Category: Japan

A Bullet Hole Underground (地下街の弾痕, Kazuo Mori, 1949)

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Produced by Daiei Kyoto under the guidance of the Osaka Police, Bullet Hole Underground (地下街の弾痕, Chikagai no Dankon) is keen on selling a vision of order in a new Japan in which the police force employs all the latest technology to solve crimes calmly and methodically. We see them approach the crime scene forensically and conduct a series of scientific tests with microscopes and gadgets such as lie detector machines and code breaking equipment as they proceed towards the truth while earnest policeman Minagawa (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi) battles the ghosts of his past on realising that the dead man’s wife is his own lost love.

In any case, the film opens with a noirish scene at Umeda Station, Osaka, which then turns strangely comic. A man stumbles toward the exit and we assume that he is probably drunk but another man soon comes up behind him and pushes a pistol into his back. The second man pulls the trigger, then again to make sure, before calmly walking up the steps and leaving the station. A little while later, another drunk man arrives and has a little banter with the body before covering it with a signboard which is one reason it isn’t spotted until the shoeshine boys turn up in the morning. 

This sudden influx of children at rush hour is another symbol of the destabilisation of the post-war society in which the war orphans try to support themselves amid the still difficult economic environment. The lack of economic opportunities is also posited as a reason that the deceased, later identified as Kaneko, may have turned to crime by getting involved with a criminal gang smuggling drugs and money to destabilise the society even further. Yet the rot may have set in a little earlier than that. Before the war, Minagawa had wanted to marry Michiko (Machiko Kyo), the sister of his friend Sekiguchi (Toshiaki Konoe), but she later threw him over to marry the wealthy son of a family running a pharmacy. She admits she married him for the money, but after the war he lost everything. Unable to find work, Kaneko became a wastrel while Michiko gained employment at a cabaret bar as a dancer. He told her that he’d found a job at a company, but this turned out to be a lie and chief investigator Fujimoto (Takashi Shimura) assumes he must have been working for the gang. 

Still, to begin with it seems like it may have been a case of mistaken identity. Kaneko’s clothes turned out to belong to other people, a fact easily explained by Michiko that they were second hand, but also suggesting that someone may have set him up to take their fall. The gang needed the skills he learned in the navy but maybe they didn’t need him anymore. The root of the evil is located, ironically enough, in a jewellery store presenting a front of affluence and elegance but in reality founded on crime and misery when so many are still struggling to rebuild their lives. Michiko too seems to have turned cynical. She snarls and pushes Minagawa away, but privately cries and appears to regret her youthful decision to reject love for material comfort.

Perhaps because of its genesis as a film designed to promote the local police force, it has a much more upbeat conclusion and particularly for Michiko who is, unusually, allowed to redeem herself and gain a second chance to make a better decision by reuniting with Minagawa who does not and never has held her past against her. The pair of them look out over the fracturing city and remark at how it just carries on as if nothing had happened which feels like advice intended for the post-war society that it should do the same and try to leave the past behind to start a new life in this new era. Meanwhile, huge numbers of policemen swarm the harbour to crack down on the smuggling gang sending the not altogether comforting message that this city is well protected against all kinds of crime and the police force is a well-trained, modern institution that has the latest technology at its disposal along with astute and compassionate officers. There may be sleazy clubs, duplicitous men and heartless gangsters, black markets and smuggled dangers, but there are, the closing scenes with their wide-open vistas in which scorched trees stand behind the burgeoning city imply, better days to come.

Whirlpool of Flesh (おんなの渦と淵と流れ, Ko Nakahira, 1964)

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A intellectual professor and his wounded wife find themselves trapped in a toxic marriage after returning from Manchuria in Ko Nakahira’s fatalistic drama, Whirlpool of Flesh (おんなの渦と淵と流れ, Onna no Uzu to Fuchi to Nagare). Set in the late ‘40s, the film does indeed position Manchuria as a point of corruption while otherwise suggesting that Japan itself has been emasculated by the Occupation, but otherwise demonstrates how the couple drag each other into a cycling whirlpool of jealousy and obsession that it seems neither of them are really equipped to understand let alone escape.

Claiming to have been struck by her bright and smiling face in her omiai photo, Keikichi (Noboru Nakaya) married Sugako (Kazuko Ineno) in Manchuria without actually meeting her before the wedding. Apparently uninterested in sex, Keikichi was a virgin on their wedding night but harbours doubts Sugako may not have been. In any case, he seems put out that Sugako is not in his opinion his intellectual equal. He chances on her diary in which she details how bored she is by his constant lectures about English literature and that she feels him to be more schoolteacher than husband, but he merely scoffs that it’s not particularly well written. He begins to suspect that she’s sleeping with customers who come into the speakeasy she opens in their home during the days between the Russian invasion and repatriation and succumbs to a generalised sense of impotence hiding out in his room upstairs reading while she takes care of business below. 

In the present day, convinced that she’s having an ongoing affair with a merchant, Otani (Kazuo Kitamura), Keikichi pretends to go to a hot springs resort and then sneaks back to spy on her from an adjacent room. Though he feels no desire for her as his wife, through the eyes of these other men he rediscovers a sense of Sugako as the woman from the photograph for whom he does feel some attraction and satisfies his latent sexual desires through watching her sleep with Otani. As an escape from the war, he’d been working on a translation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida the heroine of which he seems to superimpose on Sugako in wondering if she is a faithless woman or true, angel or devil. 

Yet from Sugako’s point of view, she begs him for physical intimacy which he refuses to grant despite his jealousy over her relations with other men. Traumatised by her sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle, Sugako believes that she has a body designed to satisfy men’s desires and is drawn into meaningless, and often transactional, sexual relationships. When Keikichi later questions her, it seems she doesn’t remember any of them in detail for to her they were simply “men” and nothing more. The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that her uncle was a scholar of Chinese literature, which in part aligns him with Keikichi, but also points back to Manchuria as a source of corruption though coming uncomfortably from the opposite direction. 

Sugako equates this corrupted sexuality with the great emptiness inside her that frequently leads to thoughts of suicide. Nakahira constantly shows us shots of Keikichi’s knife as if implying some kind of violence is inevitably going to take place, though in the end it signals nothing so much as Keikichi’s impotence. Then again, the emptiness is also linked to a sense of despair in Japan’s defeat that is manifested most obviously in the house next-door where the widowed mother may have been having an affair with Sugako’s uncle and unsubtly tries to blackmail her by threatening to expose the secret of her sexual abuse about which she had tried to tell Keikichi but he had refused to listen. The daughter has become a sex worker catering to American servicemen to support the family while her brother, Kenichi (Tamio Kawachi), allows her to sacrifice herself for him justifying himself that it’s for the greater good as he’ll eventually become a doctor and save countless other lives. He’s also masquerading as a Christian to get a scholarship to an American university through the church which is all very contradictory not to mention selfish and cynical. The sister, meanwhile, appears to have lost her mind and frequently rants and raves, blaming her mother by claiming that walking in on her with Sugako’s uncle permanently corrupted her sense of self and sexuality. Like Sugako, she exorcises her trauma through abusing her body, in her case through sex work with “nasty GIs who don’t always pay.”

Keikichi refers to this as “post-war nihilism” like the frequent strikes and workers parades that take place around him, but partially repairs his sense of masculinity after moving to Tokyo and getting a job. At work he meets another young woman who is a mirror of the young lady from next-door in that she was also repatriated from Manchuria where her father was a member of the government. With her mother dead and father unable to work, Shimura (Kaori Taniguchi) also supports her family with her secretarial job and often goes without lunch herself to make ends meet. Keikichi notices this and offers her his bento claiming to be feeling unwell, but fails to notice how his pity wounds her dignity even if he meant in kindness while acknowledging that he’s never known hunger. Unlike the mismatched Sugako, Keikichi and Shimura are an ideal match. She also wanted to study English literature and can meet him on his level discussing politics and culture though he does not seem to be aware that he is attracted to her and acts almost paternally in offering to pay her university fees to help her escape her life of poverty, echoing Sugako’s claims that he had become her “little boy” rather than her husband. 

The irony is that Sugako insists Keikichi, who does little but look down on her and alternately complain that she’s either impure or unattractive, is the only man she’s ever loved and blames his lack of sexual interest in her on the unresolved trauma of her childhood abuse. Having asked Kenichi to help her get her hands on some cyanide, she is shocked and disgusted when despite his need he rejects her money and asks for her body instead. He insists that it’s “only the friction of mucus membranes” and that she might as well sleep with him first if she’s going to die, though her refusal is in part a desire to die “pure” and finally overcome the emptiness and despair inside her. This inability to reconcile herself is also aligned with Keikichi’s vision of “post-war nihilism” and suggests that in the end this trauma can’t be healed and must necessarily lead to destruction. Meanwhile, Keikichi seems to have discovered a path towards his rebirth in his friendship with Shimura only to potentially have the rug pulled from under him. His new future too, may end up poisoned by Sugako’s unilateral decision to facilitate it. Dark and twisted in true Nakahira fashion, the film paints the post-war society itself as a deepening whirlpool from which there is no escape or at least not for those like Keikichi and Sugako forever locked in a deathly embrace and drawn ever deeper into the waves.

Paradise of Solitude (孤独な楽園, Ikki Katashima, 2024)

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A blocked writer and a introverted young woman discover unexpected connection through accidental epistolary communication in Ikki Katashima’s poetic drama, Paradise of Solitude (孤独な楽園, Kodokuna Rakuen). Each wondering what exactly “paradise” means, the pair of them eventually find new ways to face the past and move on with their lives all while undergoing a vicarious romance with yearning at its centre that may or may not develop into something more “real” or else achieve its power solely through its lack of resolution. 

Yu Tsushima (Sho Aoyagi) is a writer struggling to meet his deadlines on a new serialised novel. Suffering with an illness, he’s retreated to his hometown and is now unable to leave because he experiences seizures on boats which understandably leaves him preferring not to get on them. One day, he receives an incredibly poetic love letter from an anonymous address only to notice a link to a porn site at the end of the email like a cruel punch line. Meanwhile, Ayame (Akiho Otsubo) is a nervous and introverted young woman working at a factory on the next island over. To begin with, it seems like she has suffered under the authoritarian rule of her aunt Tsukiko (Narimi Arimori), though as we later discover she may have meant well. 

Showing a talent for writing which sees her exploited by the factory boss, Ayame is tasked with writing a love letter on behalf of her friend Elena to a man she’s apparently only seen once yet has fallen hopelessly in love with. There’s something a little strange about this proposition, and not least because it seems like Elena may actually want this letter for herself and has unspoken (in Japanese, at least) feelings for Ayame. Elena is not the only non-Japanese person working at the factory at which it seems there may be some racist attitudes and behaviour among the employees, though there may be other reasons she feels isolated and otherwise drawn to Ayame.

But somehow, the letters find their way to Yu who is then “inspired” to write a new serial basically ripping off the anonymous correspondence but rewriting it in his own way while Ayame, having read his stories in a literary magazine, is not exactly angry yet confused and continues writing in order to complete this literary back and fore in crafting a new story together. Though the letters spin a tale of a lovelorn soul, it’s really the past that Ayame longs to revisit in the resultant trauma of her mother’s unexplained abandonment.

On top of the weird island drama, Katashima builds on the sense of uncanniness with a subplot about a cult-like local church and its own desire to reclaim Ayame thereby preventing her from fully confronting her past. Just as Yu is suffering from a medical condition, Ayame too experiences panic attacks when in contact with the church. Though it’s not always clear what is objectively true and what part of the story Yu is constructing from Ayame’s prose, parallel stories develop in which Ayame’s father hoped to liberate her mother’s soul though she eventually decided to chase paradise somewhere else. 

Because of her experiences, Ayame comes to believe that love within her has died, but perhaps begins to regain something of it thanks to her correspondence with Yu who becomes remorseful in learning that his actions may have been additionally unethical in encouraging Ayame to engage with her past trauma and risk dragging it all up again. He, meanwhile, begins to discover his creativity and overcomes the psychological dimensions of his condition by leaving his island and breaking out of his self-imposed isolation. The correspondence is like the message in a bottle discovered by Ayame’s mother which claimed to be from “paradise”, a hand across the ocean promising a better world over the horizon. Whether or not they find each other eventually in a more direct sense may not really matter, for simply having this invisible presence has enabled each of them to move past their internalised inertia and restart their lives. They may be trapped in a paradise of solitude, but on the other hand not quite alone and now a little more open to life’s possibilities rather than bound by its hurts and disappointments too frightened to leave the safety of their isolation in search of a more perfect paradise.

Paradise of Solitude screened as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Rules of Living (ルール・オブ・リビング, Greg Dale, 2023)

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A lost tourist finds a begrudging sanctuary in the home of a reluctant middle-aged woman in Greg Dale’s cross-cultural comedy, Rules of Living (ルール・オブ・リビング). Well intentioned as it may be, the film has some outdated humour and suffers from an unbalanced perspective that prioritises that of the American hero and at times uncomfortably pushes a message of Western individualism as he somehow “liberates” there heroine, Mikako (Kaho Minami), from her sense of obligation to her family and wider community. 

In a case in point, Mikako doesn’t want a roommate because her well-appointed home is a private sanctuary from the outside world and its constant judgement but is more or less forced to let Vincent (Greg Dale) in out of guilt and politeness. For his part fleeing a messy divorce and his own dissatisfaction with life under capitalism, Vincent arrives in Japan only to be somehow surprised that everything’s in Japanese and he can’t communicate with anyone because they are all too embarrassed about their English ability to respond to his questions. This results in a little well-worn humour in which his asking a portly middle-aged lady about a cheap place to stay is misunderstood and leads to an awkward situation as the apparently sexually insatiable older woman drags the naive and wholesome Vincent to a love hotel. Yet Vincent, an aficionado of Lafcadio Hearn, continues to wander round with wide-eyed wonder before rocking up Mikako’s office for more language-barrier banter and subsequently at her house despite not having made any attempt to contact her to make arrangements having befriended her daughter Chieko in Bali.

The film seems to directly contrast Mikako with her daughter who has given up a prestigious job and corporate career to go travelling leaving Mikako overstretched trying to care for her own mother alone as her health declines. Chieko’s decision is to a degree selfish in that she doesn’t answer her mother’s calls and does not even return home for her grandmother’s funeral while ironically looking down on Mikako for being a doormat who always puts the needs of others above her own as, the films argues, is expected by Japanese society. That’s not entirely wrong, though there must be a middle ground between total abandonment and selfless sacrifice in which not everything would simply be left for Mikako alone to deal with and she would have more freedom to fulfil herself outside of the expectations of others including those of Vincent. It’s notable that Mikako also seems to be dissatisfied in her career because of persistent sexism and office mores in which, at 49, she’s been more or less demoted to the ranks of office ladies after spending the rest of her working life in accounts and likely won’t be offered any further promotions, therefore justifying Chieko’s decision to quit. At the office, Mikako is treated as a maternal figure unfairly over relied upon by the boss because of her advanced skills while the younger women make too many mistakes and are slapdash in their work because they aren’t planning to stay in these jobs long term.

Meanwhile, Mikako is also under pressure to remarry especially as many seem to remark on the fact her family home is too large for her as a single woman. She’s been in a semi-serious relationship with a divorced childhood friend for some time but neither of them seem keen to give marriage another go until he too is pressured by his father to find another wife in order to take over the family business. Koichi (Kippei Shiina) is apparently the perfect man, nice, polite, well turned out and professionally successful yet there’s no real spark and Mikako feels guilty that she can’t learn to love Koichi in the way everyone else seems to love him for her. If she marries him, it will be for convenience and companionship along with the expectations of others much more than for herself. 

Her romance with Vincent is not all that convincing but born of frustration with these same social expectations and desire to put herself and her feelings first as manifested in her sudden desire to learn English. Vincent teaches English around the neighbourhood and spreads these individualist ideas around while enlivening the community through the simple act of communication as if no one had ever thought to speak to anyone else before. Yet he meets a more cynical force in the head of the language school he eventually gets a job at who is from India and offers yoga classes on the side despite never having practiced it before coming to Japan in another example of the pernicious qualities of these “expectations”. Vincent partially falls victim to them too in assuming a young woman in the staffroom is a lost student rather than a teacher simply because she looks Japanese. Nana complains no one takes her seriously because of her appearance despite her native level English and American accent. Before arriving at Mikako’s Vincent had tried to rent an apartment only to be told they don’t rent to foreigners and those that do either offer inappropriate accommodation or ask for a series of spurious additional fees. A man in the street also yells at him to go out with his own kind when seeing him with Mikako.

Essentially, Mikako’s choice is between two men, Vincent who apparently represents “freedom”, and Koichi who represents conventionality. This rather undermines the central thesis of Mikako rediscovering herself and taking agency over her life rather than as her daughter had said devoting herself entirely to the service of others. The film’s title is taken from a series of rules Mikako pastes up as condition for Vincent staying with her which included not using the bathroom or disturbing her while she’s in the living room, symbolising her desire for privacy and reluctance to let the relentlessly friendly Vincent into her life (even though being reluctant to let a total stranger and especially a man you’ve never met before stay in your house with you is completely understandable), but also hints at the “rules” that govern her own life in a conformist and patriarchal society. Some of these at least she may escape in deciding to follow her heart even if the place it leads her to has rules of its own that may not in the end be all that better.

Rules of Living screened as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

River Returns (光る川, Masakazu Kaneko, 2024)

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At the beginning of Masakazu Kaneko’s River Returns (光る川, Hikaru Kawa), a little boy asks his father where water comes from. It’s one of those questions that children ask but adults find difficult to answer. In any case, his father tells him that it comes from the sky, travels down leaves and branches, and then makes its way to the river. But what if all the trees are felled, the boy asks. His father tells him not to worry, they only cut down “useless” trees in order to plant “money-making” ones in their place.

This is the conflict at the centre of the film and to some extent that at the centre of all of Kaneko’s films so far in the changing relationships between man and landscape. The boy, Yucha (Sanetoshi Ariyama), is too young to fully understand what’s going on but has an inkling that might not be good for his beloved mountain which is somehow linked with the fate of his sickly mother, Ayumi (Kinuo Yamada). His father, Haruo (Tomomitsu Adachi), is one of the younger men in the village in favour of a plan to sell off the mountain for industrial construction with the building of a modern roadway and a dam project which he says will make everyone in the village rich. It’s 1958, and the nation is fast recovering from post-war privation. The population is increasing. New homes will need to be built so there’s money in timber. He wants to use some of it to treat Ayumi’s illness, but his mother has her doubts even if her son dismisses them as backward superstition. 

Haruo worries that their old-fashioned, rundown home may not survive a severe typhoon nor the flooding that often accompanies them. If you fear floods, then cutting down trees is obviously not a good idea and there is something quite unsettling about the imposition of the dam that would interfere in this ancient and natural process that keeps the rivers flowing. Yet this particular river also has a quasi-mystical quality that Yucha learns of from his grandmother and a kamishibai storyteller who recounts a local folktale about a girl who drowned herself in the pool at the river’s source after falling in love with a nomadic mountain woodcutter. It is said the girl’s despair sometimes brings about terrible floods and that the one who receives a wooden bowl from the river must return it full or a loved one will be taken by the waters.

Yucha had been worried about this before, frightened that his mother would not be able to escape the rising waters because of her illness. What he learns is that time flows differently at the source and in temporal terms, this river also flows backwards. He becomes a kind of conduit and saviour of the mountain in going back to right a wrong, ensuring that man and landscape are joined once again and can live in a more natural harmony. By saving the mountain, he can also save his mother whose condition it is implied is partly caused by a corrupted modernity. Haruo could not save her with money gained by nature’s destruction, only by restoring nature itself and making a commitment to keep the pool as clear and blue as the cormorant’s eye. 

The nomadic woodcutters after all know that too much felling ruins the mountain which would take generations to recover. They kneel and pray after felling their trees and respectfully move on at the full moon. Kaneko structures his tale elliptically, like a river that constantly returns in which all is a harmonious cycle that man threatens to interrupt, arrogantly thinking that it can improve upon nature. The middle part of the film is a lengthy flashback transitioning out of the kamishibai folktale set sometime in the feudal past in which even then there was division between the “civilisation” represented by the village and the natural world of the mountains which would be healed in the union of Oyo and the woodcutter Saku and is opposed both by the mountain nomads and Oyo’s widowed father Tsunekichi (Ken Yasuda). Only the mute boy can in the end resolve this romantic tragedy and ensure the river continues to flow. Elegantly lensed to capture the majestic quality of the mountain landscape, River Returns is a timely reminder of the importance of protecting the natural environment which in return will also protect us. 

River Returns screens as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

99% Cloudy… Always (99％、いつも曇り, Midori Sangoumi, 2023)

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Why do some people feel themselves entitled to ask insensitive questions at emotionally delicate moments? Kazuha (Midori Sangoumi) may have a point when she calls her oblivious uncle a bully when a lays into her about having no children at the first memorial of her mother’s passing, but still his words seem to wound her and provoke a moment of crisis in what otherwise seems to be a happy and supportive marriage.

Kazuha is a very upfront person and fond of directly telling people that she thinks she has stopped menstruating so she doesn’t think she could have a child now even if she wanted one. One of the other relatives, however, suggests that her husband, Daichi (Satoshi Nikaido), may feel differently which somewhat alarms her. The questioning had made her angry and offended, not least by the implication that a woman’s life is deemed a success only through motherhood and that those who produce no children are somehow “unproductive”, but it was all the more insensitive of her uncle to bring it up given that Kazuha had suffered a miscarriage some years previously.

The miscarriage itself appears to have resulted in some lingering trauma that’s left Kazuha with ambiguous feelings towards motherhood. Having been bullied and excluded as a child because she is autistic, Kazuha is reluctant to bring a child of her own into the world in case they too are autistic and encounter the same kind of difficulties that she has faced all her life. As the film opens, she’s trying to get in touch with someone about the results of a recent job interview but getting flustered on the phone and asking what may be perceived as too many questions all in one go. She does something similar while trying to enquire at a foster agency about a clarification of their guidelines as to whether she would be eligible to adopt as an autistic woman which she fears she will not be. It just happens that no one is available to talk to her that day as they’re all at an outing leaving only a member of the admin team behind to man the desk while Kazuha repeatedly asks the same question in the hope of a response. 

The truth is, Kazuha might have liked to raise a child but not her own while for Daichi it’s the opposite. He may still want to have a biological child but is not particularly interested in raising someone else’s. This question which has reared its head again at a critical moment immediately before it may be too late places a strain on their marriage as they contemplate a potential mismatch in their hopes and desires for the future. Daichi is reminded he has no other remaining family as his younger sister passed away of an illness some years previously and his parents are no longer around either. As he tells a younger woman at work, Kazuha is his only family while others needle them that there’ll be no one there for them in their old age should they remain childless. 

Part of the issue is a lack of direct communication as Daichi talks through his relationship issues with a colleague in trying to process Kazuha’s revelation that she felt relieved after the miscarriage given her guilt and anxiety that the baby would also be autistic which is not something that had previously occurred to him nor that he particularly worried about. The film seems to hint that Daichi has the option of moving on, perhaps entering a relationship with his younger colleague, if his desire to have a biological child outweighed that to stay with Kazuha while that is not an option for Kazuha herself who is left only wondering if she should divorce him so he can do exactly that. In flashbacks, we see her reflect on some of her past behaviour and realise that she may have inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings in speaking the truth and been shunned herself because of it. Even so, she has a warm community around her who love her as she is and are in effect an extended family. The accommodation that she finds lies in fulfilling herself through art and building a relationship with her nephew while also helping and supporting those around her. It may be cloudy 99% of the time, but there’s still a glimmer of light and a radiance that surrounds Kazuha as she embraces life as she wants to live it rather than allow herself to be bullied by belligerent uncles and the spectres of social expectation.

99% Cloudy… Always screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Hope (望み, Yukihiko Tsutsumi, 2020)

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What would you prefer, that your son is alive but a murderer, or that he’s dead but blameless? That’s the dilemma faced by the family at the centre of Yukihiro Tsutsumi’s Hope (望み, Nozomi) who find themselves wondering if they really knew their son at all or had been deluded by an image of familial harmony that was only ever superficial. Meanwhile, they’re also at the centre of a media storm, on the receiving harassment from the press and neighbours, along with the potential financial strain of lost business and fracturing relationships in the local community.

Teenage daughter Miyabi (Kaya Kiyohara) tells her father that she’s read online some families have to move after a relative becomes involved with a crime, that they lose their jobs and place in the community. She’s been studying hard to get into a top high school and is worried that they may not now accept her even if she passed the exam because of something her brother may or may not have done. Some might say that a being a part of the family means that you live or die together, but there is a persistent sense of unfairness felt by all they are being made to suffer because of something over which they had and have no control.

Tadashi (Koshi Mizukami) never explained of this to them and it’s true that he had been behaving differently, was sullen, stayed out all night coming home with bruises, and had in fact recently purchased a knife but it’s difficult for them to believe that he could really have gone on the run after murdering a classmate. At the beginning of the film, architect Kazuto (Shinichi Tsutsumi) had shown off their warm family home to some prospective clients remarking that they wanted to ensure close relationships with the their children and that the design is a good opportunity to plan ahead for the next 10 or 20 years but perhaps there’s something a little hubristic in that statement. Kazuto is trying to sell an image of familial bliss that his house design can bring, but when he knocks on Tadashi’s door the boy is rude and resents the intrusion. Typical teen behaviour, the clients might think, but still it’s a minor crack in the edifice of the image of a perfect family.

But for all that it’s Kazuto who most strongly resists the idea that Tadashi may really have killed his friend and clings fast to the hope that he may be a victim too even though, as mother Kiyomi (Yuriko Ishida) points out, that might mean that he’s already dead and was killed alongside him. For Kiyomi, she just wants Tadashi, whose name means “correctness”, to be alive even if that means he really did do it. If that were the case, the family would also face constant harassment for the rest of their lives, Tadashi would be in prison for the next 15 years, and they would likely have to compensate the other family financially for the boy’s lost future and 50+ years’ worth of lost earning potential. None of that matters to her so long as Tadashi is alive, but to Kazuto it seems more important that Tadashi not be guilty and he reclaim the image he had of his son as a good and honest young man rather than a delinquent killer and bully.

Investigations among the teens turn up contradictory reports, some saying that Tadashi was aloof and arrogant while a group of girls insist on his innocence and even contemplate going to the police to help clear his name. What’s clear is that everyone seems to have taken football far too seriously and a situation among hotheaded young men went way out of control. As a policeman later says, problems often occur at this age because children who are mature enough to think for themselves start wanting to solve their own problems without worrying the adults around them but don’t always know the best way to do it and end up making everything worse. The irony may be that in the end Tadashi may indeed restore a sense of hope for his family that they can turn things around and regain a more genuine sense of familial harmony no matter what the outcome may be.

Hope screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Scoop! (新米記者トロッ子 私がやらねば誰がやる！, Keiichi Kobayashi, 2024)

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The print media industry in Japan has often come in for criticism because of its perceived toothlessness in which it is often afraid of speaking truth to power lest it lose its access. Of course, as we’ve seen all too well just recently, that’s not a problem limited to Japan, but it’s something that’s preoccupied the students at the centre of Keiichi Kobayashi’s teen drama The Scoop! (新米記者トロッ子 私がやらねば誰がやる！, Shinmai Kisha Torokko: Watashi ga Yaraneba Dareka ga Yaru) whose unofficial newspaper club is threatened by the school because of its tendency to expose scandal and oppose the elitism which has otherwise taken over the institution.

Yui (Karin Fujiyoshi) only enrolled here because of the famous literature club and the possibility of meeting her idol, Konoha Midorimachi, the winner of a prestigious student writing competition. But as she quickly finds out, the Literature Club is pretty high up in the school hierarchy and only really open to those in the “advanced” class. All of its members wear red scarves to distinguish them from the other students who wear blue. You have to take a test to get in, but Yui’s dreams end before they’ve even started when she’s hit by a rogue drone and knocked out. They won’t let her retake the test because they say it would be unfair to the other students, but the club president, Mari (Rinka Kumada), has another proposition for her. It turns out that Konoha Midorimachi isn’t a member after all but a mysterious person using a pen name. Mari wants to know who it is too so she suggests they team up to find out. Following a lead to the unofficial Newspaper Club, Mari advises Yui to sign up there and win their trust to find out Konoha’s true identity on the promise of being admitted to the Literature Club once she’s solved the mystery.

Yui isn’t really happy with this plan in part because the Newspaper Club has a bad reputation for being a bunch of cranks and nerds. The Newspaper Club isn’t really all that keen on talking about Konoha either but is glad to have Yui on board while she also begins to embrace the opportunity to hone a different side to her writing skills. While there, she’s confused by the tactics employed the editor, Kasane (Akari Takaishi), whom she describes as more like a con-artist than a journalist as she employs some unorthodox methods to get to the truth, but also wakes up to the myriad problems at the school and comes to understand that the newspaper is necessary for exposing them. 

This does not, however, endear them to the headmaster, Numahara (Masahiro Takashima), who is a fascistic elitist intent on ruling the school with an iron fist. Backed into a corner, he agrees to make the Newspaper Club “official” with funding from the school but only as a gambit to control it. If Kasane accepts his offer, they will have to abide by his rules which means puff pieces and propaganda only. “Submit to me,” he snarls, inappropriately pinning the teenage Kasane to a wall while making her an ultimatum to join his side or get the hell out. “Women should be compliant,” he advises shortly before Kasane socks him on the jaw. What happens after that is a neutering of the paper while Numahara strengthens the elitism of the school by deepening the privileges held by the so-called “advanced” class represented by the Literature Club. 

The Japanese title of the film is the more evocative “Rookie Reporter “Trolley”: If I don’t do it, who will?” As Kasane had said to Numahara, silence changes nothing. Kasane later claims that she started the Newspaper Club because she lost faith in the power of fiction, but also wanted to bring about real change and expose Numahara’s corruption. Though their paper is suppressed, they do eventually manage to bring about something like a more egalitarian revolution and expose Numahara for what he really is by using the same tactics he used against them. In some ways, it’s an allegory for the wider society and an advocation for the power of journalism to bring about real change by refusing to shrink from the truth or be cowed by those in power, as much it is a coming-of-age tale in which the heroine learns that things aren’t always what they seem and a club that’s founded on the principle of excluding others isn’t one you want to join.

The Scoop! screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Tetsu Maeda, 2021)

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A minor controversy erupted in Japan in 2019 when then finance minister Taso Aso issued a statement recommending that couples should have 20 million yen (£104,620 total at the time of writing) saved for their retirement on top of the state pension in order to live a comfortable life in old age. All things considered, 20 million yen actually sounds like quite a low sum for two people who might live another 30 years post-employment. Nevertheless, Atsuko (Yuki Amami) and her husband Akira (Yutaka Matsushige) are now in their mid-50s and don’t have anywhere near that amount in savings. They’re still paying off their mortgage and though their children are grown-up, neither of them seem to be completely independent financially and both still live at home. 

Tetsu Maeda’s familial comedy What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Rogo no shikin ga arimasen!) explores the plight of the sandwich generation which finds itself having to support elderly relatives while themselves approaching retirement and still needing to support their children who otherwise can’t move forward with their lives. Seeing an accusatory ad which seems to remind her personally that even 20 million yen isn’t really enough when you take into consideration the potential costs of medical treatment or a place in a retirement home, Atsuko has a sudden moment of panic over their precarious financial situation. The apparently sudden death of Akira’s 90-year-old father acts as a sharp wake up call especially as Akira’s apparently very wealthy but also selfish and materialistic sister Shizuko (Mayumi Wakamura) bamboozles him into paying for the entirety of the funeral while pointing out that they’ve been footing most of the bill for the parents’ upkeep over the last few years.

There was probably a better time to discuss the financial arrangements than with their father on his deathbed in the next room, but in any case Shizuko doesn’t pay attention to Atsuko’s attempt to point out they’ve been chipping in too. Akira’s mother Yoshino (Mitsuko Kusabue) also reminds them that their family was once of some standing and a lot of people will be attending the funeral so they need to make sure everything is done properly. The funeral arranger is very good at her job and quickly guilts Atsuko into spending large sums of money on pointless funeral pomp to avoid causing offence only to go to waste when hardly anyone comes because, as she later realises, all of the couple’s friends have already passed away, are bedridden, or too ill to travel. 

Yoshino is however in good health. When Shizuko suddenly demands even more money for her upkeep, Atsuko suggests Yoshino come live with them but it appears that she has very expensive tastes that don’t quite gel with their ordinary, lower-middle class lifestyle. Having lived a fairly privileged life and never needing to manage her finances, Yoshino has no idea of the relative value of money and is given to pointless extravagance that threatens to reduce Atsuko’s dwindling savings even more while in a moment of cosmic irony both she and Akira are let go from their jobs. Now they’re in middle age, finding new ones is almost impossible while their daughter suddenly drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant and is marrying her incredibly polite punk rocker boyfriend whose parents run a successful potsticker restaurant and are set on an elaborate wedding.

The film seems to suggest that Atsuko and Akira can’t really win. They aren’t extravagant people and it just wasn’t possible for them to have saved more than they did nor is it possible for them to save more in the future. Instead it seems to imply that what they should do is change their focus and the image they had of themselves in their old age. One of the new colleagues that Akira meets in a construction job has moved into a commune that’s part of the radical new housing solution invented by his old friend Tenma (Sho Aiwaka). Rather than building up a savings pot, the couple decide to reduce their expenses by moving into a share house and living as part of a community in which people can support each other by providing child care and growing their own veg. Yoshino too comes to an appreciation of the value of community and the new exciting life that she’s experienced since moving in with Atsuko. It may all seem a little too utopian, but there is something refreshing in the suggestion that what’s needed isn’t more money but simply a greater willingness to share, not only one’s physical resources but the emotional ones too in a society in which everyone is ready to help each other rather than competing to fill their own pots as quickly as possible. 

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

SAKURA (朽ちないサクラ, Hiroto Hara, 2024)

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Sakura, or cherry blossoms, are often seen as emblematic of “Japan”. A potent poetic symbol, they blossom only for a short time and then slowly fade away. In the case of Hiroto Hara’s conspiracy drama SAKURA (朽ちないサクラ, Kuchinai Sakura), however, the title refers to a nickname for the security services. In fact, the title could be read either as the “sakura never decays,” or perhaps “will never be tarnished”, “will never die,” echoing the frequent messages that you can never really escape your past for like sakura it will always blossom again while the security services themselves will never fall.

In this case, the event that reverberates is a nerve gas attack on a station that is clearly an allegory for that conducted by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. Like Aum which is now known as Aleph, the cult in the movie simply changed its name and carried on. Now the head of the police PR department for which the heroine works, former security agent Togashi (Ken Yasuda), is haunted by a mistake he made as a rookie cop and blames himself for not being able to stop the disaster. As fate would have it, the case they’re currently investigating ties back to the cult suggesting a much wider conspiracy in play than the simple intention to cover up a murder.

But there are also two killings here that are likely connected, the first being that of a woman whose allegation of stalking was ignored by the police who, rather than investigate, went off to enjoy themselves on some kind of outing The press is having a field day with the implication the police are both lacking in compassion and negligent in their work. Predictably, the PR division’s main intention is to uncover the source of the leak with Togashi seemingly already suspecting a woman in his department, Izumi (Hana Sugisaki), whose boyfriend, Isokawa (Riku Hagiwara), was himself on that outing. Izumi had accidentally let slip about the police’s activities to her best friend Chika (Kokoro Morita), a reporter who works at the local paper that broke the story. Chika insisted it wasn’t her who wrote the article, but Izumi didn’t believe her. Chika is then found dead after vowing to investigate more fully and prove Izumi wrong with an original hypothesis that she took her own life in guilt over betraying her friend.

Obviously, there’s more to it than that and it soon becomes clear she was murdered probably because she got too close to the truth. Izumi isn’t a detective, but finds herself trying to investigate out of a sense that she contributed to Chika’s death by not believing her when she said she never broke the promise she made not to tell anyone else about the police outing. One might legitimately ask why she is allowed to do this, and the lead detective is not originally happy about it, but as they’re grateful for the leads she turns up, Izumi effectively gets a sort of promotion to investigator. Later events might lead us to wonder if she isn’t being manipulated as part of a wider conspiracy, but then the central intention remains unclear as does the reason the shady forces in play would allow her to investigate Chika’s death knowing the possibility that she may stumble on the “real” truth in the process.

It could be that they simply don’t need to stop her because they know there’s nothing she can do. She has no evidence for her final conclusions and no one would believe her if she spoke out, but it seems odd that conspiracists who’ve already bumped off several other people would allow her to simply walk away knowing what she knows if there were not some grander plan in motion. The question is, is it justified to cause the deaths of a small number of people in order to save the lives of hundreds more who might otherwise die if the cult carries out another terrorist attack before they can be stopped? Sakura apparently have spies and informants everywhere and will do everything they can to protect them in order to facilitate their goal of protecting the nation. Thus the famed cherry blossoms now become another symbol of constant threat and oppression in the spectre of the security services who watch and oversee everything but remain in the shadows themselves. Hara homes in on this sense of paranoia and injustice but in the end cannot resist indulging Izumi’s plucky rookie investigator spirit. Her final decision may not make an awful lot of sense while essentially pitting one authority figure against another. Nevertheless, the tension remains high as Izumi presses forward towards the truth no matter what the danger while like her policeman boyfriend determined to pursue justice wherever it may lie.

SAKURA screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2024 SAKURA Film Partners