Category: Nippon Connection 2023

Mondays: See You “This” Week! (MONDAYS／このタイムループ、上司に気づかせないと終わらない, Ryo Takebayashi, 2022)

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If you got stuck in a time loop at work reliving the same week several times over, how long would it take you to notice? For the harried employees at a small creative agency in Ryo Takebayashi’s Mondays: See you “This” Week! (MONDAYS／このタイムループ、上司に気づかせないと終わらない, MONDAYS / Kono Time Loop, Joshi ni Kizukasenaito Owaranai), sleep deprivation and the mind-numbing sameness of their lives prevent them from realising that events have begun to repeat themselves and if it weren’t for the sacrifice of a suicidal pigeon they never might never wake up at all. Waking up is in many ways the point as the heroine is forced to reflect on the unintended consequences of her corporate drive while conversely accepting that sometimes you do have to take care of yourself for the good of all. 

Yoshikawa (Wan Marui) is on the verge of landing her dream job at another firm, but is determined to see out a particularly problematic project trying to mount a campaign for a miso soup-flavoured soda tablet to please an incredibly picky client. When her colleagues try to explain that they’re stuck in a time loop, she thinks they’re just messing around and ignores them along with their warning not to take a taxi to her meeting because she’ll get into a car accident and hurt her head. After a series of failed attempts, they finally convince her using the smack of a poor pigeon into the office window as a device to snap her out of their collective delusion. 

Amusingly enough, the plan to bust out of the time loop can only be enacted by following office protocol. Yoshikawa understandably asks why they can’t talk to the boss directly to discuss the problem, but soon discovers he won’t listen to her so they have to “escalate” the issue through the proper channels by waking each of the team members in order of seniority so the highest can bring the matter to the boss’ attention. The boss, Nagahisa (Makita Sports), is always the last to arrive at the office, though that might be a moot point seeing as the team are forced to work through the night even at the weekend and in fact rarely get to go home anyway. This level of sleep deprivation might fuel their belief that they’re stuck in a time loop, but equally they soon become to convinced that the boss is more directly to blame in wearing a cursed bracelet and unwittingly stopping time because he’s about to turn 50 and is realising that he has nothing to show for his life. 

As some of the employees remark, it’s like time has been repeating for the last ten years. They find little fulfilment in their work and are often exploited, expected to work extreme overtime which damages both their health and relationships with others. Yoshikawa’s boyfriend is becoming very fed up with her workaholic lifestyle and is on the verge of breaking up with a girlfriend who never has time for him while she throws everything she has into getting her dream job working for someone who tells her success comes to those who put themselves first. 

Yet being forced to work as a team alongside the colleagues she previously looked down on, Yoshikawa comes to a better appreciation of the values of community and recommits herself to pursuing their common goal of escaping the time loop even if it means sacrificing her big job opportunity. Then again, the team have a difficult time getting through to their boss in part because he’s too meek and incapable of putting his own interests first which is why he’s feeling maudlin about turning 50 while filled with regret in having failed to chase his dreams. 

There may be a slight irony in the employees being trapped in their office while trying to vicariously fulfil the dreams of their dejected salaryman boss, but there’s also something quite poignant in the team’s genuine desire to help him out of an existential hole if only so they can climb out too. “There’s not much you can do alone” he admits simultaneously selling both the value of teamwork and the importance of fulfilling one’s personal desires for a healthy and harmonious life in the office and out. Slickly edited and perfectly plotted, Ryo Takebayashi’s quirky time loop comedy neatly satirises the mind numbing absurdities of contemporary corporate culture but ultimately makes the case that there are things more important than work and to find them you’ll need to find a way to escape the never-ending drudgery of life at the office. 

Mondays: See You “This” Week! screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection. It will also be screening in New York Aug. 6 as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

I Am What I Am (そばかす, Shinya Tamada, 2022)

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Part way through Shinya Tamada’s empathetic social drama I Am What I Am (そばかす, Sobakasu), the heroine’s sister remarks that she wishes she could live as if the world did not concern her as she assumes her sister does. In many ways, it’s an incredibly ironic statement because Kasumi (Toko Miura) finds herself constantly at the mercy of a world which refuses to acknowledge her, certain that the truth she offers freely of herself must be a lie or at least a cover for some other kind of shame. 

The fact is that Kasumi is asexual and has no interest in love or dating. As the film opens, she appears to be on some kind of awkward double date but seems isolated and aloof, as if deliberately left out of a conversation as she will be several times throughout the course of the film because of the centrality of “romance” in most people’s lives. She’s constantly asked about her “type”, or what she finds attractive in a man with a clear presumption of heteronormativity in also in play. Not wanting to get into it, Kasumi finds herself just nodding along offering some vague, stereotypical comment to smooth things over. When one of the men does strike up a more interesting conversation to which Kasumi can enthusiastically contribute, he doesn’t even listen to her but abruptly gets up to chase her friend. She ends up going to ramen bar on her own to decompress before running the gauntlet at home between mum, sister, and grandma who are all very confused by her lack of interest in marriage. 

Kasumi’s mother tells her that she has to get married someday, unable to accept that not to do so is also valid choice. Whether she does this because she feels embarrassed to have a 30-year-old unmarried daughter fearing that it reflects negatively on her parenting, is genuinely worried that Kasumi is lonely and unable to progress romantically because of shyness, or has a practical concern that she’ll be alone when she’s old, remains unclear though it does seem that her quest to marry Kasumi off is more to do with herself than her daughter. But with grandma apparently having had three divorces of her own, Kasumi’s sister Natsumi (Marika Ito) paranoid her husband’s cheating on her while she’s pregnant, and the parents’ marriage strained by her father’s depression it’s only natural she may wonder what’s so great about marriage anyway. 

In any case, though Kasumi constantly tells people quite directly that the issue is she has never experienced romantic desire and is fine the way she is they refuse to believe her assuming either that she is shy, stubbornly rebellious, or as her sister later suggests, gay. “No one would judge you for that,” she spits out less than sympathetically even while quite clearly judging her for this, as if it denies a basic fact of biology as unthinkable as someone claiming not to breathe the air. Her friend, Yashiro, who introduces her to a new job at a kindergarten, reveals that people did indeed judge him for being gay which is why he’s returned to his hometown. Not even he really believes Kasumi though eventually develops a sense of solidarity with her when her attempt to update Cinderella for a new, more inclusive generation leaves her both exposed and humiliated with a conservative politician visiting the school remarking that he thinks “diversity” is all very well but it only confuses the children and perhaps they should learn about it after developing “solid values”. 

The irony is that Kasumi is remarkably unjudgemental and accepting of all those around her, Yashiro remarking that he just knew she would be a safe person to disclose his sexuality to while she also bats nary an eyelid on reconnecting with a middle school friend (Atsuko Maeda) who turns out to have become a famous porn star in Tokyo only keen to protect her from the unwanted attention of star struck teenage boys and the accusatory eyes of those around them. Each of her attempts to find platonic friendship also fails because sooner or later romance gets in the way. She hits it off with the guy at the omiai marriage meeting her mother tricked her into attending because he also reveals that he has no desire to date or get married, but as much as she thinks she’s found a kindred spirit it turns out that his issue was a more conventional reluctance to enter a serious relationship. When he develops feelings and she has explain again that she meant it when she said she had no interest in romance he takes it personally, insisting that she’s lying and resentful that she doesn’t find him attractive. An attempt to get flat with a female friend also hits the rocks when she decides to get back together with an ex instead. 

When questioned about dating activities and giving the unoriginal answer of the cinema, Kasumi had mentioned a fondness for Hollywood remake of the War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise. She later elaborates on her statement that she likes the way he runs to explain that in most of his other films, Tom Cruise is usually running towards something but in this one he’s just a regular guy running from trouble which something she can relate to because she’s been running away all of her life too. Yet the unexpected discovery that her mini stand over Cinderella might have done some good after all along with encountering someone who might indeed be a kindred spirit gives her the courage to start moving forward, less concerned by the world and more confident in herself. An empathetic tale of one woman’s attempt to live her life the way she wants frustrated by a conformist society, Tamada’s gentle slice of life drama is a refreshingly empathetic in its fierce defence of its heroine’s right to chase happiness in the way that best suits her.

I Am What I Am screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2022 “I am what I am” film partners

Thorns Of Beauty (恋のいばら, Hideo Jojo, 2023)

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“Can two women who like the same guy become best friends?” A loose remake of Pang Ho-Cheung’s 2004 Hong Kong comedy Beyond our Ken, Hideo Jojo’s Thorns of Beauty (恋のいばら, Koi no Ibara) finds a jilted ex teaming up with the current squeeze against a no good guy who has compromising photos of each of them he could potentially expose online anytime he feels like it. Not quite everything is as it first appears, yet as they plot revenge against the caddish Kentaro (Keisuke Watanabe) the pair begin to discover a bond that runs deeper than their shared quest for validation.

Momo (Honoka Matsumoto), a mousy librarian, first accosts Riko (Tina Tamashiro), an aspiring dancer who works at a nightclub, on a bus, staring at her intensely until she finally removes her earphones. In truth, Momo never quite shakes an edge of possibly dangerous eccentricity and there is always an underlying doubt that she is telling the truth when she explains to Riko that she and Kentaro were previously an item and he has private photographs of her she fears he may intend to post online. For whatever reason, Riko decides to hear her out and though insisting that Kentaro’s not that sort of guy seems to think there may be something in it. A photographer by trade, Kentaro has in the past photographed her without her consent claiming that he spends all day photographing things other people find beautiful and wanted capture something for himself in his free time. 

Much of the story is filtered through a version of Sleeping Beauty that Momo finds at the library where she works. As the two women bond in their shared quest for revenge, Jojo often plays with the image of them as “witches” lighting them in an eerie green while they dress in black with hats that cast shadows over their faces. Yet we also find ourselves wondering who the sleeping beauty is in this scenario, an unexpected candidate turning out to be Kentaro’s elderly grandmother who has dementia and spends her days collecting shiny things to build a vast fairytale castle. Momo comes to see herself as hoping to wake Riko from a moment of romantic fantasy with a man who in the end doesn’t really care for her which she likely knows but has allowed the relationship to continue mainly out of a sense of inertia. 

But in teaming up with Riko, Momo also begins to awaken from her own low self-esteem in believing herself to be inferior to someone like her. There are times when we wonder if this is going to turn into a Single White Female-style bid at identity theft as Momo seems to idolise her new friend possibly planning to eliminate her and reclaim her place in Kentaro’s life. In the end, however, both women are throughly awakened from their romantic illusions in realising that Kentaro is indeed that sort of person with a hard disk full of pictures of other women just like them while their friendship also begins to take on a distinctly homoerotic quality that clearly runs beyond simple friendship or female solidarity. 

As Momo reflects, Sleeping Beauty is a passive heroine who is asleep for the entirety of her own story. When she’s born, the fairies give her various gifts that turn her into a stereotypical figure of idealised femininity and leave her with nothing to want or strive for. Momo wonders if that doesn’t make her a little boring and if Sleeping Beauty actually wanted any of those things or in the end they were just burden to her. Momo would only be grateful for things she actually wanted like the ability to totally become herself, while Riko reflects on a “past life” as a woman living happily with her two sons by a lake in Switzerland. Cutting through the thorns of their illusions, they awaken each other to a sense of possibility each of them may long have forgotten. Strangely poignant in the touching quality of its central romance along with fairytale allusions, the film in the end allows both women to reclaim an image of themselves from a man who tried to take it from them without ever really bothering to look at it. 

Thorns Of Beauty screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Lonely Castle in the Mirror (かがみの孤城, Keiichi Hara, 2022)

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Kokoro isn’t “lying” when she complains of a stomach ache to avoid going to school, it’s just that it’s the anxiety she feels at the prospect that is making her physically ill. Based on a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura, Keiichi Hara’s fantasy-infused anime Lonely Castle in the Mirror (かがみの孤城, Kagami no Kojo) explores the effects of school phobia in uniting a series of teenagers who each for one reason or another have turned away from education often because of bullying or the rigidity of the contemporary schools system. 

As we discover, Kokoro (Ami Toma) gradually stopped going to school after her life was made a misery by manipulative popular girl Sanada who operates a small clique of bullying minions yet appears all sweetness and light with the teaching staff. Unable to fully explain what’s been going on, Kokoro largely remains at home while her understanding mother (Kumiko Aso) explores opportunities in alternative teaching and tries to support her as best she can. Though the film is very sympathetic towards Kokoro and the children in insisting that it isn’t their fault they can’t attend school but the fault of an unaccommodating system, it perhaps misses an opportunity to fully commit to educational diversity when the end goal becomes getting Koroko back in class undaunted by the presence of her bully. 

Nevertheless, it offers her another outlet when the mirror in her bedroom suddenly becomes a magic portal that transports her to a fantasy fairytale castle where she meets six other school phobic teens who are all dealing with similar issues. A young girl in wolf mask informs her that they have until the end of the school year to locate a key which if turned will grant one, but only one, of their wishes. When the key is turned, they will all lose their memory so it’s unclear if they will know whether or not the wish was granted but in any case are left with a choice between achieving their dreams and the new friendships they’ve formed at the castle. The issues that plague each of them are various from bullying to dealing with grief, purposelessness, a feeling of not fitting in, parental expectations, and an implication of sexual abuse at the hands of a close relative. As the Wolf Queen tells them “collaboration is beautiful” and it is the connections they forge with each other that give them strength to go back out into the world while each vowing to pay it forward and make sure to stand up to injustice by protecting other vulnerable kids like themselves when they’re able to. 

Even so, Kokoro takes her time on even deciding whether or not to use the mirror and for some reason the castle is only open business hours Japan time. If they stay past five they’ll be eaten by wolves! Many things about the fantasy land do not add up and Kokoro begins to worry that it’s all taking place in her head, her new friends aren’t really real, and she’s being driven out of her mind by the stress of being the victim of a campaign of harassment she can’t even escape by staying home minding her own business. But through her experiences she is finally able to gain the courage to speak out against her bullying while supported by her steadfast mother and an earnest teacher who is keen to find the best solution for each of her pupils rather than trying to force them back into a one size fits all educational system. 

In any case, Kokoro’s quest is to find her way back through the looking glass to rediscover her sense of self and take her place in mainstream society free of the sense of loneliness and inferiority she had felt while being bullied by Sanada and her clique of popular girls though in an ironic touch the film does not extend the same empathy to her or ask why Sanada has an apparent need to need to pick a target to destroy. A variable animation quality and occasional clash of styles sometimes frustrate what is at heart a poignant tale of finding strength in solidarity and learning to take care of each other in a world powered more by compassion than an unthinking devotion to the status quo.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

To The Supreme! (もっと超越した所へ。, Santa Yamagishi, 2022)

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Is it worth staying in a dissatisfying relationship just so that you’ll have someone to carry your rice? The idealist in all of us might want to say no, but it’s undeniably a strong argument. The four heroines of Santa Yamagishi’s To the Supreme! (もっと超越した所へ。, Motto Chouetsushita Tokoro e), adapted from the stage play by Shuko Nemoto, find themselves asking just this question as their relationships with a series of narcissistic, selfish men reach a crisis point on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Opening in early 2020, the film finds costume designer Machiko (Atsuko Maeda) reconnecting with middle school friend Reito (Fuma Kikuchi) who abruptly announces he’s moving in because he’s worried about her given the tone of her late night tweets. Former actress turned variety star Suzu (Shuri) lives with her gay best friend, Tommy (Yudai Chiba), after ending a 10-year relationship with petulant former child star Shintaro (Takahiro Miura) who is now seeing sex worker Nanase (Mei Kurokawa). Miwa (Marika Ito), meanwhile, is in a relationship with vacuous hipster Taizo (Reiji Okamoto) who spent an exorbitant amount of money on gold grills as a present and seems to be very concerned about this new virus going around. 

None of these men have a full-time job and all are (or were at one time or another) supported by their partner who is shouldering the responsibility for rent and domestic bills singlehandedly, not that there’s anything wrong with that in itself if were not such a blatant attempt to take advantage of the women they claim to love. In a flashback to 2018, we discover that Miwa was previously in a relationship with Reito and she’s carried on giving him pocket money every month for the last two years despite having moved on romantically. In his sudden announcement to Machiko that he’ll be stying by her side for the foreseeable future, it’s difficult not to wonder if he’s simply looking for a free place to stay especially as he largely continues to mooch off her while doing so claiming his live streaming channel is sure to take off soon. 

Shintaro had similarly been supported by Suzu during the time they lived together and put on a big show of letting her kept the apartment when he left even though the apartment was hers anyway because it was her name on the lease and she paid the rent while he wasn’t working. More practically minded, Suzu had been taking jobs that paid in light entertainment and variety only to be branded a sellout by Shintaro who was nevertheless jealous of her success. A former child star, he feels humiliated taking bit parts and even working as an extra but talks a big game to Nanase whom he often brands “stupid” and looks down on for being a sex worker. He makes her shout out that he’s the best actor as she climaxes and quizzes her about foreign directors when she says she struggles to watch the films of Shunji Iwai because they make her wonder if there’s something wrong with her eyesight. When she genuinely tells him that she enjoyed his “performance” after spotting him as an extra in a movie, he tells her that a sex worker’s opinion doesn’t count despite having been paying for just that kind of validation the entire time. 

Suzu runs into a similar problem in developing feelings for Tommy who rejects her in an incredibly insensitive way when she tries to make a move on him. During a heated argument, Tommy yells at Suzu for ruining all his plans because he wants to start a family and was intending to marry a woman Suzu being a prime candidate. The film flirts with but does not really get into Tommy’s internalised homophobia in which he seems to regard his sexuality as a barrier to achieving the life he wants given the still conservative culture has not yet legalised same sex marriage and makes life difficult for same sex partners who want to raise children together. He lets himself off the hook suggesting that his sexuality permits him to be “selfish” while admitting that he too has taken advantage of women’s feelings for him without really giving much thought to their own. 

Taizo is much the same. On the surface, it looks like he is genuinely solicitous of Miwa though it’s really more that he doesn’t want to get sick himself or be responsible for looking after someone who is ill. When Miwa goes to the hospital thinking she may be pregnant, she gets some other distressing news but all Taizo can do is focus on himself not wanting to accept the responsibility of becoming a father. When she looks to him for comfort, he fixates on his own relief. These men are selfish, self-involved, proud and fragile in their masculinity requiring the women in their lives to take care of all their basic needs without lifting a finger to help. But the film doesn’t quite let the women off the hook either, a sudden coup de théâtre bringing them together to reconsider making clear that they themselves enable the men’s behaviour by forgiving them if in part because they expect little better and having someone around who could theoretically help out, for example by carrying heavy bags of rice home from the store, might make life easier even if they never actually do it. Witty and slickly edited, Yamagishi ends with a sudden intrusion of eijanaika dancers as if literally to say “what’s wrong with that?”, which might present a rather cynical view of contemporary romantic relationships but one that is also admittedly difficult to argue with. 

To The Supreme! screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Mountain Woman (山女, Takeshi Fukunaga, 2022)

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A young woman charged with disposing of the corpse of an infant has only a few words to impart as she lowers its body to the river, “Don’t be born human in your next life.” Set in late 18th century Tohoku where famine ravages the land, Takeshi Fukunaga’s bleak fable Mountain Woman (山女, Yama Onna) sees humanity in extremis pushed to its most inhumane but also offers refuge in spirituality and a retreat to a less sophisticated existence. 

Calling this existence sophisticated might be a stretch, but there is more than a little constraint attached to the idea of community in this typical farming village in a feudal society. Bad weather has produced two poor harvests, and the villagers are beginning to feel desperate. As the film opens, a woman goes through a painful and traumatic labour only for the midwife to silently offer a cloth to her husband (Takashi Yamanaka) who ignores her pleas and smothers the child. They have nothing to feed it, and perhaps a part of him thinks it’s kinder this way. A young woman, Rin (Anna Yamada), waits outside for the inevitable and accepts a few coins to spirit the baby’s body away. Rin’s family is shunned by the other villagers because of a crime her ancestors apparently committed, and it’s for this reason that they deal with the dead. 

When it comes to handing out the rice rations, the village chief gives Rin’s father Ihei (Masatoshi Nagase) only half but justifies it as a kindness explaining that he is entitled to nothing because his family owns no land (it was taken from them because of their ancestral crime) but even those tainted with the legacy of criminality are still considered part of the community and so they are doing what they can. It’s this liminal status that begins to eat away at Rin. She’s expected to support a community that as she later says considers her less than human and gives her nothing in return. When her father is caught stealing from the rice reserves, she selflessly claims responsibility and Ihei lets her, savagely beating his daughter in front of the village elders as if he thought that might be enough to settle the matter.

It’s at this point that Rin decides to leave the village, taking off her sandals and leaving them at the gate to imply that she has been “spirited away” though everyone likely knows she has walked into the mountains to die. Several times we see her gazing at Mt. Hayachine which is where locals believe souls go after death, praying to its goddess who was herself apparently a thief and sympathetic to those who find themselves in moments of desperation. As Rin tells her younger brother who is rejected by the community because he is blind, the goddess Hayachine accepts everyone the same, good or bad, rich or poor, unlike the hypocrites from the village desperate to find a scapegoat on whom to blame their plight. There is no longer any space for sentimentality in their lives. Listening only to an old shamaness who claims to be in contact with the gods, they squabble amongst themselves for what little that remains before deciding they must sacrifice a virgin girl to the Weather God to end the bad harvests. 

But what Rin discovers in the mountains is freedom in simplicity. Having broken a taboo in stepping beyond the Mountain God Stone, she is freed from the constraints of “civility” and later tells a man who has come to rescue her that she has no desire to return for only in the mountains has felt herself to be a true human being. She encounters another person there she assumes is the mysterious Mountain Man (Mirai Moriyama) and is kind to him though he never speaks and shows her only silent comfort. It may be this that later saves her life in a fable-like moment that frees her to return to the mountain and the only place she has ever felt alive, but also says something of the inhumanity of so-called civilisation that only in a “savage” land can she find comfort and serenity. Often shot in crushing darkness contrasted with the overwhelming light and beauty of the forest, Fukunaga’s bleak tale of human selfishness implies that only by shaking off the false sophistication of an oppressive “civilisation” can one discover true humanity.

Mountain Woman screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (dialogue free)

Images: ©YAMAONNA FILM COMMITTEE

I Am a Comedian (アイアムアコメディアン, Fumiari Hyuga, 2022)

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Can comedy change the world? Daisuke Muramoto was once one of the most popular comedians in Japan appearing regularly on television screens across the nation, but the moment he began to joke about serious subjects such as the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Comfort Women, discrimination against ethnic Koreans, and the US military bases on Okinawa, his bookings swiftly declined. Fumiari Hyuga’s documentary I am a Comedian (アイアムアコメディアン) in part explores the concept of freedom of speech in a nation in which taking about sensitive issues makes people uncomfortable and is also a portrait of a wounded idealist who in the end wants to make friends if only through “upsetting” people. 

Even Daisuke’s mother says he “upsets” her every time they meet so it’s often easier to communicate with him through text message and email. He can certainly be blunt and at times unthinking but it does not appear that he has any intention of hurting people’s feelings only of speaking his mind and perhaps encouraging them to think about things they’d rather ignore. It seems odd to him that the TV stations aren’t interested in his “controversial” comedy and especially NHK which is funded by the licence payer so doesn’t have to worry about upsetting sponsors. What it does have to worry about, however, is dealing with viewer complaints and so you can see why they’d rather self-censor than deal with aggressive telephone calls and letters from people who don’t agree with Daisuke’s point of view and are offended. 

Daisuke insists on his right to offend and plans to move to America where he thinks there is more freedom of speech and stand up comedy is necessarily “political”, but the inevitable paradox is that the issues he wants to comment on are all those of contemporary Japan. Talking to a Japanese comedian fluent in English who has been performing in New York for some years, he tries out a joke about Catholic priests but she just looks at him bemused not quite knowing what to say. Eventually she explains that though it’s not something people might be familiar with in Japan it’s been done to death in America and some comedians have based their entire careers on making jokes about the Catholic church so it’s not a good angle for his stateside debut. He may be able to speak his mind in America, but as an outsider as yet unfamiliar with the culture would he really have very much to say that isn’t simply recycled outrage aside from an actually quite funny Trump-related one liner? 

Getting a mad idea and diving straight in seems to be very on brand for Daisuke whose mother and school friends recall a sudden determination he had as boy to go to Brazil and become a footballer despite never having played football before and not belonging to any club (he started taking monthly lessons but soon gave up). His grand plan is to change Japanese society through laughter, confronting people with difficult issues and making them think so maybe they’ll take their new ideas to the ballot box. But most people, including his own father, think he’s being naive and if he really wants to change society he should get into politics instead. For all the support he receives from those who appreciate his frankness, there are also those who resent his attempt to inject his views into their entertainment. 

As for Daisuke himself, he admits to being a wounded soul occasionally insecure as a middle school dropout afraid that people look down on and laugh at him for unintended reasons. He recounts suicidal thoughts in his youth caused by his sense of futility and the fracturing relationship between his parents who later divorced. Several times, his routines turn dark and end on a worrying note of sadness as Daisuke abruptly retreats from the stage and thanks the audience for saving his life. After learning that his farewell tour will be cancelled because of the coronavirus, he cries backstage as if everything he has has suddenly been taken from him. In Japan he plays 1000-seater venues despite his controversial status, but finds himself once again playing tiny rooms in bars in an attempt to make it in America. Some of the things he says may upset people, but as he later suggests it’s less about liking or disliking than recognition and what he’s trying to do is see others equally, meeting them eye to eye with an unflinching gaze. Daisuke finds the humour in his tragedy and uses it as a reason to live like spotting a star in the darkness. Can comedy change the world? Maybe, or at least change the world within the man. 

I Am a Comedian screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Okiku and the World (せかいのおきく, Junji Sakamoto, 2023)

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“Where does Edo’s poop go?” it’s a question a child might ask but the rest of us somehow gloss over. In the modern world, if we were suddenly confronted with a lot of problematic poop, we’d have to pay someone to come and take it away and that person might then get paid twice for selling it on. In old Edo, however, manure merchants had to buy their raw materials (well, aside from those they could produce themselves) in the hope of selling them on to peasant farmers desperate for fertiliser. Junji Sakamoto’s Okiku and the World (せかいのおきく, Sekai no Okiku) takes a wry look at this circular economy in the dying days of the feudal era and in the end asks us if a samurai’s shit is really any better than anyone else’s.

In a sense it might be, given that historically samurai are better fed but even they are beginning to feel the pinch these days. Sakamoto opens in 1858 which is the year the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States was signed opening the door to trade with other nations after two centuries of isolation. It is also 10 years before the Meiji Restoration and the eventual abolition of the samurai. Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is just one woman struggling with this moment of social change. Her samurai father Genbei (Koichi Sato) has been kicked out of his clan for challenging corrupt authority, so now she supports him teaching calligraphy at a local temple while the pair live in a rundown tenement in a forgotten corner of the city. 

Fittingly enough, Okiku’s name and the film’s title with it is written in hiragana, but the character usually used to write it is that for chrysanthemum which is also of course a stand in for Japan itself. Genbei muses on what the world is, defining it as an expanse of skies and lamenting that those who have only just realised that the world is vast are ironically unable to look past their small corner of it amid the chaos of the bakumatsu era and what he describes as continual “unrest”. But then politics have little relevance to those living in this particular corner of the world or for those who quite literally shovel the shit day in day out just to be able to shit themselves. 

Chuji (Kanichiro) and Yusuke (Sosuke Ikematsu) are manure men who purchase excrement from local communities and fine samurai houses to sell on to provincial farmers, transporting it by boat to a silo out in the country they occasionally bulk out with mud seeing as they’re paid by weight. Yusuke rails against his subjugation, revealing that at one particularly low point he was asked to wipe a samurai’s bum while otherwise constantly humiliated by their doorman who really does seem to think his shit’s better than anyone else’s. But as Yusuke points out, samurai or common man everyone eats and shits even if he describes himself as a literal bottom feeder who is nevertheless essential to the Edo-era economy. Without men like him, the samurai wouldn’t eat either because they’d have no crops to buy. Chuji may berate him for being all mouth and no trousers, but times are changing. Even he later mounts resistance by flinging his produce at a now powerless samurai. 

Okiku meanwhile has been rendered mute, her voice silenced by the cruelties of the feudal order leaving her struggling to rediscover her place. She has fallen in love with Chuji, but they think they come from worlds even as they witness them merging and realise there is only one vast expanse under an unending sky. In a decade’s time, it won’t mean anything that Okiku is a samurai’s daughter and Chuji an illiterate peasant but for the moment every step towards each other is transgressive and requires courage in breaking an unthinkable taboo. Sakamoto homes in on the muddiness of this “hopeless shitty world”, the unending drudgery and nihilistic futility of feudalistic life but finally offers his shit-shovelling heroes a new sense of possibility amid the ever expanding vistas of a new society. Presented as a series of black and white vignettes each except the last ending in a moment of vibrant colour, the film finally discovers a sense of serenity as Okiku prepares to reenter the world having finally come to understand her place within it.

Okiku and the World screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Hoarder On The Border (断捨離パラダイス, Takayuki Kayano, 2023)

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A former concert pianist begins to see the world from a different angle after taking a job cleaning houses in Takayuki Kayano’s humanistic dramedy, Hoader on the Border (断捨離パラダイス, Danshari Paradaisu). Ritsuki (Ryo Shinoda) describes the path that took him to his new line of work as mere coincidence, but there is something satisfying to him in helping people get rid of all the rubbish in their lives both literal and metaphorical and doing so in a broadly sympathetic way that encourages the customer to think hard about what it really is they want and don’t want cluttering their existences. 

Ritsuki doesn’t seem to have that much literal clutter, only it also appears that he is more than a little conflicted with his way of life. Seemingly coming from a rather upper middle class family, Ritsuki had trained since childhood to become a concert pianist only to give up a promising future due to a hand tremor which may be psychosomatic. It may be no coincidence that in contrast to the upbeat dance music his boss plays while cleaning, Ritsuki prefers jazz rather than classical and may be looking for something with a little more freedom than the life of a concert pianist. 

Even so he quickly discovers how many of his relationships were based on his status as classical musician. His girlfriend of 11 years abruptly breaks up with him apparently no longer interested now that he is a mere piano teacher with a sideline as a house cleaner. His experiences place him well to empathise with some of his clients who are each in someway overwhelmed to the extent that it has prevented them getting rid of literal rubbish from their lives which continues to clog up their homes only further deepening their sense of internalised shame. Then again, one of his first clients, Asuka (Yumiko Nakamura), is in her own way “shameless”, unembarrassed when Rituski discovers a box of DVDs she describes as “precious” featuring herself in her previous career as a porn star. 

The film doesn’t go into what led to her home becoming a “trash house”, but perhaps does suggest there is a degree of shame involved in the proposed solution of welcoming more visitors to encourage her to keep the place presentable. The reason she needed it cleaned is that her son’s teacher has become fed up with her attempts to dodge a home visit while his usual behaviour has them thinking there may be something wrong in his family circumstances. As is later revealed, the teacher, Mariko (Tomu Muto), also lives in a trash home for unclear reasons but that seem to reflect her generalised anxiety in her inability to make decisions or take care of the rubbish in her life. She’s recently become engaged to a man who seems a little domineering but is also becoming suspicious of her reluctance to let him into her flat worried that it’s because she lives with another man while also hurt and confused by her rejection of intimacy.

Similarly, a care worker preparing to move back to the Philippines (Mac Sekioka) found himself living in a trash home after falling into depression following the death of his mother. The thing he didn’t want to get rid of was a Tupperware container containing a stew his mother had made for him he’d been keeping in the freezer for the last eight years and eventually shares with Ritsuki as a final ritual before moving on. Another old man meanwhile needs a little more persuading with the situation complicated seeing as the main reason his son wants them to intervene is that he suspects there may be valuable antiques trapped under all that trash. What led to Shigeo becoming a local pariah remains obscure save that he too seems to be suffering with guilt and grief, haunted by the figure of a tiny woman who claims he threw her away. In some cases, it seems like at some point it all became too much and what each of the clients needed was a helping hand to get them started, Ritsuki and his eccentric boss gradually freeing them of the burdens of their lives while restoring both peace and order as he too learns to move forward bonding with his new work family no longer quite so constrained but living in the freedom and happiness of an uncluttered existence.

Hoarder On The Border screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom (金の国 水の国, Kotono Watanabe, 2022)

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After centuries of conflict, two feuding countries finally begin to put the past behind them to work for a common future in Kotono Watanabe’s animated fantasy romance, Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom (金の国 水の国, Kin no Kuni Mizu no Kuni). Adapted from the manga by Nao Iwamoto, this is very much a story of coming together to create a better future for all in which it’s always better to follow the most difficult path if it leads to longterm peace rather than opting for a quick fix like a dynastic marriage that won’t take place for another fifty years. 

In this case, the dynastic marriage actually works out but only because romantic heroes Sara (Minami Hamabe) and Naranbayar (Kento Kaku) end up meeting by chance and falling in love organically despite the class disparity and cultural differences between them. The kingdoms of Alhamit and Balkari had been feuding in part for the petty reasons of a dog and cat respectively doing their business on the wrong side of the border wall erected after previous war. Neither nation being very much interested in the dynastic marriage proposed by the previous generation in which Alhamit would give its most beautiful woman as a wife to Balkari’s cleverest man, Alhamit sent a cat instead while Balkari sent a dog. Poor Balkari engineer Naranbayar simply laughed off his new “bride” while Princess Sara of Alhamit decided to go along with the ruse knowing that to kick up a fuss would likely send both nations back to war. 

They happen to meet when Sara transgressively ventures beyond the wall in search of her dog, Lukman, who has fallen in a hole in the forest. With her pretty sisters needling her, Sara asks Naranbayar to pretend to be her new husband, little realising that he is the man she is intended to marry. The youngest of four sisters, Sara has always felt inferior and fears that she cannot live up to the title of Alhamit’s most beautiful woman but begins to fall for Naranbayar who is in fact very clever but also kind in the way most of her family aren’t. Naranbayar genuinely cares about the people of Alhamit and quickly works out that in this incredibly wealthy, “golden” desert city they will run out of water within 50 years while water is something the poor nation of Balkari has in abundance. 

An alliance will save the lives of people in Alhamit, but also also benefit those of Balkari in boosting its economy but not everyone is motivated towards a diplomatic solution with many in the court clearly agitating for war in which they would simply conquer Balkari to capture its resources. The King is under pressure in thinking of his historical legacy, not wanting to be seen as a weak monarch as his namesake earlier was in having restored with relations with Balkari rather than seeking to dominate it militarily. Under the sway of potentially corrupt shaman Piripappa (Chafurin) he rules with an authoritarian fist, while his haughty daughter Leopoldine (Keiko Toda) has appointed a handsome actor as an advisor to signal her opposition. 

Only through the genuine love which emerges between Sara and Naranbayar can the country be saved in turning away from pointless acrimony towards a more open future marked by mutual cooperation and friendship between two equal nations. Through falling in love with Naranbayar, Sara grows in confidence and learns to see herself as beautiful no longer inferior to her sisters but playing a full part in the life of the court as they work together to solve the water issue and return life to their arid land. Beautifully designed with its Middle-Eastern aesthetics and strong contrast between the desert kingdom of Alhamit and the beautiful forests of Balkari, the film also features charming paper art bookends and a watercolour credits sequence depicting a happier future for both nations as they forge a new society together. Heartfelt in its central romance, Watanabe’s charming love story positions cross cultural connection as the best means of overcoming centuries of pointless conflict along with allowing each of its heroes to become more of themselves as they work together to create a new world of love and peace in which all can prosper and live in happy harmony. 

Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)