Hiroshima Nagasaki Download

We review some of the rare delights and provocative works offered by the second Zipangu Fest, which presented the best of cutting-edge and avant-garde Japanese cinema from November 18 to 24.

Nuclear Reactions

It seemed only natural that Zipangu’s curators would be interested in exploring existing Japanese reactions to nuclear issues. Two documentaries by Hitomi Kamanaka exposed long-standing opposition to nuclear power on environmental grounds; two other films screened at the festival took a more emotional approach to the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons.

Shinpei Takeda’s 2009 Hiroshima Nagasaki Download, made with an old friend from college, is a road movie-cum-documentary about the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors now living in North America. It’s also a film about the 30-something filmmakers trying to understand their country’s past; to experience, in a small way, the horrors that an older generation lived through. While it first seemed that they included too much of themselves in the documentary (travelling in their car, conversations with each other in diners), this approach actually allows for a little distance in an otherwise incredibly intense and emotional film. The audience, like the filmmakers, can barely imagine living through such a horrific event; the memories of the survivors, still clear and vivid decades later, are inexpressibly painful; their stories are harrowing, and sometimes inspirational.

Less immediate and evocative, but still interesting, was Kaneto Shindo’s 1959 docu-drama Lucky Dragon No. 5, about the crew of a fishing boat who are exposed to fallout from the American nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll. The opening scenes, as the villagers prepare for the ship’s send-off and the tuna fishermen first set sail, are impressionistic and visually absorbing; the race by scientists to determine what caused the fishermen’s illnesses when they finally return to land is tedious and over-long. The film is most rewarding towards the end, when it becomes a moving tribute to the victims of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, represented in the guise of a dying fisherman. Sarah Cronin

The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (Kiyohiko Ushihara, 1938)

Screened by kind permission from the National Film Centre of Tokyo, The Ghost Cat is delightfully off-kilter. Believed to be lost, this recently re-discovered print of the 1938 film is dilapidated and scratched, with the images dissolving and fading as the spooky story unfolds. It’s a tale of jealousy, love, revenge and the supernatural, where the damaged film stock adds to the strangeness. Set against a theatrical background – two of the main characters are involved in a Kabuki ensemble – it tells the story of Mitsue, played with callous aplomb by Sumiko Suzuki, a possessive actress who loves sweet, but lowly Seijiro, a shamisen (a stringed musical instrument) player.

Things pretty soon go awry on the romantic front when Seijiro’s wandering cat brings the lovely Okiyo, daughter of a noble samurai family, to his doorstep. She falls for Seijiro, provoking the jealous wrath of Mitsue, who first dispatches Seijiro’s sleek, black cat with a hairpin before killing Okiyo, and, in a final act of jealous passion, throws Seijiro’s beloved shamisen into the river.

But the cat, Okiyo and the musical instrument refuse to rest in peace. The shamisen is rescued from the water, and its series of new owners are plagued by episodes of surreal hauntings, attended by odd screen blackouts and strange sounds. The film culminates in a hallucinogenic finale at a Kabuki performance, where the ghost cat, the ghost girl, an avenging sister, dressed as a monkey, and some impressively kaleidoscopic images, accompanied by a tensely, discordant shamisen ensure that Mituse gets her comeuppance in a suitably sinister style. Eithne Farry

Shirome (Kôji Shiraishi, 2010)

Japanese horror maestro Kôji Shiraishi is a director fixated on overused storytelling styles: ‘found footage’ horror and the notorious torture porn. The Curse and Occult both took the mock-doc route while his notorious Grotesque is banned in the UK because of its ‘spectacle of sadism’. With Shirome, Shiraishi has stuck with his tried and tested formula, this time following a girl-band called Momoiro Clover, who take part in a Derek Acorah-type TV show. Shiraishi himself takes the role of director and tells the teenagers that they’re heading into a haunted location to confront the urban legend of Shirome, an entity that can grant wishes but drags you to hell if you’re insincere.

What’s striking is that Shirome isn’t the BBFC-baiting horror you might expect. There’s no gore or on-screen death but Shiraishi builds a creepy atmosphere thanks to the restrained use of special effects and the near-hysterical screeching girls. There’s a lot of backstory but it adds to the realistic premise that this is a shoddy TV show relying on cheap tricks to make easy entertainment.

The film is an attempt to explore the quest for fame and what kids are prepared to sacrifice in order to get it. It’s a simple morality tale, which doesn’t outstay its welcome. Its ending might be blunt and a little obvious but Shiraishi has made an accessible film that dispenses with the ‘how sick can we make this?’ mantra of many current horror directors in favour of good old-fashioned scares. Richard Badley