{"id":27274,"date":"2012-10-11T15:28:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T19:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=27274"},"modified":"2012-10-15T15:26:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T19:26:34","slug":"wit-life-215-more-yakusho-koji-greatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/11\/wit-life-215-more-yakusho-koji-greatness\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #215: More Yakusho Koji greatness"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a> is <\/strong><\/em>a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting<\/strong><\/em> tidb<\/strong><\/em>its and t<\/strong><\/em>rends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Looks like it’s been exactly a month since I’ve written here, and we have already entered \u5b9f\u308a\u306e\u79cb\u30fb\u98df\u6b32\u306e\u79cb (minori no aki, <\/em>shokuyoku no aki<\/em>) or season of harvest, season of hearty appetites. \u00a0 Leaves are started to turn their lovely colors and there is a nice chill in the air most mornings and nights, which makes me wish there was a nearby onsen<\/em> to soak in…\"\"<\/p>\n

On the plane on the way back from a recent European vacation I was able to catch Yakusho Koji<\/a>‘s \u308f\u304c\u6bcd\u306e\u8a18 (waga haha no ki), or Chronical of My Mother.\u00a0 This film was featured in this year’s Japan Cuts<\/a>, but I was not around when it screened so I was glad to have the chance to make up for it.\u00a0 Based on an autobiographical novel by Yasushi Inoue, it tells the story of\u00a0novelist Kosaku Igami who has achieved great success, but at the price of mining his family for his material.<\/p>\n

He has three daughters and it bothers some of them more than others, notably the feisty youngest one Kotoko (pictured above with her grandmother).\u00a0 In addition to exploring the fragile relationship between Kosaku and his mother due to her abandonment of him in childhood, the movie also gets into his power struggle with Kotoko.<\/p>\n

Kiki Kirin who\"\" plays Kosaku’s mother is a familiar maternal face, as she also played the matriarch in Koreeda Hirokazu’s Still Walking.\u00a0 This is another movie that looks into complicated family relationships and how they evolve.\u00a0 Both films have been compared to the work of the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu in their cinematic styles, and story wise they both tackle misunderstandings and lifetime hurts that strain familial bonds.\u00a0 If you had to pick one or the other I would say I prefer Kiki’s role in Still Walking, but she is certainly worth checking out in Chronicle of My Mother as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Looks like it’s been exactly a month since I’ve written here, and we have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-75U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27274"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27342,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27274\/revisions\/27342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}