Zakka Films: An interview with Seiko Ono

Rokkasho Rhapsody (Hitomi Kamanaka, 2006)

One of the biggest frustrations of fans of Japanese film is that we hear about a great documentary playing at international festivals and have to wait years before it is available on DVD.  Even then, the film is usually only released in Japan and without English subtitles – thus limiting the audience and making it difficult to use for teaching purposes.

All that changed earlier this year when the U.S-based company Zakka Films opened its Filmmakers’ Market with the aim of offering Japanese and Asian documentary filmmakers the opportunity to bring subtitled DVDs of their films fresh onto the market for consumption like fish at Tsukiji. 

Zakka Films is the brainchild of Seiko Ono, wife of respected Yale professor Aaron Gerow (author of Visions of Japanese Modernity and A Page of Madness).  After my dedicating the month of October last year to reviewing DVD releases by Zakka Films, I contacted Seiko Ono to learn more about how she came to start this exciting new DVD label.

Tell me about yourself and your background in the film industry.

In the late 1980s in Japan I started working at Studio 200 of the Seibu Department Stores. Things were about to decline, but Seibu still had lots of museums, movie theaters, performance theaters and galleries. Unlike the department stores in the US, they were trying to provide an entire life to customers: not just fashionable brands, but the arts as well. Studio 200 was one of the Seibu art spaces, and was sort of an all-purpose theater playing rare films, presenting dance performance, experimental music concerts, art exhibitions, etc. People working there, including me, coordinated many different kinds of events, and I had some wonderful opportunities to work with films which were not shown at commercial theaters such as Taiwan New Wave films. It was extremely exciting for me to work there, and in fact I learned so many things and met a lot of film people, which helped me later. Just before the 1990s, Seibu’s art spaces started closing one after another out of financial difficulties. People around me started leaving because no one wanted to be transferred to the shoe section or some other section of the Seibu Department Store. In 1990 I joined the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, which was preparing for the second festival in 1991 (the YIDFF takes place once every two years). After that, for nearly 20 years, my work involved programming and coordinating the YIDFF. I am no longer officially at the YIDFF, but I am still involved.

Zakka Films seems like a real labour of love.  What inspired you to start the company?

In 2004 my husband got a job at Yale in the US, and all of us moved to America. I still continued to work for the YIDFF from afar even though I was not a programmer anymore. I had more spare time to start thinking of doing something I had never done before, or something that could justify me living here in the US. Considering my long career at the YIDFF, it didn’t take a long time to get the idea to sell Japanese documentaries on DVD. I already had connections with many documentary productions and filmmakers. It was a quite natural idea to start thinking of working on Japanese documentaries. There were only a few Japanese documentaries that you could obtain in the US, and the few that existed tended to downplay the presence of the director, such as with Out of Place: A Memoir by Edward W. Said and Radiation: A Slow Death. The first is by Makoto Sato and the second by Hitomi Kamanaka, and both of them are pretty famous documentary filmmakers, but their names as directors were sometimes hard to find in publicity. Customers were not always even aware these were documentaries from Japan. I felt there was something not quite right with this situation. That was one impetus for starting Zakka Films. By the way, Zakka Films means 雑貨映画in Japanese. It is a made up word combination, but zakka in Japanese means miscellaneous goods, so I thought I’d deal not just with documentaries, but also with other rare films which are powerful and excite fans of good cinema. As you know, the first DVD of Zakka Films was The Roots of Japanese Anime, a collection of classic animation, not documentary. You see I had no experience in running my own business in Japan, and here in the US I was a non-English speaker, so I thought I should not try something too difficult at first. Classic animation had a broader appeal and there were already many fans of Japanese animation. Starting with this, I could learn how to produce a DVD, how to promote it, and how to sell it.

Although much of pre-war animation has been lost, many great animated films by Noburo Ofuji and Kenzo Masaoka did survive until the present day.    What criteria did you use in selecting films for The Roots of Japanese Anime: Until the End of WWII? 

If you want to access classic animation films, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, is the best place to visit, but it is almost impossible for us to make a DVD from their films. Fortunately, there are some classic animation collectors in Japan. All the films on The Roots of Japanese Anime were from one collector whom I had known for a long time. At the beginning of this project, I had a longer list of films to include, but the process of working on permission and rights issues trimmed it down to eight films. For me Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (review) was the one which couldn’t be removed, since it was so historically significant. We also made a booklet that comes with the DVD which includes historical backgrounds of each film, and out customers have liked that.

Do have any plans to release more anime in the future?

Right after I released this DVD, I received requests from many customers about what they want next. Many of them were popular 1970s anime which were made for TV such as the anime of Fujio Akastuka or Go Nagai. If I won a fortune in a lottery, I might put out such DVDs, but that is a bit beyond our scale. However, if I have another chance to work on classic animation again, I would do it.

Zakka Films released four documentaries by legendary filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto who passed away in 2008.  Did Tsuchimoto know of the plans for their release?

I wish he had known of this plan. Two years after his death, my husband and I visited his office, Ciné Associé, a company which was taken over by his wife and sometimes editor of his later films, Motoko Tsuchimoto. I told her about my project before the plans were even concrete, and she was very happy to hear of it, and it was her enthusiasm that helped start the project. Of course I needed to discuss the project with Siglo, the production company for Minamata: The Victims and Their World (review). Both of them were so supportive. Motoko-san provided us tapes, documents, books and whatever was helpful for Zakka.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Tsuchimoto’s documentaries about Minamata and Hiroshima seem more important than ever – particularly his focus on the victims of these manmade catastrophes and their stories.  What can today’s documentarians learn from Tsuchimoto?

Tsuchimoto’s belief was that “If there is no record, there is no truth.” When he started making documentaries about Minamata, Minamata disease was taboo: no one wanted to talk about this disease, which is why his first attempt to make a documentary about Minamata for television totally failed. So what he did was to enter their world: he and his staff started living there, and volunteered to do things like drive a car to help them. Minamata was a poor town and cars were still rare. After building closer relationships with them—a method that wasn’t unusual in the 1960s given the Sanrizuka series by Ogawa Productions—he and his staff gradually started shooting. Their office was always open so people from Minamata could make casual visits and Tsuchimoto could show them the rushes they just shot. Building trust, people who refused to be filmed at the beginning ended up turning to ask him to film them! That’s why he could shoot so many of the victims for Minamata: The Victims and Their World. 

This documentary became an important document in publicizing Minimata disease so they could be officially recognized as a victims by the government of Japan at that time. Tsuchimoto’s Minamata series is not just a document, it is a record of human dignity. For cinematic beauty, I believe some of his films should be ranked among the top films of world cinema history. You cannot find in his films the terrible images of the victims that you can find by searching YouTube with the keyword “Minamata.” He patiently waited until the patients were relaxed and tried to film their most beautiful expression. I think that’s how he in the end could create works that made you think deeply about social contradictions. After the Fukushima nuclear accident, many documentary filmmakers have been to Fukushima or Miyagi to make documentaries. I think it is fine to have many different styles and methods, and not all of them need be masterpieces. But I wonder how many filmmakers think like Tsuchimoto did about how to film such tragedies, and how their work relates to the issues. The documentaries I like to see are not those that are complete when you’re finished watching, but those that start then. Tsuchimoto’s films are like that.

On the Road: A Document (1964) is a groundbreaking film for its experimentation with the form of dramatized documentary.  Can you talk a little bit about why this was such a radical film when it was released and how it was received by audiences?

This film was originally made as traffic safety film for the Metropolitan Police, but it was shelved for nearly 40 years because Tsuchimoto did not make the film that was ordered. Tsuchimoto was working with the drivers union to expose their problems and unhealthy labor conditions, while also masterfully editing the footage like a city symphony, so when a police official finally saw the film, he called it “useless—the plaything of a cinephile.” Until recently the film was not shown openly except at some film festivals, so for a long time On the Road was a kind of phantom film. The production company went bankrupt, so the rights finally reverted to Noriaki Tsuchimoto himself, and the DVD was released in 2004 in Japan.

The name “Zakka” (miscellaneous goods) suggests that you plan to expand your catalogue to include more than just classic works of animation and documentary.  What is next for Zakka Films?  

I am going to continue working on Tsuchimoto’s works, but in the spirit of my company’s name, zakka (雑貨), I would like to extend my business and move beyond the limitations imposed by our size and finances. The project I just opened is The Filmmakers’ Market (FM). FM is a new marketplace for documentaries that tries to break down the walls separating Japanese filmmakers and foreign viewers and allows filmmakers to bring their English-subtitled works in for direct sale, kind of like a farmer’s fresh produce market. When I produce and release my own DVDs, there are countless steps such as making subtitles, designing the DVD cover, making booklets, and so on; that is a big investment in time and money, so we have to limit ourselves in what we actually release. But FM is basically Zakka helping independent filmmakers sell the DVDs they have already made to a foreign market. It opens up the possibilities to obtain rare documentaries, some of which are not even commercially released in Japan. We feature not only Japanese but also other Asian documentaries. All of the DVDs are produced by the directors and producers themselves; for some, Zakka will help make an English booklet or cover, but some may have only Japanese on the package or in the booklet (we will note as such when selling it). But and all of them will have English subtitles. Please come and look at the films brought to market!

産地直送 Filmmakers’ Market (official website)

ROKKASHO RHAPSODY  Director: Hitomi Kamanaka (read review)

In 2004 the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was completed in Rokkasho village as a facility for reprocessing spent fuel from Japan's nuclear reactors into plutonium. The film spotlights the people of the village, who hold diverse opinions regarding this huge, nearly operational national project.

ECHOES FROM THE MIIKE   Director: Hiroko Kumagai

The story of the Miike Coal Mine, the largest mine in Japan, which ceased operations on March 30, 1997. Hiroko Kumagai interviewed over 70 individuals, men and women, including Koreans who were forcibly brought to Japan. The film looks at Miike not just to explore the past, but also to think about the future: what it means to work and to live.

BREAKING THE SILENCE  Director: Toshikuni Doi

In the spring of 2002, the Israeli army surrounded and attacked the Balata refugee camp. The camera follows residents living in at state of terror and records their lives and feelings.

ARTISTS OF WONDERLAND Director: Makoto Sato

This is a film about seven artists. It's also about seven people who are mentally handicapped. This has all the marks of a Makoto Sato film: the quirky humor and passion for everyday human life.

BINGAI  Director: Feng Yan

Bingai, a Chinese documentary by Feng Yan—a director deeply inspired by Shinsuke Ogawa—has just been added to the Filmmakers' Market at Zakka Films. Bingai won the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize (the grand prize of Asia program) at the Yamagata Film Festival.

MAPPING THE FUTURE NISHINARI  Directors: Yukio Tanaka, Tetsuo Yamada

Nishinari in Osaka is home to one of Japan's largest concentrations of day laborers, with much of the population being composed of homeless persons, buraku(a discriminated community of descendants of outcast groups), former yakuza, and Korean-Japanese. This documentary presents the people of Nishinari, not from on high, but rather from their own level.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Another Glimpse at the Yayoi Kusama documentary Princess of Polka Dots

Filmmakers Heather Lenz and Karen Jonson are sharing another glimpse at their documentary in progress Kusama: Princess of Polka Dotswhich examines the life and career of the extraordinary artist Yayoi Kusama.  Today they posted a new video on Youtube:

This 7-minute clip was put together for the Kusama retrospective at the Tate Modernin London (9 February – 5 June 2012).  I have been impatient to see this film since I first discovered their 2007 trailer:

However, it would seem that they are still trying to raise enough tax-deductible donations to cover the costs of archival image licensing and the cost of post-production.  You can support this promising documentary by donating money here.  If they can secure financing they hope to get the film out to festivals sometime this year.

I also learned this week through a posting on Brainpickingsthat Kusama has illustrated Alice in Wonderland.  A brilliant pairing of art and fiction which has gone directly onto my birthday wishlist for this year:

Two Tea Two (2010)

Hiroco Ichinose’s quirky animated shorts have been delighting festival audiences since 2006.  The Last Breakfast (2006), Ha・P (2008), and Cow’s Day (2009) combine stylistic sparseness with a touch of the surreal much like the films of her mentor Taku Furukawa.

Her most recent independent work, Two Tea Two,has a very tactile feel to it, with its inky lines drawn on a textured paper.  An alarm clock rings, awakening a long-haired woman with an angular face sleeping naked in her bed.   She tilts her head and contorts herself into a round shape, as if stretching her body awake.  She rushes off-screen and we hear a door close.  She reappears again in a loose fitting dress.  The sound suggests she is now on a public street and we see her gaze in a window, her face reflecting in a window as if she were a two-headed creature as she observes a cup of tea.

Cut to the woman seated in a low chair, her body oversized and contorted, as she tries to drink from her tea cup.  She looks up and a lovely short sequence unfolds in which we see traces of the world outside the café window – black ink on yellow paper.  A shadow of another female figure appears outside the window looking in at our protagonist.  Two women or the woman’s face reflected in the window?  She tilts her head inspecting the reflection of herself.  When she straightens, her mirror image remains contorted.   She pokes the contorted mirror image of herself and the mirror image rounds into her chubby form again, knocking the lid off the sugar dish as she floats to the other side of the table.  A small insect spreads its wings and scurries past the sugar dish.

We now have two identical women – or the same woman reflected – sitting in low chairs facing each other, with the coffee table hidden under the tangle of their long legs in high-heeled shoes.  They stare at each other, steaming tea cups in their hands.  In a split screen, the mirror image appears to speak to her original.

The woman with her bare shoulders above the red dress now stands in a storm, her long black hair streaming to the side in the wind.  A second head and long neck appear – a two headed woman staring at the audience.  She then curls herself into a ball and floats away. 

Back in the café, the winged insect wanders around a stray sugar cube on the table.  It splits in half then reforms before munching on the sugar cube.  The chubby version of the woman jumps past the cashier with a chink of change hitting the counter, then sheds her clothes as she jumps off screen.  A door squeaks as it closes on the vignette.  The alarm clock rings as the end credits roll.  The animated short finishes with a reprise of the city setting and the woman jumping to the coffee table in her two-headed form.

For me, Two Tea Two captures the ambivalent relationship many women have with their bodies.  Rationally we may have come to terms with our physical selves, but first thing in the morning, pre-tea/coffee and depending on what phase of lunar cycle it is, our bodies may feel heavy and bloated.  Looking bleary eyed in the mirror or at one’s reflection in a café window first thing in the morning, it is not unusual for a woman to search her own face as if it were a stranger’s, trying to reconcile our external selves with our internal selves. 

I love the little touches in this animated short of the action of city life passing by in fragments, and I identify with the feeling of being elephantine and klutzy in a tiny café.  This is a nice film to watch together with Aico Kitamura’s Getting Dressed (2010) as both films explore the relationship between a woman’s physical self and her state of mind.

Rita et Machin Rita to Nantoka no Picnic

Hiroco Ichinose (瀬皓コ, b. 1984) is, together with her husband Tomoyoshi Joko, one half of the creative animation team Decovocal.  She is a graduate of the animation department of Tokyo Polytechnic University, where she has taught part time since 2009.  In addition to her independent animated shorts, Ichinose has worked on commercial animation including the Rita and Whatsitand Bee TV animated TV series.


by Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Three Came Home (三人の帰宅, 1950)

In 2001, I was writing a paper on Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), and decided to find out if any American films had tried, as I feel Oshima did, to understand the horror of Pacific War from both the Japanese and the Allied perspectives.  Among the predictable John Wayne war films like They Were Expendable (John Ford, 1945) and Back to Bataan (Edward Dmytyk, 1945), I discovered the remarkable 1950 film Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950).

The story is an adaptation of Agnes Newton Keith’s memoir Three Came Home (1948) about her experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II in North Borneo (today called Sabah) and Sarawak.  An American writer married to British forester Harry Keith, Agnes made a name for herself shortly before the war with her bestselling memoir Land Below Wind (1939) which painted a idyllic portrait of her early married life, the land and the people of Sandakan – then the capital of British North Borneo.

The film begins with the growing unease of the British inhabitants of Sandakan as they hear radio reports about the escalating war.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the fall of Singapore, many husbands begin sending their wives and children back home.  Agnes; however,  refuses to leave her husband’s side.  When the Japanese invade British North Borneo, Agnes, Harry, and their young son George become prisoners-of-war. 

Agnes and George are separated from Harry and imprisoned first on Berhala Island and then they are shipped to the Bau Lintang camp near Kuching.  The women and children do not receive any special treatment and are forced to live on the edge of starvation in primitive conditions.  A Hollywood film of that era could not really capture the horror of the living conditions in the camp (lack of clothes and diapers, lack of hygiene and clean water, widespread disease) as Agnes does so movingly in her book, but the film does not sugar coat the situation either.  It is a rare look at the Pacific War from the perspective of an American mother.  The film was also shot on location as much as possible which gives it an air of authenticity. 

Husbands and wives separated by a trench.

Although Nunnally Johnson’s screenplay embellishes some parts of the story (a massacre of horny Australians, the stereotyping of the brutal Nekata as a hulking oaf) and leaves out some important aspects (the complexity of Anges’ relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Tatsuji Suga, how she made toys for her son, how she buried notes that she dug up later in order to keep a record of her ordeal), on the whole the film captures the essence of Agnes Newton Keith’s wartime experience.  She went through hell on earth in that prisoner-of-war camp, but emerged from the war with a surprising lack of bitterness.  Somehow, despite having had a miscarriage brought on by the stress of detainment and witnessing/experiencing torture and other cruel behaviour from the Japanese soldiers, Agnes did not learn to hate the Japanese.  She learned to hate war and what war does to humanity.  The film retains her sense of balance by showing the small gestures of good will made by some Japanese soldiers (such as the doctor secretly giving Agnes medicine)  in contrast to the cruelty and inhumanity of others (Nekata, the anonymous soldier who assaults her).

The casting of Three Came Home was really key to making this work for Jean Negulesco.  Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night, The Gilded Lily) plays Agnes – ideal casting because the women were about the same age and Colbert had a great range as an actress.  Colbert was nearing the end of her peak as an actress as there were (and still are) few good roles written for older women in Hollywood.  She unfortunately was injured during the Three Came Home shoot and lost out on the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950) – a role which Mankiewicz had written with her in mind.

Col. Suga weeps - a man broken by the horror of war

The real success of the film hinges on the casting of Sessue Hayakawa (The Cheat, The Bridge on the River Kwai) as Col. Suga.  Hayakawa had been a major Hollywood star during the silent era, but his star had waned with the coming of sound and he was stuck in France for the duration of the war under the German Occupation having gone there to star in French films directed by Max Ophüls, Marcel L'Herbier, and others.  Humphrey Bogart’s production company tracked him down to have him star as Baron Kimura in Tokyo Joe(1949).  As a seasoned actor, Hayakawa brings sense of humanity to the role of Suga – without giving this depth of character to the enemy, Negulesco would not have been able to really capture the core message of Agnes’ memoir:   

“If there are tears shed here, they are for the death of good feeling.  If there is horror, it is for those who speak indifferently of ‘the next war’.  If there is hate, it is for hateful qualities, not nations.  If there is love, it is because this alone kept me alive and sane.” (Three Came Home, p.9)

Reel Cuisine: Blockbuster Dishes from the Silver Screen

The films of Naomi Ogigami (Seagull Diner, Glasses) turned me into a fan of the food stylist Nami Iijima (飯島奈美, b. 1969).  As I wrote in Nami Iijima: Food Stylist Extraordinaire, in addition to her work styling food for great films like Chef of the South Pole and Villon’s Wife, Iijima has made a name for herself in Japan as a celebrity chef.  She has written many wonderful cookbooks such as Breakfast Menu (Asagohan no Kondate) and Life: Iijima Nami’s Homemade Taste (LIFE Nandemonai Hi, Omedetou! Gohan).

I was delighted to discover late last year that Iijima’s recipes have become available in English via the American publisher Vertical – an imprint that I associate with manga.  They publish English translations of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack and Buddha.   It turns out that Vertical also translates cookbooks, novels, and other miscellanea. 

Reel Cuisine: Blockbuster Dishes from the Silver Screen is based on Nami Iijima’s column Cinema Shokudo (シネマ食堂) which she wrote for AERA magazine between 2007-9.  Many of the recipes also featured in the Japanese book based on this column and also called Cinema Shokudo (2009).  Both books feature photography by Elina Yamasaki.   

When it first came in the post I was initially disappointed by how slim the volume is – I collect cookbooks and I like them big and bulky and full of lovely illustrations or photographs.  There is no introduction explaining who Iijima is, which clearly confused one reviewer of the cookbook.  This would have been useful as the films that Iijima has worked on have only played at festivals in North America and have not been released there on DVD. 

The first section of the book consists of recipes from films that Iijima worked on.  Each recipe is accompanied by a brief explanation of the context of the food in the film.  At the back of the book, there is some text from Iijima’s “Work Diary” that explain how she works with food and give an idea of the thought process that goes into designing food and settings for the food during film production. 

The rest of the book contains recipes from world and Hollywood cinema.  In them Iijima recreates meals that she has seen in movies.  In her short introduction (which is more like a preface) she writes that her favourite genre of film is the “slice of life” movie.  Her cinematic tastes are varied from quirky independent cinema to classics to popular Japanese and Hollywood fare.  As I associate her with modern Japanese cuisine, it was fascinating to learn that Iijima delights in the challenges of world cuisine from zha jiang mian (Chinese fried noodles in sauce) to pot-au-feu (French beef stew). 

To the North American reader, some of the recipes may seem quite ordinary – scrambled eggs from Misery and sandwiches from The War of the Roses – but one must recall that these recipes were originally written for a Japanese readership who would be more likely to have a bowl of rice with grilled salmon for breakfast and onigiri (rice balls) for a packed lunch.  Those staples of Japanese cooking are also here – with wonderful little notes from the chef.  For example, the recipe for onigiri from Iijima’s first movie Seagull Diner features the little note: “My name, Nami, apparently means ‘delicious’ in Finnish.  Rice balls filled with herring and crayfish were very ‘nami’ indeed.”  (p. 16)

Apart from the lack of introduction to Iijima herself, my only criticism of the book is that it doesn’t include more of Iijima’s commentary on the films and the reasons why she chose a particular dish from each film.  The best recipes are the ones that have this additional text.  For example, the Comics Worth Reading reviewer of this book wondered why Iijima gives us a recipe for fried chicken instead of the titular fried green tomatoes of the popular 1991 film starring Mary Stuart Masterson, Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, and Mary-Louise Parker.  Reel Cuisine only gives a mini film synopsis with the recipe.  However, in her AERA column, Iijima explains that due to the lack of commercial availability of green tomatoes in Japan she decided to teach her readers about fried chicken – a staple of the southern United States.  Fried chicken is a popular treat in Japan as well – but the spices used in the recipe would be different. 

Iijima’s recipes are not authentically from the movies she has selected – each one has her own particular take on the dish.  So the fried chicken recipe calls for sake – which I am sure was not on set during the filming of Fried Green Tomatoes.  If you want the original recipe, I advise purchasing the original novel by Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg as it contains recipes (or even the accompanying cookbook).  I recall trying those recipes when the movie came out and failing miserably as I did not have the ingredients or the technique needed.  Iijima has simplified the fried chicken recipe and made it easy for the average home cook.

This book a tribute to food in the movies written by a movie lover and chef.  The recipes have been adapted to North American measuring standards and are written in a clear and concise manner.  There are lots of practical tips and interesting ideas that I would never have thought of myself.  It's a fun little book for cinephiles like me.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Here is a list of the food/movies included:

Food for Film

Chirashi sushi (Glasses, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2007)

Napoli Egg (Handsome Suit, Tsutomu Hanabusa, Japan, 2008)

Chicken Nuggets (Chef of the South Pole, Shūichi Okita, Japan, 2009)

Boiled Tripe (Villon’s Wife, Kichitaro Negishi, Japan, 2009)

Rice Balls (Seagull Diner, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2006)

Cinamon Rolls (Seagull Diner, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2006)

Noriben (Nonchan Noriben, Akira Ogata, Japan, 2009)

Travel the World

Fried Chicken (Fried Green Tomatoes, Jon Avnet, USA, 1991)

Hamburgers (Transamerica, Duncan Tucker, USA, 2005)

Hummus (Tuesdays with Morrie, Mick Jackson, USA, 1999)

Norimaki (The Man Without a Past, Aki Kauismäki, Finland, 2002)

Silken Crab with Vegetables (Eat Drink Man Woman, Ang Lee, Taiwan, 1994)

Pot-au-Feu (Overboard, Gary Marshall, USA, 1987)

Mojito (Volver, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2006)

Fish and Chips (Dear Frankie, Shona Auerbach,UK, 2004)

Water Spinach Stir Fry (The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung, Vietnam/France, 1993)

Paella (Blame it on Fidel!, Julie Gavras, France, 2006)

Yakiniku Korean BBQ (Rough Cut, Jang Hun, South Korea, 2008)

Jeon and Porridge (The King and the Clown, Lee Jun-ik, South Korea, 2005)

Popcorn (Welcome to Dongmakgol, Park Kwang-hyun, South Korea, 2005)

Happy Brunch

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (The Godfather Part III, Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1990)

Ratatouille (Ratatouille, Brad Bird, USA, 2007)

French Toast (Kramer vs. Kramer, Robert Benton, USA, 1979)

Quiche (Waitress, Adrienne Shelly, USA, 2007)

Scrambled Eggs (Misery, Rob Reiner, USA, 1990)

Pancakes (The Notebook, Nick Cassavetes, USA, 2004)

Baked Potatoes (Juno, Jason Reitman, USA, 2007)

Green Salad (Cinema Paradiso, Guiseppe Tonatore, Italy, 1988)

Yakisoba with Clams (The Shoe Fairy, Yun Chan Lee, Taiwan, 2005)

Egg Over Rice (Kabei: Our Mother, Yoji Yamada, Japan, 2008)

Fried Rice (Tampopo, Juzo Itami, Japan, 1985)

Spaghetti Risotto (Mostly Martha, Sandra Nettelbeck, Germany, 2001)

Zha Jiang Mian (Shower, Zhang Yang, China, 1999)

Vegetable Potage (Rinco’s Restaurant, Mai Tominaga, Japan, 2010)

Penne in Cream Sauce (The Unknown Woman, Guiseppe Tornatore, Italy, 2006)

Spaghetti Vongole (The Big Blue, Luc Besson, France, 1988)

Kidney Bean Soup (Red Like the Sky, Cristiano Bortone, Italy, 2006)

Delicious Family Dinners

Risotto (Big Night, Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, USA, 1996)

Guacamole (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sharon Maguire, UK, 2001)

Sautéed Salmon (Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni, Italy, 1997)

Loco Moco (Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant, USA, 2000)

Roasts Chicken (Miracle on 34^thStreet, George Seaton, USA, 1947)

Sandwiches (The War of the Roses, Danny DeVito, USA, 1989)

Roast Beef (The World According to Garp, George Roy Hill, USA, 1982)

Macaroni and Cheese (Soul Food, George Tillman, Jr., USA, 1997)

Steak (My Date With Drew, Jon Gunn/Brian Herlinger/Brett Winn, USA, 2004)

Mushroom Dumplings (The Road Home, Zhang Yimou, China, 1999)

Burritos (The Jane Austen Book Club, Robin Swicord, USA, 2007)

Grilled Fish (Paris, Cédric Klapisch, France, 2008)

Samosas (The Namesake, Mia Nair, USA/India, 2006)

Spring Rolls (Happily Ever After, Yvan Attal, France, 2004)

Oden (Tora-san Plays Daddy, Yoji Yamada, Japan, 1987)

Sukiyaki (Always: Sunset on Third Street, Takashi Yamazaki, Japan, 2005)

Curry (All Around Us, Ryosuke Hashiguchi, Japan, 2008)

Corn Fritters and Edamame Rice (Still Walking, Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan, 2008)

Ochazuke (The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice, Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1952)

Cinematic Sweets

Apple Pie (The Shawshank Redeption, Frank Darabont, USA, 1994)

Banana Cake (Stanger than Fiction, Marc Forster, USA, 2006)

Chiffon Cake (The Secret Life of Bees, Gina Prince-Blythwood, USA, 2008)

Love Cake (Donkey Skin, Jacques Demy, France, 1970)

Truffles (Chocolat, Lasse Hallström, USA/UK, 2000)

Crème Brûlée (Amélie,Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2001)

Birthday Cake (Kitchen Stories, Bent Hamer, Norway/Sweden, 2003)

Iced Azuki (Glasses, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2007)

Wild Berries (蛇イチゴ, 2003)

There are many theories as to how the Asian variety of mock strawberry hebi  ichigo (Duchesnea chrysantha) – quite literally “snake strawberry” got its name.  The name is so old – the Japanese adopted the name from the Chinese – that no one knows its origin for certain.  This pretty little flowering plant of the rose family is found growing in the wild all over Japan.  It resembles a wild strawberry, but disappoints when eaten for it is bland.  After watching Miwa Nishikawa’s debut feature film Hebi Ichigo (Wild Berries/蛇イチゴ, 2003), I had to think of the English idiom “snake in the grass”, for in her film the members of the Akechi family  are like the hebi ichigo: on the surface they appear as lovely as wild strawberries but it is all a façade.  In fact, the more we learn about their true personalities, the more they appear to be a den of venomous snakes. 

The Akechi family have mastered the art of tatemae(建前,  the public face one is expected to uphold for the sake of family/work) to such a high degree that not even other members of the family are aware of each other’s honne (本音, one’s true feelings and desires).  The father, Yoshiro Akechi (Sei Hiraizumi), has lost his job as a salaryman but puts on a pretense of going off to “work” each day in the desperate hope of finding a job so that he does not lose face with his family.  His wife, Akiko (Naoko Otani) plays the role of dutiful housewife, taking care of the household and her increasingly senile father-in-law Kyozo Akechi played with terrific comic timing by the great rakugo storyteller Matsunosuke Shofukutei.  Akiko never complains, despite the fact that her situation has become intolerable. 

When their daughter, the straight-laced school teacher Tomoko (Miho Tsumiki), brings her boyfriend Kamata (Toru Tezuka) home to meet the folks, he is totally taken in by the Akechi family’s apparent normalcy.  Having been raised in a privileged family of inherited wealth, Kamata thinks that he has found a potential wife from the ideal family in which the mother and father selflessly sacrifice themselves by working hard for the good of the family.  This public façade (tatemae) comes crashing down at the grandfather’s funeral when one-by-one the members of the Akechi family begin to reveal their true selves (honne).  The greatest family secret of all is Tomoko's disowned brother Shuji (Hirayuki Miyasako), the proverbial black sheep of the family, whose unexpected return brings even more chaos. 

On the surface, this sounds like an absolutely depressing tale, but Nishikawa has written a brilliant black comedy on par, in my opinion, with the classic Alec Guinness vehicle Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949).  It’s the kind of humour that has one cringing and laughing at the same time.  On the Japanese DVD release of Hebi Ichigo the acerbic dialogue has been excellently translated by Linda Hoaglund (director of ANPO: Art X War) for the English subtitles.  It is rare for a debut feature film to look and sound so terrific, but Nishikawa was fortunate to have the guiding hand of Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Still Walking) as her producer.  Not only did the film go on to win Nishikawa the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival, but it marked the beginning of a directorial career that has been brilliant so far with Sway (2006) and Dear Doctor (2009) bringing her much critical praise.

Hebi Ichigo is available via cdjapan:

Hebi Ichigo (English Subtitles)

Sway (ゆれる, 2006)

Is all that we see or seem

But but a dream within a dream?

- Edgar Allen Poe

The human mind loves to try to bring order to chaos.  That is why readers are drawn to classic detective fiction like that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie where we marvel at the ability of Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot to solve the mystery conclusively by bringing together threads of clues and witness testimonies.  The modern detective; however, will tell you that such eyewitness testimony is often not very reliable.  Not only can it be coloured by prejudice, but the human mind can sometimes play tricks on us.

The first sign in Sway (ゆれる, 2006) that Takeru Hayakawa (Joe Odagiri) is not a reliable witness comes when he returns to his home town for his mother’s funeral. The self-anointed black sheep of the Hayakawa family, Takeru barges late into the funeral services dressed head to toe in red, inciting his father (Masatō Ibu) into a rage over his lack of filial piety.  The root of the bad feeling appears to be Takeru’s decision to reject joining the family business – a non-nondescript gas station – to become a big shot photographer in Tokyo.  Yet, Isamu Hayakawa’s extreme reaction to his son suggests the strife runs even deeper into the family’s history.

The older brother Minoru (Teruyuki Kagawa), tries to bridge the yawning chasm between them by giving Takeru their mother’s Fujicascope projector and old 8mm home movies she took when they were little.  One of the 8mm reels contains footage of a family outing to Hasumi Gorge, where Minoru recalls fondly fishing there with their father.  Takeru does not remember ever going to the gorge and Minoru teases him, telling Takeru prophetically that he has selective memory made cloudy by the Tokyo smog.

Sway (Yureru) (English Subtitles)

Order from cdjapan

The camaraderie between the brothers sours when Takeru decides to seduce his old girlfriend Chieko Kawabata (Yōko Maki).  Chieko has been working for the Hayakawas since the company she used to work for went under.  She had a friendly, flirtatious relationship with Minoru and he’d been hoping she might take a fancy to him.  Chieko joins the brothers on a trip to visit Hasumi Gorge, and her shocking sudden death at the old suspension bridge is the mystery that sets into motion the remainder of the film.  However, whether or not Minoru was responsible for Chieko's death is really just a red herring.  The true question is whether or not this tragedy will bring the brothers closer together or tear their tenuous relationship apart forever.

Director Miwa Nishikawa has a deft hand for creating dramatic tension in her screenplays.  Whereas the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, would create it by showing the audience more than what the characters know, Nishikawa creates suspense by withdrawing visual information from us.  We only see as much of the events on that fateful day as Takeru can remember, and we are drawn into his struggle to find a way to help his brother avoid being sentenced to prison for murder while remaining true to himself.  We share Takeru’s frustration at not knowing all the details of what led to Chieko falling from the bridge.

Sway is an extraordinary film which at turns recalls the themes of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashōmon(1950), the mysterious beauty of Peter Greenaway’s Picnic at Hanging Rock(1975), and the withholding of information narrative structure of Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994).  The colours in Sway are muted, but beautifully done and like Hitchcock and Kurosawa one has the impression that every frame of the film was carefully composed ahead of the filming.  It’s the type of film one needs to watch more than once in order to appreciate the subtle nuances of expression and meaning. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The Japanese DVD release of Sway has excellent English subtitles for the feature, no subs for the extras.  The film was so well received at festivals that it also got a US release.

Directed and Written by Miwa Nishikawa

Cinematography by Hiroshi Takase

Original Music by the Cauliflowers

Cast 

Joe Odagiri as Takeru Hayakawa

Teruyuki Kagawa as Minoru Hayakawa

Masatō Ibu as Isamu Hayakawa

Hirofumi Arai as Yohei Okajima

Yōko Maki as Chieko Kawabata

Face To Face (お向かいさん, 2007)

The animated films of Kansai artist Mika Seike (清家美佳, b. 1975) are a rare treat. Information about her is even harder to come by as she has very little web presence.   As far as I am aware, Face to Face(Omukaisan/お向かいさん, 2007) is the most recent animated work released by Seike.  As in her previous films, she uses scanned objects and photographs of her actors (in this case Natsuko Miyata and Yoshiro Togami) for the basic forms of her animation, which she manipulates, colours, and animates on her computer.  As in her previous films, the people and backgrounds in Face to Face have a grey, textured tone similar to that of newsprint.  In contrast to the grey and black of the human forms, elements of the natural world, such as leaves, butterflies, and flowers have been vividly coloured. 

2 films by Seike appear on Thinking and Drawing

A female hand enters from screen left and puts a green leaf down on a flat surface and it grows roots and transforms into a small tree that leans to the left.  Then a male hand enters from screen right and places a red leaf on the tree.  This leaf sprouts into a branch giving the tree a more balanced shape.  The camera then cuts to a wider angle and we see that the surface on which the tree is growing is not earthen, but a small wooden card table.  A man and woman sit at the table, hands on their laps, heads bent forward in rapt concentration as if they were playing chess with one another.

The woman raises her head, and a green leaf pops out of her mouth, like a ticket out of a vending machine and she places it on the tree, causing a new branch to form.  The man does the same with a red leaf.  And so the “game” continues, with the man and woman staring intently at one another across the branches of the tree.  Their faces have a rough quality to them as if they were made out of corrugated paper. 

When the tree is full with entangled branches of green and red, one of the green leaves suddenly pops off the tree and begins to fall.  The man looks surprised and the woman’s expression suggests that she is crestfallen by this – her eyes lower to watch it fall.  When the green leaf touches the table, it begins growing into a vine which rapidly wraps itself around the woman’s neck and head.  Another leaf comes out of her mouth and she places it on the tree.  As the green leaves grow higher, close ups show us that the leaves are now almost blocking out eye contact between the woman and man. 

Two red leaves fall to the ground and transform into vines that wrap themselves around the neck and face of the man.  Another red leaf comes out of his mouth, but instead of placing it on the tree, he plants it on the woman’s side of the table, where it grows into a red-leafed vine that wraps around the woman.  She opens her mouth and a green vine grows out of it, wrapping itself around the man’s face.  He releases another red leaf, but instead of planting it, holds it up defiantly between their lines of vision and it transforms into a red flame.  He sets the vine alight, and the flame travels, as if up a dynamite cable, to the woman’s mouth.  Consuming the flame causes a small stone to fall out of the woman’s mouth.  She then raises her head and a stone shoots out of her mouth, hitting the man on his forehead. 

Seike's Fishing Vine (2006) appears on Tokyo Loop

The woman looks over the man’s shoulder at a butterfly fluttering past the window, set against a red sky.  Her gaze then shifts to the floor, where there are three stones – suggesting that this has happened before.   She then removes the vines from her face.   She walks to the window to peer outside.  As she does so, the red butterfly comes to greet her on the windowsill and a rumble of thunder can be heard.  Outside, there are some of flower-boxes – some full of colour, some empty – and a giant stone appears to have fallen at some point on the ground causing fissures in the concrete.  The woman’s gaze follows the butterfly as it soars into the sky, joining other butterflies against a ruddy sky.  This establishing shot reveals a landscape of dull grey apartment buildings, each with flowerboxes giving the scene some colour.  In some of the apartment windows other people can be seen sitting at tables performing the same ritual of planting leaves on tables. 

As the butterflies continue their soaring, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind joins the low rumble of a distant thunderstorm.  Eventually, the butterflies plant themselves on the floor of a small wood of red-leafed trees, causing another red-leafed tree to sprout.  This tree also produces a fruit, out of which is born another butterfly.

The butterfly flies to the woman and lands on her hand, then journeys into the sky.  The camera pulls back to reveal that the urban landscape seems to be walled.  The camera pulls back further to show that these walls are actually the walls of a box that juts out from the chest of the man.  Back inside the apartment, the woman returns to the table.  The sky is now green and the red butterfly has joined them.  The man looks down, then removes the vines from himself, stands and closes the box into his chest, as if it were a bureau drawer.  He walks to gaze out the window on the opposite side of the room, where a green butterfly lands on the window sill.  Between the apartments out this window is a much less bleaker scene:  a garden full of greenery and colour.  Some purple butterflies plant themselves in the grass causing a stone to grow out of the earth.  The green butterfly returns to the man who looks at it intently before watching it fly away again.  The camera then pulls back to reveal more of this garden community, and then to show that it too is inside a box, but this one is jutting out of the woman’s chest.  When she closes it into her chest, a green butterfly escapes from it and joins the red butterfly on the tree on the table.  The red butterfly then lands on the woman’s forehead, then enters the woman’s mouth.

Inside the woman, the butterfly flies downwards and arrives in the garden where the man is gazing out the window.  It plants itself in the ground in front of the man and sprouts into a red-leafed tree.  The green butterfly then flies to the man’s forehead, then into his mouth and appears on the stormy side of the house, where it plants itself in the empty flower-box. Unlike the red butterfly, which sprouted a tree of its own colour, the tree that the green butterfly creates has both green and red leaves.  The man returns to the table and the couple stare at each other over the original tree.  Each pulls a leaf from their mouths and plants them on the tree, causing butterflies to emerge – the red butterfly lands on the woman’s forehead and the green on the man’s forehead.  As the camera pulls silently away, we see the butterflies then enter their mouths again.  The camera continues to pull back, out of the window.   The final image is of the man and woman, framed in a window, staring at each other over the green and red tree on the table.

Seike’s characters inhabit a monochrome world and the only signs of nature – the leaves and the butterflies – seem to represent communication between men and women.  But, instead of being a beautiful organic process, the relationship between the two sexes has been reduced to a game of strategy.  It is a bleak vision of the modern world with the vibrant butterflies being the only signs of a possible transformation of the relationship into something more beautiful.