Tag: Atsushi Funahashi

The Burden of the Past (過去負う者, Atsushi Funahashi, 2023)

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Japan has a relatively high recidivism rate with 50% of those released from prison convicted of reoffending within five years. To some this figure simply proves that “criminals“ are, as one woman puts it, “an entirely different race” who have no place in mainstream society and can never be rehabilitated. In many ways it’s a vicious circle, those who’ve spent time in prison are rejected on their release and unable to find steady employment have no other option than to return to criminality in order to support themselves. Atsushi Funahashi’s socially-minded docudrama The Burden of the Past (過去負う者, Kako Ou Mono) explores this contradiction through the stories of a series of former prisoners and the organisation that attempts to help them reintegrate into mainstream society, Change. 

“Change” might in some ways be an ironic name, placing a demand on the people they’re trying to help that implies they are necessarily at fault for their involvement with criminality. The well-meaning staff members are committed to helping the former prisoners reform, but are otherwise powerless to address the systemic social circumstances that led them into crime while prioritising the individual and advocating for conventionality as the only path towards a settled life. That said, each of the people the film spotlights are involved in quite specific kinds of crimes which lean towards the individualistic with only the backstories of Taku, who killed a teenage boy in a hit and run but is also revealed to be dealing with unresolved trauma from childhood physical abuse, and Ai who turned to drug use to overcome her problems with interpersonal communication, loosely explored. 

It is however Ai who suffers most from the hypocritical attitudes of mainstream society. After being taken on as a cleaner she encounters a man smoking who ironically reveals to her that he used to smoke pot but was never caught which is perhaps the only difference between them but on explaining that she spent time in prison for possession of crystal meth he calls her “a real mess” and a “junkie”, telling her that she has no right to hope for a future and should have stayed in jail. His rant results in Ai going temporarily missing with a fear that she may being using drugs again to overcome her sense of hopelessness. Her circumstances are dictated by her existing sense of alienation in her inability to communicate, something which could have been better addressed either by finding ways for her to communicate more effectively or for encouraging others to accommodate her way of communicating rather than insist she conform to theirs. 

Yet it’s clear that the issue is more to do with the stigmatisation of criminality than it is about any fear of potential reoffending as the team from Change discover on talking to a man hoping to recruit a large number of people quickly for pandemic-related cleaning services. The first issue is that he specifically mentions hiring women seeing as it’s a job in cleaning, but also that he says he’ll have to discuss with his boss about hiring people who’ve been involved with sexual or drug-related crimes rather than those which might present a more practical anxiety such as theft, violence, or fraud. 

Close to the end of the film, Change stages a play featuring some of the former prisoners which ends in a confrontational Q&A session in which members of the audience direct their anger towards not only the cast but Change itself for helping them rather than focussing on the welfare of victims of crime. Change also receives a fair amount of harassment, as do a couple who live close by and complain that they feel personally uncomfortable knowing that people with criminal pasts are wandering around where they live while also bringing up that it’s bringing down the price of their property. One of the case workers tries to explain that they’re trying to stop the cycle of recidivism, which would result in lower crime all round and less chance of becoming a victim, but the audience members cannot see her point. They simply feel that these people are not quite human by virtue of their transgression and are in some way weak or defective for being unable to control their impulses or emotions. It may be a comforting thought, to believe these people are so different from oneself is to deny that anyone at anytime could become involved with a crime for a variety of different reasons. After all, laws are socially constructed device for defining conventional morality and what’s considered “criminal” today may not be tomorrow or vice vera. 

But then how do we deal with those whose crimes are so deeply offensive to a conventionally held morality that they cannot really be forgiven? Misumi is a former teacher convicted of an indecent act with a child and fears that he may end up reoffending. He obviously cannot return to his previous employment, and given the nature of his crime can find no other but also must find a way to live. Many at the Q&A session seem to feel that those who’ve been convicted of crimes should be segregated into an alternate prison society so that they do not corrupt the mainstream, but this is in its own way a social death sentence that effectively says they no longer deserve to live even if unlike the extreme case of Misumi their “crimes” were relatively minor and of the sort many others may have committed and faced no penalty for. 

Still, Funahashi doesn’t exactly let Change off the hook suggesting that they are overly idealistic and fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with some of the more serious problems the former prisoners face especially those that would benefit from more comprehensive psychological care. He does though criticise the justice system in which the prison sentence is essentially a fine that’s paid in time and is geared towards punishment rather than rehabilitation leaving the prisoners no different on their release than they were when incarcerated some like Taku still not having fully addressed or accepted their crime and therefore unable to move on with their lives. In any case, the conclusion seems to imply that simple acts of human trust and compassion can go a long way helping to restore a former prisoner’s self-esteem and allowing them to process the realities of their crimes so that they can avoid committing them again even if it is also society which must change. 

The Burden of the Past had its World Premiere as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Company Retreat (ある職場, Atsushi Funahashi, 2020)

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“You can’t be suspicious of your team” an older woman insists, trying to defuse a rapidly devolving situation of mistrust among co-workers away on a “Company Retreat” ostensibly to cheer up a female employee who has recently become the centre of an online storm after her name and photos were leaked in relation to a report of sexual harassment at a prominent hotel chain. Inspired by true events, director Atsushi Funahashi originally planned to make a documentary exploring the fallout from an accusation of sexual harassment but discovered that few were willing to put themselves on camera opting instead to craft a docudrama in part improvised by his cast of actors. 

Shot documentary style and in black and white save one colour flashback, the action is split between two distinct company getaways four months apart taking place at a coastal town the first in the winter and the second in spring. Saki (Saki Hirai), a young female employee, made an accusation of sexual harassment against her male middle-aged boss, Kumanaka (Makoto Hada), and has been receiving constant online abuse after being outed by an unknown figure for unknown reasons. While her colleagues are largely supportive, they may also be harbouring an unspoken resentment that her decision to speak up has indirectly endangered their jobs as the company continues to suffer a loss of reputation with the public. When another of the employees reveals that he’s tracked the IP address of a persistent troll and discovered they’ve been posting from nearby it invites the suspicion that one of her friends is behind the online hate campaign possibly at the behest of the hotel chain keen to blacken her name and reputation in order to safeguard their own. 

The sexual harassment accusation exposes the gulf between what people say and what they really feel with some of the other employees eventually losing their cool and taking their frustrations out on Saki, partly for spoiling the holiday with her gloominess but also for her tendency to isolate herself from the group now viewing each of them as a potential enemy. She later accuses Noda (Yoshio Taguchi), a placid company man she feels may have chosen to sacrifice her in order to save the company’s reputation and with it his own job. Noda is upset to realise Saki sees him as a heartless corporate drone but later claims to have forgiven her. At the second retreat, however, he begins to voice quite a different opinion, exposing a deeply held set of patriarchal values in playing devil’s advocate wondering if it wasn’t all a misunderstanding and the boss, who has been demoted and transferred but not fired, has had his life “ruined” over something that wasn’t “that big of a deal”. He says this, in part, because his new girlfriend who also happens to be an employee has advised him that he is inappropriately touchy feely in the office and has little understanding of boundaries or personal space. Noda doesn’t see a distinction in the way he interacts with men and women and feels that’s just how he is, laying the blame on the other party if they ever felt uncomfortable while tacitly sympathising with another man who he believes may have had no “bad intentions” and is simply the victim of a “misunderstanding”. 

Perhaps paradoxically, he also blames Saki for her complicity that she may have smiled or laughed and said it was fine on previous occasions giving the boss the green light to think there was nothing inappropriate in his behaviour. In this she finds herself agreeing, that is perhaps the way it works in the workplace. Another older woman in a senior position advises her to transfer to another department, eventually explaining she thinks that might be easier seeing as the bosses are all men unlikely to be sympathetic. Ushihara (Mikoto Yoshikawa) is not unsympathetic herself, but is also willingly complicit, among the contingent of older career women who feel that sexual harassment is something you just have to put up with while simultaneously claiming that nothing will change until there are more women in a position of power. Attempting to take her side, Kinoshita (Megumi Ito), a divorced senior employee, tells Saki to do the “right thing” and refuse the transfer but is shot down by Noda who exposes even more misogyny when he tells her that her “emotional” and “righteous” tone is “unattractive”, insisting that she needs to “win the respect of men” in order for her arguments have weight. 

For some, however, and particularly the younger men this sort of hypocrisy becomes too much to bear. A company is supposed to be a family, but no one trusts anyone. Several employees from the original retreat resign after a decision is taken to try ringing the troll to prove they aren’t among the group unable to bear the sense of mistrust and suspicion from their close friends and teammates. Another employee, Taku (Taku Tsujii), brings his boyfriend to the first retreat though closeted at work losing confidence to come out to his colleagues in case they reject him and worst case scenario it costs him his job. Eventually he makes the decision to explain, realising he’s placed his boyfriend in a difficult position, and is relieved to discover he is immediately accepted by all, but continues to sympathise with Saki knowing how devastating it can be to be outed while also irritated by her tendency to reject them while they are only trying to help her. Meanwhile, another awkward young man struggles to confess his crush on the increasingly paranoid young woman, overly invested in a patriarchal ideal of masculinity that women are in need of male protectors mistakenly believing that Saki will be impressed by his attempt to safeguard her which ironically becomes a secondary act of harassment even as he, like Kinoshita, attempts to convince her to rebel against her complicity with a relentlessly rigged, conformist and conservative social order. 

The conclusion that she comes to, however, is that she has to “survive in this world” rather than striving for a better one. She has been unfairly demonised as if the real problem is her speaking up rather than her boss’ inappropriate behaviour and is understandably weary with fighting a battle she doesn’t understand, willing to accept a level of complicity in order to end the hate and suspicion. Kinoshita fears she will never see a “safe workplace” while others relentlessly “try to make society work for them” rather than for everyone. A bleak picture of contemporary society ruled by oppressive social pressure and aggressively patriarchal norms, Funahashi’s empathetic drama offers no real answers but advocates for the right to say no in a society where dissent is an untouchable taboo. 

Company Retreat (ある職場, Aru Shokuba) streamed as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.