/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-JAPAN: Now Showing — Asian Movies

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 22 2000 (IPS) - More and more cinemas in Japan are starting to show films and documentaries from Asia, responding to their growing popularity among movie fans who are flocking to full houses to watch films that up to now lay in the shadow of their western counterparts.

“Hollywood movies are still at the top, but there is no doubt that the Japanese audience watching films from Asia is increasing rapidly. This is because of a growing curiosity about Asian lifestyles,” Keisuko Watanabe said in remarks at Iwanami Hall, a cinema currently showing ‘The Soong Sisters,” a Hong Kong film.

‘The Soong Sisters’ was first shown at the cinema in December 1998. The film features the story of three sisters in China of the Soong family, who had been educated in the United States in the early years of the 20th century.

The movie which tracks their marriages to powerful men and their relationship with one another as well with their parents, ran to packed houses for over seven months until last July.

Popular interest followed the movie, which occurred against the backdrop of Chinese history, civil war and revolution. The three sisters married powerful figures — one married a wealthy businessman, another the Chinese leader Sun Yat Sen and a third, to Chiang Kai Shek, later the leader of Kuomintang forces who fled to Taiwan after defeat by the communist forces.

“During the peak we had to turn away more than a hundred people each day despite having three showings a day. We then decided to re-run the screenings and started last December,” explained Watanabe.

He says that the audience comprises both young and old, the big draw being the dramatic story which intricately and sensitively portrays the ups and downs in the relationship between parents and their children.

Charlie Soong in ‘Soong Sisters’, for instance, severs ties with a daughter, Ching Ling, who elopes his long-time friend, Sun Yat Sen, in 1915.

“The Japanese are fascinated with the Chinese portrayal of child-parent relations. It is a theme that is close to their hearts because they too come from Asia and can relate to many of the scenes,” he says.

Chinese films from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, are the best hits among Asian films, but the Japanese’ appetite for films from India, Thailand and films that feature countries like Tibet and Bhutan are showing big demand as well.

Makoto Sato, a documentary director who hosted a three- festival day featuring 12 documentaries from five nations, says three of the countries involved were from Asia with the US and Japan making up the other two.

“All the films featured family relationships. The Japanese find a closer affiliation with Asia on this theme because of similarities with the way the older generations lived in Japan,” Sato explained.

For example, a Philippine film by Kidlat Tahimik follows the growth of three sons against the backdro of Philippine history and culture. ‘Father, Son and Holy War’, a 1994 Indian film, was another screening that ran to a packed house.

“The Japanese are just discovering Asian films and loving them. For many people, the experience is closer to the heart than western films because for one, the actors look so much like them and the portrayal of emotions, which is done more subtlety, is much closer to the Japanese than the more outspoken western films,” says Sato.

An Asian Film festival, screened once every two years in Yamagata prefecture since 1989, has been reporting huge success these past few years.

Movie write-ups explain that the festival used to be attended by special movie fans and critics, but recently the appeal has extended to ordinary movie-goers who are demanding the event be shown more regularly.

Organisers say one reason for the slow popularity of Asian films was the fact that until recently, it was difficult to find Asian films even if one wanted to screen them.

“There was a long wait to buy films or order films from Asain countries,” says professor Shozo Noguchi, who translates films from Sri Lanka into Japanese. “But that is slowly changing and we are getting a better response from Asian countries.”

Currently a Japanese cinema has put on extended run ‘Shuri’, a South Korean film enjoying a glowing reputation in Japan.’ The film is being shown in major cinemas across the country and opened at the top of the box-office chart following its release in Tokyo in January.

Another film ‘One Step on a Mine, It’s All Over’ features the life of a Japanese photographer, Tazo Ichinose, who covered wars in Cambodia and Vietnam in the early ’70s, learns the local language and becomes intimately acquainted with the people there.

Midori Sekiyama, 46, a public health nurse, says she enjoyed every moment of the film and is now wants to join the anti-mine drive and visit Cambodia.

A Vietnamese movie, ‘Three Seasons’, was another major hit in Japan last December, and won applause among the Japanese for its exotic portrayal of a young country girl who is hired to pick and sell white lotuses.

“There is a lot of nostalgia among the Japanese for the innocence and close family ties they see in Asian films, values that they have lost as a result of modernization,” adds Sato.

Another major draw is that Asian actors and actresses, such as the explosive South Korean actress Kim Yun Jin, in ‘Shuri’, have world-famous reputations, a feature that inevitably draws in the younger crowd.

“The Japanese see Asian films and their directors and actors on par with Western movies and the demand for more will only grow,” predicts Sato.