Again, interesting comments by you. This is only my opinion but I think Suzuki would answer that all your hypotheses and counterhypotheses about all these events in his film are equally valid. I really think there is no real desire to unify the details of this film and its "plot" in any kind of linear or literal logic. I think it's more of an overall view of human desire and delusion. To Suzuki, I think the internal and the external are treated the same in this film, so in a way it doesn't matter who cheated with whom exactly or whether anything is real other than this stuff exists in the world and in the realities for many of us, particularly in men I would say. This film only gives the appearance of one man's (Aoshi's) personal reflections on the contradictions within himself (and on how he sees and treats the woman or women in his life ... by extension, womanhood in general). I see Nakasago as his alter ego, most of his actions likely imaginary, what Suzuki perhaps thinks Aochi subconsciously wants to be, but strangely somehow suffering for these alter-ego actions of his. Ie. Nakasago is the freer version of Aochi, but who suffers nevertheless in Aochi's eyes. The funny thing is that Suzuki makes Aochi completely ignorant of these alter ego desires of his. I think if you pay close attention, you might get clues of this throughout the film. For instance, when do we see the first meeting of Aochi with Nagasako in this film? Aochi is on vacation and somehow (very mysteriously) happens onto the disheveled Nagasako at the beach after he's been captured on suspicion of killing a woman, a fisherman's wife who has supposedly been trying to cling onto him after a brief relationship. Aochi saves his "friend" from the mob and the policeman by presenting his professional credentials and saying they are BOTH professors from the SAME military academy. There is something really unreal or surreal about this opening sequence and helps set up the "two" men's linkage throughout the rest of the film. And remember how Aochi reminds Nagasako it was the wandering Nagasako who left Aochi behind at the academy and that it was selfish of Nagasako to do so, implying that Aochi is the one who has controlled his own will, and not the other way around. Anyways, I can go on. I think you should look at my post responding to your other posted question on this board. In my opinion, all the characters in this film fall or spiral into the self-reflective theme which is almost finally revealed into the light by the statements made by Nagasago's daughter to Aochi towards the end of the film.
Both men are "cheaters", one is a little circumspect and more repressive about it, the other finally freed by enlightenment and death to come back and try to make the other see the light of his actions and/or desires, real or imaginary. The woman in this film almost don't matter as far as being real "people". They are objects, in my opinion, or rather representations of men's desires and loathings. That is where the real suffering is, in the unenlightened desires of men, whether real or imaginary, towards others and towards themselves.
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