TATAMI GALAXY

How to describe the 2010 anime Tatami Galaxy directed by Masaaki Yuasa and featuring the art-work of Nakamura Yusuke... I have never struggled so hard to keep up with the dialogue like in this anime because of the speed with which its delivered. Which is a shame because the animation needs time to be appreciated. And time is what the viewer doesn't have. Tatami Galaxy depicts the life of a Kyoto University student plagued by indecision about his love life and an over inflated sense of his own worth. He pursues his dream of enjoying a rose-coloured campus life at Kyoto University but he is unable to choose between three women: Keiko, to whom he is writing letters; Kaori, the elegantly dressed love-doll that belongs to Jogasaki senpai and Hanuki, the oral hygiene assistant who is being pursued by a perverted dentist. Each episode shows him go so far before he makes a hasty retreat only to start all over again in a new direction in the next episode. But, of course, each episode is connected. Like the 4.5 tatami mats in his room and like the blocks of colour in a Mondrian painting the dialogue is a rapid review and retracing of previous episodes before new directions and new information is presented. By the time the final episode arrives, the narrator is trapped in a boarding house full of the 4.5 tatami mats rooms which represent the lives he would have lived if he had taken that particular direction. The animation is put together in a combination of styles in a way that subverts a conventional narrative structure. Apart from the integration of photographs with animation, colour with black and white cells and the reworking of previous scenes into new scenes without treating them as conventional flashbacks, ultimately, the characters are shown to be working to a script that comes  from the narrator's own head. These are scenes that he wrote whilst he was a member of the film circle. Ultimately, however, he has the missing charm that Akashi san lost and which he found at the laundry-mat when he was washing his underwear at the start of the program. And it is this charm that dangles before him in the credits at the start of each episode that will presumably lead him to return the charm and win her love.

He is, however, his own worst enemy. When Hanuki, the dental hygiene nurse, finally invites him out for a drink and begins licking his face when she gets drunk he is aroused but locks himself in the toilet so as not to lose his purity. His libido, personified by the cowboy Johnny, is raring to go and can't believe that he is going to let this opportunity go. He returns home to spend time with Kaori and decides to elope with her but she is taken away by Jogasaki senpai. He is relieved that he has been saved from his own lecherous thoughts. Finally, it turns out that the letters he has been receiving from 'Keiko' have really been written as a joke by Akashi san. As the un-named narrator is thus frustrated at each and every turn, a mischievous imp named Ozu  manages to ingratiate himself to all and sundry ensuring that all their plans go astray whilst he is busy planning to steal a rocket to go on a date with the daughter of the owner of the Honwaka health foods company.

Needless to say, all of these threads are connected and there is a fortune teller who charges 1,000 yen more for each piece of advice from whom he can't get any clear answers. And did I mention the pop-up ramen stand known as the nekko ramenya? This is rumoured to use cat meat in its broth but provides a sanctuary for our hero to take a break from his troubles. And so in each episode, at break-neck speed, our un-named protagonist lurches forward only to find himself back at the start on the board game of love.

BANANA YOSHIMOTO'S: 'MOSHI MOSHI SHIMO-KITAZAWA'

Bu Su is a 1987 film made by Jun Ichikawa starring Tomita Yasuko. In 1990 he made Goodbye Tsugumi, the novel written by Yoshimoto Banana, into a film. And in 2004 he made Tony Takitani, the short story by Murakami Haruki, into a film. This is one of the few films Murakami has allowed to be made from his books. Of significance to Yoshimoto is the film Zawa Zawa Shimo-Kitazawa which she references at the beginning of her novel Moshi Moshi Shimo-Kitazawa. Clearly when you look at his films there is an affinity in his subject matter and that which Yoshimoto has made her own over the last 25 years. 

 

Moshi Moshi Shimo-Kitazawa was first published serially on a monthly basis in the Mainichi Shimbun during 2009 - 2010. Typically for Yoshimoto Banana's fiction it starts with a death. The narrator's father, a musician, has been seduced by a woman whose pale complexion reminds them of that of a fox or a snake. She and her mother believe that her father was bewitched before both of them were killed in a love suicide. In shock and despair the narrator watches the Ichikawa Jun film and is inspired by the pianist Fujiko Hemming to move to Shimo-Kitazawa. Yocchan finds a room there after a friend marries and moves to England. The rent is cheap and whilst there is a café on the ground floor, at night the building is empty. She is enjoying her independence when her mother decides to move in. She can no longer bear living in the house in Meguro. Not only are memories too painful but she has also seen the ghost of her dead husband. Yocchan is reluctant at first but agrees because it makes sense financially. Her mother will come into money if and when the family house in Hokkaido is sold. What is most apparent to Yocchan, however, is a change in her mother who is usually so careful and so considered, unlike her father who was often on tour playing keyboards or else recording.

That summer is particularly hot and neither of them has an appetite for eating but they go to a little  café in Shimo Kita and eat a delicious kaki kori ice and salad. The sincerity with which Michiyo san prepares her meals refreshed their bodies even though Yocchan's mother says that her heart still feels dead inside. At this time Yocchan is constantly reliving memories of the last time that she saw her father. He wanted her to come with him to a live gig in Ginza but she had another appointment. He promised to take her to an expensive French restaurant when he comes back so she can do some research but this is the last time that she saw him alive. Food is important and she is upset that he father will never be able to eat the food that she is now able to make. His only memory was of the food she had prepared when she was younger and less skilled.

Yocchan is curious after a while what her mother does while she is at work each day. Her mother feels more comfortable in Shimo Kita than in Meguro because no-one knows her and she is free to be herself. She starts to dress differently and no longer dresses like a 'madam'. She describes all of the shops that she visits and it turns out she even visits the restaurant where Yocchan works during her breaks. Yocchan is embarrassed  by this but says to her mother that it is good for the shop to have customers. They reminisce about a family trip to Paris. It was very enjoyable like all of their other memories except for the last one. Yocchan imagines her father at home in Meguro alone playing the piano and eating cup noodles whilst wearing odd coloured socks. She thinks that if he had rally loved the other woman his ghost wouldn't have come back to the family home. That night Yocchan sees her father in a dream. He had come home to look for his mobile phone so he could call her mother. Yocchan wants to help him but she can't say anything. While she is looking at his back she wakes up and sees her mother sleeping. Looking at her mother's spine she feels reassured and falls asleep.

One day a new customer comes to the restaurant (named Re-Riyan). Both Yocchan and Michiyo san are impressed by his table manners. Yocchan is taken aback at how much he reminds her of her father. When she goes to buy coffee in her break they meet in the street and it turns out that he knew her father. He used to watch him play at the live house in Shinjuku. Whilst Yocchan's father played mature English style rock Shintani kun, however, prefers Japanese Indie bands... Shintani kun also knows Yamazaki san, her father's best friend. He meets her in the street one day and she agrees to meet him after work. He asks her about her father and says that Yamazaki san had told him about the woman. Yocchan is disturbed decides to contact with Yamazaki san. At first Yamazaki san is reluctant to talk about the woman but he informs Yocchan that not only was it a love suicide but she had tried it once before with another man but failed. Prior to this she had had borrowed money until there was no more money left. Yamazaki san said that even though her father had had plans go build his own studio he had no money in his account when he died. It turns out that the woman was his niece. Yocchan realises that what she had seen in her dream was true. But Yamazaki reassures her of the strong feelings that 'Imo', her father, had for his family and she feels reassured.

Yocchan has a bad dream in which she calls home and her father answers. She can feels his love and starts to cry but the connection is bad and the she can't hear anything. She then hears a woman's voice and takes the phone away from her ear. She is scared and her mother wakes her up telling her that she was calling out for her father. Her mother apologises for only thinking about herself. After work Yocchan has a drink in the underground in a bar that is full of old men and women that looks like something out of the Showa period. She tells Shintani kun about her dream and about how her mother saw her father's ghost in Meguro and he says that he believes her. Working in a live house, he sees the effects of alcohol and drugs on musicians and groupies who die young and while he is not sure if he believes in ghosts, he knows that strange things happen. He suggests she visits her father's grave to see how she feels. She remembers the awful trip she and her mother made to Ibaraki when he father died. He offers to go with her. She is not so sure. He tells her that she has to take her time to get over the loss of her father. She asks him how he knows so much about these things even though he is young. He tells her that it is because of the demons that he has seen people struggling with at the live house over the years.

Yocchan is working at the restaurant one day when she has a visitor from Ibaraki. Nakanishi san introduces herself by saying that her first husband nearly became a victim of the strange woman. She blames herself for what happened to Yocchan's father and wants to know where his grave is so that she can light some incense and offer some prayers for his repose. Yocchan is confused and afraid at first but she is convinced by the woman's apparent sincerity and tells her. She has to tell someone but she can't decide who to tell. Her mother has started working as a waitress so she doesn't want to upset her and she doesn't want to tell Shintani kun so she decides to call Yamazaki instead. He listens to her story and eases her fears by telling her that she has done nothing wrong. He decides that he will go with her and they will visit he forest where her father died with the strange woman and they will take the band with them so that afterwards they can play her father's songs. They will turn the trip into a celebration. Yocchan is overjoyed.

At this point Yocchan gets some bad news... The restaurant where she works has to close because of rising superannuation costs. Michiyo san plans to close the restaurant and go to France for six months before she comes back to Shimo Kitazawa to open a smaller shop. She offers Yocchan a job in the new restaurant but on a lower salary. Not only does Yocchan want to work in the new shop she also wants to go to France with Michiyo san. Michiyo san agrees to take her saying that they can stay with a friend and then travel in the provinces to try various foods and to make plans for the menu for the new shop. Yocchan doesn't want to leave Shimo Kitazawa, it feels like her home town. You can take your time there unlike in many other places in Tokyo. This is one of the reasons why she likes Shintani kun... As her feelings for him grow there is no pressure on her to take relationship any further. She thinks about she and her mother have created healthy lives in Shimo Kitazawa and thinks that they could have done it together as a family if her father was still alive. This thought saddens her...

Shintani kun invites Yocchan to his apartment and to her surprise his stereo is smaller than she thought but the kitchen is well used and the floor is shining. He kisses her but refuses to take things further because she is not yet ready. He assures her that he is a 'beast' but he wants to give her time. Yocchan visits the family home in Meguro for the last time with her mother and even though there is an oppressive atmosphere they do some cleaning. They decide to eat curry on the way home at a favourite local restaurant and then at the last minute as they are locking the doors they both decide at the same time to get Yocchan's father's photograph from the piano. They have family photographs at the apartment in Shimo Kitazawa but this is the only photograph they have of him on his own. They burn some incense and light some candles to go with the photograph and in this way feel they have brought his spirit home to live with them..

Yocchan has another dream in which she goes back to the Meguro home but all of the furniture has been taken away for a new family to move in. The phone rings and when she picks it up it is her father. She asks him if he loves them but there is no reply. She tells him that they have taken his photograph. She realizes that he wanted to call them when he died. She wakes up and sees her mother sleeping. She has the feeling that they managed to get the photograph just in time. Yocchan then gets another visit from Nakanishi san. Yocchan thanks her for visiting he father's grave but she says she has been busy. Instead she has brought a gift. It is a purse with some salt in it which a friend who is knowledgeable about the spirit world has given her. She tells Yocchan to take it with her when she goes to visit the forest where her father died and when she goes to visit his grave. No doubt this is the last time that she will see her Yocchan thinks when she leaves.

Yocchan goes to a 70s bar with Shintani kun that looks like it has been designed by some drunken Gaudi. There is no change in their relationship. They meet Yocchan's mother   who goes home early so that they can enjoy their date together. Her mother goes to Meguro and brings her giant TV set to Shim Kita. Inside herself Yocchan feel si something that is waiting and she is not sure what it is. It might be a miniature of what killed her father. When she gets home her mother is in front of the giant TV. She is watching a movie starring Matsuda Yusaku... Yocchan feels there is some kind of hint there. It was a favourite movie of her mother's and her father took her to see it when she was young.

Michiyo san gets a fever and Moriyama san comes to help out at the restaurant. Yocchan realises that she is not ready yet to fill Michiyo san's shoes. She can barely cope with the demands of the job. Shintani kun reassures her. He tells her that he can't wait any longer and asks her to come home with him They have sex as soon as they get there and then he makes her tea.  She goes home in a taxi but can't stop crying. She fears that it won't last and that it isn't real love. She tells him they can't go out together for a while and that she needs time. She asks her mother about her relationship with Shintani kun and she says they just look like friends who have slept together... They do not look like people who would marry each other. Yocchan tells her mother about the woman from Ibaraki and about her plan to visit the forest where her father died so she can say some prayers. Her mother refuses to go with her. She won't prayer for the other woman. Her mother has also been seeing dreams...

Yocchan has lots to do to get ready to go to France but just can't get motivated. She decides to visit Ibaraki that day as the weather is fine. At the station, however, she feels like she has forgotten something. She thinks of calling Shintani kun but calls Yamazaki san instead. She is crying on the phone and he as he is by coincidence already at Tokyo station he agrees to drive to Ibaraki and meet her there. She feels good again and realises that she likes Yamazaki more than Shintani kun. But Yamazaki is 45 years old and he is married. When they get to Ibaraki the weather is fine and Yamazaki san feels that Imo (his nickname for Yocchan's father) will enter Nirvana. They go to the suicide spot in the forest in Yamazaki san's Mini Cooper. It is a deserted area with a dirt road and only a few houses. The ride is very bumpy... The bodies were found by a book illustrator and Yocchan and her mother were grateful for their kindness at the time.

The branches on the road make visibility difficult. When they come to the spot, they decide to bury the charm they have brought in the ground. Yocchan is amazed that Yamazaki san has a shovel in his boot. She also buries her father's mobile phone which is in pieces after her mother stamped on it. Yamazaki san recognizes it and asks what happened to it. She explains about her mother's anger... It turns out that Yamazaki san was divorced two years earlier. His wife left him for a younger man. She wanted to have a baby. Yocchan is happy to hear this news but feels that he has probably already met someone else. Yamazaki san's life has changed a lot in the last two years with the death of his best friend and his divorce. He tells Yocchan how different she is to her parents always thinking of others before herself. She feels grateful for his kind words. Yocchan tells him that she likes him but he warns her against having feelings for him because she is still grieving. They debate about whether to go to the aquarium that he father loved but decided to go another time. Yocchan realises that she probably won't see Shintani kun for a long time. It wasn't a mistake but she wants to begin a new life. She says goodbye to the Re Riyan-Shintani period of her life.

Back in Tokyo, Yamazaki san treats Yocchan to soba at a very expensive restaurant. He asks her if she has spoken about him to her mother? She says yes. She talks about not going home and he warns her again. She realises that he has known her since she was a child and that that is probably still how he sees her.  He tells her that her father had stomach cancer but refused to go to the hospital. She is shocked but thinks that her father probably told her mother. Yamazaki san asks her why she likes him and why she wants to sleep with him. She explains and he accepts. It is different to being with Shintani kun. Shintani kun was more practiced in the ways of sex whereas Yamazaki had just had sex with the same woman. Yocchan feels better having sex with Yamazaki san because he sees the 'real her'.  She takes a taxi back home and they agree not to meet until she comes back from France. The only thing that she asks is that he doesn't start living with someone else. he can have sex with them but she would like to see how they feel when she gets back. She gets out of the taxi near the Shimo Kita station and walks home looking at the shops and reflecting on the life that she has made there and the people that she has met. She feels that this is her home town. She is sad that the sakura tree will be cut down for the new building but she will carry the memory of it inside her like she carries inside her her father's DNA.

TEN DOLLAR TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY

Tradition abounds in Japan and television is no different. The TV show Shinkonsan featuring newly married couples is now in its 45th year with the same compere Katsura Sanshi. Japanese comedy also has a long history full of bizarre comedy acts such Beat Takeshi, Tunnels and Downtown. Manzai Combi duo Ten Dollar are an act that have been around for twenty years and have recently enjoyed some success in the United States where they performed in a show in English in Los Angeles to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. On Japanese television to start the New Year in 2015, they enacted a skit which focussed on the handing over of the sash between runners in the annual ekiden marathon. Unusually for manzai there was more focus on physical comedy rather than spoken word. The runner alternately put the sash over both runners, took too many drinks and got drunk, went to the toilet and used the sash to wipe his bum etc...  Both Hamamoto Hiroaki and Shirokawa Hitomi are from Osaka and the combi is part of the Yoshimoto Kogyo company.

MURAKAMI HARUKI: 'THE STRANGE LIBRARY" AND THE RETURN OF THE SHEEP MAN

Murakami’s latest book in English is interesting for a number of reasons: its brevity, its pictures and the return of an old, favourite character the Sheep Man. Its shortness means that the plot is quite simple. Whilst the idea that reading makes the brain creamy to the taste might put some children off reading, it is a dark fantasy in which parallel worlds are jumbled up and what belongs in this world one minute doesn’t belong the next. As his pet starling dies in order to secure his release from the strange library so too his mother passes away soon after he notices “shadows gathering around her.”   

The pictures are also very much part of the story. As the narrator reads the diary of an Ottoman tax collector and becomes the tax collector he experiences the sights and sounds of Istanbul. The book transports him to another time and another world despite having no knowledge of the language. The pictures come from the books in the library and they illustrate events in the narrative as they unfold.

Finally there is the character of the Sheep Man. It is impossible not to read this story and to have flashbacks from Pinball 1973 and the Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dnce etc. The whipping he receives at the hands of the old man in the strange library perpetuate the his ongoing struggles. The sacrifices he continues to make his equanimity all the more endearing. This is a story for the fans who fell in love with this character and never want to let go…

ANDO HANAKO x KYARY PAMYU PAMYU

Oshin the perennial favourite on Japanese television seems more and more incongruous in this era of the empowered female. Think Kyary Pamyu Pmayu the queen of the Harajuku girls and female gender identity in Japan does not look like there will be a return to the self-sacrifice embodied in the Oshin narrative. Whilst Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is the latest in a long line of examples of the New Japanese Woman, the NHK production about Ando Hanako, the Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables, shows that there is a still a fascination for the traditional Japanese female stereotype. The NHK story has Hanako growing up in a poor farming family with no education until her father comes home and sends her to primary school. From there she is sent to a girls school in Tokyo where she is forbidden to speak Japanese. Typical of the era, the rules were strict but for those who adapted the rewards were great. Of course Anne of Green Gables had a powerful impact on young women all around the world. Simone de Beauvoir has written at length about the importance of this book to her during adolescence. This is the spirit with which the New Woman in Japan in the early twentieth century was imbued. The character of the New Woman developed (or degenerated, depending in your point of view) into the shojo of which the Harajuku girls are the latest manifestation. Interestingly, the spirit of Oshin is, however, not dead. Apart from the ongoing television series directed at those nostalgic for the traditional hard luck story of being born female in Japan, there is a group of mothers, survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in the Fukuoka region, who have made the news with their nuigurumi made from socks, named Onoko. These soft toy monkeys are sold to raise money for the victims of natural disasters. Supporters of the campaign include the actor Tsugawa Masahiko who starred in many of the late Itami Juzo's films. People who buy them hold parties and take toys on holidays and photograph them in famous locations. In this way traditional values and virtues of sacrifice and hard work endure in the age of digital technology and are propagated on social media displacing to some extent the idol culture and the slavish devotion to individualism that it promotes.

'THREE SISTERS': JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL 2014

'Three Sisters' was screening at ACMI as part of the 2014 Japanese Film festival.  It was a reasonably full house and after a short introduction it was into the film. The big screen was luxurious and lush compared to the flat screens that people's houses were filled with these days. The film walks a fine line between drama and comedy and somehow the women who ran the confectionary business Toraya in Kagoshima managed to keep their failed relationships with men in perspective. Except for the youngest sister Sakae, who was struggling to let go of the married men with whom she was having an affair. Namie, who has walked out on her husband in Tokyo, returns to the family home in Kagoshima but hardly has time to settle down before her husband arrives to ask her for a second chance. There is little encouragement for him at first but as time goes by the family warm to him and Namie slowly reconsiders her position. Or does she? She has prospects with a young publisher who has shown an interest in he as she tries to get her career going as an illustrator.

 

After the screening both producer Nishida Seishiro and director Sasabe Kiyoshi took some questions from the M.C. and the audience. They were asked questions such as whether the film reflected contemporary Japanese society? They were also asked if there were any problems with their portrayal of divorce in Japan?

"No" one of them replied through the interpreter. "In fact, the further south you go in Japan, the higher the divorce rate gets."

The audience laughed.

Then there was the scene at the airport when Namie wife meets her husband in the nick of time before he catches his plane. Whilst there is no indication that she will stay with him there is a lingering moment where the camera is focussed on her eyes. This is a scene filled with a pregnant but unspecified meaning teasing the audience to guess as to whether she will pursue a relationship with the young publisher or whether she will she return to Tokyo to be with her husband? Whilst the film left this open, current trends in Japanese society would suggest this is the last good-bye.

 

Producer Nishida suggested the film explores what is meant by family, and what is meant by marriage? The film also pays homage to his hometown in Kagoshima. The film is set at a time when small family businesses were closing down and being replaced by large shopping malls. Asked how it hard it is to get funding for film projects, he explained that he was able to get funding from local government, businesses and individuals after he explained that he wanted to film the local matsuri (festival) and introduce it to the world. 

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR AND JEAN PAUL SARTRE'S BIG TRIP TO JAPAN

Two old lefties who could never agree with anybody... Neither with the communists and definitely with those on the right. de Beauvoir was filled with loathing and hatred for her own country during the Algerian conflict. In the end thewy had to side with somebody and so it was the communists that they found the most common ground despite Stalinism and suppression of the facts about the camps. Trips to Cuba in the early 1960s helped give them faith in the goals of political solidarity. In 1966, however, they visited Japan for a three month period and were feted from one end of the country to the other (as they had been in Cuba). All Sartre's and de Beauvoir's books had been translated into Japanese and The Second Sex had been a best-seller.  On a boat to Beppu, de Beauvoir observed that Sartre was travelling with a camera for the first time in his life and "plied it with the ardour of a Japanese." Elsewhere she noted that Sartre had told reporters at a press conference that he held a very high opinion of the works of Tanizaki. Tanizaki's relationship with his wife had been as unconventional as that of Sartre and de Beauvoir. For a while, with her late, first husband's consent, she  had been Tanizaki's mistress. When Sartre met Tanizaki's widow, he questioned her about her late husband's sexual life. She told him that, "Tanizaki had wanted them both to try out some of the some of the practices described in his account of the blind female musician; at first she had refused, but then, because she admired him so, she agreed."

In her account de Beauvoir speaks about many aspects of Japanese life including the economy, religion, society and the arts. She writes about  Japanese temples and shrines, the Eta, sumo wrestling and both Noh and Bunraku theatre. In terms of her meetings with Japanese woman, de Beauvoir observed that women at one port did the work of unloading cargo from the boats. Questioning them she learned that as well as working seven days a week they also did all of the house work and were paid less than men. This was a widespread phenomenon in Japan; women received on average sixteen thousand yen a month compared to men who received thirty-five thousand yen. At that time, women represented thirty-five per cent of the Japanese work force. In the little town of Komamuto, de Beauvoir observed some men accompanied by geisha and noted that compared to other geisha that they had seen, these were "less stiff" and "sang cheerful songs, laughed a great deal, and put up with having their bottoms slapped." The author of The Second Sex did not seem to feel the need to make any adverse comment about this frivolous behaviour.