Tag: Japanese

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (Onoda, 10 000 nuits dans la jungle, Arthur Harari, 2021)

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For most people, the Pacific War ended in 1945. For Hiroo Onoda it may in a sense never have ended though he laid down his arms in 1974, 30 years after his initial dispatch, having spent the intervening three decades pursuing guerrilla warfare in the Philippine jungle the last two of them entirely alone. Arthur Harari’s three-hour existential epic, Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (Onoda, 10 000 nuits dans la jungle), explores the psychological dimensions of his quasi-religious conviction in the righteousness of a mission which is in one sense no more than to survive along with his refusal to accept that the war is over and his personal struggle has been pointless. 

Immediately in opening the film in 1974 with a young man identified only as a “tourist” (Taiga Nakano) arriving on the island in search of Onoda (Kanji Tsuda), Harari draws a direct contrast between these two arrivals and subsequent departures. As he says, the Tourist is just that in town for a specific purpose after which he will leave and though you might be able to say the same of Onoda who came to the island of Lubang in late 1944 his reality was very different. On luring him out of the jungle by playing the patriotic war song he had sung with the other soldiers who unlike him accepted the surrender, the Tourist poignantly tells Onoda that he has travelled to over 50 countries whereas Onoda in a certain sense has never left Japan. “This island belongs to us” he’s fond of insisting seeing it as a piece of the Japanese empire which others are trying to take from him but he alone must defend. 

As we discover, the young Onoda (Yuya Endo) had wanted to become a pilot but washed out of the training program because of a fear of heights and was subsequently put forward for a kamikaze squadron. The irony of his life is that he is a man who refused to die for the emperor, his will to survive bringing him to the attention of Major Taniguchi (Issey Ogata) of the notorious Nakano spy school who sells his students a line that they are the good guys helping to liberate East Asia from Western imperialism. Trained in guerrilla warfare part of Onoda’s mission is to foster an uprising in the local population whom he assumes will also oppose American influence never realising that he is in fact a part of a destructive colonising force they will also seek to repel not least because of the way they have been treated by Japanese forces. 

Onoda’s first meeting with his captain on arriving on Lubang is interrupted by the arrival of the mayor of a nearby town who has come to complain that Japanese soldiers have been stealing food supplies from local farmers. This comes as a surprise to Onoda who is obviously not fully aware of the reality on the ground. His initial orders are largely ignored by the remaining NCOs who get up and leave during his briefing knowing that what he’s proposing is impossible. These men are already battle weary, many of them are sick, and they are running low on supplies. Onoda is 22 and fresh faced, arriving full of energy and patriotic zeal assuming these men are simply lazy or lack ideological commitment. He has no grounds to wield authority and no combat experience that would permit him to understand the circumstances in which he finds himself. In an especial irony, his first kill occurs after the war has (for everyone else) ended and he will himself go on to commit acts of atrocity against the local population which he justifies as acts of war. 

The military song which he is fond of singing celebrates there being no more bandits, yet banditry is essentially what he has been reduced to calling into question any idea of heroism which might be attributed to his refusal to accept the wartime defeat. In his Nakano spy school training, Onoda had been encouraged to ignore the accepted rules of war, that all is permissible in the pursuit of victory. He is also told that the prize for the “secret war” he is conducting will be a “secret glory” that goes unrecognised by others while he alone will possess true integrity in knowing that he never wavered in his mission. Yet there is something in him which weakens when he encounters the Tourist and is told that most of Japan believes him to be dead, rendering his struggle an irrelevance. 

He begins to admit the concept of surrender but only if given new orders from Taniguchi whose contradictory teachings have informed the course of his life, yet Taniguchi like many of his generation in the Japan of 1974 does not want to face his wartime past. The bookshop he now runs sells no military books and he claims not to remember Onoda or Lubang refusing his responsibility for his role in the conflict now filled with shame and regret. Yet it’s also possible that Onoda misunderstood the nature of the mission he’d been assigned, that in saving him from the kamikaze squadron because he did not want to die, Taniguchi gave him only one order – to survive. “You do not have the right to die” he reminds the recruits while giving them the ultra-individualist mantra that they must be their own officers which is in essence the paradoxical instruction to obey no orders but their own meaning that Onoda was always free to accept defeat. 

The psychological consequences of doing so, however, may have been too great. Coming of age in a militarised society, he already feels himself emasculated and embarrassed by his failure to become a pilot essentially because he is afraid to die. An awkward meeting with his father (played by film director Nobuhiro Suwa) resembles that of a Spartan woman sending her son to war with the instruction to return with his shield or on it. To return in defeat is psychologically impossible and suicide forbidden and so the only choice is inertia. In this Onoda may be hiding in the jungle unable to face a post-war future, descending into delusional conspiracy when presented with evidence that the war is over choosing to see the attempts of others to discourage him from his mission as proof of its importance, as if he and the remaining soldier sticking with him are key players in geopolitical manoeuvring worthy of such an elaborate plot. To believe the world is wrong is easier than to accept that he’s wasted his life in service of a mistaken ideal while failing to prove himself a man by the standards of a heavily militarised society. 

He’s tempted out of his delusion only by the Tourist who confronts him with the face of a new Japan entirely unknown to him, a Japan of economic prosperity, of the Shinkansen, of democracy. Being taken off the island means he must finally leave his dreams and delusions behind to enter a new post-war reality. Harari frames the island of Lubang as a psychological realm, the topography of Onoda’s delusion, but is also mindful of the islanders living outside it whom Onoda terrorises under the justification of war no better than a bandit in his quest for survival. In Harari’s oneiric landscapes, Onoda’s vistas are forever haunted by the spectres of his latent regret in the reflections of the boy he once was who came to Lubang to prove himself a man only to leave it a ghost. 

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle opens in UK cinemas April 15 courtesy of Third Window Films. It will also be released on blu-ray May 16 in a set which also features an interview with actor Kanji Tsuda plus an interview with director Arthur Harari, DOP Tom Harari and assistant director Benjamin Papin.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Our House Party (ボクらのホームパーティー, Shuichi Kawanobe, 2022)

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The pressures of living in a still conservative society quietly build towards a small explosion provoking a moment of catharsis among a series of gay men some of whom are lovers or long term friends while others are meeting for the first time each bringing with them their own particular fears and anxieties. Inspired by his own life experiences, Shuichi Kawanobe’s Our House Party (ボクらのホームパーティー, Bokura no Home Party) presents a naturalistic view of gay life in contemporary Tokyo in which the six men find solace in their friendship while outside battling a sometimes unsympathetic society. 

The slow burn drama waiting to tank the party revolves around the relationship between hosts Akito and Yashushi who have been together for seven years, Akito having accidentally overhead his boyfriend with another man, Kenichi, through a phone call Yasushi presumably didn’t mean to answer. Despite living together so long, Akito is not out at work and finds himself deflecting potentially invasive comments from his boss about his plans for marriage while he and a recently engaged colleague not so subtly attempt to set him up with a female co-worker who has romantic issues of her own, all of them oblivious to Akito throwing longing looks at their handsome waiter in the local izakaya. When the party begins to get out of hand and provokes a complaint from the couple’s neighbours, Akito’s hostile response implies that they have faced similar complaints before which he believes to be rooted in homophobia, that they simply object to him living there. “All our lives we’ve been trying not to cause trouble” he adds, “where do you expect us to go? Why do we have to apologise?” pushed into a moment of rebellion by the emotional intensity of the present situation that is later unexpectedly echoed by Kenichi who reminds them that they’ve suffered enough, insulted and looked down on, unable to voice their feelings freely and seeing their relationships crumble under the constant pressures of a sometimes hostile society all of which leads them to hurt each other without really meaning to. 

Yet the catalyst for all this is a naive and idealistic college student hopelessly in love with his straight best friend invited to the party after being taken under the wing of kindly bar owner Sho who introduces him to the scene and tries to help him loosen up while accepting his sexuality. Tomoya acts as a kind of judge or arbiter, only just learning the rules of this society but somehow feeling betrayed by its contradictions and hypocrisies. Only he can see that Akito is not really enjoying the party and makes several attempts to check in with him only to see something he shouldn’t have and partially misunderstand it, his illusions a little shattered as he recalibrates his internal sense of morality. Meanwhile he’s both matched and challenged by the lovelorn Masashi who has come in the company of recent hook up Naoki but dreaming of a stable relationship disappointed by Naoki’s assertion that he doesn’t do commitment while picking a fight with Sho over a disagreement about the importance of physical intimacy in romantic relationships. 

Nevertheless through all of these heated debates and fraught emotional crises the men achieve a kind of catharsis in having cleared the air and agreed to return to the sense of solidarity they had felt before only with a little more clarity. “Don’t lie to yourself about how you feel, you’ll only make yourself miserable” Sho had advised the conflicted Tomoya convincing him to join the fun by pointing out that if you don’t like it you can always go back to where you were, advice that might go as well for all as they begin to interrogate how they really feel along with the fears and anxieties that cause them to behave the way they do until approaching a moment of calm after the storm cleared with all truths aired and seemingly at least forgiven. Taking place largely within the claustrophobic and intense environment of the apartment, Kawanobe captures a naturalistic vision of contemporary gay life through the eyes of a series of jaded not-quite-middle-aged men and a naive youngster discovering both himself and a new community only to be confronted by the difficulties and contradictions of life in a society he believed to be better than it is. 

Our House Party screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Dawning Sky (明け行く空, Torajiro Saito, 1929)

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A family broken by economic shock and destructive male pride is eventually mended through Christian faith in Torajiro Saito’s 1929 silent melodrama The Dawning Sky (明け行く空, Akeyuku Sora). Though most of his work is currently presumed lost, Saito became known as the “god of comedy” while working at Shochiku’s Kamata studios yet Dawning Sky while affecting a cheerful tone is marked by a sense of sadness and anxiety that perhaps reflects the precarities of the world of 1929.

Recently widowed Kyoko (Yoshiko Kawada) has learned to bear her grief by doting on her newborn daughter Reiko, though her world is about to implode as the bank operated by her previously wealthy father-in-law Junzo (Reikichi Kawamura) has collapsed leaving the family in financial ruin. Kyoko’s parents approach Junzo offering to take her back, but the idea provokes only intense resentment in Junzo’s wounded pride as he takes it that they no longer feel his family is good enough for their daughter now that he is no longer rich. A traditionally minded woman Kyoko pleads with him to stay but he will have none of it, throwing her out but insisting on keeping Reiko with him. Out of old-fashioned ideas of loyalty, Kyoko decides that she will not return to her parents nor marry again but is at a loss for what to do sadly wandering about ominously near a bridge before catching sight of the cross on a Christian church and feeling herself saved. Some years later, Kyoko is sent to a small town as a female pastor where, by total coincidence, Junzo is also living with Reiko (Mitsuko Takao) and now working as a lowly coachman. 

The cause of Kyoko’s forced dislocation is located directly in the economic shock of the late 1920s which causes Junzo to lose his family bank and with it the social status which gives his life meaning, but it’s also implicitly the demands growing consumerist capitalism which have already undermined traditional familial bonds and responsibilities. Junzo is so consumed by resentment towards Kyoko’s family, who may have made the offer for pure-hearted reasons rather than snobbish disdain for Junzo’s ruined state, that he coldly separates a mother from her child and thinks nothing of the consequences seeing only red in his internalised shame in having failed in business. Yet true happiness is evidently not possible until he finally learns to abandon his lust for material success. “I’m poor, I know, but life is nice and carefree because I have my granddaughter” he explains to one of his passengers having reconsidered his priorities and come to realise it’s familial bonds which are most important after all. 

Nevertheless, he continues to hide the truth from Reiko having told her that both her parents are dead while she continues to pine for a mother she’s never known. Her little friend Koichi meanwhile is the only son of his widowed mother who is bedridden and unable to work. As the family is poor Koichi is responsible not only for her care, they’ve rigged up a kind of machine which automatically dispenses her medicine while he isn’t there to administer it, but for the cooking and cleaning too. The two children first bond when Reiko discovers a wounded pigeon shot by Koichi and scolds him that he has no right to kill living things though he only wanted to feed his sick mother, the pair of them deciding to bury the pigeon and give it a proper funeral. This brings her to the attention of the pastor, Kyoko, who is proving especially popular in the local community because of her innate kindness and compassion. But in suspecting that Reiko may be her daughter, Kyoko is at a loss as to how to move forward unwilling to disrupt her life with Junzo by telling her the truth while torn apart inside by her wounded maternity and new duties to her Christian faith. 

The film’s overt religious overtones are perhaps surprising for the world of 1929 as is the near universal approval with which the church is viewed in the local community with only the strange and bookish Hide refusing to attend on the grounds that he hates Christians while all of the other children begin hanging out inside largely because of Kyoko’s warmth and kindness. It is finally Christian virtues which allow the family to be repaired, Junzo overcoming his sense of wounded male pride when faced with Reiko’s constant pining as the pair eventually make a mad dash towards the station on learning that Kyoko has decided to leave town rather than risk causing Reiko further pain by disrupting her new life. “God’s grace brought them together” as the benshi intones, yet as much as Kyoko’s maternity is restored she remains a liminal figure returning not to Junzo’s house but only to the church as its pastor recommitting herself to her religious duties while looking out sadly as Reiko plays with the other children in the beautiful countryside suggesting that the ruptured bonds of the traditional family cannot ever be fully repaired. 

Saito’s elegant mise-en-scène has its moments of poignancy in the expressionist angles of Kyoko’s walk into darkness or frequent employment of superimposition, not to mention the intensity of its climactic storm scene intercut the with the spiritual ferocity of Kyoko’s desperate praying surrounded by candles in the dark and empty church, but the film is first and foremost a melancholy tale of familial reunion which, while in some senses incomplete, nevertheless suggests that true happiness exists only in simplicity, the family repairing itself through jettisoning contemporary ideas of capitalistic success and social hierarchy in order to embrace their natural affection for each other.

Arc (Arc アーク, Kei Ishikawa, 2021)

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Does something have to have an ending to be meaningful or could eternity be the point? Inspired by Ken Liu’s short story, Kei Ishikawa’s near future tale Arc (Arc アーク) envisages a world without death if perhaps not for all in which bodily immortality has been achieved, but what would that mean for humanity no longer faced with mortal anxiety, how should it reorient itself in the absence of sickness or old age while the possibility of endlessness for the self has removed the urge for immortality through childbirth? These are all of course questions which have no one answer, though what the heroine finally discovers is that in the end it may be the choice itself of when to live or when to die that may lend her life at least its meaning. 

Even so, hers is a particular anxiety bound up with frustrated maternity having abandoned a baby she gave birth to at 17, too afraid of the responsibility to accept it. At 19, Rina (Kyoko Yoshine) is spotted at a club by a mysterious middle-aged woman, Ema (Shinobu Terajima), who runs a revolutionary cosmetics company which has pioneered a new way of preserving the bodies of the dead turning them into uncannily lifelike mannequins with a new process known as plasticisation. To Ema’s mind, true liberation comes from accepting transience, that once life has left it the body is just an object which might be repurposed for her art but then at the same time perhaps she is attempting to hold on to something that should be released, interfering in a natural process and while intending to offer comfort to those bereaved preventing them from letting go or moving on with their lives. Her much younger brother Amane, meanwhile, actively wants to stop time while alive utilising a similar technology to halt the ageing process and overcome the tyranny of death. 

In a strange way, Ema’s desire to restore a body which is no longer alive to ideal condition is also an acknowledgement of death which she believes is not the opposite of life but a necessary part of it. In overcoming the fear of death, she claims, a transcendental beauty will reveal itself. Amane meanwhile seeks to overcome death physically, but as Rina is warned his health revolution may not bring happiness to mankind not least because it exposes a persistent inequality in which eternal youth is available only to those with the means to acquire it, creating a new underclass not only of the poor but those whose bodies are not able to accept the treatment. Amane sees his creation as a dividing line in human history which will necessarily divide humanity into two groups, those who choose to join his revolution and those who do not (though interestingly he does not consider a third group who actively opposite it). Even so he sees it as a choice and accepts the right to reject immortality even going so far as to build a dedicated centre where those who choose to live a “natural” lifespan can do so in dignity and comfort. 

The concept of personal choice appears to be key, Ema too replying that her decision to stick with plasticisation rather than Amane’s treatment is her right though she too eventually hits a wall in the imperfection of her craft and the depths of her grief. She tells Rina to live her life freely encouraging her to live fully in the moment, while she too is quick to remind others that the decisions are theirs to make as regards their life and death. It’s not death nor the fear of it that are the problem, but the inability to choose as Rina finally acknowledges in remarking that the ability to decide its end point gives her the means to carve the arc of her life overcoming death through full existential control having in a sense closed a circle in facing her own sense of maternal failure. Shifting from the warmth and natural beauty of a beach in summer to the dark and brutalist environments of the BodyWerks lab, and from the muted colour of Rina’s youth to the black and white of her youthful old age, Ishikawa’s near future sci-fi-inflected tale suggests it’s not so much death that frightens you but helplessness and as in all things the answer lies in autonomous choice. 

Arc screens in Chicago on April 3 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Monthly Anime at Japan Society New York April 15 to July 22

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Japan Society New York has announced its latest monthly screening series running April 15 to July 22 and featuring four anime classics from Mamoru Oshii’s sci-fi landmark Ghost in the Shell through to Masaaki Yuasa’s wild night in Kyoto, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl.

April 15: Ghost in the Shell

Preceded by a 6PM pre-screening party with Japanese foods and snacks provided by Kikkoman plus Sapporo beer

Mamoru Oshii’s landmark adaptation of the manga by Shirow Masamume in which cybernetically enhanced police officer Major Motoko Kusanagi finds herself hunting down the elusive Puppetmaster following a spate of cyberbrain hackings.

May 27: The Animatrix

Screening on 35mm in English (original language)

Produced as a companion piece to the Matrix: Reloaded, this nine-part anthology film features contributions from Cowboy Bebop’s Shinichiro Watanabe, Ninja Scroll’s Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Redline’s Takeshi Koike. Screening on 35mm in its original English-language voice track.

June 17: The Night is Short, Walk on Girl

Adapted from the novel by Tomihiko Morimi, Maasaki Yuasa’s madcap odyssey through a single night in Kyoto follows college student Otome on her quest for a book from her childhood all while a young man goes on a few adventures of his own hoping to win her heart. Review.

July 22: Princess Mononoke

Screening on 35mm

25th anniversary screening of the Studio Ghibli classic set the 14th century in which a young warrior cursed by a diseased boar spirit finds himself swept into a local conflict between a forest princess and the neighbouring iron town hellbent on destroying the Earth.

The series runs monthly April 15 to July 22 at Japan Society New York where tickets are already on sale.

Musicophilia (ミュジコフィリア, Masaaki Taniguchi, 2021)

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What is “music”? Adapted from the manga by Akira Saso, Masaaki Taniguchi’s Musicophilia (ミュジコフィリア) finds its heroes grappling with a series of conceptual insecurities attempting to draw lines around what the what word might mean while torn between conservation and innovation as they struggle to find their own voices. Yet as the hero comes to realise, you can’t make music on your own letting go of his resentment and childhood trauma to remember his natural love of sound while repairing his relationship with his estranged half-brother in the wake of his father’s death. 

Gifted the talent of synesthesia in the ability to perceive shape and colour in the sounds of nature, Saku (Kai Inowaki) harbours a deeply held resentment towards “music” which he believes destroyed his family life, his mother (Misuzu Kanno) having been seduced by well-known composer Kishino (Kanji Ishimaru) as a student and thereafter forced to give up her dreams of becoming a professional cellist. Though he had contact with his father in his childhood, his stepmother never missed the opportunity to make him feel inferior while her own son, Taisei (Ikusaburo Yamazaki), became his father’s protege. Saku was not even allowed to touch his piano as if he were somehow unworthy of his artistic legacy. Having enrolled in art school in Kyoto, he nevertheless ends up being adopted by the contemporary music club which practices avant-garde and experimental techniques only to re-encounter his brother who is now in the third year of a PhD and an unpleasant elitist privately insecure about his musical talent. 

Everyone agrees that Taisei’s playing is technically perfect, but somehow dull lacking the individual spark of a true creative genius merely a carbon copy of his father’s teaching. Saku’s new friend Nagi (Honoka Matsumoto) compares Taisei’s skill unfavourably with the untrained talent of his brother, insisting that Saku’s music has the colour of joy and shape of kindness while Taisei’s sounds like notes arranged by a machine. Taisei is indeed cold and arrogant, snapping back at Saku’s question “what is music?” with the reply that music is what he’s played, as if he owned it and it only belongs to him. He even breaks with protocol and insults his professor claiming that his criticism is down to “internal politics” because he and his father did not get on, publicly criticising his translation of a German textbook on music telling him to “grasp the fundamentals of language” while his professor urges him to master the fundamentals of composition rather than arrogantly insisting his playing is unimprovable because it is the definition of “music”. Of course, some of this is his own insecurity afraid he can’t match up to his father and worried that in the end all he is is a poor imitation. For his part, Saku is often less than kind to Taisei, Nagi trying to point out to him that he’s better that but simultaneously finding him heading in the same direction as he tries to overcome an internal insecurity in order to rediscover his musical voice while unfairly lashing out at those around him. 

Taisei sucks the joy of out music, and indeed everywhere else, through his arrogant perfectionism his treatment of violin-playing girlfriend Sayo (Noa Kawazoe) approaching the abusive as he consistently runs her down and blames her for his own sense of dissatisfaction, while Nagi meditates on how freedom can make you lonely, herself seemingly the only one who thinks she’s in a musical, as the youngsters find themselves isolated by their own desire for artistic expression. Yet what the two men discover is that their father may have intended something else for them and that his desire was that they’d rediscover the innocent connection they’d had as children able to help each other should they become stuck either in life or in music. Saku’s natural talent is born of being immersed in the world around him realising that this too is “music” while Taisei struggles to move forward too obsessed with technical perfection to allow his music to breathe only rediscovering his humanity after an immense humbling that allows him to re-immerse himself in the natural world. At heart a coming-of-age tale in which two young men learn to put their differences aside and rediscover their childhood bond, Taniguchi’s gentle drama also offers a mild critique of academia and the tendency of institutions to exploit and manipulate talent only to wash their hands of it if something goes wrong placing funding above ethical concerns but eventually discovers that music is everywhere if only you’re willing to listen.

Musicophilia streamed as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (no subtitles)

My Father’s Tracks (僕と彼女とラリーと, Renpei Tsukamoto, 2021)

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A struggling Tokyo actor begins to re-appreciate small-town wholesomeness after returning home for the first time in many years on learning of his semi-estranged father’s death in Renpei Tsukamoto’s heartwarming drama My Father’s Tracks (僕と彼女とラリーと, Boku to Kanojo to Rally to). As much a celebration of the idyllic countryside villages around the city of Toyota in Aichi, obviously closely associated with the automobile industry, Tsukamoto’s gentle coming-of-age tale sees its hero find his purpose in returning to his roots while gaining a new perspective on his parents’ relationship and the father he’d always resented who became a local hero but was never around when his family needed him. 

At 29 Taiga (Win Morisaki) is still trying to make his mark as an actor in Tokyo, his dejected manager complaining his trouble is that though he’s quick and clever he’s essentially soulless which is why he’s failing to captivate the audition panel. He repeatedly ignores calls from his semi-estranged father Toshio (Masahiko Nishimura) and then answers one on the urging of a friend only to utter some very unkind words before unceremoniously hanging up. The next time he answers his phone, however, the call is from an old friend and neighbour, Miho (Mai Fukagawa), letting him know that his father has passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Though they had not been on good terms, Taiga cannot help feeling guilty that his final words to his father were so harsh especially as he’d called to invite him to visit the following November. 

Though everyone in the town seems to have held Toshio in high regard, he was a frequent fixture on the local TV channel for which Miho works, both Taiga and his older brother Hiroyuki (Ryuta Sato) who has become a cynical and heartless businessman feel only contempt for him for having selfishly neglected his family while travelling all around the world as a mechanic with a champion rally team not even making it home in time to see their mother before she passed away of a longterm illness. Taiga can’t forgive him for leaving his mother lonely, but later comes to reflect that perhaps he wasn’t best placed to fully understand the relationship between his parents and may have misinterpreted something which as he later puts it only a husband and wife can know. Meanwhile, it seems his father had also been a supportive force in the community having given jobs to those who might not ordinarily find them in a mechanic with a criminal record, an old man past retirement age, and a young woman so shy she is largely unable to speak. Taiga can see how important his father was to these people and worries what will happen to them now whereas his coldhearted brother is deaf to their pleas planning to close the business and have it and the family home bulldozed as soon as possible to settle the estate without undue delay. 

Hurt even more deeply that Taiga, Hiroyuki has become cruel and cynical often running his brother down rolling his eyes that no one makes a living from a “hobby” while insisting this isn’t one of his “namby-pamby” plays. He claims that he needs the money to protect his family, something that he feels his father failed to do in spending all his time on a “hobby” of his own even shutting down his own small son’s curiosity and desire to join in with the other kids’ fun. Even so after repeatedly telling him to “man up” and get a real job, Hiroyuki is less than impressed by Taiga’s desire to take over the family business which he admittedly knows nothing about having acquired a driving license solely for a role, only relenting when threatened by a flamboyant human rights lawyer with the name of a legendary samurai (Riki Takeuchi).  

Nevertheless, marshalling the skills he picked up in Tokyo and working alongside the locals Taiga begins to rediscover the sense of purpose he’d been missing while gaining a new understanding of his father and greater sense of future possibility. Despite complaining that there is “nothing here” in comparison to Tokyo only for Miho to remind him of all the things Tokyo doesn’t have or that are freely given in Toyota but need to be paid for in the city, he quickly settles back in to small town rhythms and begins to accept his father’s legacy finally finding his sense of direction and taking his place in the driving seat of his own life. A heartwarming tale of familial reconnection and the power of community, not to mention a celebration of rural small-town Toyota, My Father’s Tracks insists life is a rally, all about the going there and coming back, walking on blazing a trail and never giving up no matter the sharp corners and unexpected turns a life may take. 

My Father’s Tracks streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Will I Be Single Forever? (ずっと独身でいるつもり？, Momoko Fukuda, 2021)

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If you can achieve financial independence in the contemporary society, then what is or should be the primary purpose of and motivation for marriage, what does it mean, should you want it at all or is it merely an outdated institution designed to keep women in their place by making them dependent on men? Adapted from the manga by Mari Okazaki, Momoko Fukuda’s Will I Be Single Forever? (ずっと独身でいるつもり？, Zutto Dokushin de Iru Tsumori?) finds a series of young women asking just these questions wondering why it is everyone themselves included is still intent on viewing marriage and motherhood as the only markers of success as if none of their other achievements really matter if they’re going to write spinster of this parish on their headstone. 

10 years previously the now 36-year-old Mami (Jun Hashizume) shot to stardom penning a best-selling book about how it isn’t a sin to be single and the worst thing isn’t to be alone but to settle for less solely to escape loneliness. These days, however, she’s beginning to wonder, growing fearful of what it might mean to spend the rest of her life alone and worrying she’s about to miss the marriage boat witnessing it pass by passively without making a concrete decision of her own. Expressing her views on a talk show where “the troubled women of today are slapped with harsh reality”, Mami disappoints some of her longtime fans who found validation in her book reassured that there was nothing wrong in their desire to live independently rather than get married right after college and become regular housewives. Yet they are also ageing and facing the same dilemma, wondering if their life choices are really OK or if they’re missing out on a family life by refusing to settle for Mr. Almost-Right. 

The film’s English-language title flips the Japanese as if the question is self-directed, the women asking themselves when Mr. Right’s going to come along or worrying about the consequences if he never shows up, while the Japanese is more like the dreaded question every young woman is asked by an invasive female relative at a family gathering reminding her she’s not getting any younger and will end up alone if she’s not careful. Meanwhile, Mami is reminded that women who’ve bought their own apartments seldom marry, men aren’t interested in women who can be financially independent and don’t need to rely on them for economic support as Yukino’s (Miwako Ichikawa) longterm boyfriend explains breaking up with her immediately before moving in together as it turns out right next to Mami though she doesn’t know it as she takes out her frustrations online through an embittered anonymous Twitter account. 

For her, the point of marriage is supposed be escaping loneliness yet as her school friend Ayaka (Eri Tokunaga) will testify marriage can be the loneliest thing of all. Her husband is happy to play with the baby but hands it back every time it cries or needs changing unwilling to engage with the less fun sides of marriage or parenthood. Husbands are emotionally absent and rarely help at home, Ayaka’s trying to be helpful by taking the baby to the park so that she can focus on her chores both leaving her out of their fun and reinforcing the idea the home is all her responsibility and none his. “Don’t end up like me” Mami’s mother (Mariko Tsutsui) advises instantly seeing that her decision to marry casual boyfriend Kohei (Yu Inaba) just because he asked is doomed to end in failure, warning her that you have to “be ready to live alone” even if you marry, “no good comes of being a slave to a husband” she adds uttering the unthinkable in trying to warn her daughter of the realities of a patriarchal marriage. 

And as it turns out though five years younger vacuous rich kid Kohei is a patriarchal man whose friends all praise him for being brave and understanding in marrying an older woman while he pats himself on the back for being progressive in granting her permission to continue using her maiden name professionally after they marry. When they go to meet his conservative parents he criticises her outfit for making her look “old” while he’s worn shorts to a fancy restaurant and then orders a ridiculous green soda drink, forcing Mami to go along with his mother’s prodding that she’ll give up work when they marry to devote herself to childrearing though he’d also refused to attend a fertility/genetic screening session Mami had recommended on the grounds that it’s unnecessary because he’s a man as if childbirth is only a female concern and only women can have fertility issues or potential problems in their medical history. The more she tries to voice her worries the more he overrules her, the final straw coming as he refuses to listen to her anxiety about getting behind the wheel of a car, generally unnecessary in Tokyo, having previously been involved in an accident. She begins to wonder why it’s so important to follow the “correct path” even if it brings you no happiness solely in order to avoid people asking you with barely suppressed pity if you’re going to be single forever. 

The question comes from an older era in which it was it was near impossible for a woman to survive without a husband, but now that she can why should she put up with poor treatment and restrictions on her freedom if she is perfectly capable of supporting herself? Much younger than the others, sugar baby / professional socialite Miho (Sayuri Matsumura) meanwhile has gone the other way in trying live off men without the constraints of marriage only to find herself hamstrung by patriarchal expectations once again in having failed to realise that her lifestyle has an expiration date while she’s painted herself into a corner with no qualifications or work experience at the age of 26. The bulk of her business model is already rooted in the selling of other younger, prettier women as party guests for wealthy men and the consequences of continuing down that path are largely unpalatable to her. 

Touched by a further TV update from Mami, each of the women has a kind of epiphany that allows them to move forward into happier lives reassuring them that it’s alright to ask for more and they don’t have to hold any part of themselves back to meet the outdated expectations of traditional femininity, even Miho finding another way of harnessing the skills she does have to achieve true independence. The answer is not a total rejection of marriage or committed relationships but a reacknowledgment that to marry or not should be their own choice based on their own happiness rather than something you have to get over with to avoid the social stigma of becoming an old maid. A relatable exploration of the lives of young women in the contemporary society Fukuda’s empathetic drama eventually advances that in the end the best cure for loneliness is female solidarity in the face of a still overwhelmingly patriarchal society. 

Will I Be Single Forever? streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

International trailer (English subtitles)

Howling (遠吠え, M Haris Sheikh, 2022)

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“What do you want from the world?” the sad sack hero of M Harris Sheikh’s noirish drama Howling (遠吠え, Tooboe) is asked on three separate occasions giving first a non-answer, then the answer he’d like to give, then the real one which is far less heroic or edifying but at least honest. Like everyone else, he too is howling into a void putting a brave face on his inner insecurity while longing to play the hero in his own life only to discover that no matter how many chances he’s given he may not be up to the mark. 

A self-professed nice guy, we first meet Ryuji (Ichiro Hashimoto) trying to help a young woman at the karaoke bar where he works escape sexual harassment in the workplace promising that he can protect her while pledging to kick the other guy’s ass, only as it turns out the other guy is her boyfriend and it’s Ryuji who’s been harassing her. Quite clearly uncomfortable, the young woman informs Ryuji she’s already reported him to HR and he’ll probably be fired today which is exactly what happens but rather than take this as an opportunity to learn Ryuji goes around telling everyone it was all a misunderstanding and he’s fallen victim to a needlessly judgmental society. “The world is tough for middle-aged men” he adds, lamenting that even having a “friendly discussion” with a younger woman has somehow become inappropriate. 

It’s these twin facets of his personality that go on to precipitate his downfall in his intense desire to conform to the masculine ideal as a protector when coming into contact with two women who are each in need of his help. Apparently never having had a girlfriend, Ryuji is overexcited when a 20-year-old college student, Akane (Yukino Takahashi), contacts him, a 40-year-old man, on a dating app never really considering that there might be something untoward going on right until the moment she explains that she’s trying to hire a randomer to kill her abusive father who happens to be the chief of police which is why she can’t hire a professional. Meanwhile, a school reunion grants him the opportunity of reuniting with middle-school crush Chisato (Sonae Kotani) only to discover that she has since married the bully, Tsuchida, who made their lives miserable and is trapped in an abusive relationship. Ryuji had been unable to protect her when they were children but claims to be different now. Then again Tsuchida said the same the thing and clearly hasn’t changed at all. Hoping to solve all his problems by getting a sudden windfall and proving that he can be the hero, Ryuji agrees to Akane’s plan but of course eventually disappoints himself realising that his fantasy of being a saviour is just that. 

Meanwhile the two women, who happen to be neighbours in a swanky high rise apartment block, begin by believing that they cannot escape their situations alone but need a male saviour each placing their hopes in the overeager Ryuji but finally freeing themselves perhaps spurred on by Ryuji’s male failure but otherwise rendering him an irrelevance. By the final confrontation each of the trio has sustained a wound to the hand to which Akane and Chisato jokingly refer as an eye of truth just like the hero from a manga yet with its own degree of truthfulness in that the women begin to see that their freedom is theirs for the taking while Ryuji is finally forced to accept that his presence is unnecessary proving his mettle only with a gesture of nihilistic futility. 

On the other hand we can also see the hand of a highly pressurised society on his fragile masculinity as he accidentally bonds with a pair of weird street preachers crying out for revolution but with an ironic bent. The first is a former Todai graduate who lost a good job in advertising because of all his unhealthy coping mechanisms. He preaches about a creating a truly fair society free of inequality brought about through a deadly virus claiming that his guru, the Master, is the origin not only of the coronavirus pandemic but every other dangerous pathogen known to man. Somewhat contradictorily, the Master reveals that he once lived in a swanky high rise apartment and would like to do so again which sounds somewhat incompatible with the goals of his revolution assuming he’s not planning to build so many that everyone who wants one can have one. The contradiction is further borne out in Ryuji’s answers about what it is he wants from the world, firstly stating ordinary requests such as a decent job, home, wife, children etc before admitting he’d actually prefer a really big house, lots of women, and respect from other people the last emphasising his internalised sense of belittlement and failure. 

The world that Ryuji inhabits does indeed seem to be oppressive and ominous, the strange overgrown alleyway below an overpass where he first encounters the revolutionaries reflecting the dark path of his soul while in the film’s complex production design the sterile space of the upscale tower block becomes a kind of trauma room where truths are aired leading to the final confrontation whimsically scored with circus music in which the women literally take matters into their own hands, and even the diner where Ryuji meets Akane takes on a Lynchian sense of the uncanny. Darkly humorous with its deadpan gags of giant spaghetti and the completely random entrance of an unrelated older woman also with a glove on her right hand ranting about her daughter’s hairdresser boyfriend and his koala neck tattoo, Sheikh’s absurdist drama quietly builds to its theatrical conclusion bringing down the curtain on a bloody tableaux the world as prophesied turned upside-down.  

Howling screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

International trailer (English subtitles)

Skeleton Flowers (かそけきサンカヨウ, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2021)

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The increasingly prolific Rikiya Imaizumi has become most closely associated with zeitgeisty youth romance accurately capturing the fears and anxieties of 20-somethings in contemporary Japan but brings his characteristically mellow touch to the classic coming-of-age tale in adapting Misumi Kubo’s short story Skeleton Flowers (かそけきサンカヨウ, Kasokeki Sankayo). In contrast to the gloominess of the title, teenage angst is never where you’d expect it to be as the variously pre-occupied pair at the film’s centre strive to deal with their problems with maturity and mutual compassion. 

You might for instance expect Yo (Sara Shida) who has been raised by her father, Nao (Arata Iura), since her mother left the family when she was three to feel jealousy or resentment when he sits her down and tells her that he’s fallen in love and wants to get married, especially as the woman he’s fallen in love with, Yoshiko (Akiko Kikuchi), has a small daughter of her own, Hinako. Attempting to be sensitive, Nao frames the new arrangement in a positive light in that Yo will be have more free time to be a regular teen and hang out with her friends rather than skipping out on after school clubs to take care of the household chores, a spin which could backfire in that Yo has obviously been used to being the lady of the house and might feel as if a responsibility she was proud of carrying is being taken away from her or that she’s being displaced by the new maternal presence of Yoshiko. She may in fact feel a little of this, but rather than lashing out or rebelling against the change in her familial circumstances she does her best to accept it with good grace while simultaneously prompted into a reconsideration of the relationships between parent and child meditating on the absence of her birth mother and wondering how and why she could have come to leave her behind. 

Riku (Oji Suzuka), her sometime love interest, had started a discussion in their friendship group about their earliest memories Yo unable to come up with anything on the spot but later remembering her mother carrying her into the forest and showing her the skeleton flowers of the title which appear bright white when dry but gradually become transparent as they absorb water. Later she remembers something else unsure if it’s a memory or a dream, a feeling of being suspended in mid-air as her parents argued as if everyone had forgotten she existed. Riku too frequently states that he’s “nothing at all”, feeling himself lost and directionless after being diagnosed with a heart condition later forced to accept that his life will never be the same as it was and his choices are now limited in ways they might not have been before. His health anxiety ironically leaves him emotionally numb, unable to identify let alone express his feelings as he becomes close not only to Yo but another, much more direct, girl in his class Saki (Tomo Nakai) who later does him the favour of explaining exactly what his problems are hoping to jolt him out of his emotional inertia while taking him to task for having been unintentionally condescending in his innate kindness. 

It’s this innate kindness that eventually sees both the teens through, each approaching their various worries with a mature compassion. Riku had felt uncomfortable in his familial home and jealous of Yo’s “real family” as she comes to accept her new relationships with Yoshiko and Hinako, but himself comes to understand the complicated relationship between his overbearing grandmother and lonely mother as one of mutual support getting another tip from Yoshiko that even if he feels has no particular talents, also jealous of Yo’s artistic prowess, his ability to support those around him is a talent in itself and an important part of the whole. A robust emotional honesty and the willingness to think things through calmly eventually lead stronger bonds between all concerned, Yo forgiving her birth mother while also embracing a new maternal relationship with Yoshiko, while Riku gains a new perspective of his own and even if he still hasn’t quite learned to identify his feelings is more comfortable with expressing them directly. A gentle, empathetic coming-of-age tale Imaizumi’s teenage drama roots itself in a world of fairness and compassion that allows each of the teens the space to figure themselves out while helping others to do the same no longer transparent in the rain but whole and fully visible not least to themselves. 

Skeleton Flowers streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

Original trailer (English subtitles)