Midori Oka – Windows on Worlds

A young woman facing a life crisis is forced to reevaluate her relationships with art, friends, and family after learning that her estranged younger sister has suddenly passed away in Seira Maeda’s indie drama, Back to that Day (幕が下りたら会いましょう, Maku ga Oritara Aimasho). Facing a patriarchal society, the young women at the film’s centre wonder if it’s better to chase your dreams even if they won’t come true or contend with the unfair demands of contemporary salaryman culture in the hope of achieving conventional success and a comfortable life.

At around thirty, Manami (Rena Matsui) is beginning to lose patience with herself feeling that she’s achieved little in her career as a theatre director in the last 10 years while continuing to work part time at her mother’s hair salon. Her younger sister, Nao (Miwako Kakei), left abruptly for the city some time previously and the pair have hardly spoken since partly as we discover because of a high school falling out that continues to play on Masami’s mind in undermining her sense of confidence in her art.

The two women have in many ways chosen different paths, Nao striking out by heading to the city and getting a regular office job and Manami staying at home trying to make it work in theatre but finding herself treading water. On the night that Nao dies, the sisters mirror each other each black out drunk collapsed in the street but only one of them is alone which in the end perhaps makes all the difference. Out to dinner with members of her theatre troupe celebrating an engagement, Manami has far too much to drink, much more than than anyone else or than is really appropriate becoming embarrassing in her belligerence as she lays into even her closest friends while others wonder why they bother with the troupe at all now that most of them are ageing out of their carefree days, have full-time paying jobs and growing familial responsibilities to take of.

Nao, meanwhile as we discover, was pressured into drinking more than was wise by her boss at a semi-compulsory work do, an all too common form of power play in the contemporary working culture. Carrying her own share of guilt, Manami is alerted to this hidden source of her sister’s suffering by one of Nao’s colleagues, Mihashi (Manami Enosawa), who alone attended the funeral. Facing the same continued harassment, Mihashi is determined to confront her boss with the help of Niiyama (Kenta Kiguchi), an activist working on behalf of employees experiencing workplace bullying, but is later blamed herself with the implication that Nao drank on her behalf while she perhaps should have stayed to make sure she was alright before leaving for the last train. Her colleagues insist that Nao seemed cheerful and engaged with the party, while Manami and her actress friend Sanae (Nanami Hidaka) wonder if she wasn’t just playing the part, that in feeling disconnected from her family she wanted to feel accepted by those around her.

In an unexpected turn of events, however, Manami decides to not to take Nao’s employer to task or attempt to change a dangerous and outdated workplace culture but to try and make peace with difficult relationship they had through restaging the high school play that set them apart which as it turns out was actually written by Nao but for which Manami had taken credit. Along the way she’s led towards a more commercial path by the duplicitous Niiyama who turns out to be a bit of a sleaze and not much better than those he claimed to be challenging. What she discovers is that restaging Nao’s play may not be the best way to honour her, gradually working through her grief and guilt by writing an original piece inspired by their relationship while reconsidering herself and her life up to that point. Of course, in one sense, she reduces Nao to a plot device in the mere motivation for her own creative rejuvenation while partially letting herself off the hook in discovering a family secret that explains a lot about her difficult relationship with her mother but does at least allow her come to terms with her sister’s death in letting her burn out bright just as in the alternate ending she’d crafted for Anna Karenina as a woman driven to extremes by the strictures of her society.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Forced transfers have been in the news of late. Japanese companies, keen to attract and keep younger workers in the midst of a growing labour shortage, have been offering more modern working rights such as paid parental leave but also using them as increased leverage to force employees to take jobs in far flung places after returning to work – after all, you aren’t going to up and quit with a new baby to support.

As Isshin Inudo’s Samurai Shifters (引っ越し大名！, Hikkoshi Daimyo!) proves, contemporary corporate culture is not so different from the samurai ways of old. Back in the 17th century, the Shogun kept a tight grip on his power by shifting his lords round every so often in order to keep them on their toes. Seeing as they had to pay all the expenses and handle logistics themselves, relocating left a clan weakened and dangerously exposed which of course means they were unlikely to challenge the Shogun’s power and would be keen to keep his favour in order to avoid being asked to make regular moves to unprofitable places.

When the Echizen Matsudaira clan is ordered to move a considerable distance, crossing the sea to a new residence in Kyushu which isn’t even really a “castle”, they have a big problem because their previous relocation officer has passed away since their last move. Predictably, no one wants this totally thankless job which warrants seppuku if you mess it up so it falls to introverted librarian Harunosuke (Gen Hoshino) who is too shy refuse (even if he had much of a choice, which he doesn’t). Unfortunately for some, however, Harunosuke is both smart and kind which means he’s good at figuring out solutions to complicated problems and reluctant to exercise his samurai privilege to do so.

In fact Harunosuke is something of an odd samurai. As others later put it, he doesn’t care about status or seniority and has a natural tendency to treat everybody equally. When the head of accounts advises him to take loans from merchants with no intention to pay them back, he objects not only to the dishonesty but to the unfairness of stealing hard-earned money from ordinary people solely under the rationale that they are entitled to do so because they are samurai and therefore superior. Likewise, when he finds out that his predecessor was of a lower rank and that all his achievements were credited to his superiors he makes a point of going to his grave to apologise which earns him some brownie points with the man’s pretty daughter, Oran (Mitsuki Takahata), who was not previously minded to help him because of the way her father had been treated.

Harunosuke’s natural goodness begins to endear him to the jaded samurai now in his care. Though they might be suspicious of some of his methods including his “decluttering” program, they quickly come on board when they realise he is not intending to exclude himself from his ordinances and even consents to burn his own books in order to make it plain that everyone is in the same boat. He hesitates in his growing attraction to Oran (who in turn is also taken with him because of his atypical tendency to compassion) not only because of his natural diffidence but because he feels it might be selfish to pursue a romance while urging everyone else towards austerity.

Meanwhile, “romance” is why all this started in the first place. The lord, Naonori Matsudaira (Mitsuhiro Oikawa), is in a relationship with his steward (something which seems to be known to most and not particularly an issue). While he was in Edo, he rudely rebuffed the attentions of another lord, Yoshiyasu Yanagisawa (Osamu Mukai), who seems to have taken rejection badly and has it in for the clan as a whole. In an interesting role reversal, his advisor laments that perhaps it would have been better for everyone if he’d just submitted himself, but nevertheless a few thousand people are now affected by the petty romantic squabbles of elite samurai in far off Edo.

Bookish and reticent as he is, Harunosuke sees his chance to “go to war against the unjust Shogunate” by engineering a plan which allows them to reduce the burden of moving, reluctantly having to demote some samurai and leave them behind as ordinary farmers with the promise that they will be reinstated as soon as the clan resumes its former status. Asking the samurai to drop their superiority and carry their own bags for a change has profound implications for their society, but Harunosuke’s practical goodness eventually wins out as the clan comes together as one rather than obsessing over their petty internal divisions. A cheerful tale of homecoming, friendship, and warmhearted egalitarianism, Samurai Shifters is an oddly topical period comedy which satirises the vagaries of modern corporate culture through the prism of samurai-era mores but does so with a wry smile as Harunosuke finds a way to live within the system without compromising his principles and eventually wins all with little more than a compassionate heart and a finely tuned mind.

Samurai Shifters screens in New York on July 21 as part of Japan Cuts 2019.

Teaser trailer (English subtitles)

Tag: Midori Oka

Back To That Day (幕が下りたら会いましょう, Seira Maeda, 2021)

Samurai Shifters (引っ越し大名！, Isshin Inudo, 2019)