Between Us (藍に響け, Yasuo Okuaki, 2021)

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Hyper-individualism goes to war with collective harmony in Yasuo Okuaki’s taiko-themed coming-of-age manga adaptation, Between Us (藍に響け, Ai ni Hibike, AKA Wadaiko Girls). Reminded that “your sound is everyone’s sound” the closed-off heroine begins to realise you can’t always just do your own thing and expect everyone else to deal with it, but in the end shows remarkably little growth as even her otherwise positive contribution of helping a similarly troubled young woman quite literally find her voice is in itself achieved mainly through abrasive bullying not to mention a persistent ableism which otherwise entirely ignores her feelings. 

Okuaki opens with an intense scene as the heroine, Tamaki (Ayaka Konno), burns her ballet shoes alone on the beach at night before staring pensively out at the ocean. As we discover, Tamaki has a lot going on that she is reluctant to share with others. Something has evidently gone wrong at home, she seems worried about money and the modest house she shares with her mother who appears to work late often is filled with packing boxes suggesting they may only recently have moved. She hasn’t told her mum she’s given up ballet, partly it seems because she’s working part-time at the local supermarket which she has to keep a secret because the elite Catholic school she attends has a rule against part-time jobs. Wandering around alone however while her friends, who each seem to come from extremely wealthy families, assume she’s heading to ballet Tamaki becomes captivated by the sound of taiko drumming, eventually spotted by a young woman practicing, Maria (Sayu Kubota), who happens to be mute. 

Despite the impossibility of direct communication, Maria manages to covey her enthusiasm for the drums presumably picking up on something in Tamaki which, for unexplained reasons, she is extremely reluctant to explore. Fellow drummer Kahoko, however, is dead set against her joining the club even setting her a cruel and impossible challenge as a kind of entrance exam. The irony is that even as the sullen Tamaki stands up against low-level bullying from Kahoko who makes a basic training exercise seem like humiliating punishment, Tamaki becomes far too into perfecting the art of taiko, obsessively honing her craft and displaying natural ability but quickly losing patience with her fellow drummers who are mostly playing for fun and friendship. 

Tamaki is and remains distinctly unpleasant to be around while Kahoko seems to soften, becoming a source of support to the other girls, and poor Maria is rounded on by just about everyone including maternal figure Sister Nitche (Mariko Tsutsui) who was once herself a top taiko coach but for reasons unknown gave up the art, got religion, and became a nun. Sister Nitche was known as a demon coach, and the decision to reassume her role does indeed resurface an element of cruelty in her unseen in her role as high school teacher and carer at the attached children’s centre. Maria first bonds with Tamaki in revealing to her that she was rendered mute in a car accident and has been undergoing rehabilitative therapy in an attempt to regain her speech but that it hasn’t been going as well as she’d hoped. Yet both Sister Nitche and Tamaki eventually set on her, insisting that the reason she’s not making progress is because she’s not trying hard enough instead of, perhaps, reassuring her that even if she not able to improve her speaking it would still be fine and there’s no need to rush. 

The conflict seems to be between the ultra-competitive, deeply wounded Tamaki and the ethos of taiko which demands group harmony. There’s no point being a show off because the group must move as one, yet Tamaki struggles to accommodate herself to the idea of adapting to the collective rhythm insisting everyone attempt to match her speed while suggesting that those who can’t aren’t up to the task and should voluntarily resign rather than bring the group down, echoing the rather harsh survival of the fittest philosophy espoused by a transformed Sister Nitche. Just as she had, Tamaki later turns on Maria in the face of her own failure repeatedly insisting that she is a “loser” who wouldn’t fight for taiko or for her voice in a confrontation that leads first to a physical fight and then to an intense taiko battle that bears out the repeated notion of baring one’s soul through the beating of the drum. 

There is an unmistakable though unresolved homoerotisicm in the conflict between the two young women filled as it is with repressed emotion, frustration, and unspoken desires all of which appear to dissipate through the climax of the physically and emotionally intense taiko session. Nevertheless, there is also something in uncomfortable in the fact of Maria’s path towards finding her literal voice arising because of what is essentially abusive bullying rather than encouragement or positive support especially as it also denies her the right to speak her feelings honestly while no one is making much of an effort to listen to her. Tamaki meanwhile remains somewhat unsympathetic even in her silent concern for Maria betrayed by the unexpected warmth of her smile in seeing her deciding to return to taiko, her own buried troubles otherwise unresolved while her unforgiving hyper-individualism is tacitly condoned even as she learns to submit herself to the collective rhythm and finds through it the sense of connection she was perhaps missing. 

Between Us screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (no subtitles)

London Korean Film Festival Announces Full Programme for 2021

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Following last year’s hybrid edition, the London Korean Film Festival returns entirely in cinemas taking place at venues across the city from 4th to 19th November. This year’s edition features a special focus on actress Youn Yuh-jung in particular showcasing her work with director Im Sang-soo.

Opening: Escape from Mogadishu

North & South Korean diplomats are forced to set ideology aside to escape the increasing violence of the Somali Civil War in the latest action drama from Ryoo Seung-wan (Die Bad, Battleship Island). Review.

Closing: Heaven: To the Land of Happiness

The latest film from Im Sang-soo whose The Housemaid and A Good Lawyer’s Wife are also screening as part of the Youn Yuh-Jung Focus. Youn again stars alongside Choi Min-sik and Park Hae-il as a man with an incurable illness (Park) who cannot afford his treatment goes on the run with a white collar criminal (Choi) who has less than two weeks to live.

Special Focus: Youn Yuh-Jung

  • Woman of Fire – Kim Ki-young’s second take on The Housemaid stars Youn Yuh-jung as the arrival of a young woman causes disarray for a composer and his wife living on a chicken farm.
  • The Housemaid (2010) – Im Sang-soo’s contemporary update of Kim Ki-young’s original starring Youn Yuh-jung as an ageing housekeeper to a wealthy family who hires a new au pair (Jeon Do-youn) only for her to be seduced by her employer (Lee Jung-jae)
  • A Good Lawyer’s Wife – Youn stars an older woman having an affair with an old friend while her son (Hwang Jung-min) is also cheating on his wife (Moon So-ri) with whom he is sexually incompatible in another steamy drama from Im Sang-soo.
  • Canola – Youn stars as a cheerful Jeju island grandma who was raising her granddaughter until she suddenly disappeared one day without trace only for a young woman to return some years claiming to be the missing girl.
  • The Bacchus Lady – Youn stars as an ageing sex worker who agrees to help a regular client end his life. Review.
  • Documentary Youn Yuh-Jung – documentary focussing on the career of the legendary actress.

Cinema Now

  • In Front of Your Face – drama from Hong Sang-soo in which an actress trying to restart her career after spending time abroad meets a director looking to cast his latest film.
  • Aloners – an isolated young woman begins to re-evaluate her living circumstances when a neighbour dies a lonely death.
  • The Book of Fish – An “evil learning sinner” and a fisherman fixated on Neo-Buddhist thought butt heads while compiling an encyclopaedia of fish in Lee Joon-ik’s contemplative period drama. Review.
  • Shades of the Heart – an author returning to Korea after a failed marriage begins to change the story he is writing after encounters with friends and colleagues.
  • Josée – Korean adaptation of Seiko Tanabe’s short story Josee, the Tiger and the Fish in which a student befriends a young woman isolated by her disability.
  • Spring Song – musical drama directed by and starring Yu Jun-sang as a singer heading to Japan to make a music video.
  • Collectors – a tomb raider prepares a daring heist to retrieve a precious artefact.
  • Recalled – thriller in which a woman recovers from an accident with psychic powers but no memory at all of her husband.

Indie Talent

  • Limecrime – two young hip hop fans try to find their voice.
  • Made on the Rooftop – LGBTQ+ rom-com in which a recently dumped man moves in with his DJ friend.
  • Rolling – Covid-era drama in which a young woman takes over the family kimbap shop.
  • Awoke – social drama in which a disabled man is forced into a bureaucratic nightmare after being judged “fit for work”.

Women’s Voices

  • After Me Too – series of documentary shorts from female filmmakers Park Sohyun, Lee Somyi, Kangyu Garam, and Soram exploring the impact of the Me Too movement on Korean society.
  • Snowball – The previously close friendship between three teenage girls is disrupted by shame and societal repression in Lee Woo-jung’s cruel story of youth. Review.

Documentary

  • Sister J – documentary following a factory worker’s quest for justice after being fired from the job they’d held for 30 years.
  • Sewing Sisters – documentary interviewing a series of now elderly women who left the countryside to work as seamstresses in Seoul but encountered dangerous and exploitative working conditions.

Animation

  • Climbing – 3D adult animation in which a mountain climber’s pregnancy anxiety turns into a living nightmare.

Mise-en-Scène Shorts

  • Feel Good Story (Lee Kyoung-mi, 2004)
  • The Perfect Fishplate (Na Hong-jin, 2016)
  • Enemy’s Apple (Lee Su-jin, 2007)
  • Forest (Um Tae-hwa, 2012)
  • How to Operate a Polaroid Camera (Kim Jong-kwan, 2004)
  • The Cursed (Huh Jung, 2010)
  • Don’t Step Out of the House (Jo Sung-hee, 2009)
  • Be With Me (Kang Jin-a, 2009)

Artist Video

The London Korean Film Festival runs 4th to 19th November at venues across the city. Full details for all the films as well as screening times and ticketing information are available via the official website and you can keep up with all the latest news by following the festival on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Deer King (鹿の王 ユナと約束の旅, Masashi Ando & Masayuki Miyaji, 2021)

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A broken and defeated man rediscovers a sense of purpose in human connection but finds himself hunted by opposing sides each of whom see in him either salvation or destruction in Masashi Ando & Masayuki Miyaji’s fantasy anime adapted from the novel by Nahoko Uehashi, The Deer King (鹿の王 ユナと約束の旅, Shika no Ou: Yuna to Yakusoku no Tabi). Set in a fractured land of fragile peace, Deer King perhaps uncomfortably casts resistance as villainy while largely letting its oppressors off the hook but argues finally for turning towards the light rather than the darkness in a spirit of mutual forgiveness that permits a less fractious co-existence. 

As a lengthy title roll explains, a war took place between the Aquafa and the Empire of Zol which resulted in a truce, partly because of a mysterious ”Mittsual” plague, the Black Wolf Fever, which frightened the Zolians out of sacking the capital. 10 years on, however, it’s clear Aquafa has become a vassal state living (literally) under the eye of the watchful Zolian emperor. The action opens in a salt mine where the enslaved are mercilessly exploited by their Zolian masters. “Work as if death spared you” one shouts out as an old man collapses, a younger, fitter one silently picking up his burden. As we’ll later discover this man is “Broken Antler” Van (Shinichi Tsutsumi), a lone survivor several times over and about to be so again as the mine is attacked by seemingly rabid dogs, one of them wandering into the prison where Van has been chained for helping the old man with a small child in its mouth. Van lunges at the dog which drops the child and bites his arm instead, the creature in a sense freeing him from the source of his oppression in breaking the chain which tied him to the wall before walking away leaving him bleeding only for Van to discover the bite has given him new power. Breaking free he takes the child with him as he ventures back out into the world. 

Van has lost more than most in this war, in a sense orphaned, a living a ghost with nothing and no one to live for. He could so easily lean towards hate or resentful violence but is given new reason for survival in becoming a father to the little girl, Yuna (Hisui Kimura), who is like him a lone survivor. Yet others feel differently, the resurfacing of the plague a metaphor for the grief and anger existing among the Aquafa targeting as it does only the Zol who look upon it as a “curse” or else or rebellious plot, which it in fact is. The former elite of Aquafa are apparently intent on using the Mittsual, to which they believe themselves immune, to free themselves of Zolian control and regain their independence. A neutral scientist, Hohsalle (Ryoma Takeuchi), however, throws their plan into disarray in his conviction that Van’s blood, the blood of a survivor, may act as cure and vaccine. The Zolians need him to survive, but Aquafans would rather he didn’t. 

Meeting his destiny head on, Van finds he has a choice: either embrace the darkness, accept the fear and the grief and the hate by using the Mittsual to target the Zolians, or allow Hohsalle to use his blood to find a cure. In the small, formerly nomadic, village in which Van finds a temporary home, they care nothing for politics and only want peace. They’ve begun intermarrying with the Zolians and live happily together while another man he meets along the way appears to be grateful for all the Zolians have done for them, which seems on one level a peculiar sentiment in welcoming their ongoing oppression. Yet salvation comes in a sense from re-embracing the Aquafan culture which has been taken from them, the cure not Van’s blood but his bond with nature something which all Aquafans once shared but was disdained by Zol. Zol can only survive by recognising Aquafa’s equality. 

Van’s strange new power, dubbed “inside Out” literally connects him to every other living being in the land becoming one with the great confluence of nature and cosmos. “Blood ties matter not” he tells an embittered young woman realising that Yuna is not his biological daughter, she in turn learning to abandon her hate through the force of his love. He reflects on the memory of a deer who put himself at risk to save a foal, asking himself if that’s what it means to be a hero or if he merely had the means to do what anyone should and did what was asked of him. Where the cruel patriotism of the Aquafans and religious zealotry of the Zolians fail, the rationality of humanitarian science and simple human empathy win out. A sacrifice may in a sense be needed, but it’s not the one you thought it was. A tale of the redemptive power of love, The Deer King argues for forgiveness in the face of hate if perhaps uncomfortably suggesting the burden of peace lies with the oppressed.

The Deer King screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (English subtitles)

You’re Not Normal, Either! (まともじゃないのは君も一緒, Koji Maeda, 2021)

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What’s so great about being “normal” anyway? As the title of Koji Maeda’s quirky screwball comedy You’re Not Normal, Either! (まともじゃないのは君も一緒, Matomo Janai no wa Kimi mo Issho) suggests neither of its heroes is quite in tune with the world around them but then again, is there really such a thing as “normal” or is it more that most people are making themselves unhappy by settling for less simply because they think that’s just how things are and resistance only makes you seem awkward? 

Nerdy cram school maths teacher Yasuomi (Ryo Narita) thought he was OK with being a little different, but just recently he’s begun to feel lonely and fears the possibility of being alone for the rest of his life. Perhaps inappropriately, he looks to one of his students, forthright high schooler Kasumi (Kaya Kiyohara), for romantic and life advice hoping that she will teach him how to be, or at least present as, more “normal”. Unbeknownst to him, however, Kasumi is not quite “normal” herself and is in fact obsessed with a tech entrepreneur, Isao (Kotaro Koizumi), who is all about a new and freer future in which humanity is freed from the burden of labour. Finding out that her crush is already engaged to Minako (Rika Izumi) the daughter of a hotel magnate, Kasumi hatches a plan to break them up while training Yasuomi in the art of seduction. 

Kasumi’s insecurities seem to be down to her failure in her middle school exams, attracted to Isao’s philosophies because they offer a possibility of freedom outside the rigid demands of academic success in Japan. She tells Isao in a not quite by chance meeting that she wants to become a teacher in order to expand children’s minds rather than force them into a fixed perspective as the rather authoritarian, rote learning system of education often does. Yet she also feels out of place among her peers whom she sees as vacuous always gossiping about part-time jobs and boys. She frowns at Yasuomi when he accidentally cuts the conversation dead with an awkward comment while attempting to chat up a pair of bubbly office workers in a bar, but often does the same thing herself while sitting with her high school girl friends who fall silent and then change the subject after she injects a little realism into their mindless chatter. 

Yasuomi had viewed himself as “normal” and never understood why others didn’t, noticing that people often stopped associating with him but not knowing the reason why. Obsessed with pure mathematics, over literal, and overstimulated by the complications of life he takes refuge in the forest and the sensory overload of its nocturnal creatures speaking quite eloquently about the beauty of numbers and actually fairly emotionally intelligent in his understanding of the two women. Resolutely failing at Kasumi’s Cyrano act, he comes into himself only when speaking more honesty much to Kasumi’s annoyance actually hitting it off with Minako who is herself just as lonely and alienated but perhaps wilfully trapped. 

Predictably enough, Isao isn’t exactly “normal” either or perhaps he is but only in the most depressing of ways, his rosy vision of the future delivered with more than a little snake oil and just as much sleaze. Minako may know what sort of man Isao is, that her marriage is largely a dynastic affair set up by her overbearing, authoritarian father, but she too may think this is “normal” and might have preferred not to have to confront her sense of existential disappointment while attempting to fulfil the role of a “normal” woman content with creating a comfortable space in which her husband can thrive.  

Romantically naive, Kasumi wonders how people come to fall in love informed by two relatively mature classmates that for them at least falling in love is a gradual process of increasing intimacy generated through casual conversation. This turns out to be pretty much true for Kasumi too, though in ways she didn’t quite expect watching as Yasuomi opens up to Minako and finding herself unexpectedly jealous while reluctant to let go of the idealised vision she had of Isao as some kind of messiah for a better Japan. There is something a little uncomfortable in the potentially inappropriate relationship between a student and her teacher even as the roles are, on one level at least, reversed but there’s also a kind of innocence in their childish friendship and later determination to start small and let things grow while abandoning the idea of the “normal” altogether to embrace their true selves in a freer future of their own creation. 

You’re Not Normal, Either! screens in Chicago on Oct. 7 as part of the 13th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Wuhan Wuhan (武汉武汉, Chang Yung, 2021)

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“Safety isn’t the issue right now. We have to keep moving forward” a harried doctor replies to a cabman’s question, like most it seems just getting on with it until it’s over. Like Wu Hao, Chen Weixi & Anonymous’ 76 Days, Chang Yung’s Wuhan Wuhan (武汉武汉, Wǔhàn Wǔhàn) documents the final stretches of the city’s intense lockdown beginning in February 2020 yet where 76 Days was largely a exploration of grief, panic, and confusion Chang’s documentary assembled remotely from 300 hours of footage shot on the ground by local camera crews perhaps reflects a new accommodation with the nature of the pandemic in its empathetic depiction of ordinary people going about their lives as normally possible. 

The first trail Chang picks up is that of factory worker Yin who has begun working as a volunteer driver ferrying medical staff between the hotel where they are being housed during the lockdown and the healthcare facilities where they are working. Yin explains he took the job more or less for something to do rather than be bored at home, but it also places a strain on his relationship with heavily pregnant wife Xu who is intensely anxious about catching the disease or that there may be other complications with the birth but no hospital space available to treat her. Through his various fares, Yin gets to see the other side of the pandemic as the medical staff honestly describe the situation on the ground which is often in contrast with the impression given by official channels. 

As for the medical staff themselves, ER Chief Zheng is quick to point out that much of the PPE they’ve received is not fit for purpose while his staff is already traumatised and close to burnout. Later a team of psychiatrists is sent in to provide support both to the frontline health workers and to the patients, most of whom are extremely grateful to the doctors and nurses if sometimes frightened and angry though one they’ve nicknamed grumpy grandpa continually refuses treatment and otherwise makes a point of pigheadedly insulting his nurse. Psychiatrist Zhang is also however under strain, learning via telephone that her father in her hometown has been diagnosed with a serious illness. Like many she is away from her family with no idea when she’ll be able to return to them. Nurse Susu, in the same position, receives a raw and difficult phone call from her small daughter who breaks down crying, unable to understand why her mother’s not coming home while all she can do is listen in heartbreak unable to explain or make a promise she knows she can keep as to when she’ll back. Zheng likewise makes calls to his wife and daughter, but also reveals that he’s asked an old friend to watch over them should the worst happen. 

Nevertheless, people try to find the small moments of joy where they can. At a temporary hospital for those whose cases are mild to moderate, a mass dance routine breaks out while patients otherwise try to keep active through group tai chi supporting each other while Zhang runs group therapy sessions on the other side of the wall. Worried part of the problem is that the patients can’t bond with them because the PPE erases their identity, some of the doctors print out photos to display on their chests while others are always quick to help, a collection of local hairdressers offering free haircuts to medical personnel to help prevent contamination and make PPE more comfortable. 

The overall impression is of a community managing, working together to get through the crisis while quietly getting on with the job. Chang apparently made his documentary partly with the rise in anti-Asian hate crime in mind, hoping to “humanise” the citizens of Wuhan by showing them as ordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances though others of course may read it slightly differently in its deliberate avoidance of the horrors of the virus save a few scenes of grieving relatives or terrified patients, the only indication of anxiety caused by the system seen in those at the temporary hospital hearing it’s about to close down and fearful of what might happen to them next. Nevertheless Chang’s empathetic documentary is at its best capturing the everyday reality, be it a husband running all over town trying to find somewhere selling a crib or a woman cooking yams in her room because she can cope with the virus but another one of those box meals might push her over the edge. 

Wuhan Wuhan streams in the US Oct. 6 – 12 as part of the 13th Season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema. It will also screen at Chicago’s Chinese American Museum on Oct. 9.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

I Never Shot Anyone (一度も撃ってません, Junji Sakamoto, 2020)

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“You don’t know the pain of being forgotten” laments an ageing actress attempting to move the heart of a heartless conman in Junji Sakamoto’s comedy noir I Never Shot Anyone (一度も撃ってません, Ichido mo Uttemasen), more as it turns out a melancholy meditation on age and disappointment than hardboiled farce. Sakamoto’s elderly heroes live in a world of night in which their dreams of youth never died, but are confronted with the realities of their lonely existences when the sun rises and exposes the shallowness of their escapist fantasy.

74-year-old Susumu Ichikawa (Renji Ishibashi) was once a promising novelist but veered away from the realms of literary fiction towards the allure of hardboiled noir, no longer permitting his wife Yayoi (Michiyo Okusu) to read his drafts claiming that she would find them too distressing. His publisher (Koichi Sato) meanwhile is more distressed by the quality of the prose than the content, partly because his novels are simply dull but also because they are far too detailed to be mere imagination and as each one seems to be based on a recent ripped from the headlines case he’s staring to worry that Susumu is the real life legendary hitman said to be responsible for a series of unsolved suspicious deaths. 

On the surface, it might be hard to believe. At home, Susumu is a regular old gent who reads the paper after breakfast and locks himself away in his study to write for the rest of the day but his wife complains that he stays out too late at night little knowing that he leads something like a double life, dressing like a shady character from a post-war noir and even at one point likening himself to Yves Montand in Police Python 357. He speaks with an affected huskiness and is fond of offering pithy epithets such as “women come alive at night” while reuniting with two similarly aged friends in a bar run by a former hitman nicknamed “Popeye” (pro wrestler Jinsei Shinzaki) who seems to have some kind of nerve damage in his hands he’s trying to stave off through obsessive knitting. 

What Susumu seems to be afraid of, however, is the sense of eclipse in his impending obsolescence. The guy who ran the local gun shop whom he’d known for 30 years recently passed away, while the guy from the Chinese herbalist apparently went home to die. His publisher’s retiring, and Popeye’s going to close the bar because his mother’s ill so he’s going back to his hometown. Susumu and his wife didn’t have any children and he perhaps feels a little untethered in his soon-to-be legally “elderly” existence while the now retired Yayoi is also lonely with her husband always off in another world he won’t let her share. His friend Ishida (Ittoku Kishibe) once a prosecutor and now a disgraced former mob lawyer working as a security consultant/fixer is estranged from his only daughter, while former cabaret star Hikaru (Kaori Momoi) never married and spends her days working in a noodle bar. They are all scared of being forgotten and fear their world is shrinking, living by night in order to forget the day. 

Perhaps you can’t get much more noir than that, but there’s a definite hollowness in Susumu’s constructed hardboiled persona that leaves him looking less like Alain Delon than a sad man in an ally with only a cigarette for a friend. Even his new editor is quick to tell him that no reads noir anymore, Susumu is quite literally living in the past battling a “hopeless struggle” as someone puts it against the futility of life by living in a hardboiled fantasy. We see him looking at target profiles for an investigative reporter proving a thorn in the side of yakuza and big business, and threaten a heartless conman (Yosuke Eguchi) whose investment frauds have caused untold misery, yet he’s not really a part of the story and his life is smaller than it seems or than he would like it to be. Perhaps in the end everyone’s is even if Susumu is as his new editor describes him “one step away from being insane”. Never quite igniting, Sakamoto’s lowkey tale of elderly ennui is less rage against the dying of the light than a tiny elegy for lives unlived as its dejected hero steps back into the shadows unwilling to welcome an unforgiving dawn.

I Never Shot Anyone screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Okinawa Santos (オキナワ サントス, Yoju Matsubayashi, 2020)

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Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, yet the fortunes and status of the Japanese migrants have been extremely variable since the first boat arrived in 1908. At the end of the Meiji era as the society attempted to transition from feudalism towards a modern economy, Japan was a poor country and with exclusionary acts often blocking migration to countries such as the United States many travelled to South America and in particular to Brazil, which was desperate to recruit cheap labour following the end of slavery, to seek their fortunes intending to return in a few years’ time having made enough to set themselves up at home. 

This is one reason given for why many settled in the harbour town of Santos, thinking it not worth their while to move further inland when they’d be going home soon enough. Yoju Matsubayashi’s documentary Okinawa Santos (オキナワ サントス), however, centres itself on a little known and traumatic episode of Brazilian-Japanese history, the forced relocation of the city’s Japanese community on July 8, 1943. Interviewing several of those who experienced the relocation first-hand many of whom were children at the time, Matsubayashi explores the position and legacy of the diaspora community the majority of whom hailed from the Okinawan islands rather the mainland. 

One of those interviewed explains that the rationale for the relocation was that Allied boats were sinking off the coast of Santos with alarming frequency and the authorities began to view the Japanese community, against whom there had already been a degree of prejudice, as potential spies. One now elderly gentleman recalls with sadness that his Brazilian friends abruptly stopped playing with him, calling him a “fifth columnist” in the streets. Japanese-language newspapers had already been shut down which is one reason few primary documents relating to the relocation exist, while speaking Japanese in public had also been banned. This might have seemed ironic to those who’d travelled from Okinawa where they also found themselves oppressed by the majority Japanese culture whose attempts at forced assimilation ran to banning the native Okinawan language, something they were comparatively free to preserve after relocating to Brazil. 

Midway through his documentary, Matsubayashi encounters this same divide even within the Japanese community receiving a phone call from a Brazilian-Japanese woman he’d interviewed who asks to be removed from the project apparently because of his interviewing so many from the Okinawan diaspora. An older man who later went into politics recalls the community having been largely segregated with the mainland Japanese often looking down on the Okinawans while each operated separate communal halls and intermarriage was frowned upon. Some hid their Okinawan heritage out of shame as Okinawans were regarded as not really “Japanese” but somehow other. This rift was apparently unhealed until the contemporary era though as the phone call implies may still to some extent survive. 

All were however subject to the relocation order as the now elderly children explain their fear and confusion in being cast out of their homes with little warning, having their farms looted while forced to leave most of their property and possessions behind. Crowded onto a train they were taken to an immigration centre in São Paulo before being moved on further into the interior but with little assistance or support dependent entirely on friends and relatives, other members of the diaspora, already living and farming inland. Many of the now elderly members of the community tearfully recount crushing poverty and discrimination, never having talked about their experiences even with their own children and describing them as unreal, like a sad dream from which they have never quite woken up. Meanwhile they continued to face prejudice after the war due to the presence of a minority group who couldn’t accept the Japanese defeat and apparently committed acts of terrorism against those who could, further harming the reputation of the Japanese community in mainstream Brazilian society to the extent that legislation was proposed to halt immigration from Japan which was finally defeated only on the grounds of democratic principle. Nevertheless, though many of those interviewed have been able to build happy, successful lives they are each affected by the traumatic legacy of forced displacement unable even to speak of their childhood suffering. 

Okinawa Santos screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (no subtitles)

My Name is Yours (君が世界のはじまり, Momoko Fukuda, 2020)

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A collection of Osaka teens process adolescent angst and generational anxiety but in the end find a gentle solidarity in their shared suffering while resolving to be kind in Momoko Fukuda’s adaptation of her own novel, My Name is Yours (君が世界のはじまり, Kimi ga Sekai no Hajimari). “People are unknowable” they solemnly resolve, admitting that you never really know anyone but later making an effort to share their secrets, if only gently, bonding in a new sense of openness as they begin to move forward into a brighter future. 

Fukuda opens however with a scene of crime as a high school student is arrested for the murder of their father. As we discover, several of the teens could be potential suspects, each in someway resentful of their dads though for very different reasons. Recently transferred Tokyo boy Io (Daichi Kaneko), mocked for his accent, is involved in some kind of hugely inappropriate sexual relationship with his middle-aged step mother as accidentally witnessed by moody classmate Jun (Yuki Katayama) hanging round the shopping mall in order to avoid going home to her overly domesticated dad (Kanji Furutachi ) whom she blames for her mother’s decision to leave the family. Narihira (Pei Omuro), meanwhile, was abandoned by his mother soon after birth and is sole carer to his father who seems to be suffering with early onset dementia. 

Childhood best friends En/Yukari (Honoka Matsumoto) and Kotoko (Seina Nakata) first encounter Narihira in their secret hideout, a disused school library, having a private cry leading Kotoko to fall madly in love publicly dumping her current boyfriend with extreme prejudice seconds later. Meanwhile, En becomes an accidental confidant to nice guy Okada (Shouma Kai) who has received a mysterious love letter he doesn’t quite understand because it’s come in the form of a classical poem only for Okada too to fall for Kotoko while Narihira seems to prefer En. 

Love triangles aside, each of the teens has their private sorrows some more secret than others but nevertheless producing chain reactions of their own in their inability to express themselves fully. But as angry and frustrated as they are, they still want to be kind if more to others than themselves. “If I only think about my own freedom how can I be kind to others?” Narihira sadly reflects confessing his occasional resentment in trying to care for his father. Even Io, seemingly realising how inappropriate his relationship with his step mother is, resolves that he wants to be kind to her despite the harm she may be doing him. “Wanting to hurt other people is absurd” he claims, unable to understand the impulse to exorcise his frustration through violence. 

Narihira attributes his salvation to having met En, explaining that in a sense she opened up a new world in giving him the courage to talk about his father sharing the secret with Okada who told the coach on their sports team who told him about a facility that might be able to help. Yet Narihira also begins to disrupt the previously close relationship between En and Kotoko, leaving Kotoko feeling jealous and En confused it seems on more than on level as the unexpectedly perspicacious Okada seems to have figured out forcing her in turn to reckon with and accept her own unspoken feelings. 

Taking refuge in a darkened shopping mall overnight, the teens unexpectedly bond through a musical performance of the classic Blue Hearts track Hito ni Yasashiku with its melancholy yet cheerful chorus encouraging each other to hang in there, remaining kind in a world which often isn’t. “Well, I can’t say for sure. Nobody can.” an amused secretary guard honestly answers asked by one of the teens if the mall will be torn down, his refreshingly direct answer perhaps adding to their new sense of confidence even in the face of the world’s uncertainty. A gentle, quietly nostalgic coming-of-age tale, Fukuda’s Osaka-set lowkey yet stylishly moody drama begins with violent darkness but ends in bright sunlight, the teens each finding a sense of equilibrium having come to new understandings about themselves and those around them bolstered by a youthful solidarity. Some secrets it seems still cannot quite be shared, but friendships resolve themselves all the same if in unexpected ways allowing a melancholy intensity to dissipate into a sad if fervent hope for the future. 

My Name is Yours screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Hito ni Yasashiku music video

The Blue Hearts – Hito ni Yasashiku

Closet (クローゼット, Takehiro Shindo, 2020)

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“Everyone has their own closet” according to a bereaved older man sympathetically reflecting on a life half lived. The wounded hero of Takehiro Shindo’s Closet (クローゼット) is about to discover he may have a point as he works through his own issues, finally coming to an understanding of the true nature of intimacy before learning to open himself up to living life true to himself realising that perhaps his very ordinary dream is not as hopeless as he thought it was if only he can bring himself to put his male pride aside. 

Returning to Tokyo following a failed engagement, Jin (Yosuke Minogawa) finds himself taking on an unusual line of work on the invitation of an old friend, embarking on a career as a sleep companion. Essentially, he’s there to lie beside a lonely person offering a safe and supportive space where they can relax and be their authentic selves free from the judgement they may otherwise receive from a friend or a lover. Ironically enough, Jin is a man of few words, his fiancée once asking him to be a little more sociable when her parents visit, which means he’s a good listener but slow to adapt to the true purpose of his work. His first client, a harried hospital worker, seemingly just wants to destress but mostly through having someone listen to her rant about workplace concerns and nod along sympathetically rather than offer earnest advice. As his boss Takagi (Shinji Ozeki) reminds him, it’s all about empathy, or at least telling them what they want to hear which may sound insincere but in another sense may not be. 

As the old man says, everyone has something they don’t really want to let out but the presence of the sleep companion is intended to ease the burden and provide temporary relief. Jo Shimoda (Ikkei Watanabe), is grieving for his late partner who remained in the closet for the entirety of their relationship leaving him now with nothing but intangible memories. He asks Jin to put on the other man’s pajamas, experiencing the warmth and comfort he misses from his absent lover and gaining through it the ability to begin moving on. Kaori (Iku Arai), meanwhile, is a harried executive, or at least she claims, apparently in love with a slightly younger colleague but unsure if her crush is appropriate while worrying that she’s in danger of missing the boat both in love and in her career. 

A young student from the country, Nanami (Aino Kuribayashi), on the other hand, is in search of the kind of comfort she does not receive from her no good boyfriend, realising only too late that his treatment of her is abusive and their relationship is built on exploitation. Jin had in a sense experienced something similar, ruining his relationship in a crisis of masculinity. It is of course he who also receives warmth and support through his role as a companion, but the job also allows him to reconfigure his idea of what it is to be a man in providing a sense of safety, protection, and comfort while engaging in a true intimacy that is not defined by sexuality.

Through their shared experiences, both Jin and the sleepless companions begin to grow in confidence, accepting themselves for who they are and preparing to move on into a more authentic future even if for some the path turns darker before it reaches the light. Stepping out of their individual closets, they no longer feel so insecure finally gaining the courage to live as their true selves no matter what anyone else might have to say about it in the knowledge that others too are also suffering and might be led out of it by their example. A gentle tale of the simple power of human intimacy to overcome a sense of existential loneliness and individual despair, Closet allows its reticent hero to find new meaning in the ability to accept from and give to others comfort while coming to terms with his own traumatic past in realising that he is not and never was defined by conventional ideas of masculinity and that he is not worthless solely because he is no longer able to fulfil them. Perhaps that small yet infinitely ordinary dream is not so out of reach after all. 

Closet screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Queer Japan (クィア・ジャパン, Graham Kolbeins, 2019)

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Japan has in recent years become a much more progressive place in which LGBTQ+ rights continue to advance though hopes that hosting the Olympics would finally provoke a shift in the political reality ultimately came to nothing with anti-discrimination and national equal marriage legislation still pending. Released in 2019, Graham Kolbeins’ comprehensive documentary Queer Japan (クィア・ジャパン) as its name suggests explores the lives of ordinary people across the spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community yet cannot perhaps avoid falling victim to, as one interviewee points out, a certain degree of exoticisation even while demonstrating the diversity present with the community itself.

Nevertheless, Kolbeins is keen to stress the warmth and solidarity found with the various subcultures he explores such as that surrounding Department H, a costume fetish ball at which all are welcome from gay furries and puppy play enthusiasts to avantgarde artists such as a young woman whose multi-person rubber pig giving birth is notable inclusion. As the club’s hostess, drag queen Margarette, points out the fetish scene often transcends ideas of gender, the club providing a totally safe, inclusive, and relaxed place where anyone can come to be themselves and find acceptance. 

That has not always been true when it comes to other aspects of the community as evidenced by the controversy surrounding lesbian bar Gold Finger which came under fire some years ago for refusing admittance to transwomen under its longstanding women only policy. Interviewed here Chika Ogawa outlines her original reluctance to admit transmen who had previously been frequent customers prior to transition but eventually reconsidered to team up with another group to host an evening geared towards transmen and masculine women as a place where the community can come together. 

As explained by activist Fumino Sugiyama, it is legally possible to change one’s gender in Japan though the conditions are somewhat draconian and require the surgical removal of reproductive organs which some have viewed as a breach of fundamental human rights. The change in the law was largely due to Japan’s first transgender lawmaker Aya Kamikawa who outlines how difficult her life had been unable to change her gender on her family register creating problems when trying to rent an apartment, access healthcare, or gain employment. She admits that the law passed was very strict, but laments the limits of what is possible under the current LDP administration and its ultraconservative outlook as evidenced by gaffe-prone politician Mio Sugita’s characterisation of the LGBTQ+ community as “unproductive” and therefore not deserving of social benefits. 

Pioneer of gay manga and G-Men co-creator Hiroshi Hasegawa remarks that the oppression faced by the community in Japan is often less direct than it might be elsewhere operating largely through societal shaming and a conformist social culture. Kolbeins discovers this to be true on visiting other cities such as Naha, Okinawa, where a cheerful dentist reveals that he only embraced his love of dancing at the age of 33 and spoke to no one for two years after receiving a bad reaction to coming out during university. Nevertheless, in the face of this indirect oppression the community has developed a sense of comprehensive, intersectional solidarity often coming out to counterprotest racist prejudice against ethnically Korean citizens and discovering that the anti-racist straight community often comes to Pride to support them in return. Bearing out this spirit of intersectionality, Queer Japan is fully subtitled in Japanese throughout while a deaf LGBTQ+ activist highlights the importance of proper sign language interpretation which is familiar with the community.

Even so, Japan’s LGBTQ+ community is subject to the same concerns as many others from around the world one Pride goer criticising the increasing commercialisation of the event, sympathetic that some degree of sponsorship is necessary to hold a celebration on this scale but also that you need to be accountable. Meanwhile a young trans person objects to the celebratory atmosphere insisting that all they want is to feel safe using the bathroom, love can wait. There is clearly work to do, but also much already accomplished one vox popper enthusiastically listing all of his various fetishes with thinly concealed glee while making a serious point about normalising condom usage. Featuring internationally well-known figures such as gay erotic manga pioneer Gengoroh Tagame alongside activists and ordinary members of the LGBTQ+ community, Kolbeins’ handsomely lensed doc showcases the diversity of queer life in Japan while never losing sight of the battles still to be won. 

Queer Japan screened as part of this year’s Queer East.

Original trailer (English subtitles)