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Almost literally overflowing with storylines and satirical jibes, this is the smartest and sparkiest sign of life in Japan's indie sector in several years. It borrows the structure of Joyce's Ulysses (a 24-hour span, with each episode matching a section in the book) and crams it with characters and incidents derived from Japan's creation myth Kojiki. The central figures are brassy call-girl Daisy and her gay chauffeur Takeru, also a ventriloquist, who suffer many indignities as they pursue their trades and desires; seeming digressions include a mockumentary about a Korean-Japanese woman looking for her Korean roots, an investigation into the sex-massage industry and the use of melon seeds to save Japan from nuclear attack. The title references the date (15 August 1945) of Hirohito's surrender in WWII, and the underlying thrust is that Japan has remained stuck in the imperial mindset of that time; the emperor, it notes cheekily, is a giant phallus in need of deflation. The mix of conceptual sophistication and vulgar humour is entirely cherishable.