Best 10 Japanese Documentaries of All Time

Last month, the Gifu-based Italian film critic Matteo Boscarol put out a call for critics and fans of Japanese documentaries to put together their Best 10 Japanese Documentaries of all time on his new blog Storia(e) del documentario in Giappone ~ percorsi ed esplorazioni nella storia del cinema di non-fiction nipponico.  It is always hard to choose just ten films and then arrange them numerically, especially with a country that has such a rich documentary tradition.  My least favourite documentaries in Japan are the television variety with their unnecessary voice-over narrations.  I have chosen for my list a cross-section of different documentary types in addition to the necessary classics.  

1.  Tokyo Olympiad (東京オリンピック, Kon Ichikawa, 1965)

I have a personal connection to this film, because my aunt has a small cameo in it, but that is not why I have chosen in as my number one Japanese documentary of all time.  Growing up with a sport teacher for a father I have seen countless sports documentaries in my time, which I suspect was why the experience of watching Tokyo Olympiad for the first time made such as impact on me.  The scope of the film is like no other sports documentary, and its focus not just on the great highs but also on the great lows of the event makes the film unique.  It is also a brilliant (deliberate) counterpoint to Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938), which in the 1960s was the best sports film ever made in spite of its problematic subject matter.  One of my favourite sequences is the marathon, which I wrote about in World Film Locations: Tokyo (ed. Chris MaGee, 2011).  The marathon route followed the historic Kōshū Kaidō (甲州街道), one of the Five Edo Routes (五街道) that connected the outer provinces to the capital in ancient times.

2.  A Man Vanishes (人間蒸発, Shōhei Imamura, 1967)

This is such a brilliant film in the way that it plays with our expectations as documentary spectators.  It begins in a relatively straight-forward way presenting itself as a documentary about the riddle of an ordinary man who disappears without a trace.  But instead of presenting a mystery and then solving it, the film begins to cast doubt on the nature of the missing man’s relationships, business ventures, and even the role of the documentary filmmaker himself.  The complexity of humanity, and the difficulties in discerning what is real from what is illusion are expertly probed in this film.   

3.  Minamata: The Victims and Their World (水俣 患者さんとその世界, Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1971)

The first in a series of documentaries Tsuchimoto made about the plight of victims of Minamata disease, this film has become the standard for films about people suffering at the hands of unfeeling corporations / governments.  Read my review of this film to learn more.

4.  Pica-don (ピカドン, Renzō and Sayoko Kinoshita, 1978)

Following on the success of Chris Landreth’s Ryan (2004) and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (2008), the animated documentary genre has grown in stature in recent years.  In the 1970s, it was a genre rarely used.  The Kinoshitas’ powerful depiction of the day an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima uses cutout animation to depict the horrors of that day.  Based on the testimony and drawings of survivors, the film drives home the message that we should never forget and never allow this atrocity to happen again.  Read my review to learn more. 

5.  The Shiranui Sea (不知火海, Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1975)

Emotionally for me, this is the most powerful of Tsuchimoto’s documentaries about the Minamata disaster.  Fishermen continue to fish the poisoned waters, discarding their catch because it is inedible, because fishing is all that they know.   It explores just how deeply the mercury poisoning has affected the community in Minamata, particularly the children – innocent victims who have been neurologically scarred for life.  See trailer for the Zakka Films release.

6.  Antonio Gaudi (アントニー・ガウディー, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1985)

With very little spoken word, this mesmerising film takes us on a cinematic journey through the fantastic career of Catalan architect Gaudi (1852-1926).  Alongside films like Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983) and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), it ranks among the most poetic documentary films of all time for me.

7.  Genpin (玄牝, Naomi Kawase, 2010)

As I wrote in my review of this film in 2011, this is the most is the most beautiful documentary I have ever seen about child birth.  It is also the most informative for the way in which it records the varied experiences, hopes, and fears of the women.  Although the birthing methods might not appeal to all women, I would encourage pregnant women to watch the film for an alternative perspective on pregnancy and child birth.

8.  Hitomi Kamanaka’s films about nuclear power and radiation:

Hibakusha at the End of the World (ヒバクシャ 世界の終わりに, 2003)

Rokkasho Rhapsody (六ヶ所村ラプソディー, 2006)

Ashes to Honey (ミツバチの羽音と地球の回転, 2010)

I really couldn’t decide which of Hitomi Kamanaka’s films to rank as "the best" as they complement each other so well and the issues they raise concerning radiation and the use of nuclear power in Japan are even more important in the wake of the Fukushima disaster than they were when Kamanaka started out on her cinematic journey.  Read my reviews of Rokkasho Rhapsody and Ashes to Honey to learn more.  Her films can be ordered from Zakka Films. 

9.  AK: Akira Kurosawa (A.K. ドキュメント黒澤明, Chris Marker, 1985)

This documentary is not everyone’s cup of tea with everyone from hard-core Kurosawa fans to even Vincent Canby of the New York Times blasting it for a variety of reasons (read my review of the film to learn more).   Often packaged as a DVD extra, the film is often mistakenly viewed as a bad “Making of” Ran (乱, 1985) documentary, but that is not what it is at all.  Marker has created a carefully crafted homage not just to Kurosawa himself but to the team who worked closely with him.  

10.  ANPO: Art X War (Linda Hoaglund, 2010)

An amazing film about the psychological impact of war and occupation on the Japanese psyche, as told through the art, photography, and films of the post-war period.  Read my full review here.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2015

10 More Things About Natto Wada

Shunji Iwai’s 2006 documentary The Kon Ichikawa Story (Ichikawa Kon Monogatari) arrived in the post yesterday afternoon. As connoisseurs of Japanese film will know, Japanese DVDs are usually very overpriced compared to prices in other countries. The price for this 2 disc box set is well worth it for the beautifully designed packaging and glorious black and white photographs of the director and his screenwriter wife Natto Wada (和田 夏十, 1920-1983). 

The documentary was its flaws (more on that another time), but from it I have gleaned a few more things about Natto Wada than I knew when I wrote 10 Things I Know About Natto Wada:

1. When Ichikawa met his wife, she was working as an interpreter at Toho.

2.  When Ichikawa fell in love with Wada, he decided he would marry her after he became a full-fledged director. She chose the novel for him to use for his first screenplay: Machiko by Yaeko Nogami. This novel became his first feature film A Flower Blooms (Hana Hiraku, 1948) 

3.  On April 10, 1948, Ichikawa and Wada married quietly in a local shrine and invited a few close friends from Toho to celebrate with them.

4.  The name Natto Wada initially was their pen name as co-writers, but it soon became her name. In private, she called him “Danna” (often translated at “master”, it is a traditional way for a wife to refer to her husband)  and he called her “Natto-san”. 

5.  Ichikawa and Wada could have intense creative arguments with each other that could lead to them eating dinner together in silence. But, Ichikawa admitted that when they argued he would always end up being the first to give in because he had to admit that her ideas were always right.

 Ichikawa in the foreground at his desk.  

Wada in the background working at the coffee table.

6.  Wada had never set out to be a screenwriter. She wanted to be a good wife and saw her writing work as an extension of her support for her husband. In a very Jane Austen kind of way, she didn’t have her own study but would write in communal family spaces like the dining table, the coffee table, or in the kitchen.

 Tanizaki (center) and Ichikawa (right)

7.  In order to acquire the rights from Junichiro Tanizaki for his 1956 novel The Key (Kagi), Wada told Ichikawa that he should prepare a wad of cash and drive a Mercedes to visit the great writer. Apparently, she was right about the cash and the Mercedes because Ichikawa did get the rights to make the film Odd Obsession (Kagi, 1960) and Wada’s adaptation met with Tanizaki’s approval.

 

7.  After Tokyo Olympiad, Wada told Ichikawa that it was time for him to do it by himself. After her retirement, she showed no interest in screenplays any longer and Ichikawa was left to his own devices.  However, before he passed away, Ichikawa told Shunji Iwai that he still had screenplays by Wada that he had not yet had a chance to film.

8.  While Ichikawa was away working on films, Wada rarely called to interrupt his work. One exception was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She called him in Osaka where he was editing a television drama.

9.  Shortly before she died, Ichikawa convinced Wada to write the ending to his Makioka Sisters screenplay. She died before the film was released.

 

10.  The last film that Natto Wada saw was E.T. (1982) at a theatre in Ginza.  She and Ichikawa agreed was Steven Spielberg’s best film to date. Ichikawa recalls her saying: “I’m glad I saw such a good movie in the end.”  She died in the New Year.

The Kon Ichikawa Story (English Subtitles)

Japanese Movie

Odd Obsession (Kagi)

Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Ten Things I Know about Natto Wada (和田 夏十)

Natto Wada (和田 夏十, 1920-1983) was the wife of renowned film director Kon Ichikawa (市川 崑, 1915-2008). During the early years of their marriage, Ichikawa and Wada collaborated on over 30 films together with Wada writing or co-writing the screenplays. After Tokyo Olympiad (1965), Wada decided to retire from screenwriting. Kon Ichikawa explained her retirement thusly: "She doesn't like the new film grammar, the method of presentation of the material; she says there's no heart in it anymore, that people no longer take human love seriously" (see James Quandt’s book). Most critics see Wada’s retirement as an important turning point in his career, though it is difficult to know how much she unofficially contributed to his films from the late 1960s until her untimely death in the early 1980s. 

1. Natto Wada was a pen name. Wada’s real name was Yumiko Ichikawa (née Mogi). 
2. She was born in Himeji in Hyōgo Prefecture – famous for its beautiful castle.
3. Wada had a degree in English Literature from Tokyo Women’s Christian University.
4. Wada and Ichikawa were married on the 10th of April 1948 and had two sons together.  It was the second marriage for both of them.
5. Wada won the Kinema Jumpo Award for Best Screenplay in 1960 for both Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959) and Odd Obsession (Kagi , 1959). She also won the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Screenplay in 1963 for Being Two Isn’t Easy (Watashi wa nisai, 1962)
6. Most of Wada’s screenplays were literary adaptations. In fact, the sheer number of adaptations Ichikawa directed in the early part of his career can be attributed to his wife’s extensive reading habits.
7. Wada also collaborated with pioneering female director Kinuyo Tanaka by writing the screenplay for The Wandering Princess (Futen no Ōhi, 1960). It was adapted from a bestselling book by Hiroko Aiishinkakura.
8. Other films she wrote or co-wrote that were not directed by Ichikawa include The Woman Who Touched the Legs (Ashi ni sawatta onna, Yasuzo Masumura, 1960) and Hateshinaki Yokubo (Shōhei Imamura, 1958).
9. In Waiting on the Weather, Teruyo Nogami says that Ichikawa always credited his wife for the unique tempo of his films, quoting him as saying that “Natto has such an ear for dialogue.”
10. Wada died of breast cancer after a long battle with the disease.

Update: Ten More Things About Natto Wada (29 August 2010)

Odd Obsession (Kagi)

Movie

The Kon Ichikawa Story (English Subtitles)

Japanese Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

The Girl at Dojo Temple (娘道成寺 , 1945)

Kon Ichikawa (市川 崑, 1915-2008) had a long and varied career, attaining great acclaim as the director of such classics as The Burmese Harp (1956), Fires on the Plain (1959), and Tokyo Olympiad (1965). At heart, however, Ichikawa considered himself a cartoonist, telling Donald Richie that after Charlie Chaplin, the biggest influence on his films was Walt Disney.

Each monk in Musume Dojoji has a very different personality to 

their face and character movement - much like the dwarfs from

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Walt Disney, 1937)

Many of the films that Kon Ichikawa worked on as an animator and assistant director at J.O. Studios and later Toho were considered lost for over half a decade. When Cinematheque Ontario published their book honouring the career of Kon Ichikawa in 2001, Ichikawa’s puppet film The Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji, 1945) was considered unquestionably lost. In an interview with Yuki Mori, Ichikawa admitted that he had no idea what had happened to the film, though he had kept his original screenplay and storyboards.

Sample pages from Ichikawa's storyboards

Ichikawa began Musume Dōjōji several months before the end of the war. It was one of several puppet projects intended for an international audience. As puppet films were not considered of very high stature, Toho allowed assistant directors like Ichikawa and Tatsuma (Tacchan) Asano a chance to direct. They were free to choose their own material. Ichikawa began adapting the story Hana by Ryunokuke Akutagawa (whose stories had been the basis of Kurosawa’s Rashomon), but changed his mind and decided to tackle the classical kabuki play Musume Dōjōji instead because he felt he could use it to convey the beauty of Japanese culture. 

Originally, Ichikawa intended the film to be a stop motion animation. It is unclear if it was financial or time constraints that led to the film being shot with live action marionettes instead of stop motion. One short sequence in the film, the cracking of the bell, uses animation techniques to depict the explosion.

The script was co-written by Ichikawa’s friend and long time collaborator Keiji Hasebe, who worked on dozens of Ichikawa films including Kokoro (1955), Odd Obsession (Kagi, 1959), and Enjo (1958), not to mention also co-writing The Insect Woman (1963) and Murderous Instincts (1964) with Shohei Imamura. The studio arranged for some of the greatest performers of the day to participate including traditional puppet master Yuki Magozaburo, singer Ishiro Yoshimura, and shamisen player Kisaburo Okayasu. The music was composed by the great Tadashi Hattori (1908-2008) who composed the scores of films like Akira Kurosawa’s No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) not to mention Kenzo Masaoka’s Tora-chan animated shorts.

Use of cherry blossoms as a seasonal and metaphorical motif.

Although the film was completed before the war’s end, it fell victim to bad timing. The war finished before the film could be released. The censoring arm of the American Occupation’s GHQ (General Headquarters) required film scripts to acquire censorship approval before shooting. As Ichikawa’s film had already been shot, it was refused permission to publically screen. Ichikawa’s film also had a strike against it because it used Japanese traditional culture as its source material. Because Japanese traditional culture had been used extensively in Japanese war propaganda, the Americans suppressed any depiction of feudal Japan at the movies in favour of more contemporary tales.

In the intervening decades, it was believed that the film was confiscated by the GHQ censors, but I have a feeling that the truth was much more mundane. I am still tracking down information concerning the circumstances of the film’s recent rediscovery. I have a feeling that the film was simply shelved and forgotten about at Toho. In 2008, Kadogawa Pictures rectified the years of neglect by finally releasing Musume Dōjōji to the general public. It appears on the DVD Style of Kon Ichikawa: Art + CM + Animation alongside Shinsetsu Kachi Kachi Yama (Ichikawa’s directorial debut), dozens of commercials that Ichikawa directed throughout his career, and a poetic documentary Ichikawa made about Kyoto.

Contrast of long shots and extreme close-ups 

are a trademark of the Ichikawa style 

The puppet movement in the film is graceful and expressive.

The original kabuki tale Musume Dōjōji is one of the most famous dance-dramas of the genre. In this ancient legend, the young woman Kiyohime performs a series of dances that follow her character arc from innocence, through frustration, into her final transformation as a vengeful serpent/demon. The tale has many variants. Kihachirō Kawamoto faithfully adapted, in all its horror, the most common version as a puppet animation in Dojoji Temple (Dōjōji, 1979). In this version, Anchin is monk who is making a pilgrimage. The young maiden, Kiyohime, encounters him and immediately falls in love with him, but Anchin resists her charms. She transforms herself into a serpent and chases after him. Anchin seeks refuge at the temple of Dōjō where the monks hide him under their great bell. Kiyohime as the serpent/demon wraps herself around the great bell and with her fire heats the bell. When the monks finally lift the bell, Anchin has been burnt to a crisp.

The only evidence of the serpent motif in this adaptation

is the adornment at the top of the bell.

In an interview with Yuki Mori, Ichikawa said that rather than just relaying the original story of Anchin and Kiyohime, he “wanted a more abstract and creative story of a young bell maker and a princess who helps him.” Ichikawa also takes a much more sympathetic view of Kiyohime transforming her from a vengeful female figure into one who is self-sacrificing. In this tale, Kiyohime becomes the central figure, with her dance becoming the climax of the film.

In Ichikawa’s adaptation Anchin is the mason making the bell. The other monks are hard at work sweeping the cherry blossom leaves and Anchin’s workers are toiling over the bell’s construction. Kiyohime peers around the edge of the bell and spots Anchin and falls in love, but he is too concerned with his work to pay her any notice. Then, disaster strikes, and the bell suddenly cracks and falls into pieces. Anchin is devastated and falls into despair. Kiyohime begins to pray to a large statue of a Bodhisattva (ボーディ・サットヴァ or 菩薩 / bosatsu). As Kiyohime prays long into the night, the moon rises symbolically behind the head of the Bodhisattva. The moon is used often as a symbol in Buddhist art as it represents the Buddha’s knowledge and virtue and symbolizes the aspirations of sentient beings to attain Buddhahood.

  Repetition of framing as a storytelling device.

The light of the moon falls upon Anchin and he races to his kiln which is firing on its own, until suddenly his great bell, with the figure of a serpent at its top stands completed before him. He approaches Kiyohime, who is still in prayer at the foot of the Bodhisattva, but when he reaches out to touch her she falls to the ground lifeless. Kiyohime has sacrificed her own life in order to restore the bell to the temple. At the next falling of the cherry blossom leaves, the spirit of Kiyohime reappears at the foot of the Bodhisattva and she begins to dance in celebration of the bell. Her dance, accompanied by the strains of a shamisen, is so captivating that the monks join in with her. When her climactic dance draws to a close, the image of her waving is superposed with a shot of the bell spinning wildly. The film ends with an image of Anchin looking up (to the moon/to the bell?) reverentially.

Use of extreme angles for dramatic effect

Ichikawa’s skill as a director is already apparent in this film. He uses a wide variety of camera distances, often contrasting long shots with close ups. He also maintains visual interest through camera movement and editing. For such a short film, quite a large number of edits are employed, especially in contrast with many filmmakers of the day. Ichikawa also uses light and shade in a very expressive manner. Although the film concerns itself with a narrative exposition, dialogue is used only sparingly and conveyed via jōruri narration and song. The story may belong to a traditional theatrical tradition, but Ichikawa’s adaptation of the story is purely cinematic.

Poetic use of light and shade... 

not to mention silhouette

The war coming to a close effectively ended Ichikawa’s career as an animator / puppet filmmaker. He had actually started shooting a second puppet film in the months leading up to the end of the war called I Became a Cat, But. . . (Neko niwa natte mitakeredo). While the title may sound similar to the satirical novel by Natsume Soseke I am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), which Kon Ichikawa adapted into a film in 1975, it was actually an original story in which a mouse transforms into a cat. When Japan lost the war, the film got shelved.  It is fascinating to speculate how different the history of puppet animation in Japan would have been if Ichikawa had been able to continue in this genre. 

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Director

Kon Ichikawa

Script

Kon Ichikawa & Keiji Hasebe

(based on a classical story)

Music

Tadashi Hattori

Puppet Master

Yuki Magozaburo

Singer

Ishiro (aka Ijiuro) Yoshimura

Shamisen

Kisaburo Okayasu