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Shinya Tsukamoto 塚本晋也, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 鉄男, 1989. 67 min.

I leave the factory. Pass through a haze of cigarette smoke. Walk to the car. Slide the key into the ignition slot. The engine bleats. The seatbelt clicks into place. The steering column squeals in protest, cold and stiff. Gravel crunches beneath the tyres—unpaved, uneven.

I am aware of these sounds now.

On the way home, I swerve to avoid a cyclist riding in the dark. I’m humming a tune I haven’t heard in years. It takes me a few bars to recognise what I’m singing:

The glazed, dirty steps
Repeat my own and reflect my thoughts
Cold and uninviting
Partially naked

“I’m Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.” The melody feels far removed from the insectile, industrial clatter still resonating in my ears after the film I’ve just seen. And yet, the lyrics feel uncannily aligned with its motifs. I’m unsettled by the way the mind gathers such disparate fragments and arranges them into meaning.

But that, of course, is what I’d been doing for the past 67 minutes—grasping for familiar coordinates to ground my viewing of Shinya Tsukamoto’s 1989 film Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

As I stepped out after the closing credits, I caught fragments of conversation—people talking about “influences.” I went home and listened to “Hamburger Lady.”

I realised—many of us sat in that factory recalling what we already knew. Thinking of Eraserhead, Brazil, or Edmundo Paz Soldán’s Turing’s Delirium. Of Kafka, Cronenberg, or Philip K. Dick. Or drifting elsewhere, wherever the mind went in its search for something to hold onto. We crawled out, breathless from the onslaught, grasping for meaning—to connect the dots, to unearth a why from what we did not want to accept as pure, senseless violence.

Perhaps that’s precisely what we were meant to do. Perhaps it was all just one vast, gleaming piece of metal reflecting you. Perhaps Tsukamoto designed us to be exactly what we were—a mass-produced audience, shoving plugs into sockets like a roomful of switchboard operators. Struggling to form connections. Connections to each other, to ourselves, to past and future, to some semblance of a societal whole. But what exactly were we reaching for? Had we become so saturated with “influences” that there was no longer space for thought of our own?

The crowding out of humanity by the products of humanity finds both literal and metaphorical expression in Tetsuo. Immersed in the film, we—its viewers—came face to face with our own fetishisation of, and dependency on, the technological, metallic, celluloid world we have constructed around ourselves. We were reminded, uncomfortably, that we are consumers in every possible sense. Like that dinner scene.

The director afforded none of us the luxury of disassociation. By entering the world the film conjured, we entered into a contract—social, psychological, existential. Born free, and yet everywhere in chains. We could no longer remain passive. Nor innocent.

It felt as though the film’s themes were hammered into us with unapologetic mercilessness. Many could be teased out—transhumanism, paranoia, industrial subjugation, sexual repression, the ulcerous underbelly of technological advancement. Yet the theme of human guilt was not one I had anticipated encountering.

Although critical analysis of this film often focuses on everything but the narrative, Tetsuo does, in fact, have a plot. It is not until late in the film that we learn the circumstances of the oft-alluded-to car accident, and the lingering effects it leaves on both victim and perpetrator.

To insert another plug into another jack—there are unmistakable parallels to Albert Camus’ 1956 novel The Fall, in which the protagonist, like the driver in Tetsuo, begins an existential descent after an incident that sears him with enduring guilt.

The Fall dissects guilt, innocence, social alienation, existence and non-existence, and the weight of self-judgement—all explored in the European aftermath of the Second World War, against a backdrop of moral and physical devastation. Tsukamoto’s treatment of similar ideas emerges instead from late-1980s Japan—a time of rapid economic expansion, unchecked urban development, and deep cultural transformation. Unlike Camus, whose vision followed a period of unquestionable destruction, Tsukamoto responds to a time seen by many as triumphant progress and relentless upward motion. But like a camera obscura, his lens inverts this vision—reminding us that while we are looking up, up, up, we fail to notice we are about to fall.

The film’s frenetic energy and breathless pacing do not celebrate the economic and technological boom—they caricature it. A growth embodied most viscerally in metal. The same metal—tons upon tons—that transformed coastal fishing villages into looming urban Gothams overnight. Metal that razed lives, cultures, ecosystems—everything in its path—to make way for a future serving only those for whom it was designed. And the film undercuts even that promise.

As viewers, we are made to feel the disorientation—we are meant to be nauseated by the speed. The recurring close-up of a screaming human mouth becomes a haunting emblem of a humanity caught in the teeth of production: when machinery overtakes meaning, when individuality is subsumed by a metallic existence.

Was the film funny? Yes—hideously so.

There was a strain of absurdity running through many of its scenes, a kind of deranged Dadaism. The sort of humour that elicits a dry chuckle when one passes In Advance of the Broken Arm in a museum. Its twisted comicality, anti-art tendencies, jagged photomontages, and its obstinate DIY spirit all gestured toward punk—but also unmistakably towards Dada. One might even regard the human body as a rectified readymade, simply by inserting a piece of metal into the skull.

Then there was the repetition. The repetition. (A comparison might be drawn to 张培力 Zhang Peili’s 30 x 30 or Uncertain Pleasure II《不确切的快感 II》.) The film’s repetition and dissonance were not confined to the visual—they permeated every sensory register. A relentless sonic tempo, incessant screaming, and a nauseating, metallic soundtrack render Tetsuo one of the most aurally distressing films I have encountered. It begins in antagonism and builds toward a crescendo of aggressive dissonance—a sustained, excruciating katzenjammer.

Seated before the screen, I found myself rocking slightly, lurching forward and back. At times, I worked to decipher deeper meanings from the film’s metaphors. At others, I relished the fact that I was the consumer—the punchline—scrabbling for meanings that may not have existed. I was in genuine discomfort. I laughed. I felt raw. I felt numb. And I respected Shinya Tsukamoto for his ability to make me think and feel all of it.

I went to see Tetsuo: The Iron Man『鉄男』in an old pyjama factory in small-town America. And I was surprised to realise—the film was about everyone there.

How to cite: Cantor, Kristen. “Viewing Tetsuo: The Iron Man in an Old Pajama Factory in a Small Town America.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 22 Apr. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/04/22/iron-man.

Kristen Cantor is a writer and translator working in English, Chinese, and at the intersection of the two. Based in Pennsylvania, she divides her time between south-western mainland China and New York. She is currently furthering her studies at Columbia University.

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