Tag: Masanori Ishii

Negotiator (交渉人 真下正義, Katsuyuki Motohiro, 2005)

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Beginning as a popular television drama, Bayside Shakedown developed into hugely successful franchise. Released two years after the second theatrical feature, 2005’s Negotiator (交渉人 真下正義, Koshonin: Mashita Masayoshi) is a self-contained spin-off revolving around Japan’s first specialist negotiator Mashita, whose name actually appears in the title. In Bayside Shakedown 2, he’d returned to the Wangan police department having left to pursue specialist training in the city. Though some of his former colleagues make cameo appearances and Motohiro maintains the lighthearted tone the series is known for, Negotiator essentially reverses the position of previous instalments, adopting the outsider’s perspective as Mashita finds himself implanted in the control room of the metropolitan mass transit system. 

For some reason in Japanese cinema, terrorist threats seem to arrive on Christmas Eve with alarming frequency, significantly upping the stakes for Mashita personally as he was planning to propose to fellow police officer Yukino (Miki Mizuno) after a romantic date the details of which he seems to be rather sketchy on. In any case, the crisis at hand is a rogue and unexpected train on the Tokyo subway. It quickly becomes apparent that someone has hijacked a remote-driven experimental “Spider” train designed to automatically switch gauges so that it can travel between differing lines on the complicated transit map. The hijacker will apparently only speak to Mashita, impressed or irritated by his accidental celebrity status following the Rainbow Bridge incident in Bayside Shakedown 2. One of the problems of that crisis had been the police discovering they do not actually have the power to unilaterally close a bridge because it requires the consent and co-operation of numerous other transportation officials (though actually in the end they just do it anyway). 

Something similar happens to Mashita when he fetches up in the control room to help. The official in charge, Kataoka (Jun Kunimura), directly tells him that they don’t require his assistance. He will just be in the way and should sit quietly in the corner while they get on with solving the crisis. In this scenario, Mashita is the outsider akin to the HQ guys descending on the Wangan police station and taking over, though as a trained negotiator he is more aware of the implications of his actions and temporarily agrees to take a back seat while his team set up shop in a meeting room only to be further embarrassed when it becomes apparent that the hijacker is intent on playing a game with him personally while thousands of ordinary passengers, not to mention railway and law enforcement officials, are placed in danger. 

Unlike previous instalments in the franchise, Negotiator is prepared to leave several questions unanswered such as the hijacker’s identity, purpose, and intentions focussing instead on the approach of the police and railways in response to the crisis. As in Bayside Shakedown 2, a solution is only possible once both sides have learned to trust each other letting go of any sense of division so that they can work together in total harmony. Meanwhile, there is also a minor criticism of institutional insularity as it becomes clear that part of Kataoka’s reluctance to cooperate is out of a sense of duty to the rail service in that he feels himself duty bound to withhold “secret” information that would help Mashita solve the case, that being the existence of tunnels and sidetracks not listed on the map because they are intended for use by the government and the military only in the event of an emergency fearing that revealing them would, ironically, present a security risk. Meanwhile, on the other side, Mashita and his team find their investigations hampered by the fact most of the data they need from HQ is stored on outdated media such as floppy disks, Jazz and Zip drives they do not immediately have the capability to open. 

Meanwhile, Mashita is engaged in a game of cat and mouse with a train obsessive who baits him with movie trivia and inevitably threatens his romance by targeting the oblivious Yukino who thinks she’s been stood up again and has no idea she’s actually in the middle of a terrorist incident. Like the previous films in the franchise, however, the central thesis is that in the end you just have to ignore all of the annoying bureaucracy and learn to work together for a common goal which is in essence what a negotiator is for, Mashita smoothing over conflict and differences of opinion with sympathetic politeness while unafraid to put on a show for the hijacker in order to get what he wants. A seasonal thriller, Negotiator is in an odd way about peace and harmony to all men and saving Christmas from the forces of disorder. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Tetsu Maeda, 2021)

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A minor controversy erupted in Japan in 2019 when then finance minister Taso Aso issued a statement recommending that couples should have 20 million yen (£104,620 total at the time of writing) saved for their retirement on top of the state pension in order to live a comfortable life in old age. All things considered, 20 million yen actually sounds like quite a low sum for two people who might live another 30 years post-employment. Nevertheless, Atsuko (Yuki Amami) and her husband Akira (Yutaka Matsushige) are now in their mid-50s and don’t have anywhere near that amount in savings. They’re still paying off their mortgage and though their children are grown-up, neither of them seem to be completely independent financially and both still live at home. 

Tetsu Maeda’s familial comedy What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? (老後の資金がありません！, Rogo no shikin ga arimasen!) explores the plight of the sandwich generation which finds itself having to support elderly relatives while themselves approaching retirement and still needing to support their children who otherwise can’t move forward with their lives. Seeing an accusatory ad which seems to remind her personally that even 20 million yen isn’t really enough when you take into consideration the potential costs of medical treatment or a place in a retirement home, Atsuko has a sudden moment of panic over their precarious financial situation. The apparently sudden death of Akira’s 90-year-old father acts as a sharp wake up call especially as Akira’s apparently very wealthy but also selfish and materialistic sister Shizuko (Mayumi Wakamura) bamboozles him into paying for the entirety of the funeral while pointing out that they’ve been footing most of the bill for the parents’ upkeep over the last few years.

There was probably a better time to discuss the financial arrangements than with their father on his deathbed in the next room, but in any case Shizuko doesn’t pay attention to Atsuko’s attempt to point out they’ve been chipping in too. Akira’s mother Yoshino (Mitsuko Kusabue) also reminds them that their family was once of some standing and a lot of people will be attending the funeral so they need to make sure everything is done properly. The funeral arranger is very good at her job and quickly guilts Atsuko into spending large sums of money on pointless funeral pomp to avoid causing offence only to go to waste when hardly anyone comes because, as she later realises, all of the couple’s friends have already passed away, are bedridden, or too ill to travel. 

Yoshino is however in good health. When Shizuko suddenly demands even more money for her upkeep, Atsuko suggests Yoshino come live with them but it appears that she has very expensive tastes that don’t quite gel with their ordinary, lower-middle class lifestyle. Having lived a fairly privileged life and never needing to manage her finances, Yoshino has no idea of the relative value of money and is given to pointless extravagance that threatens to reduce Atsuko’s dwindling savings even more while in a moment of cosmic irony both she and Akira are let go from their jobs. Now they’re in middle age, finding new ones is almost impossible while their daughter suddenly drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant and is marrying her incredibly polite punk rocker boyfriend whose parents run a successful potsticker restaurant and are set on an elaborate wedding.

The film seems to suggest that Atsuko and Akira can’t really win. They aren’t extravagant people and it just wasn’t possible for them to have saved more than they did nor is it possible for them to save more in the future. Instead it seems to imply that what they should do is change their focus and the image they had of themselves in their old age. One of the new colleagues that Akira meets in a construction job has moved into a commune that’s part of the radical new housing solution invented by his old friend Tenma (Sho Aiwaka). Rather than building up a savings pot, the couple decide to reduce their expenses by moving into a share house and living as part of a community in which people can support each other by providing child care and growing their own veg. Yoshino too comes to an appreciation of the value of community and the new exciting life that she’s experienced since moving in with Atsuko. It may all seem a little too utopian, but there is something refreshing in the suggestion that what’s needed isn’t more money but simply a greater willingness to share, not only one’s physical resources but the emotional ones too in a society in which everyone is ready to help each other rather than competing to fill their own pots as quickly as possible. 

What Happened to Our Nest Egg!? screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Fukushima 50 (フクシマ50, Setsuro Wakamatsu, 2020)

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The “Fukushima 50” (フクシマ50), as the film points out, was a term coined by the international media to refer to the men and women who stayed behind to deal with the unfolding nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Loosely inspired by Ryusho Kadota’s non-fiction book On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi which featured extensive interviews with those connected to the incident, Setsuro Wakamatsu’s high production value film adaptation arrived to mark the ninth anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami which occurred on 11th March, 2011 and closes with a poignant callback to the plant’s role in Japan’s post-war reconstruction as the nation once again prepares to host the (now postponed) Olympics with a torch relay beginning at Fukushima as a beacon of hope as the country continues to rebuild in the wake of the disaster. 

Though inspired by real events Wakamatsu’s dramatisation is heavily fictionalised and while surprisingly frank for a mainstream film in its criticism of the official reaction to the disaster, is also quietly nationalistic while doing its best to pay tribute to the selfless sacrifice of the plant workers who stayed behind to do what they could many of whom had little expectation of surviving. Chief among them would be Izaki (Koichi Sato), an imperfect family man and veteran section chief, and the plant’s superintendent Yoshida (Ken Watanabe) who are both local men and old friends. Local, it seems, is later key with multiple appeals to the furusato spirit as each is at pains to point out that they stay not only to prevent a catastrophic meltdown that would leave most of central Honshu including Tokyo uninhabitable, but because they feel a greater duty to protect their hometown and the people in it. 

Meanwhile, they find themselves burdened rather than assisted by official support as government bodies’ political decision making undermines their attempts to avert disaster while the boardroom of TEPCO who operate the plant reacts with business concerns in mind. A few hours in the prime minister (Shiro Sano) decides to make a visit, in political terms he can’t not national leaders who don’t visit sites of crisis are never forgiven, but his presence actively hinders the recovery efforts. Referred to only as the PM, Wakamatsu’s film presents the man leading the nation as an ignorant bully overly obsessed with his personal image. He has little understanding of nuclear matters or the implications of the disaster, refuses to abide by the regular safety procedures required at the plant, and mostly governs through shouting. Beginning to lose his temper, Yoshida does his best to remain calm but resents the constant interference from those sitting in their offices far away from immediate danger while he does his best to contend with the increasingly adverse conditions on the ground, mindful of his responsibilities firstly to his employees and secondly to those living in the immediate vicinity of the plant who will be most at risk when measures taken to prevent meltdown will lead to an inevitable radiation leak. 

Yoshida’s hero moment comes when he ignores a direct order from the government to stop using seawater to cool the reactors, knowing that he has no other remaining options. Meanwhile, the government refuse offers of help from the Americans, who eventually make a strangely heroic arrival with Operation Tomodachi, discussing plans to move their families to safety while their commander reflects on his post-war childhood on a military base near the site of the nuclear plant. Japan’s SDF also gets an especial nod, granted permission to leave by Yoshida who is beginning to think he’s running out of time but vowing to stay and do their duty in protecting civilians in need. 

In essence, the drama lies in how they coped rather than the various ways in which they didn’t. The conclusion is that the existence of the plant was in itself hubristic, they are paying the price for “underestimating the power of nature” in failing to calculate that such a devastating tsunami was possible. They thought they were safe, but they weren’t. Perhaps uncomfortably, Wakamatsu mimics the imagery of the atomic bomb to imagine a nuclear fallout in Tokyo, harking back to ironic signage which simultaneously declares that the energy of the future is atomic while the plant workers reflect on the sense of wonder they felt as young people blinded by science back in the more hopeful ‘70s as the nation pushed its way towards economic prosperity. Frank for a mainstream film but then again perhaps not frank enough, Fukushima 50 is both an urgent anti-nuclear plea and an earnest thank you letter to those who stayed when all looked hopeless, suggesting that if the sakura still bloom in Fukushima it is because of the sacrifices they made.

Fukushima 50 is available to stream in the US until July 30 as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.

International trailer (English subtitles)