Category: Japan

Floating Weeds (浮草, Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)

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An oft-repeated criticism of the work of Yasujiro Ozu is that it is all the same. The similarity of the English-language titles with their ubiquitous seasonality doesn’t help, but you have to admit there is some truth in it. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that Ozu was not so interested in uniformity or repetition as he was in dialogue with himself. Thus Late Spring becomes Late Autumn and the abandoned father a conflicted mother, the two boys of I Was Born But… who rejected their father’s descent into corporate lackydom become arch consumerists seceding from society until their parents give them a TV set in Good Morning. Ozu refrained from remarking on the repurposing of old plots for new dramas, but did expressly regard his 1959 Floating Weeds as a “remake” of the 1934 A Story of Floating Weeds updated to the present day and filmed in the, by then, classic Ozu style. 

As in the 1934 version, the action centres on the arrival of a theatrical troupe to a small town which they have not visited in some years, in this case 12. This time around, the troupe is a little more exulted, performing kabuki-style narrative theatre rather than rustic entertainment, but is subject to many of the same problems. Kihachi is now Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura), a much older man though cheerful and energetic. He has chosen this town because it is home to an old flame, Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who is the mother of his adolescent son, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Kiyoshi thinks that Komajuro is his mother’s brother and that his father is long dead. He recognises Komajuro right away and is pleased to see him, though they evidently have not met in many years. 

The 1934 version had revolved around Kihachi’s corrupted paternity in his shame regarding the stigma of being a travelling player. By 1959 that is simply no longer so much of an issue, but whereas the financial difficulties Kihachi’s troupe faced were partly a symptom of the depression and partly of their misfortunes, those of Komajuro take on a more melancholy quality because it is obvious that this is a way of life which is coming to an end. When Kihachi says he’s going to start over, it seems futile but he is still young enough to have a credible chance. Komajuro is already “old” and it’s clear that he will struggle to support himself as a travelling actor simply because it is no longer a viable occupation. 

Thus Komajuro’s story is less one of frustrated fatherhood than of melancholy resignation to the vagaries of a lifetime. “Life is an unknown course”, he tells Oyoshi, “the only constant is change”. Like Kihachi he doesn’t want his son to see the show, though perhaps more out of embarrassment. Kiyoshi complains that the character in his play is “unrealistic” because he doesn’t relate to the modern world. Komajuro objects but explains that he is “a character from another era”, making it plain that he is talking as much about himself. Komajuro is a man left behind by time and incapable of understanding the world in which he now lives which may be one reason he seems to hang on to an intense desire to save Kiyoshi from being affected by the stigma of being the son of a travelling actor even though that is no longer something he would need saving from. 

This slight disconnect, along with Gajiro Nakamura’s cheekily comical performance, adds to the genial comedy which characterised the majority of Ozu’s colour films though this one is admittedly slightly less colourful owing to being produced by Daiei as one of a handful of films made outside Ozu’s home studio of Shochiku. Komajuro becomes a tragicomic rather than purely tragic figure, a man suddenly realising he has become old and facing the decline of his patriarchal authority. Like Kihachi he turns violence on both his mistress, Sumiko (Machiko Kyo), and the young actress Kayo (Ayako Wakao) who has fallen for his son, but it’s futile and born of desperation. A more sympathetic figure than 1934’s Otaka, Sumiko seems to genuinely like Komajuro and is hurt as well as jealous and threatened by the existence of his “secret” family. Her petty revenge is taken in response to Komajuro’s bitter claim that his son “belongs to a higher race” moments after bringing up her past as a sex worker. Rather than a simple desire for chaos and upset, she intends to pull Kiyoshi down to her level through getting him to sleep with Kayo, but Kayo falls for him for real only to worry she is perhaps ruining his bright future. 

“One can’t suddenly show up out of nowhere and assert one’s parental authority,” Komajuro eventually realises. His hopes are dashed by Kiyoshi’s relationship with Kayo not because of her proximity to the world of the travelling actor, but because he fears it means that Kiyoshi is just like him, an irresponsible womaniser. He wanted to save Kiyoshi as a means of saving himself, pushing his son into a more respectable world he had been unable to enter. Kiyoshi, however, rejects his sacrifice, describing his parents as “selfish” for keeping the secret all this time only to drop a bombshell now. He complains he’s been fine these 20 years and does not want or need a father beyond the one he already thought to be dead. Rather than the nobility Komajuro’s of paternal sacrifice, the focus is pulled back towards the son and his filial responsibility to live up to it by becoming a fine and upstanding young man while Komajuro is once again exiled back to the moribund world of the travelling actor. 

Of course, the world of 1959 was very different to that of 1934. The economy was at last improving and consumerist pleasures were very much on the horizon, meaning that for many life was comfortable at last. Japan was at peace if not completely free of political strife which removes the constant anxiety felt by those trying to survive the mid-1930s. But Ozu himself was also 25 years older and had perhaps reached that sense of resignation with the world that allowed him to sigh and laugh where before he may have trembled with fear or rage. Komajuro is as he always was, a floating weed, a man without a home, but now perhaps one of many rootless wanderers off the post-war landscape.

A Story of Floating Weeds (浮草物語, Yasujiro Ozu, 1934)

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Japanese cinema is filled with tales of maternal self-sacrifice which is more often than not rejected by ungrateful children unable to understand the depths of a mother’s love. More contrarian than most would have it, Yasujiro Ozu’s abiding interest is with fathers and particularly with those who are flawed but loving. 1934’s A Story of Floating Weeds (浮草物語, Ukigusa Monogatari) which he later remade in colour 25 years later, is a tale of one such father and another of his “Kihachi” movies, but situates itself in a liminal space defined by Kihachi’s precarious position as a member of a virtual underclass of travelling players. 

Kichachi’s (Takeshi Sakamoto) troupe is returning to a small town after four years where they hope to stay a year. Unbeknownst to the other members, Kihachi has an ulterior motive in that the town is home to his former lover Otsune (Choko Iida) and his illegitimate son, Shinkichi (Koji Mitsui) who thinks that Kichachi is just a family friend and that his father was a civil servant who has now passed away. As is usual in travelling player stories, the troupe is in crisis and on the verge of disbanding, so Kihachi’s frequent absences do not go unnoticed, particularly by his current mistress Otaka (Rieko Yagumo) who has a petty and vindictive streak. When one of the veteran actors spills the beans, she marches straight over to Otsune’s to make trouble but Kihachi, sick of her possessive behaviour, breaks up with her. To take revenge, she bribes another actress, Otoki (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), to seduce Shinkichi. 

The central issue is one of Kihachi’s frustrated paternity. It’s clear that he couldn’t be physically present for his family but has always done his best to support them financially while Otsune runs a small restaurant. They are not married and their present relationship seems to be more one of companionship than romance but whatever label they might put on it they get along well and both deeply care for their son. While in town, Kihachi busies himself with fatherly activities, playing board games with Shinkichi or fishing in the local stream. It pains him that his visit may be short and that Shinkichi, who seems to like him a great deal, has no idea he is his son. 

That is largely because Kihachi’s only hope in life is that he spare Shinkichi from the depressing life of a travelling player. He has been paying for his education and Shinkichi is now almost a man, apparently a post-graduate student at an agricultural school. When he expresses an interest in coming to see the show, Kihachi seems panicked and tells him the kinds of shows he does are not for people like him and that he should stay home and study. Shinkichi laughs at the fatherly advice but little knows that it comes from a place of shame. Travelling players are regarded as an underclass. They are often barred from inns and not considered polite company.

“My son belongs to a world better than yours,” he shouts to Otaka during a heated, rain-drenched argument during which she threatens to expose him. Otoki, the other actress, was originally reluctant to enact Otaka’s plan, but later found herself falling for Shinkichi. Perhaps a young man bedding a travelling actress isn’t a grand shame or much of a problem for him, at least not so much as to provoke Kichahi’s despair in exclaiming he has caused his son’s ruin, but destroys his father’s hopes of keeping him out of that untouchable world for which he had sacrificed so much including his paternal love. 

Yet like the ungrateful child of a hahamono, on learning the truth Shinkichi rejects his sacrifice and feels only his abandonment, refusing to believe that any father could be so “selfish”. The rejection comes at a low point, immediately after Kihachi loses the acting troupe and considers returning to Otsune for a settled, ordinary life as a husband and father. Otsune scolds her son, reminding him that all he wanted was to give Shinkichi the settled, ordinary life that he could never live as a travelling player. It seems this life will always elude him, he is barred from his own home and must forever wander. Being a good father means he must keep far away from his son, a floating weed with no place to call home.

Come and Go (COME & GO カム・アンド・ゴー, Lim Kah-Wai, 2020)

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Japanese cinema has not always been willing to contend with contentious social issues such as immigration. More recently, however, indie filmmakers in particular have been keen to critique the nation’s attitudes towards those who’ve come to make their home there. Like Akio Fujimoto’s Along the Sea, Lim Kah Wai’s Come and Go (カム・アンド・ゴー) explores the lives of those who’ve come to Japan, in this case Osaka, in search of a better life but have mostly encountered exploitation and prejudice while marginalised Japanese residents apparently fare little better. 

Lim weaves his disparate tale around the discovery of a skeleton in a rundown part of town which is later found to belong to an elderly woman apparently reported missing six months previously. The comings and goings that we witness are an interconnected series of movements between a quartet of South Korean sex workers apparently trying their luck in Osaka because of an economic downturn at home, a tour group of wealthy Chinese tourists mainly interested in shopping, their guide, a Malaysian businessman in town for a presentation about tourism, a lost Japanese woman failing to make it as a hostess, an Okinawan porn producer literally pulling women off the street and embarrassing them into taking part in his videos, a Taiwanese sex tourist, a Vietnamese man on a “Technical Trainee” scheme but trapped in exploitative factory work, a student from Burma sexually harassed at the second of her part-time jobs, a Nepali refugee dreaming of opening a restaurant of his own, the Japanese teacher he is having an affair with, her husband the policeman, a middle-aged Japanese man embarking on a career as a rent-an-uncle, and a man being exploited while working in a car park who also seems to be mixed up with gangsters.   

Osaka it seems is a busy place. Mr Lee, the man travelling with the Korean sex workers, harps on about the “Osaka dream” as if the city held some special allure but pretty much everyone is struggling, either exploiting or exploited by others. Like the three women of Along the Sea, Nam came to Osaka on the technical trainee programme but is treated badly by his unsympathetic boss who refuses to give him permission to return to Vietnam temporarily to visit his mother who has been taken ill. Nam too attempts to run away, contacting a Vietnamese friend who runs a restaurant for advice where he’s told to convert his technical trainee visa to a student one by enrolling in a language school so he can “come and go” as he pleases. This is the same language school where Yoshiko, the policeman’s wife currently having an affair with Nepali Refugee Musoun, works. We can see that her classes are barely attended, and when she asks her boss about apparently fake names on the roster, she’s told to make her attendance figures look better on paper. It’s clear that not everything is on the level at the school, the headmaster explaining to Nam he needs to pay a hefty fee to enrol but that’s OK because they can help him find a part-time job in return for a hefty part of his salary. Later picked up by the police, Nam runs into another Vietnamese guy who also left his technical trainee programme but now regrets it, claiming he was cheated by false promises and one of his friends even took his own life as a result. 

Working at the same factory but as a part-timer, Burmese student Mimi finds something similar as she’s sexually harassed by the skeevy middle-aged boss at her second part-time job at a supermarket. While the men are forced to deal with labour exploitation and physical violence, the women are also subject to ingrained patriarchal values as evidenced by the preoccupation with sex and pornography among many of the male visitors such as sex tourist Xiao Kang who idly plays with sex toys in a store while lining up for an autograph from an AV actress, or the collection of sleazy Chinese businessmen demanding to be set up with authentic Japanese porn stars. The problem there is that porn producer Ryuji is deep in debt to yakuza loan sharks and has no women on his books, eventually brokering an unconvincing deal with Chinese tour guide Cheung and the South Korean pimp Lee to pass off the Korean sex workers as Japanese porn stars assuming that the Chinese won’t notice the difference because one woman’s as good as another. Meanwhile, conservative Malaysian family man William finds himself extremely uncomfortable when forced to conduct business in a hostess bar which his contact keeps insisting is how business gets done in Japan while unwilling to change his behaviour to accommodate his guest which is in itself ironic as William is there to advise them on boosting tourism from Malaysia through cultural awareness. 

While well-meaning protestors take to the streets to hold an anti-discrimination rally, Kenji fairly points out that they preach acceptance for the international community but ignore mixed-ethnicity citizens like himself, something fully borne out by their rather defensive and somewhat prejudiced conversation when he leaves to use the bathroom. The police conference regarding the skeleton ends with the policeman lamenting that the modern society has become selfish and indifferent to the feelings of others placing wealth and convenience above community which is how an old woman’s body went undiscovered so long and apparently became mixed up in a complicated real estate scam. Even the Japanese rent-an-uncle is forging time-limited, compensated relationships with strangers while his own son ironically tries to convince him to retire to Malaysia so he can get his hands on the house. These people are all connected even if they don’t know it, all victims of the same oppressive system as the city moves all around them increasingly indifferent to their existence.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Shara (沙羅双樹, Naomi Kawase, 2003)

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Familial absence and painful nostalgia once again take centre stage in Naomi Kawase’s third feature, Shara (沙羅双樹, Sharasoju), in which she also stars as an expectant mother still contending with tremendous loss. Set once again in the director’s hometown of Nara, Shara continues Kawase’s key themes in its gradual healing of a fractured family which finds itself at a point of departure, struggling to accept the path forward but finding strength in friendship and community spirit as they prepare to welcome a new life both figurative and literal. 

Shooting in her usual documentary style, Kawase opens with an ethereal handheld sequence wandering through an antiquated atelier until finding twin brothers playing with charcoal ink in a pure white room. Suddenly one of the boys, Shun, runs off and is chased by his brother, Kei, as the chanting of monks and the sound of bells accompany them marking this as a festival day. At some point, the boys switch places. Shun pauses to bounce off a car and realises his brother has turned a corner and can no longer be seen. He looks for him in vain before returning to his mother, making preparations at the temple, and explains what’s happened but Kei is not found nor ever seen again. 

An unannounced time jump moves us on some years into the future in which Shun (Kohei Fukungaga) is now a moody teenager obsessively painting a portrait of his absent brother, while his mother, Reiko (Naomi Kawase), is heavily pregnant and father, Taku (Katsuhisa Namase), is once again preparing for the festival. The family is, of course, defined by its absence, the unanswered question of Kei one they each actively avoid trying to address even as the impending birth of the new baby forces them into a reconsideration of their familial bonds. While Reiko tends to her flowers, which is to say to life, Taku busies himself to the street festival while only Shun remains definitively locked within his grief, isolating himself to finish the painting while tempted away from broody introspection by his pretty neighbour, Yu (Yuka Hyodo), who we learn is also contending with displacement and identity in learning that her mother is actually her aunt who had slightly problematic feelings for her older brother who like Kei simply disappeared one day and never returned. 

As often in Kawase’s filmmaking, the literal truths may be less important than the emotional or the spiritual. Kei’s body is eventually found, an event greeted with stoic resignation by the parents who must perhaps have been expecting it, while only Shun is thrown into chaotic despair in once again being confronted not only by his loss but the guilt and the finality. Both Reiko and Taku declare that it’s time to “face” things, something they have perhaps been refusing to do even while Shun was literally facing his brother in painting his portrait. Taku explains to his son that there are things which can be forgotten, others which must not, and more that must be. Painting a calligraphy banner with the characters for shadow and light, he tries to show his son a new way forward.

Yet it’s the local festival with its traditional Basara dance which finally allows Shun to find the path out of his grief. Kawase captures the local planning meeting with documentary rigour, Taku listening patiently while a local man explains the point of their festival is to make sure that the whole community is involved, something later made plain when Shun, hitherto a marshal, is invited to join the dance which continues even as the rain falls. Taku’s final speech in which he describes Basara dance as “a unique event in which each of us can shine our brightest” takes on new significance as the sun finally comes out. “When you’re offered the opportunity to shine you must grab it”, he concludes, hoping that the spirit of Basara dance will make its way into the rest of their lives. 

Elliptically structured and shot with Kawase’s trademark handheld, the film finds its way back to where it started as the chiming of the temple bell recurs with its air of anxious alarm, but is finally quieted, giving way to the peaceful summer sounds of the cooling breeze and ubiquitous cicadas as the family is perhaps repaired with the advent of new life, not replacing the old, but beginning again even in the midst of such unanswerable grief. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Extremists’ Opera (過激派オペラ, Junko Emoto, 2016)

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Junko Emoto ironically explores Tokyo’s fringe theatre scene in adapting her semi-biographical novel. Shot with a roving, handheld camera, The Extremists’ Opera (過激派オペラ, Kagekiha Opera) situates itself within an all female, avant-garde experimental theatre company but quickly makes plain that even those with high-minded artistic intentions are not free of the usual human flaws as the borderline abusive, womanising female director finds herself sabotaging everything she’s built through a mix of hubris and wandering desire. 

Blanket Cult are a popular company on the fringe theatre scene with a small following devoted to their art. Former banker Ayako bursts into their office determined on an audition and subsequent career change precisely because she can’t get enough of director/playwright Nao’s experimental plays which, she explains, she believes can stop wars. Nevertheless, it’s not Ayako the team are struck by, but the intense young woman who came in behind her, Haru, who more or less demands to be taken on. Nao is captivated, hiring both women on the spot and vowing to write a new piece with Haru in the lead. Of course, she does this partly for not altogether altruistic reasons. Immediately after the first script meeting she asks Haru to stay behind and then propositions her, directly declaring her love with the justification that she’d rather be upfront rather than waste time during the rehearsal process. Haru tells her that she’s not into women, but Nao doesn’t take no for an answer seemingly oblivious to the fact that what she’s doing is harassment and really she’s no better than any other sleazy male director handing out parts to women she wants to sleep with. 

Nevertheless, her persistence even with its undignified pleading eventually pays off. Haru relents, either because she’s fed up of fending off Nao’s advances or discovering that she is on some level receptive, finding that she does in fact enjoy sex with another woman. She agrees to start dating Nao who declares Haru her muse and the pair move in together but their relationship is threatened by their working environment with its petty jealousies and temptations. Emoto opens the film with a graphic sex scene of two naked women 69-ing, rolling around in the empty environment of the garage the troupe uses to rehearse. The two women are Nao and her previous squeeze, a former leading lady she throws over because of her attraction to Haru whose own desire is perhaps signposted after she walks in on them going for a second round and makes a passive aggressive scene that leads the other woman to warn her that Nao is a heartless womaniser with a habit of bedding her leading ladies, sometimes in the wings. 

Yet it’s not only Nao’s misplaced desire that endangers the troupe but her arrogance and abusive directing style. After their play proves a success, she unwisely gives in to ambition and sells out by allowing a mainstream professional actress, Yurie, to join the troupe, a move which disrupts their dynamic while also inflaming Haru’s jealousy as she begins to wonder if she’s already being replaced. Nao snaps at her team and stops giving them proper direction in favour thinly veiled insults. She repeatedly instructs an actress to lose weight while increasingly allowing Yurie to dominate the rehearsals, accepting all of her ideas even while the other members sceptical. She even goes so far as to abandon her usual thriftiness, purchasing elaborate props such as a large vertical tank which leads her into another possibly inappropriate relationship with an older woman who had been pursuing her. Needless to say, the whole thing blows up in her face, ruining not just her relationship with Haru but that with her theatre company who are now all thoroughly fed up with her mistreatment and have entirely lost respect for her as a person and an artist. 

“If you want to pick a fight with society live in it first,” her benefactor irritatedly tells Nao after she’s thoughtlessly caused offence, reminding her that she lives in a kind of bubble that is the fringe theatre scene. Her only real interaction with someone outside of it is with the estate agent who finds her and Haru a flat and is extremely confused as to why they only need one room if they’ll be living together, concerned that female roommates are a liability because sooner or later one gets a boyfriend and leaves the other in the lurch unable to make the rent alone. Unable to learn her lesson, Nao has furiously energetic sex with an apparently wealthy starstruck fan and then immediately asks for money, perhaps getting a taste of her own medicine when she assures her there’s plenty more where that came from as long as she sees her again and also gives her a part in a play. Playfully ironic with its whimsical score and slightly detached gaze, Emoto’s refreshingly explicit drama is both a mild satire of the avant-garde fringe theatre scene and a takedown of its self-involved director whose inability to separate the creative from the carnal proves her downfall both artistic and emotional. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

She Taught Me Serendipity (今日の空が一番好きとまだ言えない僕は, Akiko Ohku, 2024)

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Akiko Ohku’s quirky dramedies have so far mostly focused on an introverted woman’s quest for love, but with She Taught Me Serendipity (今日の空が一番好きとまだ言えない僕は, Kyo no Sora ga Ichiban Suki to Mada Ienai Boku ha) she moves into new territory in adapting the novel by Shusuke Fukutoku in which an alienated college student is unwittingly caught between two women. Set in the picturesque city of Kyoto, the film echoes the work of Tomihiko Morimi and revels in the power of serendipitous connection but equally the melancholy loneliness that underpins it in the legacy of grief and regret.

Returning after a six-month absence following the death of his grandmother, Konishi (Riku Hagiwara) is indeed at odds with his environment. He walks as if in a fog and is slightly out of tune with the world around him while often carrying an umbrella, or parasol depending on the weather, as a bulwark to protect him from prying eyes. Unlike his classmates, he speaks in the standard dialect rather than with an Eastern-inflection which his only friend Yamane (Kodai Kurosaki) has taken to extremes, describing his manner of speech as “Yamane Dialect”. It’s on campus that he begins catching sight of a young woman Yamane has dubbed the “solo soba” diner who seems to be just as solitary as he is, though the pair later strike up a connection precisely because of their shared sense of alienation.

To that extent, it’s not unreasonable that Konishi might doubt his new friendship with his young woman, Hana (Yuumi Kawai), who seems to be tailor-made for him and appeared seemingly from nowhere during his absence. Meanwhile, he’s resumed his old job at a local bathhouse where he cleans after hours with a girl-named Sacchan (Aoi Ito) who, judging by the looks she exchanges with the owner’s daughter Kaho, is secretly in love with him though he hasn’t noticed. While Hana is like him quiet and mysterious, Sacchan is a live wire, a young woman full of life who can’t stop talking and makes each of their cleaning sessions a riot of fun and silliness. 

But in keeping with these kinds of stories, Konishi suffers from extreme main character syndrome and never really sees either woman as a whole person rather than as an extension of himself. As Sacchan says in a poignant monologue movingly delivered by Aoi Ito, he never even bothered to ask her full name. He promised to buy her dinner to make up for missing shifts and needing extra help, but most likely never planned to follow through, nor did he ever listen to the song she recommended to him, though he went and read the short story Hana referenced right away. On the one level, there was nothing he could do to avoid hurting her feelings when he couldn’t return them, but at the very least he’s been self-involved and insensitive, just as he is when Hana suddenly drops out of contact and he convinces himself she was only hanging out with him as a joke. Rather than process his pain, he lashes out at Yamane instead and almost loses his only remaining friend before finally growing up a bit and making the effort to say sorry. 

The Japanese title translates as something like “I, who still can’t say, ‘Today’s sky is my favourite’,” echoing a common phrase repeated by Hana’s late father and Konishi’s grandmother, and hinting at Konishi’s inability to embrace whatever life gives him and find joy within it. Nevertheless, he does perhaps learn the importance of saying how he feels before it’s too late while taking into account the feelings of others even if his final confession comes at an awkward and insensitive moment, though it’s true enough that he’s really talking to himself. On one of their surreal adventures, he and Hana visit an unusual restaurant where all the dishes have quirky codenames except for one. It turns out the proprietor used to have someone to help him, but for whatever reason they’re not around anymore. Playing with aspect ratios and split screen, Ohku often fills the frame with a sense of absence in which characters simply disappear quite abruptly, echoing the fragility of these connections and, in fact, of everything, but makes plain that the main thing is to embrace them when they come rather than live in the shadow of loss or let the chance for love pass you by in fear of its failure.

She Taught Me Serendipity screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Aimitagai (アイミタガイ, Shogo Kusano, 2024)

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When we say, “what goes around comes around”, we usually mean it in a bad way that someone is only getting what they deserve after behaving badly themselves. But the reverse is also true. The smallest acts of kindness people do without thinking can have quite profound effects on the world around them because, in the end, we are all connected. A bereaved father remarks that he thought novels that only had kind-hearted characters were unrealistic, but now he wants to believe that kind of world could exist after realising the impact his late daughter’s kindness had on those around her.

It was Kanami (Sawako Fujima) who saved Azusa (Haru Kuroki) in middle school when she was being bullied for coming from a single-parent family and the pair remained firm friends ever after until Kanami was suddenly killed in an accident while working overseas. Kanami’s loss leaves Azusa struggling to move forward with her life while mired in grief and uncertainty. Having lost her mother some years previously, she has never really dealt with the trauma of her parent’s acrimonious divorce and has a rather cynical view of marriage despite working as a wedding planner where her unmarried status sometimes causes her clients anxiety though it obviously has very little do with her ability to do her job. She’s always been clear with her long-time boyfriend Sumito (Aoi Nakamura) that marriage isn’t something she sees in her future, though he seems to want more commitment, while she repeatedly describes him as “unreliable” and is hesitant to take the next step with their relationship whether it involves getting married or not.

In that sense it’s really Azusa’s inability to surrender herself to the concept of what her grandmother (Jun Fubuki) calls “amai-tagai”, or mutual solidarity, which they experience first-hand while visiting her as another old lady nearby comes rushing in saying her house is on fire. It’s not so much reciprocity as a generalised idea of having each other’s backs, that people help each other as needed without keeping score in much the same way as Azusa was saved by Kanami and as she later realises by Komichi (Mitsuko Kusabue) whose piano-playing soothed her spirit though Komichi intended to play in secret, allowing her music to blend in with the six o’clock chimes as a daily act of atonement for having played the piano for boys who were going off to war many of whom never returned. It is then Azusa who saves Komichi in turn by telling her that she felt comforted by her music and that she does not believe that she has no right to play it simply because of the ways it was misused in the past. 

What Azusa fears is that by getting married she would essentially be cutting herself off from her paternal grandmother who, aside from her aunt (Tamae Ando) who is also Komichi’s housekeeper, is the only other family member she seems to have a meaningful connection with. Unable to let go Kanami, she keeps sending her messages little knowing that her mother is actually reading them and feeling both sorry and grateful that her daughter had such a good friend who like her is also struggling to continue on without her. She and Kanami’s father (Tomorowo Taguchi) find solace in the letters they receive from children at an orphanage where Kanami used to donate cakes and sweets after visiting there on a job. The photos she took are on display at their bathrooms, Azusa said because Kanami wanted them to be in a place where the children felt free to embrace their feelings privately without fear of embarrassment. 

The photographs, letters, and belated gifts are all examples of the ways in which what Kanami sent around is still going around and will continue to do so long after she herself is gone. Through realising the reality of “aimi-tagai”, Azusa learns that the world can also be a kind place, Sumito might be more “reliable” than she thought, and it might not be such a bad idea to trust people after all. Based on the novel by Tei Chujo, the film’s interwoven threads of serendipitous connections and the unexpected results of momentary acts of kindness prove oddly life-affirming if only in the ways in which each realise that Kanami is always with them even if physically absent.

Aimitagai screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Kakashi (案山子, Norio Tsuruta, 2001)

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There’s a village in Japan that’s mostly inhabited by scarecrows. One of the last remaining residents began creating them to replace something that had been lost, fashioning effigies of those who had passed away and immortalising them as if clinging to a distant past long before the shadows of rural depopulation were cast over the village. In a way, it’s an expression of grief or at least a lament for a loss of community and a sense of increasing loneliness and isolation. 

Adapted from Junji Ito’s manga, Norio Tsuruta’s Kakashi is also in its way about grief and the way in which it can consume those left behind so that they too have no more desire to live. Dr Miyamori (Kenzo Kawarasaki) later explains that in the village they co-exist with death and he returned to his home town in the hope that he could save his daughter, Izumi (Ko Shibasaki), through its peculiar magic of resurrecting the deceased as human scarecrows. As he freely admits, he could not accept his daughter’s death and so has chosen to stay here in the village though alive himself rather than attempt to remake his life without her.

The village itself appears to exist slightly outside of the mortal realm as Kaoru (Maho Nonami) discovers on encountering the long tunnel that leads to its entrance. Her car breaks down half-way through signalling her liminal status as one who does not yet belong on either side. It’s not quite grief that’s brought her here but still a nagging sense of foreboding in that she’s come in search of her missing brother, Tsuyoshi, after discovering a letter from an old school friend, Izumi, next to his telephone. Kaoru appears confused as to why the letter should be there and travels to the village hoping for answers, assuming that Tsuyoshi (Shunsuke Matsuoka) may have travelled there in search of Izumi.

As the landlady lets her into his empty flat, Kaoru explains that she is his only family and there’s a suggestion that her attachment to him is unnatural, bordering on the incestuous. A policeman taking a look at the photo Kaoru hands him remarks that they look like a couple, which they do, leading her to stuff the photo back in her pocket as if she were embarrassed. To that extent, she’s come to reclaim Tsuyoshi, not just from death, loneliness, grief, and depression, but from Izumi or at least the spectre of her. In life, she feared that Izumi would take him away from her and at least in Izumi’s mind frustrated their romance out of romantic jealously. Dr Miyamori implies it was this sense of despair that contributed to her death and it’s clear that Izumi’s mother also blames Kaoru while Izumi accuses Kaoru of being forever in her way.

But then again, she did not bring Kaoru to the village and is not targeting her personally out of vengeance. Rather, she has moved beyond that as she finally’s about to become “herself” thanks to the village’s dark magic and the following day’s scarecrow festival, and therefore no longer needs to care about the resentments of her mortal life even if her father says that her evil spirit has empowered the town. There is definitely something quite creepy in this weird village with its shades of the Wicker Man in its strange ritual and humanoid effigies where improbable numbers of children softly blow pinwheels under a large windmill that seems to be moving time itself. Tsuruta even borrows a particularly eerie shot from Don’t Look Now and emphasises the liminal qualities of the village in Dr Miyamori’s advice that Kaoru leave as soon as her car is fixed otherwise she may no longer wish to.

The village is apparently full of those like him who are trapped but wilfully so because they no longer desire to leave. Kaoru attempts to help one of them, a young living woman from Hong Kong unable to let go of the memory of her late father whose scarecrow eventually tells her to go. It’s a place for those who have no other place to go to because they cannot let go of their grief and despair. Thus Kaoru is pulled towards the edge of the tunnel, not so much to free her brother as, in a way, herself by allowing her grief to consume her and consenting to live this empty life alongside death rather than allow herself to accept her loss.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Invisible Half (インビジブルハーフ, Masaki Nishiyama, 2025)

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Most people don’t mean to, but in thinking they’re being nice all they do is make someone feel bad. Like they don’t belong, or there’s something wrong with them. Since returning to Japan from the UK after her parents’ divorce, Elena (Lisa Siera) can’t help thinking everyone’s staring at her. They call her the “gaijin” girl, a derogatory term for someone who is not considered to be Japanese, but Elena isn’t a “foreigner”, not that it matters. On her first day at her new school after leaving the last one due to relentless bullying, the teacher asks her what kind of mixed-ethnicity she is and then asks her to tell her all about England, though she’s been living in Japan for over 10 years and can’t really remember it. Nor can she remember much English, or perhaps simply doesn’t want to talk about it, though there’s no reason why she should anyway. 

Maybe not bringing it up would be worse, but the teacher’s ham-fisted attempts at inclusion only leave Elena feeling othered. These are just a few of the microaggressions she experiences in her daily life and even another girl who tries to make friends with her, Akari (Miyu Okuno), makes a few insensitive remarks like how she’d like to have “a gaijin’s face,” and that it’s not fair because she is Japanese. She also goes straight to using Elena’s first name, which could just be friendliness or possibility circumventing the usual rules of Japanese politeness because they don’t really apply to non-Japanese people implying Akari may not think of her as one. Elena says she just wants “a normal Japanese name”, so her new friend starts calling her “Rena” which Elena seems to like because it feels like acceptance, but is it, really?

In many ways, it’s the Elena/Rena dichotomy that’s at the heart of Masaki Nishiyama’s incredibly accomplished debut as she struggles to accept the “invisible” half of herself that is nevertheless what she thinks everyone is always staring at to the extent that they don’t even really see her. There’s another girl in her class, Ito (Runa Hirasawa), who appears to be a figure of fun who everyone, including Elena, avoids and considers “weird”. It’s after the class bullies take Ito’s phone and put it in Elena’s bag to kill two birds with one stone that Elena begins to feel especially haunted. A monster with a bandaged face she can only see when she’s holding her phone begins stalking her, leaving her in a permanent state of agitation.

The phone is otherwise a source of anxiety as it’s many through group chats, text messages, and social media that bullying takes place. Elena firmly believes that the monster is real, though in other ways it reflects her own sense of internal discomfort in being unable to accept what she perceives as two sides of herself as an integrated whole. Her not altogether sympathetic mother can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through, and there’s another part of her that wonders if she should have stayed with her father, though the situation may not have been much different in the UK. Her well-meaning teacher tells her she should learn to trust adults more, and asks why Elena is keeping things from her in a way that makes it sound like a personal slight or in someway a malicious act on Elena’s part. Elena replies it’s because she also Japanese, which is to say not someone Elena currently feels she can trust while also implying that Elena also does not quite consider herself to be “Japanese”.

The lumbering, bandaged monster reflects the way in which she is pursued by her own uncertain identity while craving acceptance from others but at the same time afraid to accept it. She doubts Akari’s sincerity and worries that her overtures of friendship are a prelude to a long-form pattern of bullying, but it’s finally Akari who is prepared to help her face her monster in accepting that it actually exists. Faced with another bandaged face, Elena comes to accept it as a friend along with embracing her whole self including her full name. Filled with a genuine sense of unease, Nishiyama’s eerie debut is both an exploration of societal prejudice and a coming-of-age ghost story in which a young woman learns to make her own place to belong regardless of the gaze of others.

The Invisible Half screened as part of this year’s Raindance Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Whole Family Works (はたらく一家, Mikio Naruse, 1939)

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A young man becomes fed up with the constraints placed on his life and asks for the opportunity to improve his circumstances, but knows that to do so will leave his family at a disadvantage, at least in the short term. Is his request selfish, or are his parents selfish for exploiting the labour of their children and thereby impeding their progress in the world? As in many of Naruse’s films, the great enemy is poverty, but as the wise teacher Mr Washio says, the solution would be easy if Ishimura had a drinking problem or Kiichi were lazy but the situation is too complicated for such a simple adjudication.

Ishimura (Musei Tokugawa) has a job, but his wages are low and he has nine children to support along with elderly parents who are also still working. Fourth son Eisaku (Takeshi Hirata) tells his mother (Noriko Honma) that he doesn’t want to go to the factory and would like to carry on to middle school with his friends, but she tells him he’s being selfish and childish and that all his brothers began working after primary school. Perhaps because the burden disproportionally falls on her, it’s the mother who is most acutely obsessed with money and the most controlling of her children. Ishimura is more of a soft touch and genuinely sorry that he can’t really agree to oldest son Kiichi’s (Akira Ubukata) request to take five years off to study because the family can’t survive without his wages.

But Kiichi’s problem is that he’s trapped in a dead-end job. There’s no possibility of advancement and his wages won’t ever change. He could work there 50 years and never be able to support a family of his own. His idea is that he wants to become an electrician which he believes will be a steady occupation that will pay enough to allow him to take care of his parents when they’re old and also get married. He thinks if he doesn’t do something now, he’ll be trapped in this life forever and never escape his parents’ yoke. Nevertheless, he worries about whether his desire is “filial” or not and feels a tremendous amount of guilt and frustration that sends him to drink.

Ishimura also knows that if he agrees to Kiichi’s request, he’ll have to say yes to the others too. All the boys have dreams of their own with young Noboru (Seikichi Minami) even hoping to become a lawyer, while Genji (Kaoru Ito) and his younger brother Kokichi (Seiichiro Bando) are intent on joining the armed forces which is perhaps a nod to the rising militarism of the age. Scenes of imagined warfare leave a less aspirational vision of the military, though there hints of it throughout the boys’ lives through magazines and children’s literature such as the book Mr Washio gives to Eisaku. The household becomes a kind of microcosm of a totalitarian regime that controls the boys’ lives and futures, causing them to form a conspiratorial faction talking over their mutual dissatisfaction in the coffeehouse opposite run by Genji’s old school friend Mitsuko (Sumie Tsubaki) who has a crush on Kiichi. Eisaku has been patiently saving his allowance, but his mother finds out and so he blows the whole lot taking his brothers out for dinner rather than allow her to “borrow” any more of his money to which she feels herself entitled.

It’s the entitlement that’s the point. The parents expect the children to work without giving them any choice and thereby deny them the opportunity of working towards their own futures. Kiichi sees the big picture and wants to improve his circumstances, but does so because he wants to work for his family. He doesn’t intend to abandon them and chase his own success, he just wants to be able to provide for himself and at least have enough to eat. Mr Washio says he won’t tell him what to do, but also that there’s no rush, which seems like an intrusion from the censor’s board to reinforce the importance of filial piety over individualistic desire but also doesn’t deny that Kiichi has a point and as a grown man a right to freedom and independence. Nevertheless, there’s a subversive tension in the confrontation scene as the family sits in silence as the clock ticks away on the wall and the rain beats down outside. The brothers roll around in exuberance upstairs, while their defeated parents can only look up in resignation to their broken authority as the children’s revolution begins to take hold.

The Whole Family Works screened at Metrograph as part of Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us – Part II.