The Japanese movie business has evolved in the past decade from the relatively egalitarian model of the 1990s, when small and mid-sized distributors sprang up to serve the booming “mini-theater” (Japanese-English for “arthouse”) and video markets, to today’s oligopoly, with giant Toho and its TV network partners accounting for nearly all the biggest hits, while the indie sector struggles to survive.
Among the factors driving this change are the drift of the young audience from art films, Japanese and foreign, to more easily digestible multiplex fare and the erosion of DVD rental store sales as fans flock to free digital entertainment.
The result has been arthouse theater closures and distributor bankruptcies, as well as a scramble by Tsutaya and other DVD rental store chains to find new, more profitable businesses, online and elsewhere.
Also, Hollywood, which once ruled the Japanese box office, has found hits harder to come by, since the comic book adaptations and comedies it now churns out for its huge domestic market face a blank wall of incomprehension in Japan, where X Men and Adam Sandler are unknown. The local offices of the Hollywood majors, with Warner in the lead, have tried to reverse this decline by distributing and producing local films, but with indifferent success to date.
In 2010, however, Hollywood discovered a partial solution to this problem in 3-D, which lured millions of Japanese into theaters, despite higher ticket prices, to see Avatar, Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3. All earned more than $100 million, making them the year’s three biggest hits. Boosted by these blockbusters, the Japanese box office set an all-time record in 2010 with a total of 1.94 billion euros ($2.69 billion) for a 7 percent gain over the previous year, according to figures released by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. The previous best was 1.88 billion euros ($2.57 billion) recorded in 2004.
Meanwhile, the three top-earning Japanese films were the Studio Ghibli animation The Borrowers (Karigurashi no Arietty, 81.9 million euros or $113 million), the sea epic Umizaru 3 (The Last Message Umizaru, 71.2 million euros or $98 million) and the cop thriller Bayside Shakedown 3 (Odoru Daisosasen The Movie 3, 64.7 euros or $89 million). The latter two films were produced by the Fuji TV network and all three were distributed by Toho. In fact, Toho released 19 of the 29 Japanese films that grossed more than 1 billion yen (8.85 million euros or $12.1 million), including nine of the top ten.
A total of 716 films opened theatrically in Japan in 2010: 308 foreign and 408 Japanese, with 59 of the latter classified as adult. Japanese films outnumbered the foreign competition for the third year in a row, but 408 was 46 fewer than in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of screens rose year-on by only 16 to 3,412, indicating that multiplex sites have reached market saturation.
So the industry collapse predicted by some observers has not yet arrived. Instead the production boom that began in the middle of the last decade has been gradually deflating, with smaller producers and distributors taking the biggest hits as they compete for shrinking numbers of fans and venues. In short, the rich are getting richer, the poor, poorer.
The story, however, is not quite as simple as evil Toho — the Godzilla of Japanese distributors — stomping the good little guys. In fact, Toho released some of the better films of 2010, several of which became bigger hits than the glorified TV episodes or the live-action versions of anime and manga franchises that are the local industry’s surest box-office bets.
One was Villain (Akunin), Korean-Japanese director Lee Sang-il’s downbeat drama about a sullen, sensitive young laborer (Tsumabuki Satoshi) who falls for a thirtysomething men’s store clerk (Fukatsu Eri) while on the run from the police for murder. Showered with prizes, including Japan Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, Villain also earned 17.5 million euros ($23.7 million). This topped Lee’s previous biggest hit, Hula Girls (Hura Garu), the 2006 drama about an amateur hula club in a 1960s mining town that was an audience favorite at the Udine Far East Film Festival.
Another much-praised money-spinner was 13 Assassins (Jusannin no Shikaku), cult favorite Miike Takashi’s reworking of a 1963 Kudo Eiichi samurai swashbuckler. Instead of a homage, however, Miike went cheekily head-to-head against the masters of the genre with all of his formidable talent and energy, especially in the 50- minute climactic battle, with the 13 title assassins squaring off against a sadistic lord and his 300 minions. Screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, as well as at many others around the world, the film revealed a new, more serious side to Miike, as his cocky heroes devolve into wounded, desperate men fighting for their lives. At home, 13 Assassins earned 14.2 million euros ($19.3 million), as well as picking up four Japan Academy Awards.
An even bigger hit at the box office, at 34 million euros ($46.4 million), was Nakashima Tetsuya’s Confessions (Kokuhaku). This pitch-black drama about a junior high teacher (Matsu Takako) who takes vengeance on two students in her class for killing her toddler daughter was short-listed for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but did not make the final five. Even so, Nakashima, whose Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no Issho, 2006) and Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma Monogatari, 2004) were also screened at Udine, was hailed as a genius at home for Confessions’ unique blend of vividly expressive, at times surreal, visuals and stark, turbulent emotions.
Despite the nods to art by Toho and other majors, Japan’s beleaguered indie sector produced most of the films worth watching last year, including those clearly intended as entertainment.
One was Boys on the Run (Boizu on za Ran), Miura Daisuke’s slacker comedy about the campaign of a dweebish trinket salesman (Mineta Kazunobu) to bed a pretty coworker (Kurokawa Mei) and defeat a slick romantic rival (Matsuda Ryuhei). The humor is on the dry, understated side with the laughs coming at odd moments and angles, while the story rejects any hint of sentimentality. Another selection of the Udine festival, Boys on the Run appeared on several domestic Best Ten lists for 2010, including that of the notoriously contrarian Eiga Geijutsu magazine critics poll (which named Confessions its worst film of the year).
Taking a different, defiantly uncommercial tack was Zeze Takahisa’s Heaven’s Story (Hevenzu Sutori), an ambitiously (if not always coherently) structured four-and-a-halfhour epic about the search for revenge and justice, not to mention love and meaning. A stand-out performance by newcomer Tsuruoka Moeki as a girl haunted by her parents’ murders propels the film, though it wanders into thickets of sub-plot on the way to its slashing finale. Screened at the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum section Heaven’s Story was awarded the NETPAC and Fipresci jury prizes. It was also chosen, not unexpectedly, as the year’s best film by Eiga Geijutsu critics.
So far no film has quite matched the artistic and commercial success of Confessions, Villain and 13 Assassins. One that tried was Into the White Night (Byakuyako), Fukagawa Yoshihiro’s mystery about two children — one the son of a murder victim, the other the daughter of a suspect, who grow to adulthood with dark secrets and desires. Screened at the Berlin Film Festival, the film featured strong, if opaque, performances by Horikita Maki and Kora Kengo as the leads, but left too much in the murk until the unconvincing final reveal. It left Berlin without a prize, while doing indifferent business domestically.
Unfolding less ambiguously, and more successfully, was Cold Fish (Tsumetai Netaigyo), Sono Sion’s shocker about a mild-mannered fish store owner (Fukikoshi Mitsuru) forced to aid a more prosperous rival (Denden) in his murderous schemes. As usual, Sono piles on and runs on, but he also creates strong characters, particularly Denden’s grinning sociopathic monster, as well as gruesomely memorable moments. Selected for the Venice Film Festival, Cold Fish also did surprisingly well at the Japanese box office, despite its stomach-churning plunges into blood and gore.
The biggest commercial hit was Sato Shinsuke’s Gantz, the first of a two-part fantasy actioner about two former primary school friends (Ninomiya Kazunari and Matsuyama Kenichi) who find themselves in a bizarre limbo and forced to fight monstrous aliens by a strange black sphere.
Based on a popular manga by Oku Hiroya, the film plays like a cross between a murder game, whose rules the desperate players barely understand, and a waking nightmare of being suspended between the life and the death. The first film, which opened in late January, reached the 3 billion yen (27 million euro or $36 million) box office milestone, while the second, scheduled for an April 23 release, is expected to do even better.
Other potential blockbusters this year include Kokurikozaka Kara (literal translation: “From Kokuriko Slope”), an animation directed by Miyazaki Goro, son of anime master Miyazaki Hayao. Made by Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli and set around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the film is scheduled for a summer release. Goro’s previous film, Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki, 2006), was a compendium of Ghibli cliches that famously disappointed author Ursula K Le Guin, on whose fiction the film was based. But never count out Ghibli in the summer box office sweepstakes, even with Goro rather than Hayao at the helm.
Another likely hit is the peculiarly titled Suteki na Kanashibari: Once in a Blue Moon (literal translation: “Wonderful Paralysis: Once in a Blue Moon”), the latest comedy by hitmaker Mitani Koki. Fukatsu Eri stars as a third-rate lawyer who is asked to defend a murder suspect — and discovers that her only witness is 421- year-old ghost. Mitani’s previous films, including The Magic Hour (Za Majikku Awa, 2008) and Suite Dreams (Uchoten Hoteru, 2006), have tended to the frantic, farfetched and funny and the new one will probably be no exception.
In December Toho will release Friends: Mononoke Shima no Naki (literal translation: “Friends: Naki of Mononoke Island”), a CG animation directed by Yamazaki Takashi, whose credits include the hit Always films about workingclass Tokyo in the 1950s (both screened at Udine, the first with the director in attendance) and Space Battleship Yamato, a 2010 SF fantasy based on an iconic Matsumoto Reiji anime. Friends, about two oni (Japanese fairy tale demon) pals who cross paths with a human child, promises to be Japan’s answer to Pixar.
Also coming up this year are films that, given their cast, subject matter and directors’ international reputations, seem destined for major festival submission, with Cannes, Venice and Toronto high on the list.
One is Kiseki (literal translation: “Miracle”), Kore-eda Hirokazu’s drama about two young brothers who want to bring their divorced parents back together, using the soon-to-be-completed super-express train on their home island of Kyushu. Heading the cast are Odagiri Joe as the father and Natsukawa Yui as the mother, while the boys are played by real-life brothers who shot to fame as a pintsized manzai (comic duo) act.
Another is My Back Pages, a drama by Yamashita Nobuhiro, best known abroad for the teen band dramady Linda, Linda, Linda (2005). Tsumabuki Satoshi plays a reporter for a weekly magazine who befriends a student radical (Matsuyama Kenichi) — and learns from him about an upcoming, possibly lethal action. The film is a dramatic departure for Yamashita, whose specialty until now has been mixing the everyday and the absurd in ways humanly real and blackly comic.
Finally Ishii Yuya, the wunderkind who has been screening his quirkily inventive films around the world since his early twenties, will release Azemichi no Dandei (literal translation: “Dandy of the Rice Field Path”). Veteran character actor Mitsuishi Ken stars as a single dad trying to raise two teenagers in the countryside following the death of his wife.
In short, 2011 is shaping up as an interesting year for Japanese films, whether made as art, entertainment or, as is becoming more and more common, a combination of both. The troubles of the smaller producers and distributors — which increasingly means anyone other than Toho — are not about to end, but somehow, be it via a 50-seat theater in Shibuya or a cell phone screen, the films still manage to get out there. And some, like Boys on the Run, arrive unheralded by hype, but leave a big impression.
Mark Schilling