In Japan, Hokkaido and Okinawa are two external "Honshu Islands", and with this innate geographical attribute, they occupy a special position similar to "overseas" in the hearts of the Japanese people.
But this regional identity is not only related to the two complex non-Yamato peoples of the indigenous peoples, "Ainu" and "Ryukyu", not only because of its overwhelming geographical center, but also because of its overwhelming geographical center. The two, with their looming figures, are suspended on the road to escape as urban people, forming a very interesting benchmark. Among them, Okinawa also carries a series of political issues that have not yet been liquidated, such as post-war US military bases and World War II landings, which also show a more tortuous interpretation route when reflected in literary and artistic works.
This article tries to use Hokkaido (or more accurately, the snow in Hokkaido) to see what kind of visual image this particular region uses to show its expression in the shadow of the sun.
Author: Kelp Island
Book editor, Japanese film fan. Douban ID: HIDETOKAZU.
EDIT: Soda flavor
01 Pure love and sublime
If we search for the image of a movie about Hokkaido in our minds, Shunji Iwai's "Love Letters", released in 1995, would be a very favorable candidate. The film retraces a youth story in the form of flashbacks, starting with a snow scene and ending with a snow scene.
Snow, as a condensation of Hokkaido, is the most convenient visual focal point.
Its noble image perfectly visualizes the dreamy and transparent crush of adolescence. Whether it is the girl's version of "Tree" running in the wind and snow in a black coat, or the adult heroine who shouts "How are you, I'm fine" in a blank space, all of them leave the viewer's impression with a very concise composition. The director uses very idol close-ups in both sections, while the medium and long-range scenes highlight the contrast between the "characters" and the "macro background".
Love Letters (1995)
If you pay attention to the timing and success of the film, you may have thought more. The 1990s was a time when pure love movies exploded, and in the decadent and oppressive urban atmosphere, people needed a "perfect past", a beautiful story that "once" took place in the pure kingdom more than at any other time. This story is precisely because it is far away from prosperity and crisis, and precisely because it belongs to the past, so it will never be destroyed.
Hokkaido in this film fulfilled its mission as a dream stage, which has also become its most "high-grossing" pop culture image, and it has not faded to this day.
Also the beginning of the snow scene, the end of the snow scene, in the 1999 movie "RailroadMan", Takakura Ken completed a lofty narrative with a very main theme. A railroadman who insisted on staying at the abandoned station all his life ended up in the snow. The outdoor scene is refined, and the indoor scene is warm. Ryoko Hiromi's appearance makes the whole story present a sad and happy East Asian bittersweet atmosphere, and finally the railroad man completes his tragedy in the snow. Even more noteworthy is that the station, known as the "Hokamai", was originally a bustling coal mine, but now it is withered away by the decline of the population. The identity of the industrial victim of the small city is clearly revealed, but the film erases this real pain with falling snow in a way that freezes the previous suspicions. It has been "abandoned" as the pre-epoch that should be cut off, and this abandonment must be written as noble by a foolish and resolute old man.
The Railroad (1999)
This film has also achieved a very good impact. Hokkaido remains a distant and "non-everyday" existence. Its clean beauty, tragic beauty, swaying frosted glass across time and space.
02 Exploited fugitives
Based on this distorted purity and sublimity, Hokkaido has another identity in the shadow of the sun, that is, a "destination to escape."
In her 1951 novel The Adventures of Natsuko, Yukio Mishima arranges for the heroine to escape from the city to the monastery of Hakodate on the "Ayokan Liaison Ship", where she meets a man and falls in love.
In the interpretation of the novel, Mishima writes that "the stage is Hokkaido, but the two young protagonists are urbanites." But in the city, they can't find someone who can respond to their enthusiasm. They set out from Tokyo with dreams. This youthful dream, which contains jerkiness, is dissatisfaction with something of its contemporaries. In today's Japan, the only thing that allows them to pursue this dream is Hokkaido, which can be called a "foreign land.". Their romantic and absurd travels can only be found in the lakes and forests of Hokkaido. ”
As Mishima put it, Hokkaido was a "foreign land" at the time. Even "Hokkaido" is an existence that is antithetical to "modern.". Because of the advent of "Natsu", a series of novels with this contrast relationship as the stage appeared, such as Takero Yukishima's "カインの末 Descendants", Yoshiya Nobuko's "Hiroshi Yoshiya", "Yoshiya Nobuko", "Yoshimoto Takeshi", Takeda Taijun "Mori", "Moriko", "Mori", "Yoshiya Nobuko", "Yoshiya Nobuko", "Yoshinobu Takeshi".
Yukio Mishima's Adventures of Natsuko
If the city is industrial, infinite, and cold, then Hokkaido is agricultural, organic, and vivid. Until very late, urban people expect that hokkaido's distance from "modern" is preserving such a clean "paradise" for them.
In the words of Nakahira Dorma, this is a touristy urban property.
But for me, it's not just a simple "sightseeing", but the modern expectation of a pure "womb", a place to go back to at any time. It's just that this return is a kind of "exploitation."
The 2000 film Wind Flower (Shinji Somi) also arranged for an adult to return to the "womb". A sacked employee played by Tomoko Koizumi and a dismissed employee played by Tadanobu Asano, they live a chaotic life in Tokyo. One drunken morning the two woke up under the cherry blossom trees and decided to travel to Hokkaido. However, the elements in this film are more complicated, Hokkaido is not only a natural existence contrary to Tokyo, but also the hometown of the widowed heroine, and even her own girls are left in their mother's house to raise. But the reason she wanted to go back was to die. Her father was drunk and asleep in the snow and froze to death, and she wanted to "bury her face in the snow and die when she fell asleep." ”
In this story, Hokkaido exists both as a destination for escape and as an end point for return. The unity of the "womb" is presented on both sides. The director chose to shoot the scene of the heroine falling in the snow at dawn. In the thin blue air and the pure white snow, a small figure lay in the snow waiting to die. The tension of this picture is not horror, but despair, beauty and dreaminess. But in the end, she was rescued by the male protagonist and seemed to have completed a kind of renewal. The bodies of the two people in Tokyo and Hokkaido are in different states, one is weak and damp, the other is cold and determined, and the custom shop on the underground level in Tokyo also forms a different temperament from the wooden inn in Hokkaido. But in the end, what happened in Hokkaido is the story of another world.
Wind Flower (2000)
This kind of return, squeezing, and leaving has also become almost a pattern of urban crowds facing Hokkaido. At the end of the film, the heroine has this passage: "I have been thinking that I may be able to meet you somewhere unexpectedly." However, there are too many people in Tokyo. I used to lean on the signal lamppost in the 'Walker's Paradise' area to look at the passing pedestrians, but after a long time, I would have low back pain and had to do it. It seems that I can't do what I've been standing on. ”
03 Muddy everyday
The most wonderful Hokkaido in recent years, in my eyes, belongs only to Kazuka Kumachi, who was born in Hokkaido.
He used "My Man" (2014) and "Narrative of Haitan City" (2010) to present two Hokkaido landscapes, black, dangerous, and dull and nihilistic, respectively.
My Man (2014)
At the beginning of the novel "My Man", adapted from Kazuki Sakuraba, a very shocking ice floes scene is arranged. The heroine played by Fumi Nijido stands on the snow, and the camera slowly pulls away from the endless ice. The crushed ice drifted as if there was no end in sight, they had no support, no roots, beautiful and dangerous.
This sea of white snow will carry the secret of the protagonist's pink and black in the future, where she kisses her father and commits crimes here. Even the murder itself, which was a complete prank of ice, had caused extremely horrific consequences in a very calm posture, and the crime of dancing teeth and claws was hidden behind the dirtless surface.
The tone saturation of the whole film is extremely high, and the sense of transparency in the entire snow scene of "Love Letters" cannot be found, and it is replaced by a kind of uneasiness. Shadow and the truth behind the overly neat snow. The climax of the whole film, the red color block presented by the bloody rain of non-lun bed scene, contrasts with the white color block outdoors.
Hokkaido in "My Man" is a crumbling Hokkaido, full of fearful temperament. To me, this is like a kind of revenge for the pure snow country!
Adapted from a short story by Hokkaido-born writer Yasushi Sato, "A Tale of Haitan City" presents the faces of people living in a small port town. The landscape expression in it still has the sensitivity of the bear cut itself.
Unlike "My Man" with a staged design, the entire visual style of "Haitan City Narrative Scene" is very classical, using very everyday shots, and the author wants to show a muddy daily life.
One of the figures is a worker at the port shipyard, and the opening ceremony of a new ship going to sea is arranged. The snow-covered harbor attracts new ships to the sea, and the atmosphere of joy even taints the sheer size of the ships. But with that comes the fall. Shipyard layoffs, one of the docks was suspended, and the bustle of the past was cut off throats. After that, the director arranged a very inorganic space, the small town was covered with white snow, and the gray and dull sea slapped the beach at once. During the New Year's Season, the man who lost his job and his sister ascended to the horizon together and waited for the sunrise. The sun slowly emerges from afar, sprinkling on the sea, golden instead of gray with white towns. The sea seems to be brushed with the luster of the future. But soon after, my brother fell off a cliff on his way down the mountain because he didn't have money to take the cable car. The most brutal design was that the body was hanging on a tree and could not be reached, so the rescue team chose to crash it into the sea and then salvage it. My sister, who had already reached the bottom of the mountain, meditated in her heart, "The sunrise is over, and we should return here." "Where is this place?" This is a sea of gold, but only corpses.
"Narrative View of Haitan City" (2010)
The existential atmosphere exuded throughout the film even exceeds this specific tragedy, and constant boredom and pain permeate the heavy clothes worn by the characters. The mud that has been trampled on the street because of the melting snow has been taken care of by everyone, and it is just a daily routine. Every story seems to have no way out, and it seems that there is no tragedy at all, the background of life.
This is not only the orientation of Kumachi and Ka, but also the gaze of Taishi Sato, a suicidal writer. This collection of novels was originally planned to be divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter, and 9 stories in one season, for a total of 36 stories. But with only 18 written, the author can't wait to leave. The five articles selected by Xiong Che without exception occur in winter.
Yes, when the snow fell, we never thought about how dirty and lonely it was when it melted.
Hokkaido is an interesting presence on Japanese soil, and this article does not cover all its visual images, but rather attempts to present the path it may have on a textual basis. If we had the chance, maybe we would write about Okinawa as well. The vast and ferocious tropical sea, the "exotic country" that was hung by teenagers on the dreams of adults in the story of youth, the beautiful archipelago that is still in a semi-colonial predicament to this day.
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