The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye (福壽草, 1935)

The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers (1935)

乙女シリーズ その一 花物語 福壽草

Shōjo shiriizu sono hito - hana monogatari fukujusō

For their 10^th anniversary, Camera Japan Festival in Rotterdam presented a benshi performance with piano accompaniment of the rarely seen silent film The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers (乙女シリーズ その一 花物語 福壽草 / Shōjo shiriizu sono hito-hana monogatari fukujusō, 1935).  The revival of this film occurred in 2008/9 with screenings at the National Film Center in Tokyo (2008), who has a 35mm print of the film, and at the Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2009). Screenings of the film have featured benshi performances by either Midori Sawato or Ichiro Kataoka.  The film’s first international screening is believed to have been at the 2013 Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

The Story

The film is based on a story found in Tales of Flowers (花物語/Hana Monogatari, 1916-1924) by Nobuko Yoshiya (吉屋信子, 1896-1973).  The 52 stories of romantic female friendships in this collection were very popular with female students of the day.  Yoshiya was a prolific and commercially successful writer who is considered a pioneer in lesbian literature.  Her same-sex (dosei-ai) romances were considered acceptable because they depicted lesbianism as a phase on the road to a culturally acceptable heterosexual marriage. 

The “pheasant’s eye” of the title English common name of the flower fukujusō (フクジュソウ / Adonis ramosa).  In the original kanji it means luck (福/fuku), long life (寿/ju), and herb(草/sō).  It belongs to the family of flowers named after mythological figure Adonis.  In East Asia, the fukujusō is a rare yellow flower found mainly in central and northern Japan.  In the context of this story, the flower is a metaphor for the rare beauty of the young female protagonists.  This is made clear by the opening quote from Yoshiya herself: “I dedicate this to the lovely young flowers.”

The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye tells the story of a high school girl called Kaoru Sakamoto who falls in love with her sister-in-law Miyoko.  Her crush actually develops before she has even met her brother’s new wife.  It is an arranged marriage and the "sisters" only meet on the wedding day.  A romantic young girl, Kaoru and her friends are the kind of girls who would be likely to read Nobuko Yoshiya’s novels and fantasize about their ideal romantic partner.  As the friendship blossoms between Kaoru and Miyoko, Kaoru grows jealous of any affection Miyoko shows Kaoru’s brother.  Kaoru’s schoolmates and family act as foils for her moody behaviour.  The drama of any romance is kept light with comedic moments such as the slapstick scene where the two young ladies are being photographed together in nature and the photographer falls into the water.   The physical comedy in the film shows the influence of the American silent greats like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd.   The lesbian love affair is suggested via the female gaze and evocative mise-en-scène, but no direct dialogue.  Miyoko is equally flirtatious with her husband as she is with his sister, causing the latter to indulge in jealous temper tantrums. 

The Cast

Star billing is given to Naomi Egawa in the role of Kaoru Sakamoto.  She gives a melodramatic performance, putting on a hilarious “jealousy face” every time her sister-in-law shows her brother some affection.  The benshi, Kataoka-san, told me that Kaoru’s “jealousy face” had the audience at the 2009 Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in stitches.  Egawa’s film career seems to have just been in the 1930s.  In contrast to Egawa’s melodramatics, Matsue Hisamatsu puts in a more subtle performance as Miyoko, the object of Kaoru’s intense affections.  Hisamatsu’s film career was even briefer than that of Egawa.

The best actors in this film are Akira Kichōji (credited under his real name of Mitsuhiko Okazaki) as Kaoru’s brother Mitsuo, and Buman Kahara (also credited under his real name of Keiji Ōizumi) as her father. Both men went on to have long and varied careers as character actors.   Kichōji’s best known films are Seven Samurai (1954), where he played one of the farmers, and Japan’s Longest Day (1967), while appeared in films such as Shōhei Imamura’s My Second Brother (1960) and Pigs and Battleships (1961).  With his expressive face, Kichōji plays Mitsuo as a very charming man.  However, the show-stealing performance of the film is that of Kahara who opens the film with a hilarious slapstick bicycle ride which would have been right at home in a Buster Keaton film. 

The Cinematography

The real star of Scent of Pheasant’s Eye for me is the extremely innovative cinematography.  The film opens with a POV shot of Kaoru’s father, a town councillor, coming home by bicycle.  I am not sure how they shot it, but it does indeed look as though they mounted the camera on an actual bicycle.  At first, the councillor's form of transportation is unclear, we only know that it is a bumpy ride and get to enjoy, from his perspective, the bemused farmers’ greetings of this well-known local figure.  When we do finally get to see a shot of him, it is played for comic effect.  His way has been blocked and he berates whoever is blocking his way.  When the camera finally widens the shot, we see that he has been telling off a cow rather than a person.  Such visual gags are frequent in the film, giving us a welcome respite from Karou’s sometimes over-the-top melodrama. 

The unusual framings of dialogue and action seem fresh and innovative for the time.  By the mid-1930s in the USA, the classical Hollywood style had largely been standardized and this film would have broken all those rules.  It seems surprising that this film has remained hidden from international scholarship for decades.  The cinematographer is Asakazu Nakai (中井朝一, 1901-88), who went on to become a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa.  The film gave me a thirst to see more of his early work, as I have only seen the films for which his cinematography is renowned, like Stray Dog (1949), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), High and Low (1963) and Ran (1985).  In total, he made over 130 films in his long and successful career, but his pre-war work has been little seen or written about.

The Director

Not a great deal is known about the director Jirō Kawate (川手二郎, b. 1904 – d. unknown).  He was born in Nagano Prefecture and it is said that his admiration for the renowned film and kabuki actor Bando Tsumasaburo (阪東妻三郎, 1901-53) inspired him to get into the film industry himself.  He first worked as an extra, then as an assistant director, before becoming a director in 1932 for Shinkō Kinema.  

In 1936 he moved to what is now Toho Studios, where he made several films of the genre Kulturfilm (文化映画 / Bunka eiga).  He then returned to his hometown to work in real estate, but nothing is known about his life since he retired from the film industry.

Jirō Kawate Complete Filmography:

1932父をたづねて三千里 / Chichi wo tazunete sanzen-ri

1933時雨ひととき/ Shigure Hito-toki

1933花嫁選手 / Hanayome Senshu

1933結婚快走記 / Kekkon Kaisōki

1934 誕生日/ Tanjyōbi

1934細君ネロ 家庭争議の巻 / Saikun Nero Kateisōgi no Kan

1935福寿草 / Fukujusō

1935釣鐘草 / Tsuriganisō

1935恋の浮島 / Koi no Ukishima

1936乙女橋 / Otomebashi

1936残月の歌 / Kingetsu no uta

The Screening with Benshi and Piano Performances

Ichiro Kataoka shortly before his performance of 'The Scent of Pheasant's Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers'. Featuring Kevin Toma on piano.

A photo posted by Cathy Munroe Hotes (@nishikataeiga) on Sep 26, 2015 at 1:52am PDT

Ichiro Kataoka’s benshi performance was, as always, stellar.  He performed together with the Dutch silent film pianist Kevin Toma.  Toma and Kataoka met for the first time on the day.  They had a chance to talk to each other beforehand and did a sound check together, but they did not rehearse together.  One could liken their improvisational performance to jazz music.  Kataoka played off of the script that he wrote for the film in 2008.  Much of the film’s dialogue was preserved, but I noticed that he added his own interpretation to scenes.  I have seen him perform in Germany with projected subtitles of his script, but this film only had the NFC English subtitles of the title cards (done by the amazing husband and wife team Dean Shimauchi), so non-speakers of Japanese missed out on some of the poetic touches Kataoka brought to the film, such as his description of the changing seasons.  One moment that needed no translation was his hilarious interpretation of a scene in which two deaf old men play Go together but only have one ear trumpet to shout at each other through. 

The pianist, Toma, does not play silent movie standards.  He composes his own music, improvises, and often adds themes from some of his favourite composers.  During this performance he apparently used a melody from a piece by Toru Takemitsu.  The film was consisted of three 35mm reels that were on loan from the NFC but the cinema had only one projector, so Toma had to improvise during the long reel changes.  On the whole it was a lively performance much enjoyed by the audience.  

Incidentally after the performance I discovered that Kataoka is from Nerima (a ward in Tokyo).  This was a funny coincidence, I thought to myself, because Nerima is famous for its daikon radishes, and there is a memorable scene in The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye where Mitsuo flirts with Miyoko as she washes a long row of daikon in the river.  When I asked Kataoka about this, he laughed and told me that The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye was actually shot in Nerima and because of this, he would be doing a benshi performance of the film in Nerima next year.  Keep your eyes open for the event next year Tokyoites – it is worth watching!

Director

Jirō KAWATE 川手二郎

Script

Raizo HAGINO萩野頼三

Jirō KAWATE川手二郎

Nobuko YOSHIYA吉屋信子 (novel)

Camera

Asakazu NAKAI  中井朝一

Cast

Kaoru SAKAMOTO 坂本薫：Naomi EGAWA 江川なほみ

Miyoko (Kaoru’s sister-in-law) 薫の嫂美代子：Matsue HISAMATSU 久松美津枝

Kimiko (Kaoru’s classmate) 薫の学友春日公子：Ginko HANABUSA 花房銀子

Tsuyako (Kaoru’s classmate) 薫の学友阿部ツヤ子：Kimie HAYASHI 林喜美枝

Housemistress 舎監先生：Mineko KOMATSU 小松峰子

Governer’s wife 知事夫人：Junko KIMURA 木村潤子

Mitsuo (Kaoru’s Brother) 薫の兄満雄：Akira Kichōji吉頂寺 晃 credited as Mitsuhiko OKAZAKI 岡崎光彦

Kaoru’s father 薫の父村長さん：Bumon KAHARA 加原 武門 credited as Keiji ŌIZUMI 大泉慶治

Photographer 写真屋：Kan UEDA上田寛

Go-playing old man 碁敵のおじさん：Eirō NIIMI  新見映郎

Old man 人のいいおじさん：Joe Ohara  ジョウ・オハラ

Masako KINOSHITA 木下政子：Ruriko HOSHI 星ルリ子

Schoolmaster 校長：Yōyō KOJIMA 小島洋々

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Shady (かしこい狗は、吠えずに笑う, 2012)

Ryohei Watanabe (b. 1987) made a splash at last year’s Pia Film Festival with his debut feature film Shady (かしこい狗は、吠えずに笑う/Kashikoi inu wa hoezu ni warau, 2012) where he won the Entertainment Award and the Cinema Fan Award.  Since then, his film has shown at international festivals including Nippon Connection 13 and the Nara International Film Festival.  Yoshito Seino has listed Watanabe as one of 7 Japanese Indie filmmakers to check out at the upcoming Raindance (25^th Sept. – 6^th Oct. 2013) in the UK.

On the surface Shady appears to be a teenage girl coming of age film.  Risa Kumada (mimpi*β) is an outsider at school.  Her body type and round face don’t conform to what’s currently “cool” and she finds herself on the receiving end of cruel taunts from the school bullies.  Mocking her slightly chubby appearance, the bully ringleader Marisa calls Risa “Pooh-san” in a play on words of “kuma” (bear) in her family name. 

Risa has become so resigned to her fate as an outsider that she is startled by the sudden attentions of Izumi (岡村いずみ), who is one of the cutest girls in high school.  Wary at first, Risa soon falls under the spell of Izumi’s charm and before long the girls have become best friends who confide in each other and do everything together.  Before long their friendship takes on the intensity of a romance.

However, there is a growing sense of unease that develops gradually from the moment the film begins.  This unease is invoked through parallel story lines (the police search for missing classmate Aya), cinematography (strange glimpses of the past and the future shot in shades of grey with punches of colour), the soundtrack, and metaphor.  Right at the outset, a sense of entrapment is established when Risa as voice-over narrator wonders if people can sympathize with what it is like to be a dog on a leash, a fish in an aquarium, or a bird in a cage.  Watanabe and cinematographer Katstuki Tsuji continue this motif by filming Risa and Izumi in claustrophobic spaces and frames within the frame from the aquarium in the foreground to the electricity lines.

Izumi’s home also serves as a metaphor for her character: a strangely quiet place devoid of family life.  When Risa expresses surprise at how big the house is, Izumi mysteriously warns Risa that appearances can be deceiving.  Of course, Risa does not head this or any other warning (i.e. Izumi’s repeated quotation of Napoleon saying “Men are moved by two levers only— fear and self interest”) until she is too psychologically entangled with Izumi to escape. 

For such a young filmmaker, Watanabe has put together a tightly edited, suspenseful film.  Although I might have gone a different route with the resolution of the film, it was a delight to see such a well executed film under 2 hours in length at Nippon Connection.  A nice contrast from the countless young directors whose films drag on because unconstrained by the cost of film stock they indulge themselves with long-winded endings.  Ryohei Watanabe is definitely a filmmaker to keep one’s eye on.

For more on Ryohei Watanabe see Guillaume Boutigny’s interview with him at Nihon Eiga  (FR) and Adam Torel’s Best of 2012 posting on Wildgrounds (EN).

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

#nippon13 #nc2013

Osaka Hamlet (大阪ハムレット, 2008)

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Polonius, Hamlet I,iii, 78-9

Polonius` words of farewell to his son Laertes in the first act of Hamlet sum up the moral message of director Fujirō Mitsuishi’s live action adaptation of Hiromi Morishita’s award-winning manga Osaka Hamlet.  The film intricately intertwines the coming of age stories of three brothers – Masashi, Yukio, and Hiroki Kubo beginning with the death of their deadbeat Dad.  Embarrassingly, their mother (Keiko Matsuzaka) does not appear to be in mourning at all and even more worryingly, their long lost Uncle Takanori (Ittoku Kishibe) moves into the house and tries to make himself useful.

There could not be three more unalike brothers than the Kubo boys.  The eldest, Masashi (Masahiro HIsano), is a quiet, bookish type who is inspired to boldly come out of his shell when falls head over heels for a beautiful, wayward older woman he meets by chance.  In order to get to know Yu-chan (Natsuki Kato) better, he poses as a college student and even humours her cringe-worthy father fixation.    

The middle brother, Yuki (Naoyuki Morita) is a thug who bullies others and seems to enjoy getting into violent scraps with other thugs.  When he hears that the geek of the school has called him “Hamlet” he is at first offended because another kid at the school has a hamster named "Hamlet".  Upon threatening the young man over the perceived insult, he learns about the play by Shakespeare and is actually interested enough to take his first book out from the library.  At first, he cannot comprehend the language in the play, and has another outburst when he discovers Hamlet’s unusual relationship with his mother.  The most interesting part of Yuki’s character development is how he comes to terms with Shakespeare’s text.  Another Shakespearean element to Yuki is his capacity for extreme violence which recalls some of Shakespeare’s bloodier plays (ie. Mercutio vs. Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet).

The youngest brother, Hiroki (Tomoya Otsuka), is coming to terms with the fact that he would rather be a girl.  His family is remarkably understanding – even the thug Yuki whom one could imagine harassing people for being different.  “Koki” sports an androgynous haircut and wears a pink T-shirt.  The one person he identifies with most is his Aunt Aki (Manami Honjo) who is in the hospital with cancer.  Aki is also a bit different and enjoys role play and dressing up in costumes.  Some of the more touching moments in the film come when Koki visits his aunt in the hospital.

Even Koki’s classmates are supportive of him being true to himself.  When they decide to put on a class production of Cinderella, they collectively decide that Koki would be the best to play the lead role and cast a girl in the role of the prince.  The climax of the film comes when the play is put on and poor Koki has to endure taunting from three bullies in the audience as well as bad behaviour from other parents.  This was the most uncomfortable scene in the film as the acting was over-the-top and extremely unlikely.  First of all, it is not unusual in Japanese culture for men to play female roles, and secondly, the dialogue was really unlikely.  It turned an otherwise decent film into a TV sitcom for a few scenes.

  

The storylines of each of the family members have one thing in common: role play.  Masahi is pretending to be older than he is and role playing the father Yu-chan never had, Yukio has carefully constructed a tough guy façade for himself, and young Hiro-kun is getting to live out his fantasy by playing Cinderella in his school play.  Even their uncle is playing at being a house husband, even though he himself is not sure he is able to fulfil that role in their family.  

The theme of role play and even the plot have much more in common with A Midsummer Night’s Dream than Hamlet.  Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Osaka Hamlet has three interlocking plots and is a kind of comedy of errors.  It’s a decent little drama with much of the credit for originality of plot going to the excellent mangaka Hiromi Morishita.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

I saw a special screening of this film hosted by Nippon Connection in Frankfurt.  It is also available on DVD:

Osaka Hamlet Deluxe Edition

Coming Out Story (カミングアウトストーリー, 2011)

And in the journal you kept by the side of your bed.  .  . 

Confessing childhood secrets of dressing up in women's clothes

Compulsions you never knew the reasons to

“Searching for a Former Clarity”, Against Me!, 2005

Although there are many manga and anime that feature positive transgender characters, the reality of coming out as transgender in Japan is pretty harsh.  The social pressure to fit into the expectations of the community is so enormous, that most transgender people keep their struggle with their identity a secret for years.  Sex change operations did not even become available in Japan until the late 1990s, and it was only in 2004 that laws changed so that some transsexuals (unmarried, childless) could change their officially registered gender (learn more).

These small, but significant changes are thanks to the hard work of activists fighting for recognition and acceptance of transgender people in their communities.  Kei Umezawa’s award-winning documentary Coming Out Story (2011) follows the story of one such activist: Itsuki Dohi.  Dohi is a middle-aged high school math teacher born a boy in the 1960s who has been slowly making the transition to living as a woman for more than a decade.  Dohi always knew that she wanted to be a woman, but as a child there was no one to whom she could speak to about her feelings and so she kept them hidden until well into adulthood.  It wasn't until a co-worker came out to her as gay and lent her a book that mentioned transsexuality, that she even had a word for the deep truths that she felt about herself.  Before that, she feared that she was "hentai" (a pervert).  Now, aged 49, she is finally ready to go through with gender reassignment surgery.

Umezawa’s documentary is remarkable for its ordinariness.  There are no flashy camera movements or artsy shots.  The focus is simply on telling the story of Dohi, her friends, her community, the other transgender people whose lives she has touched, and her efforts to bring awareness to the human rights concerns of those of varying sexualities/genders.  Many films about transgender people focus on outlandish transvestites or people who have been the victims of hate crimes.  The transgendered in this film are shown to be just regular folks who are active members of their community.  Dohi teaches math and runs a broadcasting club, one of the young people she is mentoring is an out and proud young trans man working in a care home for the elderly, while others are students just barely out of puberty who are just embarking on the path of coming to terms with their true identities.

It is an understatement to say that the journey these transgender people are on is a challenging one.  One of the more poignant moments in the film comes when a friend Dohi has tried to mentor loses his/her grip on reality, dresses as a woman and tries to rob a store.  The resulting newspaper headlines lead Dohi to feel that she could have done more to save her friend.  Although many of Dohi’s friends – mostly women and other transgender people – testify about their experience with her, it struck me that there were no interviews with family members of the transgendered featured in this doc.  Their absence spoke volumes as to the difficulties transgender people face in coming out to their family and friends.  The greatest fear of all is rejection by the people and communities they care so much about.  Films like Coming Out Story are crucial to educating people to love and accept all members of their community without prejudice.


Another great little film about growing up transgender in Japan: the short fiction film Jellyfish Boy

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Erleuchtung garantiert (Enlightenment Guaranteed/もんぜん, 1999)

Brothers Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht) and Gustav (Gustav-Peter Wöhler) have very little in common with each other apart from their bad marriages.  Uwe is a self-absorbed kitchen salesman with four children whose wife Petra (Petra Zieser) gets fed up with him and walks out on their marriage.  Meanwhile, Gustav is in a sterile, childless relationship with his wife Ulrike (Ulrike Kriener).   Unlike chaotic Uwe, Gustav makes a concerted effort to find inner peace in his life, working as a Feng Shui expert, raking his miniature Zen Garden, memorizing Asian proverbs, and practicing meditation.

Consumed by grief over his failing marriage, Uwe crashes Gustav’s planned Zen Buddhist retreat to the Monzen monastery on the Noto Peninsula.  When the brothers arrive in Tokyo, Gustav’s façade of inner peace is torn away as both men find themselves overwhelmed by their new environment.  After a night on the town, the men are unable to find their hotel again and have run out of cash because they spent it all on booze.  Their inability to communicate with a taxi driver lands them in an unfamiliar neighbourhood,  and they wander aimlessly through the darkened city streets.  They eventually end up in the Taito ward where they follow the example of the homeless people there by spending the night sleeping in cardboard boxes.

The next morning, their situation does not improve and they manage to lose each other while crossing Shibuya’s famous scramble crossing in the middle of the day.  With Uwe armed only with his video camera, which he uses to record a video diary of his journey, and Gustav armed only with a book of Zen sayings, the two men must take on this next phase of their journey alone.  Eventually the brothers find each other again and make their way through a series of misadventures to the Monzen monastery where they are given the opportunity to see their lives from a new perspective through a regime of hard work and meditation. 

Erleuchtung garantiert (Enlightenment Guaranteed/もんぜん, 1999) was shot entirely on digital video and has an intimate feel to it.  I enjoyed this film more than Doris Dörrie’s other Japan-themed feature Kirschblüten– Hanami (Cherry Blossoms, 2008) which was much hyped in the German media the year after I moved here from Tokyo.  The journey of self discovery in Cherry Blossoms seemed forced, whereas the story of Uwe and Gustav seems so effortless.  There is a realness and a spontaneity to the characters which reminded me of the works of Mike Leigh.  Above all, the humour that Uwe Ochsenknecht and Gustav-Peter Wöhler bring to their roles keeps the film from taking itself too seriously.  It's a great film for people reevaluating their own lives and in need of a good laugh at the inanities of human nature. 

Enlightenment Guaranteed is one of five films that I wrote about for World Film Locations: Tokyo (ed. Chris MaGee, 2011).  I chose the Yanaka Cemetary as the location to focus on.  Support independent film critics by ordering the book today:

The film is available on DVD in the States:



. . . in Germany:



.  .  .  and even in Japan:

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009)

It is rare to find an individual who is completely happy with themselves.  Most people, especially those without love in their lives, find themselves constantly searching for a way to improve or replace these pieces of themselves that they find lacking.  Momoko Andō’s Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009) is peopled with characters who are unhappy with their present circumstances and are looking without rather than within in order to fulfill their needs and desires.

Kakera tells the story of a college student named Haru  Kitagawa (Hikari Mitsushima of Love Exposure), who stays with her boyfriend (Tasuku Nagaoka of Moon and Cherry) despite the fact that he treats her quite badly.  One day in a café, she is approached by an older woman named Riko Sakata (Eriko Nakamura) who finds her attractive.  This awkward, yet tender scene marks the beginning of a complicated relationship between the two women which runs the gamut of emotions from warmth and affection to jealousy and confusion.  

Momoko Andō has managed to capture the fragile beauty of a romance between women with an authenticity and sensitivity rarely seen in feature films.  Each of the characters in the film has a kind of void in their lives that they try to fill with the love they have for another character and as in real life the course of these relationships never runs smooth.  Riko’s love for Haru is complicated by Haru’s unresolved feelings for her boyfriend and her own sexuality.  Haru’s boyfriend is one of those types of people who seem to always desire what he cannot have.  And Riko’s client and lover Tōko (Rino Katase) is also consumed by desires that remain only partially fulfilled.  This theme is visually represented in the film by the prosthetics that Riko designs for people who have lost body parts.  Prosthetics allow their wearers to disguise the ravages of illness or accidents that they have suffered, but they are not a permanent replacement for what has been lost.

Kakera is a film that examines female sexuality in all its ambiguities.  Riko’s love for Haru is complex.  She can be loving and kind, but she can also be possessive and jealous.  It is a brave film in many respects, though might have been even braver if Andō had included less chaste lovemaking scenes between the female protagonists.  This would have been a welcome contrast to the cold, empty sex scenes between Haru and her boyfriend that look more like rape than love-making.

The film has a feeling of authenticity about it thanks to not only the sincere performances of the actors but also the use of recognizable locations from around Tokyo, which ground the film in a very realistic, contemporary setting.  As a female spectator, I also took great delight in Andō’s use of female spaces that normally get left out of films.  There is one wonderful scene in which Haru is shot from a high angle using a public squat toilet to put a menstruation pad into her underpants.  It is an intimate moment that marks a new phase in Haru and Riko’s relationship.  This scene should not have been as surprising as it was as it’s a part of women’s everyday lives, but  startles because these moments always get omitted from films.  

  

Order the DVD

Kakera was adapted by Andō from the popular manga Love Vibes by Erica Sakurazawa  and was filmed beautifully by cinematographer Hirokazu Ishii.  The soundtrack was written by James Iha, the former guitarist of Smashing Pumpkins.  It is available on DVD in the UK from Third Window Films.  It is also available from cdjapan (JP only).

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.

Manji (卍, 1964)

The impassioned voice of Kiyoko Kishida in the lead role of Sonoko Kakiuchi dominates the narrative of Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 classic feature film Manji (卍, 1964). Just as in the original novel Quicksand (Manji/卍, 1928-30) by Junichirō Tanizaki, the story is told from Sonoko’s point of view to a man she refers to as “sensei”.

  

The Taniguchi novel

Sonoko is stuck in a loveless arranged marriage to Kotaro Kakiuchi (Eiji Funakoshi). The marriage is childless because Sonoko is secretly taking measures to prevent pregnancy, and she fills her empty days with art. She attends art lessons at a local women’s college. During life drawing classes, it is brought to Sonoko’s attention that she has become the subject of gossip because instead of drawing the model’s face, she has been drawing the face of beautiful fellow student Mitsuko Sido (Ayako Wakao).

Sonoko is brought to her knees by Michiko's unadorned beauty

The two women develop a friendship with each other that blossoms into a full-fledged love affair. The passion Sonoko feels for Mitsuko is so strong that she brazenly conducts the affair in her own marital bed and defies her husband’s wishes for her to end the relationship. It does not take long however for cracks to appear in what Sonoko believed to be a perfect love. She soon discovers that Mitsuko has a secret fiancé Eijiro Wakanuki (Yuusuke Kawazu), a man whose impotence leads him to behave in a jealous, irrational manner. This awkward ménage-à-trois becomes even more complicated when Mitsuko also draws Sonoko’s husband into the fray.

Michiko embraces Sonoko.

It’s a frenetic narrative that rarely stops for air as it races towards its dramatic conclusion. Set among the Osakan upper classes, we rarely see a glimpse of the city streets as the story for the most part unfolds in the interiors of the Kakiuchi home or in anonymous rented rooms. The use of interior spaces and frequent use of close-ups adds to the stifled atmosphere created by the oppressive passions of the four narcissistic lovers. The Japanese title “Manji” is the Buddhist swastika with its four arms representing each of the four lovers. Sonoko also uses Mitsuko as the model for her painting of the Goddess of Mercy, which serves an ironic function in the plot as Mitsuko turns out to be anything but merciful in the way that she skillfully manipulates her lovers.

Sonoko and Michiko's love letters.

In the wrong hands, Tanizaki’s story of obsession and jealousy could have easily been turned into a tawdry film exploiting love between women. Masumura avoids this thanks to Kaneto Shindō's poignant script and his use of highly stylized framing. Love scenes are rendered in fragments with each frame carefully composed with the elegance of an oil painting. The pureness of Sonoko's love for Michiko is emphasized through one of the few outdoor scenes in which the two women stroll through a verdant forest and pause in front of some Buddhist statues.  Throughout it all, the tremulous voice of Kyoko Kishida as Sonoko reminds us that with all the lovers’ threats of suicide at the very least one passionate woman will survive the maelstrom that is Manji. 

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.  This film is widely available on DVD (Fantoma in the US, Yume Pictures in the UK - who have interestingly dropped the swastika from the poster).  Click here to order from Japan (no subs).

Jellyfish Boy (くらげくん, 2009)

 

Jellyfish boy, he is my friend.

He dresses like a Jellyfish, so I named him Jellyfish boy.

He likes me even though we are both boys.

One day, Jellyfish boy told me he's moving.

We can't play together anymore.

He asked me to go somewhere far together.

He told me he wants to run away from his life.

We can't run away from our life, so we went to the sea.

The sexuality of children is normally a taboo subject in the world of filmmaking. It is even rarer to find a film that portrays a young, homosexual boy in an unabashedly postive manner.   In his short film Jelly Fish Boy (くらげくん/Kurage-kun, 2009), young director Shoh Kataoka (片岡翔) tackles the issue head on by presenting the story of two prepubescent boys.

Kotaro (played by Ren Yasuda) is a very masculine type. His hair is shorn short, he wears masculine clothes and he likes to play with toy soldiers. 

In contrast, Kotaro’s best friend Kurage-kun (Daiki Gunji) is very effeminate. Kurage means ‘jellyfish’ and ‘–kun’ is the diminutive placed at the end of boys’ names in Japanese. This is the affectionate nickname that Kotaro gives his friend because the flowy dresses that Kurage-kun likes to wear remind him of a jellyfish. Kurage-kun likes to play music on his ocarina, and in addition to dresses, wears a pink scarf, a necklace, and frilly shoes. 

In spite of the pair’s different outward appearances and different interests – Kotaro likes to play rough, while Kurage-kun has a more gentle nature – the two are fast friends. They play chase, and tease each other and spend a lot of time talking with each other.

When they learn that Kurage-kun will be moving away with his family, the two boys decide to run away to the seaside together. While at the seaside, it becomes clear that Kurage-kun has a slight crush on Kotaro and that his dreams for the future and Kotaro’s vision of the future don’t exactly match up.

The story unfolds in a lyrical manner with beautiful cinematography by Yoshinobu Murahashi and music by Mayumi Nakata. The scene of the two of them sitting on the stairs together was surprisingly dialogue heavy for a film, but as the two young actors made the words seem natural it worked. The best moments of the film were of the two of them playing together or just simply sitting together on the train, for their body language and expressions spoke more than words could say.

The cynic in me thinks that the relationship portrayed in the film is an idealistic one – a relationship that could only develop outside of the pressures of school peers and with liberal-minded parents. On the other hand, the young actors portrayed their characters so convincingly that I wanted to believe that two such boys could have a friendship that transcends the prejudices of society to conform. 

An enchanting and thought-provoking film, Jellyfish Boy won the runner-up prize at the 2010 Pia Film Festival. I had the good fortune to see at the Shinsedai Cinema Festival in Toronto. Definitely check it out if it comes to a festival near you. In the meantime, check out the trailers on Kataoka's Youtube channel.

Shoh Kataoka Filmography

2006 Can Kick
2007 Nitankasanso
2008 28 (6‘)
2008 hero (3‘)
2008 Guru-guru Mawaru (28‘)
2009 Following (5‘)
2009 Mr. Bubblegum (13‘)
2009 Kuragekun (Jellyfish Boy, 14‘)
2010 Gurunika (21‘)

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Waterboys (ウォーターボーイズ, 2001)

Although my viewing habits of late have taken me into the territory of more artsy fare, I do occasionally indulge in a few guilty pleasures. For example, I love a good genre film now and then, no matter how predictable the plot. Waterboys (ウォーターボーイズ, Shinobu Yaguchi, 2001) falls into the category of heartfelt screwball comedy with an Esther Williams twist. I’ll bet, dear reader, that you didn’t even know that such a category exists! The premise: it is nearing the end of the school year for a group of young students at an all male school who have failed to be successful in any clubs for sports or hobbies. A young female teacher arrives on the scene with a passion for synchronized swimming and therein lies the screwball comedy: young men performing a sport which is usually done by women.

Through a sudden and unlikely series of events in which the teacher pukes one moment and the next moment is eight months pregnant and on pregnancy leave, the boys find themselves stuck with a plan to perform at the school summer festival but without anyone to train them. I could imagine a lot of cynical western viewers getting annoyed with the film at this point because of the unrealistic plot devices being thrown at them. However, I suspect that the average Japanese audience takes this as a cue to not take anything seriously and to just sit back and laugh at the gags. The plot really is besides the point. It only acts as a build up for the swimming spectacular (more a choreographed routine using a swimming pool than the actual sport of synchro) which is the centerpiece of the film.

Waterboys is successful because it never takes itself too seriously. The underlying plot device could be described as a kind of ‘if you don’t succeed, try, try again’ story, but the film only expects laughs and not tears from its audience. It’s not really about winning but about going through the process of improving oneself. And of course, although there are individual stories of triumph in the plot, as this is a Japanese film succeeding as a group is what is most important. Or, as Naoto Takenaka in the role of Sea World boss Isomura-san tells Suzuki-san (Satoshi Tsumabuki): getting out there, having fun, and making a fool of yourself is much better than feeling worthless for the rest of your life.

The film is also successful because it doesn’t overdo offensive stereotypes that sometimes creep into Japanese comedies. The jokes surrounding the transvestites who fund the boys in their efforts to learn synchro are relatively tame and the uncomfortable tension surrounding the one gay character Saotome (Takatoshi Kaneko) who has a crush on one of his teammates (Sato, played by Hiroshi Tamaki) is normalized rather than mocked. The big laughs in the film come from seeing geeky guys performing amusing routines – such as when Ohta (Akifumi Miura) gets discovered doing a workout video in tight red briefs. The director even managed to reign in the performance of Naoto Takenaka as Isomura the dolphin instructor. Takenaka is known for his over-the-top characters in films like Shall We Dance? (hilarious!) and Nodame Cantabile (a dreadful performance!). My favourite cameo of his was in Twentieth Century Boys where he gets killed off moments after making his appearance (I do have a black sense of humour).

Waterboys was so successful that there was a follow-up TV series on Fuji TV (2003-4) which ran for two seasons and a sequel Waterboys 2 (Yuji Sato, 2004). It’s a fun film for the young, yet perhaps surprisingly there may actually be some food for thought for the more academically inclined. For example, I believe there may be a great academic paper in there somewhere about male bodies subverting a typically female genre film. Being a big fan of 1930s genre films, I can say without hesitation that it’s a film that would indeed make Esther Williams and Busby Berkeley proud of their legacy. Available on DVD and Blu-ray with English subtitles.

Waterboys (English Subtitles) [Standard Edition]

Waterboys (English Subtitles) [Blu-ray]

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Anime Alice in Wonderland

There’s a lot of hype in the blogosphere at the moment over Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (see recently leaked images) despite the fact that the film won’t be released until spring 2010. It got me thinking about the prevalence of Alice in Wonderland-type themes in Japanese animation.


The first one that comes to mind is the classic anime series Alice in Wonderland (ふしぎの国のアリス/Fushigi no Kuni no Arisu, 1983-1984) directed by Shigeo Koshi and Taku Sugiyama. The series was a German-Japanese co-production involving Nippon Animation which aired on in Japan on the NHK and in West Germany on ZDF. Nippon Animation (formerly Zuiyo Eizo) has a long history of producing classics from world children’s literature. They were the studio responsible for the World Masterpiece Theatre (世界名作劇場/ Sekai Meisaku Gekijō) anime series, which ran from 1969 to 1997. It’s a beautifully animated little series. I don’t know if it has ever shown on TV in English – I would imagine that there might be copyright problems with Disney - but it’s widely available on DVD here in Germany and repeats were shown on the children’s broadcaster KiKa earlier this year.


The popular series InuYasha (戦国御伽草子 犬夜叉, 1996-2008) has an Alice in Wonderland theme. It follows the adventures of a young girl who is drawn into a fantasy world when she falls down an old well. Viz, the company who translated the series into English, gave nods to the influence of Lewis Carroll in their translations of some of the titles. For example, of the third episode in the first series as "Down the Rabbit Hole and Back Again." (骨喰いの井戸からただいまっ!) The second movie was called The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass (映画犬夜叉　鏡の中の夢幻城, 2002). The use of the archaic term ‘looking glass’ instead of ‘mirror’ as a translation for ‘kagami’ (鏡) makes the Lewis Carroll reference clear.


The Clamp manga Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (不思議の国の美幸ちゃん) puts an erotic, lesbian spin on the Lewis Carroll tale. It was adapted into a 30-minute OVA anime by Kiyoko Sayama in 1995. This anime was not really my cup of tea, but its fansub is pretty popular viewing on youtube. The screenshot above features a female embodiment of the Cheshire cat seducing Miyuki-chan.

Ouran High School Host Club (桜蘭高校ホスト部) takes on Alice in episode 13. Entitled "Haruhi in Wonderland"(不思議の国のハルヒ), the episode features Haruhi having a fantastical Alice in Wonderland dream about the day of her admission into Ouran High School.


Nagisa Miyazaki’s adaptation of the Kaishaku Kagihime Monogatari Eikyū Alice Rondo manga (鍵姫物語 永久アリス輪舞曲, 2006) was also inspired by the Alice in Wonderland story.


My favourite, however, is Atsuko Ishizuka’s contribution to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series: Tsuki no Waltz (Waltz of the Moon, 2004). After making a big splash with her independently produced animation shorts, Madhouse snapped Ishizuka up as an in-house animator. However, the studio was kind enough to let Ishizuka do one short animation for the NHK. Tsuki no Waltz is easily in my top ten Minna no Uta animations of all time because the dream-like animation is just stunning. It fits with the romantic Mio Isayama song perfectly, and each frame of the animation could be printed, framed, and hung on the wall as art. You can check out the video here.  (Update Sept. 2010: More on Tsuki no Waltz)

Can anyone think of one that I've missed?  Leave a message in the comments.

Related Posts:
Tsuki no Waltz
Gravitation

Tsuki no Waltz is available on:

Minna no Uta Best Hit Collection

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009