Tag: Shiori Doi

Just the Two of Us (二人ノ世界, Keita Fujimoto, 2020)

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“We’re just ordinary people” the heroine of Just the Two of Us (二人ノ世界, Futari no Sekai) eventually exclaims in exasperation with the often hostile world around her. Produced by Kaizo Hayashi as a project for students at the Kyoto University of the arts, Keita Fujimoto’s sometimes bleak social drama offers a less rosy view on disability in the contemporary society than has perhaps been seen in recent Japanese cinema as the twin protagonists each struggle against prejudice and preconceived notions of how disabled people should live while internalising a sense of shame and impossibility that leaves them with little hope for the future. 

Opening in darkness, the scene then shifts to bright sun light as a young woman, Hanae (Shiori Doi), is woken by a phone call informing her she has been unsuccessful in a recent job application. Meanwhile, Gohei (Motomi Makiguchi), an old man caring for his son Shunsaku (Masatoshi Nagase) who has been paralysed from the neck down since a motorbike accident some years previously, finds his latest attempt to hire a carer ending in failure, Shunsaku deliberately making obscene comments towards the earnest young woman leaving her so upset that she leaves in tears and does not return. After hearing Gohei discussing his problem on a local radio show, Hanae decides to apply for the job the only thing being that she herself is blind which is why she’s been having so much trouble trying to find employment. 

Gohei has his doubts, but after talking to the young woman and witnessing her take no notice of Shunsaku’s attempts to make her uncomfortable, he decides to take her on in part because she reminds him of his late wife and he instinctively feels that he can trust her. As we discover, that’s something all the more pressing to Gohei because not only is he finding it increasingly difficult to care for his son as he himself ages but is also suffering with a serious medical condition and worrying who will look after him once he’s gone. For all these reasons he places a heavier responsibility on Hanae than she had expected, showing her where the spare key is in case she needs to get in when he’s out and even handing over their passbooks and bank cards. A little shocked, Hanae asks him if that’s really necessary, how does he know she won’t just run off with them but he simply tells her that he knows she’s not the sort of person who would do something like that and indeed she isn’t. 

As she later reveals, Hanae has no family of her own repeatedly reminding Shunsaku that he was lucky to have parents that loved and cared for him as much as they did. She becomes in a sense a member of the family, Gohei telling hospital staff she is his daughter while later even Shunsaku claims to be her husband in order to make a point. Yet the arrangement is not one that all find suitable, Shunsaku’s snooty aunts instantly taking against Hanae on the grounds that they cannot believe a blind woman could care for a paralysed man while simultaneously attempting to chase Shunsaku out of his home he fears disguising their desire to get their hands on the inheritance as concern for his wellbeing. They continue to infantilise him, refusing his right to make his own decisions over his life even though he is a man in his 40s of entirely sound mind insisting he should be put away in a nursing home rather than allowed to live as independently as possible in a house which he owns. 

Tellingly Shunsaku had been reluctant to leave the house afraid of the stigma and judgement he may receive from others in an ableist society, a fear later borne out by their encounter with an extremely rude man while trying to enjoy a summer a festival. Hanae who had been partially sighted since birth and lost her sight entirely five years previously reassures him that she feels people staring at her all the time but has had to become used to it in order to carry on with her life, her courage and support beginning to give him the desire to begin living again yet the world continues to place various barriers in their way eventually removing all sense of hope and possibility that the decisions they’ve made for themselves will be accepted or that they could become a conventional family supporting each other. 

“How can we live without bothering others?” Hanae eventually snaps back at the snooty aunts, signalling perhaps a slightly problematic framing that leans into the idea that Hanae and Shunsaku are burdens and that their presence is never anything other than a nuisance to those around them rather than taking others to task for their refusal to accept disabled people as equals or to treat them with basic human empathy. The conclusion is further reinforced by the bittersweet ending which echoes the film’s title implying that the pair can stay together but only by accepting exile from mainstream society and retreating into a world of two. Nevertheless, Fujimoto’s often sensitive, elegantly shot drama has genuine poignancy even in its melancholy conclusion as the marginalised heroes find solace in each other in defiance of a hostile society.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Gift of Fire (太陽の子, Hiroshi Kurosaki, 2020)

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“What can we do? It’s for the victory of our country” one woman stoically laments as her family home is demolished in an attempt to mitigate the damage from potential aerial bombing in Hiroshi Kurosaki’s wartime drama, Gift of Fire (太陽の子, Taiyo no Ko). A co-production between Japanese broadcaster NHK and American distributor Eleven Arts, Kurosaki’s ambivalent interrogation of the price of progress asks some difficult questions about scientific ethics while simultaneously suggesting we may have been stoking a fire we cannot fully control in a bid for a technological evolution which has become unavoidably politicised. 

The hero, Shu (Yuya Yagira), is an idealistic young man who excels at running experiments. He has been spared the draft because his work has been deemed essential for the war effort as he is part of the research team at Kyoto University working on the development of an atomic bomb. A theoretical thinker, Shu has not fully considered the implications of the project and largely views it as a problem they are trying to solve in the name of science rather than a concerted attempt to create a super weapon with the potential to bring death and destruction to the entire world. 

Others meanwhile are beginning to question the ethical dimensions of their work. The team is equipped with a shortwave radio receiving the American broadcasts and is fully aware that Japan is losing the war. There are frequent power outages which interfere with their research, while food shortages are also becoming a problem. The potter Shu has been visiting in order to acquire Uranium usually used for a yellow glaze tells him that he rarely needs to use colour anymore because the vast majority of his output is plain white funerary urns for boys who come back as bones. Some of the scientists feel guilty that they are living in relative safety while other young men their age are fighting and dying on the front line, while others wonder if working on the bomb, which will almost certainly not be finished in time, is the best way to help them. They also wonder if scientists should be involved in the creation of weapons at all, but their mentor Arakatsu (Jun Kunimura) justifies the project under the rationale that they aren’t just trying to make a bomb but to unlock the power of the atom and harness its intrinsic energy to take humanity into a brave new world. 

As it turns out, Arakatsu may not have expected the project to succeed but was in a sense using it in order to protect his students by ensuring they would be exempt from the draft. Another senior researcher meanwhile points out the Americans are also working on a bomb, and if they don’t finish it first the Russians will. Arakatsu claims this war, like most, is about energy but nuclear energy may be infinite and therefore its discovery has the potential to end human conflict forevermore. Still, it’s difficult for Shu reconcile himself to the reality of what he was working on seeing the devastation inflicted on Hiroshima. The scientists are plunged into a deep sense of guilt and despair that they failed to prevent this tragedy, but also perhaps relief in knowing they were not responsible for inflicting it on the city of San Francisco as had been the plan. 

Arakatsu claims he wants to change the world through science, a sense of purpose that appeals to Shu even while he remains firmly in the present moment. His childhood friend, Setsu (Kasumi Arimura), however is looking far ahead already thinking about what to do when the war is over. Seeing through the wartime propaganda disturbed by the answers the high school girls co-opted to fill-in at her factory give when asked about their dreams that all they want is to marry as soon as possible and raise children to serve the nation, she aims to educate. Shu’s brother Hiroyuki (Haruma Miura), meanwhile, is a conflicted soldier filled with guilt for having survived so long crying out that he can’t be the only one not to die. The theory that nothing is ever created or destroyed becomes an odd kind of justification, yet Shu is also forced to admit that destruction can be “beautiful” while claiming that scientific progress is a body already in motion which cannot be stopped. “The nature of science transcends humanity” Shu is told by an accented voice speaking in English, insisting that the bomb is merely another stop on the inevitable march of progress in the great chain reaction of history. Kurosaki’s melancholy drama preserves both the beauty and wonder of scientific discovery as well as its terrible ferocity but offers few answers as to the extent of its responsibilities. 

Gift of Fire screens in Chicago on Sept. 16 as part of the 13th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema before opening at cinemas across the US on Nov. 12 courtesy of Eleven Arts.

US trailer (English subtitles)

108: Revenge and Adventure of Goro Kaiba (108 海馬五郎の復讐と冒険, Suzuki Matsuo, 2019)

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In Buddhism, there are said to be 108 earthly desires, 108 lies, and 108 human delusions. As he points out however, all that is merely coincidence to Goro Kaiba, his petty revenge is founded entirely on the fact that a Facebook status in which his wife, using a pseudonym, detailed an affair with a lithe young contemporary dancer, garnered 108 Likes. Waxing self-referential, Suzuki Matsuo’s surreal sex comedy 108: Revenge and Adventure of Goro Kaiba (108 海馬五郎の復讐と冒険, 108: Kaiba Goro no Fukushu to Boken) in which he also stars, finds a middle-aged screenwriter somehow still trapped in adolescent insecurity, intensely self-involved as he pursues a “revenge” which is also a strange kind of ironic self harm intended to prove his manhood but accidentally exposing the love’s sordid underbelly in the vacuousness of its inversion. 

As the film opens, successful screenwriter Goro Kaiba (Suzuki Matsuo) is overseeing auditions for the musical adaptation of his greatest hit, Dancing in the Mental Ward. He tells us that he’s bored with his work and somewhat disrespectfully is actually writing a column due in a couple of hours’ time, barely paying attention to the actress as she valiantly perseveres with the less than stellar material before rudely dismissing her performance and suggesting she dump the boyfriend who helped her come up with it. Goro claims that he carries on in a job he hates for three reasons: he loves money, his wife’s a spendthrift, and he loves her. It’s something of a shock therefore when a young actress comes up to him after the auditions to ask for a private chat which turns out to be about something slightly different than he’d assumed. She shows him a Facebook profile she believes belongs to his wife, Ayako (Miho Nakayama), in which she claims to have fallen in love with a “contemporary dancer” named “Dr. Snake”. 

Confronted, Ayako admits “everything”, but explains that the Facebook profile is nothing more than wish fulfilment, a romantic fantasy to distract from the emptiness of her married life. Predictably, Goro fails to pick up on the fact there are obviously problems in their marriage, fixating on the extent of Ayako’s relations with Dr. Snake of whom she now has a large tattoo on her shoulder, something which he hasn’t noticed because they have not been intimate in some time. Ayako assures Goro that she means to stay with him forever, but will be fantasising about Dr. Snake when they make love, further hinting at another problem undermining their relationship. Goro, however, is not convinced and starts talking to his friends about divorce only to be reminded Ayako will be entitled to half his savings if he splits up with her. Consumed by pettiness, he decides to spend all the money so she’ll be left with nothing by sleeping with 108 women as “revenge” for her infidelity. 

Of course, the problem is less Ayako than his wounded male pride and emotional immaturity. Perhaps he’s doing this because he can’t admit to himself how much he really does love his wife and how hurt he is by her “betrayal”, but in any case he makes it all about him, refusing to engage with the problems in his marriage or reflect on the fact Ayako is obviously unhappy and unfulfilled. He tries giving some of the money away to his ex-wife and 20-year-old son Michio (Louis Kurihara) from whom he has apparently been withholding alimony and child support, put out that his ex won’t take it because she has no need of him, a man who abandoned her. Not abandoned, he points out to his son, simply “ran away”. In an awkward conversation, he goes so far as to blame Michio for his family’s collapse, claiming that he left essentially because Michio didn’t love him enough while complaining that no one seems to appreciate him. 

Meanwhile, we also realise Goro has been hypocritically carrying on a casual affair with an old friend, Mitsuko (Natsuko Akiyama), perennially unlucky in love but planning to put an end to their “arrangement” to marry a much younger man she is fully aware is only after her money. As part of his sexploits, Goro hires a high class call girl, Azusa (Shiori Doi), but she is also romantically challenged in that despite being the number one herself, she’s only really doing this to make her host club boyfriend top dog at his establishment. In love, it seems there is always some kind of transaction, a misplaced desire. Edging deeper into his pointless and petty quest to bed 108 women, it’s not until late in the game as he’s overseeing a pool full of glistening, gyrating bodies that he perhaps begins to realise how vacuous and meaningless it all really is, sordid in its emptiness. By then, however, he’s gone too far to turn back. 

Better to him than he deserves, Ayako eventually confesses that she was “fighting the inevitability of ageing”, both facing and refusing to face the fears which informed the choice she made to retire from acting and become his wife, but Goro remains petulant and immature, indulging in a romanticisation of their early romance but unwilling to confront himself, his fears, and the real reason he’s embarked on this pointless and silly quest to vindicate himself through aggressive masculinity. Worryingly indulging in fantasies of sexualised violence against his wife which admittedly have an unexpected pay off, Goro struggles to identify what it is he’s really reeling from while pursuing not so much pleasure but misdirected pain in flight from adult vulnerability. In his usual style, Matsuo has ironic fun with Goro’s flights of fancy, suddenly breaking into song like one of his shows while simultaneously mocking them and undercutting Goro’s thinly veiled misogyny by having the leading actress abruptly walk out in protest against his childishly smutty song about the joys of sex. Nevertheless, we leave Goro exactly where we found him, all at sea torn between the risky rewards of honest romantic connection and the dubious pleasures of hedonistic conquest. 

108: Revenge and Adventure of Goro Kaiba screened as part of Camera Japan 2020.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

River’s Edge (リバーズ・エッジ, Isao Yukisada, 2018)

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River's Edge poster 2The ‘90s were a strange time to be a teenager, but then what age isn’t? Isao Yukisada, surprisingly making his first manga adaptation, brings Kyoko Okazaki’s cult hit River’s Edge (リバーズ・エッジ) to the big screen, recreating those days of nihilistic despair in which ordinary teens spiralled out of control in the wake the bubble bursting, watching all their possibilities disappear in a cloud of smoke. Set in 1994, River’s Edge is a post-bubble story but it also takes place in the period immediately before everything started to go wrong. In 1995 there was a devastating earthquake followed by terror in Tokyo and somehow it all seemed so dark – something the kids at the centre of River’s Edge already seem to see as they watch time flow, knowing all that awaits them is yet more emptiness.

Haruna (Fumi Nikaido), a spirited tomboy and latchkey kid living with her busy single-mother, is in a lazy relationship with violent popular boy Kannonzaki (Shuhei Uesugi) though in truth she doesn’t seem to like him very much. One of her major problems with Kannonzaki is that he keeps picking on one particular guy, Yamada (Ryo Yoshizawa), who is rumoured to be gay. Warned by one of Kannonzaki’s minions, Haruna races off to an abandoned storeroom where she finds Yamada trussed up and naked hidden inside a locker. The pair become friends and he offers to show her his “special treasure” which turns out to be a dead body hidden among the reeds near the edge of the river. Yamada, with another friend, Kozue (Sumire) – a model with an eating disorder, likes to come to the river to gaze at the body in an effort to feel alive.

The ‘90s were full of tales of cruel, emotionless youth torturing itself without mercy and there is something of the era’s insensitivity in the detachment of the central trio. Unable to feel alive, the teens of River’s Edge chase sensation and oblivion through indiscriminate sex, drugs, violence, and self harm but rarely find the kind of fulfilment they so desperately crave. Kannonzaki, the rowdy delinquent, blames his broken home for his lack of connection, making a fierce resentment of a perceived rejection his excuse for his dangerously violent proclivities which run not only to venting his rage on the figure of the gay outsider Yamada but also to drug fuelled rough sex with one of Haruna’s classmates, Rumi (Shiori Doi), who is also chasing agency through sexuality but eventually finds herself cornered in the most terrible of ways.

Yamada is indeed gay, but can hardly say so in the environment in which he lives and so has turned in on himself with a near sociopathic detachment. Having given up on the idea of romantic fulfilment he has resigned himself to loving the object of his affection from afar, happy enough that he exists in the world even if he can never declare himself let alone dare to hope his feelings may be returned. Yamada works as a rent boy in the evenings, going to hotels with middle-aged men for money, but has a fake girlfriend at school, Kanna (Aoi Morikawa), whom he uses as a beard. Kanna, seemingly sweet and oblivious, soon becomes jealous of her boyfriend’s friendship with Haruna and is driven into her own kind of despair by Yamada’s continued coldness.

There’s an especial irony in Yamada’s use of Kanna which is almost certainly not lost on him. These kids, like many before them, abhor the fakery of the adult world but are also unable to embrace their own painful truths. Yamada covers up his sexuality through misleading Kanna, while Kannonzaki is resentful towards his parents who put on a front of marital harmony even after his father ran off with his mistress only to come back a week later with his tail between his legs, and Kozue laments the superficiality of her industry in which everyone falls over themselves to declare something ugly beautiful in order to make themselves feel better. There are no responsible adults here, having ruined the future for their kids they no longer have any kind of moral authority that can offer guidance or support to a jaded generation.

Shooting in the classic 4:3 of a ‘90s TV, Yukisada recreates the narrowness of an era in which the kids struggle to see past themselves, blinkered by their own solipsistic perspective and trapped by the shallowness of their perceptions. Permanently dark, gloomy, and lonely their world is one nihilistic despair in which they feel themselves already dead, living in the half-dug grave of a moribund city giving off its last few puffs of toxic industrial smoke before the whole thing collapses in on itself. In one sense nothing changes, there are no answers or cures for adolescent malaise, but something does eventually seem to shift in the genuine connection formed between two detached outsiders standing on the brink, watching the decay of their era flow past them with melancholy resignation.

Screened at Nippon Connection 2018.

Original trailer (no subtitles)