Nagano Mei is only 21, but she has been acting in films and TV dramas since 2009, when she debuted in the low-budget actioner Hard Revenge Milly. Her long list of credits includes a starring role in the 2018 NHK morning drama series Half Blue Sky, which she landed after beating out 2,366 competitors in auditions. She also played the female lead in Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High, a hit 2017 comedy about an epic power struggle in a manga-like elite high school.
On May 4, I interviewed Nagano at Hanazono Shrine in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district, where she was appearing in a promotional event for the action comedy jigoku-no-hanazono OFFICE ROYALE. (The film’s Japanese title [literally, Flower Garden of Hell] made the venue a good fit.) Based on an original script by comic Bakarhythm, the film stars Nagano as an OL (“office lady” or clerk) working at a big company and leading a mundane existence. But among her colleagues are yanki (“delinquent”) OLs belonging to factions that fight pitched battles for corporate supremacy.
The contrast between the peaceful lives of the heroine and her pals and the warlike goings-on around them is a source of laughs. Then we find out that Nagano’s character is not so ordinary after all. Directed by Seki Kazuaki, a music video veteran making his first feature, the film may be a laugh machine, but it also satirically comments on Japanese society’s tendency to turn a collective blind eye to what it finds strange, uncomfortable or, in the case of the feuding factions, comically violent.
Prior to meeting Nagano, I watched her and co-star Nanao, who plays a yanki OL leader, do a Q&A with an emcee on the shrine steps while the press took photos and notes. Asked what she had prayed for at the shrine, Nagano said “That the film be a big hit, of course. But since not all theatres are open now, even though a lot of films are on release, I also prayed that theaters all over the country might open safely.” Nagano and Nanao then held up votive placards on which they had inscribed their wishes for the film. Nagano’s read “Sequel.”
Her group Q&A over, Nagano joined me in a room inside the shrine, where we sat across from each other at a table divided by a clear partition. Answering my questions minus a mask, she was the cool, poised professional.
Naturally, I asked her about the hoped-for sequel. “People active in various areas got together to make the film,” she said. “We had a strong team. And during filming everyone was motivated and had confidence in what they were trying to do – there really aren’t many films like that. That was a growth experience for me. So I want to see how the world of the film unfolds further.”
She added that she was excited about the project even before reading the script. “I’d heard that Bakarhythm had written it and that Mr Seki would direct it so I knew it would be interesting,” she explained. “That’s why I wanted to do it before I read the script. After I read it, I knew for sure that it would be a really interesting film.”
The film features many action scenes, which are executed with a skill that is surprising, given that most of the actors, Nagano among them, are not action specialists. “Those scenes worried me at first,” she says. “I thought I’d find it hard to curse at people in a loud voice. And I’d never done action scenes before – I didn’t know what it felt like to hit people.”
Under the supervision of action director Tomita Minoru, Nagano trained for four months. “I practiced extra hard, starting from zero,” she says. “The style was closest to kickboxing, but as the action patterns that we were going to use in the movie had been decided I worked on those, with the action director giving me detailed instructions.”
The action scenes may not be hardcore, but they have real impact. Nagano looks pleased: “I thought that the comic elements were unnecessary in the action scenes,” she says. “The story is a comedy, but I wanted to show my character fighting for real. Everyone in the cast thought that way.”
Her character, Tanaka Naoko, is not in reality an average, mild-mannered OL, though she tries to act like one. She is hiding her true identity – until she suddenly reveals it in one of the film’s funnier scenes. “I thought of her as a ‘mob character’ (note: Non-player character in a computer game),” says Nagano. “As the heroine, Naoko has monologues in the movie, but she is also always thinking about the close friends who are around her. So I saw her as someone who never tries to be the center of attention. But she is deluded. I tried not to exaggerate her too much, though.”
The director, Seki Kazuaki, is best known for making music videos for such top acts as Perfume and Radwimps. OFFICE ROYALE is his first feature film. Nagano proclaims herself pleased with his directing. “I don’t know that his style is all that different,” she says. “But he has made a lot of music videos, so his visuals are original and beautiful. He also coordinated them with the music. Of all of the movies I’ve worked on, this one is really brilliant that way.”
Because of the pandemic, Seki and Nagano will not be able to make the trip to Udine, Italy this year for the Udine Far East Festival, where OFFICE ROYALE will have its international premiere. When I suggest that she come to Udine with the sequel, she brightens up. “I’d definitely like to try,” she says. “I want to shoot a film in a foreign country!” That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant, but no matter. If Seki gets to film Nagano battling her OL opponents in Udine’s Piazza San Giacomo, I would love to see it.
Mark Schilling