films of Nobuyuki Oura
NIPPON SUICIDE PACT Ichiro Hariu--the man holding a whole of Japan
( Digital Beta Cam-NTSC, 87min., color, 2001)
| producer & director: Nobuyuki Oura | ||
| screenplay : Nobuyuki Oura | ||
| staff : Cinematographer : Tomohiko Tsuji, Sound : Kazuyoshi Kawashima, Editing : Tomohiko Tsuji, Yoshihisa Nakanishi & Nobuyuki Oura | ||
|
cast: Ichiro
Hariu (critic) Cho Hori (tattooer) |
Hiromi Nakano
Miyuki Kurata Akihito Terada |
Kha Jhon-Ung
Hon Son-Dam
|
| Production company : KUNITACHI studio | ||
Synopsis
In the apring of 2000, critic Ichiro Hariu(1925~) made a round trip between South Korea and Japan, as the director of a special exhibition "the Art and Human Rights " in Kwangju Biennale 2000. It was also a trip of recollection and imagination that should be said as a compilation of his whole life and thought.
In Kwangju, working as a director of the exhibition, Hariu walked around from alley to alley, through the crowd, or in a large market...While this endless walking in foreign land, memories and dreams came into his mind....woman singing old ballad of Chosun, dances filled with grief and prayer, a tattooer carving female body, dancer transforming himself into "ground spirit" on the gate of a temple... ruins, high school students citing a paragraph from E.A.Poe.... etc.
In Japan, in his dark study room Hariu remembers his encounter with Yojurou Yasuda(1910~81), Japanese Romanticist who influenced the critic in prewar days. After the war the critic turned to the leftist, trying to apply the ideas of Walter Benjamin to Japanese reality. He tells about the society and the system of Japan after the war, which have not changed in some sense. His says, "I have tried to make up a new order in Japan through Yasuda and Benjamin. It is an alternative history, that is produced by the concentration of the energy in the grief which wells up from the bottom of the social ladder. I have struggled against "system" for it".
The critic's thought , remembrance and imagination weaves a ever-lasting labyrinth of modern Japan, which haven't yet compensated the loss of humanity during the Second World War and which continues seeking a new relationship with neighbors.