Tag: Yoshio Kataoka
His Motorbike, Her Island (彼のオートバイ彼女の島, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
June 21, 2016 March 10, 2017 by Hayley Scanlon 1 Comment
Like many directors during the 1980s, Nobuhiko Obayashi was unable to resist the lure of a Kadokawa teen movie but His Motorbike, Her Island (彼のオートバイ彼女の島, Kare no Ootobai, Kanojo no Shima) is a typically strange 1950s throwback with its tale of motorcycle loving youngsters and their ennui filled days. Switching between black and white and colour, Obayashi paints a picture of a young man trapped in an eternal summer from which he has no desire to escape.
Ko (Riki Takeuchi) tells us that he's an unusual guy because most people dream in colour but all of his dreams are in monochrome. He's a student and dispatch rider overly attached to his admittedly very handsome Kawasaki motorbike. After getting beaten up by his boss due to deflowering the guy's sister and then breaking her heart, Ko skips town for the open road, just him and his bike. However, he repeatedly runs into the same mysterious girl who lives on an equally mysterious island and develops a deep seated need for her, secondary only to that for his bike. Miyo (Kiwako Harada) has also taken a liking to the Kawasaki and is intent on getting her full motorcycle license. Her growing obsession with the bike threatens to become an all consuming need driving a wedge between the two young lovers.
Obayashi begins in a black and white sequence window boxed in the centre of the screen before expanding to 4:3 when Ko has his fight with his boss and only hits 16:9 for the first colour scene which sees Ko taking off on his beloved bike. He told us that his dreams are in black and white but the film seems to disagree with him, segueing into various gradated colour schemes as Ko narrates his melancholy tale of tragic lost love. Ko is not necessarily a very reliable narrator in any case, but in each instance the on screen action is always coloured by the recollections of the older man who offers his voice over commentary.
Like many Obayashi films, the overriding feeling is one of melancholy mixed with a youthful apathy. This is a story about modern young people, but refracted through rebellious '50s movies from Rebel Without a Cause to The Wild One and a hundred others inbetween. Ko is a university student (of what we don't know) but seems to have no great ambitions. He takes things as he finds them and his only passion is the bike itself. When he first meets Miyo and she asks him where he's going, he simply replies that he's "looking for the wind" – a motif which recurs throughout the film.
Later on when he arrives at Miyo's island, it takes on an opposing symbolism to his bike. Just as Miyo can't get enough of the Kawasaki, Ko is originally attracted to the island much more than to the girl. It's not quite a coincidence that each time he visits there it's the Bon festival where the dead are temporarily allowed to return to the world of the living. Later he says that Miyo wasn't just a girl but an island, and he wan't just a boy but a bike, and together the two of them became the wind. They became one entity, inseparable one from the other. Finally the esoteric colour scheme begins to make sense, we've been watching a ghost story all along. This island is an unreal place, existing only inside Ko's memory where Miyo waits for him with a full tank of gas.
Once again youth is seen as a brief yet unforgettable period filled with longing and regret. The older man is forever trapped by this one glorious summer, a place to which he can never return but neither can he escape. The nihilistic tone and voice over narration have an edge of the French New Wave but '50s American cinema of alienation seems closer to Obayashi's intentions. An elliptical and strange tale of tragic love retold as a ghost story, filled with phantoms of memory and landscapes coloured by dream and emotion, His Motorbike, Her Island is another characteristically offbeat effort from Obayashi which once again embraces the aimlessness of youth and age's regret.
Unsubtitled trailer – goes through to a video of Kiwako Harada singing the title song, in case you were in any doubt what this movie is for.
Or, here is the film's opening (which also features the title song)
Posted in JapanTagged 1980s, 1986, book to film, Hikaru Ishikawa, idol, idol movie, Ikuo Sekimoto, Ittoku Kishibe, Japan, Japanese, Kadokawa, Kadokawa idol movie, Kadokawa teen movie, Kiwako Harada, Kiyohiko Ozaki, Koji Naka, Nenji Kobayashi, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Noriko Watanabe, Riki Takeuchi, Ryoichi Takayanagi, Shigeru Izumiya, Takahiro Tamura, Tomokazu Miura, Toru Minegishi, Toshie Negishi, Yoshio Kataoka, Yoshitaka Sakamoto
Main Theme (メイン・テーマ, Yoshimitsu Morita, 1984)
February 18, 2016 March 10, 2017 by Hayley Scanlon 3 Comments
Despite being one of the most prolific directors of the '80s and '90s, the work of Yoshimitsu Morita has not often travelled extensively overseas. Though frequently appearing at high profile international film festivals, few of Morita's films have been released outside of Japan and largely he's still best remembered for his hugely influential (and oft re-visited) 1983 black comedy, The Family Game. In part, this has to be down to Morita's own zigzagging career which saw him mixing arthouse aesthetics with more populist projects. Main Theme is definitely in the latter category and is one of the many commercial teen idol vehicles he tackled in the 1980s.
A tale of two intersecting love stories, Main Theme begins with nursery nurse Shibuki getting close to the father of one of her pupils, Omaezaki, who will shortly be transferred to Osaka. Omaezaki also has a long running thing with a cabaret jazz singer, Kayoko, which seems to be a messy situation to begin with. Shibuki then ends up running into magician with a pick-up truck Ken who drives her to Osaka where she's set to meet up with Omaezaki to become some kind of nanny living with him and his wife. En route, the pair pick up Kayako little knowing of her relationship with Omaezaki. Eventually, everyone ends up in Okinawa where Ken lives and Shibuki has an older sister each hoping to sort out their romantic difficulties under the blue island skies.
Main Theme stars popular idol of the time Hiroko Yakushimaru (star of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun) and is, unsurprisingly, centred around her chart topping song of the same name. A neat, new Japanese arrangement of the classic jazz standard Sway, the song fits neatly into the movie's soundtrack which also features a number of other jazz hits such as The Man I Love and most notably Bei Mir Bistu Shein (or Shoen, or Shön depending on which version you're looking at) courtesy of our cabaret singer (and her rivals) but being an '80s movie there's still a bit of pop synth in there too though our central couple do seem to have oddly sophisticated tastes.
Though it is, as it's intended to be, a teen romantic comedy, Morita tries (not entirely successfully) to put a little more substance into the background by also showing us the unhappy romance of middle-aged jazz singer Kayoko and the non-committal Omaezaki. It seems the pair have had an entailment probably stemming back years, perhaps even before Omaezaki's marriage. Mrs. Omaezaki is a fairly ditzy and neurotic woman who loves shopping and seems to be more interested in the appearance of things than the reality. The status of the marriage itself is difficult to discern and it's not quite clear if Omaezaki's problem is a lack of will to leave his wife or that he's already "left" and is trying to find a way to support her. In any case, introducing Shibuki, a 19yr old with an obvious crush on him, to the household is not one of his better ideas.
Needless to say, Ken also ends up forming an attraction to the older, melancholy musician who doesn't seem to know what it is she wants (or knows but chooses to run away from it) leaving us in an odd kind of love square with the couples really each wanting their age appropriate partners but getting distracted by foolish dalliances with age and youth respectively. It does feel as if Morita could have made more of this dramatically interesting idea as Kayoko in particular is drawn in by Ken's youthful innocence, but this isn't what the film is for so it remains an intriguing yet perverse addition to the film's otherwise straightforward narrative.
The "perversity" or strangeness of the film doesn't end there as Morita has also added a number of quirky, absurd touches to offset the flatness of the teenage love drama. Perhaps because he's a magician we get these odd flashes of Ken where he's suddenly got crazy eyebrows (just for one 15 second shot) or crazy hair and there's another charming scene where he's pulling artificial flowers out of his suit only to have the magic bouquet suddenly droop as his heart starts to break. In another intriguing trope there's also a strange illustrated map which lead's Shibuki to her sister's house by outlining common scenes from the area and when she gets there the gates are covered in light up ornamental tropical fruits. Add to this that the backing behind Kayoko's final cabaret reads "Bates Motel Live" and there's definitely a very strange mind behind the production design on this run of the mill, idol pop pushing rom-com.
Undoubtedly of its time, there is probably a reason Main Theme has not proved a big overseas hit though it seems to have been massively popular at the time and is fondly remembered for nostalgic reasons even if not particularly well regarded today. This is perhaps how the film is best approached – as a monument of its times and as a prime example of the 80s idol dramas studios such as Kadokawa put out to push their inoffensive pop music. However, Morita does add his own quirky touches to the film which does provide its fair share of youthful fun even if it isn't always successful.
Unsubtitled trailer:
And a more recent version of Hiroko Yakushimaru singing the title song:
Posted in JapanTagged 1980s, 1984, book to film, Hiroko Yakushimaru, Hiromi Ohta, Hironobu Nomura, Ichiro Ogura, idol, idol movie, Japan, Japanese, Jun Hamamura, Jun Togawa, Kadokawa, Kadokawa idol movie, Kaori Momoi, Kazuo Zaitsu, Keiko Yumi, Machiko Watanabe, Masao Komatsu, Masataka Matsutouya, Michio Hisauchi, Nami Matsukawa, Ryoko Watanabe, Ryuichiro Hosokawa, teen, Yonezo Maeda, Yoshihiro Kato, Yoshimitsu Morita, Yoshio Kataoka