Taboo (御法度, Gohatto) is a 1999 Japanese film directed by Nagisa Ōshima. It shows life in a samurai training school during the bakumatsu period, the end of the samurai era in the mid-19th century, specifically concentrating on the issue of homosexuality in the shudō tradition in the partially closed environment.
At the start of the movie, the young and handsome Kanō Sōzaburō is admitted to the Shinsengumi (新撰組), an elite samurai police group led by Kondō Isami that seeks to defend the shogunate against reformist forces. He is a very skilled swordsman, but it is his appearance that makes many of the others in the (strictly male) group, both students and superiors, attracted to him, creating tension within the group of people vying for Kanō's affections.
The film title 御法度 (Gohatto) is an old-fashioned term that can be translated as 'against the law'. Nowadays, gohatto can be translated as 'strictly forbidden' or 'taboo' (tabu).
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