Unless you’ve had your head buried deep inside some sandbox in a place a million miles from the nearest social network or wireless connection, you’d already know precisely what I’m leading into - or if you'd bothered to read the entry immediately beneath.
So let's get straight into it.
On Friday March 11th, at around 2:45pm local time, the east coast of Japan was hit by an earthquake that tipped the scale at around 8.9 – 9.0 on the Charles Richter magnitude charts.
I’ve since learned that we survived the fourth or fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history, and the worst ever in Japan – which is one of the world's most seismically active places.
But Tokyo was lucky compared with other places in this country just north of our city, like Miyagi Prefecture.
Straight after the earthquake there were tsunami waves of up to ten metres (33 feet) that struck the Pacific coast north of Tokyo, ploughing inland up to a dozen kilometres – sweeping away the towns and cities along the way.
The footage has been so surreal: That tsunami rapidly filling the streets of the city of Kesennuma as people watched (and filmed) from atop hills; cars and air-conditioning units bobbing and floating by, followed by houses that started moving and weaving between overturned boats; the aftermath with ships and trucks on top of highways and houses. It was like looking at The Day After Tomorrow rolled up into Dante's Inferno.
But the sad truth is that it isn’t surreal at all. This is no dream. It’s been neither fiction nor the unrealistic segment of a disaster movie – it's cold, hard reality.
Somewhere around 10,000 people have been killed, though no-one knows the true extent of the fatalities even now – at the time of writing this – seven days after that initial disaster. Our thoughts go out to all the people affected.
But I say “initial” disaster, because we’ve since suffered aftershocks numbering in the hundreds and varying in intensity depending on the area. The other night night in Shizuoka, near Mt. Fuji, there was another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4.
I got woken up by an aftershock at 5:00am yesterday morning - rattling doors and shaking bed. When we went to the supermarket almost half the shelves were empty as people are stocking up in case of another emergency.
And yesterday my daughter and wife flew down south to join the in-laws in Fukuoka.
It makes me far happier to know they're safe(r) - especially since there are the melting-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima, 170 miles north of Tokyo.
These babies were initially damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, and are currently out-of-control, spewing forth radioactive particles that are being felt as far south as, well, here in Tokyo.
This past week has been a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.
It’s eerily like the plot in Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) – I saw both the spin-off movies made in 1973 and 2006 – but defies the page or the artificial image of a viewfinder.
Real people have died, and thousands of other bona fide human beings have lost loved ones and friends. They’re destitute, lacking basic provisions, and braving up to zero-degree temperatures up north.
This is going to take a long time to clean up and forget.
And while the Japanese people here have been astoundingly resolute – not here the looting and general mayhem on the streets you see in other lesser disasters elsewhere in the world – it's a mind-numbing situation and an emotionally debilitating one to see this country and these people go through all of this.
In the meantime the best thing to do as hang onto the coattails of a sense of humour about it all – and gaze somewhat wistfully at the Japanese kanji "kibou", which means “hope”.
Which brings me full circle to some untimely, self-indulgent navel-gazing... but I guess that's what blogs are all about, especially ones like this which have only a couple of entries anyway.
Amidst all this madness I'm releasing my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is coming out through Another Sky Press in the U.S. on 31 March.
As previously mentioned here it's a sci-fi/noir tome that's set in Melbourne, Australia, but mostly rewritten here in Tokyo and heavily influenced by my 10 years in Japan.
I'm going to stop with the hype right now. It tastes wrong. If you're interested at all in checking out the novel, fantastic - thank you. If not, that's cool too - but please think in some way about how, in whatever small or seemingly inconsequential way, you can assist Japan. It all helps.
OK, so I've seen my fair share of Japanese disaster flicks; in fact I'm a fair bit of a fan.
I loved Godzilla movies when I was a kid - the way in which he walloped little balsa-wood versions of Tokyo and Osaka - and I still DJ out the awesome theme song to Mothra (モスラ, 1961), written by Yuji Koseki and sung by The Peanuts.
But yesterday was a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.
Just before 3:00pm yesterday I was with my five-year-old daughter at her music class, in a building several storeys high; that's when the first quake hit - and it was the worst tremor I've felt in the 10 years I've been living in Tokyo.
The place was literally bouncing and rocking like a small boat in a very big storm. Women were sheltering their kids and diving under tables, but the staff handled it all with aplomb, handing out blankets and helmets as we went through another couple of big aftershocks.
Thank god my wife was OK too and we all got home safely.
My mate Devin tells me we just survived the fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history. Zounds. This doesn't make any of the sights and signs on the news easier, however.
From the 24-hour televised images we're seeing of Miyagi, it's like The Day After Tomorrow rolled up in Dante's Inferno.
One of my preferred emerging Japanese artists at play here in Tokyo over the past couple of years has been the somewhat enigmatic Tsuyoshi K.
He doesn’t tell anyone what the ‘K’ stands for.
Tsuyoshi started out making fringe, left-of-centre electro-pop stuff as Gadget Cassette but last year scrapped that and changed name to Cut Bit Motorz – at the same time as he began pushing through more tech-house related sounds.
Funnily enough, even though we lived in the same city and customarily did the email thing as well as having remixed each other’s tunes, we didn’t actually meet up until last month – when yours truly was quite tanked (that’s the Christmas/bonenkai season for you in Japan) and... er... embarrassingly played a hack set at his party.
The lack of personal acquaintance before that jaunt didn’t stop me from releasing last year in August a digital slab of remixes of Tsuyoshi’s tune ‘Dry Fruit‘, albeit in a limited manner, through IF? Records. We got on board some of the man’s more experienced Japanese peers – DJ Wada (Co-Fusion), Toshiyuki Yasuda (Robo*Brazileira), Takashi Watanabe (DJ Warp) and Tomi Chair – to do the rejigs, making it an entirely Japanese putsch that crisscrosses eclectic, tech, electro, house and (dare I twist it) a marginally more progressive stance.
Even after putting a face to a name – and in spite of my sadly wayward set at that gig in December – Tsuyoshi seems to have forgiven me for the musical mayhem and is keen to do more together. This guy is an absolute gem to work with.
If your stunted attention span is still somehow focused, you can read more about Tsuyoshi - plus the interview questionnaire itself - at the new Techno How? site here.
No, it has nothing to do with calorie control or losing weight, not even in the current global financial straitjacket - but has everything in common with the U.S. Congress and British Parliament, both of which have been adapted, to some degree, into the system of government here.
We’re talking about the Diet of Japan (locally known as Kokkai 国会), which like its British, American and Australian equivalents includes two legislature: the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors.
They meet in the National Diet Building (Kokkai-gijidō 国会議事堂) in Chiyoda-ku, fairly close to the Imperial Palace and right next to Nagatacho and Kokkai-gijidō-mae stations on the Tokyo Metro.
As of August 31, 2009, the place has been rather shaky thanks to the electoral overthrow of the Liberal Democratic Party - which had ruled virtually continuously since its inception in 1955.
The "new" government (formed by the similarly named Democratic Party of Japan) is a thing most Japanese are still trying to get accustomed to as they've already churned through two prime ministers - Yukio Hatoyama, and the current incumbent Naoto Kan.
But the rocky political road has been pretty much continuous since Junichiro Koizumi served five years in office up to September 2006; since then there've been five PMs.
Perhaps it all has to do with the hidden side of the diet building - the fact that this is also the place that Princess Hinoto lives beneath in the CLAMP manga classic, X - which was made into an anime movie by director Rintaro in 1996 and later ran as a Madhouse TV title thanks to Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll).
There’s more to the National Diet Building, however, than its laid-to-waste fate in a couple of Godzilla movies and in the 2006 disaster flick Japan Sinks.
The structure itself has a far-flung history and international input that began with initial designs by German architects in the 1880s, right up to its completion as a finished structure in 1936 - to a plan by public competition winner, Watanabe Fukuzo, some input from fellow winner Takeuchi Shinshichi, and a nod in the direction of the original Germanicic concepts.
It’s a majestic building, with the lofty architectural ideals supported by stained glass, flowing drapes, and marble throughout.
Suiting the reputed punctuality of both Germany and Japan, who shared a hand in the design, there’s a tour of the building every 60 minutes - right on the dot.
Godzilla has many kaiju enemies and friends, like King Ghidorah, Biollante, Mothra, etc.
I assumed the majority of Japanese musicians, especially ones involved in the techno and electronic music sphere of things, would know all about Godzilla and would have an opinion on same, like a preferred friend/foe.
I was wrong - partially.
Most of these people seem to have vague feelings but nothing solid enough to slap a ribbon on it and call it assertive.
“Sorry, I don't have enough knowledge to select a Godzilla co-star,” quips Toshiyuki Yasuda.
“I don't know much at all about Godzilla,” admits Jin Hiyama, while both DJ Wada and DJ Warp select Mothra as their champion - but for somewhat dubious reasons.
“Because he’s peaceful?” Wada wonders aloud; “Because he can fly and is really cute,” suggests Warp.
“I like King Ghidorah,” Cut Bit Motorz says, “though I’m not well-informed about Godzilla. I think I like Ghidorah because his name and appearance are so striking.”
“I think I like King Ghidorah too - but I have a sad story about this. I accidentally got a tattoo of King Ghidorah on my left arm! I asked for the Japanese eight-headed dragon Yamata no Orochi but the tattooist gave me King Ghidorah, which has only three heads, and unfortunately it also has a foot missing... So it’s a very funny dragon. Anyway, some people talk to me when they see it and they’re like ‘Oh, hey! You like King Ghidorah, huh?’, so I’ve gotta keep saying yes every time. After 10 years, I finally started to like King Ghidorah. To tell the truth I don’t know much about it - I’ve never seen a Godzilla movie yet.”
“I’d definitely support Godzilla,” assesses technopop musician Electron Tee. “He’s much cooler—and, besides, I hate moths!”
Techno DJ/producer Shin Nishimura agrees, aside from the anathema toward common streetlight variety flying insects. “Godzilla would win by jumping and punching with that tail of his,” he pictures.
Ko Kimura, however, sees more in the machine. “Mechagodzilla is best for me because it looks really cool!”
THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW/DISCUSSION IS NOW ONLINE @ FORCES OF GEEK. PART 2 WILL BE PUBLISHED in 2 WEEKS.
"Versus was the movie that changed my life and it means everything to me. The spirit of it is pure me and that's why it was so special. Fight your destiny, find out who you are, fight through to the end for your love; it ain't over till it's over... That theme and message came from within me."
So assesses Ryuhei Kitamura in a moment of absolute clarity.
These moments are peppered right throughout any interview with the Japanese director; far from being a scatter-logical talking head or playing things close to his chest with a bunch of guarded one-word answers, like some of his more famous brethren, Kitamura unfurls things freely and easily and occasionally hits home with these moment-of-certainty comments.
Versus (2000) was Kitamura's big breakout movie, a canny combination of action and horror that in many ways has served to define or at the very least delineate his work since.
"It's all me," he agrees. "It's all Ryuhei Kitamura-style, and I'm not going to try to change or steer away from anything. I'm only trying to get better." Versus, it becomes clear, was an apotheosis in Kitamura's career; a punctuation mark he always tends to refer to for its apparent sense of purity in his cinematic vision.
"When I was making it exactly ten years ago I hadn't even started off my career properly, I had no money, and a very murky future. But somehow I had faith in myself, and all the cast and crew believed in me and gave me the incredible courage to finish it."
Kitamura pauses for just a moment.
"I don't know how I survived two years of making the film, but somehow I did and here I am now. Versus is me. It was the very beginning, and now there will be a new Versus. It's part of my life and I can't escape that."
The new Versus he's talking about is Versus 2, which is already listed on imdb.com but the director admits he hasn't actually started it yet.
"This year [2010] will be tenth anniversary year of Versus so I'm thinking of doing something special. The original film means a lot to me and has huge fans all over the world, so I can't do anything easy or cheap - I can't guarantee anything in the long run, it's a definite that I'll do the new Versus in the future for sure."
At the moment Kitamura says he's in post-production on Shadows, a movie he's producing rather than directing. "It's a supernatural horror takes place in Thailand, and I'm working with writer/director John Penney and stars Cary Elwes and William Hurt. I'm producing many projects now."
On top of this Kitamura is also in pre-production on a movie he's going to direct that's called Taekwon.
"It's my version of The Karate Kid and it takes place in Korean Town in Osaka, Japan. It's the story of a Japanese street-fighting kid who meets a Korean taekwondo martial arts expert. I wrote the script and am producing the movie now; we start shooting this spring."
Just over five years ago Kitamura had wrapped up the final installment in Japan's longest, most misunderstood cinematic franchise, when he helmed Godzilla: Final Wars in 2004.
It was somehow equally appropriate that Kitamura's style and intent on the finale was equally misunderstood in some quarters.
The critical reaction was a startlingly mixed bag, as reflected in the movies 50% rating on rottentomatoes.com, with some calling it 'A rush of explosive excitement' (Cinefantastique) and others claiming it focused too much on action and not enough on story (Boston Globe).
Personally I loved everything about Final Wars - it was all too apparent that it'd been made by a fellow old-school aficionado of the humble kaiju (Japanese monster) movie.
Kitamura himself recalls the experience with obvious relish. "It was great!" he enthuses.
"I mean, it was Godzilla. It was the 50th anniversary. And it was the final movie. Who could say no? It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I had a great time making it and am very proud of the movie. I even decided to use the old fashioned man-in-rubber-suits style and it was pure fun - think big explosions and motorcycle chases, and I even got to shoot a few scenes in Sydney, where I'd learned film making in the first place. Lots of great memories."
Final Wars was the 28th Godzilla movie - so it's pertinent to know whether or not the director sat through all the previous 27 films before shooting his own.
"Yeah, I did," Kitamura confirms.
"In fact I loved the Godzilla movies back in the '70s, but not so much the ones released in the 1980s and '90s. Godzilla movies back in the '70s were never just monster movies... There were always messages and themes that reflected the time and world within which they were made, and they combined this so well with straight-out entertainment. They lost that touch in the '80s. I'm an honest guy and that's what I told the producer in the first meeting. Strangely, the producer liked what I said and I was hired to do something that was not only new, but also classic in a sense."
So is the kaiju movie still alive and well in Japan in 2010?
"I don't think so. These days, Japanese film studios are only interested in making dramas based on novels, manga or another TV series. Nobody wants to do expensive, old-fashioned kaiju movies. For me, the beauty of the kaiju movie is the retro man-in-rubber-suits style, not CG; it has more soul. Godzilla: Final Wars was the last movie made in that style. I'd be more than happy to revive the tradition in the future and do a new kaiju movie."
Kitamura has previously let it be known that his favourite kaiju character is King Caesar, who first appeared in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla in 1974 - then reappeared 30 years later in Final Wars.
"I simply love that original Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla movie," says the director. "The moment King Caesar wakes up is my favourite moment in all of the Godzilla movies. It was so hard to choose which monsters would be in Final Wars - everybody has their favourite, and unfortunately we couldn't put them all in. So some tough choices had to be made."
Some foreign audiences know Kitamura best for Azumi (2003), a film that turned out to be an energetic, sometimes touching, and definitely underrated action set-piece that was dubbed ninja J-pop by one reviewer.
"It was my first big movie, based on a manga comic that was a huge influence in my own style," he muses.
"It took me two long years from start to end; I put all my energy into it and I'm so proud of it. The producer, Mata Yamamoto, hired me after he watched Versus. That was back when I was a complete nobody, and he gave me the big break and also believed in me. I was an angry, young, reckless director, and we had so much fun and a lot of fights making that movie."
It turns out that the original manga, by Yu Koyama, was a pivotal factor in Kitamura's own development as an artist and filmmaker.
"I grew up reading the great comics of Yu Koyama. He was my favourite comic author, so I was extremely happy when I got this job [to make Azumi], but also it created an unbelievable sense of pressure because I loved the comic so much. Then again, I realized that I understood the spirit of Azumi better than any other director, so I was 100 percent confident that I was the right one to accomplish the mission."
Joe Odagiri's turn as the effete killer Bijomaru Mogami is as funny as it is eerily scary - it turns out like an amalgam of British vocalist Morrissey's live performance tic in the '80s (when he inanely tossed flowers into the crowd) blended with Ben Kingsley, in Sexy Beast mode, dressing up as Boy George.
"The original comic series is really long - there are something like 48 volumes, a huge story arc, and tons of characters - so it was very difficult but really important to choose which episode and which character to incorporate. I thought about it again and again and created an original story for the movie, and for that chose Bijomaru for the main enemy. I think I made the right choice, and Joe Odagiri did a fantastic job."
Some of the criticisms of Azumi were that it was too violent, especially given the laid-back, somewhat zany nature of the opening part of the story. By the end, with Azumi herself drenched in blood and most of the principle characters dead, the scenario could be seen as quite bleak.
"I agree, and that's what I wanted to do. It's easy for me to make movies without blood or violence, but Azumi wasn't that kind of movie," Kitamura says.
"The whole concept was about war, life, death and terrorism. I never agree that having violence in a movie is a bad influence on kids. F**k no. It's not a f**king videogame," he asserts.
"Not that I mean anything against video games; I love them. What I mean to say is that kids shouldn't feel that killing is just like playing a video game. I was making a live-action movie, and Azumi was serious - not like more fun movies Versus or Midnight Meat Train. Azumi had to feel real and painful when she's killing somebody."
Kitamura puts it another way: "If you cut someone... it hurts, and blood comes out, and that's what the audience should feel.
"With this movie I couldn't go into a clean, sterile safety zone. I know if I took out the violence and thus avoided the ratings issue, and maybe cut out 20 minutes to make it a two-hour movie, it would've been a much bigger hit - but I just couldn't do that. I had to do the right thing for the story. That's the most important thing for me. Violence and length were the two big issues I had to fight about all the way through. I'm just glad I had the strength to fight till the end, and kept the movie I really wanted it to be."
Azumi was also actress Aya Ueto's big break, and she shone in the pivotal title role.
"We met more than 150 beautiful actresses and couldn't find our Azumi," Kitamura recalls.
"One day I saw Aya on a local poster for a baseball campaign, and I instantly knew that it was her. She was an absolute nobody at that time and I had to fight against everyone else to cast her. I only feel respect and love for Aya - she's a wonderful girl and an amazing actress. We did a new animation movie together called Baton this year," for the City of Yokohama 150th anniversary celebrations.
When I ask for Kitamura's opinion on this sequel, he responds with another of those moments of clarity I mentioned.
"I don't want to answer this question. The fact that there was never an Azumi 3 is the answer. I have nothing against Mr. Kaneko - he's been a great supporter of me since Versus. But I don't want to even think about Azumi 2."
Which brings us full circle to how he actually first got started making movies.
"I grew up watching movies back in the '70s and '80s - Hollywood, Japanese, Australian, Italian; action, horror, sci-fi, drama... everything!" He laughs. "I spent most of my time in cinemas and didn't go to school much. Movies were instead my school, my teacher, my life.
"When I was 17, I started thinking about my future and it was natural for me to decide that I'd become a film director. It all started as my fantasy, my own imagination, and I could make that real... That's the best thing about movie making. So I promptly quit high school, went to Australia, and entered film school. That was the beginning."
Why Australia?
"For simple reasons. Mad Max, director Russell Mulcahy, and INXS, all of these together conspired to make me go Down Under.
"I wasn't great student at school, I was poor, but those were happy days for me. From 1987 to 1989 I went to the School of Visual Arts in Sydney, I lived in Paddington, Rose Bay and North Sydney. I love Australian movies and Australian rock - not only INXS but also James Reyne, Jimmy Barnes, Icehouse... I still love them."
Citing favourite international film directors is deceptively easy - "James Cameron, George Miller, Peter Weir" - but when it comes to chalking up a list of preferred fellow Japanese directors, Kitamura stumbles.
"That's a tough question to answer. There have been too many great directors in Japan, and I can't pick just one or two," he then sighs.
"However, that said I feel bad that I can't find so many directors that I respect in Japan these days. But if I had to choose just one... I'd say Shunji Iwai [Fried Dragon Fish]. I really admire his talent and highly respect him. I think Swallowtail Butterfly [1996] is one of the most original and beautiful Japanese movies ever made."
Finally, as per a recent interview bent, I just have to ask Kitamura what he thinks is the most offbeat place in Tokyo. Interestingly enough, he opts out of the city altogether.
"Tokyo is a boring city," he asserts.
"I love my hometown, Osaka. I think it's Latin Japan - totally different from Tokyo, more funky, more crazy, and more sexy."
To get you in the mood for Versus 3, here's the trailer for the one that started it all a decade ago:
The last time I saw him (aside from in recurrent TV advertising here in Japan) was in the 2008 reshooting of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 epic Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress) – the movie that George Lucas has admitted made such a huge impression on the shooting script for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
As a samurai, General Makabe (in another role played by the late, great Toshiro Mifune) turns out to be perhaps the most fearless and honourable man alive – as well as one of the more charismatic and inspiring. He’s got that rousing leader quality, the sort Russell Crowe delivered in Gladiator, Edward James Olmos brandishes on Battlestar Galactica, and King Hal throws about in the pages of Shakespeare’s Henry V.
It’s also the kind you just didn’t get at all from Orlando Bloom in Kingdom Of Heaven nor Yuji Oda in the 2007 remake of another Kurosawa classic, Tsubaki Sanjuro.
In Star Wars, General Makabe ended up necessarily spliced into the two characters handled by Harrison Ford (as Han Solo) and Alec Guiness (Obi-Wan Kenobi).
And while the original Kurosawa title literally translates as “The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress”, any mention of villainy and/or camouflaged bunkers were eschewed in the title of the lacklustre 2008 incarnation with Hiroshi Abe, which opted instead for The Last Princess.
Possibly they had Leia more in mind. “With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece,” Kurosawa, who also co-wrote the story for The Hidden Fortress, once said.
“With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film.”
In the driving seat this just-passable second time round (or the third, if you want to include Star Wars) was Shinji Higuchi, a man respected for his skills with SFX and story boarding rather than any panache as a director.
Higuchi previously helmed Lorelei (2005) and Japan Sinks the following year; his choice for the role originally played by Mifune and the one that inspired Han Solo?
Former model and regular TV actor Abe – himself a capable individual who unfortunately, in this case, lacked the raw charisma of either Mifune or Ford in their prime.
But as I mentioned I do dig the man's work, in everything from his TV activities to Godzilla 2000 (ゴジラ2000 ミレニアム Gojira ni-sen mireniamu, actually made in 1999).
And his best role to date has been his cynical physics professor, Jiro Uedain, out to debunk things supernatural in the recurring TV series and cinema incarnations of the surreal Trick.
It's witty, pokes fun at a lot of other more dramatic TV programs and movies, has some hilarious recurring and cameo characters, and co-stars the sublime Yukie Nakama... as the hokey failed magician Naoko Yamada.
So the good news is that there's a new Trick movie upcoming in May (the release date is 8th May 2010), starring Abe, Nakama and an array of other suitably oddball characters.
It's called Gekijoban Trick: Reinouryokusha Battle Royale and is directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, who did the recent 20th Century Boys movies.
Located in a surprisingly wealthy part of Setagaya here in Tokyo is the sprawling home of Toho Studios. Not only is Toho the largest and most famous film studio in Japan, but it’s the owner of one of the more internationally famous film logos, on par for Asian cinema aficionados with MGM’s Technicolor roaring lion.
On location at the studio, you’ll discover a collection of sound-stages, outdoor arenas and warehouses, plus a stream lined with gorgeous cherry blossom trees, all of it originally set up in 1936 by railroad and showbiz entrepeneur, Ichizo Kobayashi.
After pumping out propaganda films during World War 2, Toho overcame a brush with bankruptcy and disfavor with the American occupation forces to unleash a wad of critically successful and internationally-regarded movies by Akira Kurosawa, such as Drunken Angel (see the January 3 entry here), Yojimbo, Ran, and Seven Samurai - a scene from which is now boldly embossed as a huge painted mural across the outer wall of the studio.
It’s at least 10 meters high, and you can’t miss it when you visit the hallowed halls that also saw through films directed by Hiroshi Inagaki (The Birth of Japan), Shiro Moritani (Japan Sinks) and Ishirō Honda (The Mysterians).
In 1954, Honda got together with Toho to skewer the science fiction world when they unveiled the first Gojira movie – better known to you and me as Godzilla – and the studio followed up with over two dozen sequels. The original is still an absolute classic 56 years later and features JapaneseCultureGoNow! fave Takashi Shimura.
I picked up my copy for just ¥980 (about $9) a couple of months ago thanks to the new DeAgostinikaiju classics series. Yum.
While Toho’s star has waned in recent years, the studio continues to produce movies in conjunction with Japanese TV companies like TBS (the Masahiro Nakai/Yukie Nakama WW2 drama, I Want to be a Shellfish, for instance - the one I did the walk-on, gate-pushing MP bit for in the earlier entry here on October 8, 2008).
Toho is better known these days as major playing distributor for smaller production houses like Asmik Ace - the company that unleashed the Ring movies - along with anime studios Production I.G and Studio Ghibli.
It seemed somehow fitting when, in late May 2008 at the 12th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF 2008), a charming, quirky little anime feature titled Tokyo Marble Chocolate was awarded the Grand Prize in the Feature Film Category.
After all, much of the anime’s unfolding romantic comedy and poignant philosophizing about love and life in contemporary Tokyo takes place around Tokyo Tower – an obelisk that in 2008 also celebrated its 50th anniversary.
While there are a lot of other symbols of Japan that weigh in much older and further tip the scale in the history stakes, when you're debating the preeminent visual icon in Japan's capital city, and its more famous ones, you can’t possibly ignore Tokyo Tower.
Besides, it’s impossible to miss the tower – painted, as it is, in vivid red and white and gorgeously spot lit after hours. Stature-wise, it reaches upward to a peak of 333 meters, thus edging out its earlier doppelgänger, the Eiffel Tower, by around nine to 13 meters, depending on whether or not you include their antennas in the equation.
Tokyo Tower also continues to dominate the skyline as the world's tallest self-supporting steel tower, easily seen from the Imperial Palace and Roppongi. It boasts an otaku-revered antenna that broadcasts all that vital anime we watch on TV stations here in Tokyo like NHK, TBS and Fuji TV.
The past 50 years have been quite remarkable, and monumental unto themselves in terms of the life of this tower and its impact on this city as well as Japan and the outside world.
It dominates the back-drop in the recent, nostalgic feature movies, Always: Sunset on Third Street, parts one and two, that were directed by Takashi Yamazaki (of Returner fame) and set in the late 1950s, during the tower’s construction. And our metallic altar was used as the titular name of a movie in 2005 that starred Junichi Okada, who more recently did the voice of Prince Arren in Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea.
In contrast to such dramatic attention, however, the tower has long been Godzilla’s and Mothra’s favoured plaything, and in manga has been particularly ill-treated: it was sucker-punched in Geobreeders, became the center of paranormal activities in the pages of Tokyo Babylon, and was the focus of some alcoholic excess in Wings of Wishes.
The tower also features heavily in anime.
It was shown destroyed in Cybuster, then popped up in a more romantic light – before being partially ransacked – in Sailor Moon, as well as in other anime like Card Captor Sakura, X, Magic Knight Rayearth, Angelic Layer, Someday’s Dreamers, and Burn Up Excess.
In fact if the anime outings are to be believed, the structure is actually a magnet for mayhem and a portal for inter-dimensional mysticism.
All the iconoclasm may be fictional, but the tower came a hair’s breath from destruction in September 2004, when a 747 accidentally passed within 200 meters, en route to Haneda Airport.
And yet, while the monument may have been crushed, squashed, melted down, transformed, and manhandled like a mammoth toothpick, and represent an object of some cynicism in younger Japanese’s minds, Tokyo Tower wasn’t raised for ruin alone.
Twenty-something Japanese English language school advisor, Shoko Shima, sees the tower in a more positive light. “For me, Tokyo tower is one of the symbols of Tokyo. When I see it, it makes me feel nostalgic. It’s not cute, nor interesting, but I think we need it in Tokyo as an older symbol of the city.”
And acclaimed electronic music producer, Toshiyuki Yasuda (Robo*Braziliera), says that “It is most assuredly a romantic symbol in mid-Tokyo.”
The obelisk was designed by Nikken Sekkei Ltd., and constructed in 1958 by Takenaka Corporation, Japan's oldest architecture and engineering and firm, at a cost hovering at around ¥2.8 billion.
It has an average 2.6 million visitors per annum and has been romantically illuminated at night – with 164 globes that change color according to the season – for enamoured young and old couples alike since 1989. Many of them visit the first-floor aquarium, which houses some 50,000 fish, or the wax museum on the third floor, and then the self-explanatory Trick Art Museum. The view itself is an optional extra.
On a clear day, Mt. Fuji is visible from the tower. On most days, unfortunately, it isn't.
Regardless, all this is set to end in a way when Tower Tower is superseded by its younger, more virile replacement, the Tokyo Sky Tree – currently being constructed in Sumida (see below, this week) - which aims at almost twice the size of our existing aging hero.
Turns out that Tokyo Tower just isn't tall enough in the 21st century to offer complete digital terrestrial television broadcasting coverage - but at least this may mean that Ol' Red will be left in a secure retirement from attacks by Godzilla and his kaiju cronies.
The Tokyo Sky Tree will just have to lean to deal with the abuse.
Check out Shusuke Kaneko on imdb.com and you’ll find that he’s currently involved in post-production on the movie Bakamono, starring Hiroki Narimiya (from both Nana movies and the Honey and Clover live-action TV series) and Miho Shiraishi, who previously appeared in the bizarre Calimari Wrestler (2004).
At the beginning of this year he also helmed the over-the-top rival opera singer romp Pride, starring Hikari Mitsushima – a.k.a Sayu Yagami in the Death Note movies.
Which is no coincidence, since three years ago Shusuke Kaneko directed both Death Note and its sequel Death Note: The Last Name.
The man responsible for the sequel to Ryuhei Kitamura’s Azumi popped up a decade before as one of three directors for a 1994 American/French adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon.
He then steered into kaiju (monster) territory when he directed a trilogy of movies featuring Gamera, the giant flying turtle (1995 to 1999); two years later Kaneko hit paydirt when he helmed Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.
While recently the principle involved in the Ultraman reboot TV series, Ultraman Max (original Ultraman director Akio Jissoji and the great Takashi Miike were others alongside him), at the same time that the Death Note spotlight fell, Kaneko in fact started out in the 1980s as an assistant working in the roman (romance) porn industry for respected production company Nikkatsu – just like fellow directors Tatsumi Kumashiro (Woman with Red Hair) and Koreyoshi Kurahara (Antarctica).
These days, at the age of 54 and with the Death Note movies on his resume, Kaneko is one of Japan’s more in-demand film-makers and he made time in September to chat with me in an interview this month published in its entirety in Impact magazine – nicely translated to full effect by my wife Yoko.
Here's the straight Q+A version.
Why do you enjoy directing, and which part of creating movies makes you the happiest?
“I’m happy when I feel my originality and talent are alive – the times that I think other directors would never shoot like this, or they wouldn’t think that way; the moments when I know my choice is the best choice. That moment comes all of a sudden while I’m making a script, shooting, editing. If the moment becomes continuous it can be fun, though sometimes it’s not. So I can’t say which process, in general, makes me the happiest.”
I note that you are now completing postproduction of the feature Bakamono – could you tell us more about this movie?
“Yes, we’re working on that now. This movie is about a guy who lives in a local city for about a decade, from the age of 19 to 29 years old. He doesn’t have any skills – he was raised by a sweet family, so he’s a nice guy but rather stupid. He is hurt in love, becomes an alcoholic… then he become a ‘man’. This story describes his path with a bit of a poetic touch.”
How was the earlier experience of directing the Death Note movies?
“Because of my super-tight schedule, the work required lots of concentration from me. The offer came on 10 December 10, 2005, and at that time it was already planned that the first-half movie would be released in June 2006, and the rest of the story in the second part in November 2006. So shooting took place in February and March 2006. I had also committed to work on Ultraman Max for TV around the end of the year and the new year, so while making the script for Death Note, I shot Ultraman Max. It ‘s fun to think back to that busy time now.”
Had you read the original manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata before doing the Death Note movies?
“Two years before I got that offer, my elementary school son brought me the first volume of the comic. At the time I thought the concept was interesting, but I didn’t imagine that that kind of thing would be made into a movie, so I didn’t read the rest of it. But straight after I received the offer to make the films, I went straight to a manga café and read the whole series – then went to the meeting.”
Why do you think the Death Note franchise has been so successful in Japan?
“When the Internet had established itself across Japan, Death Note appeared [in 2003] and it created a realistic setting for an otherwise impossible story. The imaginative superstition – that you’ll die if you write your own name in the notebook – coincided with the phenomenon that an anonymous note on the Internet could harm a person quite physically.”
Some people argue that the Death Note stories encourages kids to be violent...
“I think it’s possible. But there’s a lot of other stuff that makes kids violent. I certainly don’t think I’m making good stuff in the educational realm.”
Could you tell us more about the Ultraman Max experience, directing with Takashi Miike and other directors?
“Tsuburaya Productions offered me a job as main director, and I was in the position of controlling the scriptwriter selection, other directors and the cast. The producer approached Mr. Miike to shoot two episodes as a guest director, so I thought he would be great for that job. My view of the Ultraman Max world was closer to that of the original Ultraman rather than science fiction; an anything-is-possible place. So I wanted the other directors work freely and I think Mr. Miike could do so in that way too.”
How did you get involved directing the Gamera movies, from Gamera: Guardian of the Universe in 1995 to Gamera 3: The Awakening of Iris in 1999?
“I can’t describe that in such short space, but I think people thought me suitable for the Gamera directing job since I had just given a presentation to the producers, Diei Motion Picture Company, on Ultra Q.” [The 1966 sci-fi/kaiju monster series was the most expensive TV series in Japan at the time.] “I wasn’t a Gamera fan when I grew up. I hadn’t exactly thought Daiei’s monster films were childish, but I liked Toho’s monster films better when I graduated from elementary school. Just before I got into adolescence, which is when I got into girls, I was also a manic fan of monster movies; at that time I was making a monster illustration book by myself. Therefore, when I was directing Gamera, I felt happy that I could revert back to my childhood.”
In 2001 you directed the wonderful Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.
“There was something I quite deeply felt about that... I started with Gamera, and reached up to Godzilla. Since Toho studio was producing movies more systematically than Daiei, I could hop on that flow and make movies myself. Then again, we had more time to prepare for Gamera but there wasn’t enough time to think about Godzilla – I feel like we made that movie on impulse power. But, of course, Gozilla is charming.”
Imagine a battle between Godzilla and Mothra. Who would win, and how?
“They had fights so many times already, so please talk to Toho about that suggestion, and get them to offer me the director’s chair so I can start dreaming up ideas!”
The rest of this interview has been published in the November issue of British anime & action movie magazine Impact - see HERE for details.
