On December 1-3, 2017, the "New Japanese Film Festival" will be held in Shanghai, Kunming and Shenzhen, and Yoshida's new work "Beautiful Star" will be released. Like his predecessor, Hirokazu Kore-eda, who also came from Waseda University, Daihachi Yoshida is one of the most high-profile Japanese directors today.
Kagoshima-born director Yoshida Daihachi re-studied in Tokyo after failing the college entrance examination, and there happened to be an art theater next to his residence, and he was fascinated by movies by chance. Yoshida heard that there are many film clubs at Waseda University, and many students who have really become directors since the students started making independent productions, so he decided to apply for the Waseda examination. In high school, he used to play in bands.
After being admitted to the Waseda University's First Literature Department, Yoshida joined the film club and began to produce independent films, not only as a director, but also as an actor in the works of his predecessors. Waseda has countless images and drama fans, and Yoshida joins a very small film society called "Cicada".
As a neighbor of the English Research Association, which had hundreds of members, borrowing the awning of the Second Student Union at that time, there were several chairs under the shed, and the "cicada" also had its own side of the space. In this corner is the contact manual of the members of the "cicada", and in the era of no mobile phone, college students write down the latest situation on the contact manual to keep in touch. During the day, I soak in the movie theater, occasionally go to class, and return to the "cicada" stronghold in the evening, and I can always meet a few companions and go to the izakaya to have a drink together.
At that time, in addition to Yoshida Daihachi, the members of the "Cicada" were also Toya Sato (the movie "Gambling Apocalypse", the TV series "Proofreading Girl Kono Etsuko", "The Housewife Mita"), Yamada Akane (director of "Everything Turns into the Sea", the script of "Time Police") and others. Although it calls itself a "marginal" organization (compared to the centennial historical society "Film Research Society", which was founded in 1918, it may be true), but it is also full of talents. Nowadays, "Cicada" is listed as one of the "Eight Film Societies" of The University of The Morning Along with the Film Research Society, the Script Research Society, the Ronin Street, and the "Cinema Production".
One year older than Yoshida,8 years older was Kore-eda, who was also in the First Faculty of Literature at Waseda University at the time. It is just a recollection of the branch that when he was in college, he was really "unknown", watching movies all day in the literary theaters of "Waseda Shochiku" and Takadanobaba, and the days of going to school were few, and almost none of his classmates knew him, and of course, he did not join any film clubs.
Kore-eda returned to his alma mater as a Distinguished Professor since 2016, teaching the "Image Production Internship" course at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and instructing students to shoot independent films. He laughed and said that the number of lectures as a professor has exceeded the number of times he came to school when he was a student. Now that college students are attending so seriously, it surprises teachers who have another senior status.
After graduation, Daihachi Yoshida entered the television industry and began shooting commercials. Producing CM for major companies such as airline JAL, Meiji Milk, communications company KDDI, and Otsuka Pharmaceutical, and directing MVs for spitz, Yoshida Daihachi's name is well known in the Japanese advertising industry. In 2007, he debuted as the director of the film "Show Your Sad Love".
2007 Show Your Sad Love
The transition from advertising director to film is not uncommon in Japan (famous for Nobuhiko Obayashi, Jun Ichikawa, etc.), and even though you are immersed in the world of independent cinema as a student, there are still few opportunities to enter the mainstream film industry.
Daihachi Yoshida's accumulation of word of mouth and contacts in the advertising industry, coupled with the experience of the Waseda period, made his first directing pipe more smooth. The original work of her debut film Show Your Sad Love was a drama by Wasagawa Prize writer Yukiko Motoya, and the novel was nominated for the Yukio Mishima Award. The film became an invited work in the Critics Week section of the 60th Cannes Film Festival, ranking 10th in the top ten of the year in the 2007 Film Magazine.
In order to pursue the actor's dream, his daughter ran away from Tokyo and returned to the countryside of Noto in Ishikawa Prefecture to do a funeral for his parents who died in a car accident. The constant exposure of family secrets during funerals can be said to be the family entanglements, rural and urban themes that are common in Japanese movies, but it can already be seen that Daihachi Yoshida prefers to chase the dark side rather than depict a family reunion.
2009 "Marriage Fraudster"
Based on a true story, a pure Japanese who claims to be a U.S. Air Force officer and a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth uses a fabricated experience to defraud Japanese women of marriage. Yoshida was interested in the story of the marriage fraudster "Kaibio Daisa" because "forging identities and pretending to be Americans to cheat repeatedly" shows the hidden inferiority of japanese people.
In 2016, Daihachi Yoshida brought "Marriage Fraudster" to the drama stage, starring Riki Miyazawa, who collaborated in "Paper Moon". Yoshida said that his first exposure to drama in his life was also at Waseda University, where the theater tradition was strong, and he watched the works of Naoshi Hirokami, a student at the time and later director. The film version of the lead actor Masato Sakai, who is also an early university alumnus, immersed in drama, he finally chose to drop out after repeating grades twice - in Waseda, there is a saying of "dropping out of school first-class, repeating grades second-rate, and graduating third-rate".
2010 "Evergreen Rose"
The original author of the manga, Keiko Nishi, is quite famous in Japan, both as a manga artist, a celebrity, and a de facto partner of the director of the Takasu Clinic, Japan's largest plastic surgery hospital.
The small town girl Naoko in Kochi Prefecture, her mother, and the girls who grew up with her are not "men's luck", and they have been cheated and abandoned by men many times. The women struggled with love and resentment, delusion and anger, disappointment and confusion, and revived, just like the name of the barbershop run by their mother, Wild Rose.
The delicate female perspective, the contradictory relationship between the deceitful and the deceived, may be seen as a consistent theme throughout Yoshida's first three films.
2012 "I heard that Kirishima is going to retire"
This film depicts the relationship between high school students in a subtle and profound way, and won the top ten of the "Film Shunbun" that year, the Japan Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenwriter, which became an opportunity for many viewers to know director Daihachi Yoshida.
"I Heard That Kirishima Is Leaving" is based on Asai-Ryo's Naoki Prize novel, and in fact Asai-Ryo and the film's producer Yoko Emi were born at Waseda University like the director. Actors such as Masadai Higashiide and Mosuke Matsuoka, who starred in the film as newcomers at that time, have now become well-known in the Japanese film industry.
In college, Yoshida, like Ryunosuke Kamiki in the movie, dreamed of film with an 8mm film camera in hand.
2014 "Paper Month"
A female banker in the bubble economy era, tired of the dull and boring family life, accidentally met a college boy and began a year-old love. Falling in love made her feel free, swaying in the mood of "second life", and began to embezzle bank money. "Paper Moon" is extremely well depicted in the plight of women's survival, and the film helped Miyazawa win the Best Actress Award at the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival.
The original author Naoki Prize writer Mitsuyo Kakuda was also born in the Waseda Literature Department and is the descendant of director Yoshida. When he was in college, Mitsuyo Kakuda was a member of a drama club, working at a restaurant and a second-hand record store in Takadanobaba, writing novels and scripts.
2017 "Beautiful Star"
Why did you think of bringing this wonderful science fiction novel published by Yukio Mishima in 1962 to the screen? Daihachi Yoshida said that after reading Mishima's novels in high school, he always imagined that it would be interesting if he visualized the work. An ordinary family suddenly woke up one day and found that they were Martians, Mercurians, Venusians, and Earthlings, shouldering the task of saving the "beautiful planet" - Earth.
The depiction of the universe in "Beautiful Star" is completely different from that of ordinary science fiction films, and the director calls himself a retro "Showa universe". The film version of the novel was greatly adapted, the protagonist's occupation was set as a weather forecaster, the "disc" UFO described in the novel was not presented in the film as a physical image, and Yoshida Daihachi's reason was that in the era when the novel was published, people did not have a established imagination of the UFO in their minds, and after various media shaping, the understanding of a specific UFO appearance has been fixed, and now to repeat the performance, it is equivalent to depriving the audience of the freedom to imagine.
Deliberately not drawing conclusions, not consciously "right" or "wrong". Although the topic of global warming is involved in the film, it is not a film that calls for environmental protection and condemns human irresponsibility.
"For those who always want to see some philosophy through the film, 'Beautiful Star' may confuse them. Rather than pursuing 'meaning' that can be described in words, the film is better suited to music and rhythm. "Starring Masaya Nakagawa (Lili Frank) explains "Beautiful Star" this way.
2018 "Sheep Tree"
Daihachi Yoshida's latest work will be released in Japan next February, and "The Tree of Sheep" has already taken the lead in holding its world premiere at the Busan Film Festival in October 2017. Ryo Nishikido plays a civil servant in a fishing port town who receives applications for the relocation of six men and women (Kazuki Kitamura, Yuka, Shihito Ichikawa, Jungo Mizusawa, Yutaka Tanaka, and Ryuhei Matsuda), but there is something puzzling about the six of them. It turned out that under the government's secret plan, this small town with a small population became a test point for receiving murderers and migrants.
When director Yoshida first met Ryo Nishikido, his impression was "ordinary". The choice of him as the main actor is precisely because he is an "ordinary person" in the sense of praise, in order to show the impact of facing six characters with distinct personalities from the perspective of an ordinary person.