{"id":35698,"date":"2014-07-22T18:59:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=35698"},"modified":"2014-07-24T17:04:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T21:04:25","slug":"wit-life-272-japan-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/22\/wit-life-272-japan-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #272: Japan Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es some of the interesting tidbits and <\/strong><\/em>t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends along with h<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>er own observations.\"The_Snow_White_Murder_Case-p1\"<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This weekend wrapped up Japan Society’s annual film festival Japan Cuts, and all of the films that I caught out of the 28 presented this year were wonderful.\u00a0 I particularly enjoyed the opening film on the first Friday of the festival, The Snow White Murder Case (\u767d\u3086\u304d\u59eb\u6bba\u4eba\u4e8b\u4ef6).\u00a0 This movie made its U.S. premiere, and told the story of the murder of a beautiful young office worker.\u00a0 The prime suspect is her plain co-worker who has disappeared following the murder, and in the online world the case is made for her guilt before the official investigation takes place.\u00a0 As interviews are carried out with others at the company and the truth is gradually revealed, viewers come to realize how culpable we are in automatically convicting suspects based on hearsay and popular opinion.\u00a0 This film skillfully highlights just how pernicious social media can be in stringing people up before they have the opportunity to defend themselves.\u00a0 Although this sounds like a dark story, it also has comic moments that serve to lighten the mood.<\/p>\n

Two kid-centered films that I liked more than I expected were Maruyama, the Middle Schooler (\u4e2d\u5b66\u751f\u5186\u5c71)\u00a0 and Hello! Junichi (\u30cf\u30ed\u30fc\uff01\u7d14\u4e00), both of which use dance and humor to great effect.\u00a0 The former focuses on a 14-year old in the height of puberty who uses his active imagination to escape reality.\u00a0 His relationship with the bumbling single father (played by Tsuyoshi Kusanagi) who moves into his apartment complex makes the film.\u00a0 Kusanagi helps Maruyama to further develop his fantasies, all the while making us doubt that he really is who he says he is.\u00a0 I found this comedy entertaining, especially when Kusanagi’s righteous character lectures his new neighbors about how to properly sort the trash, etc.\u00a0 One ironic scene shows him lecturing Maruyama about running around naked, when this was something Kusanagi arrested for<\/a> in real life a few years back, causing quite a scandal.\u00a0 Hello! Junichi tells the story of this eponymous 3rd grader and his ragtag team of friends, all with their own concerns and dreams.\u00a0 Like in Maruyama, in their lives they are forced to deal with people possessing various degrees of ethics, and they sometimes seem to be more mature than the adults around them.\u00a0 The evolving relationship with their young, beautiful student teacher is a particular highlight of the film.<\/p>\n

Other films I\"the_tale_of_iya_bruk_dette\" would highlight as worth seeing are The Great Passage (\u821f\u3092\u7de8\u3080), Pecoross’ Mother and Her Days (\u30da\u30b3\u30ed\u30b9\u306e\u6bcd\u306b\u4f1a\u3044\u306b\u884c\u304f), and The Tale of Iya (\u7956\u8c37\u7269\u8a9e).\u00a0 The last of these three came in at a whopping 169 minutes, but it was a movie with a message.\u00a0 It is as an environmentalist epic that takes place in Tokushima’s Iya Valley, with lush scenery that was breathtaking at times and haunting at others (reminding me of another film I have written about here, The Ballad of Narayama<\/a>).\u00a0 The story highlights the struggle between preserving nature and modernization, as well as the balance between the everyday and the fantastic, and Iya residents’ lives are faithfully depicted.<\/p>\n

Director Tetsuichiro Tsuta is only 30 years old, and he was on hand after the film for a Q&A that provided insight into the film.\u00a0 For example, when asked how to interpret the open-ended conclusion, he said that he leaves the viewer to decide whether the main character eventually embraces a new life in the city or remains at home for good.\u00a0 He also revealed that the American environmentalist character campaigning against the creation of a tunnel was based on real-life Iya Valley resident and author Alex Kerr.<\/p>\n

So many great films to see, so little time!<\/p>\n

 <\/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. This weekend wrapped up Japan Society’s annual film festival Japan Cuts, and all of […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,263,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","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-9hM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35698","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=35698"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35726,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35698\/revisions\/35726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}