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

The 4th Annual Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival (第4回東京ごはん映画祭)

A festival that brings together “delicious films” and “delicious food”.

おいしい映画」と「おいしいごはん」を真ん中に、みんなで繋がる映画祭

Dates:  October 12^th – 18^th, 2013
【日時】2013年10月12日（土）～10月18日（金）
Locations: Omotesando Hills and the Image Forum Theatre
【場所】12～14：表参道ヒルズ スペース オー12～18：シアター・イメージフォーラ
http://tokyogohan.com/

The Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival is back for its fourth year with a mixture of festival favourites, classic foodie films, and some new films with a food theme.  What makes this film festival unique is that they partner with local chefs and restaurants to pair dishes with the films, making the film screenings a delight not only for the eyes and ears but also for the audience's senses of taste, smell, and touch.

Films that have shown at the festival before include the documentaries eatrip and El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, as well as the much loved indie fare Amélie and Bagdad Café.  This year sees a number of recent documentaries including heartfelt films Ten no Shizuku, Reviving Recipes, and Iranian Cookbook, not to mention the internationally acclaimed Jiro Dreams of Sushi.  There are also recent feature films such as the high school girl comedy-drama Otome no Recipe, Amole Gupte’s award-winning Stanley’s Tiffin Box (aka Stanley’s Lunch Box), and Ken Loach’s Cannes Jury Prize winner The Angel’s Share.  Other films I highly recommend are Louis Malle’s beautifully shot anarchic comedy Zazie dans le métro and Wong Kai-Wai’s dynamic Chungking Express.

This years films and their accompanying dishes:

Girl’s Recipes / Otome no recipe『乙女のレシピ』

Mitsuhiro Mihara, JAPAN, feature, 2012

Starring: Miho Kanazawa, Airi Kido, Mika Akizuki, Erena Watanabe and Mio Yuki

Dish:  Chef Okuda Original Dish

Special Guests: Chef Okuda, members of the cast

eatrip 『eatrip』

Yuri Nomura, JAPAN, documentary, 2009

Dish: Roast Chicken in a Green and Lemon Sauce

Amélie 『アメリ, 』

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, FRANCE, feature, 2001)

Starring: Audrey Tautou, André Dussollier, Mattieu Kassovitz, Rufus

Dish:  crème brûlée

Chungking Express 『恋する惑星』

 Wong Karwai, HONG KONG, feature, 1994)

Starring: Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-Wair, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow

Dish:  Hong Kong Street Food

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress 『エル・ブリの秘密 世界一予約のとれないレストラン』

Gereon Wetzel, GERMANY, documentary, 2011)

Dish: presented by Food Creation  

Stanley’s Tiffin Box 『スタンリーのお弁当箱』

Amole Gupte, INDIA, feature, 2011

Starring: Partho A. Gupte, Numaan Sheikh, Abhishek Reddy

Dish:  Indian curry

Bagdad Café 『バグダッド・カフェ』

Percy Adlon, GERMANY/USA, feature, 1987

Starring: Marianne Sägebrecht, C.C.H. Pounder, Jack Palance

Dish: coffee and bread

Coffee and Cigarettes 『コーヒー&シガレッツ』

Jim Jarmusch, USA, feature (11 linked vignettes), 2003

Starring: Roberto Benigni, Bteve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits

Dish: coffee and hamburgers

Jiro Dreams of Sushi 『二郎は鮨の夢を見る』

David Gelb, USA, documentary, 2011

Featuring: Jiro Yoshino

Dish: sushi

Iranian Cookbook 『イラン式料理本』

Mohammad Shirvani, IRAN, docu-fiction, 2010

Dish: Iranian home cooking

The Angel’s Share 『天使の分け前』

Ken Loach, UK/FRANCE/BELGIUM/ITALY, feature, 2012

Starring: Paul Brannigan, John Henshaw, William Ruane, Gary Maitland

Dish: Scotch Whisky

Zazie dans le métro『地下鉄のザジ』

Louis Malle, FRANCE, feature, 1960

Starring: Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret

Dish: blue mussels steamed in wine

Dinner Rush 『ディナーラッシュ』

Bob Giraldi, USA, feature, 2000

Starring: Danny Aiello, John Rothman, Frank Bongiorno

Dish: lobster pasta

Ten no Shizuku: Tatsumi Yoshiko “Inochi no Soup”

『天のしずく　辰巳芳子“いのちのスープ”』

Atsunori Kawamura, JAPAN, documentary, 2012

Featuring: Mitsuko Kusabue

Dish: potage bonne femme (leek, potato and carrot soup)

Reviving Recipes 『よみがえりのレシピ』

Satoshi Watanabe, JAPAN, documentary, 2011

Dish: Yamagata produce

Screening times and locations on the official website: http://tokyogohan.com/

Obāchan’s Garden (おばあちゃんのガーデン, 2001)

When sansei Canadian filmmaker Linda Ohama set out to make a film that would celebrate her grandmother’s life on the eve of her 100^th birthday, she had no idea just how far her journey would take her.  On the surface, there was more than enough material to make a feature-length documentary for her obāchan (grandma) had lived an extraordinary life in Canada.  Yet during the filming of Obāchan’s Garden (2001), the Murakami family discovers that the matriarch of the family has been keeping a painful secret about her early life in Japan for over 70 years.

Asayo Murakami (1898-2002) was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima Perfecture in 1898.  Her parents had named her Asayo because she was born in early in the morning (asa).  For her Canadian family, Asayo’s story began in 1924 when she came to Canada as a “picture bride”.  A man named Murakami had selected Asayo’s photograph as a potential future wife and paid for her journey to British Columbia.  Unfortunately, upon meeting Mr. Murakami, Asayo immediately rejected the possibility of marrying this short statured man.  She worked for three years in a fish cannery and picking strawberries to pay the man back the $250 dollars he had spent on her. 

Not long after this a matchmaker introduced her to the fishing boat craftsman Otokichi Murakami (of no relation to the man she had turned down) – a tall widower with two young children.  Asayo agreed to this marriage and the couple settled in the village of Steveston, which today belongs to the city of Richmond, British Columbia.  They went on to have 8 children of their own and Asayo was known locally for her wide social circle and her beautiful flower garden.  While most women filled their gardens with more practical crops of fruit and vegetables, Asayo preferred flowers – a sentimental preference which was connected to her private sorrows.

Like the other Japanese families living in coastal British Columbia, the Murakamis were forced to leave their home during World War II and were relocated to a sugar-beet farm in Manitoba.  After the war restrictions were lifted, the couple joined their eldest daughter and her family on their potato farm in Rainier, Alberta.  These were difficult times for the family  – the grandfather missed making boats and Asayo missed her garden  –  but they were resilient folk and persevered in the face of hardship.

Linda Ohama pieces together the life of her obāchan like a quilt.  Fragments of recollections by obāchan herself, Ohama’s mother and siblings, Ohama’s daughter, and other friends and relatives are woven together with a collection of family photos, archival footage from Japan and Canada, and dramatic reenactments of the past with the filmmaker’s cousin Natsuko Ohama playing obāchan in her younger years.  Docudrama elements in documentaries are a common, and sometimes controversial, feature in Canadian documentaries and may not be to everyone’s taste – but as the Murakami family had to leave everything behind when they left Steveston, the reenacted sequences bring colour and life to the home that obāchan loved best outside of Onomichi.

The film keeps coming back to one of obāchan’s prized possessions: a beautiful photograph of two smartly dressed little girls.  The secret that obāchan has kept for all these years is that before she came to Canada she was married to a man from a prominent family called Ishibashi.  For reasons that are unclear, around the time of the Great Kantō earthquake, Asayo was divorced from her husband and he took their daughters to live on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.  Asayo has been unable to trace her children, but has always believed that they were safe because they lived near the emperor and his family.   

The discovery of obāchan’s secret changes the course from a mere celebration of Asayo’s life to a quest to find out what happened to these two long-lost daughters.  At this point, according to the director's online diary, Ohama brought the National Film Board of Canada on board to help with funding and she set off to Japan with her mother and daughter – the first time the three women have been to visit obāchan’s family there.  It is a complicated journey, with many unexpected twists and turns, but it certainly makes riveting viewing.

Also interwoven with the story of obāchan is the story of her former home in Steveson.  The Murakami home and boat works, where they lived from 1929-1942 were the only buildings belonging to the Japanese to survive into the 1990s.  As they prepare for obāchan’s birthday, the family are involved in the restoration of the property which is now a part of the Britannia Heritage Shipyard Site in Richmond.  The film also documents the family’s restoration of the garden, which they plant according to obāchan’s instructions in preparation for the opening of the Murakami Visitor Centre in May 1998.

Is Linda Ohama able to track down obāchan’s daughters and is it possible for frail obāchan to travel to British Columbia from her nursing home in Alberta to see her garden in its restored glory?  You can enjoy the emotional ending of the film yourself on the NFB website:

Obachan's Garden by Linda Ohama, National Film Board of Canada

Since making this documentary Linda Ohama (リンダ・オオハマ/official profile) has developed strong ties between Canada and Japan.  She is currently in Japan on a lecture tour and is active in Tohoku region recovery efforts through her Canada-Tohoku-Japan Cloth Letters project.

To learn more about obāchan read:

Asayo Murakami: The Last Picture Bride and The Story of Ms. Asayo Murakami by family friend Kojiro “John” Iuchi