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

The Red Spot (Der Rote Punkt / 赤い点, 2008)

When Marie Miyayama’s debut feature film The Red Spot (Der Rote Punkt /Akai Ten /  赤い点, 2008) was released here in Germany in 2009, it created a buzz of a similar level to that of Dorris Dörrie’s Kirschblüten (Cherry Blossoms/Hanami, 2008) the previous year. It was a real delight for me to finally be able to see the film at Shinsedai this summer. My delight only increased when I discovered that unlike Kirschlüten, which disappointed in its superficiality of emotion, The Red Spot moved me with its simplicity of plot, beautiful cinematography, and the excellent performances of its cast.

Part of the authenticity of the story comes from the fact that it is inspired by a real incident. While working as an interpreter in Germany in the late 1990s, Marie Miyayama was hired by a Japanese woman to assist her on her quest to find a spot marked in red on a map. They took a taxi to the spot on Highway B17, southwest of Munich, where they found a memorial stone dedicated to a Japanese family that had been killed there in a hit-and-run car accident in 1987. These were relatives of the woman accompanying Miyayama, who told her that only a 6-year-old girl survived the accident. The orphaned child was then adopted a raised by other relatives.

Der Rote Punkt / The Red Spot from Münchner Filmwerkstatt e.V. on Vimeo.

Inspired by this story, Miyayama reimagined it from the point of view of the orphaned girl. The Red Spot, tells the story of Aki Onodera, a young college woman nearing graduation whose future path is clouded by memories of the past. Her adoptive parents, her aunt and uncle, have provided a loving home for her, but she has never properly mourned the loss of her parents and infant brother. Before seeking a graduate job, she decides to travel to Bavaria to find the red spot on the map where she lost her family.

Intertwined with Aki’s story is that of the Weber family, Johannes and Erika, whose children, Elias and Martina, are now reaching adulthood and on the verge of leaving the family nest. There is a lot of tension between the father and son, which reaches a fever pitch with the arrival of Aki as a guest in their home. By coming to Bavaria in order to connect with her dead family, Aki unwittingly sets of a series of events that will cause a Weber family secret to be revealed.

The underlying concept behind The Red Spot is how a traumatic incident can create a ripple effect throughout the lives of people who are in some way touched by it. The silence of Aki’s family regarding the past is mirrored by Weber family’s inability to talk freely about the underlying problems in their relationships with one another. The result is a tangled web of emotions and conflict that are always threatening to come to  the surface.

Marie Miyayama and Chritoph Tomkewitsch have written an impressively restrained script for first time feature film scriptwriters (though Miyayama has done quite a number of short films and docs).  Oliver Sachs’s cinematography captures the tranquil beauty of Bavarian Swabia. I liked the added dash of red objects throughout the film as a poetical, visual reference to not only the dot on the map, but to Japan itself. It was interesting to see small Catholic shrines erected on the sides of Bavarian country roads, just as one sees Buddhist and Shinto shrines on roadsides in the Japanese countryside (there is a quite memorable one in Totoro, for instance).

Some have criticized the film for having a predictable plot. While I was able to work out early on the general direction the film was taking, I did not feel that this took away from the emotional impact of the film. In fact, the suspense of waiting to see everything unravel was part of the pleasure of watching the film for me. The success of the film on an emotional level was made clear to me during the Shinsedai screening by the quiet weeping of the Japanese-Canadian women in the row behind me throughout the second half of the film.

Along with Naoko Ogigami’s Megane (2007), Momoko Ando’s Kakera, Yuki Tanada’s One Million Yen Girl (2008), and Miwa Nishikawa’s Dear Doctor (2009), Marie Miyayama’s The Red Spot joins a growing number of films by women that have genuinely moved me this year. It will be interesting to see if Miyayama continues making features or if her next project will be another documentary like between earth and sky (2004). Either way, I look forward to more films from this multifaceted young director.

Cast

Yuki Inomata as Aki Onodera

Hans Kremer as Johannes Weber

Orlando Klaus as Elias Weber

Imke Büchel as Erika Weber

Zora Thiessen as Martina Weber

Mikiko Otonashi as Aki’s Aunt

Shinya Owada as Aki’s Uncle

Yuu Saito as Jun

Toru Minegishi as the Photo Shop Owner

Toshihiro Yashiba as Aki’s Father

Nahoko Fort-Nishigami as Aki’s Mother

The Red Spot is available on DVD in Germany with German and Japanese subtitles.

Other great movies by women directors:

Dear Doctor (English Subtitles)

Megane (English Subtitles)

Kamome Shokudo (English Subtitles)

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Ten Things I Know About Kōgo Noda (野田高梧)

Ozu with Kōgo Noda (野田高梧, 1893-1968)

This Hokkaido-born / Nagoya-raised screenwriter is most famous for his collaborations with Yasujirō Ozu at Shochiku studios. They collaborated on more than half of Ozu’s films together (a total of 27). Of their close working relationship, Ozu has been quoted as saying: “When I work with Noda, we agree even on short bits of dialogue. And though we never discuss the details of sets or the costumes, his image of these things is always in accord with mine. Our ideas never contradict each other. We even agree on whether a line should end with a wa or a yo. Of course, sometimes we have a difference of opinion. And we don’t compromise easily since we are both stubborn.” (Richie, p. 27)

1. Family

The youngest of five brothers, one of whom was the painter Kyūho Noda (野田九浦, 1879-1971) whose work can be found at the Kichijoji Art Museum in Musashino.

2. Schooling

Graduated from Waseda University with a degree in English Literature. Other famous Waseda grads include Edogawa Rampo, Hirokazu Koreeda, Akio Jissoji, Haruki Murakami, and Shuji Terayama.

3. Collaborations

Ozu, Shimizu, Fushimi & Noda at an onsen in Izu (July1928)

While Kōgo Noda’s name is most closely associated with Ozu, he has actually collaborated with over a dozen directors over the course of his four decades at Shochiku. Other notable pairings include Yasujiro Shimazu, Hōtei Nomura, Hiromasa Nomura, Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinosuke Gosho, Kiyohiko Ushihara, Kenji Mizoguchi and Mikio Naruse.

4. How Ozu & Noda Met

Ozu and Noda had seen each other around the Shochiku lot many times before they ended up working together. Ozu had come up with a film scenario called Sword of Penitance (Zange no yaiba) based upon an early George Fitzmaurice film Kick In (USA, 1917) that he had read about. The head of studio, Shiro Kido, sent him to work on it in the jidai-geki section of the studio which is where he and Noda got to know each other for the first time and Noda agreed to help him write the script. Sword of Penitance, which is sadly lost, was Ozu’s debut as a film director.

5. Noda & Ozu’s Writing Methods

Noda and Ozu used a writing method that I often use for writing essays – a card system. In the early stages of writing they would write each scene idea on a card rather than in a book. This allowed for greater flexibility when organizing the script as the cards could be shuffled around or discarded freely. (Richie, p. 21)

6. Drinking Binges

Noda and Ozu legendarily enjoyed drinking sake while writing scripts together. They would go somewhere like a bar called Fledermaus in Nishi-Ginza and stay up late drinking until the ideas came. When the finished writing Tokyo Story, Noda wrote in his diary: “Finished. 103 days, 43 bottles of sake.” (Richie, p. 26).

7. Tateshina

In the early 1950s, Ozu bought a cottage in the mountains of Tateshina (Nagano) where he and Noda could seclude themselves to drink and write. A typical scenario would take them 3 to 4 months if they were writing it from scratch, while adaptations took less time.

8. Shared Stubbornness

Both Ozu and Noda were notoriously stubborn and in the rare event of a disagreement could give each other the silent treatment. As Noda remarked after Ozu’s passing: “If we didn’t agree we would sometimes scarcely speak to each other for two or three days in a row except for remarks like, ‘Well, the birch leaves have finally started to fall,’ or, ‘Last night there was a bird singing down in the valley.’ After some days of this kind of thing there would come, strangely enough, either from me or from him an idea quite different from anything we had been considering before, and then work would go smoothly again.” (Richie, p. 27)

9. Marriage

Unlike Ozu, Noda did marry. His daughter also worked as a scriptwriter under the name Ryū Tachibana (立原りゅう). She married the writer Hisashi Yamanouchi (山内久, b. 1925).

10. Awards

In 1950, Noda and Ozu jointly won the Mainichi Film Concours for Late Spring (1949). In 1967, Noda was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for his contribution to Japanese culture.

Filmography (work in progress)

1925 Shin chikyōdai (Yasujiro Shimazu)

1926 Kōtō no kage (Yasujiro Shimazu)

1926 Cosmos saku koro (Hotei Nomura)

1926 Yōfu gonin onna – Dai ippen: Benten Osaku (Tsutomu Shigemune)

1926 Yōfu gonin onna – Dai gohen: Reijō Osumi (Yoshinobu Ikeda)

1927 Sword of Penitence (Zange no yaiba, Yasujirō Ozu)

1928 Man’s Worldly Appearance (Hito no yo no sugata, Heinosuke Gosho)

1928 Riku no ōja (Kiyohiko Ushihara)

1929 Wasei kenka tomodachi (Yasujirō Ozu)

1929 Kaishain seikatsu (Yasujirō Ozu)

1929 Dance girl no hiai (Kōjirō Sasaki)

 1929 Mother (Haha, Hotei Nomura)

1930 Marriage for Beginners (Kekkongaku nyūmon, Yasujirō Ozu)

1930 The Army Advances (Shigun, Kiyohiko Ushihara)

1930 Shami-hen: Haha (Hotei Nomura)

1930 Daitokai: Bakuhatsu-hen (Kiyohiko Ushihara)

1930 Vengeful Ghost of Erotica (Eroshin no onryo, Yasujirō Ozu)

1930 Ashi ni sawatta koun (Yasujirō Ozu)

1930 Story of Kinuyo (Kinuyo Monogatari, Heinosuke Gosho)

1931 Tōkyō no kōrasu (Yasujirō Ozu)

1931 Nanatsu no umi: Zempen Shojo-hen (Hiroshi Shimizu)

1932 Nanatsu no umi: Kohen Teiso-hen (Hiroshi Shimizu)

1932 Manshu koshin-kyoku (Yasushi Sasaki and Hiroshi Shimizu)

1932 Byakuya wa akaruku (Hiroshi Shimizu)

 1932 Seishun no yume imaizuko (Yasujirō Ozu)

1932 Mata au hi made (Yasujirō Ozu)

1932 The Stepchild (Nasanunaka: Mikio Naruse)

1933 Tōkyō no onna (Yasujirō Ozu)

1933 Ōendanchō no koi (Hiromasa Nomura)

1934 Haha wo kowazukuya (Yasujirō Ozu)

1934 Kōki Manshu-koku (Kazuo Ishikawa)

1935 Hakoiri musume (Yasujirō Ozu)

1936 Shindo: Zempen Akemi no maki (Heinosuke Gosho)

1936 Shindo: Kohen Ryota no maki (Heinosuke Gosho)

1937 Hana-kago no uta (Heinosuke Gosho)

1938 Kokumin no chikai (Hiromasa Nomura)

1938 The Tree of Love (Aizen Katsura, Hiromasa Nomura)

1939 Zoku aizen katsura (Hiromasa Nomura)

 1939 Aizen katsura – Kanketsu-hen (Hiromasa Nomura)

1940 Nishizumi senshacho-den (Kozaburo Yoshimura)

1941 Genkide yukōyo (Hiromasa Nomura)

1943 Hiwa Normanton jiken: Kamen no butō (Keisuke Sasaki)

1944 Kimi koso tsugi arawashia da (Toshimasa Hozumi)

1944 Yasen gungakutai (Masahiro Makino)

1946 Josei no shōri (Kenji Mizoguchi)

1949 The Flame of My Love (Waga koi wa moenu , Kenji Mizoguchi)

1949 Late Spring (Banshun, Yasujirō Ozu)

 1950 The Munekata Sisters (Munekata kyoudai, Yasujirō Ozu)

1950 Hi no tori (Shigeo Tanaka)

1951 The Good Fairy (Zemma, Keisuke Kinoshita)

1951 Early Summer (Bakushū, Yasujirō Ozu)

1952 Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Ochazuke no aji, Yasujirō Ozu)

1953 Tokyo Story (Tōkyō monogatari, Yasujirō Ozu)

1956 Early Spring (Shoshun, Yasujirō Ozu)

1957 Tōkyō boshoku (Yasujirō Ozu)

1958 Equinox Flower (Higanbana, Yasujirō Ozu)

1959 Good Morning (Ohayō, Yasujirō Ozu)

1959 Floating Weeds (Yasujirō Ozu)

1960 Late Autumn (Akibiyori, Yasujirō Ozu)

1961 The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, Yasujirō Ozu)

1962 Zoku aizen katsura (Noboru Nakamura)

1964 Radishes and Carrots (Daikon to ninjin, Minoru Shibuya)

2003 Musume no kekkon (Kon Ichikawa, TV)

3-DVD "Chichi Ariki," "Todake no Kyodai," "Hitori Musuko (The Only Son)"

Japanese Movie

3-DVD "Banshun (Late Spring)," "Nagaya Shinshiroku," "Kaze no Naka no Mendori (A Hen in the Wind)"

Japanese Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010