{"id":40053,"date":"2016-07-17T13:39:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T17:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=40053"},"modified":"2016-07-17T23:37:01","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T03:37:01","slug":"wit-life-303-japan-cuts-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/17\/wit-life-303-japan-cuts-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #303: JAPAN CUTS 2016!"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life<\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/a> (Kumamo<\/a>to-ken<\/a> 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 along with h<\/strong><\/em>er<\/strong><\/em> own obse<\/strong><\/em>rv<\/strong><\/em>atio<\/strong><\/em>ns<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong><\/em>\"mohican\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This week kicked off the 10th year of the JAPAN CUTS film festival<\/a> at Japan Society, and if the initial films are any indication this year’s lineup looks as stellar as the nine previous.\u00a0 The opening film was Mohican Comes Home<\/a>, and was introduced by director Shuichi Okita and co-star Atsuko Maeda.\u00a0 They were also both on-hand for a post-screening Q&A, where they revealed behind-the-scenes stories about filming.<\/p>\n

Okita’s previous film The Woodsman and the Rain was shown at JAPAN CUTS 2012 (with an appearance by star Koij Yakusho!), and like this film Mohican is set in a rural location.\u00a0 The plot is of a young man (Ryuhei Matsuda) from a small island in Hiroshima, who hasn’t been back in seven years since living in Tokyo, where he scrapes by as the lead singer for a struggling death metal band.\u00a0 He decides to return home for a quick visit with his girlfriend (Maeda), who is pregnant and he intends to marry.<\/p>\n

The film features a wacky cast of island characters, including his zany family with the always wonderful Masako Motai as the mother.\u00a0 Akira Emoto plays his father, who we quickly learn has been diagnosed with lung cancer.\u00a0 Matsuda’s character decides to stay longer than planned to take care of his dad.\u00a0 His bumbling attempts at connection are both relatable and touching, and the bonds between the family are clear.\u00a0 Due to shooting on a far-flung location, Okita shared that he had to use locals in many of the parts, and the middle school brass band that the father conducts is especially well cast (with only the clarinet player being a professional actor).\u00a0 Despite dealing with the heavy themes of life and death, Mohican has plenty of light moments and left the audience in a buoyant mood perfect for the opening night party.<\/p>\n

I returned \"\" the following night for the film Bitter Honey<\/a> which also had death as its subject, albeit through a different lens.\u00a0 It is the story of an aging writer seeking literary glory before succumbing to the death sentence he has been given two years before.\u00a0 He finds an erotic muse in the form of a shape-shifting goldfish he buys for 300 yen.\u00a0 She becomes human and gains self-awareness with the help of the writer’s deceased former student and lover, who was summoned at the time of his diagnosis.\u00a0 Another interesting ghost appearance is that of writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the author’s contemporary who has long ago passed away but with whom he is still competing for fame.<\/p>\n

Looking forward to the rest of what this year’s commemorative JAPAN CUTS has to offer!<\/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 along with her own observations. This week kicked off the 10th year of the JAPAN CUTS film festival at […]<\/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":[53,263,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-film","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-aq1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40053","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=40053"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40074,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40053\/revisions\/40074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}