War Crimes

A Woman and War (2013) - Inoue

There are two stories happening in this slim but pointy new Japanese film. Ohira (Jun Murakami) comes home to his wife and a young son from the frontline of Northern China after losing his right arm. It's near the end of WWII. Because all the atrocities he committed, he can't have an erection. After witnessing a gang rape in his home town full of frustrated, demoralized men and the woman's almost comatose state, Ohira finally gets hard. With the promise of rice (everyone's starving because of war rations) he lures in women into a secluded area, knocks them unconscious and have his ways. He becomes a serial rapist. Then there is a defeatist writer (Masatoshi Nagase) who is waiting for total annihilation of Japan. He shacks up with a local bar hostess/former prostitute (Noriko Eguchi). His grand idea is to make love with her until the end of the world. Because of her past and being treated like a boy toy at a young age, she can feel pleasure. The end comes. Japan surrenders. The Emperor is a human being again. Now the writer is shooting himself up with heroin to death, the woman is a prostitute again, this time for American GIs. It's only the serial rapist who can give her pleasure.

Scathingly damning in Japanese war atrocities, A Woman and War is an uneasy film that plays out like the other side of JG Ballard. The violence against women in this film is to the point and unflinching. Uneasy zoom in shots are very effective in showing fuzzy moralities of the characters. A difficult film to like.

Austere Tribute to Japanese People

Japan's Tragedy (2012) - Kobayashi

How do you proceed making a film about Japan's recent tragedies- first, the crippling recession that forced 31,650 Japanese into taking their own lives in 2010, then the horrific Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear meltdown a year later, that took about 20,000 lives? One of the modern masters of Japanese cinema, Kobayashi Masahiro (Bashing, Haru's Journey) teams up with the legendary actor Nakadai Tatsuya (Yojimbo, Ran, Harakiri) again in an austere, emotionally devastating film that takes place in one location, shot in monochrome static long takes. It's a fitting film to an immeasurable grief that the battered nation must have been suffering for the last few years.

Frail Murai Fujio (Nakadai) is discharged from the hospital. He has lung cancer and without further treatment, he won't last 3 months. But that's too long of a wait for him. With his wife Yoshiko passed on a year ago, he wants to die. Against his unemployed, divorced son Yoshio (Terajima Tenobu)'s wishes, Fujio nails the doors and windows shut in his room and refuses to budge from his seat in front of the portrait of his dead wife. He grimly jokes that he will become a mummy. He warns his son that under no circumstance that he should come into the room. The idea is, after his death, Yoshio can continue to live off of his pension for a year without reporting his passing. As Fujio sits motionlessly, memories of good times and bad times appear and disappear in his mind.

Yoshio has had his share of tragedies. The prolonged unemployment led him to drinking. His wife and daughter left him and went back to her home town in the northwest, only to go missing after the devastating tsunami and Fukushima disaster. With everyone he loves gone, and the only family left being his sick, suicidal father, things really can't be any more hopeless. Even in his dire circumstances, Yoshio shows resilience, proving his survival instinct is still there, perhaps because his father has none left.

Based on a real life story about a pension scamming scandal in 2010, the tragedy befallen on the Murai family can also be used for describing the desperate situation that millions of other middle-class Japanese families have found themselves in.

Kobayashi's strength has always been portraying the realistic side of life with a sobering eye while not losing humanism in his characters. Even though Kobayashi's usual style does not reflect a typical Japanese family drama in the tradition of Ozu, he pointedly chooses to be minimalistic with Japan's Tragedy. All the interior, static misé-en-scene is unmistakably reminiscent of the old master, especially in flashback sequences which take place at and around the dining table.

The film's black and white cinematography and use of the off-frame spaces by Ooki Sumio is masterful. The cold stillness and somber greys provide the film its weight but also, strangely enough, comfort. The effectiveness of a color sequence near the end: the happy days of Murai family really broke my heart. Not only is it a complete contrast to the rest of the film, but it illustrates the fragility of human life with such a simple method.

Once again, Nakadai proves that there is no other actor on earth who could portray grief better without overacting. Kobayashi knows this and makes full use of the close-up of Nakadai's face as he stares into camera in silence in many long takes. Terajima Tenobu is equally good as a stand-in for the millions of middle-aged men and women, a generation which is perhaps going through the darkest time in Japanese history since WWII.

Emotionally and physically austere, Japan's Tragedy is not an easy film to watch. But it's a beautiful tribute to the people who've been suffering through so much grief.

Japan's Tragedy will be showing July 21 as part of Japan Cuts 2013. For more info and tickets please visit Japan Society's website.

Finding Human Kindness and Optimism in an Ordinary Man

A Story of Yonosuke (2013) - Okita
From reading a brief synopsis online of A Story of Yonosuke, and with its 2 1/2 hour plus runtime, and the fact it is a period piece (taking place in 1987), I was fully expecting a Being There or Forest Gump type parable steeped in a socio-political survey on Japan's economic boom and its downturn in recent years. In a way the film is a parable, but in the subtlest terms.

It's a winsome tale about an affable young man named Yonosuke (a funny sounding name, I was told), who is not mentally handicapped nor an ethereal butler who may or may not exist. Rather, he is a regular guy who still manages to touch many lives with his gentle, optimistic nature.

Even though the film's periodic details are astutely recreated and observed, it is not the nostalgia piece where someone would say, "Yes, I remember the Yomiuri Giants winning the world series that year". As you delve into Yonosuke's life, it makes you forget the film's artificial backdrop soon enough.

Yonosuke, a college freshman from Nagasaki, is played by Kora Kengo (Norwegian Wood, Woodsman and the Rain). His sharp features and intensity are diffused by his big fuzzy hair and goofy smile. He is an ordinary, good natured kid whom everyone wishes would be their best friend. Yonosuke first befriends Kuramochi (Ikematsu Sosuke) and Yui (Asakura Aki) (they later become a couple), when they stumble into the school's samba club in an orientation week. They become an inseparable trio. After getting infatuated with an older, alluring 'party girl' Chiharu (Ito Ayumi), Yonosuke unloads his feelings about her on the reluctant ears of Kato (Ayano Gou), a reserved man Yonosuke mistakes for someone he knows. They also become best friends. Then he meets Shoko (Yoshitaka Yuriko), a rich industrialist's daughter, who is always chaperoned by a driver and waited by a maid. Their class differences provide many comedic moments in the film. A wide-eyed naif, Shoko falls for good natured Yonosuke right away. She even follows him to Nagasaki for the summer break at a moment's notice, bewildering him and his rightfully suspicious parents. Their courtship is perhaps the most beguiling part of the film: awkward, funny, tender and uplifting- as should any first love be remembered by.

"When I die, would anyone cry?" wonders Yonosuke at his grandma's funeral. It's a question all of us ask ourselves at some point in our lives. "No, everyone will laugh when they think of you." Shoko tells him. And this they do. Throughout the film, director Okita Shuichi unhurriedly inserts people from Yonosuke's life reminiscing about their time with him after some 16 years, without sacrificing the film's gentle narrative flow and without corny sentimentality. Their chance encounters with Yonosuke enriched their lives immeasurably and they feel privileged to have known him.

I take the film as a reminder that beauty and kindness is in all of us, in this time of economic hardship/post-Fukushima Japan. It's a warm hearted, hopeful film subtly realized by Okita and its spirit is beautifully embodied by Kora. A Story of Yonosuke will go down as one of the best films I've seen this year.

A Story of Yonosuke screens on July 13, as part of Japan Cuts 2013. For tickets and more info, please visit Japan Society's website.

Sadistic Thrill?

Lesson of the Evil (2012) - Miike

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of Battle Royal. I never got the thrill from seeing school girls and boys offing each other. I thought it was way too sadistic. So going in to see Lesson of the Evil, I knew what I was getting into. I mean, it's a Takashi Miike movie for god's sake. As usual, it's very well done. It was mildly gratuitous seeing a handsome young teacher doing evil shit, then it increasingly becomes uncomfortable as he wipes out an entire High School class with a shotgun. Obviously Miike hasn't heard of Newtown. Sorry dude, I don't get a hard on seeing crying school girls getting shot in the face.

Lessons of the Evil plays part of this year's NYAFF  and Japan Cuts. If you want more information and tickets, please check FSLC and Japan Society websites.