After a decades-long long slump that began with the rise of television in the early 1960s, the Japanese film industry has come roaring back. In 2014 local films accounted for 58.3 per cent of the US$1.753 billion total box office, the seventh straight year that the home team bested the foreign competition. Last year, eight of the ten top-grossing films were Japanese, while 31 Japanese films equaled or exceeded the one billion yen (US$8.5 million) considered the benchmark of a commercial hit. The similar figure for foreign films was only 18. Finally, an incredible 615 Japanese films were released theatrically, compared with 569 foreign films. This is nearly triple the 230 domestic films that opened in 1991, which was the lowest number since the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan began compiling annual industry figures in 1955.
So why isn’t everyone cheering? Speaking last October at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where he received an award for career achievement, comedian, actor and director Kitano Takeshi told his audience that “the Japanese film industry is going to ruins. You have to be careful not to get involved with the major studios or, if you do, you’ve got to deceive them”. Kitano may have sounded alarmist, but he made a valid point: Films released by Japan’s major studios may boast splendid box office numbers at home, but their distribution outside Japan is usually limited to a few Asian territories, if that.
It’s not for a lack of trying – Japanese film companies are present in force every year at the Marché du Film in Cannes, the European Film Market in Berlin, the American Film Market in Los Angeles, and elsewhere – but find relatively little success given the size of their industry. One reason why Japanese films don’t travel well abroad is the so-called ‘production committee’ system. A ‘committee’ typically consists of a film company, TV network, major publisher and other media entities who partner to turn a hot property, be it a hit manga or bestselling novel, into a film. The main aim is to please all possible parties, from the readers of the original comic to the average TV viewer. The resulting film is frequently bloated (from cramming in characters and sub-plots to keep core fans of the property happy) and bland (from kowtowing to TV networks and their various sponsors).
Makers of commercial films can sometimes impose their own creative identities and concerns. Kitano can do that, and his audience-friendly films, such as the 2003 samurai swashbuckler Zatoichi and the 2012 gang epic Outrage Beyond, retain the combination of extreme violence and deadpan humor that he perfected as an indie director in the 1990s. But Kitano’s latest, the comedy Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen, with its aged gangsters limping out of retirement for one final taste of absurd action, suggests he may be tiring of his signature gangster genre.
Another stubbornly independent spirit is one-time ‘king of cult’ Miike Takashi, who in the past decade has done everything from the sober drama Harakiri: Death of a Samurai (2012) to the goofy anime adaptation Yatterman (2009). His upcoming Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld, with its yakuza vampires, promises to be the sort of wild and crazy genre-bender he first became internationally famous for, long before he transformed into a reliable maker of commercial hits.
Still another in-demand director with strong indie roots is Sono Sion, who has made the transition from art house to multiplex on his own terms, while churning out films as though he were working for a 1960s programme-picture factory. The four titles he has announced for release this year are all in popular genres, or based on popular properties, including Shinjuku Swan (sex and violence in Tokyo’s biggest erotic playland), Love and Peace (an absurdist action comedy with everything from punk rock to kaiju), Esper Dayo! (a sci-fi comedy based on a late-night TV show about ordinary folks who acquire superpowers) and The Chasing World (a new entry in a long-running sci-fi/fantasy action series). It’s difficult to argue that Sono has ‘sold out’ by making these films, since he has long enjoyed exploiting or exploding genre formulas, as seen in last year’s Tokyo Tribe, a rap musical set in a near-future Tokyo where rival gangs battle stylishly, violently and absurdly for street supremacy.
Then there is Yamazaki Takashi, Japan’s most consistently successful hitmaker today, whose controversial second-world-war drama The Eternal Zero was the biggest live-action hit of last year, grossing US$73.5 million. After earning a reputation as a CGI wizard with the Shirogumi effects house, where he is still based, Yamazaki developed a blend of highly charged human drama and eye-popping visuals that has won over Japanese audiences, if not always critics. In his latest, the Parasyte duology centering on a boy (Sometani Shota) whose right hand is invaded by a sentient alien parasite, Yamazaki returns triumphantly to his sci-fi roots, using tools unavailable when he debuted in 2000 with the E.T.-inspired Juvenile.
Some directors successfully move back and forth between commercial and indie projects, such as Hiroki Ryuichi, a former ‘pink’ (soft-core porn) filmmaker who became internationally known for such intimate woman-centered dramas as Vibrator (2003) and It’s Only Talk (2005). But since his 2009 hit April Bride, whose young heroine marries despite a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Hiroki has become the industry’s go-to guy for romantic dramas, including The Lightning Tree (2010) (mentally ill lord falls for free-spirited girl), The Egotists (2011) (gambler brings his pole-dancer lover to his conservative home town), and this year’s A Man’s Life (middle-aged college prof woos and wins a woman young enough to be his daughter).
Last year, however, Hiroki returned to his indie roots with Kabukicho Love Hotel, an ensemble drama set in a hot-bed hotel in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s biggest red-light district. Screened at the Busan and Toronto festivals, the film won raves from critics and fans alike for its laugh-out-loud gags and finely etched character portrayals. It also became a hit, with former AKB48 girl group leader Maeda Atsuko, who plays the hotel manager’s singer-songwriter girlfriend, being the big box office draw.
While Kitano, Miike and Sono and other veteran male directors still garner the lion’s share of the major foreign festival invitations, more female filmmakers are coming to the forefront at home. One is Oh Mipo, an ethnic Korean director whose 2014 film The Light Shines Only There depicts the turbulent relationship of two lost souls – an unemployed man (Ayano Go) with a trauma in his past, and a prostitute (Ikewaki Chizuru) with dark family secrets – in a gritty Hokkaido port. The film received a long list of domestic accolades, including the Best Film Award presented by Kinema Junpo (Kinejun) magazine for topping its annual critics’ poll.
Also on the Kinejun 2014 Best 10 list was 0.5mm, an offbeat road movie directed by Ando Momoko and starring her sister Sakura as an enigmatic caregiver forcing her services on a series of elderly men. Sakura starred in another film on the list, Take Masaharu’s 100 Yen Love, playing a live-at-home slacker who finds self-esteem by training to become a boxer. An amateur boxer off-screen since she was a teenager, Sakura brings a hard-hitting authenticity to the role.
While Japanese women are beginning to punch above their weight as directors and actors, Japanese animators are jostling to fill the huge shoes left by Miyazaki Hayao, who officially retired in 2013 following the release of his second-world-war smash The Wind Rises. Last summer, Yonebayashi Hiromasa, who worked under Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli, released When Marnie Was There, an animated fantasy based on a children’s novel by Joan G. Robinson. Though praised for its lush visuals and nuanced depiction of an unusual female friendship, the film finished with US$30 million, while Disney’s Frozen took US$213 million – the highest total of any film released in Japan last year. By contrast, Miyazaki’s films regularly thumped the Hollywood competition at the box office – and now that he has gone both Studio Ghibli and the Japanese animation industry as a whole seem to be losing their long-time lock on the local audience.
Yamazaki Takashi’s Stand By Me Doraemon, a 3D CG animation whose US$70 million take was the second-highest of any Japanese film last year, showed a possible way forward. New 2-D entries in the long-running Detective Conan, Pokemon and Doraemon animated series also appeared on the 2014 box office top ten – but in the bottom half of the rankings.
What is in store for 2015? Studio Ghibli is on an indefinite hiatus, though in an interview with the Associated Press, studio co-founder Takahata Isao said he is working on a new film about “exploited girls forced to work as nannies with infants strapped on their backs.” Takahata’s 2014 folk tale adaptation The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was nominated for a Best Feature Animation Oscar, though at age 78, with a history of long gaps between films, Takahata may run out of energy or time before he and Studio Ghibli make another try for a statuette. Meanwhile, Hosoda Mamoru, who has been called the ‘next Miyazaki’ for well-received hits like Summer Wars (2009) and Wolf Children (2012), is now making The Boy and the Beast, an action/fantasy set for a July 11 bow in Japan, with Hosoda’s Studio Chizu and the Nippon Television Network producing.
The most highly anticipated live-action films on their way to theatres this year include Kore’eda Hirokazu’s Kamakura Diary, a story of three sisters (Ayase Haruka, Nagasawa Masami, Kaho) who live in their grandmother’s house in the title seaside town, and are faced with a younger half-sister (Hirose Suzu). Long one of Japan’s most-honored auteurs, Kore’eda has recently become a box office force, and his 2013 family drama Like Father, Like Son took a solid US$27 million. His latest film will be released on June 13 by Japan’s biggest distributor, Toho, and is a likely candidate for a Cannes festival invitation.
The best place to look for interesting Japanese films not in the line-ups of the major distributors, but a couple of levels down, where films like The Light Shines Only There or Kabukicho Love Hotel dwell. These mid-to-low budget films may be based on a novel or a manga, or something other than that rarity in the Japanese film business – an original script –, but they do have a director’s signature. That is something all the production committees haven’t yet been able to erase.
Mark Schilling