Japan Cuts 2018, the festival of New Japanese Films was held from July 19-29 at New York’s Japan Society having grown into the largest United States event for contemporary Japanese cinema with a selection of 30 films of which most were premiering in North America. The program included 27 feature films, 3 documentaries, classic films, the experimental spotlight and Q&A sessions for most films with 14 guest appearances. The Cut Above award for outstanding performance in film was bestowed to the legendary screen actress Kirin Kiki who excelled in the Cannes Palme d’Or awarded Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda. The actors Lily Frank and Sakura Ando also received the Cut Above award. The thematic range of the festival covered a broad spectrum from LGBTQ issues to governmental abuse and obstacles, issues of migration and refugees, as well as inter-cultural problems.  Since 98.5% of Japan’s population are ethnic Japanese thematic  topics and narratives  presented are  context bound and specific to Japan, but  there are obvious connections to conflicts  faced by other postindustrial societies be it the gender and migration area, restrained official responses to environmental conflicts or  contrasting traditional and contemporary values.  With its eclectic choice of productions from popular works to the avant-garde, Japan Cuts has retained a “meticulously created” (New York Times) program providing “an expansive glimpse into Japan’s national consciousness” (The Observer). Having released in 2017 594 new Japanese films for an expanding audience,  Japan is one of the most lucrative global film markets and generates the third largest box office after the US and China. It has concluded recently a film-co-production treaty with China facilitating the release of more Japanese films in China and Chinese films in Japan. Japanese productions are also gaining more traction on the US film festival circuit. There are several major US cities with Japanese film festivals, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kansas City and Boston.  The New York Asian Film Festival under the direction of Samuel Jamier, the former head of Japan Cuts, included 14 features from Japan this year in its New Cinema from Japan section.  For its 2018 edition Japan Cuts attracted an audience of about 5000 individuals.

Among the noteworthy issue oriented feature films presented this year were these award winning productions::

Of Love & Law, Hiokaru Toda, Japan, UK, France, 2017.     In the fairly closed Japanese society which is much more homogeneous and tradition bound than other advanced post-industrial societies, those not conforming to the norms face obstacles and discrimination. In this documentary feature two gay lawyers are embracing cases of outsiders from their Osaka-based law firm to ensure that a modicum of justice can be attained for them. The audience gets clear insights into the lawyers’ private life and the hurdles their clients are facing. Within the narrowly defined rules and regulations of the legal system seemingly obscure stipulations make gaining justice a problem.  A woman is indicted for breaking an obscenity law because she was displaying and distributing sexual organs rendered into art objects. The court eventually comes to a mixed verdict exonerating her art.  A teacher refuses to stand for the national anthem at her school and is dismissed from her work and a judge faults her for not ‘reading the air‘ thus failing to conform to the behavior of others. She is fired and still appeals the decision. In this society where obedience and silence is expected some laws appear to be arcane. Children born outside the traditional family system cannot be listed in the civil registry and claim their rights such as welfare, driver’s and marriage license or a passport. They have no legal identity. About 10,000 Japanese belong to this group and it requires lengthy proceedings to secure civil registration with judges who admonish plaintiffs for not conforming to normal patterns. For the gay lawyers Masafumi Yoshida and Kazuyuki Minami the courts no longer function to protect minorities. US American viewers may be astonished by these archaic rules unless they realize that in their own country the rights of illegal immigrants are being stripped away.

Produced over a period of 10 years The Sennan Asbestos Disaster by the acclaimed director Kazuo Hara is a long ethnographic masterpiece of documentary filmmaking.  Though the message of the disastrous consequence of asbestos use and failure of governmental agencies is very clear, the film derives its power from the painstaking interviews of victims and families throughout their formal struggle to get justice which stared in 2000.  Sennan was the center of the Japanese asbestos textile industry with its frequently illiterate workers coming from poor and rural backgrounds searching for employment.  Asbestos products were manufactured in Japan from the early 1900s through 2006.Though governmental agencies and the industry knew about the dangers of asbestos they did not warn the workers who related in interviews their ignorance how they even happily took their children to work. As it turned out, asbestos pollution affected the neighborhoods surrounding the factories and residents contracted cancer though the courts ruled afterwards that they had no asbestos exposure. Kazuo Hara also shows that in Korea people working in asbestos textile factories suffered from the same ailments as the Sennan residents. For close to seven years asbestos workers and the descendants of those who had perished from diseases caused by asbestos pursued through legal proceedings the objective of having the government declared liable. It took demonstrations, mass collection of signatures, and filing numerous appeals to overcome the opposition of the government to accept responsibility.  Throughout these years the civility of the plaintiffs and the bureaucratic arrogance of officials down to the protracted refusals of a minister to offer an apology are certainly startling for viewers. The plaintiffs settled unanimously in 2007 with the government and accepted the judgment. But the judgment did not cover asbestos impact on the neighborhood, people not having worked directly with asbestos and the compensation was limited to those who worked in the factories from 1958 to 2006. We have here again parallels to the current situation in the United States. With progressive deregulation it has become more difficult to sue as individuals or through class actions corporations and governmental agencies for compensation.

One of the most appealing features of this year’s program was the 2017 debut film Passage of Life by Akio Fujimoto. With their young children born in Myanmar a young couple leaves for Japan raising there the children and making a living working illegally in a restaurant and a laundry. Though they try to teach them the Burmese language the 7-year old Kaung and five-year old Htet brothers are growing up like Japanese kids far from acquiring a Burmese identity. The parents face problems because Japanese immigration authorities refuse to provide them with residence papers. The father, Isaace, loses his job and the family survives with the help of friends. The mother, Rhine, grows increasingly frustrated and depressed about their unsettled situation and is hospitalized. Eventually she leaves with the kids for Yangon capital of their homeland to live with her family. Isaace stays in Japan his family contact are now restricted to the cell phone. The children have a hard time adjusting to their new home and are desperate to join their father. Fujimoto adopts a subdued straight forward narrative approach avoiding in this emotional and touching human interest film any overtones or political statements.  Passage of Life views like a documentary in the best neo-realistic tradition.  Because the director is using a non-professional cast and untrained child actors we experience the story through the unhampered perception of the adults and children.  As distinct from Ramen Shop (2018) the festival’s opening film by Eric Khoo ending in the reconciliation of a Japanese man and his distant estranged Singaporean relatives, Passage of Life with its broken up family and cultural differences has no apparent happy ending.

Side Shop, 2017, Ryuichi Hiroki.     This film is a superior presentation of the  life of a few individuals from Fukushima and of the impact the 2011 Fukushima earthquake had on  them. Their adjustment to the disaster is reflected by in their everyday activities and the dislocation of their lives.  They cannot reconnect to what they had before 2011 except through memories which prove difficult to retain. The director Hiroki comes from that area and is intimately familiar with the consequences of the quake and grounds his narrative in research and the stories he has recorded. He refrains from providing a commentary about the people he presents not editorializing about the catastrophe.  Thus his characters who live in temporary housing and their interconnections appear authentic. Unlike other films on the impact of disasters on individuals one does not anticipate uplifting endings. Here they seem to be immured in conditions imposed by the catastrophe and no escape seems possible. The lead character Miyuki works as a city clerk for the Iwaki administration and spends her weekends in Tokyo as a hotel call girl for the Cutie Mermaid agency while telling her father she is taking courses there. One of her fellow call girls jumps out of the agency’s window and kills herself. In the cramped quarters of her home she takes care of her alcoholic father, a former farmer, who spends his time in panchiko parlors gambling his compensation and her money away. Her mother was killed by the earthquake and never found. But he also plays with the children from the housing barracks and takes care of someone’s depressed wife.  Miyuki’s acquaintance, Nitta, who also works in public relations for Iwaki city tells her that his family has, is fallen apart. His father received compensation but his mother and grandmother have joined a cult and attempt to convince his son Katto to leave him.  Miyuki tries without success to be intimate with a friend she was close to six years earlier after telling him about being a call girl.  Her father removes some of her mother’s cloth from their home in the radioactive forbidden zone and drops them it into the sea for her while explaining that she needs them in the cold water.  The film ends with images of a farmer working his land juxtaposed with views of the village devastated by the catastrophic earthquake. Written on one house is the note “We survived. Don’t worry about us”.

Claus Mueller   filmexchange@gmail.com