Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (星を追う子ども, 2011)

“.  .  .  it came in a language

Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,

Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,

So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope

Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.”

- from “Orpheus Alone” by Mark Strand 

The Continuous Life: Poems

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990

For his latest anime, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, 2011), animator Makoto Shinkai delves into legends about the underworld.  In Japanese creation mythology, it is said that the female deity Izanami dies and goes to Yomi – the “shadowy land of the dead.”  The male deity Izanagi goes after her and tries to bring her back to the land of the living.  The tale has many similarities to the ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and his wife Eurydice, and Shinkai draws on the symbolism of both of these tales in this, his most complex animated film to date.

The central character is a lonely preteen girl called Asuna Watase.  Her father died when she was very young and her mother often works night shifts at the hospital which means that Asuna is frequently left to fend for herself.  In addition to her schoolwork she cleans her own clothes, makes her own meals, and does other chores around the house to help out as much as she can.  Although she is doing well in school and seems to get along well with her classmates, Asuna spends a lot of time on her own.  She often sits on the hillside listening to strange music that she can pick up on the crystal radio left to her by her father.

Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo 

(Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below) (Theatrical Anime)"

subs: English/Japanese/Chinese

One day while crossing the rail bridge, she is attacked by a giant, bear-like creature.  A mysterious boy named Shun rescues her and the next day they bond with each other listening to the crystal radio.  Shun tells her that he comes from another land called Agartha and there appears to be a connection between his native land and the music Asuna listens to on her radio.  They promise to meet up again the next day, but Shun has disappeared and is rumoured to have fallen to his death into the river.

Meanwhile, Asuna’s teacher goes on pregnancy leave and is replaced by a charismatic male teacher called Morisaki.  Asuna is fascinated by Mr. Morisaki’s tales of the underworld and visits him at his house to learn more.  It turns out that both Asuna and Morisaki are destined to journey into the underworld (Agartha) together – Asuna is drawn there by her natural curiosity and her desire to be loved, whereas Morisaki has been driven mad by his grief for his late wife and he uses violence to go on his Orphean quest to resurrect his wife.

Makoto Shinkai has admitted in interviews that he has been deeply influenced by the films of Hayao Miyazaki and the influence is very strong in Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below.  Asuna has a little cat-like creature – which the medicine man in the underworld calls a yadoriko– which is very similar to the fox-like creature Teto in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984).  The Quetzalcoatls resemble some of the kami from Princess Mononoke (1997) as well as the stone robots of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1987). The use of a flying ship – the Shakuna Vimana ark – is also very Miyazaki. 

While the Miyazaki influence is undeniable, I am not one of those critics declaring Shinkai as the next Miyazaki.  First of all, I think that’s putting way too much pressure too soon on a director who has not yet fully matured as an artist.  Second of all, Shinkai’s films have a very different feeling to me than Studio Ghibli films.  Shinkai’s work takes itself much more seriously than a Studio Ghibli film.  A typical Ghibli film is full of visual gags and self referential humour, whereas there are few laughs in Shinkai.  What sets Shinkai apart from his peers is that he is the master of dreamy landscapes.  He uses such a colourful palette – and not just for landscapes.  Some of the interior sequences of the medicine man's home looked as colourful and intricate as a patchwork quilt.  One of the more interesting sequences was the flashback to all the famous world leaders from Caesar to Napolean, from Hitler to Stalin who, according to the legends of the bottom-dwellers – tried to plunder the riches of the underworld.  The sequence was painted like an elaborate wall mural.

Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is on the one hand the moving story of a lonely girl’s quest to make sense of the world she is living in.  On the other hand, for the viewer it is a philosophical journey into the realms of the possible.  Although there is some influence of the Orpheus myth, the ideas in this film largely come from Shintō, Buddhist, and even some Sanskrit thought, with the medicine man reminding us that while it is normal to grieve the dead, we should not pity them for the cycle of life and death is a natural one.  Death is not to be feared but accepted.  We need to count our blessings and learn to let go of the past in order to continue on our journey into the future.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

This film screened at:

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

The Mirage Flower (あんてるさんの花, 2012)

Tonight the 13^th Japan FilmFest Hamburg is hosting the world premiere of The Mirage Flower (aka The Mysterious Flower of Anteru / Anteru-san no hana, 2012) directed by up and coming young filmmaker Tadaaki Horai.  The film is set in Kichijōji, a bustling neighbourhood of Musashino city. 

Shigemitsu Ogi (Paradise Kiss, Always: Sunset on Third Street 2) plays Teruo Ando, the quiet unassuming proprietor of an izakaya (Japanese-style bar) which he has named using his own nickname “Anteru”.   While doing a guest spot on a local radio station to promote his izakaya, Anteru learns about a mysterious flower from Peru whose petals can cause realistic hallucinations for up to three days.

On his way home, Anteru spots a flower fitting the description at a florist, purchases it on a whim, and takes it back to the izakayato show his wife Namiko (Misato Tanakaof Bride of Noto).  Namiko suggests that they test the flower’s powers out on three of their regular customers: Kusanagi, a divorcee with a young son; Chisato, a recently signed musician trying to make a name for herself; and Takayuki, a part-time security guard with a meddling little sister.

After having contact with Anteru’s flower, each of the central characters encounters an important figure in their lives – someone who has been haunting their dreams and whose relationship with them is unresolved.  Kusanagi (Hidenori Tokuyamaof Slackers 2) is still suffering from the pain of his recent divorce and struggling with being a single father to Shuichi.  The sudden reappearance of his ex-wife (Megumi Satoof Happy Flight) forces him to confront his conflicting feelings towards her.

Chisato (Megumi Yanagi) now considers herself a professional musician on the up-and-up, but her new record producer is pressuring her to change her style in order to become more successful.  After coming in contact with Anteru’s flower, Chisato’s former band mate Naomi (Yukina Kasai) reappears in her life.  Naomi reminds Chisato of her roots as an artist and causes her to question whether or not she has become a sell-out.

Unlike his two friends, Takayuki (Ren Mori) doesn’t seem to have any skeletons in his closest – apart from a troubled relationship with his parents – but he does have secret fantasies about the kind of girl he’d like to meet.  One day while on the job the beautiful girl of his dreams turns up and engages him in conversation.   Remembering his encounter with Anteru’s flower, Takayuki immediately presumes that this girl must be a hallucination.  Real or not, Takayuki is happy to go with the flow for as long as this trip lasts.

The film unfolds in a dream-like fashion with some scenes shot overly bright to add to the ethereal quality.  The multiple plot lines weave in and out of one another in a manner reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy with a colour scheme similar to that of The Double Life of Véronique. The line between what is real and what is hallucination is so thin that we start to realize that even the envelope story of Anteru and his wife may not be all that it seems.  The references to Hans Christian Andersen remind us that this is not a realistic story but a more of a fable about life.   It is a film about unfinished business and second chances, not to mention love, loss and forgiveness. 

The Mirage Flower will be released in Japan on the 16^thof June at the Baus Theatre.  For more information, check out the film’s official websiteor the website of the production company Musashino Eiga.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Postcard (一枚のハガキ, 2010)

Kaneto Shindō’s film Postcard(Ichimai no Hagaki, 2010) opened Nippon Connection 2012 last Wednesday night.  The 100 year old director, who was mentored by legendary filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, has said that it will be his final film.  Postcard features a strong female lead – a common feature of Shindō’s films – a resilient peasant woman named Tomoko Morikawa (Shinbou Ōtake).  In order to emphasize Tomoko’s emotional and physical strength, Shindō shows Tomoko ably carting water to her home using a shoulder pole.  This motif recalls Shindō’s classic film The Naked Island (Hadaka no shima, 1960) which tells a similar story of a rural family struggling to survive on a tiny island.

Tomoko does not live on an island but she is similarly trapped by circumstances of fate.  Women living in rural Japan during World War II may just as well have been living on islands for their choices were limited.  Tomoko has been living a meagre existence with her husband Sadazo (Naomasa Musaka) and his elderly parents (Akira Emoto and Mitsuko Baisho).  They were poor but happy for 16 years until Sadazo is called up into military service.  Sadazo is then one of the unlucky chosen by the drawing of lots to be shipped off to Manila.  On the eve of his departure, Sadazo shares a poignant postcard from his wife with his bunk mate Keita Matsuyama (Etsushi Toyokawa).  Sadazo has been unable to bring himself to reply to the postcard because he knows that anything he writes that is personal will be censored by the military.  He predicts that Matsuyama will be more likely to survive the war on home front duty and gives the postcard to Matsuyama for safekeeping, asking him to take it to Tomoko after the war and tell her that he received it.

Order now:

Postcard (Ichimai no Hagaki)

In structuring the film, Shindō has tried to find a balance between tragedy and comedy.  Indeed, tragedy upon tragedy befalls poor Tomoko in the first half of the film to the point that it almost becomes farcical.   Matsuyama himself also returns home to find his life is a tragi-comical disaster.  Matsuyama’s arrival on Tomoko's doorstep with the postcard shifts the balance towards comedy and romance with Ren Osugi putting in a terrific comic performance as a married man who desperately wants Tomoko to become his mistress.

As a female spectator I had mixed feelings about the film at first because for the first half it felt like yet another drama that romanticizes the self-sacrificing wife.  Tomoko is willing to not only do hard labour, but also to marry her brother-in-law in order to fulfil her duties to her husband’s family.  I was won over in the end by the realistic touches in the film.   Shindō has not cast the film with starlets but with mature actors who bring a lot of authenticity to their roles.  Although the string of tragedies Tomoko has to endure seems over the top to us today, such tragedies were sadly all too common in wartime Japan.  Shindō does not romanticize Tomoko’s life, he rather lays it bare.  From sex as a chore to preparing meagre meals with leftover scraps, Tomoko holds her head up high and survives all that life throws at her.

The most touching part of the film is the knowledge that for his final film, Shindō has chosen to tell his own story.  He too was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Navy.  Of the 100 men he served with, 60 were indeed chosen by lottery to serve on a ship and died when their ship was attacked by a submarine.  30 men were selected to serve on a submarine and were lost, and another four were selected to act as machine gunners on freight ships and were also killed.  Shindō was one of six men selected, like Matsuyama, to clean the Takarazuka theatre and they were the only ones from the 100 to survive the war.  "I have always had the souls of the 94 with me and have made them the theme of my existence," said the director when promoting the film at a press conference (source: Mark Schilling).  It is fitting that a director who has dedicated his career to facing injustice full on should end his career with a tribute to the memory of those men whose sacrifice gave us the gift of his talents as a director and screenwriter.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Nippon Connection 2012

Nippon Connection starts next week in Frankfurt am Main and once again has put together an impressive programme of events.  I put together the animated shorts screening Spaces In Between: Indie Animated Shorts from Japan (Thursday, May 3, 20:00).  The title of the programme is a nod to animation guest this year Atsushi Wada.  Wada won the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale for his latest film The Great Rabbit (2012).  The programme features work by top indie animators from Akino Kondoh to Kōji Yamamura.  This event will be followed by a filmmaker’s talk with Wada at 22:30.  I will write more about the animated shorts later this week.

I will also be giving a lecture called Kihachirō Kawamoto’s Quest for the Ultimate Expression of Puppets  where I look at the diverse influences on him as an animator (Friday, May 4, 18:00). This presentation is based in part on the chapter I wrote for the Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (Intellect Books, 2012) edited by John Berra, but will feature images and film clips that could not be included in the book.  It will be a kind of a visual journey through the early part of Kawamoto’s career.

I have also organized one of the children’s events this year.  There will be a book reading (in Japanese and German) of the first of the popular children’s books Rita and Whatsit(Rita to Nantoka/Rita und Dingsda) followed by five episodes of the children’s animation series.  The books were originally written in French by Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignodand illustrated by Olivier Tallec.  They were adapted into animation through a co-production between Planet Nemo and Nippon Animation.   The series is not only great entertainment for kids, but fascinating for animation fans because Nippon Animation employed not only in-house animators but also indie animators to direct individual episodes (see Anipages).   Planet Nemo is currently working on the English release of the 26 episode series.

Other events sure to delight animation fans are screenings of Makoto Shinkai’s Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (2011) and the digital shorts series Onedotzero: J-Star 11 which features Mirai Mizue’s Construction (2011).  Mizue’s Modernand Modern No. 2 will also be screening as part of the Wada event mentioned above.

On the opening night of Nippon Connection, I am planning on attending Kaneto Shindo’s Postcard(2010).  Shindo (b. 1912) is one of the oldest working filmmakers in the world, having celebrated his hundredth birthday last Sunday.  I believe the oldest, still actively working film director is Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908).

One must-see event on the programme is the rare chance to catch a live Benshi performance.  Beshi Ichiro Kataoka and the musical group Otowaza are presenting Jirokichi the Rat (1931).  The film is one of only about 20 silent films made by the celebrated trio of director Daisuke Itō (1898-1981), actor Okochi Denjiro (1898-1962) and cinematographer Karasawa Hiromitsu (1900-80) to survive in its entirety.  It was groundbreaking in its day for its use of close-ups and exciting action scenes.    

Yonghi Yang’s feature film debut Our Homeland (2012) will also screening at the festival.   I was deeply moved by her documentary Sona, the Other Myself (2010) at Nippon Connection 2010 and am excited that Yang will also be a guest at the festival this year.  I am also looking forward to seeing Nobuhiro Yamashita’s latest film My Back Page(2011).  Yamashita is a festival favourite with his films Linda, Linda, Linda (2005) and A Gentle Breeze in the Village (2007) having been warmly received at the festival in past years. 

Nippon Retro this year celebrates protest culture in Japanese documentary films.  Rare documentaries from the sixties including Shinsuke Ogawa’s The Oppressed Students (1967) and Summer in Narita (1968), Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s Prehistory of the Partisans (1969) and Minamata: The Victims and their World (1971), and Keiya Ouchida’s Underground Square (1969) will be playing along contemporary fare like Yuki Nakamura’s Amateur Riot (2010) and Ying Li’s Yasukuni(2007).

There are a number of events dedicated to the events of March 11, 2011.  Isamu Hirabayashi’s 663114(2011) will screen as part of the animation event I mentioned above.  There will also be a screenings of 3.11 Tomorrow, the Sendai Short Film Festival Project, Yojyu Matsubayashi’s  Fukushima: Memories of a Lost Landscape (2011),  Toshi Fujiwara’s documentary No Man’s Zone (2011), Masaki Kobayashi’s Fukushima Hula Girls (2011), and much more. The Japanology department of Frankfurt’s Goethe University will also be giving a number of papers examining the current state of things one year after the disaster in Fukushima.

I am looking forward to seeingShinya Tsukamoto’s critically acclaimed film Kotoko (2011).  In addition, Nippon Connection will see the international premiere of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2011).  Other intriguing films being screening this year include Hitoshi Matsumoto’s latest film Saya Zamurai (2011), Takashi Miike's Ichimei (Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, 2011), Kei Umezawa’s documentary Coming Out Story (2011) examines the hard realities of the life of a transsexual, Phillipe Grandrieux’s documentary about legendary screenwriter and filmmaker Masao Adachi It May Be that Beauty has Strengthened our Resolve (2011), and Neil Cantwelland Tim Grabham’s KanZeOn (2011).  

This is only a taste of the films and events on offer at Nippon Connection 2012.  Head on over to their website to learn more.  I look forward to seeing you all there!

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

Saturday, March 24, 2012

At 19:00, Ilan Nguyen led a conversation with Yuri Norstein about his longstanding and complex relationship with Japan.  In addition to having been a friend to his fellow animator Kihachirō Kawamoto, whom he still affectionately calls “Chiro” just as he did when Kawamoto was alive, Norstein is revered as a master of animation in Japan and has visited the country on many occasions.

Norstein discovered Japanese culture at a young age.  In his mid-teens, he found a small book of haiku poetry by Bashō in the library.  The book featured one poem per page – a clever editing choice which emphasized the minimalism of the three stark lines of poetry on the plain page.  One of the poems that he recalls being in the book is the famous one about the frog:

furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

 mizu no oto

an ancient pond

a frog jumps in

the splash of water

(Bashō, 1686)

This book of haiku made a very strong impression on Norstein.  He had learned in school that poems had rhythm and rhyme yet these poems had neither.  He was moved to buy himself a copy of the book and each time he looked at the poems, he was surprised anew by them.  “Can one say that this is poetry?” he would ask himself. 

Many years later he came across a book of Japanese woodcut prints at a friend’s house and he was again surprised.  The images had a different sense of perspective and volume than what he was used to seeing in Russia.  For Norstein, it was a revelation to realize that there was another way of seeing the world and these two incidents marked the beginning of his love for Japan. 

He got to know Russian translators of Japanese and began to learn more about the importance of gesture and movement in Japanese culture.  One thing that he learned from Japanese culture was that a subject that is very simple can express something very great.  He explained that he finds the same thing in the fiction of Marcel Proust.  In À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27), Proust’s simple observations of everyday life take on great meaning.  Norstein also remarked that this was also true of Homer’s The Iliad.

While listening to Norstein talk, it occurred to me that his interest in Japanese poetry, and particularly way in which time is expressed in Japanese poetry has much in common which his fellow compatriots Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, who were both also greatly influenced by haiku poetry and Japanese aesthetics.  The influence of Eisenstein's writings on Norstein has been written about by animation scholar Nobuaki Doi (see his ASIFA profile).  The conversation with Norstein was accompanied by a slide show by Ilan Nguyen and among the many photographs and items that were shown there was a photograph of Norstein visiting the Eisenstein Cine-club in Tokyo. 

I had presumed that Norstein and Kawamoto became friends during Kawamoto’s tour of Eastern Europe in 1963-64.  Although a photograph apparently does exist of Kawamoto with another Russian animator (it was not in the slideshow) in which Norstein can be seen working on something in the background, Norstein apparently does not recall Kawamoto’s visit at that time.  Their friendship began at the World Animation Festival Varna in Bulgaria in 1985 where they met and talked up a storm.  Their friendship developed over the coming years at animation festivals such as the second animation festival in Hiroshima in 1987 where Norstein was on jury alongside Te Wei, Paul Driessen, Nicole Salomon, Bruno Bozzetto, and Osamu Tezuka.  This festival was really a star-studded affair with Karel Zeman acting as the International  Honorary President and John Halas being the special guest.  This event is also notable as being Norstein’s first visit to Japan.

Norstein shared many amusing anecdotes.  Some of my favourites:

• the photo from Hiroshima 1987 prompted Norstein to say  that he did not know Tezuka very well but that he thought his skill as an artist was amazing
• there was a wonderful photograph of Norstein sitting at the foot of the Laputa robot on the rooftop of the Studio Ghibli museum.  Norstein laughed with delight at this photograph and it inspired him to even burst into a song from his childhood
•  when discussing the Laputa International Animation Festival, Norstein talked about the fact that he was criticized for always picking the same guy for the Yuri Norstein Award (he didn’t say the name, but it was clear he was referring to Kunio Katō who won twice: in 2001 for The Apple Incident and in 2004 for The Diary of Tortov Roddle).   His response to this criticism was: “well, I don’t know this guy personally, but his stuff is great!”
• he was quite modest when Nguyen pointed out that his films ranked #1 and #2 on the Laputa 150
• if he had had to make Tale of Tales with the interference of producers, it would never have been made
• “the most simple techniques in animation can result in something really spectacular”

On Winter Days:

• Kawamoto loved Chiro’s spirit (Kawamoto): he hated things that were false and his friendship with Kawamoto was the only reason Norstein agreed to do Winter Days
• Norstein wanted to have accurate details in his contribution but he didn’t want it to be too Japanese
• in order to get the details right, he paid a lot of attention to how a Japanese person would move, carry a bag, wear their hat, and other gestures.
• the Japanese loved his contribution to Winter Days, but he is critical of himself
• the most difficult part was getting the colour palette right.  Once they (he and his wife, along with consultation with “Chiro”) got the right colours (gold, maroon, some blue and a touch of grey), everything else fell into place
• re: Bashō meeting Chikusai: “In animation the real and the mythological can meet.”
• ““Chiro” could make everyone laugh.  He had such a wonderful laugh.  He laughed all the time.”

The evening concluded with a screening of The Book of the Dead on 35mm.  As with Winter Days, I noticed many details about the puppets and the scenery that were not as noticeable when watching a digitized version on a TV.  The details were so vivid: the lines on the puppets’ faces indicating age or weariness, the weave of kimono and other fabrics, each thread of hair carefully placed on the puppets heads, and so on.  As I mentioned in my guest stint on Vcinema in 2010, The Book of the Deadis a film that requires multiple viewings in order to fully understand all the nuances of meaning.  One thing that never ceases to amaze me when watching The Book of the Dead is the movement of the kimonos in the wind.  It looks so effortless, but the time and energy that went into painstakingly animating those sequences frame-by-frame boggles the mind.

Order JP edition:

Shisha no Sho

So ends Day 2 – I became acquainted with a number of interesting people between screenings.  Most notably,  animator Florentine Grelier (official website) and animation expert Giannalberto Bendazzi , author of Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation.  Flroentine has posted some lovely images in pixels that she made of Norstein - check it out.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forumdes Images, Day 2 (Part I)

NEXT: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum desImages, Day 3

The Japan Society presents Love Will Tear Us Apart

Bad romance, blind love, amour fou! This spring, the Japan Society of New York will screen a series of twisted, obsessive, heart-blazing love stories from Japan and Korea. Love Will Tear Us Apart, the 6th annual Globus Film Series, will run from March 2 to 18 and include 22 feature films and 2 shorts.  It is a mixture of cutting edge modern fare and avant-garde classics.  The programme includes such internationally acclaimed directors as Hirokazu Koreeda, Kōji Wakamatsu, Nagisa Oshima, Kim Ki-duk and Lee Chang-dong. 

New Yorkers will have the opportunity of enjoying the US premiere of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko and the world premiere of  Kōji Wakamatsu’s Petrel Hotel Blue.  Special guests will include actress and model Hyunri (Romance, Freeter ie wo Kau), film scholar John Berra (Nanjing University), and film historian and curator Go Hirasawa.  I saw Romance, the short by Toshiro Sonoda starring Hyunri at the Nippon Connection sponsored screenings at Japan Week in November and it's a wild ride.  John Berra is the editor of the forthcoming publication Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2, which features an essay that I wrote on the great puppet master Kihachirō  Kawamoto.

SCHEDULE

Friday, March 2

7:30 PM   Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2011)

preceded by short film Romance (Toshiro Sonoda, 2010)

+ MAKE LOVE party with Hyunri

Saturday, March 3

2 PM   Air Doll (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2009) 

4:30 PM   My Dear Enemy (Lee yoon-ki, 2008) 

7 PM  Vital(Shinya Tsukamoto, 2004)

9 PM   A Snake of June (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2003) 

Sunday, March 4

5:30 PM  Vibrator(Ryūichi Hiroki, 2004) 

7:30 PM   M (Ryūichi Hiroki, 2006) 

Wednesday, March 7

7 PM  Petrel Hotel Blue(Kōji Wakamatsu, 2012) 

9 PM  Running in Madness, Dying in Love(Kōji Wakamatsu, 1969)

Thursday, March 8

7 PM  Tale of Cinema (Hong Sang-soo 

9 PM  The Woman Who Wanted to Die (Kōji Wakamatsu, 1970)

Friday, March 9

7:30 PM  Villain(Lee Sang-il , 2010)

  

Saturday, March 10

3 PM  Time (Kim Ki-duk, 2006)

5:15  PM  Bad Guy( Kim Ki-duk, 2001) 

7:30  PM  Dream(Kim Ki-duk , 2008)

9:30 PM  Happy End (Jung Ji-woo, 1999)

Friday, March 16

7:30 PM  Snakes and Earrings (Yukio Ninagawa , 2008)

10 PM In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976)

Saturday, March 17

3 PM  Chaos(Hideo Nakata, 2000)

5:30 PM  Vegetarian (Lim Woo-seong, 2009) 

Sunday, March 18

4:30 PM  Minazuki(Rokuro Mochizuki , 1999)

7 PM  Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, 2002)

More information on the festival as well as past series and events is available at:

http://www.japansociety.org/film

The Japan Society Blog will also be covering the series during its 16-day run.

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)