Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase is one of the most important voices of contemporary East-Asian cinema. Consistently present on the Croisette, her films – which are both fiction features and documentary diary-films – mostly approach the way various types of affective relationships are forged between people who don’t seem to have much in common: be it friendships or Ersatz family ties, in the cases of characters who have a weak or otherwise inexistent relationship to their biological relatives; an approach that is partially informed by the director’s biography, as she grew up in an adoptive family.

Her latest feature film, True Mothers, was selected under this year’s Cannes Label and follows the adoption story of a young boy, Asato – both from the perspective of his adoptive mother, Satoko, whose husband is infertile, as well as his biological mother, Hikari, a teen that faces an unplanned pregnancy. The film screened at this year’s edition of Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, so we took the opportunity to take an interview of Ms. Kawase through correspondence, discussing True Mothers and the central leitmotifs of her works.

What attracted you to the topic of the film – meaning, the adoption process for new-born children as seen from both sides in question? And what made you take a more socially-rooted approach to the problem, in which you explore the complex net of social consequences and circumstances that weigh on young women, in contrast to, let’s say, a purely apolitical and light teen flick like Juno (dir. Jason Reitman, 2007)?

The film is, in fact, based on a book. One of the topics of this book is that of adoption, and that is where I inspired myself for the topic of the film.

In general, Japan is seen as a developed country, and so people from foreign countries imagine that the standard of living is stable and that people live in a society that offers safety and mental security. However, there is also a world in which people such as Hikari fall into, the margins of society. Up until now, my work has been focused on shining a spotlight on the lives of such people, people who permanently live in the shadows.

True Mothers, which has just been released in Japanese cinemas, has already had, in fact, a considerable social impact, and people are starting to become aware of the government structures and support groups that help save these young mothers. Many voices support using the film as a learning material in schools and other educational environments.

You pay a subtle homage to Kurosawa’s Rashomon in the formal construction of the film’s narrative – there are several encounters which are reprised from the character’s different perspectives, giving new meaning and intention to these scenes, but also offering new details and perspectives on the whole. What informed this approach?

The most important thing in the case of this film was to depict how the lives of Satoko and Hikari are intersecting. If I had failed to do that, the story would have been quite tepid and boring. And I, for one, am bored by excessive usages of the so-called flashback technique, which has become somewhat of a stereotype. Therefore, I wanted the film to concentrate on telling the present-time story, and everything that relates to the past is expressed through the characters’ memories. In other words, the scenes from the past reflect the characters’ inner expression and they don’t contribute to the progression of the plot. As such, the camera uses shots that are sometimes rather indefinite, just like memories unfold in our minds every day.

At the same time – I couldn’t help but feel that the viewer is, in fact, in the position of Asato, as he finally finds out what the conflicting truths behind his heritage are. To me, he’s the conscience of the film, just as in Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2002), Yang-Yang is both the viewers’ and the director’s avatar. Is this also the case in True Mothers, considering your particular background?

Yes, that is right. The viewer, meaning the child they used to be, sometimes has no other option than to read things through the eye of an adult. I designed the story in a way that would sublimate it into the shape of Asato’s gaze, which would then be taken on by the audience, and in the end, after they have watched the film, they can finally discover the “light”, just as I did. [editor’s note: the name Hikari means light]

There is an interesting shift of perspective at the mid-way point of the film, which is reprised at the end of Hikari’s stay on the island: that is, a subjective view of a cameraman that is filming a reportage on the island where the Baby Baton mother sanctuary is located, and then, what seems to be a video journal shot by Hikari. Could you talk to us a little bit more about this choice? Does it have to do with your early praxis in autobiographical non-fiction cinema, such as Katatsumori or Embracing?

You’re right. In this case, I adopted a work method that originates from the autobiographical documentaries in the beginning of my career. And for me, creating a film is akin to living another life.

The camera’s eye allows you to tell your own story, which is like opening a new door in your life, which reveals your existence in this world. I see this as a way to enrich your real life. On the other hand, I couldn’t fully rely on this technique, because this is a fiction film, and its primary goal was to tell the stories of Hikari and Satoko, as well as the story of Ms. Asami, from the Baby Baton sanctuary. That’s when I decided to use this reportage technique to tell the real story of the sanctuary, because the people that were living there in real life wanted their stories to be told. I inserted this paradox – a non-fictional story that lives in the middle of a fictional one, and wanted to test myself with this interplay.

I believed that the story (fiction) that resulted from these techniques could have a profound effect on the lives of the audience as if it were reality (documentary). And I wanted to challenge myself to create such a film.

Nature always plays a big role in your films, both in regards to the character’s relation to natural spaces and elements, but also technically – as many connecting/establishing shots are constructed with inserts of trees, foliage, the sea, and so on. Which is also available for the characters themselves: from their affinities to nature (not just here, but also in Sweet Bean) to their very names – Hikari can be translated to “light”. What compels you to always include these elements in your films?

Nature is something that lies above humans.

Us, humans, have ended up damaging nature and destroying ecosystems for our own comfort, and have thus managed to exhaust the very planet on which we live. I think that it’s time for us to realize how precious it is to have the gift of living on this beautiful planet. Even though my powers are limited, I wanted as many people as possible to know the beauty of this world through the images in my films, and to realize that it’s not eternal, and so, in my work, I always treat nature like another character in the film, to which I have always paid respect.

The vast majority of your films gravitate around the topic of how various (mostly platonic) affective relationships are forged between individuals, starting from various configurations and circumstances, sometimes even transgressing certain limits or various taboos. It’s a message that, in times of such intense solitude and social unrest like the ones we have been living in the past months, seems all the more important to convey nowadays. Where do you find the beauty in how people come close to one another and how do you translate it into cinema? (And where can we, the spectators, also begin to find it?)

People have the ability to believe in “fabrications”, and so, certain currents and groups have gained much power over their fellow men. And that is why the fact of experiencing culture and art in an unmediated fashion makes us feel truly alive, beyond our daily lives. We are living in an age where the situation has forced us to separate from other people, but the newly-created ways in which we can experience art online has doubtlessly saved us from our longing for others and loneliness. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the day we will be able to interact across borders and cultures directly, and not through a screen, will soon arrive. 

I think that one of the things that we have started to understand in these times is that the reality we took as perfectly normal – like, for example, traveling from one country to the other – is not something that has always been available, but rather the opposite, it’s the result of an effort that someone made at a certain point in time. Just as history has shown us in the past, at the end of each tunnel that separates us, humans will discover the “light”, and that is what I think is going to happen at the end of this period. But to be able to discover this light, it’s not enough for us to simply satisfy our egoistic desires, but also to embark on a journey to discover the others that we hold within ourselves.

Finding the „you” in „me”.

„I” am, just as you guessed, another one of the characters on the screen, and I wish to continue working with reality to create films.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.