Media watch: Nobody wants to talk about the death penalty

Posted on January 25, 2023 by philipbrasor
Otohiko Kaga

In November, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yasuhiro Hanashi was compelled to quit his post as justice minister after he made a careless remark at a political gathering. Hanashi said that he felt the job of justice minister was “low-key” and whoever held the position only merited headlines after he put his seal to an order for carrying out the death penalty. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Hanashi to resign as minister because, as Kyodo News put it, the remark was “seen as making light of his role in authorizing executions of death-row inmates,” and Kishida’s public support rate didn’t need to go any lower. However, to anyone who follows Japan’s policy regarding capital punishment, the very fact that Hanashi mentioned that policy without being prompted was probably enough to invite critical scrutiny from his peers. You’re just not supposed to talk about it. 

One person who did talk about it a lot was Otohiko Kaga, a psychiatrist and prison chaplain who died at the age of 93 last week. Kaga was very active as an anti-capital punishment advocate and worked to change Japanese detention methods, which he claimed violated international human rights standards. He was especially critical of the way the trial of Chizuo Matsumoto, otherwise known as Shoko Asahara, the leader of the death cult Aum Shinrikyo, was conducted, since he believed all the court proceedings were geared to guarantee a death sentence despite Matsumoto’s diminished capacity. 

Coincidentally, just before Kaga died, Asahi Shimbun ran two interviews on its Koron page about Hanashi’s gaffe and its implications. One of the inteviewees was writer Keiko Horikawa, who herself interviewed Kaga many times and has written several books on Japan’s capital punishment system. 

In the interview, Horikawa was asked to comment on Hanashi’s remark, and she said the first people she thought of were the prison employees whose job it is to carry out executions. They are the ones who have to face the reality of the system and thus the people who “carry the burden”—not the bureaucrats and politicians who make the decisions about who dies and when they die. Hanashi, she said, obviously never thought about those people. If he had, he would never have made such an offhanded comment. For that reason alone, he “doesn’t deserve to be a political leader.”

She went on to say that the indifference inherent in Hanashi’s remark reflected the general attitude among the public toward capital punishment. It’s something they accept without really understanding it. In surveys, the public overwhelmingly supports the death penalty for a simple reason: someone who has carried out a heinous crime must pay for that crime in kind, with their life if necessary. Those who are against the death penalty generally start from the belief that no one has the right to take another life, including the state. But as the interviewer pointed out, these two sides end up talking past each other, and nothing comes of it. 

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Media watch: South Korea happily takes over as brands leader

Posted on January 23, 2023 by philipbrasor
Screen shot of Gucci catalogue

A Jan. 14 article on the Chosun Online website revealed that South Korea has overtaken China as the luxury brand capital of the world in terms of consumption. Citing data compiled by investment bank Morgan Stanley, the news service noted that in 2022 Koreans purchased $16.8 billion worth of so-called luxury brand merchandise, which is the equivalent of about ¥2.15 trillion. That comes out to $325 (¥42,000) per capita, which clearly outstrips the next highest purchasing country, the United States, at $280, and China, the previous leader, at about $50. China’s plunge is pegged to several factors, most notably the change in circumstances brought on by the pandemic and various economic restrictions implemented by the government. 

What’s noteworthy about the Chosun story is the comment that Koreans are buying more luxury goods than ever because they want to “promote their social status as individuals” and “[Korean] society accepts the appeal of showing off one’s wealth” more than societies in other countries. These conclusions were based on a survey of worldwide consumers conducted by McKinsey Consulting about attitudes toward luxury goods. When they asked people whether they had a negative view of the use of luxury brands, those who said “yes” accounted for 38 percent of Chinese respondents, 45 percent of Japanese, but only 22 percent of Koreans. 

In any event, the article goes on to say that most luxury brands have reinforced their sales activities in Korea in a big way and quoted several fashion houses. The Italian label Moncler said that their sales in Korea actually doubled during the pandemic, while the Richemont Group, which owns Cartier, revealed that from 2021 to 2022, Korea was the only market where sales grew by “double digits.” Prada’s overall sales decreased by 7 percent in 2022 simply due to China’s anti-COVID measures, but was almost made up for by an increase in Korean sales. 

This success is mirrored by the recent rapid increase in brand ambassadors who are Korean celebrities. Lisa of the girl group Blackpink now represents Celine, while her bandmates Jennie, Rose, and Jisoo shill for Chanel, Yves St. Laurent, and Dior, respectively. Big Bang star and top music producer G Dragon also fronts for Chanel, while Kai of the group EXO is there for Gucci. Fendi gets double duty from international pop star Jackson Wang, who is a Chinese national but launched his career as a member of the K-pop group GOT7. And while the list of ambassadors seems top heavy with pop stars, quite a few actors have been tapped, as well. 

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Review: The Shadow Play

Posted on January 21, 2023 by philipbrasor

Lou Ye was once touted as one of the most significant new mainland China directors of the millennium after the overseas success of the atmospheric Suzhou River, a reputation that was further bolstered by his 2006 Tiananmen epic Summer Palace, which was banned by the government. Since then, however, he’s mostly coasted on noirish melodramas that retain his distinctively dreamy tone to tell stories that don’t really require it. His latest is a conventional police mystery built around China’s corruption-fueled real estate market—it takes place between 1989 and 2012. 

For sure, the ambitious opening scene, a long, panoramic moving drone shot of urban decay and demolition in the southern city of Guangzhou, provokes expectations the remaining film never meets. The mystery launches with the mysterious death of a local functionary, Tang (Zhang Songwen), after he tries to quell a riot of apartment block residents who are being forced out of their homes by a redevelopment project. The young police detective, Yang (Jing Boran), can’t decide if Tang fell, jumped, or was pushed from the fifth floor of one of the new buildings, and his suspicions quickly focus on Tang’s wife, the psychologically unstable restaurateur Lin Hui (Song Jia), who he quickly learns is in a romantic relationship with the Taiwan-based real estate mogul Jiang (Qin Hao). As it turns out, Jiang knew Yang’s father, a police detective himself who was forced to retire after a traffic accident left him partially paralyzed. As Yang gets closer to the truth he’s continually set up by unknown forces, thus compelling him to become a fugitive as he continues investigating the relationship between Tang, Jiang, and a fourth wheel, Yun (Michelle Chen), a former bar hostess who became Jiang’s associate in charge of dirty work and whose death in 2006 his father had been investigating when he had his accident. Then there’s Tang’s daughter, Nuo (Sichun Ma), who has secrets of her own.

Though there’s nothing wrong with this story itself, Lou ties it all up in knots with a barrage of elaborate flashbacks and flash-forwards whose only purpose seems to be to make the movie much longer than it needs to be. They also have the effect of highlighting the lack of credible motivations that spur all the strife between the various characters, resulting inevitably in overwrought scenes of violence that seem to have been contractually mandated. The only one of these that made me sit up and nod approvingly was a fight between Yang and a group of gangsters in a moving RV that was so surreal it could have been taking place in zero gravity. Had Lou fashioned the whole movie in this bizarre way, he might have made something even less coherent but at least kinetically interesting. 

In Cantonese and Mandarin. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku K’s Cinema (03-3352-2471).

The Shadow Play home page in Japanese

photo (c) Dream Factory, Travis Wei

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Yun Jeong-hee

Posted on January 20, 2023 by philipbrasor

I am saddened to read of the death of Yun Jeong-hee, who gave the best film performance of the 21st century in my favorite film of the 21st century, Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry. Yun reportedly died in Paris with Alzheimer’s, the disease that afflicts her character in Poetry. Yun’s legacy, of course, goes back to the 60s, and she made some great films, but I can’t think of a character that has haunted my thoughts over the years as much as Mija. Here is my original review of the movie from 2012.

THE DEPARTED

Poetry, directed by Lee Chang-dong

The great theme of Korean cinema, or, at least Korean cinema of the past decade-and-a-half, is male violence, which may sound too broad, but any Korean film of worth, even the sex comedies of Hong Sangsoo, wrestles with society’s acceptance of male volatility, both emotional and physical. Lee Chang-dong’s last two movies feature female protagonists addressing that violence in ways that don’t often sit right with audiences. It’s not exactly accommodation, though, and Poetry may be his fullest, most realized contemplation of this theme. Here the woman, Mija (Yun Jeong-hee), is older, and we learn right away that she is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. A widow who lives with her truculent grandson in a small apartment, Mija still thinks of herself as an attractive woman, maintaining her outdated sense of fashion, uncomprehending of people’s general ambivalence toward her opinions and outlook. She enrolls in a poetry writing class at a community center, and seriously tries to carry out the instructor’s suggestions. Lee presents her as a typically dull middle class woman on the verge of total insignificance, but these appearances mask a decency that’s troubling in the way it’s challenged by social norms. As Mija slowly comes to realize, her junior high school age grandson, Wook (Lee Da-wit), who has been deposited in her care by a daughter pursuing a job in another city, is involved in what appears to be the gang rape of a schoolmate who subsequently commited suicide. The fathers of Wook’s confederates are trying to keep the matter quiet and the police out of it by paying off the mother of the dead girl. They enlist Mija, the only available guardian for Wook, in their scheme, and she is so shocked by encounters with these men, who approach the problem as if it were an unfortunate business transaction, that she can’t help but put herself in the dead girl’s position. The poem that Mija struggles to write for her assignment thus becomes her means of coming to grips with whatever it was the girl must have felt, and since Mija herself is slowly entering into darkness, the task is all the more meaningful as a summation of her own life. Though the importance of Lee’s own task is no less weighty, his means are subtler, and the beauty of his accomplishment is in the slow accumulation of plot points. Mija’s caretaking relationship with her bedridden employer reflects her realization that men are capable of anything. Her inability to stand up to the fathers and their patronizing attitude speaks to her life of demure acceptance. And yet she never compromises her love for a boy who hardly acknowledges her. Mija proves that love in an unexpected way, while paying tribute to the memory of his victim.

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Review: La Civil

Posted on January 20, 2023 by philipbrasor

One of the salient features of the ongoing drug wars in Mexico is how opaque the issue is to outsiders. Though we know who is doing the killing and who is being killed, it’s often difficult to get much further, especially in terms of why the authorities seem so powerless to do anything about it. Watching this debut by the Romanian-Belgian director, Teodora Ana Mihai, I was almost immediately struck by the notion that almost everyone in Mexico feels the same way; that they really can’t grasp exactly why there is a war and why it has become so deadly for “civilians,” per the movie’s title. 

The protagonist is Cielo (Arcelia Ramirez), a middle aged mother raising her teenage daughter, Laura (Denisse Azpilcueta), by herself because her businessman husband has left her for a younger woman. When Laura is kidnapped by a group of young toughs who demand 150,000 pesos and Cielo’s husband’s truck for her return, Cielo is more than just terrified. She’s baffled. Why her daughter, who has no connection to drug cartels and whose father doesn’t really have that much money? Cielo and her prickly husband, Gustavo (Alvaro Guerrero), patch things up on the fly in order to get their daughter back, but each time they meet the kidnappers’ demands the bar gets lifted a little higher, and in the process, as Gustavo loses his nerve, Cielo takes on the personality of an avenging angel, complete with black baseball cap; except that, unlike your usual Hollywood revenge thriller, she is not Liam Neeson and can’t gain much traction on a criminal element that seems so entrenched and far-reaching that it affects everyone she knows. Even as she joins up with an ad hoc paramilitary force that resorts to its own terror tactics to fight the criminals, she comes to see how the drug cartels and their adjuncts carry out kidnappings not so much to fund their illegal activities, but to instill, on a permanent basis, a feeling of incipient terror in the populace so that the authorities, whether they are the police or the military, can’t rely on civilians to help them in their mission. Chaos can be the only result, and the cartels thrive on it.

Consequently, Cielo cannot trust anyone she meets to help her regain her daughter, because they may, like her, be the victim, whether directly or indirectly, of the cartels’ machinations and have carried out terrible acts themselves as a result. As the movie reaches its implication that Cielo will probably never see Laura again, the horror of her realization is, again, compounded by bewilderment: If her daughter is indeed dead, it’s not only a senseless death, but a meaningless one. Unlike Liam Neeson’s actions, Cielo’s own descent into violence is desperate without being effective, because the problem is just too huge. La Civil contains scenes of torture, murder, and brute intimidation, but its most terrifying aspect is the feeling that it’s all inescapable.

In Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8606), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

La Civil home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Menuetto/One for the Road/Les Films du Fleuve/Mobra Films.

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Review: The Northman

Posted on January 19, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though not trailblazing in any significant way, Robert Eggers’ first two features successfully perverted forms that tend to be thought of as inviolable. The Witch was a horror movie that implied a deep distrust of the devices that characterize the genre, while The Lighthouse was a rollicking tall tale that peeled away the surface comedy and explored the unremarked motivations that make tall tales subliminally interesting. Connecting both was a convincing, obsessive verisimilitude with regard to time and place that nevertheless provided its own special appeal even if it sometimes got in the way of understanding. Reportedly, much of the dialogue of The Witch, which took place in New England in the 1630s, was taken directly from contemporary documents.

Eggers is now a certified bankable director, and his latest is a conventional historical action movie with impeccable production design (Eggers’ strong point, since that’s what he did before directing) and a story that, aside from being based on the legend that inspired Hamlet and co-written by the Icelandic poet Sjon, wouldn’t have drawn much attention had it been directed by anyone who’s had a hand in the MCU. As revenge sagas go it’s literal-minded and predictable, so there’s little subtext for Eggers to fiddle with. The boy-prince Amleth of an Icelandic king (Ethan Hawke) is on hand when his uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), murders the king and kidnaps the queen, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman), and just barely escapes death himself by fleeing into the wilderness and escaping to the European continent. He attaches himself to a tribe that resorts to raping and pillaging as a means of survival—which isn’t to say they feel guilty about the carnage or, for that matter, don’t enjoy it, but in any case, it’s clear that Amleth does not care for the material spoils and is merely biding his time. Eventually, Amleth, now played with formidable muscles by Alexander Skarsgard, returns to Iceland as a slave captured in battle to work on a farm owned by his uncle, a situation he has carefully planned out. 

The only element of the story that could be deemed perverse is Amleth’s careful subterfuge in demonstrating unswerving loyalty to Fjolnir, which pits him against his cousin, Thorir (Gustav Lindh), thus pressuring him to double down on a masquerade that disorients his moral compass but not his bloody resolve. He himself commits unspeakable acts of violence in secret so as to undermine his uncle’s power, and while these scenes are gory enough to maintain Eggers’ reputation for sick mischief, they don’t add anything distinctive to the story or its emotional contours. Even when Amleth discovers that his mother is and was perfectly happy to aid her new husband’s treachery and evil intentions, there’s no Hamlet-like reckoning with his own humanity. The only corrective to Amleth’s bloodthirsty designs is his love for the fellow slave Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), a side show that’s forgettable because you’ve seen it so many times before. 

In English and Old Norse. Opens Jan. 20 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Northman home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Focus Features LLC

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Media watch: Victim of crime seeks compensation the hard way

Posted on January 15, 2023 by philipbrasor

When a person is the victim of theft or fraud, it is often difficult for them to recoup their losses, even if the perpetrator of the crime is caught and punished. According to a Jan. 12 article in the Asahi Shimbun, one man has taken a novel approach to this problem. The man, who is from Okayama Prefecture, claims to be the victim of what we assume is fraud, though the circumstances of the case as explained by the Asahi raise questions with regard to criminal intent. 

Eight years ago, the man was approached by a woman who created very realistic dolls as artworks. She wanted to stage exhibitions of her work but didn’t have the money, so she asked the man if he could lend her the necessary funds. He did and she put on the exhibitions at various places throughout Japan. Over the years, however, she neglected to pay him back and the IOUs piled up, amounting to “tens of millions of yen” in debt. Then, in 2019 she was arrested and subsequently convicted and sent to prison. 

The victim sued the woman for ¥20 million, which was less than the total amount he had lent her, and while the court found in his favor, he received no compensation because the woman, who was in prison, was broke. So he sued again, but this time asked the court to allow him to confiscate the money the woman was making in prison through her state-mandated work assignments. Since prisoners make way below minimum wage when they work in Japanese prisons, the man, if successful, would never be able to recoup his losses this way, but he said that his reasons were different; that he was confiscating her pay so that she would face up to her crime. 

This prison pay system is called “work reward,” and according to the Asahi pays between ¥7.7 and ¥55.5 per hour. The woman, whose prison work assignment is not described in the article, makes on average ¥4,537 a month. 

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Review: She Said

Posted on January 13, 2023 by philipbrasor

The PR campaign for screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s movie adaptation of New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism foregrounds their story as a seminal instance in the progress of the #MeToo movement, which it is. Nevertheless, as the movie presents how the two reporters coaxed female victims of Miramax president Harvey Weinstein to go on the record about his sexual abuse, it neglects to answer many questions the viewer is bound to have as the revelations unfold. One of the story’s precepts is the understanding that sexual exploitation, if not abuse, has been a tacitly acknowledged part of the Hollywood myth-making machine ever since it came into being, but exactly why it came to the fore so suddenly and powerfully at the time it did is left to the viewer’s imagination. The movie, as directed by Maria Schrader, gives the impression that it was the patient and empathetic efforts by Twohey and Kantor (played by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan), two women who knew exactly where these victims were coming from, that made the difference (the script gives cursory credit to Ronan Farrow’s similar and concurrent coverage of the matter for The New Yorker). 

Consequently, the tone is a bit different from other journalistic thrillers: more even-handed, less melodramatic. It’s easy to infer that Schrader and Lenkiewicz were being overly cautious with such a fraught subject, but, actually, it seems to have more to do with how they characterize the corporate culture of the New York Times, which comes off as the most seriously considerate workplace in the world. Outside its hallowed offices, Twohey and Kantor encounter all sorts of ambient sexism and social censure—Twohey, who is suffering from post-partum depression for much of the early part of the movie, is hit on by a particularly aggressive asshole in a restaurant—while within the realm of the Grey Lady they receive nothing but unconditional support from their editors, Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson) and Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher), not to mention the various staff reporters who are only too happy to aid their mission. 

Since most of the running time consists of the two reporters carefully negotiating with sources for both information and their consent to going on the record, there’s very little intrigue, but while the movie doesn’t drag, it does open the viewer’s mind to the abovementioned questions, such as, How did this systemic abuse manifest itself so thoroughly at Miramax without any pushback from management level staff and the male filmmakers they worked with, and How widespread is it throughout the industry? Moreover, why hadn’t the mainstream press picked up on it much earlier? (It should be noted that the Times felt it was OK to pursue Weinstein because of the recent precedent of the Fox News-Bill O’Reilly case.) Of course, we can guess the answers and are encouraged to, but Schrader’s rigor in making sure the movie only adheres to the record Twohey and Kantor developed gives the overall experience of watching it a limited appeal. Perhaps it was impossible to take in the whole issue comprehensively, but the movie feels a little too cautious and pleased with itself. The ending catharsis is real but premature, since the problem is still at large. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

She Said home page in Japanese

photo (c) Universal Studios

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Media watch: Is Japan bankrupting itself just to make the U.S. happy?

Posted on January 11, 2023 by philipbrasor
Aegis Ashore system

We’ve already written about the huge amount of money that Japan plans to spend for defense in the coming years. We’ve also written about how Japan will acquire all the new hardware it says it needs. What we didn’t write about—at least not in detail—is how Japan seems to have been suckered into buying all this stuff from the U.S. government under provisions that are disadvantageous to Japan. 

All this equipment and weapons that Japan has pledged to buy in order to bring its defense capabilities in line with NATO countries will be supplied by the U.S. under its Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. Under FMS, the purchasing country does not buy military equipment from the manufacturer, but rather from the U.S. government itself. And the U.S. government adds a margin to the prices charged by the manufacturer as if it were a wholesaler. The purchasing countries, in principle, cannot haggle over this price. They have to pay what the U.S. charges. The ostensible reason for this middle man tactic is that the equipment often contains parts that are classified, and so the U.S. government has to check them. 

According to national security journalist Shigeru Handa, during a recent radio interview on the show Rojo no Rajio, Japan has questioned neither this system of transaction nor the demands of the U.S. as to what Japan should buy. Moreover, Japan must follow onerous loan terms when purchasing this equipment. 

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Media watch: You can’t pay people to have kids

Posted on January 8, 2023 by philipbrasor

On Jan. 4 during his New Year’s press conference, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed to implement measures to increase Japan’s low birth rate. In 2022, the number of babies born in Japan went below 800,000 for the first time, and Kishida said that the “problem” cannot be “neglected any longer.” Most of the countermeasures he mentioned are economical in nature: reinforce or increase the child allowance, provide after-school childcare services, give more government support for ailing children and post-natal care for mothers, and promote a more amenable work-life balance for working women who have children (no mention was made of doing the same for working men with children). 

Though Kishida tried to make it sound as if these steps were “bold” and “unprecedented” (“ijigen,” an odd word that literally means “of a different dimension”), they really aren’t. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike also recently announced she would approve an extra monthly allowance for children. When the government has tried to do something in the past to raise the birth rate, which has been low since the 1980s (though not as low as it presently is in other East Asian countries and Taiwan), they’ve thrown money at the problem, which sounds logical since many couples have said they can’t afford children or can’t afford more children. But so far nothing has made a difference, so throwing money more “boldly” at the problem probably won’t make a difference, either.

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