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The Works of Satoshi Kon, and the Impossible Pursuit of Perfection (Katie)

Fans of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan would find watching Satoshi Kon's 1998 animated film, Perfect Blue, something like a case of retro déja vu. The similarities between the films are not a coincidence – Aronofsky was not only aware of Perfect Blue, he had even purchased the rights to it when making Requiem for a Dream, in order to exactly re-create the bathtub scene for his film. While Black Swan is not a remake of Perfect Blue, it draws heavily from the same themes – duality, madness, and the desire to reach a stage of impossible perfection.

 Perfect Blue is the story of Mima, a pop idol who wishes to leave her idol profession and branch into acting. This seems to please no one – her ex-pop idol manager is extremely protective of her, and disapproves of the roles she is offered and how she is treated by the directors of the television show Mima is cast in. The one most upset is Mima's number one fan, who stalks her every move and runs a website dedicated to Mima. In order to succeed and distance herself from her idol past, Mima agrees to appear in a violent rape scene, and then to pose for nude pictures – which brings her both success and misery.

 As she questions whether she is following the right path, she begins to hallucinate a double of herself – the Idol Mima, still fresh-faced and innocent, who taunts her for her mistakes and insecurities. Mima begins to sink into delusions and madness – she begins to read the blog on her website (which are not even written by her) in order to remember what she did that day. The scenes from her television show begin to merge with her real life. The Idol Mima pops up everywhere she goes. When the photographer from her nude photo shoot is stabbed to death, Mima can't remember whether or not she is the murderer.

Mima struggles with the duality of her image and her self, unable to reconcile her past as a pop idol, and her future as an adult woman in charge of her acting career. But unlike Nina in Black Swan, who destroys herself in order to achieve perfection, Mima finds that she is the victim of her manager, Rumi, who has been living vicariously through Mima. The climactic ending sequence is a grotesque and physical battle of the Mima's – and while it is revealed that Rumi was heavily manipulating Mima's life, it does not explain away how Mima continues to see Rumi as a ghostly specter of herself. In the end, it is implied that they are both disillusioned – but Mima has been able to reconcile her personality split, while Rumi could not.

 In the search for her identity, reality for Mima becomes mutable and fluid, a jungle of mirrors and images, a cobbled-together world of illusion, constructed experiences, false narratives, and deception.

 Satoshi Kon continues to play with the theme of distorted reality and narrative in his 2001 film, Millennium Actress. The film follows the life story of Chiyoko Fujiwara, an actress whose career spanned for decades in Japanese cinema, as she is interviewed by her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana. A scene towards the opening of the story is an early hint of the merging of reality and film that is to come – the audience watches as a young Chiyoko climbs into a spaceship which begins to liftoff. The camera then cuts out to reveal the scene is actually a video that Genya is watching, and as the spaceship rumbles into space, the room around Genya begins to shake. For a brief moment the film world and the real world are one – until it is revealed that it isn't the spaceship shaking the room, but an actual earthquake.

 The merging of reality and narrative continues as Chiyoko tells her story to Genya and his cameraman, and the flashbacks become not only her interior reflections, but an interactive experience. Genya and the cameraman become part of the flashbacks, watching and commenting on Chiyoko's actions and experiences. Yet there are even more layers to this constructed reality, as her recounting of her life becomes the recounting of her film roles, with no distinction between the two. The narrative becomes an epic of not only her story, but the story of Japanese cinema, of Japanese history, and Japanese history as told through cinema. She journeys through time and space in order to achieve her goal – to reunite with a painter, in order to return a key he lent to her with a promise to meet again.

It proves impossible for her to meet her painter again. Yet the story of Chiyoko's chase is more thrilling and fulfilling than any outcome where she and her beloved painter could be reunited. The narrative of her life story is what gives it meaning, even as it seems to be foolish to chase an impossible goal. On some level, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue are both about the same thing – the impossible pursuit of perfection, and the toll it takes on an individual. Perfect Blue presents a pessimistic outcome – the complete fragmentation of Mima and Rumi's identities. Millenium Actress is more optimistic, presenting the impossible pursuit as more personally enriching than the goal itself. Both films present challenging and complex narratives, and are excellent examples of animated films that are not just for children. 

Deconstructing the Geisha: Hollywood vs. Mizoguchi (Katie)

Who are geisha, these women of the floating world, whose image is so often associated with femininity in Japan? In the west, geisha are often mistaken for high-class prostitutes – which is a misconception even some Japanese continue to have. Geisha are entertainers, thoroughly trained in traditional arts such as music and dance. The world of the geisha is a complicated web of money, social responsibilities, debts, relations with men, relations with women, and the art of being living, breathing entertainment. The individual's struggle to keep all of these complications in balance makes the geisha's life an inherently fascinating, and cinematic, story. Japanese cinema has a long history of portraying geisha on film, and Hollywood has even taken an interest, cashing in on the appeal of the exotic in the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha. 

Memoirs of a Geisha was directed by Rob Marshall, and was adapted from the novel of the same name, written by Arthur Golden. The story follows Sayuri on her journey from being a servant to becoming an accomplished giesha. The film obsessively follows the details of Sayuri's training – her dance lessons, her music practices, the art of dressing in a kimono – and revels in the exoticism of the geisha experience. When Sayuri first gets her hair done up in the traditioanl style, she must sleep on a special propped up pillow surrounded by a circle of rice. When she wakes up, her hair is covered in rice because she fell off her pillow, and her hair is ruined. The film makes a great deal of the pain and preparation of becoming a geisha to emphasize to the audience how strange and foreign these practices are. Yet these glimpses are merely surface level – never is the audience truly brought into Sayuri's inner world.

This is the problem with Memoirs – the struggles of its characters are all surface-level, or flimsy external constructions. For a film so obsessed with the exotic in Japanese culture, the conflicts brought upon its subjects are decidedly Hollywood. The opening scene shows Sayuri and her sister being bought from her family and carted away from their hometown – only for Sayuri to be sold to the okiya, the geisha house, and her sister to be sold to a whore house. Instantly, the life of a geisha is equated with slavery and forced labor. Being a geisha is not something a girl chooses to do, but is forced into.

Sayuri fights against this fate at first, but her perceptions rapidly shift when she meets Chairman Iwamura by chance on the streets of Kyoto. She instantly falls in love with him, and sees that becoming a geisha will allow her to grow closer to him. Thus, she throws herself into the diligent studies needed to become a geisha. Here a love story is substituted for any kind of self-actualization or reflection for Sayuri. She exists to become the perfect woman for the Chairman, and to become that woman she must become a geisha. There is no concept of being a geisha so that she can be a financially independent woman, or so she can support herself. The film does not explore the questions of what happens when personal and professional boundaries are crossed. Sayuri at one point is sexually harassed by a patron, but the film does not venture deeper into the concept of the systematic objectification of women that geisha can fall prey to. These are not the conflicts the film is invested in – it is invested in the love of the Chairman and Sayuri, and the dramatic external forces, like World War II, that keep them apart.

There is one scene which suggests that there is more to Sayuri than just her persuit of the Chairman. When her mentor suggests that Sayuri take on a patron because it is her best choice for supporting herself, Sayuri refuses and shouts back, “I want a life that is mine!” Here is the idea that is unexplored in the film – the opportunity to build a private identity within the structure of the geisha lifestyle.

The work of Kenji Mizoguchi delves into the conflicts inherent in these social structures. In his 1953 film, Gion Bayashi (A Geisha), Mizoguchi portrays two geisha – one an older, established giesha, Miyoharu, who takes in a pupil, Eiko. Unlike in Memoirs, the geisha of Gion Bayashi are not portrayed as slaves or women cut off from any family connections. Eiko's mother was a geisha and was friends with Miyoharu, thus why Eiko saught Miyoharu out after her mothers death. Eiko is not forced into becoming a geisha – she begs Miyoharu to train her. She longs to become like the maiko (young, elaborately dressed geisha)she sees on postcards from Kyoto.

After Miyoharu takes Eiko under her wing, she is quickly trained and then brought into society as a maiko. It is here where the tangled webs of loyalties and monetary transactions become entangled with Miyoharu's and Eiko's personal priorities. Miyoharu and Eiko are pursued by two business men, Kanzaki and Kusuda, who both desire more than just artistic entertainment from the women, in exchange for financial security. On a disastrous trip to Tokyo, Kusuda tries to force himself onto Eiko – and to protect herself, she bites and severely wounds his face. Hearing her screems from a room close by, Miyoharu runs to Eiko's aid – and finds her dazed, her face covered in blood, her hair and kimono askew. The image of the immaculate maiko that Eiko so coveted is now shockingly destroyed and subverted.

Eiko's image of the geisha is further complicated and tarnished in the ensuing difficulties surrounding this incident. They find themselves blacklisted from all of the tea houses they used to frequent, because of Eiko's supposed misbehavior. Miyoharu becomes desperate to keep themselves from being swallowed by debt, and agrees to become Kanzaki's mistress so that she may protect Eiko's integrity. Eiko is disgusted by this idea, but can see that Miyoharu saw no other way out of the situation.

What Gion Bayashi lacks in the glamor and gloss displayed by a film like Memoirs of a Geisha, it makes up for tenfold in its fearlessness in portraying the dichotomies inherent in the geisha world. Geisha depend upon each other, and the bond between Miyoharu and Eiko is ultimately the most important one – yet they also depend financially on the support of their male patrons. Miyoharu especially struggles with having to protect Eiko, keep them financially stable, and still maintain her self dignity – which in the end proves to be a nearly impossible task. Gion Bayashi, in contrast to the flashier Memoirs, shows that the conflict in a film does not have to evolve from a forced love story and a world war. 

 

Love, Obsession, and the Movies in Tampopo and Who's Camus Anyway? (Katie)

A gangster in a stark white suit and his mistress stride down the aisle of a movie theater, taking their seats right in the front row. A gaggle of thugs follow after them, placing a table in front of them and quickly covering it with a luxurious basket of foods, two champagne flutes, and a bottle of champagne. The champagne is poured into a flute, and as the gangster lifts it to his lips he looks straight into the camera, addressing us, the audience - “Oh? So you're at a movie too. What are you eating?”

Juzo Itami's 1985 film, Tampopo, is a joyful visual feast celebrating the Japanese's love of - and obsession with - food. The film is a series of vignettes surrounding the main story of Tampopo, the owner of a struggling ramen shop, and Goro, a truck driver who accidentally becomes her mentor in the art of preparing and serving ramen.

And what an art it is – an early scene shows Goro's companion Gun (played by a young Ken Watanabe) receiving a lesson from a ramen guru on the proper technique to eating a bowl of ramen. The food itself is lovingly photographed – closeup shots put the bowl in the center of the frame, then pan in to fully revel in the aesthetic composition of the soup. The ramen master gently lifts the slices of pork on the top and tucks them under the noodles – explaining that this is a token of respect for the contribution of the pork. Ramen in Japan is like the cheeseburger in the US – greasy, salty, cheap and satisfying – but in Tampopo it is treated with the respect usually reserved for high cuisine. While the experience of having fresh ramen may be foreign to most American viewers, the act of eating and savoring food is universal. Tampopo takes eating a bowl of ramen and elevates it to a ritual – celebrating the pieces that make up the whole. When done perfectly, even lowly street food like ramen can become high art.

Many of the film's gags rely heavily on Japanese culture and social traditions, yet the film also incorporates elements from traditional Hollywood genres. Amongst the vignettes in the film are parodies of cultural stereotypes - a young business executive upstages his superiors at a restaurant with his extensive knowledge of French cuisine. A mother on her deathbed rises to make dinner for her family, her last act before death. A group of young women are taught how to eat noodles abroad properly, without slurping or making any noise – except once they see a foreigner in the same restaurant noisily slurping down his noodles, they follow suit. While the jokes in these scenes are heavily Japanese, they become universally accessible in their complete reversal of expectations.

As much as the film celebrates the rituals of food, it is also a celebration of Hollywood genres and film itself. The formation of a genre is a sort of ritual in itself, a meaningful repetition of familiar characters and tropes. Tampopo pays homage to traditional genres – especially the western and the gangster film. Goro the truck driver rolls into Tampopo's restaurant like Shane, there to clean up the town, conquer the bad guys, then move on. The final ramen tasting scene is filmed like a shootout, with the five taste-testers approaching the ramen store with steely resolve, ready for one last test.

The gangster figure in the film is the complete embodiment of obsession and lust, for food, cinema, and life. The opening scene immediately combines food and cinema, and the gangster's lust for both – he demands both the most optimal dining and viewing experience, threatening a man behind him for crinkling his potato chip bag too loudly. He requires silence for his movie viewing, and explains how right before death, one is said to see their life before their eyes, like a movie – and he wants no interruptions when he sees his own. Later, the gangster is featured in a version of the typical romantic sex scene – yet the addition of food and its creative uses make the scene hilariously unsexy. Finally, near the end of the film the gangster is stumbling in the gutter, shot and bleeding to death. As his lover cries over him, all he can talk about is – what else – food. Right before he passes, he hushes her, “Be quiet. My last movie is starting.” Food is life, and life is a movie.

 

For the characters in Mitsuo Yanagimachi's film, Who's Camus Anyway? (2005), the boundaries between cinema and real life become blurred as they endeavor to create a film. Who's Camus centers around a group of film students in Tokyo who are about to shoot a film, and their personal and creative trials as obstacles get in the way.

Who's Camus starts off playfully self-reflexive – as a film about film, there are several layers of interpretation and meaning involved. The opening sequence is a smoothly choreographed long take, with a fluid camera that floats around the college campus, introducing the viewer to the different characters of the film. Two of the filmophile students, naturally, are discussing legendary long opening takes of films, name dropping films like Orson Welles's Touch of Evil and Robert Altman's The Player.

These are the first of many references to films, novels, and philosophers – at times the film feels like it is only accessible to viewers who know the material referenced. However, when one of the producers of the student film, Kamimura, enters a cafe and immediately begins re-enacting a scene from Jean-Luc Godard'sMasculin Féminin, it becomes clear that the name dropping is not just for show. Kamimura remembers and recounts the scene in precise detail, remembering each camera movement, the placement of the extras in the scene, the motions of the film's star. The extras in the film we are watching become the extras in the film in his mind. The lines between reality and cinema are blurred and crossed over for Kamimura, the walking encyclopedia of film.

Who's Camus Anyway? follows the personal drama and conflicts of the student film crew as they struggle to put together their film, called The Bored Murderer, and themselves. The film within the film is about a high school student, Takeda, that invades the home of and then murders an elderly woman, for no apparent reason. As the director and his crew ponder why he would commit this act, they begin to dissect the motivations behind their own – often immoral – behavior. When Hisada, the assistant director of the student film, explains to her boyfriend why she kissed two other men while he was away, she uses similar language to Takeda, the murderer in her own film. To explain their actions both of them make no excuses – they wanted to see what it felt like after they had crossed those boundaries.

The film's most impressive cinematic feat is its last fifteen minutes, which is the actual filming of The Bored Murderer. Here the line between the film, its producers, and its audience is completely erased. The sequence starts out straight forward enough – it is clear when the audience is watching the filming of Takeda's story and when the audience is seeing what the movie looks like – as though it has already been processed and edited together. The viewer changes between the two visual worlds, that of the filming and that of the film. Then things start to get weird. In the film within the film we watch as Takeda washes up after killing the elderly woman. Her husband comes home and starts knocking on the outside of the house, and Takeda begins to panic. The film cuts outside to see the husband knocking on the window – and then Hisada calls cut from off camera, enters the shot, and tells the actor playing the husband that the take was good. Then, within the same shot, the plot of The Bored Murderer continues – Takeda leaps out of the window with a knife, tackling the husband. It is clearly not the actor who plays Takeda committing some prank on set. As the scene continues on, we are back within The Bored Murderer. The next shot is a wide shot – where previously all the crew and equipment had been set up around the house, everything is now gone, consistent with the interior film. The transition between the reality and the fiction within Who's Camus is seamless – the worlds have been united in one shot. The cinematic borders between what happens in front of the camera and what happens behind have been blurred and erased. The filmmakers become part of their own film, and the film is part of them.

 

 

The Myth of Economic Opportunities for Women in Osaka Elegy and Flowing (Katie)

Kenji Mizoguchi's Naniwa Ereji (Osaka Elegy) and Mikio Naruse's film, Nagareru (Flowing), are films that seem to speak to each other across the divide of time. Osaka Elegy came out in 1936, while Flowing came out in 1956, and so the films sit in history on either side of World War II. While the films were made nearly exactly twenty years apart from each other, and by different directors, both star the actress Isuzu Yamada, and both are deeply invested in exploring the condition of life for the women in their respective eras. Elegy and Flowing are inherently different films – they differ in their frames of reference, their directors, and subject matter. Yet both films provide commentary on the pre-war and post-war economic and social opportunities for women.

In Osaka Elegy, Isuzu Yamada plays Ayako Murai, a young working class girl who embodies the popular idea of a modern girl, or moga, that was Japan's answer to the flappers in American youth culture. Modern girls were presented as sexually promiscuous, financially independent working girls who were uninterested in politics or social concerns, and only in themselves and their affairs. Ayako is Mizoguchi's answer to the popular image of the modern girl – but he simultaneously subverts the image as he creates it.

By the end of the film, Ayako does become the image of the modern girl – finely coiffed hair, stylish accessories, western clothing – but she is styled in other images first. She is first dressed very simply, in Japanese style robes with her hair pulled into a modest bun. Ayako is the picture perfect obedient daughter. When her father is about to be arrested for embezzlement, she becomes the mistress of her boss – donning a more expensive kimono and the elaborate hairstyle of a bride. When she finds that the only way of supporting herself and her family is to continue to be the mistress of older men, Ayako dons the western look of the “modern girl.” In her patriarchal society, this modern girl is viewed as a threat because of her ability to provide for herself and choose her her sexual partners. But for Ayako, its just a costume for a roll she must play in order to survive.

When her former coworker, Susumu, who also had proposed marriage to her previously, comes to visit her at her own apartment, the dramatic nature of Ayako's costume is acted out. She greets him in one half of the room, and they sit down to a western style table and chairs, and she seems the master of this lavishly decorated apartment. Yet as she confesses to Susumu what she has done, becoming a mistress to support her family, she moves into the other half of the apartment – which is decorated in a very traditionally Japanese style. She becomes more defeated as the scene goes on, retreating further into the room – the illusion is revealed, and the audience and the actors have all been brought backstage. The illusion of the modern girl is destroyed, and economic mobility is confirmed to still be under the rule of patriarchal authority.

In Mikio Naruse's Flowing, Isuzu Yamada now plays Otsuta, the head geisha of a struggling geisha house. Here, the post-war outlook on economic authority for women is even more bleak. In Flowing there is barely even the illusion that it is glamorous or an option for the women to be the masters of their own money and destiny. The life as a geisha is not shown as an existence floating above the world, a sequence of delightful parties and merriment - but one of debt and duty, resentment and resignation. The world of the geisha is collapsing in around Otsuta, who strives to keep her house together, as being a geisha is what she is most suited to.

The Tsuta house seems to be a place of dead ends for the women who live in it. Otsuta is a middle aged woman long separated from her husband and father of her grown up daughter, Katsuyo. Once a renowned geisha, Otsuta has fallen on difficult times and has few junior geisha to support her house. Katsuyo, although brought up within a geisha house, never had skills for the arts, and feels unsuitable to ever be married. Someko is a senior geisha buried in debt, who is later abandoned by her much younger boyfriend. At the start of the film, the house takes on a new maid, Oharu, a widower who has been rejected from other households for being considered too old to do maid's work. For each of them, they have nowhere to go but the Tsuta house, and depend on its functions for their livelihood - even as the geisha profession is becoming less profitable. Their confinement to this lifestyle is absolute, unless they marry out of it – an option each of them has found is not for them. The film even rarely strays from the setting of the house, only occasionally going to the neighboring streets and stores. Economic and social mobility is not even an illusion for Otsuta anymore.

Even with the bleak outlooks portrayed in both films, their endings show that neither Ayako or Otsuta are defeated by their social confinement. The last sequence in Osaka Elegy shows Ayako in profile striding down a dark street – and then instead of just fading out, the camera swings around to see a closeup of Ayako walking straight towards us. The audience is forced to look at her, and on her face is not a look of resignation. She is walking straight ahead into the future.

Likewise, the women in Flowing do not give up on the geisha house. In the last sequence, Otsuta is singing and training young geisha students along with Someka. Katsuyo is practicing sewing in a room above the shamisen rehearsal. Outisde, the river continues flowing, and life continues on.

 

And Introduction to Mikio Naruse with When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Katie)

    Amongst film directors from Japan, there are three that are the most internationally recognized: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each of them has a certain claim to fame. Kurosawa, for his sweeping epics of samurai and sword play. Ozu, for his immaculte depictions of every day life for the common family, and the delights and dissapointments that are brought on with the passage of time. Mizoguchi, both for his vivid period films and stirring contemporary films focused on the difficulties of women in society. 

    Outside of Japan, Mikio Naruse is relatively unknown compared to these three, although he is often considered as just below them in prestige. Naruse was a contemporary of them, and directed around 80 films in his lifetime. Naruse even was trained at the same studio along with Ozu, and the two are often compared together for their thematic focus on the Japanese family in transition as the culture was rapidly becoming urbanized. Yet Naruse's films have a much bleaker viewpoint, with none of the transcendence or light comedy of Ozu's. His filming is less stylized and not as recognizably "Japanese" as his contemporaries, although the content and heart of his films were completely relevant to the society. These features may be why Naruse has been long overlooked in international film studies. Naruse's storytelling, however, is just as finely crafted as those of his contemporaries. With films centering around strong female characters, Naruse's stories are rich with emotional depth and clarity. The strengths that lie at the heart of his films are exemplified in his 1960 film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. 

    When a Woman Ascends the Stairs follows the story of Keiko Yashiro, played by Hideko Takamine, an aging widow working as a bar hostess in the glittering nightlife district of Ginza in Tokyo. She was married at a very young age to her true love - who died in a truck accident, leaving her with nothing. Now, after turning to hostessing to support herself, Keiko is too old for her line of work and finds her future prospects closing in around her. 

    In the first ten minutes of the film the audience is shown how Keiko can escape her life as a hostess. In the opening scene, the other hostesses from her bar are celebrating the marriage of one of their former co-workers. Marriage is one way out. After being scolded for poor sales by the owner of the bar, Keiko wishes she could open up her own bar and be her own boss. Investing and becoming a self-employed entrepreneur is another way out. Naruse then presents the darkest, and most extreme alternative - as Keiko returns to the bar, a crowd of hostesses gather around a stretcher being rushed into an ambulance. A hostess from another bar has committed suicide. Death is another way out. These are the options available to Keiko, each confining in a different way. Marriage would permanently make her dependant on a man, and owning a bar would commit her to a business that she despises. Death would be completely giving up, proving that she was unable to handle the difficulties forced upon her. 

    Keiko's obstinence, and her absolute refusal to humiliate herself for anyone else's gain, demonstrates Naruse's attention to the emotional realities of women. The entire world of the Ginza bar is not seen from the customer's perspective - an entitled male perspective - but from the worker's behind-the-scenes viewpoint. The film shows how they approach their work, and is not the narrow portrait of the giggling and charming hostess only there to serve her patron. Even if the other hostesses are not as emotionally burdened as Keiko, they each have their own emotional core and physical reality that their actions stem from. For each of them lies the struggle of earning a profit, maintaining self respect, and preserving the outward image of a woman who is self-reliant. Yuki, the owner of Keiko's rival bar, buys a car even as she struggles to cover her dept. Keiko struggles with debt as well, as she can barely  
afford her appartment and a new kimono. For these women, the physical demands of reality are 
innescapable. The glitz and glam of Ginza nightlife is not the reality for them, it is the image they are bound to uphold for their customers. Keiko's reality is one of dissapointments, debts, and self compromise. 

    Naruse's outlook is bleak, but the attention he gives to telling the lives of his characters is absolute. His insight to the struggles of women is as illuminating as it is grim. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an excellent introduction to the richness of Naruse's storytelling, and a film that can hopefully draw more viewers into Naruse's world of strong female characters.