When Japanese director Koji Fukada receives the Akira Kurosawa Award from the Tokyo International Film Festival at the age of 42 in 2022, he sheepishly notes that a career-achievement award may come too soon. Previous winners include Steven Spielberg, Yuji Yamada and Hou Hsiao-hsien of Taiwan; The other honoree that night, with whom he shared the stage, was five-time Academy Award winner Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Fukada said he would donate the cash prize that came with the honor to a local organization he co-founded to provide mental health and legal support for independent film workers in Japan – and pledged to continue striving for confidence in his talent.
Fukada has consistently distinguished himself at major film festivals – his family comedy “Hospité” won top prize in Tokyo in 2010, and his apocalyptic thriller “Harmonium” won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2016 – but his latest film, “N.Aggie notesCannes elevated him to its main competition for the first time, giving him a shot at the glory befitting an Akira Kurosawa Prize winner. He joins his compatriot Hirokazu Koreda (Sheep in the box(and Ryusuke Hamaguchi)suddenly) is in the running for the Palme d’Or – the first time in 25 years that three Japanese directors have competed for the Grand Prix at Cannes in a single edition.
Naji’s memoirs It follows two middle-aged women – Yuri (played by Shizuka Ishibashi) and Yuriko (Takako Matsuo) – who reunite in the rural Japanese town of the film’s title over the course of a few days in the spring. Yuri is the ex-wife of Yuriko’s brother, but the two women have remained close. Yuriko works anonymously in Nagi as a sculptor of human figures carved into raw blocks of wood. Yuri is an architect at a large firm in Tokyo, but she comes to visit Yuriko after finding herself at a professional and personal dead end. Fukada depicts rural Japanese life in Nagi with palpable emotion, and as the women reconnect and interact with a group of other locals, memories and tensions build to the point of unexpected reckoning.
before Naji’s memoirsThe premiere at Cannes – and Fukada’s first walk down the palace steps as competition director – THR I caught up with him in Tokyo to discuss the creative origins of his new film, what 10 months in rural Nagi taught him about the hidden life of a town, and why he became convinced — like his hero Hayao Miyazaki — that “bad guys” had no place in movies.
This is the second time she has adapted a work by playwright Oriza Hirata for the screen Sayonara (2015). How did this follow-up collaboration happen?
In this case, he just reached out to me. His play Tokyo Notes It takes place entirely inside an art museum, and he told me that there was actually a wonderful art museum in this city called Nagi, and he wondered if I might be able to adapt his play, but set it in this museum in rural Japan instead of Tokyo. This seemed like an interesting idea, so I went to Nagi – about six hours by bullet train from Tokyo – and that’s where it all started, in 2017. I visited the museum there, and it was a really amazing building and an impressive art institution – a wonderful place. But I also found Nagy to be a unique and fascinating city, and I began to think it would be absurd to tell this story without leaving the museum. So I moved away from the original play and started coming up with this idea for a story set in Nagi itself, which it became Naji’s memoirs.
I understand that you later held a longer resident artist residency at Nagy. What were your impressions of the place, and how did they inform your story?
I ended up spending about 10 months there, talking to locals and building my story almost from scratch. Firstly, it is a very interesting place. The art museum has this modern and unique design and it’s located right there in the middle of this rural scene, making it quite an unusual sight. The museum has been there for nearly 30 years, and has made an impact on Nagy residents. They are very proud of it, and the people there have become very culturally and artistically aware. Then, of course, like in the movie, there’s also a large military facility – a Japanese Self-Defense Forces base. This is a contradictory aspect of the city’s character. It made me wonder why the base was there, of all places, and about the connection between Tokyo and this rural part of Japan.
The film presents two versions of the artist and the artist’s life. We get this solo sculptor who has dedicated herself to her craft in a very pure way. In contrast, Yuri is a successful big-city architect. But she admits that she feels somewhat condescending, and often complies when they ask her to imitate the style of famous architects. Tell me about your interest in this dichotomy and how you arrived at it.
Funnily enough, the idea of an architect and a sculptor came to my mind very early on. At first, it was just instinct, but as I got to know Nagi, it turned out that these two people and their endeavors were a perfect fit for the place. I don’t know how popular wood carving is in other countries, but in Tokyo, it’s an impossible craft to practice. Very few people have enough space in their small homes or apartments to do this kind of work, and there is the problem of noise and complaints from neighbors. High quality wood is also very expensive. But in Nagi, space is plentiful, and you can get beautiful wood cheaply or even for free just by foraging in the surrounding forests.
Architecture is kind of the opposite. It is an art form that cannot be achieved alone. No matter how much you love architecture, you can never do it yourself, for the love of the craft. Filmmaking is a lot like architecture. I think I came to these two because I found myself sympathizing with Yuri, while at the same time longing for the way Yuriko could work – how attractive it would be to live that very pure version of a solitary artistic life.
Knowing Filmography, I had some concerns at first Naji’s memoirs. Thinking back to movies like Organ or Love lifeI was worried that something truly terrible might be about to befall one of the cute kids or the main characters. But it soon becomes clear that this is a kinder, more subtle and softer kind of film. Was this your intention from the beginning?
This time, from the beginning, I knew I didn’t want to do anything dramatic. There are different reasons for this. One is that when people in Japan look at rural life from the perspective of the city, we tend to take a quite negative view – there is a tendency to see them as backward, isolated, or even a bit scary. But I didn’t want to go that route. This was the first reason.
The second reason is that things like disappearing children or terrible acts of violence are not the only tragedies we face in life. To me, there is a greater tragedy facing us all, and that is the tragedy of loneliness, which is something we all suffer from. In the film, Yuri got divorced and found herself stuck in her job and career – and now, she suddenly finds herself having to confront this loneliness, which is the biggest tragedy of her life so far. Yuriko, on the other hand, works completely alone, in a place full of empty land – and perhaps that’s why she’s come to accept the loneliness. I think that’s what Yuri finds so attractive about Yuriko’s lifestyle. I wanted to show this contradiction.
I was also struck by the fact that there were no bad guys in the movie. What was it like working on this record?
I didn’t find it particularly challenging. I think everything is relative when it comes to humans. I don’t think there are any good or bad characters. In certain situations, people can seem good or bad – and in this case, it’s just that there were no moments in the film where anyone looked bad. I often say that one of my favorite directors is Eric Rohmer. In his films, there are no villains, and yet the stories work well. Hayao Miyazaki here in Japan is another one of my heroes. It has shaped the way I see the world since I was a child. In the 1980s, it stopped About the presence of villains in his films. In every movie after that Castle in the sky [1986]There are no villains.
The movie ends on a more ambiguous note, so I was curious to know if you had a definitive answer on what Yuri will reveal about her true personality in the moments or days after the end of the movie.
Yuri’s future has not been decided. For me, the most important thing in a film is to give space, or create blanks that the audience can fill themselves – not to impose my ideas or message on the audience. It left space for the audience to wonder what happened to Yuri and Yuriko. This is the best way I know to keep the movie from getting hyped. Yuri’s future is an empty space, like the futures of all of us. I would love to see how this statue turns out.
