Yasukuni article and interview with Li Ying

[Jasper Sharp]

I'm just back from Nippon Connection, which program-wise represented an incredibly strong year for Japanese cinema, both on the mainstream side and the indie jishu eiga level - the audience prize to Fine, Everything Fine (Zenzen daijoubu) seemed particularly well-deserved this time round. Not as many list members there as last year, I couldnt help but notice, which was a pity as they certainly missed out here. I keep saying this as often as possible, but this is THE place to get any idea of what is going on in Japanese cinema at any given year, as well as to meet the people making the films. A big thanks to Alex, Marion and Holger for putting together such a great event, and also to the volunteers who made the weekend such a fun experience.

I caught the screening of Yasukuni, but missed the podium discussion. My comprehension of the film was somewhat blighted by the fact that it screened with German subtitles, and is common with documentaries from Japan (if we can label it as such) the sound was fairly down in the mix, so for someone with my level of Japanese and German, I didnt have 100% word for word understanding, but certainly enough to get a fairly decent impression.

Obviously this was one of the talking point films of the weekend. My generally feeling was that while it was fairly even-handed in giving voice to a good number of different characters, it would certainly have been provocative for Japanese viewers of all political persuasions, and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way. I feel it was important to screen this film, as it certainly highlighted the complexities surrounding the shrine, which for non-Japanese viewers, and more specifically non-Asian viewers, are so often simplified in our media. There are a number of stand-out scenes, which work on the same agit-prop level as Ogawa's Narita films, namely the sight of one protestor being forcibly and bloodily ejected from the shrine during a visit by Shintaro Ishihara, while being repeatedly harangued by an old nationalist shouting "Go back to China!" - it transpires the young protestor is in fact Japanese! However, I heard rumours that one of the other more memorable sequences - of a non-Japanese speaking American pledging his support for Koizumi's visits while holding up an American flag, and getting a fairly mixed response from the rest of the people at the shrine to say the least - was in fact set up. Can anyone verify this? 

Anyway, all in all, it would seem that director Li Yang was going for a more gut response. The film had important things to say, but I think on the balance I would share Inada Tomomi's doubt in the Japan Focus article "about the movie’s political intentions”, though this is not to say I would agree in any way with decisions to suppress it. Japan fought a war of aggression in Asia, it is true, and yet my understanding is the shrine is not only for those who died in the Pacific War. PM Koizumi's visits then, from my British perspective, surely cant be so different from the Queen's attendance at the Remembrance Day ceremony? Well, its certainly a point of debate, and the relationship in Japan between religion and state politics has a very different history to that in the UK. In another of the films screening at the festival, the less-emotive Tokko: Wings of Defeat, a collaboration between US-born Japanese Risa Morimoto and Japanese-born American Linda Hoagland, one of the surviving kamikaze pilots did voice the opinion that for all the horror and destruction of the war, the one benefit is that it did force Japan to renounce war in other countries. I wish I could say the same thing about my own country. Yes, Koizumi's annual visits to the shrine can be seen as a provocation to its Asian neighbours, but I'm also of the opinion that the Chinese condemnation of these visits has more than a slight air of opportunistism about it. The war ended 60 years ago now, and I see a film such a Tokko as part of an interesting way of looking at how and why the world descended into such horrific madness on such a scale, of trying to get a clearer picture of "the fog of war" from a more detached time distance. The ongoing finger-pointing and acrimony in Asia does not seem helpful or healthy, and seems more motivated by contemporary politics. It might just be time to draw a line and move on as has been the case in Europe. Certainly events that have arisen in the past few weeks in the run up to the Olympics suggest that China might not be in the best position to take any moral high ground.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this continuing discourse resolves itself.. I'd be very interested to hear if Japanese viewers found the film in any way offensive, or merely controversial. My basic sentiment in all of this is that as an individual from the other side of the world and 60 years on from the war, I have no strong feelings either for or against the role of Yasukuni. Clearly the director and those who would seek to ban his film from being shown have a different relationship to the material. Nevertheless, I would like to see it again, and do understand its importance in raising the debate around these issues, so for that reason I am very glad Nippon Connection decided to screen it. Thanks Alex!

Jasper Sharp
















Midnight Eyewww.midnighteye.com

----------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 23:19:12 +0900
> From: mroberts37 at mail-central.com
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Yasukuni article and interview with Li Ying
> 
> Freedom Next Time. Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni  
> Film
> http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2712

_________________________________________________________________
Get Hotmail on your mobile. Text MSN to 63463 now!
http://mobile.uk.msn.com/pc/mail.aspx