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On February 9, 2019, junya Sato, a famous Japanese film director and screenwriter, died of multiple organ failure at his Tokyo apartment at the age of 86. Director Sato, who was active in the 1960s and 1980s, won two awards for best film and best director at the 1988 Japan Academy Awards for his masterpiece "Dunhuang". The film "The Hunt", directed by him, caused an unprecedented sensation in China in the late 1970s and became a cultural symbol of an entire era.
"Duqiu, you see, you see what a blue sky it is. Keep going, you'll melt in the blue sky, go, keep going, keep going, don't look at both sides..."
In 1978, a Japanese film "The Hunt", starring Ken Takakura and Ryoko Nakano and translated by the Shanghai Film Translation Studio, was released in Chinese mainland, which triggered an unexpected huge response. Its line mood, picture style and the way the protagonist speaks are extremely strange and fresh to Chinese mainland audiences who are accustomed to watching the "Eight Model Plays" and a handful of revolutionary films.
Stills from The Hunt
The resolute and silent Prosecutor Duchu, the plot setting where intrigue and love intertwine, the romantic scene of the hero and heroine galloping on horseback in the streets of Shinjuku... The culture shock and shock caused by all this made "The Hunt" (originally titled "You Must Cross the River of Anger"), which was only a normal action thriller film in Japan at that time, become the collective memory of a generation of Chinese. The tough guy image created by Ken Takakura, the heroine Maami's straightforward and enthusiastic way of showing love, and even the theme music "The Song of Duqiu" made of electronic synthesizers not only became the cultural enlightenment of the first generation of Chinese mainland filmmakers after the reform and opening up, but also together with Teresa Teng's songs and "The Man from the Bottom of the Atlantic", it constituted a cultural symbol marking the overall transformation of Chinese society in the late 70s and early 80s.
The Hunt for The Hunt
As the director and screenwriter of The Hunt, Junya Sato may not have thought it was his proudest work. In fact, although "The Hunt," released in Japan in 1976, grossed 240 million yen that year, it was only ranked 18th on the authoritative Film Shunbao's annual film list, making it difficult to stand out. Thousands of people rushing to see "The Hunt" is not so much poured into its contents, but rather that after the reopening of the country's doors, ordinary literary and art lovers and intellectual elites who have been confined to a vacuum for some time have fallen into a special state of "perceptual disability" in the face of the freshness and shocking power brought by foreign culture. Some of the details and plots that seem to have no new ideas today seemed to break through the door from another world at that time, and had the enlightenment function of the three dimensions of emotional cognition, lifestyle and film art. This can only be a scene created by a specific situation.
Released in Chinese mainland in 1978 along with The Hunt as the first Japan Film Week, two other films, Wangxiang and The Fox's Tale (documentary). Although they have also attracted some attention, they have never reached a level of topicality comparable to "The Hunt". This is mainly because The Hunt is a standard commercial film that naturally has qualities that are easily accepted and recognized by the general public: even if it is not good enough. Coincidentally, in 1994, it was finally approved to land on the Chinese mainland film market as the first Hollywood import blockbuster, and it was also a commercial film that was not very good. What's more coincidental is that its subject matter, like "The Hunt," belongs to the category of crime thrillers.
Tokyo, Japan, December 8, 2005, directed by Junya Sato (pictured | Visual China)
In his later years, Junya Sato admitted in an interview with the media that it was not until the death of Ken Takakura in 2014 and the echo of Chinese folk mourning to Japan that he truly realized that "'The Hunt' has become an indelible memory in the minds of Chinese film fans" and "Ken Takakura was originally so influential in China and loved by so many people."
For him personally, the direct result of the popularity of "The Hunt" in China was that he was given the opportunity to be received by Chinese leaders and direct the first Sino-Japanese co-production film, "A Game of Chess That Has Not Been Played". As a commemorative film for the 10th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, the film brings together Sun Daolin, Mikuni Rintaro and other heroes for a while, and has won many awards such as the Best Film Award at the 1983 Montreal International Film Festival and the Japan Academy Award for Outstanding Work. Following the film, Dunhuang, based on Yasushi Inoue's novel of the same name, filmed in northwest China and produced with the assistance of Bayi Film Studio, made Sato win the highest peak of box office and honor of his personal works, becoming a classic of the generation left in film history.
Stills from "Dunhuang"
The honeymoon period of frequent exchanges and close cooperation between the Chinese and Japanese film circles, and the Chinese people's attitude of looking up to Japanese films and Japanese culture, is impossible to replicate today. Tracing back to the source, the popularity of "The Hunt" was originally a by-product of the political closeness between the two countries after the signing of the "Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship" in 1978; the center of the "Hunt" fever and "Duchu fever" was only among the young residents of a few large cities. With the changes in the international situation and the rise of the tide of local commercial films, especially the changes in the texture of the main consumers in the film market and the increasing diversity of vocal media, this special atmosphere of having the intellectual elite leading the way and ordinary film lovers pursuing it is bound to undergo transmutation until it is finally blown away by the rain and the wind.
On the cover of popular film magazine published in the September 1982 issue, the photo of the actors of the two countries, starring Shen Guanchu and Mishako Ayano, the two stars of "A Game of Unfinished Chess", became a microcosm of that golden age, along with several masterpieces by Junya Sato at that time.
But Junya Sato, a film director and screenwriter, has contributed much more than the hunt and the entanglement between him and China.
Sato, who has been active in the Japanese film industry for more than 40 years, has a famous nickname "Mr. Mega (Production) Saku". His most widely known masterpieces are all known for their grand scenes and excellent productions. In addition to works such as "Dunhuang", which has a deep relationship with China, Sato's other masterpieces such as "Shinkansen Explosion", "Human Witness", and "Yamato of Men" are quite good at the box office and the industry. Before coming to China to succeed the elderly director Noboru Nakamura in directing "A Plate of Unfinished Flags," Junya Sato had just reached the peak of his career: "Proof of The Wild" grossed 2.18 billion yen after its release in 1978. For more than a decade, the university of Tokyo's highly qualified student of the Faculty of Letters had accumulated more than 15 years of industry experience by shooting commercial "violent films" and won the 1963 Japan Academy Award for Best Newcomer Director.
Stills from Proof of the Wild
"Violent films" (ヤクザ映画), or "Renxia films", are a genre unique to Japan, and many well-known directors who were active in the post-World War II period have made such films. Even Chinese, who does not know Japanese, can glimpse the frightening words such as "violence", "extreme road", "organization", "attack", "group" and so on from the Chinese characters in the title. Junya Sato's first dozen years as a filmmaker were basically whirling around these words.
Of course, although they are all "violent films", the styles of each director are not the same. Keio Ishii, the director of the popular "Violent Films" series starring Ken Takakura, prefers renxia and weirdness, while Junya Sato's style is closer to the orthodox commercial genre. After familiarizing himself with the themes of violence, police and gang fighting, and turning around with Shinkansen Blast and The Hunt, his film style began to shift back to orthodox solemn narrative. This also led to Sato gradually being classified as a director similar to Fukasaku Shinji, Yamamoto Saf, and Yasuo Shigeki, becoming an orthodox commercial film giant that promoted the spirit of national culture and male dignity. The name "Mr. Superso" has also gradually become widely known.
Stills from "Shinkansen Blast"
Japanese large-scale commercial films often have a rather prominent feature: the huge amount of money invested in the production stage, the number of manpower, and the grandeur of the scenes, resulting in the film itself also has an awe-inspiring temperament. The large-scale production cost makes shooting a film like directing a super-large battle, and the solemnity and blockbuster temperament of "the empire rises and falls, in this war" is reflected in the producer (commander-in-chief), director (supervisor) and even every actor. In this regard, the weight of "Mr. Supersaku" Junya Sato can be compared with that of Shiro Moriya, who only shoots large productions; the magnificent and solemn temperament of Sato's masterpiece "Dunhuang" and "The Great River of Men" is also completely comparable to Moriya Shiro's "Hakkodayama" and "Straits". There was a cloud in the Japanese film industry, "Non-large productions cannot complete Mori Tani Shiro", and this comment can also be applied to Junya Sato.
In other words, Junya Sato represents a spirit of eternal struggle and a fighting spirit that never fails in the post-war generation of Japanese commercial film directors. The personality traits of Duqiu in "The Hunt" are also a portrayal of Sato himself. He is not as suspicious of life as Akira Kurosawa, nor is he as concerned about small people as Akira Koshizu, but with amazing fighting spirit to face the hard "man's life", and his personal temperament and the type of masterpiece can be described as highly compatible. It was this competitive spirit, exclusive to the post-war generation, that supported Junya Sato to remain on the front lines after spending the peak of his film career.
In 2005, at the age of 73, he once again worked as a screenwriter and director for Yamato, the most expensive film produced in Japan at the time, which grossed 5.09 billion yen at the box office with an investment of more than 2.5 billion yen. By 2010, Sato was 77 years old when he directed his last major-scale film, the historical blockbuster "The Change Outside the Sakurada Gate," which mobilized more than 80,000 people.
Stills from "The Change Outside the Sakurada Gate"
Like Shinji Fukasaku and Kun Ichikawa, who died on the set and worked until the last moments of their lives, that generation of elderly Japanese film directors seemed to have a general obsession with "the set is the battlefield", and they must leave the last moments of their lives in the work scene they loved all their lives. The same goes for Junya Sato. For an old man who takes "fighting to the death" as his life's creed, this is probably the most satisfying way to leave the world.
(The author is a film director and screenwriter)
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