Atsushi Funahashi describes his movie as a “docudrama,” which usually means a blend of documentary and staged scenes. In actuality, everything here is staged, with real actors. The subject is ex-convicts who find it very difficult to reintegrate into Japanese society after they’re released from prison. The recidivism rate in Japan is 50 percent, and the main problem is employment, since many businesses will not hire convicted felons. Moreover, people don’t even want them living in their neighborhoods, thinking that once a criminal always a criminal. Consequently, many ex-convicts’ lives enter into a kind of vicious cycle of offense-incarceration-release-unemployment-reoffense, almost by necessity. We’ve covered this issue in our media reports, and often these people see no alternative but prison, where they at least know they will have a roof over their heads and three meals a day. Outside, they just can’t make it work, and Funahashi’s movie shows us in brutal detail why that is.

The focus is on a publication by an NGO called Change that assists ex-cons in finding employment. The NGO has cultivated a network of businesses that agree to take on recently released felons as employees. The cases covered represent a cross-section. There’s an angry man who spent 10 years in prison for killing a teenage boy in a hit-and-run accident. There’s a young woman sent away for two years due to her addiction to crystal meth. Another woman spent ten years in prison for setting her boyfriend’s house on fire in what sounds like an act of lovelorn desperation. A former elementary school teacher received two years for molesting a student. All of these individuals are placed in jobs that are low-paying: food service, cleaning. At least two of the ex-cons work in a Chinese restaurant for a man who himself did time for extortion and attempted murder. In addition, the NGO conducts sessions with a professional therapist who uses role-playing games and “drama therapy” to help the ex-cons express their feelings about what they are going through now and how they got to this stage in their lives. 

It’s obvious that Funahashi would have had a very hard time making a straight documentary about this topic, because none of the subjects want to talk about their crimes or how their convictions basically destroyed whatever lives they have left. He needs proxies and has developed an acting style that is meant to allow the players to express their feelings honestly without having to resort to the usual dramatic devices. At first, the dour and bitter attitudes we see on screen are a turn-off, and then you realize that society really would prefer these people either stay in prison or just crawl into a hole so as to not burden so-called law-abiding citizens with their presence. We see the former inmates struggle with their attempts to resocialize. In one powerful scene, the ex-addict is hit on by a young guy while she’s cleaning ashtrays in the place she works. Without knowing her past, he tells her he used to smoke pot, as if it might impress her. She mistakes his lecherous candor for kindness and lets down her guard, telling him how she was sent to prison for meth. He laughs, calls her a “piece of trash,” and walks away. The hit-and-run perpetrator exists with a constant chip on his shoulder, believing he’s the victim of bad luck, though he understands deep down his responsibility. His quick temper only reinforces people’s opinion that those convicted of crimes have “criminal natures,” and the notion that people believe this makes him even angrier and more self-pitying. 

The movie culminates in a harrowing discussion following a theater presentation where the ex-cons play analogues of themselves in a fantasy story. The audience is filled with neighbors of the NGO who wish it would move away as well as some victims of the ex-cons. It doesn’t end well, and the various members of the NGO, who truly believe in their cause, are forced to address the fact that they can do nothing without convincing people that those who have “crossed a line” deserve another chance. “Why do you protect criminals?” is what the NGO faces on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter that many of these criminals grew up in broken, abusive homes. It doesn’t matter that Japan’s prison system is designed to punish, not rehabilitate. It doesn’t matter that there is no public system in place to help ex-cons reintegrate. Once you have crossed that line, they won’t let you cross back. 

In Japanese. Now playing in Tokyo at Polepole Higashi Nakano (03-3371-0088).

The Burden of the Past home page in Japanese