12 Years in Tokyo

Yep, I'm still a bit stunned—today is my twelfth anniversary of living in this country, so I've been away from Melbourne (my old stomping ground-cum-home town) for well over a decade now.

The plan was originally six months.

When I arrived on July 26th, 2001 the world was, cliché as it might sound, a different place.

It was the year Stanley Kubrick's and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was supposed to take place, but didn't.

That July the World Trade Center attack in New York was still over six weeks away, Junichiro Koizumi had just become prime minister of this country while George W. Bush had been kicking back in office in the U.S. for seven months. John Howard (shudder) had run Australia into the ground for six years already.

Wikipedia had been online for just six months, the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films were released and Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed Amélie. In 2001 Japanese cinema was also on a roll: the great Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) delivered up live-action deep-thinker Avalon, while anime-wise we were blessed with two brilliant films by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress).

Personally? I was still running my record label IF? and doing odd tracks as Little Nobody, but became more focused on local food, saké, travel and journalism. I found myself living in Shin-Koiwa here in Tokyo, in a place called "Hikari Mansion"—named, perhaps with perverted jocularity, in line with
the Japanese concept of a ‘mansion’: myriad apartments thrown together in the single building, with each separate flat containing one or two tiny rooms and a more compact bathroom. 

I worked for the rather evil Nova franchise teaching English to pay the bigger bills, and did articles on the side for The Daily Yomiuri, an English language off-shoot of right-leaning Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.

Twelve years later I'm married and I have a gorgeous daughter in Grade 2 at elementary school—who recently did the bloody brilliant cover art for my latest book.

Some things have stayed the same, like the sticky late-July humidity that assails Tokyo every year, like now, but I'm today not going to whine. It is, after all, part of the charm of the place.

Mamoru Oshii's 'Assault Girls'

So, I can breathe a little easier as 2009 begins wrapping itself up in neat little patterns. For one thing I finally got to see Asaruto Gâruzu after waiting a few months then missing the Tokyo media screening several weeks back 'cos I had to work my actual day job (doh!). So it kind of rocks that, for Christmas today, I received the DVD-R in the mail and just finished viewing the movie a few minutes back.

I guess I already knew some of what to expect.

If you hadn't twigged already in the course of this rambling blog (if anyone indeed bothers to read it), I'm a huge Mamoru Oshii fan, from right back when I first glimpsed Kōkaku Kidōtai (Ghost in the Shell, 1995) in an obscure Chinatown cinema in Melbourne over a decade ago; I've since watched a couple of fistfuls of his other flicks and have had the opportunity to do two interviews with the man since 2004.

I'm also a bit of an admirer of the four actors here, namely the female leads - Meisa Kuroki (Crow's Zero), Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, and the upcoming film version of Haruka Murakami's Norwegian Wood), and Hinako Saeki (Tachiguishi-Retsuden) - and especially the only male actor, Yoshikatsu Fujiki.

He's been a recurring element in some of Oshii's movies, much like the director's own Basset hound (who unfortunately doesn't appear here).

Fujiki featured in Oshii's early live-action Kerberos saga movie Stray Dog (1991) and was the seiyu (voice actor) who played Kazuki Fuse in the Oshii-written anime Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998).

On top of this background fodder, I also was asked by Francesco Prandoni from Production I.G (god knows why, but I was incredibly chuffed!) to work with him on the English translation rewrite of the lengthy five minute lead-in narration intro to Assault Girls - so I'd been privy to the fact that this was, in some respects, a sequel to Avalon, one of my favourite Oshii movies.

What's the rushed verdict?

Moments both sublime and hilarious; other poignant and, on the flip-side, a little awkward. Funnily enough I'm not sure I was so enamoured with the intro narration I helped negotiate, but once the action kicked into gear (and especially in the moments that the actors used their native Japanese), it kicked serious arse.

Over all I believe I loved the experience Oshii conjured up here, but as I said I just finished watching and I'm probably biased. Give me time to stew on it - and definitely investigate this baby yourself in 2010, if you haven't already.

Hats off to all concerned for something completely different.