\n<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\u4ef2\u4ee3\u3055\u3093\u3068\u30c4\u30fc\u30b7\u30e7\u30c3\u30c8\"](\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/\u4ef2\u4ee3\u3055\u3093\u3068\u30c4\u30fc\u30b7\u30e7\u30c3\u30c8-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>Author with the venerable Tatsuya Nakadai at a recent screening of Ran<\/p><\/div>\n
Yesterday Japan Cuts 2013 came to a successful close, with a jam-packed schedule of four films in a row.\u00a0 I only caught the middle two, Japa<\/a>n’s Tragedy<\/a> and Dearest<\/a>, both of which deal with the theme of death (like the earlier screened I’M FLASH<\/a>, and they all do this deftly in their own unique ways).\u00a0 Japan’s Tragedy stars the amazing Tatsuya Nakadai, an 80-year old actor who I had the honor to interpret for at an event last month at the Museum of the Modern Image<\/a> when his film Ran (directed by Akira Kurosawa) was featured and he participated in a Q&A following the film.<\/p>\n Nakadai’s downtrodden character in Japan’s Tragedy is in direct contrast to his genkiness in real life.\u00a0 The father he plays has recently lost his wife and has also been diagnosed with lung cancer on the morning of 3\/11.\u00a0 After going through one operation he decides that he doesn’t want any more treatment, and furthermore that he will board himself up in his room and die beside the altar for his late wife.\u00a0 His son who is living with him since leaving his wife and daughter, as well as his job, is surviving on his father’s pension and taking care of him.\u00a0 Unsure of how to react to his father’s pronouncement, he initially tries to lure him out of the room with his favorite foods and sake, but soon realizes it is a lost cause.\u00a0 The film is shot in black and white, with only the occasional use of color during flashbacks.\u00a0 The movie concludes with a dedication to the around 20,000 dead or missing victims of the earthquake and tsunami, and to the 31,560 people who committed suicide in Japan in 2010.<\/p>\n Dearest is a sta While not all of the movies in this year’s Japan Cuts lineup dealt with death and similarly heavy themes, there were enough of them that did to made it feel as if a critical mass has been reached regarding looking back on 3\/11.\u00a0 I’M FLASH, Japan’s Tragedy and Dearest all came out in Japan in 2012, which makes it seem as if that time period was when the Japanese film world (perhaps reflecting the nation as a whole) was starting to assess the impact of this disaster on their country, on both the personal and universal levels. Going forward it will be interesting to see how these themes evolve, in terms of how 3\/11’s long-term effects are depicted on the big screen.<\/p>\n Kudos to Japan Society for its hard work in putting together another fabulous film festival.\u00a0 I’m already looking forward to next year!<\/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).\u00a0 She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. Yesterday Japan Cuts 2013 came to a successful close, with a jam-packed schedule […]<\/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":[378,53,263,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earthquake-tsunami","category-events","category-film","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-86E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31164","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=31164"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31211,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31164\/revisions\/31211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}r-studded road trip film featuring the great Ken Takakura as a grieving husband who is traveling via camper to his late wife’s hometown to scatter her ashes as per her request.\u00a0 Along the way he meets a whole host of characters, played by big time names such as Beat Takeshi, SMAP’s Tsuyoshi Kusayanagi, Haruka Ayase and Tadanobu Asano in a bit part as a Yamaguchi Prefecture policeman.\u00a0 Through these encounters, the husband gradually comes to realize why his wife sent him on this errand without telling him about it before she passed away.\u00a0 Like in Japan’s Tragedy, flashbacks play a prominent role in the story as they punctuate the widower’s journey.<\/p>\n