“This is a national issue”: Yoji Yamada calls on Japan government to support film

Veteran director Yoji Yamada called for more government support for Japanese filmmaking during a wide-ranging talk with Kokuho director Lee Sang-il at Tokyo International Film Festival today (October 30).

“It has been 70 years since I entered the industry,” said the 94 year-old director, known for the Toro-san series of films and acclaimed 2012 feature The Twilight Samurai. “Japanese cinema was bountiful back then, with films like The Seven Samurai and Tokyo Story, and because neither China nor South Korea were making proper cinema, Japan was Asia’s leading cinema nation.

“Seeing the advances of South Korea and China over the past 60 to 70 years, we must do something. The government must seriously consider this as a national issue. South Korean cinema has become so bountiful because it receives serious state support.”

Lee, whose kabuki-themed drama Kokuho is this year’s highest-grossing live-action Japanese film to date, highlighted the need to develop features that could match the popularity of anime – the dominant force at the local box office.

“[Japan’s] live-action films are far behind animation,” he said. “We live-action directors need to carefully consider analysing the structure [of anime films] and incorporate their elements.”

The structure of Kokuho was also discussed during the conversion, held as part of the TIFF Lounge series of filmmaker-on-filmmaker sessions at the festival. Based on a decade-spanning novel about a family of kabuki actors by Shuichi Yoshida, the film is nearly three hours, but Lee revealed that the initial edit clocked in at four-and–ahalf. Despite the long runtime, he said, he had to drop many subplots and side characters in order to fit the story into a film.

“It could’ve easily been a 10-hour series, but I always wanted people to see it on the big screen,” said Lee, adding that he trusted the audience to infer what had happened to various characters in the jumps between time periods.

The film, which premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, has taken $108m (¥16.6bn) locally since opening on June 6 and looks likely to surpass 2003’s Bayside Shakedown 2 as Japan’s highest-grossing live-action film of all time.

Uniquely Japanese

Yamada has directed 91 films to date and his latest, Tokyo Taxi, played as the TIFF Centrepiece title at this year’s festival, when he also accepted a lifetime achievement award.

The film, starring Takuya Kimura and Chieko Baisho, is an adaptation of 2022 French feature Driving Madeleine. The director said he deliberately added elements to the story to make it uniquely Japanese, including a scene in which Kimura’s character prepares natto, a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans.

“Just last year, Kimura played a top French chef so seeing him prepare this simple Japanese dish was pretty funny,” said Yamada, referring to his performance in Grande Maison Paris. He also remarked that Kimura, a star in Japan since his teens, was always on set long before and after his own scenes. “That’s not the case for most huge stars. He’s quite a man,” said Yamada.

Despite Yamada’s decades of experience, he was full of questions for the younger director, often demurring when asked about his own film to ask about how certain scenes in Kokuho were filmed, how actors were chosen, and how many extras were assembled for the largest crowd scene, of which the answer was “about 500”.

Lee, meanwhile, demonstrated his obvious respect for Yamada, and said that if the film industry had its own kokuho – national living treasures – Yamada would certainly be one. He also asked why the veteran director always stands as close as possible to the camera during takes rather than at the video monitor, unlike many modern directors.

“It’s important to show the actors that I’m watching them,” replied Yamada. “Actors pay a lot of attention to two things – the lens and the director. If I were an actor, I don’t think I’d like it if the director were far away.”

Looking ahead to Kokuho’s release in North America, where it will play in Los Angeles and New York in November before a wide release early next year, as well as its potential nomination for an Academy Award, Lee said that “films that tend to be nominated for awards are ones a with strong auteurist touch, while ours is a combination of auteurism and entertainment, so I’m looking forward to the reaction.”

• Japanese IP expert Tetsu Fujimura reveals boom in global film and TV adaptations