Shen Nian
When I left Japan two years ago, I didn't think the "goodbye" would be so long. On my journey, I had books I borrowed from the school library in my backpack, uneaten food in the refrigerator of my rented apartment, and DVDs that I planned to watch in the near future were messily spread on the desks of the school's research room...
For nearly a year and a half, I had been paying rent for uninhabited rental houses, and I had a hazy illusion that I would soon be going back, as I had done countless times of "goodbye." It wasn't until this summer, when two dozen suitcases full of my luggage arrived in Shanghai, that I truly realized that I had left the country and that I had no home there.
I've lived in Japan for seven whole years, and Japan is like my second home. Although I only lived in Tokyo for three years (and moved to Kyoto for the next four years), Tokyo, as the Japanese city where I first arrived and lived, undoubtedly left an indelible mark on me. I was like a letter that traveled to many cities, and no matter how many new postmarks were on the envelopes, Tokyo was always the first background of my trip to Japan.
Memory movie poster
"Have you been to Tokyo?" I want to go to Tokyo. The young man in the famous Thai director Apichatpong Weerashagu's latest work, Memory (2021), abruptly throws this irrelevant question at a female friend who is not yet familiar. The friend did not look surprised at all, but very naturally took up the conversation and talked about his experience in Tokyo. Yes, what's so strange about wanting to go to Tokyo, it's normal for foreigners to yearn for Tokyo. It's not just foreigners who have their hearts set on Tokyo. Tokyo, like China's "Kitakami-Hiroshi", is also the yearning of almost all young Japanese people.
For example, Japanese female director Yuki Yamato expressed her vision of Tokyo through her debut film The Girl Dances by the Sea (2012). This youthful, rough yet dynamic student work depicts the summer story of four high school students. The heroine is a girl who is not willing to live in a seaside township forever, and she dreams of becoming an idol, and she boldly declares that "I am going to Tokyo". Born in Aichi Prefecture, Yamato Yuki lived in her hometown until she was admitted to Sophia University in Tokyo, and her obsession with "going to Tokyo" may also be related to her own experience. When she finally portrays a pair of native Tokyo teenagers and girls in her latest feature film, "Passion Tricks" (2019), she has the protagonists chasing each other hysterically in the artificial and futuristic land of Odaiba (a man-made land in Tokyo Bay), and loudly confiding what they think.
Poster of the Movie "Passion Tricks"
"Passion Tricks" is based on the girl comic of the same name. The heroine, Chu Narita (Horiri Yona), is simultaneously pursued and contested by three men— her unrelated brother Narita Ling (Shotaro Mamiya), the suddenly disappearing and returning Takema Oda (Itagaki Mizusei), and her neighbor Tachibana Ryoki (Shimizu Shimizu), a neighbor who lives in an apartment building. Ling, Zi and Lianghui represent three typical male images respectively - the meticulous "Nianshang" warm man, the fashionable and handsome star model, and the domineering and arbitrary "rich second generation" student bully. This seemingly dreamy setting is not a harmless peach blossom source, but weaves a nightmare that makes it difficult for women to escape. We can see that Ah Chu, who became the prey of males, gradually lost himself in the movie. But the three men are not absolute perpetrators, they are also wrapped up in higher power and a larger environment into this binary narrative of gender antagonism.
In the dark night behind the movie, countless huge machines sitting on construction sites and high-rise buildings flashed with icy light, like beasts that remain vigilant and ready to bite when resting at night. The wild running and shouting of young people seem to be destined to be vented only when the city 'monsters' take a break. Tokyo, once dreamed of by the girls of the townships, has become a prison for urban teenagers and girls.
People outside of Tokyo want to go to Tokyo, and people who are in Tokyo are inevitably confused and struggling. However, few people can leave Tokyo without nostalgia. Because whether it is economic, political, cultural, or other aspects, Tokyo is the absolute center of Japan. This is especially true for those who work in the film industry.
According to the Japan Film Producers Alliance, as of the end of December 2020, the number of screens in Tokyo was as high as 410, almost double that of kanagawa prefecture (221), the second place. In addition to Toho's mainstream cinema chains, Tokyo has many independent cinemas with their own characteristics – UPLINK, EUROSPACE, IMAGE FORUM, Shinbunaya, Shinjuku K's cinema, and so on. The film selection people of these theaters are independent of the commercial theater line and choose the films to be released with a full of personality perspective and taste. As a result, a large number of diverse film festivals and specials have blossomed everywhere in Tokyo, nourishing young film fans.
Not only that, but two of Japan's most well-known film festivals, the Tokyo International Film Festival and the Tokyo FILMeX International Film Festival, are also based in Tokyo. Yuki Yamato, who was just mentioned, also joined the school's film research association at Sophia University in Tokyo, and officially entered the film industry after winning the 24th "Tokyo Student Film Festival".
It is no exaggeration to say that the city of Tokyo is inextricably intertwined with cinema both within (as a stage or theme) and outside (as the center of the Japanese film industry).
Although Tokyo now always gives the impression of being bustling, modern, avant-garde, and high-tech, the image of Tokyo in movies is not static. Born in Niigata Prefecture and driven out of "Kamigyo" alone because of his love of movies and film reviews, Tadao Sato carefully analyzes the vagaries of Tokyo's various expressions in the book "Tokyo in Movies".
Poster of the "Good Sunday" movie
In Kawaguchi Sotoshi Yamanaka (1936) and The Paper Boat (1937), Tokyo, still known as "Edo", was a "jianghu" for Yoshitoshi Chivalrous; Tokyo in the Meiji period became a love story attraction in Ichikawa-kun's Nihonbashi (1956); Kenji Mizoguchi's The White Silk Waterfall; Tokyo was an ideal town for successists in Tokyo Five (Injiro Saito, 1946) and "Beautiful Sunday" (Akira Kurosawa, 1946) and "Beautiful Sunday" (Akira Kurosawa, Akira Kurosawa, Akira, 1946) and "Beautiful Sunday" (Akira Kurosawa, Akira Kurosawa, Akira Akira, Akira Kurosawa, Akira Kurosawa, Akira Akira, Akira Kurosawa, Akira, Akira Kurosawa, Akira Akira, Akira Akira, Akira Kuro 1947) and other works, after the war in the ruins of the war, Tokyo has become a new world of people to start anew; ATG (full name Art Theatre Guild, art theater association), officially founded in 1961, has set off a revolutionary frenzy in the film industry from the base of Tokyo Shinjuku, and ATG works such as "The Diary of a Thief in Shinjuku" (Nagisa Oshima, 1969) and "Madness in Shinjuku" (Takaji Wakamatsu, 1970) show the avant-garde, experimental, and innovative side of Tokyo...
Poster of the Japanese drama "Tokyo Women's Picture Book"
Just as shinjuku replaced Ginza as the bustling district in ATG's work, the center of Tokyo is always changing. In different times, different groups of people choose to gather in different places. After several rounds of fashion trends, Tokyo's 23 wards have gradually developed their own characteristics and styles. For example, the Japanese drama Tokyo Girls' Illustrated Book (Yuki Tanada, 2016) focuses on the heroine Aya's 20 years of living in Tokyo, showing the atmosphere and characteristics of each region. Although this kind of artistic expression is inevitably exaggerated and cannot be fully trusted, it does distill most people's impressions and opinions about Tokyo's various districts. Convenient public transportation allows citizens to have a wider range of activities and freedom, and everyone can freely choose a place where they feel comfortable to gather. It can be said that there is no absolute "center" in Tokyo today.
After being "decentralized", Tokyo has also taken on a diverse look under the gaze of foreign creators.
Lost in Tokyo movie poster
Sophia Coppola's Lost in Tokyo (2003) focuses on Westerners who feel overwhelmed in out of place in Tokyo. Once-in-a-lifetime movie star Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman who feels lost in their marriage, lick a similar loneliness in Tokyo, and they become each other's warmth and comfort in a foreign country. Leo Carax was much more radical, and he was in the short film collection Tokyo! [2008] The second installment) transforms Denis Lavan into madman Med and wreaks havoc like Godzilla in the heart of Tokyo. After Med's arrest, his verdict became the subject of debate. The idol of Mede and the Tokyo where he appeared gradually became abstract symbols, inexplicable metaphors. In Into nothingness (2009), Gaspar Noe uses extensive mobile footage to look down on Kabukicho,, a gray area in Shinjuku, Tokyo, one of Japan's most famous red light districts, where erotic trades and drug trades run rampant. These Westerners, who have lost their foothold in their homeland, are trying to start a new life in tokyo. However, what awaited them was the fall again and again.
Movie poster for "Like a River of Love"
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's "Like a River of Love" (2012) shifts the focus to the Japanese in Tokyo. The heroine, Akiko, leaves her hometown to study at a university in Tokyo. She hooked up with a boyfriend with violent tendencies and had to sell her flesh for money. At this point, her guest—a mild-mannered old professor—took care of her like her own grandfather. In order to avoid her boyfriend's violence, she followed the old professor to hide in his remote home, but still could not get rid of the shadow that followed...
In this film, not only foreigners, but also Japanese people are lost in the strange city of Tokyo. At night, although Akiko's grandmother came to see her from her hometown, Akiko had to go to work (to the old professor's house to provide services) and could only pass by the station where her grandmother was, and could not get off the train to meet her loved ones. Akiko asked the driver to take a detour around the station and another detour around the station. In front of Akiko's eyes, the bustle of central Tokyo only hurriedly flowed by, and her grandmother, who stood alone in the cold wind, could only rush through. Even Akiko herself could only be wrapped up in this rushing torrent and hurriedly flowing through.
Movie poster for "The Night Sky Always Has the Greatest Density of Blue"
If there were colors in Tokyo, what would it be? Hiroya Ishii's "The Night Sky Always Has the Greatest Density of Blue" (2017) provides a very convincing answer. Shizukawa Ishibashi and Ikematsu play a pair of broken young men who try to get closer to their integrity in a brief warm storage. The whole film ripples with an unreal sense of stage, but depicts the confusion of urban life close at hand. The second half of the film, which does not know how to restrain and converge, is like my own thoughts about Tokyo—eager to escape, but also attached to it.
"This is Tokyo, but come on, come on!"
Editor-in-Charge: Fang Xiaoyan