The Economist - UK (2022-05-07)

80 Culture The Economist May 7th 2022

thepretenceofobjectivityand  enters  the

scene—influenced  Michael  Moore.  After

watching “Extreme Private Eros: Love Song

1974”,  Mr  Hara’s  provocative  portrait  of  a

former girlfriend, Martin Scorsese wrote to

him:  “No  one  has  ever  made  a  film  like

that. No one has ever seen a film like that.”

His  themes  and  techniques  have

tracked the development of Japanese soci­

ety—but  his  mission  has  always  been  to

tell silenced and marginalised stories. His

aim  with  “Minamata  Mandala”  was  to

“change  the  air”  around  the  scandal  (law­

suits  demanding  that  the  state  should

recognise the illness and compensate vic­

tims  are  still  ongoing).  Its  daunting  372­

minute length is an “approximation of the

temporality  of  the  patients”,  who  endure

year after year of pain and neglect, reckons

Aaron  Gerow,  a  historian  of  Japanese

cinema at Yale University.

Mr Hara’s urge to challenge oppression

stems from his childhood. He was born out

of wedlock at the end of the second world

war; his impoverished mother toiled in the

nocturnal  entertainment  industry.  As  a

young  man  he  witnessed  the  student

uprisings that swept Japan during the soul­

searching of the late 1960s. Distant revolu­

tionaries  such  as  Che  Guevara  and  Fidel

Castro  inspired  him,  too.  “Most  Japanese

only know how to obey their superiors, but

such movements taught me how to pick a

fight  with  authorities,”  he  says.  The

camera was his weapon. 

As  Mr  Gerow  notes,  the  director  spot­

lights emotions, and basic human experi­

ences  such  as  love  and  sex,  to  illuminate

the  effects  of  power.  This  interest  in  the

private  realm  sets  him  apart  from  earlier

Japanese  documentarians,  who  focused

more  on  contexts  and  environments.

Anger is “sacred” for Mr Hara, says his pro­

ducer  Shimano  Chihiro.  In  a  society  that

values good manners and orderliness, it is

“an emotion of the marginalised class”, Ms

Shimano  observes.  “Minamata  Mandala”

evokes  a  broad  spectrum  of  feelings.  At

times  it  is  a  courtroom  drama,  at  others  a

romantic comedy, as Mr Hara explores the

love lives of the victims. 

For  a  while,  ideas—or  Japanese  soci­

ety—seemed  to  betray  him.  From  the

mid­1990s  he  struggled  to  find  subjects,

which led to long gaps in his filmography.

In his earlier works the protagonists were

iconoclasts  like  the  pachinko­hurling

Okuzaki.  But  as  Mr  Hara  grew  older  he

found  it  hard  to  identify  anyone  in  Japan

who  was  even  remotely  as  daring.  “I

thought  my  career  was  doomed,”  he  says.

While prosperity had made Japanese lives

more  comfortable,  complacency  and  con­

formism  had  set  in.  “It’s  a  bit  hard  to

breathe  in  today’s  society,”  says  Mr  Hara’s

wife and collaborator Kobayashi Sachiko. 

Yet  he  made  a  glorious  comeback  in

2017  with  “Sennan  Asbestos  Disaster”,

which  chronicled  the  battle  of  asbestos

victims  for  compensation.  This  time  his

apolitical subjects learned the art of rebel­

lion under his influence. “It’s interesting to

cause a ripple effect on reality by interven­

ing  in  people’s  lives,”  he  says.  There  were

still stories for him to tell, and new ways to

tell  them.  The  collaborative  style  of  that

film  paved  the  way  for  Mr  Hara  to  portray

subtler  forms  of  activism.  Making

“Minamata  Mandala”,  he  saw  how  every­

day scenes might resonate with audiences.

He  also  started  to  see  himself  in  his

subjects. Like them, he is proof that anybo­

dy can cause the right kind of trouble and

challenge entrenched world­views. “I’m an

ordinary  man  from  the  bottom  rungs  of

society  who  obtained  the  means  toprobe

the meaning of life through documentary,”

he says. “I feel as if I came full circle.”n

Greetings from Minamata

NewAmericanfiction

Trick and treat

T

hetitleofJenniferEgan’snewnovel

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Rummaging through the brain—and

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isaboutwhathumansloseinofferingup

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Thenovelisakaleidoscopeofnearly

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The Candy House. By Jennifer Egan.

Scribner; 323 pages; $28. Little, Brown; £20

The mind’s eye