Newsletter No. 1428
News-Analysis
August 2, 2009

 

JAPANESE FILMMAKER REFLECTS ON LIFE, ETHICS, AND AFGHAN TIES

The Mainichi Shinbun published a feature today which may be worthy of our attention. The story concerns an elderly Japanese filmmaker named Rentaro Mikuni and footage he shot in Afghanistan in 1972. The piece says that this footage is being developed into a film that will be completed later this year.

It is unclear how much this film will relate to Japan-Afghan relations, as the filmmaker seems much more interested in existential questions relating to humanity as a whole. On the other hand, it does signify an episode of Japanese interactions with Afghanistan before the July 1973 Kabul coup, which led to the many years of tragedy that followed. Also, it is a testament to the Japanese interest in the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Finally, Mr. Mikuni has some pronounced views about the significance of Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution, which are based on his own life experience. His kind of view has largely been suppressed within the elite debates in recent years.

Recently-Discovered Afghanistan Footage Speaks Strongly
Rentaro Mikuni interviewed by Tetsuko Yoshida
Mainichi Shinbun
August 2, 2009

In the vast crimson wastelands of Afghanistan, a Japanese man walks with a young Afghani boy, searching for their own lost utopia. The man, playing a doctor losing his son to disease, is Rentaro Mikuni -- a renowned Japanese actor who has appeared in over 200 films and TV dramas, and now at age 86 is still eager to carry on his profession. The scene is from an unfinished film that he directed in Afghanistan in 1972, the footage of which was recently discovered in Tokyo.

Mikuni is now trying to put the pieces of 5 1/2-hour-long footage together, recalling the danger-fraught days of shooting under the blazing sun in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The film -- titled "Kishi no Nai Kawa" (The Endless Stream) -- will be completed later this year, and the director hopes it will provide a clue to his long-held questions about the meaning of life that lured him into a soul-searching journey of filmmaking.

"Before I shot this film, I was dead broke, living in a rented house and deserting my wife and son," recalled Mikuni during a recent interview with the Mainichi. "I was around 49 or 50 then. I guess human beings come to reflect on themselves at one point of their life, pondering where they originally come from, and I think I was just at that stage."

Ironically, the young Afghani boy called Nabi, who played the role of an orphan named Mehdi in the film, was aged at 12 at the time -- the same age as the son Mikuni left behind in Japan. His estranged son Koichi Sato eventually followed the footsteps of his father, becoming one of the leading actors in Japan.

"First of all, I want to show the film to my son, who is now about the same age that I was when I shot it," said Mikuni. "Then, I want to show it to many people as well, especially the younger generation, so that they can realize what they should do for those to come. It's not that I have realized it myself, but I shot the film because I was about to realize it."

Mikuni doesn't talk much about the details of the film -- his second ever as a director -- but believes the film has an important meaning for modern times.

"I shot the film a long time ago, but since then, I've felt that we are experiencing some enormous pressure that we cannot see, a force that is geared toward the wrong direction. I hope screening the film at this crucial time will convey various messages: I believe it can provide the human warmness, or even social awareness, that's missing in the present era," says Mikuni.

Born in Gunma Prefecture in 1923, Mikuni was deployed to China during World War II, after his desperate attempts to dodge the draft failed.

"Of course, the experience of war is a major part of my memories from my youth, but I found it meaningless to every individual involved. I even wonder what in the world their sacrifices were for. But in the meantime, I also find it's a sort of 'karma' or 'emptiness' that human beings tend to repeat over and over again. It even makes me question what the battle for survival is all about… For me, war is an experience, but I wonder why people don't realize how they're blinded to mass murder when it's justified by a cause," he said.

As someone who survived the war while many comrades in arms fell on the battleground, and who after the war made an acting debut in the early 1950s, Mikuni has tried to convey his hopes for peace through his acting -- whose works range from the suspense film "Kiga Kaikyo" (1965) to the recent comedy serial "Tsuribaka Nisshi" -- and has put a great value on the Japanese Constitution's pacifist Article 9.

"Article 9 is a social imperative that was built on the flesh and blood of the many people who were sacrificed (in the war). To let such a social imperative fall apart is a serious crime committed by people today who disregard that sacrifice… I'm not a scholar, so I'm not sure if I understand the provisions correctly, but if there are people who try to monopolize specific interests by seeking loopholes in the text (of Article 9), I would call them criminals to human society," Mikuni said.

The film's shooting locations extended from Karachi in Pakistan to Kabul and Kandahar in Afghanistan, including near the gigantic Buddhist monuments in Bamiyan -- nearly 30 years before they were destroyed by the Taliban.

"Throughout Asia prevails the influence of Buddhism. Buddhism teaches us to live for the sake of a large indefinite number of people, and in order to propagate the teaching, the 50-meter-high monument was built in Afghanistan," says Mikuni. "Destroying the Buddha's images means that human beings have returned to the primitive state. I guess those monuments can eventually be restored some day, but it may take hundreds of years, or perhaps even a thousand years. It was one of the major incidents that overturned human history," he said.

Mikuni's interest in Buddhism resurfaced in another film he directed, titled "Shinran: Shiroi Michi" (Shinran: Path to Purity), which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1987.

For Mikuni, what does the title of the 1972 film, "Kishi no Nai Kawa" -- which literally means "a river without banks" in Japanese -- mean?

"Riverbanks represent reason and something close to human ethics. If they are missing, a river gets flooded, bringing about many casualties. But while banks are supposed to prevent a river from flooding, I think they entail other negative effects. Fundamentally, I think banks are not necessary. They are an ultimate absurdity," Mikuni said.

"Can you tell who takes the responsibility for the sacrifices that were paid to build the riverbanks? Those who are successful don't care about the sacrifices, but only think about the enormous profits they would gain. To me, it seems as if everyone is living on human flesh to become affluent. I don't know much about the theory of socialism or capitalism, but I believe capitalism is about redistribution. There must be individual responsibility for redistribution, which seems to be lacking in human society today."

Over the past years, Mikuni hoped to be reunited with the young Afghani co-actor, but has no idea where he is living now. Mikuni's yearning to see him again recently brought him to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tokyo to ask the ambassador for help in finding him.

By the time a documentary TV program chronicling the process of editing the film for possible completion is broadcast by WOWOW sometime in October, Mikuni hopes to finally locate his co-actor, whom he felt as if his another son.