He warns her against drugs. One night she tells him she has shot up. She says a friendly doctor gave her the shot. But Yoh has the skin and the aura of a drug addict. What does Muraki think? He never reveals. But when the boss asks for a volunteer to murder the boss of a rival gang, Muraki says he'll do it. He doesn't have to. The boss has already given him an exemption because he's just finished one prison term. If you meditate on why Muraki volunteers, I think you will close in on his motivation, and find the theme
In his interview, Shinoda shows himself familiar with avant garde art. He was chafing at working within the studio system, and even though "Pale Flower" was produced by the major studio Shochiku he considers it an independent film, and so, apparently, did the studio. "After the screening, the writer said it wasn't the film he had written," he recalls, "and that was the excuse the studio needed." At a loss for how to deal with it, Shochiku shelved it for months, although when it was finally released it was a great success, no doubt because it captured the sense of both film noir and the emerging European art films.