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Issue 10: February 2004 The Japan Foundation London Newsletter Japanese Film Season – Self, Identity and the Outsider in Recent Japanese Film In collaboration with UK professional organisations, the Japan Foundation is presenting in March at Watershed, Bristol, Sheffield’s Showroom and at the Birmingham Screen Festival a season of recent Japanese films. It will feature films that look at the concept of “others” within Japanese society and the search for self and identity. Contemporary Japanese film has begun to reflect a general shift away from the depiction of Japan as a homogeneous society to reveal its increasing diversification in terms of race and the way A scene from Shangri-la. This will be the UK premier people think and interact. Films are focusing more and more on people’s place Return and Transparent, Nao Omori in Ichi the woman trapped for decades in a well who has within society, their feeling of “otherness”, Killer and Vibrator, and Yosuke Kubozuka in Go, projected her vengeance as a broadcast recorded and their need to re-identify themselves as Laundry and Madness in Bloom. Even housewives on to a cursed videotape. But before Ring there they attempt to adjust to and communicate are getting a look in with Hideyuki Hirayama’s was Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (1997) in which a with those they perceive as “different”. Out and Tetsuo Shinohara’s Showa Kayo stranger can so undermine one’s sense of self that Daizenshu. In the former, factory workers find one could murder the people one most loves. We plan to show the following films: their vocation cutting up dead bodies for the Japanese critics have speculated that such an Cure Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997 yakuza; in the latter our heroines enter gang examination of evil could only come from a Embracing Naomi Kawase, 1992 warfare with the local hooligans, matching them nation without the concept of a monolithic god. All Under the Moon Yoichi Sai, 1993 weapon for weapon before Tokyo explodes in a Kurosawa’s most recent film, Doppelganger, takes Helpless Shinji Aoyama, 1996 mushroom cloud. his examination of identity even further, Distance Hirokazu Koreeda, 2001 One catalalyst for the trend was the bursting speculating what would happen if one was Shangri-la Takashi Miike, 2003 of the economic bubble. Shunji Iwai’s literally confronted by one’s idealised self. Swallowtail Butterfly Shunji Iwai, 1996 blockbuster Swallowtail Butterfly (1996), Identity, of course, is the six million dollar conceived during the boom years, takes place in question that all of these films about the he outsider is a romantic figure in every a fictional Yen Town, a “paradise of yen” for outsider, the other, the dispossessed, are striving Tnational cinema. The actor who best Asian immigrants. Like Yoichi Sai’s critically to answer. What is exciting about recent Japanese represented the “outsider” in the 1990s was applauded All Under the Moon (1993) before it, cinema is how this quest, a mainstay of Tadanobu Asano, who starred in the feature the protagonists with whom the audience is independent and avant-garde film, has found debut of nearly every important Japanese director asked to identify are foreigners. Another such fruitful and commercially successful forms. to emerge during the decade, including Shinji groundbreaking film was Isao Yukisada’s Go It is no coincidence that the most influential Aoyama’s Helpless, Shunji Iwai’s Picnic, Hirokazu (2001) whose Korean-Japanese protagonist films of the past decade within Asia – Shunji Koreeda’s Maborosi and Satoshi Isaka’s Focus. And Sugihara doesn’t give a damn about Iwai’s Love Letter (1995), Hideo Nakata’s Ring with films such as Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s The Last discrimination until the girl he loves backs off (1998) and Kwak Jae-yong My Sassy Girl (South Life in the Universe, he is increasingly called on after finding out what’s really in his genes. Korea, 2001) – have each taken the question of to play the outsider in films by directors heavily It showed that it’s not only okay for a Japanese identity, communication, and what it means to influenced by Japanese cinema. actor’s career to portray a foreigner, but that it love and be loved, at their core. We are all Asano has been joined in the ranks of rebels can also be the epitome of cool. outsiders. Even the Japanese. with and without a cause by Koji Chihara in The other major trend in Japanese cinema Stephen Cremin Pornostar and Hysteric, Ryuhei Matsuda in over the past five years is the psycho-horror Details from Junko Takekawa on Gohatto and Blue Spring, Masato Hagiwara in boom. And what more extreme example of the Tel: 020 7436 6695 Cure and Rain of Light, Masanobu Ando in Kids outsider is there than Sadako in the Ring series, a Email: [email protected] Japanese Studies Doctoral Research Ever reducing budgets have impacted greatly on the availability of funds for postgraduate and post doctoral research within UK universities. We were therefore pleased that two promising young scholars succeeded last year in visiting Japan under our Fellowship Programme. Richard Ronald and Lee Woolgar describe here their research. Home Ownership Ideology in Britain and Japan y postgraduate work raised a number of owned home was a nodal point of family social modern housing. The conceptual and market Mquestions concerning the comparability of relations and intergenerational exchange. separation of housing units and land in the British and Japan as modern home owner- However, the Japanese housing market has Japanese case was also an issue highlighted by societies. Indeed, despite the obvious contrast suffered substantial loses in the post bubble era the research and stands out as a conspicuous in household and vernacular tradition, and family patterns are increasingly and unusual element of the system. This construction and architectural approaches, fragmenting. Increasingly, the housing separation goes someway in explaining the finance systems and market patterns, both ladder system is destabilising, and the long- strong preference for detached housing units Britain and Japan have transformed themselves term sustainability of the housing system is on family owned land, the deliberately rapidly from rental to home ownership in question. engineered short lifespan of the Japanese orientated societies in the post war era. Thanks My investigative approach to Japanese housing unit (normally 25-40 years), and the to the Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, housing drew upon a framework of social and over-construction of housing. for 12 months from September 2002 I was economic analyses developed in Anglo-Saxon I returned to the UK in September last year based at the faculty of Human Development at societies and the newly industrialised societies and completed the Ph.D. examination in Kobe University in order to explore this of East and South East Asia where owner- December. My hope is to develop this research comparison and carry out fieldwork necessary occupation is now prevalent. The aim was to further in the future and I am currently for the completion of my Ph.D. thesis. develop comparative understanding of the looking for a new academic position that might Levels of owner-occupied housing in Japan specific and universal aspects of the Japanese facilitate this. I am extremely grateful to the expanded rapidly during the 1950s, reaching system. My empirical work focused upon the Japan Foundation for the opportunity to around 65% before the end of the decade. The process of consumption and involved interview compete my fieldwork and experience a year expansion of home ownership drove the research with around 40 homeowners in the with Professor Yosuke Hirayama and the construction sector and was strongly embedded Kansai area, as well as supplementary research postgraduate students of the Urban Planning in the process of economic growth and the with professionals working in planning, Research Group at Kobe University. formation of a mainstream middleclass. For construction and architecture. households themselves owner-occupied housing The findings of the research shed light on Richard Ronald Centre for Residential became an important asset or container of the significance of discourses on family and Development, School of Property and family wealth. Furthermore, the privately cultural traditions in the consumption of Construction, Nottingham Trent University Japanese Investment in British Science y research was at the National Graduate innovation system. Furthermore, Japan has but is more geographically and institutionally MResearch Institute for Policy Studies recently embarked upon significant reform of its extensive in range, formality and scope. (GRIPS). It assessed: 1) the scope of Japanese R&D infrastructure and industry-science As laboratory establishment appears modest, R&D engagement in the UK; 2) how relations (ISR) linkage mechanisms. other investments are newly established or competition from other countries and Japanese Two main methodologies were used: continued. British universities are selected for universities may influence future Anglo-Japanese questionnaires and interviews. One strong research performance, and a more engagement. questionnaire was sent to British universities; a entrepreneurial attitude to ISR than many It is increasingly acknowledged that finite second to 150 large Japanese corporations. Japanese counterparts. Reform of Japanese resources and competences lead firms to seek Twenty-five interviews occurred with R&D structures and ISR linkage mechanisms were technological and scientific