Tag: Daisuke Honda

The Legend & Butterfly (レジェンド＆バタフライ, Keishi Otomo, 2023)

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“What was everything for?” an ageing Nobunaga (Takuya Kimura) asks his attendant Ranmaru (Somegoro Ichikawa) towards the conclusion of Keishi Otomo’s historical epic, The Legend & Butterfly (レジェンド＆バタフライ, Legend & Butterfly) produced in celebration of Toei’s 70th anniversary. Oda Nobunaga is such a prominent historical figure that his story has been told countless times to the extent that his legend eclipses the reality, but rarely has been he depicted so sympathetically as in Otomo’s history retold as romantic melodrama in which he and his wife, Lady No (Haruka Ayase), are mere puppets of the times in which they live dreaming only of a place beyond the waves where they might be free of name or family. 

Tellingly, Otomo opens in the spring of 1549 in which the dynastic marriage was arranged to broker peace between unstable neighbouring nations Owari and Mino. Nobunaga’s father’s health is failing and he fears in the chaos of his death Mino may attack, while No’s father fears that her brother will soon revolt against him plunging the fiefdom into disarray and therefore vulnerable to an attack by Owari. At this point, Nobunaga is known as “the biggest idiot in Owari,” a foppish dandy who cares only about appearances. As he prepares to meet No, his courtiers apply his makeup and do his hair while dressing him in a rather outlandish outfit No immediately insults as “foolish”. He treats her with chauvinistic disdain, barely speaking save to order her to pour the drinks and give him a massage only for her to point out that she’s been travelling all day and a “thoughtful” considerate husband would be giving her a massage instead. “I detest women who do not know their place,” he snaps. “I detest men who are ignorant,” she counters. The wedding night ends in humiliating failure as No demonstrates her martial arts skills and Nobunaga is forced to call his guards to rescue him. 

Little is known of Lady No in historical record, but here she is bold and defiant, as her father had said too free with her opinions for a woman of the feudal era. She claims to have been married twice before and assassinated both husbands on her father’s orders, implying that she is essentially sleeper agent more than hostage and will kill Nobunaga without a moment’s thought as soon as the word is given. Yet she also begins to guide her husband towards his destiny, mocking him as a fool but giving him useful strategic advice that wins him glory on the battlefield along with the political advancement that led him to become the first great unifier of Japan. For all that they “hate” each other, they are well matched and have a similar sensibility that allows them first to become allies and then friends before frustrated lovers.

But their love is enabled only when they escape the feudal world, shaking off their retainers to go on a “normal” date in Kyoto where they dance to Western musicians and taste foreign candy only to end up accidentally massacring some peasants when No’s martial arts training kicks in trying to stop a man beating his son. Even so, they are forever linked by their time in Kyoto in the romantic talisman’s of a carved wooden frog and a European lute even if the blood-spattered jizo and buddhist statue watching their eventual connection imply there will be a reckoning for all the blood that is spent. Jumping on a few years, the film does not elaborate on what caused Nobunaga to become a man without a heart and lose the love of his most trusted ally but positions his transformation into the “Demon King” as the kernel of his undoing just as his dream of unifying Japan and bringing about an age of peace (if one ruled by fear) is about to become a reality. 

In any case, the one thing that everybody knows about Nobunaga is how he died though then again his remains were never recovered giving rise to a happier ending in which he and Lady No were finally able to escape the feudal world to chase a freer future beyond the sea which is perhaps what they do in the film’s poetic final sequence in which they might in a sense share a dream connected by frog and lute. It might not be very historically accurate, but that is perhaps the point in hinting at the lives they might have led if the world had been different. Otomo films with a painterly eye that lends an air of poignant gravitas to a tale of romantic tragedy in which love is both salvation and destruction amid the flames of a collapsing temple. 

The Legend & Butterfly screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Waterboys (ウォーターボーイズ, Shinobu Yaguchi, 2001)

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Japan has really taken the underdog triumphs genre of sports comedy to its heart but there can be few better examples than Shinobu Yaguchi’s 2001 teenage boys x synchronised swimming drama Waterboys (ウォーターボーイズ). Where the conventional sports movie may rely on the idea of individual triumph(s), Waterboys, like many similarly themed Japanese movies, has group unity at its core as our group of disparate and previously downtrodden high school boys must find their common rhythm in order to truly be themselves. Setting high school antics to one side and attempting to subvert the normal formula as much as possible, Yaguchi presents a celebration of acceptance and assimilation as difference is never elided but allowed to add to a growing harmony as the boys discover all new sides of themselves in their quest for water borne success.

Dreamy high school boy Suzuki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is currently the only member of his high school’s swimming team, and unfortunately he’s not a particularly good swimmer. His interest is piqued when he spots a synchronised swim meet, but he forgets all about it until a new teacher arrives and pledges to revive the school’s fortunes in the pool. Seeing as their new teacher is a pretty young woman with an interest in swimming, the team suddenly becomes much more popular but when she reveals her synchronised swimmer past numbers dwindle once again. Unfortunately, the hot new teacher suddenly has to leave the school so the boys are left to fend for themselves in their new and possibly embarrassing career in a generally feminine sport.

Being teenage boys who only started this whole thing because of the pretty teacher, most of the other guys are are looking for a way out but they also don’t like to be called quitters and so they become determined to make a success of themselves. Suzuki, who secretly wanted to become a synchronised swimmer anyway, is the most committed but also, perhaps, the least confident in his choice of sport as he embarks on a tentative romance with a girl from another school – herself an enthusiast of the more masculine karate. Terrified that she will find out and laugh at him, Suzuki goes to great lengths to avoid telling her what it he really does in his club activities, possibly putting the growing romance at risk in the process.

This mild challenge to masculinity is the main joke of the film but Yaguchi neatly subverts as the guys become cool again thanks to mastering a difficult skill and creating an impressive spectacle through hard work and group mentality. The boys gain an unlikely mentor in the form of a dolphin trainer at Sea World who they hope will be able to train them in the same way he trains his marine creatures but quickly sets them off on some Karate Kid style practical training which involves a lot of menial tasks around the park before dumping them at the local arcade to play dance dance revolution until they learn the art of synchronicity through the power of idol pop. Waterboys is, essentially, a hymn to the harmonious society as the boys eventually find their common rhythm and the power that comes from many acting as one.

Unusually, this does not requite a loss of individuality or for any erasure of essential personality traits but rather a greater need for acceptance as difference merely adds to the strength of the whole. Though there are a fair few gay jokes in what is essentially a movie about high school boys in skimpy trunks, the joke is not homosexuality but reactions to it as Yaguchi adopts a “get over it” attitude and so when one of the boys does confess his love for another it’s treated with no particular reaction other than lack of surprise. Similarly the cross dressing mama-san from the local gay club (a surprising turn from Akira Emoto) becomes one of their greatest supporters and may provide comic relief but is never a figure of fun. In order to succeed the boys will need to be in tune with each other, but that in tune sounds better when it allows for harmony rather than insisting on dull monotony.

Visually inventive and often hilarious, Waterboys lacks the heart of Yaguchi’s similarly plotted Swing Girls but nevertheless succeeds in its tale of inexperienced young guys working hard and achieving the impossible, growing up and discovering new things about themselves as they do. Waterboys may be lighthearted, crowd pleasing fun, but its good natured message that great things are possible when determined people work hard at them together, and that group harmony does not necessarily require social conformity, only add to its warm and gentle tone.

Korean trailer (Korean captions/subtitles only)

Poppoya (鉄道員, Yasuo Furuhata, 1999)

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img_0The late Ken Takakura is best remembered as cinema’s original hard man but when the occasion arose he could provoke the odd tear or two just the same. 1999’s Poppoya (鉄道員) directed by frequent collaborator Yasuo Furuhata sees him once again playing the tough guy with a battered heart only this time he’s an ageing station master of a small town in deepest snow country which was once a prosperous mining village but is now a rural backwater.

Otomatsu Sato has spent his life in service to the railway. Like his father before him who believed the key to the modernisation of Japan after its defeat in the second world war was in its transportation network, Sato started as an engineer before being promoted to station master. Morning and evening in the freezing cold he bid in and sent out each passenger and freight train travelling through his one track station. However, though he clearly loves his job Sato has experienced a great deal of personal tragedy in pursuit of his career. He wasn’t there when his baby daughter died, nor was he there when his wife lay dying in hospital. He was where he always is, on the platform until the last train goes out. Now, however, the mine has closed, the town is full of old people and there are no passengers on the train so the line will be closing. Having given his life to something which will be so unceremoniously erased, what is a man like Sato to do now?

In true Takakura fashion, Sato appears tough and fairly unapproachable on the outside but actually he’s quite well respected in the town and even if some of the other residents bemoan his rigid ways, they grudgingly respect him for being the way he is. He takes his duties seriously and would never countenance breaching them for something as trivial as personal concerns, even when those concerns are something as understandable as the death of a family member. The way he sees things, this is his duty and must be fulfilled, properly each day no matter what. This may seem a little obsequious in Western eyes, though many of the other (particularly female) characters also agree Sato takes things much further than he needs to, but dedication to one’s duty is, after all, an admirable trait.

However, now it’s all been for nowt. The railway line is to be closed, the land will engulf it once again erasing the years of Sato’s work just as if he were never there. He’s sacrificed final moments with his wife and child – not even that, just sacrificed moments. He’s given all to the railway and now there’s no place left there for him. His best friend, the father of a son also in the railway business, is to take another job at a hotel complex but Sato is a railwayman through and through – he’ll work on the tracks or not at all.

Around this time Sato also starts seeing some strange new children around. He assumes they’ve come to stay with grandparents in the village, this being the time of the New Year holiday. The little one has a strangely old fashioned looking doll that reminds Sato of one he bought for his infant daughter only she never really had the chance to enjoy it. Then he meets an older sister who’s kind of a live wire before meeting the oldest – a high school student dressed in an old fashioned looking uniform who really reminds him of someone he used to know. All these strange encounters force Sato to further re-examine his past, reliving old regrets and assessing a life lived in service to an ideal at the expense of the joy he might have felt as a happy family man.

Beautifully photographed with picturesque shots of trains against the deep snows of Northern Japan, Poppoya was Japan’s submission for the 1999 Oscars and does have all the trappings of a prestige melodrama. It unabashedly pulls at the hearts strings and even if the rather sentimental score takes things too far, Poppoya does nevertheless manage to draw the odd tear for Sato’s lonely, regretful old age. Sentimental yet genuinely affecting, Poppoya is an effectively crafted weepy which serves as a timely reminder to embrace the things which are most important to you while there’s still time.

The Hong Kong blu-ray release of Poppoya includes English subtitles (though they are a little “imperfect”).

Only trailer I can find has Korean subs: