Festivals Japanese Reviews Reviews

Documentary Review: This Planet is Not My Planet (2019) by Miwa Yoshimine

First-time filmmaker directs, edits and produces what feels like a very personal project and a real labour of love and appreciation for a special woman. “” is indeed a loving portrait of Mitsu Tanaka, the legendary mother of the of the women's liberation movement in Japan, called ūman ribu (women's lib), back in 1970. An enthusiastic and dedicated 76-year-old acupuncturist and social activist these days, Tanaka is left free to open her heart and talk about her past and read passages of her book “This Planet is not My Planet” on which the film is based.

This Planet is Not My Planet” is screening at Nippon Connection 2020

Born in Tokyo, she grew up in the difficult post-war era, in a working-class family of fishmongers and restaurant owners that, despite nurturing a freedom-based environment, wasn't particularly politicised or intellectual. She didn't carry on her studies after high school but she was an avid reader of authors such as Karl Marx, Engels, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir that gave her the bases from which she elaborated her radical ideas and developed her penchant for activism. Her interest in the leftist movement, like for many Tokyo University students in those years, was sparkled by the anti-Vietnam movement (Japan was supporting the US at the time) and she ardently embraced the cause of Japanese women with her two manifestos, “Declaration of the Liberation of Eros” and her most famous “Liberation from the Toilet” where she openly criticized the patriarchal society gender hierarchy that (in her words) splits woman into two images – either the expression of maternal love: a “mother”, or a vessel for the management of lust: a “toilet”.

Her engagement with the Uman Ribu lasted only 5 years, after which Tanaka opened the Ribu Shinjuku Center in 1972; a commune, publishing house, and safe space for women to engage, discuss and offered consultation services on abortion and divorce and organized protests. As she calls it now: “a permanent #MeToo space”

Eventually, due to her controversial ideas, especially about abortion, and her dissent with academic feminism with its alienating elitism, Tanaka abruptly stopped her relentless activism fearing a psychological collapse, removed herself from the political scene and fled to Mexico. There, after a passionate love affair with a man “even more of a narcissist than her”, she gave birth to a son and eventually went back to Tokyo where she qualified as acupuncturist and grew her son as a single unwed parent.

Despite the short-lived period of proper activism in the Uman Ribu, Mitsu Tanaka's name and fame are still very strongly recognized; her determination and boldness at the front line of the movement relegated in the shadow few other leaders at the time and attracted both admiration and animosity. However, these are all well-knows facts and the film's most interesting part is the gentle disclosure of Tsanaka's private life and inner turmoils.

Her revelation that at the age of 4 or 5 she was molested by a man working for the family business and more than the fact itself – that in her ingenuity she didn't recognised as “wrong” – the conspiracy of silence and the strenuous defense of the man to the detriment of her, is painful and revelatory of a trauma that will be forever behind her sheer determination as a driving force. The title “This Planet is not My Planet” is what the little child Tanaka constantly repeted to herself and in this context, it perfectly encapsulates the personal alienation and the alienation of all women in a world running on patriarchal combustion. It's a damage that Yanaka is still carrying with her and it is also the source of her immense empathy.

It is in fact a great quality of Yoshimine's film, the indulgence on Tanaka's vulnerable side and her compassionate and spiritual approach to her patients, her son and the issue she comes across. When she says to a patient affected by psoriasis that: “ being born with a burden makes being nice an easier burden to bear”, well, we know what she is talking about. She recently started a whole campaign and protest to relocate Futenma air base in Okinawa, just after seeing a photograph of a young girl who had been killed by a U.S. military truck in 1965. That dramatic image, unwatchable for many, is what makes a 70 something year old tiny woman standing under the rain, miles from home, screaming at a bunch of soldiers.

Shot in an extremely natural and unobtrusive way, Yoshimine's documentary is a an interesting glance at the onset of the woman liberation movement in Japan and its controversial leader Mitsu Tanaka – all of which is not widely known in the West – but more than that, is a compelling portrait of the woman Mitsu Tanaka, regardless of her cumbersome past, and her determination in turning her scars into vital fuel.

About the author

Adriana Rosati

On paper I am an Italian living in London, in reality I was born and bread in a popcorn bucket. I've loved cinema since I was a little child and I’ve always had a passion and interest for Asian (especially Japanese) pop culture, food and traditions, but on the cinema side, my big, first love is Hong Kong Cinema. Then - by a sort of osmosis - I have expanded my love and appreciation to the cinematography of other Asian countries. I like action, heroic bloodshed, wu-xia, Shaw Bros (even if it’s not my specialty), Anime, and also more auteur-ish movies. Anything that is good, really, but I am allergic to rom-com (unless it’s a HK rom-com, possibly featuring Andy Lau in his 20s)"

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

>