this film is pretty great. i got it on video from a catalogue in the 90s (heard of it because one of the stars was in kurosawa's "ran").

if you like this, you would probably like shuuji terayama (of emperor tomato ketchup fame), those his work isn't the easiest to get in the USA outside of an academic context.

more available is nagisa oshima, a lot of whose work is on the excellent streaming service filmstruck, but it's a bit headier than bara no soretsu.

Portland people interested, it just happens to be screening at the Hollywood tonight.

For SF people it's playing at the Alamo Drafthouse this weekend

Gender neutrality is currently trending in Harajuku. Source: BBC doc "Ryan Gander: The Idea of Japan" (now have to sign up to iPlayer though)

This looks really interesting. I'm fascinated by gender dichotomy and how different my experiences would be with just a different chromosome.

"Just a different chromosome" can also give you Down's, if it doesn't outright kill you. It seems strange to use a diminutive to refer to a huge change in the genetic material that one's entire body is defined by.

I think it is pretty clear that they are Talking about the Y chromosome, i.e. being born a different gender.

Yeah, they just had a bizarre way of saying it.

There's far less than one chromosome's worth of difference between me and a orangatan.

"Just a chromosome" is like saying "just an extra brain"

It can be pretty straightforwardly interpreted as a reference to the probability of being born into one gender or the other, which is roughly equivalent to a coin flip (not taking into account the higher chance of being born male, hermaphrodites, etc.)

It is roughly equivalent to zero. I as I am now couldn't be born with another chromosome.

Anyway, it could be interpreted as "If my parents had a girl instead of me, what it would be like to be she".

Isn't that what I wrote? I may not have expressed it clearly.

I have trouble grasping why this distinction matters.

My understanding was that when people make "If I were X" statements, they are referring to having a conscious experience different than what they are currently experiencing. They would still be themselves by virtue of being the conscious observer in that context.