Japanese Film Festival 2012: Preview

The Japanese Film Festival, programmed by its long time director Masafumi Konomi, is one of the biggest and most successful of the colloquial festivals in Australia. It started off in 1997 with a clutch of free screenings. Last year, according to organisers, it boasted 22,000 box office entries across most of the country’s major centres. This year Konomi has programmed 39 features plus a 6-film retrospective built around director Yasuzo Masumura. “Unfortunately, only Melbourne will get the retrospective,” he explains. “We once tried this kind of [program] in Sydney and no one showed up!”

Konomi also makes a sharp distinction between the program shown in Melbourne and Sydney and the events held interstate. Victoria and NSW get the ‘major’ festival, he says, which he and his colleagues from the Japan Foundation designed. Cairns, Canberra, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane and Hobart are presented with what officials call ‘an abridged version’ – actually a handful of pictures – orgnaised by the Embassy of Japan and the Consulate General of Japan.

Konomi has selected the program based on ‘diversity’, crafted to express the scope and range of Japanese production in the last eighteen months. Which, given the disasters that befell the country in 2011, is robust, he says. “Production is down about 30% but its climbing once more,” he reveals. “And Japanese product accounts for about 50% of the gross box office.”

This year’s JFF has comedy, drama, anime, a few socially conscious pictures and a smattering of crime films.

Konomi agrees that the program is by and large ‘mainstream’ or else, he says, “uncategorisable”. This reflects, he maintains, a truth about the Japanese domestic market, where art films and documentaries have been struggling for some time. Setting aside the terrible events of 2011, Japan has had its share of crises in the last two decades – economic, social and cultural – and yet, dark themes and troubling stories don’t feature much in Konomi’s program. “I think filmmakers and audiences avoid those kinds of heavy issues.” Konomi says it may take a while before the mainstream wants to tackle the terrible events of last year. Right now there’s a feeling that “no one wants to watch any film about the disaster [of 2011]!” Still, that didn’t stop Konomi programming Land of Hope, directed by Sion Sono, about a provincial family struggling to survive after the nuclear crisis in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake. (Though at press time the film has been removed from the program due to what the organisers are calling “unforeseen” circumstances.)

Many of the films are being screened in Australia at the festival very soon after their Japanese premiere. “This works for Japanese audiences as well as non-Japanese.”

Amongst the highlights is Thermae Romae, which features as the opening night film in Sydney and Melbourne. A sci-fi comedy based on a hit manga by Mari Yamazaki, “It’s the most successful Japanese film in the last year,” Konomi says.

Directed by Hideki Takeuchi, it grossed $US75 million on the mainland. Set in ancient Rome, it’s about a time travelling bathhouse architect who finds himself in modern day Japan where he schools himself in the dazzling contemporary designs of ‘bath culture’. According to industry tipsters, the film’s CGI-driven mix of wackiness, sentiment and bizarre humour may well reach the kind of influential export potential of, say, Japanese horror a decade ago, and anime before that.

The crime movies in this year’s program have been well reviewed at home, Konomi says. The Wings of the Kirin and Phone Call to the Bar are strong, conventional entries in the genre, but Konomi singles out Key of Life, which competed in the Shanghai Film Festival, winning the screenplay prize for Kenji Uchida, who also directs. The plot, about an ‘identity swap’ between a gangster and a struggling actor, sounds like a variation on Performance (Donald Cammell/Nic Roeg, 1970). But where that famous ‘60s film was odd and arty, Key, says Konomi, is bright, funny and thrilling. The script twists with action and intrigue, all the while sending up gutless the affectation of ‘actors’ (of all kinds). Uchida is a festival guest in Melbourne.

Elsewhere in the program Konomi offers variations on those much-loved Japanese genres: ‘the doctor or medical film’ and the seishun eiga (youth drama). A Terminal Trust is a touching drama that explores the dilemma held within the unique doctor/patient privilege in a story about a dying man and his last wish. It reteams Tamiyo Kusakari and Koji Yakusho with director Masayuki Suo from the hit Shall We Dance? (Suo and Kusakari are festival guests in Sydney.)

Tomoyuki Furumaya's Bushido Sixteen, a mix of teen flick, action movie and comedy, transcends genre. A buddy movie about two girls who start as rivals and end up friends, it’s based on a novel by Tetsuya Honda and set in the world of kendoka (competitive fencing). The Kirishima Thing is a fascinating high school movie about the delicate balance of teen culture. It charts the impact on a group of friends after a star pupil elects to absent himself from ‘the game’ of… life!

Konomi says he’s wanted to do a Yasuzo Masumura program for some time. “But he is a difficult [subject for such treatment].” Born in 1924, Masumura is a ‘name’ amongst dedicated cineastes but clearly not as well known as, say, the directors he once worked for in crew roles like Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Daisuke Ito. After his ‘apprenticeship’, Masumura directed 58 films between 1957 and his death in 1986. He worked in a number of genres, including yakuza. But much of his work, perhaps influenced by Mizoguchi, is noted for its seriousness.

“Part of the problem with this director and why he is hard to show is because he deals with the war [and that remains an unpopular subject in Japan],” explains Konomi.

The festival will screen six of Masumura’s films – mostly from the ‘60s. They are Giants and Toys (Kyojin to gangu), a comedy from 1958; Afraid to Die (Karakkaze Yarō, 1960), a yakuza starring notorious novelist Yukio Mishima; The Hoodlum Soldier (Heitai Yakuza, 1965), a character-driven portrait of brutal barracks life near the Soviet frontline in WWII; Red Angel (Akai Tenshi, 1966), set during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-45) and following a nurse on the frontline; Seisaku's Wife (1965) takes place on the eve of the Ruso-Japanese war and deals with what one critic called ‘love as a kind of madness’; and With My Husband's Consent (1964) is a contemporary drama about a bad marriage and corporate malfeasance.

Other key titles in this year’s festival include:

Dreams for Sale
Based on a real life confidence trick where fraudsters con dollars from ‘brides to be’ after promising marriage, Miwa Nishikawa’s film is a complex drama abut ethics. Here a couple use this scam to re-cover financial security after their restaurant burns down; a crisis of conscience and marriage problems follow. Nishikawa is a festival guest in Sydney.

Train Brain Express
The last film from director Yoshimitsu Morita, who’s untimely death at 61 was just a couple of months after finishing this sweet light comedy about a couple of trainspotters who are romantically challenged.

Robo G
Director Shinobu Yaguchi has had a string of comedy hits: Water Boys (2001), Swing Girls (2004) and Happy Flight (2008). This latest success about a grumpy old man with acting ambitions who ‘pretends’ to be a robot designed for domestic duties is darker and tougher than the director’s usual fare but it’s big on charm.

AKKO-CHAN: The Movie
Based on a ‘60s anime that in fact originated as a manga comic first published in 1962, the movie is about a little girl who yearns to be a grown adult and with a magic mirror she gets her wish.


The Japanese Film Festival begins in Sydney on the 14th of November and in Melbourne on the 29th November. An ‘abridged version’ of the program will travel to Cairns on Nov 4, Brisbane 20-22 November and Canberra 7-16 December. Visit the official website for more details.

Pictured: Afro Tanaka.