In Memoriam
NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI:
9th January, 1938 – 10th April, 2020
Nobuhiko Obayashi, one of the greatest directors in the history of Japanese cinema, died on April 10 at the age of 82. At the forefront of film-making for 50 years, he made a number of masterpieces. Coincidentally, April 10, the day of his death, was supposed to be the day his latest film, "Labyrinth of Cinema" was released in Japan. The coronavirus made that impossible, but he still died on that fateful day. Although Japan had a number of master filmmakers such as Kurosawa Akira and Ozu Yasujiro, Obayashi was an eccentric filmmaker who consistently made genre films. His films include horror ("House"), coming-of-age ("I Are You, You Am Me" and "School in the Crosshairs"), science fiction ("The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and "The Drifting Classroom") and war films ("Hanagatami"). It would be difficult for even the Japanese to understand his whole story. Throughout his life, he remained a pop avant-garde artist, much like Andy Warhol. His work, no matter what the genre, was always experimental, yet he never forgot the socially critical and entertaining aspects of his work. That is probably why he was loved so much by cinephiles all over the world.
The most famous films in Japan are the three films known as the Onomichi Trilogy. Onomichi was his hometown, and Obayashi used it as the setting for his brilliant coming-of-age story. "I Are You, You Am Me", a story of body exchange that should be the prototype of "Your Name", "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", a story of a girl who has acquired the ability to move through time, "Lonely Heart", the director's autobiographical story of a boy's first love. They soar in film history as a collective nostalgia for Japanese people.
In recent years, he has been making works that strongly reflect his pray for peace. For example, "Casting Blossoms to the Sky" is a semi-documentary film about the 1945 Nagaoka air raid, and "Hanagatami" is a coming-of-age film set in Saga Prefecture on the eve of the outbreak of the Pacific War. It is safe to say that these films are etched in our minds as particularly strong anti-war films in the history of Japanese cinema.
In this article, I'll introduce a group of films from Obayashi's vast filmography that is unknown to international cinephiles. I hope that this will be an opportunity for cinephiles around the world to get to know Obayashi's unusual cinematic language.
CONFESSION.
Prior to entering the realm of commercial cinema with "House", Obayashi was a well-known underground filmmaker. He experimented in a variety of ways and was enthusiastically received by the cinephiles with a keen sense of vision. It was in 1966 that he produced his culminating work, "CONFESSION".
In SIDE I, this film depicts a blue spring: a boy is on good terms with certain siblings They play on the roadsides of Onomichi every day. He has ambiguous feelings towards sibling's sister that are neither love nor friendship, but he knows that her brother was more in love with his sister.
The film would resonate with the diary films of Jonas Mekas, for example. Obayashi depicts the fragments of memories that shine through in the past with a free-spiritedness that resembles jazz music. The fragments of blue spring would come and go in the minds of those of us who watch this.
What SIDE II attracts is, so to speak, a respect for the old-fashioned moving picture. The director transforms the film shooting itself into a film with a magical touch. In front of the camera, various young people walk, run, fuss, and tire themselves out. This trivial action fills our retina with pleasure.
This work has a cheerfulness that makes you feel as if you've jumped into a colorful toy box. But at the same time, there is also the fragrant smell of death, like looking at a phantasmagoria. The director declares that, when our hearts are torn apart by the beauty of these two extremes, cinema is born.
"CONFESSION" is a testament to Obayashi Nobuhiko's power as an experimental film director. This radical experimentation leads to the exuberant madness of "House".
"The Adventure of Kosuke Kindaichi"
Obayashi's 1979 film, The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi, was supposed to please Japanese lovers of detective fiction. The reason for this is that this film is about the most famous detective in Japan, the Japanese Sherlock Holmes, Kosuke Kindaichi. But this one is so full of avant-garde pleasures that it boggles their brains out.
Detective Kosuke Kindaichi becomes a Japanese star after solving a number of difficult cases. While he enjoys his fame, he is dissatisfied that the "horrible but beautiful cases" of the past are no longer happening in the present day. One day, however, he is kidnapped by a group of skate-wearing delinquents. The leader, a woman, presses him to solve a cold case from his past. Kindaichi is then caught up in a mysterious conspiracy.
Those who watch this film will be surprised by the freedom of the film's style. Irresponsible and innocent, wild and ridiculous gags are unleashed at maximum velocity and hit the audience like a machine gun bullet. We can't help but be overwhelmed by the flood of gags like this one.
In 1973, six years before this film, Robert Altman directed "The Long Goodbye". Although the film featured Philip Marlowe, created by Raymond Chandler, it was a progressive film that deconstructed the detective story with postmodern values. But the deconstruction of this film is even more radical, a nonsensical comedy to the point that it no longer holds its original form, though the director himself professes to be influenced by the "The Kentucky Fried Movie". Its fragmented and incoherent form is also the appeal of this work.
"The Adventure of Kosuke Kindaichi" is so much a parody that it has become a bizarre work that is incomprehensible to foreigners and even Japanese people. But thanks to that, you'll experience some of the most avant-garde laughter in Obayashi's work.
"Cute Devil"
"Cute Devil' is a TV movie produced by Obayashi. But for cinephiles, sometimes a TV movie sounds more appealing than a movie. For example, Steven Spielberg's "Duel" and John Carpenter's "Someone's Watching Me!", famous filmmakers made television films in the early days, which have a very different gravity than the movies. "Cute Devil" is one such piece.
At Vienna, Ryoko is at the end of a relationship. She wishes her lover dead after going through a painful breakup with him. Then he really dies in a car accident. This causes Ryoko to become mentally ill, but over the course of three years she manages to regain her sanity. She ends up working as a music teacher for a girl named Arisu Kawamura, but...
The film is a so-called "enfant terrible" film. For example, in works like "Devil Times Five" and "The Godsen", the innocent child, Arisu, continues to slaughter adults in this film. While screenwriter Machiko Nasu says the model for this film is the American film named "Bad Seeds", the director himself professes that it is the so-called "gunkoku seinen" who were brainwashed into right-wing values during World War II. With exaggerated, fairy-tale touch, he paints a picture of a girl who can go to great lengths to be cruel for what she wants.
The director has no shortage of cruel depictions. From the very beginning, a bride in a wedding dress crashes, her legs are eerily folded and blood gushes out. Furthermore, a woman's skull is smashed open by Alice, and a young man's body is burned by the fires of hell. At the time, slasher films such as "Friday the 13th" were popular in the U.S., and there is a brutality here that is reminiscent of the grotesque depictions of such films.
In the end, Ryoko confronts Arisu as a final girl. The battle is delightfully twisted, and the ingenuity is both comical and bloody. We'll be able to enjoy the essence of horror movies to the fullest. His first commercial work, "House", is a cult twist on the horror genre, but this is an ambitious work that takes a straightforward stab at horror.
"Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast"
Obayashi has been making films all his life, using his hometown of Onomichi as the setting. His best known work is the aforementioned Onomichi Trilogy, but he has also made various other films with his great love. One of the most accomplished masterpieces of all is the 1986 work "Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast".
Sotaro and boys live in a seaside town in Onomichi. They always run around the town, but one day a new student named Sakae Osugi arrives at his school. While he causes trouble with his stubbornness, Sotaro and boys fall in love with his sister, Oshou-chan, and plays "wanpaku sensou" ("naughty war") with the other boys.
As for this work, you can say that, if Edward Yang made "Brighter Summer Day" in Taiwan, Nobuhiko Obayashi have made "Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast". Obayashi's gaze on his hometown is very warm, and there is a sense of nostalgia dwelling in it. Our hearts will drift comfortably in this nostalgia.
In this film, Obayashi has taken a peculiar direction. He abandons pretended realism and is actively oriented towards the fantastical unreality. For example, he will try to portray a number of children's fights with a bizarrely exaggerated artificiality. This is a method of staging based on Kabuki, and this fictionality creates an aestival utopia.
But it's not all good in this world. We witness the approaching shadow of war in our children's world. The Pacific War is on the horizon, and it is foretold that the future of our children will be swallowed up by war. The children themselves have been brainwashed by adults and society into believing that war is a good thing. The director hasn't forgotten the ominousness of this era either.
Then one day, boys discover that Oshou-chan would been sold to a brothel. The boys scramble to save her, but this battle is also "war" in their own way. Through this, they come to know how cruelly war tramples on their future. Obayashi hopes that their awakening will lead to anti-war hopes. This strong will be passed on to the anti-war films being made in the 2010s like "Casting Blossoms to the Sky" and "Hanagatami".
"The Mature Woman"
Obayashi has mainly portrayed the fresh youth of girls. For this reason, his films are regarded as a gateway to success for new actresses, and many talents such as Tomoyo Harada ("The Girl Who Leapt Through Time"), Yasuko Tomita ("Lonely Heart"), and Isako Washio ("Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast") have come and gone from his films. But in 1996, he took a completely new step. He directed "The Mature Woman", a film about aging and its complexity.
Yumiko, the protagonist of this film, is a woman who has been working at a newspaper company for 20 years. After being recognized for her work, she would write the most important editorial for newspaper. The editorial, in which she writes about the struggles of a wife behind the scenes of her husband's solo assignment, however, sends ripples through Yumiko's otherwise peaceful life.
There is no denying that the film is plainly melodramatic, but the direction itself boasts a sharpness that makes it one of Obayashi's best films. Robert Altman's bright complexity, Steven Soderbergh's clever speed, and Woody Allen's (he was a really great filmmaker someday) rich humanity. In this film, these elements are crystalized in an ideal way.
And it's also a work that clearly expresses feminism. Yumiko writes an editorial for women's rights, but it is exposed by the ignorance of her male colleagues. Furthermore, the newspaper company = the patriarchy torments her strongly. In the midst of this, Yumiko quietly resists, and the director tells us that she is the one who holds the hope of changing the world.
Yumiko is played by Yuriko Yoshinaga, one of Japan's most famous actresses. She doesn't try to express about Yumiko's inner life with eloquence, but her emotions flow out from her abundantly delicate gestures without words. This film also proves that Yoshinaga is a fascinating treasure in the Japanese film industry.
"The Mature Woman" is a superficially prosaic melodrama, but in fact it is an excellent woman's story, underpinned by feminist values and an awareness of gender politics. The director, in his late 50's at that time, shows his mastery of his craft to the fullest.
Tettyo Saito
