Minamata: How a Japanese corporation poisoned a community and an American photographer fought to expose it

 Minamata, directed by artist and film producer Andrew Levitas (Georgetown), is about the industrial poisoning of a Japanese fishing village by the Chisso chemical company, and the struggle, beginning in 1971, by famed photo-essayist W. Eugene Smith to reveal the disastrous human consequences of this corporate crime.

Between 1951 and 1968, Chisso dumped thousands of tons of untreated wastewater containing the highly-toxic methylmercury into Minamata Bay in southwest Japan, poisoning local fish and other sea life.

Local residents, having always eaten fish from the bay, noticed strange behaviour and illness amongst cats in the 1950s, and then, in 1956, the first human cases appeared.

In the years that followed thousands of residents, including children suffered muscle weakness, disability, insanity, coma and death from severe mercury poisoning, with the company denying any responsibility for the health catastrophe.

Aileen Mioko (Minami Bages) and W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp) in Minamata [Source: Metalwork Pictures]

Today, 2,283 people have been officially recognised as patients and it is widely acknowledged that over 75,000 people suffered from Minamata mercury poisoning. Over 1,700 lawsuits are still ongoing.

Minamata is a forceful examination of Chisso’s ruthless attempts to prevent any exposure of its operations and the suffering of its victims. Based on the book Minamata: A Warning to the World, by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Mioko, the 115-minute film has brought its director into conflict with MGM, the movie’s North American distributor.

Levitas’s movie was completed in late 2019 and premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in early 2020 and was supposed to be released in the US and the UK in February 2021. This did not occur.

MGM, notwithstanding a handful of international screenings this year, has “buried” the film, refusing to announce a North American release date because of the alleged “personal problems” of the film’s lead actor Johnny Depp. We will return to MGM’s outrageous censorship below.

Tomoko in Her Bath by W. Eugene Smith, Japan, 1972 [Source: Wikipedia]

Minamata opens with Smith (Depp) in the process of photographing “Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath,” his acclaimed shot of a mother cradling her severely deformed, naked daughter, who is afflicted by Minamata disease, in a traditional Japanese bath.

The extraordinarily moving black-and-white image, later considered by many as one of Smith’s greatest achievements, along with others from the Minamata series published by Life magazine, brought to American and international audiences the horror of Chisso’s mercury poisoning.

The film then flashes back to a year earlier. Smith, a semi-recluse in his Manhattan loft, is at a creative impasse. Alienated from his former wife and children, the acclaimed photographer is frustrated with publishers, still suffering post-traumatic stress from serious wounds and harrowing experiences in World War II and drinking heavily. (Sara Fishko’s 2015 documentary, The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith, is a valuable companion piece to Levitas’s movie [see: WSWS review and interview with the director.])

Aware of his socially conscious photographic work, Aileen Mioko (Minami Bages) approaches Smith to help expose the situation in Minamata. “There’s a resistance on the ground but we need global attention,” she says.

At first reluctant, Smith eventually decides to approach long-time collaborator and Life magazine editor Robert Hayes (Bill Nighy) and insists the latter send him to Japan in order to blow the story open.

On arrival, Smith discovers that the villagers, after years of fighting Chisso, are exhausted and intimidated. Armed with as many cameras as the villagers could find, and a makeshift dark-room, Smith sets about winning the villagers’ confidence and gathering evidence against the company.

Aileen Mioko (Minami Bages) and W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp) with Minamata disease patient [Source: Metalwork Pictures]

Smith, Aileen and activist Kiyoshi (Ryo Kase) visit the Chisso company hospital in disguise and photograph those suffering the worst of the disease. They also uncover documents showing that the company hid the findings of private research, proving the river water was indeed poisonous for over 15 years.

Chisso’s president, Junichi Nojima (Jun Kunimura), is aware of Smith’s arrival in the community and tries a number of tactics—including bribery and physical violence—to dissuade or block the photographer’s work.

Running parallel with Smith’s efforts is another group representing a minority of victims still determined to fight the company. Though some are afraid of challenging the company, group leader Mitsuo Yamazaki (Hiroyuki Sanada), in a moving scene, urges them on. “This is not just about this town,” he declares. “Big companies invade small towns all over the world and pollute their existence.… It’s happened before, and it will happen again!”

Smith eventually wins the trust of Tomoko Uemura’s mother and is finally allowed to take the soon to be famous photograph. This and other outstanding Minamata images published by Life made up Smith’s last photo-essay before his death in 1978.

Minamata makes clear that the disaster that hit the southwestern Japanese fishing community was not a one-off. The film concludes with an extended list of similar tragedies in the decades since the Minamata disaster: mercury pollution in Indonesia, radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima, toxic mine waste poisoning in Africa, Latin and South America, the lead poisoning of Flint water supplies in Michigan and numerous other cases.

Reviews of Minamata have been mostly positive but there have been some sour responses by critics from Indiewire and the UK-based Independent and the Telegraph. Underlying their critiques is an insistence that no one should get too emotional about the disaster, let alone be passionately committed to exposing the plight of the Minamata victims. Any filmmaker venturing outside this framework is beyond the pale.

Indiewire critic Eric Kohn, for example, denounces the film as a “mopey drama” in an article headlined, “Johnny Depp’s Gonzo Performance Can’t Rescue an Overzealous Biopic.”

The “occasional poignant observation can’t salvage a movie trying this hard to tug every heartstring at its disposal,” Kohn declares, and accuses the film of “defaulting to histrionics.”

Geoffrey McNab in the Independent says that the film “pulls in contradictory directions” and gives it two stars. “It can’t work out whether it’s a crusading social drama or the story of a troubled artist’s redemption. The result is a film that neither engages nor moves the viewer in the way that might have been expected.”

The Telegraph declares Minamata is a “self-glorifying” biopic and accuses Levitas of “shaping the story to flatter Smith with a fairly groanworthy redemption arc.”

Contrary to these arrogant and self-satisfied claims, Minamata, is a passionate and thoroughly objective work and one that thoughtfully shows how Smith’s determination to expose Chisso’s crimes, and the corporation’s victims, reinvigorated his creative spirit.

While it is not possible here to critically examine the depth and significance of all Smith’s work (see the International Center for Photography’s online collection), his contribution to photography—as a powerful journalistic tool and artistic medium—is significant and underpinned by a profound humanity.

Smith’s post-war photo-essays—Spanish Village (1951), Nurse Midwife (1951), Country Doctor (1954) and others—established a new paradigm in contemporary photojournalism.

Above all, Smith was driven by a passionate belief that fighting to expose the truth could animate others and change society for the better. As he once said, “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes—just sometimes—one photograph, or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness… a catalyst to thought.”

While these sentiments strongly underpin Minamata, Levitas now confronts a media corporation hostile to these concerns and is using an ongoing #MeToo-style campaign against Depp to “bury” the film and punish all those involved in its production.

In 2018, Depp’s former wife Amber Heard, penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, claiming she was victim of domestic abuse. This set off the usual media and career-trashing hysteria against Depp, who was not named in the Post story. None of the incidents alleged by Heard have ever been the subject of any criminal investigations, let alone charges.

Depp was quickly removed from the scheduled next production of Pirates of the Caribbean and then last year was asked to “resign” his role as Gellert Grindelwald in the third movie of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Depp’s removal came after he lost a libel case against the Murdoch-owned, UK-based Sun tabloid after it published sensationalist material denouncing him as a “wife-beater.”

Last week Levitas made public a letter he sent to MGM condemning the giant entertainment corporation. “MGM [in early 2020] was intent on bringing to light the suffering of the thousands of victims of one of the most heinous industrial pollution incidents the world has ever seen.

“In re-exposing their pain in the sharing of their story, this long marginalized community hoped for only one thing—to lift history from the shadows so that other innocents would never be afflicted as they have… and it seemed in that moment, with MGM’s partnership, a decades-long wish was finally coming true,” the letter states.

Andrew Levitas [Source: Metalwork Pictures]

“Now, imagine the devastation when they learned this past week, that despite an already successful global roll out, MGM had decided to ‘bury the film’ (acquisitions head Mr. Sam Wollman’s words) because MGM was concerned about the possibility that the personal issues of an actor in the film could reflect negatively upon them and that from MGM’s perspective the victims and their families were secondary to this.”

Levitas recalled speaking to Mr. Uemura whose daughter “suffered every single day of her life” because a “large faceless corporation didn’t live up to their moral obligation to humanity, decency and righteousness.” His letter demanded MGM executives speak to Uemura and other Minamata victims and “explain why you think an actor’s personal life is more important than their dead children, their siblings, their parents, and all victims of industrial pollution and corporate malfeasance.”

The letter noted that “people all over the world are victimized by corporations who do not value them or consider them as real” and urged MGM to reverse its decision “to actively hinder the distribution and promotion of Minamata.”

It concluded with a YouTube video of one of the victims—Shinobu Sakamoto—talking about her experiences.

MGM has responded with a contemptuous and anodyne statement. “The film was acquired for release via American International Pictures, a division of MGM which handles day-and-date releases. Minamata continues to be among future AIP releases and at this time, the film’s US release date is TBA [to be announced].” Any decision by MGM, currently being taken over by Amazon, will undoubtedly be influenced by economic calculations.

(Source: WSWS)

What “Isle of Dogs” gets right about Japan

A week ago, I saw Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs,” or “Inu-ga-shima.” I saw it as someone who, upon hearing that name, is forcibly reminded of Oni-ga-shima, the isle of demons where Peach Boy, a hero of Japanese folklore, fights evil with his canine band of brothers. In the first grade, I was cast in a school production, in Tokyo, as one of the demons. The role required red face paint and Sharpie horns and growl-prancing, and I was as terrifying as a four-foot Japanese Caliban could be. This is all to say that I watched “Isle of Dogs” as a Japanese person—as someone who was born in Japan, who spent my childhood and adolescence there, and who looks and speaks and reads and eats like a native.

I saw the movie in New York. I arrived early. As I waited, I read critiques of the film, which is set in the fictional city of Megasaki, and which follows a group of dogs, and one or two humans, after the mayor banishes all canines to nearby Trash Island. The dogs speak English; the humans, for the most part, speak Japanese, which is often but not always translated. Reading the reviews, I found that there were some familiar gripes: the film Orientalized, it Othered, it had a white-savior narrative, it rendered Japanese people flat and mysterious and inscrutable, and it was part of a grand old Euro-American tradition of white men plundering Japanese aesthetics for their art. I put on my headphones and listened to a Slate interview in which a critic, Inkoo Kang, responded to the movie with a “first reaction: Yuck. Second reaction: Yawn.”

The movie began. The Japanese characters started speaking, without subtitles, and suddenly, in a Loews in Lincoln Square, surrounded by a sea of Americans inhaling corgi-sized tubs of popcorn, I was hearing voices from home. 

They were neither inscrutable nor flat. They were Japanese, in various shades of age and talent and fame. I heard Mari Natsuki—better known Stateside as the voice of Yubaba, from “Spirited Away”—in the host mother who dresses down an overexcited white girl: “Be quiet, go to sleep, I don’t care about your newspaper, just go to sleep.” I strained to place a TV-news anchor’s voice until, yes: it was the lead singer of the teen-rock band Radwimps, who’d starred in a mixtape that my first boyfriend had given me, in a brown paper bag, in front of Shibuya Station, more than a decade ago.

To say that the Wes Anderson film dehumanizes the Japanese is to assume the primacy of an English-speaking audience. Photograph by Fox Searchlight Pictures / Everett

Even when the voices weren’t familiar, they were distinct. Someone—if not Anderson, then perhaps the actor Kunichi Nomura, who co-wrote the film—cared enough to insure that the voices sounded pitch-perfect as types. A scientist, presenting her findings on snout flu, spoke with the bored, clipped tone of every ponytailed researcher on Japanese daytime TV. In a scene that must’ve seemed an incoherent buzz to non-Japanese viewers, a doctor interrupts another’s hushed importance during surgery with an equally serious “Gauze!”—a deadpan, bull’s-eye rendition of “Iryu,” the Japanese version of “ER.” No one else in the theatre got it, but I couldn’t contain my laughter.

As the film progressed, I picked up cues hidden from the rest of the audience. At one point, the dogs leapt on a trolley that read “Trash: For Compression and Crushing” in faint white kanji. Mayor Kobayashi’s propaganda poster—“For the Greater Good of Megasaki City”—was a playful riff on “For the Greater Good of Children,” a principle upheld in Japanese courts to protect kids against negligent parents. (That it was being used as a campaign slogan was, of course, ironic, given that Kobayashi was deporting his ward’s pet.) And then there were the gags: Atari, the ward in question, washes the dog Chief in a tub-sized can labelled “Hokusai Beer.” When the credits rolled, the staggering number of kanji characters—of Japanese people involved in making the film—lit the screen brightly for seconds and seconds.

As I walked out of the theatre, Anderson’s decision not to subtitle the Japanese speakers struck me as a carefully considered artistic choice. “Isle of Dogs” is profoundly interested in the humor and fallibility of translation. This is established early, by the title card: “The humans in this film speak only in their native tongue (occasionally translated by bilingual interpreter, foreign exchange student, and electronic device). The dogs’ barks are translated into English.” 

From the start, Anderson points to the various and suspect ways in which translation occurs. Official Interpreter Nelson, voiced by Frances McDormand, works for the government, but her reliability is thrown into doubt when she starts inserting her own comments—“Holy Moses!”;“Boy, what a night!”—while on the job. In one scene, she’s casually replaced by a little boy. The simul-talk devices, meanwhile, are shown to be operated by shadowy men in white starched shirts. This is the beating heart of the film: there is no such thing as “true” translation. Everything is interpreted. Translation is malleable and implicated, always, by systems of power

This theme persists throughout the film, especially in the character of Tracy Walker, the foreign-exchange student who’s been deemed, in some reviews, as a white savior of sorts. Tracy has a hunch that the government is covering up a mass conspiracy. During a rally she cries, “Not fair!” and stamps up to Kobayashi, demanding that her voice be heard. Kobayashi blinks, then revokes her immigration visa, leaving her in tears. (Notably, the children who provide more than just bluster are Atari and the Japanese hacker from Tracy’s newspaper club, both of whom end up saving the day.) If Tracy is a white savior, her role is immediately neutered. What is interesting about the scene is that she speaks to the crowd in English. Both Kobayashi and the crowd understand her words, but respond in Japanese. This was a revelation: in the world of Megasaki City, the Japanese can speak and understand English but choose to speak in their native tongue. They demand fluency on their own terms. At a climactic moment, the movie rejects the notion of universal legibility, placing the onus of interpretation solely upon the American audience.

This is a sly subversion, in which the Japanese evince an agency independent of foreign validation. Indeed, to say that the scene dehumanizes the Japanese is to assume the primacy of an English-speaking audience. Such logic replicates the very tyranny of language that “Isle of Dogs” attempts to erode. Anderson is a white, non-Japanese director, but had he not been interested in the power dynamics behind translation, and instead made a twee fever dream imitating Japanese aesthetics, “Isle of Dogs” would have looked and sounded a lot different. His commitment to showing the daily rhythms of a living, breathing Japanese people reveals itself not only in his cast of twenty-three Japanese actors but in his depictions of how exactly a Japanese TV-news anchor transitions to a new topic (“This is the next news”), what milk cartons for elementary schools look like (labelled “extra-thick”), or how a couple of scientists might celebrate—with a clink, “Yo—oh!,” and a clap. The film invites a kinship with a viewer who will find these banalities familiar, and lets these moments flow by, unnoticed, for those who do not.

This is not to assert the primacy of my own experience with the film. Whenever an Asian-American controversy flares up, whether in regard to whitewashing or appropriation, there’s usually a move, in the media, to ask those in the homeland what they thought—whether they were offended, say, by Scarlett Johansson playing a Japanese character. That move implies that being Japanese, and the corresponding right to take offense, are innately tied to growing up there. That the Japanese person usually responds in the negative—of course we’re fine with Scarlett!—speaks only to the fact that Japan is a country with neither ethnic diversity nor a substantial critical race discourse. To be Asian-American, meanwhile, is to develop a brutal familiarity with seeing Asia, and Asian characters, distorted, passivized, and flattened by white hands.

But we might note, when considering “Isle of Dogs,” that the tradition of white men “appropriating” Japanese art was, in large part, aided and abetted by the Japanese. The history of Japonism—of the West’s obsession with Japanese aesthetics—can’t be unwoven from the fact that said obsession served as an efficient, effective distraction as Japanese troops invaded Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula. Kabuki, haiku, woodblock prints by Hiroshige and Hokusai—the very forms that are supposedly arrogated by Anderson—were, in some respects, cultural ambassadors that ushered forth imperial expansion. And Japan, too, used language as an oppressing force; in Korea, the imperial government banned the study of Korean and enforced a Japanese-only policy.

Language is power. “Isle of Dogs” knows this. It shows the seams of translation, and demarcates a space that is accessible—and funny—only to Japanese viewers. One of the most potent shots in the film is of graffiti on gray cement. A large black scrawl asks, “Douyatte bokura wo korosu tsumori?” How on earth do you plan on killing us? For most viewers, it’s a mark on the wall. For Japanese ones, it’s a battle cry.

(Source: New Yorker)

Spaces for living: How Tokyo’s urban landscape deals with change

 Tokyo has a long and storied history, and yet little of it can be traced back to when the city became the country’s de facto capital under the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603.

This is largely the consequence of a need to rebuild the city constantly following frequent periods of destruction. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the firebombing of Tokyo in the final months of World War II are the two most obvious examples, and yet its residents have also survived massive conflagrations on a regular basis.

Between the decisive Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 that eventually allowed Tokugawa Ieyasu to establish the shogunate three years later and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, historians estimate that Edo (present-day Tokyo) experienced anywhere between 49 and 85 large fires that devastated vast swathes of land.

The observation deck of Shibuya Scramble Square offers a magnificent view of Tokyo. | BLOOMBERG

If smaller fires are included, historians estimate this number skyrockets to almost 1,800 and, even today, Edo is sometimes called “kasai toshi,” or “city of fire.”

As a result, much of Tokyo’s architecture has been constructed in the 20th century, with the city constantly rebuilding areas that have been destroyed. The architecture and aesthetics of the capital today reflect its past, while continuously being reimagined for the present.

A Herculean task

The postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games have been the latest impetus of change, with developers in the city gaining access to a range of attractive financing packages once organizers secured the rights to host the games in 2013.

Rail companies in the capital have taken advantage of favorable market conditions and, given how entrenched their operations are with property developments in areas surrounding stations, have planned numerous projects to overhaul the infrastructure of their investments.

As a result, train stations around the city appear to be in a constant state of flux. Subterranean Ginza Station, for example, was a warren of taped-off zones and construction screens for three years, with its renovation finally finished in October. It cost around ¥22 billion ($200 million) to redevelop the hub and the work is part of a wider renovation of stations along the Ginza Line — Tokyo’s oldest underground railway.

Shibuya Station is also a constantly shifting transport hub, with temporary routes from A to B changing direction almost on a monthly basis. Raised footbridges at the station overlook gigantic holes gouged in the Earth, waiting for the arrival of additional skyscrapers and other structures that will comprise an “Entertainment City” — a dream for 2027 that will finally realize a neo-Shibuya that was partly prophesied as “neo-Tokyo” in Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga “Akira.”

“It may sound presumptuous,” Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe told The Japan Times several years ago, “but I want people to think of Shibuya in the same way they do London, Paris and New York.”

Of the large-scale developments planned for the Shibuya area, the Hikarie building was completed in 2012, while Shibuya Stream and Shibuya Scramble Square were finished in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Three more developments — in Dogenzaka, Sakuragaoka and the southern area of Shibuya Station — are in the works.

Writing for an online travel guide, Tim Hornyak states: “By the end of the decade, Shibuya will have completely changed into a nearly unrecognizable new town. But if you’re longing for the past, you might still be able to find Nonbei Yokocho (Drunkard’s Alley), a collection of tiny postwar bars by the Yamanote Line tracks that survives to this day and is proudly scruffy. The cooperative that runs it is determined to keep the establishments alive, along with the original community spirit of Shibuya.”

Just behind Nonbei Yokocho, however, looms large a potential rival: Shibuya Yokocho. Part of the Miyashita Park development that opened in summer, the new collection of izakaya (traditional Japanese pubs) located here is a decidedly modern take on the retro grit of typical yokochō establishments. The constant crowds and lines have already affirmed its popularity and, for now, both alleys survive side-by-side — for how long remains to be seen.

Moving further east, an entirely new station opened on the Yamanote Line in Minato Ward on March 14. Dubbed Takanawa Gateway after crowdsourcing ideas for the name, the station and surrounding area is a joint project between JR East and the Urban Renaissance Agency to transform the neighborhood into “a global transportation and business hub.” Skyscrapers, commercial buildings and hotels are scheduled to be built in the area over the next four years.

It’s certainly not the first time the capital has overhauled itself ahead of an Olympic Games.

Tokyo’s selection as host city of the 1964 Olympics prompted many advancements that are now an accepted part of the furniture.

The Tokyo Monorail was finished over Tokyo Bay just 23 days before the games’ opening ceremony. Meanwhile, a number of metropolitan expressways were created in the capital and the Tokaido Shinkansen was unveiled. Roppongi-dori was also widened and a host of large hotels — Tokyo Prince Hotel and Hotel New Otani, to name two — sprang up.

What’s more, there was infrastructure directly related to the games themselves: Yoyogi Park — home to several venues and the Olympic Village — and Komazawa Olympic Park, for example, reshaped whole districts of the capital and still provide meaningful recreation spaces for locals.

But Yoshiyuki Kawazoe, an associate professor of design of architecture at the University of Tokyo, warns against comparing the property development in the city in 1964 to that which has taken place ahead of the 2020 Games.

Pedestrians walk by the redeveloped Miyashita Park in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. | AP

“The situation of the city is very different between the Olympics held during the postwar recovery period and the Olympics 50 years later,” he says.

Ricky Burdett, director of LSE Cities and a professor of urban studies, says new developments should try to incorporate historical elements of the areas they’re replacing.

“In order for cities to remain alive and energetic, they need to accommodate change,” Burdett says.

“An old city like London has the capacity to adapt and absorb new development without completely losing its identity and DNA,” says Burdett, who was chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the 2012 Olympics in London. “Given that the Olympic site at Stratford used to be a railway yard and became redundant and empty, the planning approach has integrated — wherever possible — new and sustainable types of development with the historic fabric and grain of London.

“It is not a question of either/or but about inclusive growth and integration.”

In Tokyo, however, this may be difficult to accomplish.

Sayonara, Harajuku Station

A short distance from Shibuya, one of the capital’s long-established landmarks is slated for removal: Harajuku’s iconic wooden train station.

Designed by Railways Ministry engineer Kaoru Hasegawa, the station was built in 1924 following the Great Kanto Earthquake. It sits opposite the frenetic and equally iconic Takeshita-dori.

Citing the station’s limited size and issues with fire safety, local lawmakers decided to dismantle the station following the Paralympics (a process that has already started due to the postponement of the games). A new station building has already appeared, unveiled without much ceremony, and started handling operations on March 21.

Replacing the old station is a minimal structure, aesthetically distant from the original — a revision to the Harajuku skyline that occludes the greenery of Meiji Shrine behind it.

Thomas Daniell, a professor in the department of architecture at Kyoto University, isn’t bothered by the design of the new building.

“I have no problem with it,” Daniell says. “The old one was a charming hybrid of Japanese and European elements, but it was too small.”

However, Daniell says the fate of the old station was probably determined by its lack of space.

“Private landowners are difficult to relocate (because the domain laws are weak), so it is difficult for developers to assemble sites large enough for coherent projects,” Daniell says. “Land readjustment is the usual model, which is quite bottom-up in principle.”

In 2016, Regis Arnaud, editor-in-chief of Japon France Eco, wrote an article that was published by Tokyo Keizai titled “The major problems of Japanese tourism policy as indicated by the dismantling of Harajuku Station.”

In the article, Arnaud equates ruthless edificial change with a lack of knowledge in what overseas visitors really want.

“Shabby” Golden Gai in Shinjuku Ward, he says, is now “one of the trendiest places on Earth” — and Arnaud says that this is primarily due to foreign tourists. New developments such as Akasaka’s Tokyo Midtown, for instance, provide only “mechanical interactions” and are not necessarily where foreign tourists want to go.

“In other words,” Arnaud argues, “the places where ordinary Japanese people do not find value are really ‘Japanese-like’ places.”

Arnaud calls Harajuku Station a “symbol of Japan’s unique culture of the fusion of old and new things” found nationwide, and cannot understand why it is scheduled for removal.

“Harajuku Station is about to become a symbol of mottainai (waste),” he writes.

Nevertheless, it is out with the old, in with the new insofar as Harajuku Station is concerned. After its removal — a slow process — a replica is planned to be built nearby, partially using parts of the original.

Julian Worrall, a professor of architecture at the University of Tasmania, notes that the new station “appears to make little attempt to respond to the history or context of its site.”

That said, he goes on to qualify this statement somewhat.

“It does, however, have large glazed exterior walls and a branch of an upmarket cafe. Coffee and transparency (for both views and for shopping) are two features of contemporary urban culture that are found in many cities,” he says. “In this sense, the new station building is weakly expressive of the period that it has been built in — as was the old one.”

Similarly, Kawazoe believes that the new station buildings, including the rail company-operated stores inside and around stations, do not necessarily detract from a city’s character.

“The personality of a city is updated daily, so I don’t think that newness means that a city loses personality,” he says. “However, I do think it’s important that each new building creates its own individuality.”

Kawazoe admits it is probably “better to think more seriously about the beauty of a building than just its function.” The look of Harajuku Station — bar the green backdrop that exists on the Meiji Shrine side — is more utilitarian than aesthetically pleasing: glass for shopping, coffee for stopping.

Although the old building at Harajuku Station is being replicated at a site nearby, not all defunct architecture is so lucky.

Still, those that are saved from the proverbial fire may find a home alongside other architectural monuments of the past at Meiji Mura, a museum at Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, founded by architects Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904-79) and Motoo Tsuchikawa (1903-74).

The museum began preserving buildings in the midst of Tokyo’s rapid development in the 1960s — when value was placed on economic growth rather than preserving old things.

Takanawa Gateway Station | KYODO

The story goes that Taniguchi caught sight of the Rokumeikan (1833) — a prominent and controversial Western-style building in Hibiya — being demolished whilst riding the Yamanote Line. He immediately felt that historic structures needed to be preserved rather than knocked down, and the rest is, well, history.

Today, the museum holds treasures such as the lobby of the 1923 Imperial Hotel, designed in the Maya Revival style by celebrated U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

“A more satisfying approach,” notes Worrall, “would have been to produce a design in a contemporary architectural language, but ensure that it consciously explores and expresses the historical layers of the site and context. You can see the results of a more historically sympathetic approach at Maach Ecute, designed by Mikan Architects at the site of the old Manseibashi Station down near Akihabara.”

Although somewhat alien to Western sensibilities, the idea of “rebuilding” heritage is something that has been done again and again in Japan to “general approval,” Worrall says.

However, if such plans fall through for Harajuku Station and it is to be lost entirely, it may be better that it is displayed in the architectural shadow box of Meiji Mura than not at all.

Looking to the future

In the “Japan Now 2020” episode of BBC Radio 3’s “Free Thinking” podcast, the state of “progress in Tokyo” is discussed by guests, including novelist and former voice actor Yukiko Motoya, who states that globalization is a “desirable direction” for the country.

“I go to places such as Shibuya and Shinjuku in Tokyo, and there’s no sense of history there,” Motoya says. “They’re a patchwork: They’ve been demolished and rebuilt, and I haven’t come across that lack of history anywhere else. I think it’s very Japanese. And I think, rather than clinging onto our image of what Japan should be, I think that this is much more interesting.”

That sense of Japanese-ness in the spirit of new buildings is something Worall agrees with.

“‘Built heritage’ has a different meaning and a weaker support base in Japan compared to many other countries in Europe and elsewhere,” he says. “In general, buildings are valued based on their economic and functional contribution, in addition to a short-lived fashion-based dimension that is related to their ‘newness’; they are essentially consumables, more akin to clothes than monuments.”

Property developers have grand redevelopment plans for the area surrounding Takanawa Gateway Station on the Yamanote Line. | KYODO

The landscape of Tokyo is constantly changing, something that has always been the case. Remembering that the old Harajuku Station was once new and expressive of 1920s Tokyo actually helps to process the new station building — a reflection of Tokyo 100 years later.

And as the retro facades and tiles of Tokyo’s train stations are being renovated, it’s also important to remember that the city itself is in a constant state of flux. Although a sense of history may be more and more difficult to find in increasingly densified areas such as Shibuya, it still exists.

“I don’t think (the city) much cares about history at all,” Kawazoe says, “but sometimes you can find fragments of the past where it wasn’t intended.”

In closing, Worrall sums it up well. Eschewing a “singular, privileged and protected version of the past,” he believes that history is bolstered by buildings that can link to different layers of the past instead.

“However,” he warns, “this should not overwhelm the future-oriented aspirations of those living in the present. Both the dead and the living have their rights.”

(Source: JT)

Hokkaido farms and fisheries hit as campus closure robs them of workers

The agriculture and fisheries industry in the northeastern Hokkaido region of Okhotsk is facing a serious labor shortage.

Tokyo University of Agriculture’s Okhotsk campus, in the city of Abashiri, was closed as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, leading to a sharp decline in the number of students living in the city and working part-time in the sector.

The university plans to hold online lectures until the end of July, followed by summer vacation, meaning the impact is likely to continue for an extended period.

Among the 1,473 students enrolled at the Okhotsk campus, roughly 60 percent — and only half of first-year students — remained in the city after the campus was shut down, according to the university.

Because more than 90 percent of the students come from outside Hokkaido, the university has asked agriculture and fisheries cooperatives in the region to refrain from hiring students who have not been in the city for two weeks or longer, to prevent them from becoming a source of infection.

Tokyo University of Agriculture’s Okhotsk campus, in the city of Abashiri, was closed amid the COVID-19 outbreak, leading to a sharp decline in the number of students living in the city and working part-time in the sector. | HOKKAIDO SHIMBUN

The Abashiri Fisheries Cooperative, which was set to begin releasing scallop spats at the end of May, needs to hire some 750 part-time workers to sort them and for other tasks.

Usually, the university’s students make up about 70 percent of workers. However, in late April, since it can’t depend on students this year, the city’s Fisheries Promotion Council advertised part-time positions in newspapers and the city’s public relations magazine for the first time.

Officials from the fisheries cooperative spoke with acquaintances and dealers, and barely managed to secure enough workers. 

Takashi Tamura, head of the cooperative’s scallop aquaculture group, said, “We always have a hard time securing part-time workers every year, so we were really worried what would happen this year.”

“We will make sure that infection prevention measures will be taken during work, including body temperature checks, the use of face masks and alcohol disinfectants,” Tamura said.

The agriculture sector is facing a similar problem. The town office of Ozora in the region, which dispatches a total of some 200 students from the university each year to farms as part-timers, has stopped its service this year in response to the university’s policy amid the spread of novel coronavirus infections.

“I was expecting to have around 10 students work for me to sow pumpkin seeds, but since they are not coming I’m at a loss about what to do,” said a farmer in the town.

An agricultural cooperative in the town of Memanbetsu in the region is also worried that farms planting Chinese yams and pumpkins manually will be hit hard by the labor shortage.

According to estimates by Sapporo-based Hokkaido Research Institute for the Twenty-first Century, students of the university who work part-time have the effect of expanding the region’s production by some ¥9.02 billion for agriculture and some ¥4.48 billion for fisheries.

On that basis, part-time student workers make up roughly 5.1 percent of agricultural production and 6.8 percent of fisheries production in the region in terms of value.

(Source: JT)

Tokyo joins world film festivals for 10-day YouTube event

As competition programmer for the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), Yoshi Yatabe has pretty much seen it all. But finding an email from Robert De Niro in his inbox still felt like a big deal.

“It was very difficult to neglect that email,” he says with a laugh.

It was mid-April when De Niro and his producing partner, Jane Rosenthal — co-founders of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival — contacted Yatabe with an intriguing proposition: Would TIFF be interested in joining an online event they were organizing?

They didn’t mention any other names at that point, but the resulting We Are One: A Global Film Festival, which will take place on YouTube from May 29, would turn out to feature contributions from many of the biggest festivals: Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, Toronto.

“It’s kind of a historic event,” says Yatabe. “It’s the first time for all these festivals to gather in one place and do a festival together, so it’s very exciting.”

There are 21 festivals taking part, each providing its own program, from features and shorts to talks and musical performances. In addition to bringing comfort to cinephiles, the 10-day event aims to raise money for a variety of COVID-19 relief efforts.

Tokyo’s program includes director Masaaki Yuasa’s 2008 animated short, “Genius Party: Happy Machine,” and Akiko Ooku’s eccentric romantic comedy “Tremble All You Want,” which won the Audience Award at TIFF in 2017.

There will also be multiple shorts by festival regular Koji Fukada, including a new film, “The Yalta Conference Online,” which stages Oriza Hirata’s historical play “The Yalta Conference” over Zoom.

Yatabe says that putting the program together was a learning process.

“It was much more difficult than I’d expected to clear the film rights for an online festival, on YouTube,” he says. “When you do a festival, for example in Tokyo, you only have to clear the domestic rights — but here, I (had to do it) for the whole world.”

Festivals typically serve as a film’s coming-out party: a place to create positive buzz, secure distribution deals or build momentum ahead of awards season.

With COVID-19 forcing many festivals to take a year off or drastically reconfigure, Yatabe says, “The whole film industry is in a bit of a mess.”

Movies that were selected for this year’s Cannes, for instance, now face an uncertain fate: Do their producers take the films elsewhere, or sit tight until next year’s festival?

“They’re kind of like lost children,” Yatabe says. This may seem like an opportunity for TIFF to snag some prestige titles, and he reveals he’s already been contacted about potential submissions for films that have seen their original plans fall through.

“I don’t think I can say I hope that these kinds of films will come to us, because it’s kind of taking advantage of other festivals’ cancellations,” he says.

As for TIFF — due to start on Oct. 31 — Yatabe thinks there’s a “very high probability” that the festival will go ahead. He’s less confident about whether it will be able to invite its usual bevy of overseas filmmakers and industry folk, given that many travel restrictions could still be in place.

“The question is: Can we make an international program without having guests?” he says. “I think that’s a challenge.”

Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place a month earlier, has said it is considering a hybrid model this year, using a mixture of physical and online screenings. Yatabe says Tokyo may do something similar, and concedes that festivals should be doing more to embrace digital platforms.

After a couple of months of lockdown, he says, “Nobody can ignore the importance of online viewing. So I think that the physical festival and the online part of the festival should be compatible.”

Yatabe also sees a more long-term role for distribution models such as Temporary Cinema, where films are streamed online and proceeds are split equally between the distributor and exhibitor.

“I think that scheme could stay after theaters reopen,” he says, “so that people in remote areas can also have access to new films.”

Given that Yatabe professes to have spent most of his free time in cinemas before Japan’s state of emergency went into effect, you would think it was a struggle for him to go cold turkey over the past couple of months. Not so, apparently.

“In one month, I watched 25 Ingmar Bergman films,” he says. “I was not expecting to be able to do that until after retirement. I hope that theaters will open as soon as possible, but I’m not bored at all staying home.”

(Source: JT)

A cut above: Tokyo barber launches 'telecut' service as COVID-19 hits business

As a 'quick fix,' customers of Mr. Brothers Cut Club get real-time tutorials via video-conferencing

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many services and events to go virtual in Japan, leading to the advent of online classes, online nomikai (drinking parties) and even online hostess bars.

But online haircuts?

Not a chance, you might say, but one barbershop in Tokyo is trying to make the impossible possible.

In what may be an industry first, Mr. Brothers Cut Club, whose flagship store is located in the fashion mecca of Harajuku, has launched what it calls a “telecut” service, in which its barbers will offer customers self-haircut tutorials in real time via the Zoom video-conferencing app.

Saito Kon, a barber at Mr. Brothers Cut Club in Harajuku, demonstrates how he teaches customers how to cut their own hair using video conferencing app Zoom. | TOMOHIRO OSAKI

“We figured many people are getting annoyed at how their hair keeps growing while they’re staying at home,” said Saito Kon, one of the Mr. Brothers barbers.

“But the only option they have at the moment is either to risk infection by venturing outside to get a haircut, or to do nothing as their hair keeps growing.”

So the barbershop decided to offer a temporary solution to that problem.

Customers interested in the telecut service need to prepare a simple collection of necessary paraphernalia themselves, such as scissors, clippers, a garbage bag and a portable mirror. There are two service options — one for parents trying to trim the hair of their children, and the other for adults looking to cut their own hair. English-speaking staff are also available, too.

Mr. Brothers admits the telecut initiative is more of a “quick-fix” measure, unlikely to blossom into a viable business model. No matter how adept barbers have become at online tutorials, “We can’t really guarantee that customers can get the perfect, high-quality haircut they would look for at barbershops,” Kon said.

“The best we can do is teach them how not to mess up,” he said, adding that the initiative boils down to him and his colleagues trying to “make a social contribution.”

The service is free of charge.

But the project also reflects a message that barbers at Mr. Brothers want to get across to men nationwide who are growing increasingly indifferent to self-grooming as they go out less and less.

“I know many guys are taking perfunctory care of how they look during this stay-at-home period, but we hope this initiative will make them stay motivated about their appearance,” Kon said.

Like many barbershops and beauty salons across the nation, Mr. Brothers has not been immune to the economic fallout of the pandemic.

“Customers have halved from the period before COVID,” Kon said with a sigh. “Not that there’s much we can do about it. We just need to hang tough.”

(Source: JT)