Do you remember when the Visual Communications L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival began? That was way back in 1983 and I wasn’t in attendance, but it was only a weekend of films and videos. Now it’s not a week, it’s two-weeks and the festival has several venues: the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood, CGV Cinemas and the Art Theatre in Long Beach. Tonight, 2 May 2013, the festival opens with a gala screening of the 2013 documentary “Linsanity.”
Love Jeremy Lin? Want to support Asians in athletics or a homeboy (born in Los Angeles, but raised in Palo Alto)? Get tickets and go insane over this 88-minute documentary that debuted at Sundance in January.
Of course, a film festival isn’t just about watching films; it’s also about education and inspiration. There are panel discussions on casting (3 May at DGA), writing (4 May at DGA), remapping Los Angeles (4 May DGA) and women as the next generation of producers (5 May DGA).
Visual Communications also has three filmmaker programs you might want to check out:
Project Catalyst which helps showcase projects to the people who can help the creators get it made (financiers, producers, agents, etc.)
VC Film Development Fund: Last year six established Asian Pacific American filmmakers were selected and given funds to develop and product a narrative feature-length film.
Armed with a Camera Fellowship: This program helps emerging media artists with funds, networking opportunities, facilities and equipment to create a five-minute digital short to premiere at the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Fest.
All work and no play makes for a dull festival, right? So there are parties including karaoke and receptions.
The L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival runs from 2 May to 12 May. Get ready, get out and celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage month.
I’m no fan of Woody Allen or his movies, but I’d guess that even some Woody Allen fans could consider any woman who takes advice from his movies very troubled, particularly if that woman is hot. Such is the case of the 2012 French movie “Paris-Manhattan.” The movie will open up on 3 May 2013 at the Pasadena Laemmle Playhouse 7.
There’s very little Manhattan here except for the presence of Woody Allen whose voice we hear giving advice to our protagonist Alice (Alice Taglioni)–taking a cue from Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam.” The first words we hear are his, “It’s over. I’m face to face with eternity.” The lines are not from Woody Allen’s 1979 comedy, “Manhattan.” It’s actually from Allen’s 1986 movie “Hannah and Her Sisters.”
In the movie, Hannah (Mia Farrow) is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner with her husband Eliot (Michael Caine). Hannah doesn’t know, but Elliot is having an affair with her sister, Lee (Barbara Hershey). Here, Allen plays Mickey, Hannah’s ex-husband who suffers from hypochondria and infertility. He eventually marries one of Hannah’s sisters.
Yet when Alice in the French movie “Paris-Manhattan” ponders, “Can one be so immoral as to sleep with one’s wife’s sister? Is everything permitted?” one can’t help thinking of Allen’s own life and questionable treatment of Farrow.
Alice also wonders, “ Could this kind of immorality happen to me?” Alice is a deep thinker. She reads and tromps around in trousers. She reads while her mother and sister look for dresses in a trendy upscale boutique. Her sister chides her saying, “Mom wants you to look more feminine.”
Alice’s mother buys her a red dress and Alice grabs a top without trying it on. At a party/dance in that very same red dress, Alice mopes in front to the keyboard looking glum. Her sister is chatting up two boys.
Alice meets an engineer, Pierre (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), who loves jazz and Cole Porter just like Alice. Alice perks up, but then her sister , Helene (Marine Delterme), comes along and it’s true love, but not between Alice and the engineer who becomes her brother-in-law, but never her lover.
Alice grows up, becomes a pharmacist, dispenses advice by giving out prescriptions of movie DVDs. She continues to take advice from Woody Allen in her head and yet can’t find true love although she’s become better at dressing herself and has become a matchmaking project for her sister. Her sister already had a teenaged daughter, Laura (Margaux Chatelier), who has a boyfriend named Achilles.
Alice is matched up with the handsome Vincent (Yannick Soulier), but he has one problem: He’s married. Then there’s Victor (Patrick Bruel) who is older, not as sophisticated as Vincent. You know that Alice will find love and she will find it through Woody Allen.
This is a fluffy little piece that asks you to suspend your believe that a blonde, thin and attractive French woman would have problems finding love and sex in France and needs the advice of a balding Jewish New Yorker whose current marriage forced his previous love alliance to break up badly and his own biological son by that relationship doesn’t speak to him at all as a result. Basically, one must ignore the Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn dilemma–erase it from your memory, to go along with this film. This homage to Woody Allen isn’t particularly clever and Alice is a blindly approving fan. She has no critical depth because surely even Woody Allen fans can find fault in some of his movies.
Director/writer Sophie Lellouche has given us a piece that shows us the beauty of Paris and a romance which is more comfy than compelling. In French and English with English subtitles. The movie will open up on 3 May 2013 at the Pasadena Laemmle Playhouse 7, Music Hall and Town Center.
Could there possibly be a worse time for the movie adaptation of the book “Midnight’s Children”? Directed by Deepa Metha with a screenplay by the book’s author, Salman Rushdie who also provides narration, the movie becomes like an alternative universe for inept X-Men. “Midnight’s Children” opens up in New York City on 26 April 2013 and then opens in Los Angeles on 3 May 2013 at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena as well as the Laemmle Royal and Town Center 5 and the Hollywood Arclight. (For more locations and opening dates go to the movie’s official website).
Rushdie’s novel won a Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1981. These literary awards are given to English language novels written by citizens of the Commonweath of Nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe. It also won a James Tait Black Memorial Prize which is for English works of fiction and biographies that are first published in the United Kingdom 12 months prior to the submission date. Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” tied with Paul Theroux’s “The Mosquito Coast.”
Rushdie’s novel is an example of postcolonial literature and Rushdie takes historical events and adds a liberal dose of magical realism. The movie is a British-Canadian production that was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. In Canada, the film was given a limited release in November 2012 and is already available on DVD.
If you haven’t read the novel, you might need to check a map and the Wikipedia entry on the book. Our press notes included a map of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as a family tree, a short synopsis and a long synopsis along with a list of the main characters.
Rushdie narrates as an older Saleem looking back at his life; he begins the movie by describing how Saleem’s grandfather, a European-educated doctor with a large nose, Aadam Aziz (Rajat Kapoor) came to meet Saleem’s grandmother, Naseem (Shabana Azmi) in 1917. Naseem turns out to be a woman with a strong will and she provides the doctor with three daughters: Alia, Emerald and Mumtaz.
Mumtaz becomes involved with a political fugitive who has taken refuge in the Aziz home. They marry, but are divorced. Mumtaz then marries the controlling Ahmed (Ronit Roy) who renames her Amina and takes her to Bombay. Sister Emerald (Anita Majumdar) marries Major Zulfikar (Rahul Bose).
The movie follows Amina and Ahmed to Bombay. Ahmed is buying a Victorian house–the Buckingham Villa–from a British citizen, William Methwold (Charles Dance), who will leave India when it becomes an independent nation on 15 August 1947. William Methwold (c 1590- 1653) is the name of an historical figure who planned the city of Bombay. This Methwold is, in the novel, a direct descendant of the earlier Methwold and has two people whom he nominally supports, a street performer named Wee Willie Winkie (Samrat Chakrabarti), and Winkie’s wife, Vanita.
Vanita is also pregnant with Methwold’s child. Vanita and Amina give birth at the same time, on midnight just as the rest of the nation is celebrating independence on 15 August 1947. On a whim, the nurse for both mothers in the hospital switches the two baby boys so the rich boy becomes the poor street entertainer Shiva and the poor boy becomes the rich man’s son Saleem.
We see them as children and youths–Saleem is awkward and Shiva is angry. Both eventually grow up to be young men adrift. Shiva (as an adult played by Siddharth) will eventually rise to be rich and Saleem (played as an adult by Satya Bhabha) will meander through life into poverty. They discover that each child born in India at midnight when their nation became independent has supernatural powers and they are linked to India’s fate. The most powerful of these children were born closest to midnight–Saleem, Shiva and a girl, Pavarti (Shriya Saran).
If you’re not up on India’s history, India would fall into a civil war (the India-Pakistan Wars) and that will result in the secession of territory into first Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The movie explains this as a natural consequence of the presence of Muslims in those areas.
Saleem drifts where his parents, history and his fate take him. He seems unworthy of such power. Shiva, bitter from having his birthright stolen from him, becomes a fighter who is both cruel and materialistic. Pavarti doesn’t seem to know how to best use her gift. She makes Saleem invisible in order to “carry” him in her basket to take him back from Pakistan into India. She casts a spell on Shiva who becomes her lover. Yet none of these Midnight’s Children are able to find greater uses for their powers. Unified action is an impossibility. They are X-Men with a cause, but without a plan.
Of course, the deconstruction of the emergence of Bangladesh and Pakistan is simplified. Some might feel that its treatment of Indira Gandhi is harsh, but according to the press material the excesses of the declared state of emergency included “forces sterilization, the razing of slums, the incarceration of opponents, and the torture of detainees.” This movie isn’t a history course although it might appear to be one. If you believe in a meritocracy and disapprove of India’s old caste system, then you might feel uncomfortable with the fall of Saleem and the rise of Shiva.
If you’re looking for answers or an understanding of India, this movie can provide an interesting point of view, but it is one of many. Not everyone believes in fate and the hard boundaries of the caste system. A fatalistic approach isn’t going to resolve the fear, hatred and prejudice that the recent Boston Marathon bombing has inflamed. If Muslims and Hindus can’t get along, then is it possible to believe that Muslims and Christians can ever live together in this global community in peace?
Although Satya Bhabha’s Saleem is the main character, Siddharth’s Shiva attracts our eyes with his boiling resentment. One wonders about the incidents of indignation that drove Siddharth’s Shiva to such ambition, especially if one doesn’t accept caste as fate. His suffering would seem to be a more compelling , revealing story. The press material calls Saleem our hero, but he’s more of a spectator and witness to history. He’s almost a tourist in life. Seema Biswas’ guilt-ridden nurse Mary has a more interesting story as does Shriya Saran’s Parvati the witch. Is this because director Mehta wanted Bhabha’s Saleem to be just a spectator and didn’t ask for more depth?
The script has some moments of lyrical language and this movie shows the expansive beauty and desperation of what was once a conquered empire and later became three different nations. I haven’t read any of Rushdie’s books and that has nothing to do with the fatwa against him. Note that Rushdie was born in Bombay to a Muslim family but is an atheist. It might be enlightening see an interpretation of Indian or Pakistan history from the views of someone who is either Hindu or Muslim and neither hard-liner nor fair weather faithful. Such as person might not make the Booker Prize shortlist or be knighted, but would likely give us a better understanding of Islam and Muslims in a world that stereotypes them as Arab and terrorists. Such a person would be a superhero even without mutant powers of an X-Man or X-Woman.
“Midnight’s Children” opens in New York City on 26 April 2013 and then opens in Los Angeles on 3 May 2013 at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena as well as the Laemmle Royal and Town Center 5 and the Hollywood Arclight. (For more locations and opening dates go to the movie’s official website).
The question of just what is black is inescapable in the Australian movie, “The Sapphires,” as well as who can pass. By pass, I mean who can pass for black or white or, more basically, something that you are not. Don’t worry, this movie is a sugar-coated, feel-good tale of a black girl group that finds opportunity and maturity entertaining American troops during the Vietnam War.
Passing, has its advantages. I can pass for Chinese in Hong Kong or Taiwan at a disadvantage because my Mandarin is poor. I can pass as Chinese in Korea where some have prejudices against the Japanese. I can’t pass for white and it’s not easy to pass as American or Japanese. You soon learn that some people look at your face and not your body language.
The movie, “The Sapphires” takes on passing for white as well as four women passing as black Americans on stage. We first see them in 1958 as a group of Aboriginal girls–two sisters and two cousins–who are singing for their relatives on a makeshift stage. We already know that not all is well because we’ve been told by subtitles that there was a Stolen Generation of children. In the crowd, we see some light-skinned faces and know something bad will and has already happened.
History
The Australian government stole away light-skinned children of the indigenous Australians, taking them from their families and putting them in institutions run by religious or charitable organizations. Sometimes they were fostered out. The practice began in 1909 and continued until 1970.
What the movie doesn’t say is that most of the women were trained to be domestics and the men to be agricultural labor. The 2002 Australian movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence” looks at this practice, following three girls who escape and walk nine weeks to return to their Aboriginal families.
To put this practice in perspective, consider that there is also a generation of White Stolen children who were part of a forced adoption policy practiced in Australia between 1930 until 1982. The babies of unmarried women were taken in this case.
The practice of sending off poor or orphaned children began with the British. Vagrant children were gathered and sent to the Virginia Colony in 1618. Large numbers of children were forcibly sent to the colonies to help with labor shortages, only ending in 1757. The Children’s Friend Society (founded in London in 1830) sent children to South Africa, Australia and Canada.
In the United States, post-Revolutionary War, there were similar attempts to force cultural assimilation on Native Americans. While students weren’t kidnapped, there was evidence that some parents were coerced into signing up their children. At the schools and on the reservations, there were efforts to convert the Native Americans to Christianity (until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
The U.S. military had only been desegregated in 1948 (Executive Order 9981). The Korean War (1950-1953) was the first war with desegregated troops. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was the second military action with desegregated troops.
Black versus black
The question of just who is black in the Pacific Ocean was asked in “South Pacific” and raised again more recently with the casting in “Cloud Atlas.”
“The Sapphires” are black in the Australian and British sense of the word and that covers a lot of ground outside of Africa. In this case, they begin as an innocent foursome singing for their relatives on a makeshift stage but as adults, they have been whittled down to a trio. These three sisters enter a singing contest. Leading the sisters is the bossy eldest, Gail (Deborah Mailman who appeared in “Rabbit-Proof Fence”), who wants to sing lead but doesn’t have the voice. Julie (Jessica Mauboy) is the youngest, but she has the voice. Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) unwisely loves the attention of men too much. They are the only Aboriginal entrants and though their performance of a Merle Haggard country classic is better than the other white entrants, they lose.
The only two people at this rinky-dink contest who see their talent is one of the white entrants, a boy who has yet to learn the logic of racism, and the drunken white host, Dave, who has been living in his car.
Seeing their raw talent, Dave (Chris O’Dowd) helps them sing “blacker” by exposing them to the Motown sound, educating them on the blues. After a lot of practice and a sudden addition of a cousin, Kay (Shari Sebbens), who has been passing as white in the big city, they audition and win a spot on the entertainment roster for U.S. troops in Vietnam. In Vietnam, they become more confident and learn a bit about show business, American racism and the war.
The movie is as upbeat as the songs so there will be a happy ending and you get to learn more about the actual women this film is based on.
Authenticity
The movie began as a play by the same name written by Tony Briggs. The play debuted in 2004. Briggs based the play on the experiences of his mother, Laurel Robinson, and his aunt, Lois Peeler, who did tour Vietnam as singers in 1968.
Briggs created the fictional character of Dave Lovelace and Irish actor O’Dowd plays him as a charming, drunk. You’ll have to take this as an adult fairy tale to see a happy ending and believe in the happy, lovable alcoholic. Briggs wrote the movie’s screenplay with Keith Thompson.
Director Wayne Blair is an Indigenous Australian writer and actor and was in the original cast of the play. Blair captures the fun and development and keeps the socio-political aspects from getting too serious or grim.
The cast is authentically Indigenous Australian and none of the women is model-emaciated thin. Mailman is both Indigenous Australian and Māori and had the lead role in a 2010 musical movie called “Bran Nue Dae.” In the original play, she played Cindy.
Shari Sebbens is part English descent (father) and Indigenous Australian from her mother’s side.
Mauboy is part Indonesia (father) and part Indigenous Australian. Her talents was recognized when she finished fourth on season four of “Australian Idol.” She auditioned by singing Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing.” That should tell yo what kind of power she has in her voice.
Tapsell was born in Darwin, but raised in Kakadu, a national park which is both under the management of the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities and the Aboriginal traditional land owners.
Like Native Americans, Indigenous Australians have different groups that are identified based on the regional indigenous languages. So while the women are all Indigenous Australians, they are not all from the same region. That might be an issue for someone somewhere. And for the black versus black, we’ll take our cue from science.
Genetically, Indigenous Australians are closer to East Asians and Europeans than they are to Africans according to a DNA sequencing performed in 2012. The study concluded that their sample indicated the “Aborigine genome was found in one analysis to be genetically closer to East Asians than Europeans” there were also indications that suggested “the Aboriginal Australians split from the ancestral population of Eurasians, rather than from modern East Asian populations.”
Beyond genetics and history, ”The Sapphires” is a feel-good movie with a cast that you can feel good about–no blackface or passing here.
“Léonie” is a mild-mannered autobiography of the mother of Isamu Noguchi and apparently something was lost during its migration from Japan, where it first screened in 2010.
The website says that this is “the true life story of Léonie Gilmour” and director Hisako Matsui was inspired by Masayo Duus’ “The Life of Isamu Noguchi.” Matsui read the book seven years before the movie came out and that was 14 drafts later (co-written with David Wiener). The movie was shot on location in the J.S. and Japan, but not specifically on the locations that might have since changed. The Pasadena scenes were filmed in the Santa Ynex Valley in 2009.
Emily Mortimer plays the title character. Léonie is old and she is telling her story to her son, Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi is already a sculptor of renown. Léonie remembers when she was a student at Bryn Mawr and we see her disputing what a male professor has to tell the all-female class in 1892. This scene is meant to introduce the woman who will become her best friend, Catherine (Christina Hendricks) and establish that Léonie is strong-willed and doesn’t want to be disappointed by boring people. What isn’t explained is why she was self-destructive. At Bryn Mawr, she also meets Umeko Tsuda (Mieko Harada), a woman determined to change the status of women in Japan.
From the Pennsylvania-based Bryn Mawr, Léonie ends up in New York where she applies for a job and meets the charming and forward Yone Noguchi (Shido Nakamura). She is hired to help him write and eventually together they publish a novel “The American Diary of a Japanese Girl” and become lovers. The chemistry between Mortimer and Shido Nakamura isn’t particularly convincing. Oddly, he and the other Japanese men are always well-coiffed–not a hair out of place, but Mortimer’s Léonie seems to have an eternal bad-hair day.Their affair is carried out in a well-furnished clean apartment. No rats. No cockroaches. If I could find an apartment like that in New York now, I’d be happy.
Yone has supposedly in his heart married Léonie. Now, you’ve probably raised your eyebrow at this thought. A simple scribble on a piece of paper isn’t enough to make it legal. It’s enough for our Léonie. Soon Léonie finds herself pregnant and alone. To avoid being much too interesting, she flees to her mother (Mary Kay Place) who lives alone in a tent Pasadena. This is 1904. The whole of Pasadena seems to be just dirt, wood wagons and tents. That might be the image of the wild west, but looking online, Pasadena seems to have been a little bit more civilized than that.
According to the book, “The Life of Isamu Noguchi,” Noguchi was actually born in a charity hospital for the poor (Los Angeles County Hospital) on 17 November 1904. Because Leonie registered herself as “Mrs. Yone Noguchi” the Los Angeles Herald ran a story on the child with the title “Yone Noguchi’s Babe Pride of Hospital: White Wife of Author Presents Husband with Son.”
By 1905 the 1872 California state law forbidding marriages between “negroes” and “mulattoes” with whites added “Mongolians.” Léonie and her mother moved to Pasadena after Leonie left the hospital. Pasadena had ten thousand residents.
Léonie is offended by the racism that her son faces and in 1907 goes to Japan where she again meets her “husband” but finds he has already taken a Japanese wife. Isamu who has been nameless because Léonie wanted Yone to name the child, gets the name Isamu, meaning courage.
Léonie gets on by teaching English to students her husband has found for her. She will leave the house Yone has found her and move on to and in 1912, she’ll have her own house built in Chigasaki (Kanagawa prefecture). She allows her son to plan the house. He’s ten. From the workers, he learns how to Japanese carpentry which is good because his mother doesn’t require that her wild boy to attend school. Mothers everywhere are cringing here.
As if Léonie hasn’t learned her lesson yet, she is again pregnant to a father whom she won’t name (but we do get a suggestion here) . This time she has a daughter, Ailes Gilmour.
Here is where the problem lies. According to Wikipedia, the original movie was concerned with both Isamu and Ailes. Isamu became a famous artist and in his adopted home of New York City, there’s a museum dedicated to him. Ailes Gilmour became a major figure in the American Modern Dance movement. Léonie somehow raised her two children to become special people, but the focus in this movie as it has been substantially re-edited according to Wikipedia is Isamu Noguchi.
There’s much, much more to this story. The movie takes us to Noguchi’s move back to the United States for education in 1981 and see his decision to leave pre-med studies for art in 1920 when his mother and half-sister had joined him in New York. Where the movie doesn’t go is into the psychological realm and examine Léonie’s emotional canvas or the way events sculpted Noguchi’s creativity and chipped away at his place in either culture.
The book notes that Noguchi was disappointed that his New York friends “spoke up against the relocation of the Japanese-Americans.” Noguchi knew of eight Japanese artist in New York City and urged them to work in relocation camps, but only Noguchi was willing to do so. entered a Japanese American internment camp, notably Poston where many San Diego and Southern California Japanese American’s were interned. Yet he didn’t feel these were his people and the experience “knocked out my sense of social responsibility” he wrote to a friend. He left and never returned and this left some bitterness on the side of the internees.
By 1942, when the internment began, Léonie has died. She died in New York of a pneumonia in 1933.
What’s disappointing is this movie doesn’t tell us more about Léonie and almost completely ignores Ailes. For a movie about a woman who forged a sometimes foolhardy independent life as a single mother, this re-edit focuses on the woman behind the man who would become Isamu Noguchi and not the woman who encouraged both her daughter and son into creative fields where they both made noteworthy contributions. Yet even with Isamu, the movie doesn’t venture to chip away at the stone to develop a personal interpretation of one of America’s great artists. “Léonie” is currently playing at Laemmle’s Playhouse 7.
The problem with subtitles is there are things that are culturally understood that do not always translate and such is the case with the 1948 movie “Apostasy” or “Hakai” (破壊).
The movie is based on a famous book of the same name by an infamous author. The author, Shimazaki Tōson, (島崎 藤村) was born in Magome, Nagano Prefecture in 1872. After graduating from Meiji Gakuin in 1891, he went to Sendai to teach. In 1906, he published his first novel “Hakai” which has been translated into English as “The Broken Commandment.” ”Hakai” 破壊 can also be translated as “destruction.” The novel was considered a milestone in Japanese realism.
Between the two English titles “The Broken Commandment” and “Apostasy,” you might be expecting something biblical. According to Miriam-Webster, the meaning of apostasy is “the renunciation of a religious faith” or the “abandonment of a previous loyalty.” A synonym would be “defection.”
The movie and the novel aren’t particularly religious in nature and focus in on the burakumin (部落民). The HuluPlus blurb on the movie comments “Amidst rumors of his lower class origins that threaten his job, a school teacher pleads for freedom and equality.” That’s a bit misleading.
In Japan, the burakumin weren’t within the traditional Japanese feudal four-class system: samurai, farmer, artisan and merchant. There were people above the class system such as the emperor and his imperial household as well as the real power at the time, the shogunate. Buddhist and Shinto priests were also above the class system. The people below the class system were the Ainu and the burakumin. The burakumin were also known as the eta. Other lowly types included actors, prostitutes, courtesan, geisha and convicted criminals.
The Burakumin are a social minority who have been and are still discriminated against in Japan. These people are considered defiled because they are involved in work that carries a social stigma, usually related to death (such as executioners, undertakers, butchers and leather tanners). Consider that when watching the Japanese movie about the death penalty, the 2008 “Vacation,” or the 2008 movie about the funeral industry, “Departures” (Okuribito).
To a certain extent, Americans caused the increase in the burakumin and their rise to prominence. The first American Consul General to Japan, Townsend Harris was in residence at the Gyokusen-ji temple for almost three years (beginning in 1856), during which time he demanded that the Japanese provide him with what he considered essentials to his diet: milk and beef. Gyokusen-ji is a Buddhist temple in Shizuoka prefecture and today has a monument to mark where the first four-legged animal killed for human consumption. In 1931, the Tokyo butchers had the monument erected.
Cultural insensitivity in the guise of Manifest Destiny started both the beef and milk industries in Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate had collapsed for a variety of reasons including the entry of Commodore Perry. The imperial house was revived as the head of the government with the Meiji restoration in 1869. The burakumin were given equal legal status in 1871. The ban on the consumption of beef was lifted in 1871.
“Apostasy” begins with scenes of a sunrise and someone ringing a temple bell before cutting to the credits which are written in calligraphy on pieces of patterned paper that peel away to the right. This written introduction sets up the problems of the new Meiji era constitution that while freedom, equality and respect for human rights basically abolished the feudal system of social ranking, it could not extinguish the prejudices held for centuries. The subtitles extol that the feudal system “controlled by submission and oppression” but even at this time in 1901 (Iiyama-machi in Nagano prefecture) “oppression continued to exist among the people.”
Riding a palaquin, a man hides behind screens as the two men who carry him and a runner take him to the doctor. The subtitles proclaim that the doctor won’t accept “villagers,” but what exactly does that mean? Villagers is the literal translation for the official term burakumin. Burakumin also translates as hamlet people or village people. You might be hearing “YMCA” in the back of your head, but this movie came out in 1948. The 1962 remake (with a 1988 US release) under director Kon Ichikawa would translate “Hakai” as “The Outcast.” That makes everything clearer.
Young male toughs stand barring the unseen man’s way and as the palaquin departs, children follow and throw rocks. Not everyone approves of this prejudice. Witnessing the scene, a teacher Tsuchiya 土屋銀之助 (Jookichi Uno 宇野重吉) tells his friend and fellow teacher Segawa 瀬川丑松 (Ryo Ikeda 池部良), “We are now a modern society. What just took place is unacceptable.”
The principal (東野英治郎) is from the former farming class. He has fired a man who was formerly of the samurai class five months before he’d receive his pension. “My teaching career lasted 15 years,” the old man, Kazama 風間敬之進 (菅井一郎)、laments. ”I started to wonder what I should be teaching my students. I’ve lost my way.” Segawa is staying at the home of this former samurai and he’s in love with the man’s daughter, Oshiho お志保(桂木洋子).
Segawa has ventured into the working world by keeping his oath to his father who told him to forget that he was born into the burakumin. That was the only way for Segawa to be able to live a normal life, but there are others who defiantly refuse to hide their identity and call for other hidden burakumin to come clean, demand real equality and believe in a “New Dawn of Social Awareness.”
As one of his father’s friends tells Segawa, “Your father’s last words were for you to hide your cast” because that’s the “only way to make it in the world.” To that end, Segawa’s father “hid himself in the woods to prevent your caste from being known.” Segawa’s apostasy is not religious in nature, but puts him in conflict between his biological father and his spiritual father.
This movie draws a contrast between modern dress and traditional kimonos. The principal, his nephew and other officials all wear three-piece western suits. They seem to feel they are modern men and modern thinkers yet they have no honor and are shown to hold prejudices. Segawa, Tsuchiya and the old samurai all wear kimonos. They respect tradition up to an extent. Alliances are formed between a man of the once powerful class to one whose class was outside of the four-class system. A man from the supposedly most honored class (farmers) finally has real power, but doesn’t use it wisely.
The movie addresses the chaos caused by the Meiji Reformation, discrimination and attitudes toward modernization but remember this film was made while Japan was under the American Occupation Army. The movie’s main point of interest is in how the Japanese are addressing the problem of long held prejudices in what Donald Richie and Joseph L. Anderson called a youth cycle of films in their “The Japanese Film: Art and Industry.” The Occupation Army which was like the nation of origin (U.S.A.) had not quite dealt with the problem of caste systems, segregation (the Army was still segregated) and prejudice so the censorship or fear of the same might have muted this rather bland entry. It would be good to compare this 1948 movie with the 1962 movie of the same name in Japanese, but called “The Outcast” when if finally made it to the United States in 1988.
“Apostasy” is available to stream on HuluPlus as part of the Criterion Collection.
Tōson Shimazaki (島崎 藤村 Shimazaki Tōson)
Characters:
瀬川丑松 Ushimatsu Segawa: Main character. An elementary school teacher who is hiding is burakumin heritage in order to avoid prejudice. He comes into conflict with the principal of the school over management.
猪子蓮太郎 Rentaro Inoko: He is of burakumin origin, but is a lawyer and known as the lion o of the new commoner. He is a figure loved and respected by Segawa.
お志保 Oshiho: She is the daughter of Noriyuki Kazama. She is an acquaintance of Segawa and has romantic feelings for him.
風間敬之進: Kazama is from a samurai family and has just be terminated, losing his pension.
土屋銀之助: He is a close friend and co-worker of Segawa. He is against injustice and prejudice toward people.
Principal: He is an ambitious man with little sympathy for Kazama and although he proclaims to be a modern man, he still harbors prejudice against burakumin.
This review was previously published in the Pasadena Weekly (4 June 2009).
Two new movies dealing with the cultural and ceremonial complexities of death and dying are opening at the Laemmle Playhouse 7: the winner of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, “Departures,” and “Dim Sum Funeral.”
“Departures” is by far the better of the two films, with former boy-band singer Motoki Masahiro turning in a performance both funny and poignant.
“Dim Sum Funeral,” on the other hand, has too many gimmicks and contradictions, despite a stellar cast.
Directed by Takita Yojiro, “Departures” (“Okuribito” in Japanese) tells the story of a mediocre cellist, Daigo (Motoki), who finally finds a position in a small Tokyo orchestra, only to lose his job when the sagging economy forces the owner to shut it down. He sells his cello and returns to his hometown with his wife, Mika (Hirosue Ryoko) — to the home his mother left to him when she died two years earlier. Daigo’s father ran away with a waitress when he was 6, but it was his dad who gave him his first cello. His mother kept all the father’s classical records.
Desperate for work, Daigo notices an ad for what he believes is a travel agency, only to discover that there is only one kind of departure involved: death. His job is preparing corpses to be placed in coffins. Traditionally, family members are supposed to wash and prepare bodies before they are placed in their coffins and then cremated. But in these modern times, a niche market has developed.
Daigo is immediately hired by Sasaki (Yamazaki Tsutomu, winner of a Japanese Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), a man of few words but an intuitive student of human nature. Sasaki has to be. He’s seen everything, as Daigo soon will.
But first, Daigo learns about the job firsthand: Sasaki uses him as a model for a demonstration video. Despite the embarrassment of being forced to work naked except for an adult diaper, Daigo survives his first day. He can’t quite tell his wife what he does, saying only that he’s involved in “ceremonies.” But his real training begins when he helps Sasaki prepare a corpse that went undiscovered for two weeks.
The ghouls among us may be disappointed that Yojiro doesn’t show the decomposition; he merely suggests it, using a light touch to deftly navigate the territory between anger, pain and love. What we see is not only Daigo’s transformation into a skilled professional, one respectful of the dead, but also various families handling death differently — from sorrowfully to joyously. One bereaved father even thanks Daigo for allowing him to recognize his child despite the contentious relationship they had before death, leading Daigo to eventually come to terms with his own father.
Less successful is director Anna Chi’s “Dim Sum Funeral,” which belongs to a funeral-film genre in which dysfunctional families reunite and resolve their problems before or after a member’s death. Here, that would be the domineering and manipulative mother, whom the kids call the Dragon Lady (Lisa Lu).
The mother’s caretaker and friend, Viola (Talia Shire), calls the children home for a seven-day traditional Chinese funeral. The eldest daughter (Julia Nickson) has separated from her white husband (Adrian Hough). The only son, a doctor (Russell Wong), is unfaithful to his wife. The middle daughter (Francoise Yip) has never forgiven the mother for forcing her to leave the only man (an African American) she ever loved. The youngest daughter, Meimei (Steph Song), is a martial arts actor who brings her lesbian lover (Bai Ling) to the funeral.
Wong and Nickson do the best work with the skimpy material, which sometimes has the characters contradicting themselves. The mother-child issues are resolved a bit too easily, although the script provides an interesting little twist.
Not particularly inspiring in content or cinematography, this film isn’t in the same league as “Departures” and your money would be better spent on, well, dim sum.
“From Up on Poppy Hill” is about a daughter who longs for her dead father and every day sends him a message as if to guide him home. Even though I can easily empathize with its theme, “From Up on Poppy Hill” lacks anything interesting to say. Perhaps what is important here is the war that rumbles in the past and the potential Asian conflict that threatens Japan now.
Directed by Goro Miyazaki and scripted by his father, famed director Hayao Miyazaki, “From Up on Poppy Hill” is the second animated feature directed by Goro (“Tales from Earthsea” was the first in 2006).
Based on a 1980 manga written by Tetsuro Sayama and illustrated by Chizuru Takahashi, the original title is “Kokuriko-zaka kara” which uses the French name for the flowers, Coquelicot. These are the red flowers and not the orange California poppy or the popular Icelandic poppies. You’d know the Papaver rhoeas as the corn poppy, corn rose, field poppy or the Flanders poppy. You might plant its cultivar form, the Shirley poppy. Although considered a weed, the flower has come to represent fallen soldiers.
The soldier in this case is the father of Umi Matsuzaki (Sarah Bolger in the English-language dubbed version). Something may be lost in translation. Listening to the dubbed version, I wonder if it’s clearer in the Japanese that the father isn’t just gone, he’s dead. The English script clarifies this later.
There are other things that might not be clear to Americans. Let’s start with the place: Yokohama. I lived in Yokohama for a year as an exchange student. It’s considered somewhat exotic for the average Japanese. It’s the second largest city in Japan with 3.7 million. Although a city in its own right, Yokohama is sometimes considered a suburb of Tokyo.
From Tokyo to Yokohama, it’s about 27 miles or 45 minutes. That’s by car. But in the 1850s, it seemed much farther on foot or by horse. It’s distance from Tokyo and the palace of the emperor was just far enough away from the Tokugawa shogunate to make them feel safer. American Commodore Matthew Perry blew into Japan with a fleet of warships, arriving just south of Yokohama. With his cannons and guns, Perry demanded the opening of Japan. That deal was sealed with the Treaty of Peace and Amity in 1854 which opened up two ports (Shimoda and Hakodate) and guaranteed the safety of shipwrecked American sailors. The United States-Japan Treaty of Kanagawa, also known as the Harris Treaty, established extraterritoriality and import taxes and other unequal conditions in 1858.
Yokohama was opened in 1859 as another base for foreign trade. The first English language newspaper was published there in 1861. An special area was established there for foreigners who were protected by their extraterritoriality both inside that moated area and outside. Amongst the foreigners were not only Europeans and Americans, but also Chinese immigrants. A Chinatown was established. This early foreign influence is what makes Yokohama unique and even exotic to the Japanese. Much of Yokohama was destroyed during the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. Allied World War II air raids also destroyed much of Yokohama, but the American Occupation used Yokohama as a base for supplies and personnel, particularly during the Korean War. The American military base was later moved to Yokosuka.
How the Japanese conceive of death and the afterlife another point. When my grandmother died, I recall how her younger brother in Japan had been angry that my state-side uncle, the eldest son of my grandmother, neglected to call them when she died. After all, they needed to say prayers for her. Her spirit was returning to Japan, just as I would. That might come as a surprise to my sister and my brother. My sister has only been to Japan once and my brother has never been.
This concept of spirits returning home isn’t just for foreign-born people of Japanese descent or those Japanese national living abroad. The Japanese take care of the spirits during August for O-bon. During o-bon the spirits return to their furusato–ancestral homes–and the household altars. Even the living return to their ancestral homes and the Japanese have a specific verb for to return home. So many people return home during August, business is hard to conduct.
In the movie, one of the first things Umi does in the morning is put an offering of water to her father. You’ll see her place it before his photograph as part of a modest family altar. The 16-year-old Umi is a high school student in Yokohama. Her family runs a boarding house, Coquelicot Manor, that is connected to the old, more traditional-styled family home where her grandmother lives. Because Umi’s mother, Ryoko, is away studying in the U.S., Umi runs the boarding house under the supervision of her grandmother. The grandmother lives in an adjoining building of more traditional architecture. Umi prepares the meals, buys the groceries and makes sure her younger siblings get off to school on time. She also raises signal flags on a flag pole every morning to send a message to her deceased father that she prays for his safe return.
The flags are noticed by someone who rights a poem about them in the school newspaper. The author, Shun Kazama, has a meet-cute with Umi and her sister Sora. Shun is one of the editors of the newspaper which is one of many clubs that are housed in the Latin Quartier building. As the clubs are exclusively run by boys, the building is a mess and will be torn down. The rest of the movie focuses on saving the building and the budding romance between Umi and Shun which has a slight impediment that you know will eventually be resolved.
The girls names are a bit unusual. Umi means sea. Sora means sky. The Matsuzaki family also includes Riku and Nijie. Riku means land as in tairiku which means continent. Niji means rainbow. While there doesn’t seem to be an immediate kanji connection to me between Umi and Shun (the character for Shun means genius), the name of the chairman, Tokumaru (徳丸理事長) has some poetic significance because ships typically have the suffix maru in Japan and the same character is used. Rijichoo just means board chairman.
The movie is set in in 1963 as all of Tokyo and Japan prepares to host the 1964 Olympics. On their black and white television you’ll see what is supposed to be Kyu Sakamoto and this adds a layer of authenticity and sadness. Kyu Sakamoto was a boyish 22 at the time. His hit song, “Ue o muite aruko” was the only Japanese song to hit number one of the American pop Billboard charts as “Sukiyaki.”
Sakamoto toured the world in 1963 and 1964, showing buoyant face of Japan. Sakamoto had been born in Kanagawa prefecture (Kawasaki) and was the youngest of nine children which is why he was nicknamed Kyu (meaning 9). He died in 1985, leaving behind two daughters and his actress wife (Yukiko Kashiwagi).
The words of the song are about loneliness. According to Wikipedia, Rokusuke Ei wrote the song to record his disappointment about a failed protest movement against the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (日本国とアメリカ合衆国との間の相互協力及び安全保障条約 Nippon-koku to Amerika-gasshūkoku to no Aida no Sōgo Kyōryoku oyobi Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku) The treaty provided for the presence of U.S. military bases in Japan and the central debate was over the U.S. base in Okinawa. In Okinawa the military base covers one fifth of the small isolated island. The concerns ranged from noise and environmental concerns to the more recent anger over kidnapping and rape.
Japan wasn’t officially involved with the Korean War, but was viewed as an important strategic point in the world defense against communism according to some historians. During the Korean War, Japan’s main functions was as a military base for U.S. troops and a place for shipping supplies. Umi’s father worked as part of a transport crew for supplies and was killed during the Korean War. This movie does, like Swedish movie “Simon and the Oaks,” show how war touches people in countries that aren’t actually involved. Korea was much in the minds of the Japanese people when Umi’s father died and under the current circumstances in North Korea, the topic may be at the forefront of the Japanese now.
This isn’t the best movie out of Studio Ghibli and the direction adequate. There are some breaks in logic here and there and I wish I could listen to the Japanese instead of the English dubbing to compare the script to the translations.
In the end, this is a nostalgic look at Japan as it recovered from war and was looking forward into a bright future. The threat of the Korean War was over. Mostly, I came away with the Kyu Sakamoto’s famous song playing in my head for the last few days and that might be the best part of the whole movie. “From Up on Poppy Hill” won Best Animated Film at the 2012 Japanese Academy Awards.
Below are the lyrics with the English translation.
うえ を むいて あるこう
なみだ が こぼれ ない よう に
おもいだす はる の に
ひとりぼっちの よる
うえ を むいて あるこう
にじん だ ほし を かぞえて
おもいだす なつ の ひ
ひとり ぼっち の よる
しあわせ は くも の うえ に
しあわせ は そら の うえ に
うえ を むいて あるこう
なみだ が こぼれ ない よう に
なきながら あるく
ひとりぼっち の よる
おもいだす あき の ひ
ひとりぼっち の よる
かなしみ は ほし の かげ に
かなしみ は つき の かげ に
うえ を むいて あるこう
なみだ が こぼれ ない よう に
なかながら あるく
ひとりぼっち の よる
English translation
I look up as I walk
So that the tears won’t fall
Remembering those spring days
But I am all alone tonight.
I look up as I walk
Counting the stars with tearful eyes
Remembering those summer days
But I am all alone tonight
Happiness lies beyond the clouds
Happiness lies up above the sky
I look up as I walk
So that the tears won’t fall
Though the tears well up as I walk
For tonight I’m all alone
Remembering those autumn days
But I am all alone tonight
Sadness lies in the shadow of the stars
Sadness lurks in the shadow of the moon
I look up as I walk
So that the tears won’t fall
Though the tears well up as I walk
For tonight I’m all alone.
Here’s an English version:
It’s all because of you, I’m feeling sad and blue you went away, now My life is just a rainy day and I love you so, how much you’ll never Know you’ve gone away and left me lonely. Untouchable memories seem to Keep hauting me another love so true, that once turned all my gray Skies blue but you disappeared, now my eyes are filled with tears and I’m wishing You were here with me soaked with love all my thoughts of you now that You’re gone I just don’t know what to do if only you were here, you’d Wash away my tears the sun would shine, once again you’ll be mine all Mine but in reality, you and I will never be cos you took your love Away from me (chorus) Girl, I don’t know what I did to make you leave me but what I Do know, is that since you’ve been gone there’s such an emptiness Inside, I’m wishing you to come back to me If only you were here, you’d wash away my tears the sun would shine, Once again you’ll be mine all mine but in reality, you and I will Never be ’cause you took your love away from me. Oh baby you took your Love away from me
Take time to discover the hidden, and even forgotten is what the 2009 French movie, “The Hedgehog” urges. Think of a prickly, curled up ball that reveals a shy hedgehog. There’s a certain elegance in becoming something people might overlook or ignore. Or think of it as buried treasure.
Too often, during Women’s History month, we think of young women–either women on their way into the world or someone who as a young woman ventured into the world and became a pioneer.
Although we hear an older, wiser Jennifer, we only see the young Nurse Jennifer Lee in “Call the Midwife.” In “Bomb Girls,” we’re mostly concerned with how our young, privileged woman learns about the working world. The young are our future, but without looking at the past, things will not change.
Yet what about the poor, the old and unlovely? French novelist and professor of philosophy Muriel Barbery wrote about one such woman in her 2006 novel “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” (L’Élégance du hérisson) which became the 2009 movie, “The Hedgehog” (Le Hérisson). The hedgehog in question is the 54-year-old Mrs. Renée Michel. Widowed, she has lived 27 years nearly invisible to the upper class tenants of the building she manages. The movie calls her a concierge. In the U.S., she would be something like the manager.
No one notices the widow, except for an 11-year-old misfit girl, Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic), who has decided that on her 12th birthday she will commit suicide. Until then, she records on video the banality of her family’s life. Things might have continued according to Paloma’s plan except someone dies. The death of a critic opens up a living quarters in the building and an elderly widow, Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa) moves in. When he meets Renée, she makes an off-hand remark, one that instantly informs Ozu that Renée is not who or what she pretends to be. Kakuro and Paloma become conspirators in an investigation.
Director Mona Achache also adapted Barbery’s novel with sensitivity. The movie respects the intelligence of children by not dumbing things down, but shows us how sometimes adults attempt to dumb down children. Paloma is at the tender age when her intelligence is not appreciated by her parents and makes her the target of ill will from other children her age.
Achache doesn’t take the focus away from Balasko’s Renée. Surely the temptation here would have been to make an easy movie of a beautiful but misunderstood precocious tween and even give this movie a happy ending. Instead, we see problems of economic class and the parallel between two female human beings–a girl and a mature woman–who are both faced with a culture that encourages them to hide away their intelligence.
Isn’t that choice still being made? And not only in France, but also in the United States? How many beautiful minds, minds that could perhaps solve so many problems of this world, been dimmed in order to fit in nicely with the rest of this man’s world?
For that reason, this movie, “The Hedgehog,” well-worth seeing for women and men of all ages. The movie won the Audience Award at the Washington DC Filmfest, the 2009 Special Award, Best Director, FIPRESCI and Silver Award at the Cairo International Film Festival. It also won the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film at the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival. You might not think hedgehogs are elegant, but in their own way all animals and all of God’s creatures are if they are allowed to be the best that they can be. The movie is live streaming on Netflix and Fandango. In French with English subtitles.
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer,” Stevie Wonder sang in 1972. Superstitions are something you need to consider when you’re watching Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 “The Ballad of Narayama” 楢山節考.
The movie “The Ballad of Narayama” 楢山節考 is based on a book by the same name by Shichiro Fukazawa 深沢 七郎. Fukazawa’s first novel was about an old legend of obasute-yama (also ubasute 姥捨て), a mountain where Japanese peasants would leave their parents to die. The characters and the words indicate that this mostly applied to women. A more general term, oyasute 親捨て, is also sometimes used.
An Ubasute-yama does exist in Nagano prefecture, but the official name of the mountain is Kamuriki-yama, the mountain that wears a crown. There is also an Obasute station on the East Japan Railway Company line. In the movie, Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) is 69 years old and in good health. Her widower son Tatsuhei (Teiji Takahashi) dreads the thought of obasute. Orin is portrayed as looking forward to her journey to the mountain because this is the way of the gods. In contrast, an elderly man, Mata-yan (Seiji Miyaguchi) refuses to make the journey and having been cast out by his son (Yunosuke Ito), begs for food.
When I first heard the title, “The Ballad of Narayama,” I thought of Nara 奈良市, the capital of Japan from 710 to 784, and wondered if this was about a mountain there. When I saw the characters, I immediately understood it wasn’t that Nara–the Nara of the Daibutsu, roaming roguish deer, Buddhism and the old capital of Japan. In Nara prefecture奈良市（ならし), the old capital, there is a Narayama 平城山駅（ならやまえき）and this place doesn’t use the same characters as the Narayama of the movie, either.
The Nara in the title, “The Ballad of Narayama” 『楢山節考』（ならやまぶしこう) means oak. There are actually three Chinese characters, kanji, that can be used to refer to what has been botanically identified as an oak tree: 樫、橿、櫧. Two are pronounced “kashi” and not “nara.” This makes one wonder why the author chose nara instead of kashi. There is indeed a Kashiyama. Kashi might make one think of Kashiwa sweets, but Nara might bring up the imagery of Buddhism. (The bushiko uses the characters for season and old).
While the Japanese admire the flexibility of the bamboo, oak trees are also seen as lucky because they have a long life and thus symbolize longevity. In Fukazawa’s novel, the oak tree mountain thus sets up an irony that those lucky enough to live a long life, up to 70 years of age, must go to this place where the elderly are taken to die.
In Japanese, the number seven already sets up a feeling of dread. Seven is one of those unlucky numbers. The number seven is usually read shichi, but the Japanese rarely use shichi to refer to people and instead substitute nana. Shichi is a homophone for the 死地 “jaws of death” or a “fatal position.” Shi means death. Chi is for earth. Sometimes juu means during such as in the phrase ichinichijuu (一日中）means all day long or during one day’s time. Certainly that makes 70, shichijuu, the perfect age for this tale about obasute.
According to Mock Joya’s “Things Japanese,” while the story of obasute is widespread and with many local variations, the “story may give a false impression that the ancient Japanese actually carried out such an inhumane practice.” Joya finds “The story was started with the idea of teaching children the duty of being kind and considerate to their old parents.” Perhaps this is how we should interpret this movie. By using the stylized theatrical staging and Kabuki and Noh conventions such as the narrator, Kinoshita places us in the realm of myths and legends–not unlike the Noh play, Takasago, the tale of an elderly couple who die and become two entwined pine trees.
Back in this time of legends and myths, people were really superstitious. They believe in things to help them explain things they didn’t understand. And just consider how superstitious people are even now. In the U.S., you rarely find a building with a 13th floor or a room number 13. In Japan, while there are 13th floors and 4th and 7th floors, there are other superstitions. I knew a teacher who would clap her hands twice, even while driving if we passed by a shrine. There are people who still consult with diviners when choosing the name of a child.
As “Shakespeare Uncovered: Hamlet with David Tennant” noted, we need to remember that during a certain time period ghosts and ghouls were considered real. Fukazawa was writing about a time period when oni were real occurrences to the villagers. In the movie, Orin’s eldest grandson, Kesakichi (Danko Ichikawa), taunts the old woman, suggesting that she is a devil because she has a full set of teeth. A woman at 69 with a full set of beautiful teeth would be unusual. People have 32 teeth, but an oni would have more than the usual number of things, like 33 teeth. Is it a coincidence that the kichi in Kesakichi’s name–an unusual Japanese name–could suggest the homophone for wit 機知or even danger 危地. According to Wikipedia (where I reference for all the names), the character used for Kesakichi けさ吉 is the kichi for good luck or joy. Kesa could mean this morning, but is written in hiragana. The danger that Kesakichi brings is the suggestion of Orin being an oni.
The danger is also in Orin’s name which among other things could be “rin” 林 for forest or “rin” 燐 for an elf’s fire or onibi 鬼火。Her name is written in hiragana and not kanji.
According to Joya, oni began as something hidden or invisible that could harm or kill humans, but with Buddhism oni came to represent hideous monsters. Dead people could become oni and cause sickness and suffering.
Other customs include Setsubun 節分are still practiced with varied levels of belief. On the eve of Setsubun, one throw beans and declare, “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi” （鬼は外福はうち）or “Oni out and happiness inside.” Oddly enough, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan notes there are Japanese families supposedly descended from oni.
In the movie, the villagers live in poverty and a persistent fear of starvation. The movie opens with a messager who brings news of death to Orin. A man in the neighboring town where Orin was born has just been buried three days ago. The widow is 45 years old just as is Orin’s son Tatsuhei and will come in after 49-days of mourning.
Orin takes the news to Tatsuhei who has just paid his respects to the grave of his wife who died a year before, falling down a ravine. Tatsuhei has just warned one of his younger sons to be careful where he plays or he too might die from such a fall. Death is all around. Orin and Tatsuhei consider the upcoming O-bon festival, a time when the dead supposedly come back to earth and visit their hometowns.
The widow who comes as the future bride for Orin’s widower son arrives alone and when Orin sets out a feast, she gobbles down the white rice–something made for special occasions and three fish. Her name Tama-yan means jade and the son’s name, Tatsuhei (辰平） are two lucky symbols, dragon and balance. The couple seems to be meant for each other. With her son taken care of, Orin is ready to accept the way of the kami because the practice of obasute is part of the villagers’ way to appease the kami or gods of the mountains.
Notice that when Tatsuhei and Orin go before the village counsel. Each of the elders drinks from a large vessel. I think they are drinking water for purification. With the Orin and Tatsuhei, there is a total of eight people in the room. Tatsuhei and Orin are seated together on one side. Six other people are seated in a line on the other side. Without the two who do not speak during the official instructions, the number of elders would be an unlucky four. With only one of the two non-speakers, the total number of the people in the room would be an unlucky seven.
Tatsuhei takes the journey, carrying his mother on his back, unwilling to leave his mother halfway there. The scene of a mountain without oak trees but littered with skulls and bones suggests a time before Buddhism, before cremation and prayers in front of gravestones. The cold which could be a curse to the poor is now a blessing. Is the lack of trees an ironic visual statement. Are the people who die there then the oak trees?
Orin’s selfless sacrifice is due to her belief that it will please the kami and that it will insure the survival of her son and his family. That kind of belief brings comfort into a world that is unpredictable where something as capricious at the weather can mean starvation and death.
Very superstitious, writings on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladders bout’ to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past
When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way
Very superstitious, wash your face and hands,
Rid me of the problem, do all that you can,
Keep me in a daydream, keep me goin’ strong,
You don’t wanna save me, sad is my song
When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way, yeh, yeh
Very superstitious, nothin’ more to say,
Very superstitious, the devil’s on his way,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass,
Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past
When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
SAN MARINO, Calif. —An innovative partnership between The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and East L.A.’s Esteban E. Torres High School has produced some pretty snappy results: An exhibition of photography by students that will be displayed along more than 1,000 feet of construction fence surrounding The Huntington’s Education and […]
If you want a chance to be part of William Shatner’s new album, and you’re lucky enough to have a photo of yourself with a rainbow (not sure if it has to be a real rainbow), then send one in to William Shatner before 31 May 2013. See the message from Google+ below: William Shatner […]
William Shatner must be working on his next documentary because he just posted the following message on Facebook: Friends, I’m looking for true stories on how watching Star Trek (any series) affected your career decisions later in life. Did you go into a career in Science or Aviation or even become an Astronaut due to […]
On Monday, during the semi-finals on DWTS 16, there were four perfect scores and 17 tens in all. Olympic gymnast Alexandra Raisman and Mark Balls were tied for first with football player Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff with 59 points. Jones and Smirnoff finally got a ten. They actually got three of them for a […]
What beloved movie from your childhood holds up just as well today? And which one doesn’t? We (my family) were animal lovers, something encouraged by living in San Diego where we frequently visited the world class San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Safari Park. I also grew up in a household ruled by Disney. […]
Do you love grand spectacle, color and great style. That’s what Baz Luhrmann brings to the movies, and I looked forward to the opening of his “The Great Gatsby.” I love the styles, the music and the fashion of that time period. Luhrmann gives it to us in vibrant excess as the art deco meets […]
As preparation for the much anticipated Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” I took to Netflix and watched the 1974 version which starred Robert Redford. Review of 2013 “The Great Gatsby” Law & Order fans might gasp at the sight of a young Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway. Carraway is the story’s narrator. His Nick is […]
When my theater companion suddenly canceled and I was scrambling to find someone who would want to join me, for this sensitive production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” I was surprised that people didn’t know who August Wilson was. Wilson who died in 2005 (2 October at age 60), won two Pulitzer Prizes for […]
It’s not to early to be thinking about summer and a week from this Friday, 17 May 2013, the Pacific Asia Museum is kicking off its Fusion Fridays with a beautiful Indonesian shadow puppet performance. Fusion Fridays are all about live performances, meeting people and seeing good art along with good eats. Cocktail and Asian […]
Pacific Asia Museum presents a wide variety of public programming in June 2013. All programs below are included with museum admission unless otherwise stated.Silk Road Storytime June 1, 10:30 a.m. […]
