisa Oshima had become one of the defining figures of the Japanese New Wave.

His work consistently rejected the conventions of traditional studio cinema and confronted subjects including political radicalism, sexuality, crime, nationalism, social alienation and institutional authority.

Films such as Cruel Story of Youth, Night and Fog in Japan, Death by Hanging and Boy had already established Oshima as one of the most uncompromising filmmakers of his generation.

The Man Who Left His Will on Film pushes that radicalism further by turning the process of filmmaking itself into the subject.

The camera is no longer merely observing the story.

It becomes part of the story.

The ATG connection

The upper-right corner carries the unmistakable ATG insignia.

The Art Theatre Guild was central to the development of experimental and independent Japanese cinema during the 1960s and 1970s.

ATG provided an exhibition and production framework for filmmakers working outside conventional studio expectations, allowing directors to pursue formally adventurous, politically confrontational and often highly personal projects.

Original ATG posters therefore occupy a special position in Japanese film collecting.

They represent not only individual films but an extraordinary period when cinema, theatre, graphic design, political thought and the Japanese counterculture intersected.

This poster’s uncompromising design is entirely consistent with that history.

Meta-cinema and the image of the camera

Perhaps the most powerful element of the design is the enormous camera occupying the upper centre.

In most film advertising, cameras and filmmaking apparatus are carefully kept outside the illusion.

Here, the camera is unavoidable.

Its lens, viewfinder and mechanical body occupy the same visual importance as the human face behind it.

That choice is particularly appropriate for a film concerned with the question of whether an image documents reality or creates an alternative reality of its own.

The poster therefore becomes unusually self-aware: an advertisement for a film about images that explicitly shows the machine responsible for making those images.

It is an exceptionally intelligent piece of film-poster design.

Condition

Excellent condition overall.

Please review all photographs carefully; they show the exact poster for sale, front and reverse.

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster from the film’s first-release campaign in 1970.
It is not a reproduction or modern reprint.

It is approximately 56 years old.

Certificate of Authenticity included.