Literalizing the titular term roughly translatable as “body politic,” Kokutai examines the spectacular aesthetics of Japan’s biannual national high school baseball tournaments.

This experimental short explores the relationship between the staging of sporting rituals and militaristic aesthetics. With its sumptuous black and white imagery undercut by an eerie, atonal soundtrack, Kokutai turns a Japanese high school baseball tournament into a tactile and theatrical spectacle.