Yellow canaries.
Yellow canaries floating down.
Down down.
Singing as they twirl. Down down.

Swoosh! The wind flies through.

Up! Red robins.
Red robins bobbing. Up up.
Wings outstretched. Up up.
In the sky. To the ground.

Brown sparrows.
Tan, chestnut, coffee, chocolate –
sparrows.
Dancing. Dancing in the wind.

The leaves of this autumn tree alive.

One of my golf friends invited me to the Beth Tikva synagogue for a laughing and yoga practice session. I was interested since we also have a laughing session at our church, and I was curious.  Laughter is the best medicine for healing any illness. Anyway, while I was there, I picked up their monthly bulletin and found this great recipe for chocolate cake.

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
YUMMY AND FAST!!
4 Tbsps flour
4 Tbsps sugar
2 Tbsps cocoa
1/8 tsp salt (my addition)
1 egg
3 Tbsps milk
3 Tbsps oil
3 Tbsps chocolate chips (optional)
a small splash of vanilla essence
1 coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well.
Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla and mix again.

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (High)
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed.

Allow to cool a little and tip onto a plate if desired.

Enjoy!  This can serve two. I had a little whipping cream on the side or you can serve with ice cream. DELICIOUS and FAST!

Why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

TSUKEMONO
I attended our church dinner, cooked by issei ladies and just loved getting tips and ideas on Japanese cuisine. I usually cut up the nappa in thin strips, sprinkle salt and leave 5 minutes and squeeze out the water. Sprinkle ground sesame seeds and voila—instant nappa tsukemono.

The nappa tsukemono made by Mrs.Miyako Kuromi was very tasty and a little different flavour from mine. She said that she cuts up the nappa, sprinkles salt, sugar and vinegar and mixes it up about two hours before serving it. Squeeze water out and serve. The vinegar and the sugar made the difference.

HAWAIIAN ZUKE
I was visiting Mrs. Mitsi Maeda and she gave me a jar of Hawaiian Zuke and it was so good!
We finished the jar at supper time.

2 medium daikon, sliced and
quartered
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup table salt
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 tsp. tumeric

Put in bowl and mix together and leave for a day.

OATMEAL TSUKEMONO
1/2 small box oatmeal (Approx 2cups)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 can beer
1/4 cup table salt
Small pieces of konbu

If mixture is too watery, put in more oatmeal.
Put vegetables in and let it pickle to your preference.
You can keep using the mixture for quite a while.

Tetsuro Shigematsu has the face of a Japanese woodblock print samurai and the résumé of a modern day renaissance man. A radio broadcaster, comedian, pop culture critic, filmmaker, playwright and actor, he came to national attention as the successor to Bill Richardson as host of CBC Radio One’s popular afternoon show, The Roundup.

Born in London, England in 1971, his family emigrated to Canada in 1974. He grew up in Vancouver,  and received a BFA from Montreal’s Concordia University.

At the age of 19, Shigematsu became the youngest playwright ever to compete in the Quebec Drama Festival. Two years later, he was performing his one-man show, Rising Son, in Montreal, Boston, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. In the mid-nineties, he studied poetry with beat icon Allen Ginsberg for a year before heading to Japan, where he spent two years studying dance with butoh founding master Kazu Ohno in Yokohama.

On returning to North America, he starred in the television movie Rinko The Best Bad Thing, based on the novel by Yoshiko Uchida. His co-star was George Takei of Star Trek fame. That same year, Shigematsu began hosting the Montreal Asian Heritage Festival.

In 1997, he created and produced three episodes of La La Pan-Asia, a half-hour TV show showcasing Asian youth culture. In 1998 he was awarded a Canada Council grant to write a new play, The Moons of Tokyo, and a year later was invited to be artist-in-residence at Technoboro, an artist-run media lab.

In the 2000s, Shigematsu began a long working relationship with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, working in both radio and television. He was involved in a number of shows including Madly Off in All Directions, Pass The Mic, CBC Radio One’s The Afternoon Show, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Shigematsu’s video work has been seen in the Montreal World Film Festival, the Biosphere, and won the Prix du Public at the Evénement Interuniversitaire d’Art.

In 2007, he completed his feature film debut, Yellow Fellas, which he wrote & directed. The film has garnered a number of awards, national press, positive reviews and interest from distributors. It also broke attendance records at the FantAsia – the world’s most important genre festival.

I understand you speak English, French, Japanese, and Persian. As a unilingual person, I wonder how people manage to master two languages, let alone four. Were you brought up speaking Japanese?
No just the opposite in fact. Like many Japanese of my parents’ generation, my mom and dad were bent on having us kids assimilate. So they didn’t really speak Japanese to us – mostly just to each other. And certainly never made any attempt to inculcate us with any sort of Japanese pride.

And yet each one of my siblings – I’m the youngest of five – we each made our way back to Japan over the years and managed to pick up Japanese on our own volition. I guess our linguistic homing devices remained strong despite or maybe because of my parent’s laissez-faire attitude.

I remember when I was teaching English in Japan, one of my Japanese colleagues, Mikyuki, christened me “bakayaro.” And I remember getting really excited, sharing with her: “Hey that was my father’s nickname for me growing up! He called me that everyday!! What does it mean again?”

When she managed to stop giggling, she felt bad and started hemming and hawing, saying; “It means someone who isn’t so much intellectually minded, but more . . . ato neh . . .” Then her friend interjected; “baka means you f@*kin’ STUPID!”

Tell me something about your upbringing—you were born in London, were your parents Japanese immigrants, or . . . ?
My mom is from Osaka, and my Dad is from Kagoshima, and together they left Japan during the 60s. When I think about my young parents, packing their lives into their little Samsonite suitcases it’s almost unimaginable to me that two people could be so willing to embrace uncertainty that they would be willing to leave everything behind and embark on such a vast journey.

My Dad ended up working for the BBC in London, with my Mom raising us five kids before they decided to pick up again and head to Canada. The world is so much smaller today, so there really is no equivalent leap of the imagination. Unless maybe you’re an Australian aboriginal thinking about starting over in Reykjavik – which come to think of it, isn’t a terrible movie premise.

For someone not yet forty, you have a lot of experience under your belt. You either have an insatiable curiosity or a very short attention span. Which is it?
Yeah, there’s a really fine line between having an intellectual wanderlust and just being plain unfocused. I honestly don’t know where I fall, but what I do know is that the final verdict will depend on how I end up. If I get nominated for the Booker Prize, people will say, well of course – look at how much life experience he accrued along the way, but if I end up pushing a shopping cart, swatting invisible flies – people will say, yeah that guy was such a dabbler, the only thing he could commit to was a mental hospital.

My life is definitely a roller coaster. Sometimes when I’m on top I think, oh this would be a good time to die, because then I’ll be frozen in this heroic posture, rather than my usual stoop of abject failure. How vain is that?
But then there will be moments when I’m holding my two beautiful children, and we’ll be laughing about nothing – and I’ll just stop and think; “you guys have no clue about the landslide of shit that’s coming your way.” Ah… those are the moments.

I’m intrigued by Rising Son, your one-person show, which your bio says was autobiographical. Tell me about that show.
During that period of my life, whenever people asked my Dad about me, he would say; “My son makes fun of my accent for a living.” It was my mom who told me.

So I asked her; “Is that Dad’s self-deprecating way of saying he’s been immortalized in a play, and he secretly enjoys the notoriety? Or is that his way of saying ‘My son makes fun of my accent for a living’ (and it totally sucks).”

My mom, who knows my Dad better than anyone said; “I’m not sure, so maybe you should stop just to be safe.” This is a word I don’t like using, but Japanese families can be totally inscrutable.

But in the end, I think I made up for it by inadvertently following in my father’s footsteps by going into radio, even if it was for just a couple of seasons (he used to work for Radio Canada International). We walked the same hallways and even worked with some of the same technicians. And I was always fascinated to hear stories about my Dad because he has always tended to be rather taciturn. Again, typical Kagoshima man.

You studied with both Allen Ginsberg and Kazuo Ohno. Much of what you have done, while varied, seems to have followed a somewhat logical trajectory, yet both of these experiences seem to be taking you in a different direction. What was the motivation behind them?
I think that was during a period of my life when I was kind of a boyish pilgrim, traveling the world, seeking greatness. Not for myself necessarily, but to be near it, and I suppose hoping some of it might rub off on me. I got over that pretty quickly when Mr. Ginsberg suggested we do exactly that.

But it’s interesting that you cited those two in particular. I really do believe poetry represents the apex of culture in that language is the highest expression of what it is to be human, and poetry is the highest expression of language; but it is only through dance that you can access the pre-linguistic vocabulary to capture and express the ineffable. That being said, I’m not a particularly good poet or dancer, unless you count disco. Under the mirror ball, I can really sing the body electric.

How did you first get involved with the CBC?
I was living in Montreal volunteering and working with Janet Lumb and the Asian Heritage Festival, when Jim Wong-Chu saw me perform and invited me to do a comedy concert for Asian Heritage Month in Vancouver. CBC Vancouver covered that event really well, and Über radio producer Yvonne Gall had me to perform one of my stories on her show. Which was heard all the way in Halifax by This Hour has 22 Minutes, which was where I ended up working until I was headhunted by CBC Radio in Vancouver, first as a reporter, then when the great Bill Richardson decided to move on to his new show Bunny Watson, show runner Heather Kennedy handed me the reigns, giving me my first big break.

So by performing at an Asian community event, I got profiled by CBC radio, which landed me a TV gig, which gave me the leverage for a plum network radio hosting gig. The moral of the story? Volunteer and perform for your community. It’s not paying your dues, it’s just good Karma.

As a CBC reporter, you studied the Sawatsky Method, which I understand teaches one to conduct revealing interviews. Did it have a big impact on your interviewing style?
Not really. My follow up questions tended to be along the lines of… “really?” as in, “you wanna try that again?” Eventually, I would often blurt out; “Oh COME ON!!” As in, you are being such a liar, I know it, you know it, so let’s cut the crap.” As simple as it sounds, apparently very few reporters have the temerity to call bullshit when they hear it. So I think that set me apart.

I think it also threw my subjects for a loop because they never had a CBC reporter roll their eyes, shake their head, and sigh with unmitigated contempt. When I finished an interview, my subjects would be glad it was over, but my audience loved it.

Also, I think I had an uncanny feel for exploiting the semiotics of the CBC brand, what it stood for – you know, something vaguely earnest, bland, but with integrity, beyond reproach, so by using the good name of the seeb as a cover, I managed to gain access and wreak all sorts of havoc. I think some suits higher up were worried I might be undermining the brand, but my champions argued I was renewing it. If it was creative destruction I don’t know, but I sure had fun doing it.

Yellow Fellas is your first feature film. You wrote, directed, produced and acted in it. Was this something that was incubating in you for a long time, or did you just decide to make a film one day?
Yeah I was thinking about it, but I hadn’t quite pulled the trigger on it. You see, I had applied for funding, and I was speculating on all the great things I would do with the money – once it came in. The catch was I was thinking out loud in front of journalists, which gave rise to all this media attention, which THEN unleashed this tsunami of volunteer energy directed not at me, but for this project called Yellow Fellas.

People from all over got in touch, saying they wanted to join the cause. A Maori comedian from New Zealand emailed me saying he wanted to fly in just to audition. Asian guys from other cities were stepping onto Greyhound buses uninvited. People were offering locations, businesses were offering resources, I didn’t even have to recruit a crew, they all came to me.

Then the funding fell through. Which is normally a death sentence for a project, but now I had this standing army awaiting my orders. So with a half-finished script in my hands, I yelled charge! That being said I couldn’t have made the movie without my wife Bahareh’s producing skills, or finished it without my brother-in-law Bamboos’ technical genius.

Is film making something you are going to explore further, or have to set off in another direction? What are you up to these days?
I definitely want to pursue filmmaking, I feel like I have another couple of movies left in me. I’m living in LA right now, working on a screenplay, I know – how original right? Could I be any more of cliché? Probably not.

Finally, I have to ask you this: were you invited to George Takei’s wedding?
(laughing) Yeah that’s right. I had the privilege of working with Sulu in a movie long before he came out of the closet. At the time, a friend of mine speculated; “I think George might be gay because I just read his autobiography (To the Stars) and there isn’t a single mention of a romantic relationship.”

And get this, so boundless was my vanity, I actually remember being surprised – thinking; “well that’s funny ‘cause he never hit on ME! So could he really be gay?” Like I was the ultimately litmus test for being gay, as in “Boys, if your heart doesn’t go pitter patter for Tetsuro, then you need to think about handing in your rainbow suspenders.”

But since then, I’ve managed to salvage my self-esteem by learning that Asian gay men are a lot like Asian women. Many of them prefer white guys. In fact, one of the projects I have in development is called Rice Kings, it’s a zomedy about a coven of Asian female zombies vamps who kill the white guys who are “dying” to sleep with them, but maybe I should cast George as the lead, have him get chased down by a mob of gay white marauding Trekkies, and call it Rice Queen of the Damned.

Now in its twelfth year, the Vancouver Asian Film Festival has established itself as a vehicle for promoting and showcasing films by Asian filmmakers from Canada, the US and Asia. Founded in 1997 by Barbara K. Lee, this year the Festival has expanded its vision and scope, bringing aboard new Executive Director Don Montgomery, who is also the Executive Director of the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society—presenter of the Asian Heritage Month Festival in Metro Vancouver called “explorASIAN”, to take on this new challenge.

If Vancouver can be characterized as a bustling cultural kitchen, then Montgomery and his team are poised to serve up a tasty Asian-themed smorgasbord—with over 40 films spread over four days. While the films are grounded in a common heritage, they are varied in theme and approach, highlighting the disparate nature of the Asian experience. Taking the gastronomic analogy one step further, then the selection of films on offer vary from bite-sized appetizers to full-course meals, some salty, some sweet, and some in-between.

Canadian Nikkei filmmakers are represented at this year’s Festival by a quartet of BC filmmakers who present four very different films. The longest, Testuro Shigematsu’s Yellow Fellas, clocks in at an hour and a quarter, while Jeff Chiba Stearn’s Yellow Sticky Notes comes in at a mere six minutes. The other two films are Memoirs of the Last Samurai’s Geisha, produced by sisters Suzi Nitta Petersen and Michele Nitta, and Machine and Wishbone, by Randall Okita.

For more information, or to download a programme guide, visit www.vaff.org.

While much of the credit can go to Randall Okita, who wrote, directed and produced the film, Machine with Wishbone owes a great deal to go to the stars of the film—a series of delicate machines created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology artist in residence Arthur Ganson. The machines have names like Machine With Oil, Madeline’s Fragile Machine, Thinking Chair, Machine with Artichoke Petal and of course, Machine with Wishbone.

As Okita explains, “The film includes a lot of what they call ‘kinetic sculpture’, these wonderful art pieces that move and evoke character and emotion. We shot these pieces in mechanical sets on turntables to create a little world for them to exist in. The art was mostly created by renowned artist Arthur Ganson, and one of the first pieces (a mechanical bed that shows up in the first and last scenes) was built by Alan Storey, another renowned artist who lives here in Vancouver.”

One of the pleasures of watching the film is the dawning realization that the entire film is shot live, without the aid of animation or special effects. It is a testament to the beguiling nature of the machines that the film has sometime been programmed as an animated piece at festivals.

Ganson has been quoted as saying that the machines are about his love for solving problems and coming up with solutions. He also believes that computer technology can detract from art, even as it is helping create it. Okita captures the essence of Ganson’s philosophy in the movie, providing a stage for his machines to work their real-world magic. While the machines in the Terminator films are out to destroy mankind, these ones belong to a kinder, gentler world. They move because they can, their cogs and wheels spinning for the sake of spinning, without the need to impact the world or make any grand statements.

Says Okita, “The film and machines have a lot to say about emotional and communicative aspects of technology, which is great when you consider that I worked with Arthur back and forth for months on the project, and I shipped part of his life’s work here and shot a film with it, but I’ve actually never met him in person.”

Machine with Wishbone has been shown at numerous Festivals and has picked up best experimental film awards at the Yorkton, Winnipeg and Brooklyn festivals.

Michele Nitta and Suzi Nitta Petersen are your basic Steveston-raised sansei sisters. Like most sansei, they grew up immersed in mainstream western culture—listening to popular music, going to movies, etc. Suzi is an aspiring actor and Michele, while involved in the film industry, prefers to work behind the scenes. The two have spent many years working as background performers, with hundreds of film, commercials and television shoots between them.

Still waiting for her first big role, Suzi is developing experience by working in commercials and student and independent films, acting in local theatre productions, and taking acting classes. She has also been a member of two sketch comedy groups—Lick the Wax Tadpole and Stir Fried Crazy.

Several years ago, the sisters were working on the big-budget feature Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as extras in the Japanese wedding scene. They wore authentic silk kimonos and were amused that more than a few people on the set assumed that all young women in kimonos were geishas. When she heard the story, local writer Liz Nunoda was inspired to write the script for Memoirs of the Last Samurai’s Geisha with Suzi in mind for the lead character. The sisters decided to produce the film and enter it in the 4th Annual Mighty Asian Moviemaking Marathon (MAMM), an initiative of the Vancouver Asian Film Festival that helps develop aspiring filmmakers.

As co-producers, the sisters hand-picked the cast and crew from friends within the film industry to form their team “Band of Buddhas” to compete in MAMM. From their experience on film sets, they knew the value of working with people who are both professional and personable, traits that would come in handy as the second day of shooting stretched to 18 hours.

In keeping with the budget, two more Nitta sisters and a family friend handled the catering, while their mom served as wardrobe assistant. The cast included Vancouver actor Zen Shane Lim who has a recurring principal role as Teddy Yukimura in the ABC Family mini-series Samurai Girl. Chad Band, serving as Director/Director of Photography/Editor filled his car with equipment to shoot over two hot weekends in August. They filmed inside Suzi’s home in Richmond and exterior shots were done close by at the Steveston Buddhist Temple.

The resulting film, a sly and gentle poke at the stereotype of the kimono-clad Asian woman, went on to win third place in MAMM, earning it a screening at this year’s Vancouver Asian Film Festival.

Asked if the success of Memoirs of the Last Samurai’s Geisha provided impetus to create more films, Suzi and Michele agreed that it did, saying, “We do feel inspired to produce more short films. We will take on the challenge if there is a really good idea or script that we’re both passionate about. We would love to work again with as many members of our Band of Buddhas filmmaking team as possible. Chad Band and the rest of the cast and crew really epitomized the team motto ‘Happy to be here! Easy to work with!’ They made it all possible and made the work of being on set a lot of fun.”

Animator Jeff Chiba Stearns first came to wide notice as the creator of What Are You Anyways?, a short, humorous film released in 2005 that looks at growing up mixed-race in the small “white-bred” city of Kelowna, British Columbia, where, growing up, he was often asked the question that makes up the film’s title.

The film brought Stearns many accolades, both for the film’s treatment of the subject matter and its classical animated style. It also changed his life in many ways, sending him on a whirlwind tour of film festivals, where he picked up numerous awards, and bringing invitations to speak at conferences and symposiums.

Stearns’ next film, Yellow Sticky Notes, is a direct response to the attention and suddenly jam-packed schedule that he faced. As he says, “I never really could have imagined the success I would have after making What Are You Anyways? All of a sudden I became the ‘go to guy’ if press or media wanted to talk about multiethnic identity. The only problem was, I wasn’t prepared for it. For three years following the release of WAYA? I was being asked to conduct countless interviews, lectures, and talks on Hapa issues and identity. The creation of Yellow Sticky Notes was a way for me to really release a total creative wave and get back to animating. I was able to enter a zone of complete animation meditation where I animated through a total stream of consciousness. What better way to self reflect than by animating on the same yellow sticky notes that made me ignore the world for the last nine years of my life. Sticky note ‘To do’ lists were constantly running my life especially after switching focus from being a filmmaker to becoming a Hapa ambassador.”

Yellow Sticky Notes proves that What Are You Anyways? was no fluke. It has met with similar success on the film circuit and picked up a number of awards. The film itself is at once a clever reflection of the filmmaker’s life over the past nine years, and a doodle-filled meditation on the creative process itself. And where What Are You Anyways? tackled a serious issue (albeit in a lighthearted way), Yellow Sticky Notes makes no attempt to be anything other than it is—an return to pure animation after the distractions of the past few years.

Despite the added pressure that came with success, Stearns is quick to acknowledge the many positives that arose from the experience. “One of the greatest things that came from the success of What Are You Anyways? was my becoming more involved with the Japanese Canadian community. Since the film dealt with my experiences growing up mixed, many Japanese Canadians could relate to the film in one way or another. Either their kids were Hapa, they were Hapa, or they knew many Hapas. I have been fortunate to have been able to speak at many JC functions, events, and conferences across Canada over the last few years and meet many prominent and inspiring Japanese Canadians. I am now even serving on the NAJC Endowment Fund Committee.”

27th Vancouver International Film Festival
September 25 to October 10, 2008

Reviews by Kentaro Ide

God’s Puzzle
Director: Takashi Miike, 2008 (134 min.)
Takashi Miike’s God’s Puzzle begins as a comical fish-out-of-water story of slacker Motokazu (Hayato Ichihara) attending physics classes for his twin brother. Teaming up with reclusive prodigy Saraka (Mitsuki Tanimura), Motokazu becomes entangled in a challenge to recreate the Big Bang. The film’s first half is a humorous take on sibling rivalry, adolescent lust and particle physics, all tied together by the charming performance of Ichihara as a clueless loser way in over his head.

In keeping with the film’s theme of order and chaos, Miike deliberately lets the film’s second half fall apart by creating a farcical disaster movie. Unfortunately, this involves removing the film’s central pillar, Ichihara, for extended lengths of time, leaving no other characters engaging enough to compensate for the film’s self-conscious lack of depth. Even the farce and satire ultimately rely on Ichihara for their biggest punchlines, but by the time the main star returns to save the day, God’s Puzzle has already lost the audience’s attention.

All Around Us
Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008 (140 min.)
Director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s long-awaited return is an absolute triumph, expertly veering between emotional extremes. All Around Us follows the tumultuous early years of marriage between the tightly wound Shoko (Tae Kimura) and the emotionally adolescent Kanao (Lily Franky). The loss of a baby reveals the underlying frailties of their relationship, and Hashiguchi’s patient portrayal creates characters that the audience comes to truly care for.

Moving swiftly through the years, the film shows the aftereffects of traumas that are left off-screen. Even in Kanao’s job as a courtroom sketch artist, the social decay of 1990s Japan is represented through only the aftermath of some of the period’s most infamous crimes. The effects of these traumas are so vivid that they haunt the film even after Shoko and Kanao begin to patch things together, anchoring scenes of heartfelt happiness with a sense of fragility and pathos. This film is one that lingers long after the closing credits.

Achilles and the Tortoise
Director: Takeshi Kitano, 2008 (119 min.)
The third and final installment of Takeshi Kitano’s surrealist self-explorations, Achilles and the Tortoise is only a mild improvement over its wayward predecessors. Kitano (along with Reo Yoshioka and Yurei Yanagi) plays failed artist Machisu, using his trademark combination of violence and humor to provide a cynical look at modern-day artistic enterprise. Unfortunately, Kitano is unable to restrain his own comedic impulses and ultimately loses sight of the film’s direction.

Machisu’s fruitless efforts to attain fame are portrayed as a long series of gags that, while amusing, run on for far too long. The film’s real punchlines are the scenes of sudden and sobering violence that strongly convey the film’s disillusionment with the pursuit of genuine creativity. But rather than confront and explore the implications of this disillusionment, Kitano repeatedly withdraws into his comfort zone of deadpan gags and slapstick comedy. Achilles and the Tortoise is good for laughs but falters at the prospect of digging deeper into its own themes.

Babin
Director: Isamu Hirabayashi, 2008 (25 min.)
Isamu Hirabayashi sets up his short films like magic tricks, engaging his audience with mysteries that gradually reveal themselves. Babin stars a strange man (Keisuke Horibe) buried waist-deep in the forest and chattering to himself and to various creatures. Questions about the man’s identity become almost secondary to his comical okama-esque musings on skin care and nutrition. A silent geologist and a cheeky little boy add to the mystery through their abusive interactions with the man, until the final tearful and gruesome reveal. The result is a surprisingly touching tale of innocence, decay and love.

German + Rain
Director: Satoko Yokohama, 2007 (71 min.)
Several scenes in Satoko Yokohama’s debut film feature the childish antics of three young boys as they scribble on walls and squeak out painful performances on their recorders. These scenes encapsulate German + Rain, a film that starts off promisingly enough but fails to capitalize on the strength of its protagonist, Yoshiko (Yoshimi Nozaki). Nicknamed Gorilla Man, Yoshiko is a short-tempered social misfit who dreams of becoming a famous singer. Nozaki inhabits the role with ease, infusing her character with both angst and innocence.

The film’s youthful energy seems to get the best of Yokohama, as the narrative quickly unravels in multiple directions. For example, we see Yoshiko interview characters about traumatic experiences, blackmail a sexual predator, deal with her estranged and ailing father, and confront her own resentment of her more attractive best friend. These and other narrative threads are handled carelessly and superficially, leaving only the awful sound of screeching recorders to echo in the audience’s memories.

United Red Army
Director: Koji Wakamatsu, 2007 (189 min.)
Koji Wakamatsu’s United Red Army is a haunting historical epic tracing the rise and fall of the Rengo sekigun (URA), a group of communist revolutionaries that formed in late-1960s Japan. The outlaws isolate themselves in the mountains to undergo military training, but their frustration at their own inability to realize their revolutionary ideals soon leads to the group’s violent self-destruction.

The film provides several characters as tenuous emotional anchors, such as the naïve young girl forced to beat herself or the three brothers who betray one another, but the film’s tragedy is in the unraveling of the group’s idealism. Though Wakamatsu does not hesitate to showcase the URA’s brutality, he sentimentalizes their fervor and desire for social change. Though the film is unnecessarily long, particularly in its second act, it is a poignant chronicle of a socially and politically active time that is quickly being forgotten in Japan.

mime-mime
Director: Yukiko Sode, 2007 (87 min.)
There are no heroes in Yukiko Sode’s mime-mime, a blunt and unsentimental depiction of a flawed girl growing up with flawed people. Makoto (Ayaco Niijima) is a jaded young furi-ta (part-time worker) with a sharp tongue and no sympathy for the people in her own life, especially her own family. Encouraged by her inept but well-intentioned friend Nakaji (Masahisa Yamazoe), Makoto reluctantly reevaluates her own personal direction.

Niijima expresses her character’s apathy toward life with a strong level of charisma, drawing the audience’s sympathy despite Makoto’s obvious shortcomings. The film is also full of subtle sequences that vivify the shallowness of Makoto’s friends and family, making her antipathy understandable. In fact, it feels almost unfortunate when Makoto allows herself to be influenced by the unappealingly naive Nakaji. But like its protagonist, mime-mime makes up for its flaws with charm and a headstrong attitude.

After School
Director: Kenji Uchida, 2008 (100 min.)
In After School, director Kenji Uchida addresses the question of what teachers do after school lets out. Uchida’s answer incorporates every student’s wildest theories in a story involving shady yakuza deals, two-faced deceptions, and a damsel in distress. Even while handling numerous characters and some genuinely surprising plot twists, this comedy-thriller skillfully manipulates its audience with humour and mystery.

The clever script is enhanced by a comedic and yet tense rivalry between Jinno (Yo Oizumi), a schoolteacher whose friend Kimura (Masato Sakai) has gone missing, and Kitazawa (Kuranosuke Sasaki), a seedy private detective hired by corporate gangsters to find Kimura. Oizumi in particular portrays the multiple aspects of his character convincingly while also showcasing some old-school physical humor. After School is a crowd-pleasing choice for anyone looking for a fun and entertaining ride.

Interview and translation by Kentaro Ide

Yukiko Sode’s mime-mime is an unflinching depiction of a jaded young girl (Makoto, played by Ayaco Niijima) alienated from her surroundings and her own self. Though the film features vivid portrayals of the sexual objectification of women, Sode insists that the real message of mime-mime is the inability of Japanese youth to communicate with themselves and with others.

Japan is known as a rather sexist society where women are often objectified. Your protagonist Makoto has a passionless sexual relationship with a married man and works at a phone-sex line. Has she internalized society’s views of women, or does she feel powerless to do anything about it?
Firstly, I think our views of Japan are a bit different. I would say in that modern Japan, men and women are almost equal. If anything, [young] women seem to have more power. Women now have more ambition, and are becoming more active in areas such as sexual relations.

In general, there is a tendency among both male and female youth to avoid developing deep relations with others. In the film, [Makoto] doesn’t want a proper “boyfriend-girlfriend” or “husband-wife” relationship and chooses to be with a married man who cannot become her “boyfriend.” It is therefore a relationship of convenience for Makoto.

But there are scenes where Makoto is deliberately portrayed through a male gaze, such as when she performs fellatio on her lover.
In the fellatio scene at the beginning, there’s no particular meaning in the fact that she’s being seen by someone. In this film, none of the sexual scenes feature actual intercourse. This demonstrates the subtle distance between the two characters. They experience pleasure together, but they aren’t connected. They have sex just to kill time. Their relationship does not involve a close connection where they share their joy and sorrow.

In that case, could Makoto have been written as a male character to convey the same themes?
I think that even if Makoto were a man, the core principles of her behavior would be the same. However, men may have a stronger social impetus to find a proper job and whatnot. I think her behavior is similar to that of Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate.

mime-mime is a movie about communication. Makoto, a modern youth, is apathetic. She has no passion about anything, whether it’s work, friendship, love, or herself. She has no desire to know or improve herself. I think this is something that is common among young people in Japan today. They don’t even understand their own selves, and so they can’t form deep relations with others. They just seek pleasure through sex.

The idea of rituals plays a central role in helping Makoto confront these issues, but how do the external actions involved in rituals help to resolve internal issues?
Identity is inherently an extremely ambiguous thing. And because “self” is so ambiguous, people perform rituals to determine their relations with one another. For example, lovers confirm their relationship by spending Valentine’s Day together, and friends confirm their relationship by discussing their problems. In this way, rituals help to make people’s lives easier. Even if it means using rituals that may seem contrived, I believe we need to continue engaging ourselves with other people.

mime-mime was runner-up at this year’s PIA Film Festival in Tokyo, where it won the Avex Best Entertainment Award, and it was nominated for the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at this year’s VIFF.

Upcoming on November 11th is the Remembrance Day Service at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial Cenotaph in Stanley Park. This event starts at 10am and I hope you will all get the chance to come down and pay your respects to the many Japanese Canadians who fought for Canada during the World Wars. Although our JC community endured many hardships during WWII, there were many who did enlist to fight for democracy and peace.

The GVJCCA will be having its Volunteer Appreciation Party on November 22 at Nikkei Place from 6-8 pm. The GVJCCA always appreciates the many volunteers who lend their helping hand at our workshops, community events such as Keiro-kai and the Powell Street Festival BBQ, the Bulletin/Geppo production and distribution and also our advertisers each month who support the Bulletin/Geppo. It is always difficult to acknowledge everyone who has helped out the GVJCCA, and these volunteer appreciation parties are our way of saying thank you for your assistance and generosity.

Membership reminder
Just a reminder, since our holiday season is coming up and it is sometimes difficult to remember about renewing your annual membership to the GVJCCA, if you could submit your renewal form and payment, it would be greatly appreciated. Keeping your membership to the GVJCCA up-to-date greatly assists us in maintaining our database in an efficient way.  If you’re not sure when your membership expires, check the mailing label on the back cover.

I hope you have a great month!

Ron Nishimura
President GVJCCA

What are the differences in human relations between Japanese people and Nikkei people? What are the similarities? Among the most difficult of topics to be sure, but these questions have been bugging me for many, many years. Having spent five years in San Francisco back in the early 70s, and have been in Vancouver for the past 11 years, and both places being a social environment where a Nikkei community and an overseas Japanese community coexist and interact, I always thought I was familiar enough with the basic “workings of human relations” among the Nikkei and ijusha folks.

In a nutshell, it is an awareness that we are all somehow “connected somewhere,” influencing each other to some extent, however great or small. I am involved a bit with community activities and am fortunate to have some friends and acquaintances. I recently had a slightly shocking experience of being made to realize how off the mark I had been, although the matter was really quite trivial

A person asked me if I could help out with a professional job, an offer I was happy to receive. As it happened, that job was with a group with whom I had been working on another project. I assumed that the offer had come as a result of that connection. But when I asked, that person did not know anything about the other project. “That’s strange….” I began to wonder. And then that “lightbulb inside my head” finally lit up. There was no reason why that person should know about it. Calling up potential “sources” for news stories was something I had to do routinely back in the old days. “Who is connected to whom and how” is the ABC of source-hunting. This time, I was wide off the mark.

In fact, the person who offered me the job was Nikkei and the person in charge of the group was Japanese. But because of my preconception that we’re vaguely “all connected,” I had forgotten the elementary fact of life that people who grew up as Canadians here and people who grew up in Japan think and act differently.

Due to the nature of this magazine’s readership, I often end up discussing the Nikkei and ijusha folks of the wide Metro Vancouver area in a single breath (like it’s Powell Street Festival every day?), but I am of course ignorant of the overall situation. We are of many generations and backgrounds. The Nikkei people comprise the Issei and Nisei who experienced the wartime internment, Sansei, Yonsei and Gosei, with fewer members of the first two generations remaining. Then there are the post war immigrants, starting with the Shin (new) Issei and their Nisei and Sansei. (The Shin Issei like the Issei before are primarily Japanese-speaking.) There are also Japanese spouses of Canadians and new immigrants who came here to study or who were originally sent here by the companies they worked for. In terms of numbers, there are about 23,000 Japanese nationals registered with the Japanese Consulate. With regard to Nikkei people, there are some statistical difficulties, such as whether or not to count the offspring of interracial marriages which are more common among them than among people who came from Japan, so there are only rough estimates of tens of thousands.

To feel as though all of these different categories of people making up the Nikkei/ijusha community are somehow “all connected” is, I’ve realized, a rather Japanese sentiment. Among the oft-cited differences between the East and West, the one about the former being group-based societies and the latter individual-based societies is hard to refute, even if it’s very generalized. If group-to-group relations are the basis of Japanese society, every member of a group (such as a traditional rural farming village) has to be in the know when that group is undertaking something. If individual-to-individual relations are the basis, secrets between certain individuals of a group have their place too.

To illustrate that graphically, individuals in Japan could be like rings that are connected in series, intersecting each other in complex ways. Individuals in the West could be like bicycle wheels with spokes radiating from the centres, that are connected in series with the spokes intersecting each other. The Japanese are not shy about divulging personal matters to people who are not involved. Westerners tend to draw a clear line between matters that concern them personally, and matters that don’t. The reason the English word “privacy” is commonly used in Japan is probably because the idea originally didn’t exist. Attempts to turn the idea into Japanese have resulted in odd translations like “to be withdrawn, averting the public eye” (intai, hitome o sakeru from Kenkyusha Pocket English-Japanese Dictionary).

On this “individual-to-individual” business, I have one experience to recount. There was a group of guys I used to drink with in Tokyo in the late 70s. It was a motley assortment including an abstract sculptor (a part-time carpenter), a woodblock print artist (a part-time animal mascot at a fairground), a bar manager (a hippie type), a blues music entrepreneur (a former student radical) and a male cabaret dancer. They might sound like a crazy bunch, but were all good guys as far as I was concerned. But there was one thing I found amiss. Whenever we got together it was in a group of at the very least three. The sculptor, whom I had gotten to know while I was in San Francisco, in particular became a friend with whom I shared many areas of interest. So I’d propose, “I want to talk more about these interesting ideas, so let’s go for a drink just the two of us once in a while.” “Sure,” he’d reply, but when I go to the place of appointment, a few more of the regulars would always drop by, the occasion thereby becoming the usual happy-go-lucky drinking session with the silly conversation and all. As thick as I was, it finally dawned on me after repeating that episode a few times. One-on-one was just something many Japanese are not comfortable with. (A couple and a friend, or two couples was perfectly OK.) Needless to say, one-to-one meetings were the norm with Westerners and occasional Nikkei friends I socialized with in Tokyo. Group situations usually involved business or special occasions like parties.

In a minority community environment like Vancouver’s, a loose fabric of all types and categories of Nikkei and Japanese people, values and ways of life, which are both individual-based and group-based, must be interacting in unfathomably complex ways. The aforementioned Nikkei person I have portrayed as a “Canadian” for my present purpose, but who knows? The person might also be much more “Japanese” than the likes of yours truly in terms of his/her values or tastes. Appearances can be deceiving.

I had a close Nikkei friend with whom I spent a lot of time in my student days and later shared occasional good times in Washington, D.C. Denver, Colo., and San Francisco. Now that he has passed on, I have only fond memories left. He certainly did not fit neatly into any stereotype. He dressed like a “typical American” in button-down shirts and levis, but if he was relaxing in yukata at a hotspring ski resort or something, he looked way more natural than, well, yours truly again. We’d eat hamburgers at US officers’ Sanno Hotel in Akasaka or go for spaghetti in Roppongi, spending our English teaching job money, but a more vivid image in memory is us sitting down in a tiny home-cooked menu diner, eating a <rice and soup plus three items for 180 yen> and talking about life. Around 1971 in Denver, he helped me out a lot, and as I recall his friendship and his delicate kindness, I find myself wanting to characterize them as somehow “uniquely Japanese.”

When an old man starts reminiscing, it is a good time to come to a conclusion. “So what?” is the question I’m obliged to answer. In this life there are some topics one gets “hung up” on, things one cannot help asking “why” of oneself and others, knowing full well there is no way of grasping the whole picture. Especially now that my destiny has brought me to Vancouver, a place where Nikkei and Japanese folks co-exist and co-mingle, the question of how they interact has become one of these topics. It is about a domain so deep, a “shared awareness” so vague, that one can be steeped in it up to one’s head (as I might be) and still remain relatively unconcerned.

The Nikkei person I introduced here may (I hope not) take offense, wondering “what’s he going on about?” In closing, I can only thank him/her with apologies for helping out a “hack” so short of story ideas that he has to make a big deal about a trivial matter.