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Interview With Yusuke Morii: The Film Set Was Like a Playground All the Time

About the titular character, being a parent to such an unusual child, Kana Osawa, the reaction of the audience in Japan, and many other topics.

(1985, Japan) graduated from the Department of Film, now Nihon Institute of Cinema, and entered the industry as part of the production department of Shunichi Nagasaki's The Witch of the West is Dead (2008). The screenwriter and filmmaker has also worked as an assistant director to Tatsushi Omori on the film Every Day a Good Day (2018). His directorial debut, (2022), is based on the novel Kochira Amiko by Natsuko Imamura and is selected for IFFR 2023.

On the occasion of his film screening at IFFR, we speak with him about the titular character, being a parent to such an unusual child, , the reaction of the audience in Japan, and many other topics.

Why did you decide to adapt the particular novel by Natsuko Imamura? 

I feel a lot of discomfort towards society and I wanted to express that particular feeling from the society's perspective, in a broader sense and from a rich, lively environment, which is Amiko's perspective. I found it interesting portraying my own uncomfortableness in society as well, and doing that from the perspective of Amiko, seemed like a good idea to me. The novel does just that, and that is why I chose it. 

I was wondering regarding Amiko, is she in the Spectrum or is she just a quirky, unusual kid?

What I think of her character is that she does not have a disorder per se, this is not my story point. If she would visit the hospital and be diagnosed, there might be a disorder found, but that is not my point, to make such a kind of branding for her. Instead, I wanted to show it is society that is branding her. Her actions are troublesome and she does a lot of things that are questionable but I am actually going back and forth between showing that what she is doing is weird, but also that it is not that weird, it is normal for a kid to act like that sometimes. 

How would you describe the way her parents treat her, before and after her surrogate mother loses her baby?

Starting with Sayuri, the surrogate mother, she is coming into a household where the father and Amiko are already there. She is trying her best to fulfill her role as mother but because of the way Amiko is, things do not proceed smoothly, but not entirely bad, at least at first. Sayuri notices that Amiko looks at her mole a lot, and that makes her uncomfortable. Sayuri is struggling, but then she gets pregnant and becomes optimistic about it and tries to go on with her life. Then, unfortunately, the labor does not work out, and while she is grieving so much, Amiko is very kind to her and Sayuri is opening her heart towards Amiko. But then Amiko gets the idea of making a grave with the name of what she perceives would be her little brother, and that breaks her mother's heart. So, after that, Sayuri's behavior towards her becomes definite in the way that she cannot be nice to her anymore. 

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From the father's side, he loves her deeply and he is a kind, very soft-spoken man, he never raises his voice. His place is between Amiko and Sayuri trying to do everything to make it work out between the two. But because that relationship does not go that well, he gradually comes to a final decision which is essentially making a choice, as he realizes that the two cannot be together. Therefore, eventually he decides to have them live separately, leaving Amiko in her grandmother's house. That could be perceived as a cruel act for a father, but that is the way the story unfolds. 

Have you put yourself in the shoes of the father of such a difficult child?

Yes, I actually have but I have not become a father yet so I cannot say that I speak from experience. Ideally though, if I was the father of Amiko, I would try to do more to accept her, I would keep trying to include her. This is what I would perceive as an ideal act of the father role but the father I portray in the film can be seen as a very common Japanese father, very very soft, trying to come in between things to make things work, maybe like a stereotype. 

Despite what happens to her, would you say that Amiko is happy in the end?

The definition of happiness is always difficult and I do not have a clear idea of what being happy means. Amiko acts as a pure child and she realizes more than anyone that she is alive and she acts based on that. It would be difficult to put it in terms of happiness or unhappiness but in any case, as a director, I do not think she is unhappy in the end, and I did not want to portray her as such. I wanted to portray her as someone who is alive and exists and that is my focus. 

Can you tell us about casting Kana Osawa in the titular role and your overall cooperation with her? 

This applies to Kana Osawa but also to all the children appearing in the film. I wanted to make a film that is about children from the children's perspective and not from the adults' perspective. And I thought that if that is my starting point, I am going to need children who do not try intrinsically to meet the needs of what a filmmaker wants, what the adults want. All the kids, with no exception, do not have long careers in acting, they are mostly amateurs, and that was one of my focuses, because if they know the filming process they would have an idea of the expectations and I did not want them to react to that. So because of that, the film set was like a playground all the time and they would see me just as a man with glasses who is just there and this is something I also tried to achieve, I was not ordering them around or anything. That is why it became chaotic but I thought that atmosphere was very important to get the perspective I want. 

Is Kana Osawa like Amiko in real life? 

Yes, in general lines, they are very similar in most of their characteristics, they are both almost in direct touch with the world, they are very honest, very pure and they give their reactions without thinking about good or bad, they just are. Kana, however, would have more empathy and would understand how others around her feel, she would never lick the chocolate from a biscuit for example (laughs). 

Has the film opened in Japan? What was the reaction of the audience? 

Yes, it screened in Japan already and the reaction of the audience differed a lot. As the film takes place in a very familiar place, the school, a lot of people would have some kind of experience with a girl similar to Amiko. So it differed significantly depending on whether the person in the audience was in the same class with such a girl, or if they were themselves like Amiko. The people from the latter group would tell me they were similar and that they might have been a little too selfish but those of the first group, if they did not like people like Amiko or just stayed away from such individuals, they would tell me that perhaps they should not have ignored those kids, maybe they should have interacted with them, maybe they should have talked with them a lot more. Essentially, they would express a sense of guilt to me. 

When the film finished, I felt really really sad. I felt sad for Amiko because the boy she loves beats her up and her father ends up abandoning her. Was that one of your purposes, for your audience to experience sadness through the movie? 

To focus on two key terms in answering your question, my intention and specific emotion, I did not want to leave the audience with a specific emotion, not sadness per se nor the other way around. Emotions come later on and are not perceived by design, by intention. When I watch the film and the final scene and think about specific emotions myself, I would perhaps feel loneliness. Then again, Amiko being the sunny, pure child that she is, she puts on a smile and says, “I'm fine”. That gives a lot of mixed emotions, maybe you would feel happy for her. That was my intention, to draw emotions, but mixed ones.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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