Nodo Jiman

[Mark Schilling]

 From: Mark Schilling <schill at gol.com> 
To: kinejapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Nodo Jiman
> Date: Wednesday, February 03, 1999 

John Dougill asks:

Anyone seen Nodo Jiman yet - supposed to be good according to my Japanese
friends...

I reviewed it last week for The Japan Times -- I would give it at least
three stars, though it's a four for anyone who wants to expand their
knowledge of postwar Japanese pop music. The program alone is worth the
price of admission!

Mark Schilling



Here's the JT Nodo Jiman review, as I sent it: 

	A Sunday afternoon institution -- it first aired on NHK radio in 1946 --
the "Nodo Jiman" (literally, "Proud of My Voice)" amateur singing program
is still going strong, with no sign that the ratings hammer is about to
gong cancellation. This, in the land that gave karaoke to the world, should
be no surprise, but when I first started watching the show, in the
mid-seventies, I naively thought that, since tone-deafness was as common
among the contestants as gray hair at a 30th class reunion, NHK must have
had a hard time finding the requisite 25 (now 22) acts. Weren't the
Japanese, especially those in the boonies the show favored in its travels,
a shy, retiring race for whom the dreaded one going  -- the "Nodo Jiman"
equivalent of "close, but no cigar" -- was a public humiliation to be
avoided at all costs? 
	The short answer provided by Kazuyuki Izutsu's "Nodo Jiman," which depicts
the human comedies and tragedies behind the show, is a big, resounding
"no." The competition for those slots, the film reminds us, is as tough as
that for a seat in a Todai classroom. Out of nearly 2,000 applicants, NHK
chooses 250 to appear for an audition. Of this number fewer than one in ten
survive to face the mike on the Sunday show, which is always broadcast live
from a hall filled with a large, usually supportive, local crowd. 
	No wonder the film's contestants treasure the postcard inviting them to
the audition. It's their admission into a select group, their shot at
something larger than their daily grind and, not least importantly, their
validation that they are what they have long secretly considered themselves
to be: starbound. 
	Izutsu, whose credits include the award-winning "Kishiwada Shonen
Gurentai" (Boys, Be Ambitious), unabashedly exploits the comic and musical
potential of this material, giving us a cute granny (Kyoko Asakiri)
warbling "Ginza Can Can Musume" with the air of thirties dance hall
chorine, a hyper-sincere salaryman (Daikichi Sugawara) emoting "Ans Toi Ma
Mie" in fractured French and a self-intoxicated cabby (Naoto Takenaka)
belting out "Sayonara O Mo Ichido" with the pinky of his mike hand pointing
firmly skyward.  
	Some of the clowning is very funny indeed, while some of it is
mechanically cartoony. One example of the latter is the mad rush of a
middle-aged yakitori stand trainee (Kohei Otomo) to get to the stage before
the auditions end. He takes a header to the floor, slams his knee against
the stage, and ploughs gamely into his number as he rises, phoenix-like, to
his feet, but his agonies are more reminiscent of a TV gaman taikai
(endurance contest) than a balletic slapstick routine. Buster Keaton ,
where are you when we need you? 
	To their credit, Izutsu and scriptwriter Teruo Abe are more interested in
getting at the core of the show's human appeal than running easy comic
riffs on its corniness. Instead of making the expected idiots of themselves
on national television, their heroes find themselves singing for reasons
more important than a winner's trophy and rising above their limitations as
a result. 
	Though they may lack the pipes and poise of their professional betters,
their performances have an intensity that goes straight to the
heart. They are up there singing not only lyrics, but their entire lives.
Watching them, I had the rare feeling that the actors were nakedly
expressing their own deep tangle of past disappointments and future hopes.
As their tears welled and flowed, so did my own.
	Though crowded with contestants, as well as snatches from dozens of pop
hits, old and new, "Nodo Jiman" focuses its narrative on four: Araki, the
aforementioned yakitori man, who croons as he empties slop buckets, Satoka
(Ayumi Ito), a high school girl  who is the star of her local karaoke club,
Kotaro (Kazuo Kitamura), an old shiitake grower who plans to sing "Ue o
Muite Aruko" to cheer up his autistic grandson, and Reiko (Shigeru Muroi), 
a struggling enka singer who wants, at least once in her life, to perform
in front of a full house in a real concert hall.  
	Of these stories, Reiko's is the most fully developed. As the film begins,
she is returning to her hometown in Gumma Prefecture with her
long-suffering manager (Isao Ito) to plug her latest record. But when she
sings at a local record store, her audience consists of, not adoring fans,
but staring schoolkids, blank-faced oldsters and two uncomprehending South
Asians, who promptly leave. When she visits her stern-faced barber father
(Nenji Kobayashi), she begs for a loan and tells him that she is thinking
of quitting (His response: "What have you been doing all this time?"). Then
she discovers a discarded invitation to a "Nodo Jiman" audition on the shop
floor and decides to grab what may be a last chance at redemption. 
	The other stories have a similar melodramatic ring. Araki has been a flop
at everything he has tried, The latest disaster being a ramen shop that
burned to the ground; Satoka comes from a dysfunctional family,
including a elder sister who is about to have the baby of her married
lover; and Kotaro is about to be abandoned by his  salaryman son, who has
been transferred to
Sao Paulo. 
	But though these set-ups may be those of conventional tearjerkers,
Izutsu's take on them is true to life. He understands working-class
Japanese from the inside -- not just the markers of language and style, but
the way they act with each other when they shut the fusuma and put away
their public faces for the day.  
	Shigeru Moroi is especially good as Reiko the enka singer. A skilled
comedian who scuffled through nearly 100 low-budget indie films before
rising to stardom with the hit TV drama "Yappari Neko ga Suki" in 1988, she
expresses Reiko's deep weariness and fierce pride with a precision honed by
her own experience. Also her climactic rendition of Mayo Okamoto's
"Tomorrow," which she filmed after leaving a sickbed with a high fever, is
a do-or-die stunner. 
	Likewise outstanding is Ayumi Ito as Satoka. While evidencing a cool
confidence and steely will beyond her years, she also reveals Satoka's
strong attachment to her wayward sister with a sudden upwelling of emotion
that is as affecting as it is unexpected.   
	See "Nodo Jiman" and gain a new appreciation for Japanese soul.  




>----------
> From: John Dougill <dougill at mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp>
> To: kinejapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Shall We Dance film script
> Date: Wednesday, February 03, 1999 1:47 AM
> 
> Thanks to Lori Hitchcock's suggestion of trying the top floor of Asahiya
> Bookstore in Osaka (06-6313-1191), I have been able to obtain by phone a
> bilingual film script of Shall We Dance (shenario taiyaku) published by
> i-ikusha.
> 
> For the information of the list, it appears that Shall We Dansu? Suop
> Masayuki no sekai (Waizu Shuppan) only has an excerpt from the film
script
> together with opinions by the director etc.
> 
> I'm still interested in obtaining other scripts of films and dramas (Long
> Vacation or With Love etc.), but it looks as if I will have to go to
Osaka
> in person.  Unfortunately the young people answering the phone in Asahiya
> don't seem to have a clue about what's in the shop, and even my Japanese
> teacher couldn't get much out of them.
> 
> Anyone seen Nodo Jiman yet - supposed to be good according to my Japanese
> friends...
> 
> Regards
> John Dougill
> Kyoto
>