Tag: Ren Komai

People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind (ぬいぐるみとしゃべる人はやさしい, Yurina Kaneko, 2023)

Posted on by

How is it possible to go on living in a society which is often unkind and at times hostile? A collection of sensitive university students find themselves struggling to accept the world around them in Yurina Kaneko’s charmingly empathetic adaptation of the novel by Ao Omae, People who Talk to Plushies are Kind (ぬいぐるみとしゃべる人はやさしい), but discover a kind of solidarity in softness after joining a club where they don headphones and unburden themselves to cuddly toys. 

As they point out, it’s good to talk. But talking to someone else about your worries can end up making them worried too and that’s the last thing any of the members of the Plushie Club want which is why they’ve decided to talk to plushies instead. Yet what’s worrying them isn’t just their worries, but a sense of their powerlessness and complicity in having behaved as if they believed the problems of others were nothing to do with them until they were shown otherwise. The hero, Nanamori (Kanata Hosoda) regrets that he “laughed things away with everyone else” rather than speaking up when he saw something that seemed wrong to him and should change while acknowledging that simply by existing as a man he may make someone feel afraid or uncomfortable without meaning to. 

Nanamori is careful not to hurt others by his own actions, trying to turn down a confession of love from a classmate in high school as kindly as he can but perhaps failing in his awkwardness even as he straightforwardly tells her that he doesn’t understand the concept of romantic desire. He simply doesn’t know what it means to “like” someone, and feels that there must be something wrong with him that he can’t grasp this simple facet of human behaviour. On a trip home uniting with some boys from school, he is immediately put off by their stereotypically masculine banter in which they ask him about girls and crushes and mock him for being a virgin until he finally leaves and tells them not to laugh at him just because he is different. 

Everyone at the Plushie Club is “different” in their own way, but has come to find a place to belong where they are simply allowed to be without needing to offer anything else. As another of the members, Nishimura (Mimori Wakasugi), puts it there’s something between kindness and indifference that is simply gentle, a quiet yet powerful quality of acceptance. When she casually revealed one day that she had a girlfriend, most of her friends were supportive but perhaps superficially. Her revelation had made them uncomfortable and regardless of how they felt about it, their perception of her had changed and she was no longer the person she had been to them before. They began to treat her differently, but at the Plushie Club there was no real difference and everyone carried on reacting to her the same way they always had. 

The Plushie Club is a place where it’s permitted to be soft in a hard world, where the members can allow themselves to feel drained by the process of living and find relief from their sense of powerlessness in acknowledging that they have made a choice to continue being kind rather than become what the world wants them to be. In an effort to understand romantic desire, Nanamori begins dating a fellow member, Shiraki (Yuzumi Shintani), but discovers that she has chosen the opposite path laughing at women who complain about societal misogyny and insisting that it’s pointless to resist because nothing will ever change. She joined the Plushie Club because she was sick of being sexually harassed at other uni gatherings but later decides to deliberately join another club filled with sexist guys because the real world isn’t so nice and the only way to survive it is to become hard yourself. 

Shiraki claims that she finds Nanamori’s “righteousness” “exhausting” and wishes she could free him and a similarly minded classmate, Mugito (Ren Komai), from their “tormenting kindness” which has in its way hurt her though unavoidably so even as she continues to be kind despite herself if rebelling by refusing to talk to plushies. Kaneko sometimes shifts to a blurry plushie vision with shimmering pastel-coloured edges and a kind of glitter snow effect that makes it seem as if the stuffed toys really are watching over their human friends as they silently, or not, agree to shoulder some of the burden of living. “They’re the ones talking to us,” Nanamori points out though in a way perhaps it’s more that the plushies reflect a part of themselves allowing them to exteriorise their internal dialogue and reach an accommodation with their fear and loneliness amid a world which consistently proves immovable and disappointing.

People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind had its World Premiere as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: (C) 映画「ぬいぐるみとしゃべる人はやさしい」

True Mothers (朝が来る, Naomi Kawase, 2020)

Posted on by

Perhaps surprisingly and in contrast with many other developed nations child adoption remains relatively rare in Japan with most children who for whatever reason cannot be raised by their birth families cared for by institutions while the adoption of adults is unusually common usually for the purposes of securing an heir for the family name or business. This might be one reason that the “secret” of adoption is touted as a subject for blackmail in Naomi Kawase’s adaptation of the mystery novel by Mizuki Tsujimura True Mothers (Asa ga Kuru), though in this case it will prove to be a fruitless one as the adoptive parents have already made an effort towards transparency having explained to their son that he has another mother while their friends, family, and the boy’s school are all fully aware that he is not their blood relation. 

The Kuriharas, Satoko (Hiromi Nagasaku) and Kiyokazu (Arata Iura), are a settled, wealthy married couple who are shocked to discover that they are unable to conceive a child naturally because Kiyokazu is suffering from infertility. After a few unsuccessful rounds of painful treatment, they decide to give up and resign themselves to growing old together just the two of them, but after accidentally stumbling over a TV spot about an adoption service which focuses on finding loving homes for children rather than finding children for couples who want to adopt they begin to consider taking in a child who is not theirs by blood. As Kiyokazu puts it, it’s not that he’s obsessed with the idea of having a child, but they have the means and the inclination to raise one and could be of help when there are so many children in need of good homes. After enrolling in the programme, they adopt a little boy, Asato (Reo Sato), and somewhat unusually are encouraged to meet the birth mother, Hikari (Aju Makita), who they discover is a 14-year-old girl tearfully entrusting her baby to them along with a letter to give him when he’s old enough to understand. 

The central drama begins six years later as Asato prepares to leave kindergarten for primary school. A crisis occurs when Satoko is called in because a boy, Sora, has accused Asato of pushing him off the jungle gym. Thankfully, Sora is not seriously hurt though according to the school Asato admits he was there at the time but says he doesn’t remember pushing anyone. The teachers don’t seem to regard him as a violent or naughty boy and wonder if he might have accidentally knocked Sora off without realising, while Satoko for her part tries to deal with the matter rationally neither leaping to his defence without the full facts or prepared to apologise for something that might not have been his fault. The other mother, however, somewhat crassly asks for compensation, bringing up the fact that the family live in a nice apartment and can’t be short of a bob or two. Stunned, Satoko does not respond while the other mother instructs her son not to play with Asato anymore. It’s around this time that she starts receiving anonymous calls that eventually turn out to be from a young woman claiming to be Hikari who first petitions to get her son back and then like Sora’s mother asks for monetary compensation. Only on meeting her the young woman seems completely different from the heartbroken teen they met six years’ previously and Satoko can’t bring herself to belief it’s really her, but if it isn’t who is she and what does she want?

Less a tug of love drama between an adoptive and a birth mother as in the recent After the Sunset, True Mothers places its most important clue in the title in that there need not be a monopoly on motherhood. A woman brought out at the adoption agency open day reveals that she’s explained to her son that he has three mothers, herself, his birth mother, and Asami (Miyoko Asada), the woman who runs “Baby Baton”. Asami encourages her prospective parents to explain to the children the circumstances of their birth before they enter primary school, keen both that they avoid the trauma of suddenly discovering the truth and that the birth mother not be “erased” from the child’s life and history. 

Though founded in love and with the best of intentions, Baby Baton also has its regressive sides in reinforcing conservative social norms, open only to heterosexual couples who’ve been married over three years (Japan does not yet have marriage equality or permit same sex couples to adopt) and requiring one parent, though it does not specify which, to give up their career and become a full-time parent. Its residential requirement is also not a million miles away from a home for unwed mothers hidden away on a remote island near Hiroshima which seems to be the way it is used and viewed by Hikari’s parents who force her to give up the baby more out of shame than practicality, telling people that she’s in hospital recovering from pneumonia. Nevertheless it’s at Baby Baton that Hikari finally finds acceptance and a sense of family, feeling rejected by the birth parents who have sent her away rather than embracing or supporting her in the depths of her emotional difficulty. Asami was there for her when no one else was, later explaining that unable to have children herself she founded Baby Baton as means of helping other women who found themselves in difficulty in the hope of “making sure all children are happy”. 

Like Hikari many of the other women at Baby Baton are there because of a corrupted connection with their own maternal figures, often rejected or abandoned many of them having participated in sex work as a means of survival. Reminiscent of her documentary capture of residents of the old persons’ home in The Mourning Forest or the former leper colony in Sweet Bean, Kawase films the scenes at Baby Baton with naturalistic realism as one young woman celebrates her 20th birthday sadly wondering if any one will ever celebrate her birthday again. A testament to female solidarity, the home presents itself as a kind of womb bathed in golden light and protected by a ring of water providing a refuge for often very young women at a time of intense vulnerability until they are eventually rebirthed by the surrogate maternal figure of Asami. 

The film’s Japanese title “Morning Will Come” as echoed in the song which plays frequently throughout hints at an eventual fated reunion while also pointing towards Asato the first character of whose name literally means “morning”, lending an ironic quality to its English counterpart which invites the conclusion that there are somehow false mothers while simultaneously evoking a sense of a great confluence of maternity in the unselfishness of maternal love. Immersed in a deep well of empathy, Kawase’s bittersweet drama is infinitely kind if not without its moments of darkness and pain resolute in its sense of fairness and the insistence there’s love enough to go around if only you’re brave enough to share it.

True Mothers streams in the UK from 16th April exclusively via Curzon Home Cinema.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

Ito (いとみち, Satoko Yokohama, 2021)

Posted on by 3 Comments

“Ye can’t hear my silence!” the timid young heroine of Satoko Yokohama’s Ito (いとみち, Itomichi), an adaptation of the Osamu Koshigaya novel, finally fires back, reminding us that silence too is means of communication. The film’s Japanese title, Itomichi, refers to the groove in shamisen player’s nail caused by the friction of the strings, but also perhaps to the path of the heroine of the same name as she makes her way towards self actualisation, figuring out the various ways there are of connecting with people as she begins to step into herself while coming to terms with the past. 

As we first meet Ito (Ren Komai) she’s trapped in a boring history lesson about local famines, reminded by the teacher to raise her voice while reading from the textbook but reluctant to do so firstly because she has an unusually strong local accent and often speaks in dialect and secondly because she is intensely shy. When she’s finished, the teacher even jokes that listening to her read is a little like classical music though it doesn’t seem much like a compliment. Even so, it’s particularly apt as Ito, like her late mother, has a talent for playing the Tsugaru shamisen and has even won numerous competitions yet she’s barely touched her instrument recently, perhaps developing a slight complex about the bumpkinishness of her intensely local way of life, especially as her father Koichi (Etsushi Toyokawa) is a university professor researching the traditional culture of the local area. 

Pointing out that talking is Ito’s weak spot, Koichi reminds her that she can communicate with others through her music even if he later admonishes her to use her words if she has something to say. Her refusal to pick up her shamisen is then a kind of withdrawal if of a particularly teenage kind. Hoping to get over her shyness, she finds herself quite accidentally applying for a part-time job at a maid cafe in the city, an incongruity in itself but one that helps her begin to open up to others. Then again, a maid cafe might not be the best environment selling as it does an outdated conception of sexual politics. Koichi later makes this argument pointing out that a maid cafe is not so different from a hostess bar while another maid, Tomomi (Mayuu Yokota), takes issue with the false chivalry of some of the middle-aged men who frequent the establishment who set up a club to “protect” Ito after she is inappropriately touched by a belligerent customer. To Tomomi the very idea that women need “protection” from men against men is inherently sexist and wrongheaded while the fact that they all rally round to protect the shy and vulnerable Ito also speaks volumes about their ideals of womanhood explaining why it is they’re in a maid cafe where the waitresses call their customers “master” and indulge their every whim in the first place. Even so, Ito’s colleagues are also quick to reassure her that she is in no way at fault, the customer’s behaviour was unacceptable and against the spirit of their establishment.

Yet as the manager points out “moe moe” is also a “means of communication” not perhaps intended to be taken literally. Ito does not exactly discover how to use her words, but through interacting with her colleagues at the cafe begins to come into an acceptance of herself no longer seeing her accent and dialect as uncool or old fashioned giving herself space to breathe as she makes new friends guided by her cafe mentor Sachiko (Mei Kurokawa) and finally getting up the courage to speak to another lonely young woman whom she’d been on awkward nodding terms with seeing as they catch the same train home from school. As Ito’s grandmother (Yoko Nishikawa) reveals, she learned how to play the shamisen with her eyes and ears proving that communication comes in many forms. Ito’s name which she had previously found old-fashioned and embarrassing appropriately enough means threads or here strings of a shamisen which become in their own ways channels to connect with other people which as the slightly dubious owner of the cafe (Daimaou Kosaka) points out is the most important thing of all. 

As Ito rehearses her maid routine with a video of her mentor, grandma outlines her thoughts about shamisen on camera for Koichi’s eager students, handing her knowledge down for the next generation. Literally finding her groove again, carving a niche in her fingernail, Ito rediscovers her love for music while gaining the confidence to stand on stage and be herself encouraged by all her friends and family. A beautifully pitched coming-of-age tale celebrating the local culture of Yokohama’s hometown Aomori, from which leading actress Ren Komai also hails, Ito is a warm and loving tribute not only to Tsugaru shamisen but to friendship and community brokered by a wealth of communication and a willingness to listen even to silence. 

Ito screened as part of the 2021 Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Images: (C)2021『いとみち』製作委員会

On-Gaku: Our Sound (音楽, Kenji Iwaisawa, 2019)

Posted on by 1 Comment

The high school band movie has a special place in Japanese cinema. From the anxious release of Linda Linda Linda to the laidback charms of K-On, music is that rare thing that both brings people together and enables individual expression. Adapted from the cult manga by Hiroyuki Ohashi, Kenji Iwaisawa’s highly stylised indie animation On-Gaku: Our Sound (音楽, Ongaku) is a psychedelic ode to the transportive qualities of musical performance from either side of the stage as its laconic, tongue-tied heroes rediscover themselves through the art of song. 

Kenji (Shintaro Sakamoto) is perhaps the archetypal hero of another kind of manga, a shaven-headed delinquent stepping straight out of the pages of Crows Zero or a hundred other tales of high school hierarchies mediated through male violence. Known for his “spaghetti fist”, the monosyllabic young man is feared all around town as a ruthless fighter, engaging in petty acts of aggression with boys from neighbouring high schools, such as the mohawked Oba (Naoto Takenaka) and his identically dressed gang of young toughs who seem to be his current nemesis.

Lost in his own little world, Kenji barely notices when he finds himself in the middle of a crime scene as a thief runs past him on the street pursued by a heroic young man who, temporarily liberating himself, thrusts the guitar he is carrying into Kenji’s arms. Bemused by the chaotic scene in front of him, Kenji becomes fascinated by the strange instrument and immediately announces to his two friends, Ota (Tomoya Maeno) and Asakura (Tateto Serizawa), that they’ll be forming a band, picking up everything they need from the school music room and cheerfully walking off with it. Of course, they have no idea what instruments even are let alone how to play them but then that hardly matters, or as Kenji puts it might just be the “whole point”. 

Asakura comes up with a name for their musical trio, “Kobujutsu”, without quite knowing what it means (classical martial arts), later realising they have a problem because there’s already a similarly named band at school, Kobijutsu (classical fine arts). Asakura has the idea to strong-arm the other guys into changing their monicker, but in place of the expected battle of the bands the two sets of unlikely allies find unexpected common ground in musical appreciation. Kobijutsu, led by introverted music geek Morita (Kami Hiraiwa), is an old school retro folk trio, while Kenji & co are unrefined, avant-garde punk rockers, but each discovers something in the other that speaks directly to them in mutual understanding as “musicians”. 

In fact, “musicians” is how Kenji demands to be identified, explaining to the gang’s female friend Aya (Ren Komai) who was used to referring to them as the “three musketeers”,  that they’re “now obsessed with music” which is why they “don’t have time” to go fight Oba. But Kenji later finds himself depressed, declaring himself “bored” with the band much to the alarm of his two friends who’ve fully embraced their artistic sides. The young men find themselves literally transported by music, Morita seeing himself in a surrealistic scene surrounded by artefacts of misremembered traditional culture pointing to unexpected angles in Kenji’s raw musical expression which later manifest themselves in an unexpected sight gag as he reveals a different side to himself in a musical register which is both refined and naive, while Morita too begins to embrace his inner rebel with psychedelic glee complete with a fresh new look. 

Iwaisawa spent seven years on the project drawing over 40,000 images by hand largely on his own. His designs perfectly mimic the quirky minimalism of Ohashi’s manga, complete with a lowkey deadpan sensibility that is perfectly in tune with the laidback charms of its slacker heroes. Kenji lives in a slightly different temporality, his extended pauses before offering up his idiosyncratically concise replies rendered as perfectly timed still frames while the musical sequences are filled with the raw anarchic energy of something being set free as the youngsters liberate themselves through the joy of music, climaxing in a rotoscoped final concert which unites all in a shared sense of transcendental transformation. Boasting an expertly crafted, nostalgic soundtrack, Iwaisawa’s joyful celebration of the power of making music is an off-beat gem.

On-Gaku: Our Sound is available to stream in the US until July 30 as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Wind in Your Heart (心に吹く風, Yoon Seok-ho, 2017)

Posted on by Leave a comment

the wind in your heart posterYoon Seok-ho is best known for his work in Korean television drama which included several of the series thought of as kickstarting the “Hallyu” wave. Chief among these is Winter Sonata which proved extremely popular in Japan and is also cited as a major inspiration for the short-lived boom of “junai” or “pure love” movies in the early 2000s. The Wind in Your Heart (心に吹く風, Kokoro ni Fuku Kaze) brings things full circle – making his feature debut, Yoon brings his brand of romantic melodrama to Hokkaido for a re-evaluation of first love, middle-aged regrets, and an escape from real world cynicism to a world of beauty and innocence.

Video artist Ryosuke (Hidekazu Mashima) has been in living in London for many years but is currently staying with a friend in Hokkaido on a working holiday. When his pick up truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere he chances in to a nearby cottage in the hope of using the phone, only to find a ghost from the past standing in the doorway – Haruka (Masumi Sanada), his high school sweetheart whom he has not seen in 23 years. Obviously a lot has happened – Haruka is married with a grown-up daughter, but seems sad and lonely. Ryosuke is only in town for a couple more days, but the pair make the most of their time to reconnect and think about what might have been and why it wasn’t, as well as what might still be if someone finds the courage to boldly pursue their desires.

Well, that might be a little strong – this is a story of innocent, chaste love, rather than a hot and passionate affair. The Wind in Your Heart does indeed share much in common with the classic “junai” in its nostalgic look back to innocent teenage romance and yearning to return to a time when everything seemed so simple and love was all that mattered. It is, however, sadder – we’re not told exactly what made Haruka decide to forget Ryosuke after he left for university in Tokyo, only that she went through some tough times. Likewise we don’t really know why Ryosuke didn’t try harder to find out, save that perhaps he thought that was what she wanted and respected her decision. Nevertheless, Ryosuke has remained unmarried and apparently still carries a torch 23 years later. All the pair have are mutual regrets and a shared sense of nostalgia for a future they feel they lost because of things that happened to them in their youths.

Now, things might be different. Haruka is obviously miserable in her marriage. Her daughter has left for university, her husband is working away in Taiwan, and she’s left at home all alone with her horrible mother-in-law. Ryosuke asks her if she’s happy and she can’t answer. She doesn’t want to talk about her husband whom she doesn’t seem to like very much. When we eventually meet him he is drunk, bossy, and insensitive. It’s no wonder Haruka might dream of running off with her idealised first love but when all is said and done she lacks the conviction to do it. She is simply too conventional, too bound by social obligation, to consider throwing caution to the wind and embracing her own happiness.

It might be patronising to suggest that Haruka is a stand-in for the expected audience – unhappy, under appreciated middle-aged women who perhaps feel trapped by a conservative society and long for escape from their humdrum lives through an innocent romance, but then that does very much seem to be the screenwriter’s intention. Haruka hesitates – her hand always hovering over door handles as if they were triggers, unsure which door to open and which direction to choose, ultimately making her decisions far too late. Unlike the more positive resolutions of a junai romance which allow the left behind to come to terms with their loss and resolve to live on with happy memories rather than sorrow, Haruka is left only with the crushing realisation that it really might be too late and she’s made a lifetime’s worth of poor choices though she does at least begin to find a degree of fulfilment in re-embracing her youthful dreams previously crushed by the unforgiving attitudes of her family.

Filming in Hokkaido, Yoon maintains a notably Korean sensibility in his static camera and straightforward composition which prioritises simple conversation between two people, only occasionally wandering off into poetic reveries in which the sun embraces the wind in a bracing Hokkaido spring. Reaching for something deeper than it manages to grasp, The Wind in Your Heart lands in standard melodrama territory, never quite managing to lend its central romance the weight it seems to want, but nevertheless doing its best to strain the heart with a tale of inescapable middle-aged misery in lives lived through the power of what might have been.

Original trailer (no subtitles)