Tag: Japanese

She is me, I am her (ワタシの中の彼女, Mayu Nakamura, 2022)

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A gentle sense of haunting lingers over the protagonists of Mayu Nakamura’s pandemic-era anthology She is Me, I am her (ワタシの中の彼女, Watashi no Naka no Kanojo). COVID-19 seems only to have exacerbated their sense of loneliness and regret, confronted by the ghosts of other lives and absent friends while having little else to do but think about past and future amid an atmosphere of anxiety. Yet within the lonely city there is space for fresh connection and new beginnings even if in themselves somewhat unexpected.

The sense of distance is obvious from the first episode, Among Four of Us, in which three university friends meet again after many years in a public park, only in reality they’re each sitting on their own in different parts of the city while connected by telephone. They speak briefly of their lives, each filled with disappointment one a struggling actor, one a conflicted housewife happily married but wondering what might have been, and the other living with a former lover who can’t forget their absent friend. Much of the conversation revolves around Sayoko who haunts them on this beautiful moonlit night as they each realise they’ve done little but think about her though she somehow slipped away from them and may have had sorrows and regrets of her own they never thought to ask about. 

It’s Sayoko who again seems to haunt the third chapter, Ms. Ghost, in which a young woman encounters an old lady sleeping on a bench near the station and realises they have more than a little in common. In fact it’s almost as if she were talking to an older version of herself, alone and beaten down by life, dreaming of past glories. Both women reflect not only on their broken dreams as country girls who came to the city to act, but on the various ways they’ve been displaced by the pandemic having lost their places of work and been left with nowhere else to go. Forced into sex work after her hostess bar closed down, the younger woman is haunted by a sense of danger that she might end up just another name in the newspaper killed by a violent man. 

Then again the lonely woman of part two, Someone to Watch Over Me, finds herself captivated by a delivery driver, Kazuya, who hastily polished off one of the meals she ordered but did not have the strength to eat. Becoming somewhat obsessed with him she continues ordering food only to have him eat it, but is conflicted on discovering a note of darkness in their relationship. When he tells her that she is not alone even if she thinks she is, it comes across as a much less comforting statement than he meant it to be hinting at the various ways having someone to watch over you isn’t always as nice as it sounds. She too is haunted by absence, along a with a vague sense of being watched that she may however uncomfortably have started to enjoy. 

The heroine of the fourth episode, Deceive Me Sweetly, is haunted by the loss of her youthful dreams taken from her along with her high school lover, a photographer just like the delivery driver, by her declining sight. Yet she can perhaps see further than most and straight through the young man who arrives at her door attempting to run an ore ore scam poignantly claiming to be the brother that hasn’t contacted her in years. Struck by remorse, the young man begins to regret scamming this strangely trusting woman remarking that the real Kazuya wherever he may be must be lucky to have a family he could call in time of need, which the young man perhaps does not. While she is haunted by lost youth, the woman is also in a way haunting him like a mystical figure offering the hand of redemption and setting him free into a world that seems more open fuelled by the need to repay a debt of kindness to a woman he never really knew. Even in these days of lonely desperation, there can still be hope and connection. Filmed with dreamy minimalism, Nakamura’s four tales each starring actress Nahana and connected by seemingly random details discover a sense of the comfort in strangers that a city can offer even in the midst of its own loneliness. 

She is me, I am her had its World Premiere at Japan Society New York on Nov. 12 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: © 2022 Omphalos Pictures

The Nighthawk’s First Love (よだかの片想い, Yuka Yasukawa, 2021)

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A young woman begins to regain a sense of self-confidence in the face of social prejudice when invited to consult on a film in Yuka Yasukawa’s adaptation of the Rio Shimamoto novel, The Nighthawk’s First Love (よだかの片想い, Yodaka no Kataomoi). Drawing inspiration from a Kenji Miyazawa story about an ostracised nighthawk bullied by a hawk who cannot accept that they are the same because he finds the nighthawk’s difference offensive, Yasukawa’s gentle drama is less about the transformational quality of love than it is about learning to accept oneself as distinct from the self that others see. 

A shy young woman, Aiko (Rena Matsui) keeps a distance with others because of a longterm sense of rejection owing to a prominent birthmark on her face. After agreeing to be interviewed for a book about people living with facial difference and disfigurement, Aiko is approached by filmmaker Tobisaka (Ayumu Nakajima) who just happened to chance on their photoshoot and was struck by what he describes as a quiet sense of strength in her reserve. Though Aiko is not originally keen on the idea of having someone turn her life into a film, she soon begins to bond with Tobisaka who does not appear to react to her birthmark and eventually embarks on a romance only to find herself insecure in his continuing attachment to a former muse and dedication to his craft. 

While visiting her publisher, Marie (Lisa Oda), Aiko encounters a curious little girl who touches her own face and bluntly asks Aiko if the bruise-like mark on her cheek hurts. Aiko answers patiently that it doesn’t and isn’t offended by the little girl’s question, but perhaps is by the mother’s reaction as she stares and wonders what to say before apologising for her daughter’s rudeness but not for her own. Aiko recounts something similar in recalling her childhood bullying in which the kids in her class nicknamed her “Lake Biwa” because the mark on her face resembled the famous landmark which they were learning about in school. Though they were being cruel to her, Aiko remembers that a part of her enjoyed the attention while the teacher’s attempt to shut her classmates down was in a way more painful as if it were the birthmark itself which was “horrible” rather than the kids’ comments. After that the other children began to avoid her, unsure what to say and perhaps blaming her for having gotten into trouble with the teacher. She explains that she worries people often drift away from her in part because of the birthmark itself and in part because of the way it influences her behaviour generating a vicious cycle of doubt, rejection, and loneliness. Tobisaka’s muse, Miwa (Miyuu Teshima), looks very much like her only without the birthmark and Aiko worries if she can keep him while fearing in her insecurity that their relationship is nothing but a long con designed to get her to agree to participating in the film. 

Yasukawa often frames Aiko looking into mirrors, at one point a reflection of her face appearing next to that of Miwa in her makeup on a poster for the film. Tobisaka gives her a compact mirror as a gift that he possibly intends to help her see herself though perhaps as he sees her, while she remains internally conflicted insistent that there’s nothing wrong with having a birthmark but carrying a degree of internalised shame and wondering if her life would be different without it. It’s another compact given to her by a similarly troubled friend that later grants her agency in realising that she does have a choice in displaying her birthmark or not even if deciding that she might not want to have it removed after discovering that it may be medically possible. Her supervisor advises her that attempting to become a different person in the pursuit of growth is nothing but a fantasy while she gradually comes to the realisation that change is not quite not quite what she’s looking for, quite literally freeing herself from her self-imposed imprisonment to embrace her authentic self. Her growth lies not simply in being loved by a man who may in a way be exploiting her, but in truly seeing herself and others for the first time. An elegantly lensed tale of self-acceptance, Yaskukawa’s gentle drama allows its diffident heroine the space to grow while becoming more rather than less of herself in defiance of a social prejudice that is all to often routed in the same insecurity she has now escaped.

The Nighthawk’s First Love screens at Japan Society New York on Nov. 13 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dreaming of the Meridian Arc (大河への道, Kenji Nakanishi, 2022)

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As it turns out, the modern world is not so different from the feudal after all. After realising that their friend and mentor has passed away, a team working together to create an accurate map of Japan in the early 19th century are immediately worried that their project will be axed as a part of a cost cutting exercise at the hands of the penny-pinching Shogun. Inspired by Shinosuke Tatekawa’s rakugo story, Kenji Nakanishi’s heartwarming dramedy Dreaming of the Meridian Arc (大河への道, Taiga e no Michi) tells parallel tales of hardworking civil servants trying to put their town on the map and Edo-era officials trying to avoid incurring the Shogun’s displeasure so they can ensure their late friend’s life’s work will eventually be finished. 

In the present day, the small town of Katori is trying to think of ways to raise its profile but according to junior civil servant Kinoshita (Kenichi Matsuyama) the programme proposed by the tourist board has little to offer in simply imitating the initiatives of other better known cities. As he points out, if tourists want to experience life in olden times there are lots of places they can do that already. Chief of General Affairs Ikemoto (Kiichi Nakai) idly suggests that they try and get local historical personannage Chukei-san, better known as Ino Tadataka the man who completed the first accurate map of the Japanese islands, featured as the subject of a year-long historical TV drama. Of course, Kobayashi from the tourist board (Keiko Kitagawa) thinks it’s a silly idea, but the governor likes it so Ikemoto now has a very difficult job not least because the governor wants him to convince a grumpy writer who hasn’t written anything in 20 years to handle the script. 

The reason Kato (Isao Hashizume) retired from screenwriting is that he too was fed up with placating commercially-minded executives and isn’t prepared to work on anything in which he doesn’t have full creative control which might be a problem a civil servant like Ikemoto could sympathise with if he wasn’t so desperate to bring him on board. It can’t be denied that the story of the map’s creation is itself fascinating if only in its technical detail of how these men were able to complete a map which almost perfectly aligns with modern aerial photography using only the technology of the early 19th century. As Kato points out, Tadataka was already in his 70s and the bulk of the work is simply walking all around Japan measuring it step by step. He’d only begun the project because he wanted to figure out the size of the earth by charting the Meridian Arc, but figured that out right away and still went on to work on the map for reasons largely unknown though later hinting a sense of anxiety in the late Edo society in believing that understanding the shape of the nation’s coastlines was the key to national defence in the wake of a Russian attack that had cost two of Tadataka’s local helpers their lives. 

Yet the drama idea is pretty much dead in the water after realising that Tadataka “died” three years before the map was completed. Fearing they’d lose their funding, Tadataka’s team buried him in secret and told people he was simply out on location while trying to finish the map before anyone found out knowing that their lives were at risk if the Shogun discovered they’d been lying to him and assumed they’d been doing it to continue claiming Tadataka’s stipend. To ram his point home, Nakanishi has the civil servants taking on the role of the mapmakers in Kato’s putative version of the story as they come together as a team to finish their mentor’s project but are eventually forgotten by history in much the same way as Ikemoto and his team will eventually be even as they too work for their betterment of their nation by taking care of the community. Ikemoto becomes something of a Tadataka figure, deciding to pickup a new skill in middle-age and aiming high in perfecting it (while slightly misleading the boss as he does so). A heartwarming tale of the value of teamwork and the perils of bureaucratic cost cutting, Nakanishi’s historical dramedy implies that not so much as changed in 200 years but that’s not entirely a bad thing as the dedicated team of civil servants do their best to put their city on the map.

Dreaming of the Meridian Arc screens at Japan Society New York on Nov. 12 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: ©2022 “Dreaming of the Meridian Arc” Film Partners

Wedding High (ウェディング・ハイ, Akiko Ohku, 2022)

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“Today is the best day of our lives” a couple exclaim seconds before taking their marital vows, but if you think about it, isn’t that just a way of saying that it’s all downhill from here? Even the determined wedding planner at the centre of Akiko Ohku’s ensemble comedy Wedding High (ウェディング・ハイ) admits that a good wedding day doesn’t amount to a good marriage and it’s certainly true that almost everyone in attendance has rather overhyped the occasion insisting that it’s a grand turning point in their lives even if they aren’t the ones swearing eternal devotion at the altar. 

Groom Akihito (Tomoya Nakamura) didn’t even really want a wedding, they are after all expensive and time consuming, but is paranoid that not having one, or having one that’s not quite right, will eventually poison his relationship with his soon-to-be wife Haruka (Nagisa Sekimizu). For him the day has to go well, or at least Haruka has to feel as if she’s had the best day of her life, or their marriage will get off to a bad start. Meanwhile they’re under pressure from friends and family members trying to decide on a guest list especially considering that key guests are expected to handle entertainment with both sets of fathers and an eccentric uncle keen to get in on the action while it’s also customary to invite one’s boss to give a brief speech at the reception. 

Akihito’s boss Zaitsu (Katsumi Takahashi) doesn’t exactly try to steal the day but does invest it with a surprising degree of personal significance, oddly touched that Akihito has asked him despite his having been disgraced at work because of a sleazy scandal in his personal life. Zaitsu sees the wedding speech as a chance for a comeback, obsessively studying standup comedy determined to deliver a genuinely funny routine that will make everyone laugh and perhaps conclude that he’s not such a bad guy after all. For Akihito’s schoolmate Shinji (Akiyoshi Nakao) the wedding becomes something similar, allowing him to regain his creative mojo after hating himself for being trapped in variety television having dreamed of becoming an arthouse movie director when Akihito tasks him with directing a wedding video to be shown at the reception. Even one of Haruka’s friends from high school dance club launches into a story about how this is their big chance to make up for their final performance being cancelled due to injury by performing it again at Haruka’s wedding.

A subplot sees Haruka’s uni ex (Takanori Iwata) decide this is his big day too, planning to storm the ceremony and win her back. He’s convinced himself they only broke up because he reacted in the wrong way when she mentioned her parents’ wanted to introduce her to a guy for an arranged marriage and thinks she’s sent him a coded message that she’s being pressured into an unwanted union and needs rescuing before it’s too late. Somehow Maho (Ryoko Shinohara) manages to keep everything running smoothly, springing into action when the couple’s big day gets derailed by competitive speech making and pretty much everyone else trying to have their moment, yet as her colleagues remind her it’s the next couple’s big day too and the last thing they want to do is spoil that by trying to save Akihito and Haruka’s wedding from falling into complete chaos. 

Like most Japanese ensemble comedies, the resolution turns on the team pulling together to make everything work out. In this case, Maho’s speed wedding strategy leads to something genuinely beautiful and better than the original plan in allowing the couple’s friends and family who may not have known each other before to present a united front of support that neatly symbolises their union as a couple and makes their special day a little more special than it might have been if everything had gone smoothly. Almost everyone does indeed get something from the big day even if it wasn’t what they originally thought they wanted, seizing the chance for a new beginning or to put the past behind them. Asked to boil her speech down to the bare minimum a high school teacher (Hairi Katagiri) offers the simple advice “be happy” while Maho reflects on her role in the proceedings admitting that a good wedding day doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a good marriage but at least you’ll have a few good memories if it all goes wrong somewhere down the line. 

Wedding High screens at Japan Society New York on Nov. 11 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: © 2022 Wedding High Film Partners

My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

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© 1988 Studio Ghibli

“Trees and people used to be good friends” explains a father to his little girls newly arrived in the idyllic countryside of post-war Japan seeking respite from the destructive modernity that has made their mother ill. Released alongside the harrowing wartime drama Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ, Tonari no Totoro) is a charming tale of childhood adventure if not quite without its shades of darkness in which two sisters embrace the wonder of the natural world while trying to come to terms with mortality and the uncertainties of adulthood. 

Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and her younger sister Mei (Chika Sakamoto) have moved into a large, ramshackle house in a rural village on the outskirts of Tokyo for the benefit of their mother’s health while she remains in hospital a few miles away. Living with their cheerful father (Shigesato Itoi), a professor in the city, the girls rejoice in exploring their new environment learning of the dust bunnies that inhabited their home before they moved in. An old lady from the village (Tanie Kitabayashi) who’s come to help keep house until the girls’ mother returns home explains that she could see the “soot spreaders” too when she was a child but presumably not anymore. The idea that the soot speakers will soon move on appears to make the sisters sad, and everyone including the parents is quite excited about the idea of living in a “haunted house” even if it’s one that rattles a little in the wind. It’s younger sister Mei who later follows the trail of acorns that mysteriously appear in their home and encounters a series of strange forest creatures she names “Totoro” that eventually introduce the girls to a parallel world of magic and fantasy. 

Their father probably doesn’t believe them, but indulges the girls’ stories and adventures while encouraging them to embrace a sense of wonder in their environment along with something deeper and older than contemporary modernity. “You probably met the king of this forest” he explains to Mei, pausing to offer a word of thanks to the ancient tree he says first drew him to the house that will be their new family home. Whether Totoro is “real” or simply a childish fantasy he helps the sisters escape their anxiety over their mother’s absence, not least by introducing them to new life in the seeds the girls plant in their garden and patiently wait to grow. The oldest, Satsuki, is perhaps a little more aware, worried that her father might not have told her everything about her mother’s condition and processing the idea that there is a possibility she won’t come home to them. She wants to protect her sister from the same fears but perhaps can’t, eventually losing her patience with her and instantly regretful when Mei goes off in a huff and gets lost.

There is darkness in the village too, a floating sandal in a nearby lake giving rise to fears that a child may have fallen in and drowned, but there’s also the gentle strength of the community in the kindly old lady and her shy grandson Kanta (Toshiyuki Amagasa) along with all the other villagers who come out in force to look for Mei fearing she may have tried to visit her mother at the hospital on her own. The old lady prays furiously while muttering Buddhist sutras and it’s probably not a coincidence that Mei sits by a row of Jizo statues after realising that she’s lost not knowing what to do. The girls are always careful to offer thanks at the Jizo shrine just as their father thanked the tree though it’s Totoro and the Catbus that eventually bring them back together echoing a sense that in a just world kindness will always be repaid. 

The countryside is in many ways closer to that just world, largely free of the evils of modernity such as the pollution of industry that has corrupted the cities. Technology is often unreliable, dad’s train is late, telegrams bring bad news, and telephone calls result in anxious waits, but life in the village is peaceful and happy and the people help each other when times are hard. It may be an idealised vision of rural living, but there’s no denying its appeal. Evoking a sense of nostalgia in its beautifully painted backgrounds, Miyazaki’s gentle drama is like much of his work an advocation for the importance of nature as a source of healing but equally for wonder in the fantastical adventures of two little girls finding strength and possibility in the heart of the forest.

My Neighbor Totoro screens on 35mm at Japan Society New York on Nov.4 as part of the Monthly Anime series. Japan Society will also be hosting a talk with puppet artist Basil Twist on Nov. 10 delving behind the scenes of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s currently running stage adaptation.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 1988 Studio Ghibli

The Vampire Moth (吸血蛾, Nobuo Nakagawa, 1956)

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“You’ve become an evil beast that sucks blood!” intones ace detective Kindaichi, though just as his later The Lady Vampire featured no lady vampires, there is no literal bloodsucker involved in Noburu Nakagawa’s Vampire Moth (吸血蛾, Kyuketsuga). Inspired by one of Seishi Yokomizo’s mysteries featuring his iconic detective here played by the rather suave Ryo Ikebe cutting a very noirish figure in contrast to the famously disheveled eccentric from the original novels, the film is for a time at least a werewolf movie though as usual the villain turns out to be post-war greed and amorality. 

This is perhaps rammed home in the open sequence as the camera pans around the neon-lit nighttime city before entering a small cabaret bar where a fashion competition is currently in progress. A note of discord is immediately introduced by a white-haired grumpy old man (Eijiro Tono) sitting in the front row who appears to be in an incredibly bad mood, later exclaiming that the winning design by rising star Fumiyo Asaji (Asami Kuji) does not seem very original to him. Some of the models later complain about the strange spectator who’s evidently come to several other shows and has begun to creep them out. Meanwhile, an aloof, conservatively dressed woman brushes past them. Fumiyo’s assistant Toru (Ichiro Arishima) explains that she is Tazuko Kusakata (Chieko Nakakita) who had been the previous number one before Fumiyo returned to Japan after an extended stay in France. The real drama begins however with the arrival of a masked man with a box for Fumiyo who reveals his wolf-like face to Toru in an effort to convince him to deliver it. After opening the box and finding an apple with a few distinctive bite marks on the outside, Fumiyo promptly collapses.  

From the introduction of the three loose “suspects” an ominous atmosphere takes hold in the certainty that something untoward is about to happen. Soon enough some of the models start getting bumped off in quite bizarre and unpleasant ways. The first girl’s body is shipped back to the studio in a mannequin box which later leaks blood, while the gang are then delivered a cake with the next victim’s name on it in pretty icing with a butterfly moth motif above. There may not be any vampires, but there are certainly moths. The old creepy guy is revealed to be a moth specialist living a giant gothic mansion with a butterfly room in the middle full of specimens nailed to boards. His front door even has a moth motif above it like a coat of arms, while a butterfly mural lies behind it in the hallway. The killer places a decorative moth on each of his victims to cover their modesty which would seem to indicate the grumpy professor but, once he finally arrives, Kindaichi isn’t quite so sure. 

Though this is technically a Kindaichi mystery and he does finally get to unmask the criminal, he is not actually in it very much and as previously mentioned is nothing like later incarnations of the famous detective such as that of Kon Ichikawa’s series of Kindaichi movies released throughout the 1970s. In a common B-movie motif, the main detective work falls to a male and female team in dogged reporter Kawase (Minoru Chiaki) and intrepid model Yumiko (Kyoko Anzai) who eventually succeed in digging up clues at the creepy mansion while simultaneously stumbling across a subplot involving plagiarism in the world of fashion with Tazuko implying that Fumiyo stole her winning outfit from another designer and then passed it off as her own thereby robbing Tazuko of her rightful place as the best designer in Japan. Partly because of all this stress and the vast amounts of money apparently needed to sustain a career in the fashion industry, Fumiyo’s well-meaning boyfriend wants her to abandon the profession but also admits that asking her to give up fashion would be like asking her to give up her life. 

Nakagawa ramps up the tension with a series of elegantly presented reversals, making us think we’re witnessing the killer stalking Fumiyo before pulling back to reveal it’s someone else or presenting the same scene of a masked man ominously peering out from behind a tree. The presence of the “wolf man” links back to a Japanese traveller who supposedly fell victim to a supernatural curse in France described as being akin to possession by a fox in Japanese mythology causing the infected person to gain wolf-like characteristics, become violent, and eventually be consumed by an overwhelming desire for human flesh, but perhaps also hints at the sense of voracious greed that has overtaken the killer and caused them to abandon their sense of of humanity in favour of material riches. Filled with a sense of the gothic along with noirish dread in Nakagawa’s foggy, kilted angles eventually giving way to an atmospheric chase sequence strongly recalling that of The Third Man, The Vampire Moth presents a banal evil with palpable anxiety yet suggests justice will be done to those who however briefly stray from the path. 

Missing (さがす, Shinzo Katayama, 2021)

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“None of us are needed” claims the nihilistic serial killer at the centre of Shinzo Katayama’s dark mystery drama, Missing (さがす, Sagasu). That he’s wrong is an obvious point, but also one reinforced by the teenage heroine’s determination to find her father not just literally and physically, but spiritually and emotionally as she struggles to reorient herself and find direction in her life in the midst of grief and despair. Drawing inspiration from the so-called “Twitter Killer” case of 2017 Katayama asks some difficult questions about the ethics of life and death and how seemingly ordinary people can be pulled towards the dark side by a mixture of greed and misplaced compassion. 

As the film opens, young Kaede (Aoi Ito) is running through the backstreets of Osaka looking for her dad (Harada). What occurs is something of a role reversal as she arrives, breathless, at a convenience store and is forced to apologise because her father has been caught shoplifting having been short the paltry sum of 20 yen which she then has to pay to smooth things over so he won’t actually be arrested. It’s at this point that Satoshi tells her about his big get rich quick scheme which involves claiming the reward for catching a fugitive serial killer, Terumi Yamauchi (Hiroya Shimizu), known as “No Name”, whom he believes to have seen in the local area. Kaede does not take her father seriously, but then Satoshi suddenly disappears. She can’t help but wonder if he was telling the truth and that something untoward has happened to him. 

What she quickly discovers, however, is that no one except herself is very interested in her father’s disappearance. Her teacher tries to help by taking her to the police, but it’s clear that they do not consider Satoshi to be a person worth looking for suggesting that whatever’s happened to him is most likely his own fault for being an imperfect person, implying that he drinks and has debts so most likely has gone missing on purpose. The teacher later comes to the same conclusion, getting a nun from a local orphanage to come and fetch Kaede believing her father has no intention of returning. Probably meaning well, the nun also tells her that her father has abandoned her and there’s no point waiting for him. But even if everyone else thinks that Satoshi is an “unnecessary” person, he is important to her and so she will not stop until she finds him even if that puts her in similar danger hot on the heels of a serial murderer. 

Like the Twitter Killer, Yamauchi disingenuously claims to be helping people, offering “salvation” to those who want to die but cannot bring themselves to end their own lives. By his logic, there are some who are only clinging on to life out of guilt for those who will be left behind while simultaneously blaming themselves that they are “unneeded” and nothing more than a burden to the few who do care about them. His claims are however nothing more than sociopathic justification designed to convince others that what he’s doing is in some way compassionate rather than a sickening attempt to satisfy his own dark desires. As he finally concedes with a repeat customer, in the end none of the people he killed wanted to die but were looking for something else which obviously was not what he wanted to give them. 

Perhaps Satoshi was looking for something too though whether he found it or not only he could say. Katayama hints at the grimness of everyday life in Satoshi’s unsatisfying existence of casual labour, guilt, and loss. When Kaede tries to check whether or not he’s been going to work, no one recognises his picture and it turns out that someone else has been working under his name. A migrant worker urges her to be careful, that the man calling himself Satoshi Harada has bad vibes of the kind he claims you often find “in places like this”. All Satoshi wanted to was to reopen the ping pong parlour he was forced to close in order to care for his wife during a longterm illness which left him with financial debts along with the emotional. It is quite literally a back and fore between father and daughter, a ping pong ball flying across a table until finally hitting its mark as Kaede reveals that she has found the answers she was looking for even if not quite the ones she wanted. Lightened by moments of dark humour, Katayama’s strange procedural grimly suggests that none of us is really so far away from acts of desperate brutality but equally that none of us is ever unneeded no matter how lonely it might feel. 

Missing screens in Chicago on Oct. 30 as part of the 15th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema. It will also be released in the US on Nov. 18 courtesy of Dark Star Pictures.

US release trailer (English subtitles)

Nagi’s Island (凪の島, Masahiko Nagasawa, 2022)

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“Doctors don’t heal patients. We just help them heal themselves” according to the kindly grandmother at the centre of Masahiko Nagasawa’s warmhearted drama Nagi’s Island (凪の島, Nagi no Shima). In many ways an island film, Nagasawa’s gentle tale of the power of community support and mutual compassion celebrates the healing power of laidback island life while simultaneously lamenting its decline amid rural depopulation and an ageing society which it leave it in someways vulnerable without the protections of big city infrastructure. 

For young Nagi (Chise Niitsu), however, it’s a kind of haven. Following her parents’ divorce she’s returned to live with her grandmother Yoshiko (Hana Kino) who runs the island’s only medical clinic while her mother (Rosa Kato) has a secured a job as a nurse at the hospital on the mainland. Nagi has adjusted to island life fairly quickly, but is also haunted by her past and suffers from panic attacks when witnessing small acts of violence and aggression that recall painful memories of her father’s drunken rages. In any case it seems that Nagi has maintained contact with her dad, Shimao, through social media while he is trying his best to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse and repair his relationships with his family. 

As Yoshiko puts it, history has in a sense repeated as she too came to the island with her daughter, Mao, after leaving her husband and was comforted by the total acceptance of the island community who asked few questions and never attached any social stigma to the fact she was a single mother. Many people here are, however, also suffering such as Nagi’s new friend Raita who is touched by her relationship with her mother while missing his own. Irritated by his grandfather’s refusal to explain to him what’s happened to her other than that she’s in a hospital, he determines to find out dragging Nagi along for an adventure but perhaps discovers something he wasn’t quite prepared for only to be comforted by a frank yet compassionate outlaying of the facts from a sympathetic doctor and the gentle support of his friends and family. 

Nagi’s arrival also begins back painful memories for the school’s janitor who is nicknamed Grumpy Grandpa (Kyusaku Shimada) by the kids (of whom there are only five) because of his morose appearance and the fact he never smiles. Having lost his own daughter to a heart attack, he worries for Nagi who in turn becomes determined to make him smile and eventually succeeds in making him feel a part of the community allowing him to begin making peace with his daughter’s death. 

That sense of community is however threatened by the realities of contemporary island life. Nagi’s new friends Kengo and Raita are secretly worried that Mao will decide to remarry and Nagi will leave the island leaving them alone again as the only children of their age. In the local school all the kids are taught together because there are only five of them, the other two being an older boy and his younger sister. Life on the island may seem so idyllic that it’s difficult to see why anyone would want to leave, but with few jobs available younger people often seek better futures in the city while there’s no denying that because of the decreasing population there are few resources available. Yoshiko is the only doctor on the island and her clinic is only a regular GP’s office meaning those who require more serious medical treatment will have to travel to the mainland which is possible only by small fishing boats in good weather. 

In any case the island provides a healing environment of its own, allowing Nagi and her mother to begin putting the past behind them while offering a chance of redemption for Shimao who may be able to start over in a kinder place free of the pressures of city life. As the islanders celebrate the first marriage taking place in the village in 30 years, there is promise of new life and new beginnings despite the prevailing narrative that communities such as these have little future in a continually evolving society. What is clear is that Nagi has found her place to belong along with a purpose in life in the gentle lull of the island’s seas and its welcoming shores. 

Nagi’s Island screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan. It will also be screening at Japan Society New York on Nov. 20 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Fallen Blossoms (花ちりぬ, Tamizo Ishida, 1938)

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By the late 1930s, film censorship had tightened and it was perhaps all but impossible to rebuke the militarist regime through the silver screen. Nevertheless, as always setting your film in the past can make the impossible possible through thinly veiled allegory. This may not have been its primary intention, but it’s impossible to ignore the subtext of Tamizo Ishida’s Fallen Blossoms (花ちりぬ, Hana Chirinu) which sets itself entirely within the confines of a geisha house on the night of the Kinmon incident or Hamaguri Gate Rebellion in 1864 during which anti-Shogunate forces from Choshu marched on Kyoto with the intention of kidnapping the emperor in order to restore imperial rule. The incident ended in devastating defeat for Choshu with rebel forces setting fire to the city as they bid their retreat. 

There is therefore an uncomfortable anxiety in the context of the Japan of 1938 as the women trapped inside the teahouse remark on the chaos outside with unfamiliar soldiers on the streets and townspeople deciding to remain at home which is of course very bad for their business. Aside from the sense of danger, the major problems inside the house are economic with constant talk of declining revenues and the recent closure of similar establishments while even the guests that have come have done so to drown their sorrows as their own business is also going badly because of the rumours of imminent unrest. The situation is all the more acute for Akira (Ranko Hanai), daughter of the house’s madam, because she’s secretly fallen in love with a young man of Choshu she fears may be marching on the city which is one reason she deflects her mother’s attempts to encourage her to accept an offer of marriage from a wealthy associate. 

As Akira later puts it, her mother was born in the teahouse, became a geisha and then its madam. She sees herself sharing the same fate but wants to experience a different kind of life, curious about what lies outside the pleasure district. Maid Miyako (Kimiko Hayashi) was sold to the geisha house as a child because her family was poor, she doesn’t think the life outside is anything worth seeing. Yet she too wonders what her fate might be, believing herself to be too plain to make it as a geisha and particularly to attract the kind of wealthy patron who could provide an escape route. Matsuba (Ayako Ichinose), a former geisha, did just that but now she’s come back apparently regretting her decision because she’s neither wife not maid in her new home but also occupies a liminal status in the teahouse, her actions deliberate or otherwise reinforcing the idea that she is no longer a geisha in her inability to tie Akira’s obi and claims to have forgotten the words when asked to rehearse a piece of music with another of the women. “Surely it’s OK for a girl to dream, even in the Kuruwa” Akira fires back but perhaps on some level knowing that her mother has a point when she says that samurai don’t marry young women of the pleasure district. 


Even so Akira’s romantic fantasy takes on even greater import when a man begins loudly banging on their door and demanding to be let in, presumably in fear for his life. Akira rushes forward to open it, but is held back by her mother and the other women. After a while the sound of fighting stops and it’s assumed the man has been killed. Akira doesn’t know if the man was her lover or not, but it makes no difference. Someone called for her help and she refused it. Guilt and shame overwhelm her. Her mother’s decision may prove to be a prudent one, though she is in any case later arrested by the pro-shogunate Shinsengumi police presumably suspicious the geisha house may have harboured rebel soldiers. Akira’s double sense of guilt that what’s happened to her mother is partly her own fault prevents her from leaving with the others when it becomes certain that their only choice is to evacuate the city. Her only point of refuge is on the watchtower, apparently unique to her geisha house and said to be haunted by someone murdered by the Shinsengumi, where she sees the smoke of fires glowing on the horizon. Her lover’s poem falls from her hand as if in admission that her dream is ended and there will be no escape for her from the environs of the Kuruwa.

The moment is therefore one of eclipse and endings, a city a falling but not as the invaders are beaten back and defeated. Prophetic and chilling in its import as bells strike ominously in the background while the city burns, the film paints a bleak prognosis for a Japan of mounting imperialist ambitions. Drunken geisha Tanehachi (Reiko Minakami), herself trapped in the Kuruwa apparently because of a bad man she cannot escape, reveals that her father was beheaded in the street for disrespecting a samurai and if this is the beginning of their end then so be it, but even so “Kyoto is finished. No matter who loses it will make no difference.” Adapted from a stage play by Kaoru Morimoto, Ishida’s increasingly anxious drama never leaves the geisha house or repeats a shot and situates itself entirely within a world of women where men are heard but never seen, but finally leaves its heroine all alone watching helplessly as the fires creep closer. 

The Island Closest to Heaven (天国にいちばん近い島, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1984)

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On its publication in the mid-1960s, Katsura Morimura’s autobiographical travelogue The Island Closest to Heaven (天国にいちばん近い島, Tengoku ni Ichiban Chikai Shima) became something of a publishing phenomenon and is credited with creating a romanticised image of the Pacific islands in the post-war Japanese imagination. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1984 film adaptation in fact prominently features adverts for the UTA New Caledonia tour and acts as something like a tourist information video showcasing the idyllic island scenery and well appointed resort accommodation if also later featuring the decidedly less well appointed establishments on the other side of town where the locals live and and work. 

It is however first and foremost a vehicle for Kadokawa idol star Tomoyo Harada who had made her debut in Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time and was now onto her third lead having starred in Curtain Call earlier in the year which Haruki Kadokawa had directed himself. As such, the film is only loosely based on Morimura’s novel, recasting the heroine as a recently bereaved 16-year-old embarking on a coming-of-age adventure while travelling overseas looking for herself and a sense of the safety and stability she experienced before her father’s death. 

In the prologue sequence which opens the film, shot with a muted, pink-tinted colour filter, a younger Mari sits on the edge of a bridge with her father holding her from behind. As both she and her father are dressed in yukata, as are others who pass them on the bridge, we can assume that it is summer and possibly around the time of Bon festival which adds an extra degree of poignancy to their conversation in which her father quietly clearly anticipates his own death. He tells her about a distant island far to the south and close enough to Heaven for God to call on where it is always warm and sunny and the people always happy. Mari asks for the name of the place and is told it is called New Caledonia, possibly a name her father picked out of the air without thinking but becomes to her a symbol of the bond that existed between them and place she must visit now that her father is no longer physically present in her life. 

What she’s looking for is in a sense a path back to her father or at least a means a coming to terms with his absence. Her mother (Kayo Matsuo) may appear somewhat indifferent, but it’s clear that it’s a kind of pride she feels in her daughter’s first steps into adulthood knowing that she has raised a determined young woman if one with her head in the clouds like her father. Her sentiment is later echoed by an older woman (Nobuko Otowa) who has come to New Caledonia in order to make peace with the death of her husband 39 years previously when his submarine was sunk during the war, stating that all these years later her abiding memory is pride that she fell in love with someone she could be proud of. “Love is the story of your whole life” she tells Mari, who is herself just beginning to understand that life is a process of love and loss as she searches for her island and eventually finds it in the eyes of a local boy who yearns for an island far to the north where it’s always bright and sunny and the people are always happy. 

Mari’s interactions on the island are torn between two men, the young Taro (Ryoichi Takayanagi) who is fascinated by the idea of Japan where his grandfather first came from to dig nickel, and a much older man, Yuichi (Toru Minegishi), who seems to be arrested, stuck on the island and unable to move forward with his life because of a youthful broken heart. Mari reminds him of the young woman he loved and lost, trying to recapture the magic with a moment that seems to reference Jules Verne’s The Green Ray, but of course failing to do so. There is something uncomfortable in their relationship given that Mari is only 16 and this man is perhaps already in his 40s, yet her decision to leave the safety of the tour group and venture astray with him to find what she is looking for rather than what the tour guide wants to show her demonstrates her independent spirt and impending adulthood in taking an active control over her life and future. 

In this way the island is a liminal space in more ways than one, symbolically connecting the mortal world and the other while allowing Mari to transition into adulthood as symbolised by her return home now no longer wearing her glasses in having opened her eyes to a fuller reality. Nevertheless, the film does follow the line of the book which is very of its time in its presentation of the indigenous community which is bound up with the idea of a smiling island people lazing in the sun of a tropical paradise while possessing profound spiritual knowledge. Mari’s literal coming of age is symbolised by a fever she endures after being stung by a sting ray, coming to during a tribal dance and then collapsing again to awaken as if reborn into adulthood.  

After this transition it’s implied that her relationship with Taro will have to end, that this brief summer adventure like so many in Obayashi’s films was just about making memories to carry forward in the further course of life. But then as her seemingly unburdened tour group friend had pointed out, Mari found Taro by chance twice before and so may someday find him again just as Mari’s intervention has earned Yuichi and his first love a second chance no longer so enthral to the illusionary power of the green ray but making choices informed by the realities of love that may still be “romantic” if no longer quite so naive. Shifting into a more contemplative register than other similarly themed Kadokawa idol movies, The Island Closest to Heaven is one of Obayashi’s most straightforward features save for its brief use of colour filters in the opening and closing scenes and the lengthy title sequence which draws inspiration from classic Hollywood melodrama, but engages with some of his key themes in the romantic nostalgia of love and loss as his heroine comes to a new understanding of herself while bidding goodbye to the past. 

The Island Closest to Heaven is released on blu-ray on 17th October courtesy of Third Window Films as part of the Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 80s Kadokawa Years box set alongside School in the Crosshairs, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and His Motorbike, Her Island.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Theme song performed by Tomoyo Harada