Bashing, Masahiro Kobayashi, Japan (2005)

From four time Cannes afficiondo Masahiro Kobayashi comes a film about a Japanese journalist held hostage in Iraq who returns home only to meet the scorn of her people. Coming to terms with the confinements of her upbringing in this brutal ostracization, she longs to return to the Middle East where she feels her life had meaning for the first time.

The film evokes cross cultural references to hostage situations. In the case of Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's believes that hostages get what they deserve unlike Italian Prime minister Silvio Berlosconi who has apparently even paid ransom to get Italian residents home. The question is, what happens to them when they get home? That is the subject of this film. The film zeroes in on the role of the Japanese media where right wing journalists echo the sentiments of the prime minister, even accusing the hostages of being Marxists, which in turn kindles mass consensus that hostages are suspect and weak and do not deserve sympathy.

Kobayashi explained the intracacies of why this phenomenon is common in his country: "Japan is a village society. If one of the villagers steps out of line, he is the victim of massive ostracism, an outcast. When the hostage-takings occurred in Iraq, the victims' families suffered in isolation for a matter of collective responsibility."

To this one must add that the Japanese woman is particularly chastised for stepping out of her conventional role. The film allows the xenophobia of the Japanese culture to be taken to task. Kobayashi claims fear of outsiders extends from the way people are treated in Japan as foreigners, for example volunteers doing emergency rescue work after earthquakes, who are regarded suspiciously - to Japanese returning from foreign cultures. Even Japanese who volunteer to help humanitarian causes abroad are ostracized.

The director revealed that his friends were concerned for him and asked him to not make Bashing claiming “it was dangerous”. “I did have problems getting together the film”, admitted Kobayashi. As for the source of his inspiration he revealed that the genesis of the film came about during “a period of great stress and disatisfaction with the society around me”. The character of the journalist, “Yuko”, “ could express the feelings inside me”., he said.

Kobayashi denied that a current bestseller in Japan on a hostage inspired the film, but had read the book and even changed some minor parts of the story. The novel was inspired by a situation last year where three civilians were taken hostage in Iraq: Nahoko Takato, a volunteer aid worker helping to organize medical supplies, free lance writer Noriaki Imai and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama. Their abductors sent images of the bound and gagged hostages with the threat: “Withdraw your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters”. When the hostages were later released and sent back to Japan, they were met at the airport by people carrying signs: "You are Japan's shame". The government in fact made them pay their airfare home.

“The subject of bashing by media who ignore me” was Kobayashi's central concern. “The script came out of my imagination”, said the director. Experiencing a “life in a world of Japanese cinema relegated to the sidelines, the book depicted many things I felt myself".

Actor Fusako Urabe who plays the photojournalist Yuko felt that despite harassment the situation allows her character to “build up inner strength.”. Actor Nene Otsuko who plays the character of Yuko’s stepmother at first can not understand Yoko but later identifies with her. When asked about a present situation involving a Japanese hostage in Iraq, Otsuko challenged the question, claiming that hostages are not the purpose of film topic, but harassment of victims when they return to country. Otsuko claims the film describes Yuko’s feelings and how she doesn't understand she is the object of harassment of society. “It’s a human film, not a controversy".

As such Bashing is one of the contenders for the prestigious Palme d'Or.



Moira Sullivan