Zegen - Ken Ogata (1987) - Avenida da Praia, Taipa

A brief journey (i.e. a single post) into the Japanese film Zegen, filmed in 1987 and starring Ken Ogata. Ogata is most perhaps better known to western audiences for his portrayal of the adult Mishima in 1985's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters but he was also in The Pillow Book playing "The Father".

In the film, Ogata is Iheiji Muraoka, a poor fisherman who swims from Japan to Hong Kong in the hope of a better life. However, after settling down he is forced into service as a spy for the Imperial Japanese Army and ends up being inspired to create a network of brothels - the Japanese National Brothel - to service the ever expanding number of colonising soldiers. Apparently, Zegen (女衒) is a Japanese term for a philanderer.

This is one of those films that has been uploaded to the Internet Archive website, so you can view it at the following link: https://archive.org/details/zegen.-1987

Even though some scenes are set here, the film wasn't actually filmed in Hong Kong as far as I can tell. Instead, for some of its Hong Kong scenes, the film used Taipa in Macau as well as another location - a hillside village - that definitely wasn't Hong Kong or Macau (where though? I have no idea. Edit: it's Jiufen in Taiwan, see comment below). In the top image you can see the former waterfront along the praya on the left. All the area of sea behind it in the background is now part of the Cotai Strip.

In the story, Iheiji and his fellow swimmers have just arrived in Hong Kong and their local contact has instead told them to go to the Japanese Consulate for help. The house used as the consulate is the first house in the row and is now the "Museu Vivo Macanese" (although this is spelt as "Macaense"on Googlemaps).