Most contemporary Japanese films, regardless of their level of radicalism or genre, deal with a world in which Japan no longer exists



When talking about specific areas of new Japanese films and their relationship to the wider feeling of world, Akira Mizuta Lippit notices that those spaces became islands, ends of the world beyond borders and the finality of worlds, close to the disappearance of space. Indeed, most contemporary Japanese films, regardless of their level of radicalism or genre, deal with a world in which Japan no longer exists. The topic of a conflict between the old and the new world is nothing new. One particularly continuous theme in Japanese film (as well as in Japanese society and history) is the “immanent otherness” of women, young people and foreigners - representatives of the world beyond the borders of mainstream Japanese society and film. If you want to say something about Japan, focus on women,” said actress Sachiko Hidari a long time ago and pointed to the complex representation of women in Japanese films. Dominant, emphasized questions of a breakup of objects in contemporary film, which is an allegory for the breakup of a nation, are likewise not new and can be traced to the depersonalized, minimization of persons in films by the director of the New Wave as well as connected to political and personal crisis after WW II, trauma of the atom bomb and a shadow and taboos of nationalism and isolation.

Within this program and thanks to the Japanese Embassy in Zagreb and the Japanese Foundation, which organized this film tour in countries of East and Central Europe, we will have the chance to see seven contemporary Japanese films. These films are symptomatic of key problems of the contemporary world and intertwine dichotomies of the individual and collective as well as the national and transnational in a conflicting desire for reintegration and overcoming boundaries.

Kagami no Onnatachi / Women in the Mirror is a neoclassic film by the famous modernist Yoshishigo Kiju Yoshida from 2002, which focuses on the multilayered and shattered subjective world of three women who could be family or could have the same memories. Their sense of world is once again connected to the victims of the atom bomb Hibakusha. The place of remembrance is Hiroshima, and Yoshida’s reference point is Yasujiro Ozu’s anti-film.

A satire about an escape from family and the return home of an unhappy wife and mother, after visiting a revitalizing old spa, Takkyu Onsen / Ping-Pong Bath Station by the director Gen Yamakawa from 1998, prototypically portrays the unchanging role of a woman in Japanese patriarchal society.

Kaneto Shindo’s layered combination of a documentary and feature meta-film Sanmon yakusha / By Player from 2000 is comprised of excerpts from different films, documentary materials and acted scenes. >From the perspective of two actors, Taijiji Tonoyama, who performed in more than 250 films and the actress and his wife Nobuko Otowa, director Shindo recapitulates fifty years of his own independent production house Kindai Eiga Kyokai, as well as the history of independent film making in Japan.

Films about young people (seishun eiga) in this program cover ethnic issues and the problems of “parasitizing”, violence and social rebellion. Yukisada Isao’s film Go from 2001 is an adaptation of the work of a Japanese writer of Korean origin, Kazuki Kaneshiro, about discrimination toward third-generation ethnic Koreans living in Japan. It also speaks about the borders of cultural diversity, shame and inferiority complexes as well as identity issues from double names to differences between people of Japanese and Korean nationality.

A road film “without the car or the road” Realism no Yado / Ramblers by Nobuhiro is based on Japanese cartoons (Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga) and the minimalism of American and European independent film. In a humorous way, it shows the adventures of two losers, self-proclaimed filmmakers who arrive at a train station to meet the potential actor in their film who is a real film star.

The satire Shinkokyu no Hitsuyo / The Necessity of Deep Breathing from 2004 by the director Tetsuo Shinohara depicts how “parasitizing” gets cured in fields of sugar cane as an absurd return to a society in Okinawa during thirty five days of hard physical labor.

The master of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa in his film Akarui Mirai / Bright Future from 2003, taking into account the issue of different values and using the motif of generational conflict and social rebellion, creates another apocalypse. Because of the loneliness of two empty, non-human characters that are joined by a poisonous jellyfish as an ominous foreshadow of doom and the reminiscence of a mythical father figure, there is no sense in the world at all. (Tanja Vrvilo)