That is how the ride goes…

Tokyo Vice (Miniseries)

2 Seasons, 18 Episodes

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/tokyo_vice

I don't know why, but watching this miniseries reminded me of President Xi Jinping's recent visit to Southeast Asian countries. Everyone had much to say about Xi in private regarding the CCP's megalomaniac and imposing projects. Still, when the big Don landed in their backyard, leaders from these minion nations decided to hide their tails behind their hind legs and play dead. No one can blame them. This is the effect a powerful nation has on smaller ones. It happened in ancient times and continues to happen now. Might is right.

When the majestic fleet of the Ming Dynasty emperor came to the Malaccan shores in the 1400s, the Sultan had no choice but to send his emissaries to China with gifts. When the Siamese King showed displeasure, another entourage would go there with gifts and beautiful princesses to solidify international relations.

Intertwined with physical might are the potent forces of wealth and political office, with a recent addition being the capacity to influence public opinion. The power of propaganda cannot be overstated. In this modern world, where news travels faster than both light and sound combined, those who control the news literally control the revolutions of the planet!

This miniseries is based on Jake Adelstein's book of the same name, subtitled "An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan." Jake worked as an apprentice journalist at Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's premier newspapers. He studied Japanese Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo, a Jesuit-sponsored institution. He was the newspaper's first non-Japanese reporter.

The book narrates his observations as an American looking at the working culture, working environment and his experiences reporting on criminal cases around Tokyo. He shadowed a police officer and was exposed to the down low of the running of the yakuza activities and the precarious understanding that they and the police foster. The yakuza are a necessary evil in Japanese society. Peace is maintained when different gangs have a sense to respect each other's boundaries and not to step on each other's toes.

The yakuza have intricate connections in all layers of society, including the police, politicians, and the media. What is reported in the press for general consumption is generally agreed upon by all factions above. Those in power justify suppressing the truth by citing national security and the need to maintain public order.

A similar scenario also occurs in Malaysia. Many of my schoolmates, who have since retired from active journalism, have much to say about the murmurs surrounding major breaking news that erupts frequently. Fearing the repercussions of breaching the disclosure clauses in their employment contracts, they would remain silent during conversations. Having interacted with them since childhood, I could see that their words were on the tip of their tongues, eager to burst out, but did not.

Jake's report about a well-known yakuza boss allegedly making a deal with the FBI in exchange for a liver transplant in the USA landed him in a great deal of trouble. Intertwined in the plot is another gaijin (a foreigner in Japanese), the American daughter of an evangelist who flees home to start a new life as a hostess, a modern version of a geisha. In this context, a hostess is someone who serves drinks, engages in conversation, and sits at tables in a bar or high-end restaurant. It is strictly non-contact entertainment. They make money through patrons' tips and from the owners of the establishment based on the number of drinks clients purchase.

I am grateful to SA for recommending this engaging miniseries to me. It helped me understand the subtle balance between vice, criminal activities, police work, and conducting business in the modern world. Much like a peacekeeping conduit, politicians play the role of middlemen, striking a balance between allowing gangsters to operate and keeping the police guessing their next move. They aim for a win-win situation where the bad guys (the yakuza, in this instance) exert their control over the public, politicians continue to disguise themselves while profiting, and the general public believes that their lives are improving. In reality, people are being taken advantage of while everyone else gets richer at the expense of the general public.

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In the land of make believe!

Spirited Away (2001)

Written and Directed: Hayao Miyazaki

All through our childhood, my sisters and I had been watching manga without manga was referred to as so. It was then just Japanese cartoon, with characters having big round eyes, cute demeanour and screechy loud voices.

Later, Japanese cartoons developed into separate entities grew wings and started telling more mature stories and themes. The written graphic form became known as manga, and animated forms that appear in games and films are known as anime.

I was recently introduced to Japan's eminent cult figure in the field of animation and direction, Hayao Miyazaki. His film ‘Spirited Away’ has been hailed as Japan's highest-grossing movie for 29 years. It also won the Oscar at the 2022 Best Animated Feature Film. BBC listed it in its 100 greatest films of the 21st century.

Partnered with Disney, this film infiltrated the four corners of the globe. Thanks to the vibrant colours, creative storytelling, and interesting characters, it looks like Alice in Wonderland on steroids. A lost girl, Chihiro, is in a weird world, only to be helped by many characters with Shinto-Buddhist backgrounds around her. She ends up saving the day and learning many valuable life lessons.

One of the reasons to live is to immerse yourself in a land of make-believe.

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The spirit of the black cat...

Kuroneko (@ Black Cat, Japanese; 1968)

Director: Kaneto Shindō

Thinking about it, primitive societies of yesteryears were run mainly by female tribe members. The male members were mostly out of the scene most of the time. Some may have been out hunting for food during their caveman days. In more civil societies, when aristocracy ruled the day, the male members needed to do their national services. Many left for months or even years together to fight wars. Children mostly grow up with absent fathers. Wives led the pack in their day-to-day running of the family unit. Men were left to make many life-changing decisions like defence, security, foreign relations and food security.

Guarding the household is no small feat. Nature is very unwelcoming and hostile. Torrential rains, storms, extreme temperatures and wild beasts frequently harass their abode. So, the female species was not as fragile as modern man had made them out to be. They are actually more robust than the world credits them to be.

Both sexes had their respective roles laid out. Both factions must diligently carry out their roles for a society to continue. No one's role was superior to the other. 

When specific communities encourage men to wed more than one partner, it is not so much for carnal pleasures as for the continuity of species. Infant mortality was high, and people had short life spans. At a time when might is strength by the numbers, an extra pair of hands meant better defence and help running the household chores. 

Much like in Onibaba (1964), the villages are left to be manned by the women, as the men have all gone off to fight in local wars. After all, it was the pre-Meiji restoration of the Samurai era. Men all to bring home loot from the wars or at least bask in the glory of attaining 'samurai-hood'. Samurais carry a particular holding in society. 

A mother and daughter-in-law duo are seen eating their meal. Their dinner is ceremonially trespassed by a group of renegade samurai. They eat their dinner, rape the women, kill them and burn down the raggedy hut. A black cat licks their bodies. The spirits of the dead women come in the form of black cats to avenge every samurai that comes their way. Long story short, the husband/son of the deceased returns after the war, ordained as a samurai. He is sent to hunt down the ghost of the duo, unbeknownst to him their identity.

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Part of the company you keep!

Onibaba (Japanese, 1964)
Director: Kaneto Shindō

Many stories tell us to be wary of the company we keep with. Like how Amma frequently reminds us, a calf, if it moves around with piglets, will eventually join the piglets and source its daily meals from the rubbish dump. An animal, placed high in Hindu society, will ultimately do unholy things depending on the company it keeps. 

There is something special about black-and-white movies and the horror genre. It reminds me of my childhood, when my sisters and I would flock around our home 16" TV, squinting to watch RTM's Friday offering of Cerita Pontianak. Even the poor makeup of Pontianak would scare the living daylights out of my sister. She would even be scared to enter the kitchen. To make it worse, I would hide around the corner and jump suddenly in front of her, making her scream!

Onibaba is a classic Japanese movie set in the Samurai era. Times are bad. All the territories are at loggerheads; all men are out to fight, and the women have to rough it out, scavenging on whatever comes their way, stealing from travellers, catching dogs for meals and selling loots. A lady and her daughter-in-law desperately try to survive in that climate. A neighbour, who returns from war, informs them that the lady's son died, not in the war, but while stealing food. The lady blames the neighbour for the son's death. The neighbour seduces the young widow, but the lady is not very happy about it. The lady's daughter-in-law, the young widow, is secretly in love with him and has secret trysts in the dark of the night. The lady comes to know of this and tries to prevent her.

One day, as the lady follows the daughter-in-law to one of these late-night meetings, she is stopped by a mask-donning samurai at knife-point. The lady tricks the samurai by pushing him into a pit. She removes his mask and wears it to scare her daughter-in-law. It works, but the mask gets stuck to her face after getting wet in the rain. After forcefully removing the mask, the lady and her daughter-in-law discover that her face has peeled off and is disfigured. The daughter-in-law runs away scared. The lady falls into the same pit and dies.

A chilling movie. Introduces the Hannya masks, usually used in Japanese Noh theatres, typically representing a jealous female demon.

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Life with its ups and downs!

The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Director and Written: Hayao Miyazaki

I did not know much about this director until recently, but he has been a cult figure among those who enjoy Japanese cartoons. No, his brand of cartoons does not fall under manga, anime, or adult cartoons; instead, it carries a rather philosophical message. In fact, this particular offering is a semi-autobiographical one that the filmmaker made ten years after his retirement. In keeping with the coming-of-age era, the story is set in late 1930s Japan when the country is steeped knee-deep in the Pacific War. 

It starts with Mahito, a young boy who gets up from sleep to find his mother trapped in a great fire. His mother subsequently succumbs to the fire. His father remarries his wife's sister, whom Mahito finds challenging to connect with.

Mahito moves to a new town to live with his pregnant stepmother. As Japan prepares for war, we see Mahita finding it challenging to fit into his new school and accept his new mum. A grey heron keeps hounding him. Mahito soon discovers a mysterious tower and a secret hidden beneath it.

Mahito soon enters a dream-like state into a bizarre new world, where he meets his deceased mother and maternal grandfather. His grandfather had an ambitious plan to create a utopia, and Mahito is the selected successor to continue the plan. 

One cannot help but think that many scenes give the sense of déjà vu. There are scenes reminiscent of 'Alice in Wonderland'. I swear that one reminded me of Snow White in a glass casket. And not to forget the 1970s favourite Japanese cartoon, Marco - From the Apennines to the Andes, where Marco goes in search of his mother from port to port from Japan to Argentina.

The take-home message in this film is that life has its ups and downs, losses, and heartaches. We should not change anything in it but accept all the sadness and happiness in stride.

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Simple living is virtous?

Perfect Days (Japanese, 2023)
Director: Wim Wenders

(Please note: It is plural, not singular. Every day is a perfect day, and there are many!)

This is a reminder to recreational cyclists over 60: Just enjoy every opportunity that comes your way. By the twist of fate or alms from karma, you can go out, pedal, and feel the wind whisk by as you zoom downhill. Only some people are gifted with the privilege to do this. There is no need to outdo a fellow cyclist, go all out for a personal record, or invest in a state-of-the-art, spanking-new machine to keep up with the Joneses. Every completed cycling route happens on a perfect day. There will be many perfect days.

This beautifully crafted film gets all my thumbs up. It moves very slowly with apparently no definite direction, but that, in essence, that is the message behind the movie. We should find happiness in the things around us. 

The protagonist, Hirayama, is a creature of routine. He gets up to the rhythmic pace of a street sweeper sweeping the street. From that, it is like clockwork. Folding his mattress neatly, washing up, trimming his moustache, slipping into his overalls, and getting his keys organised, he exits his door. He looks out gleefully at the morning sky. Next is coffee from the vending machine, and gets into his working van. In the truck, he listens to songs that suit his mood on a cassette player! He is a proud, dedicated worker who cleans public toilets. 

Even though he realises that he is viewed with condescension, he knows his job is essential and does it diligently. 

His lunchtime routine is also set. Armed with a packet of drinks and a sandwich, he sits on the same park bench every day, observing people and seeing the ray of light dancing through the shadows of the leaf (Komorebi*). He snaps moments he finds something fascinating on his analogue automatic camera (with physical films!). His mobile phone is also an analogue. He is content without learning to take digital photos or using apps like Spotify. He sneers at them and is pleasantly surprised that his cassette can fetch much money if sold. He is happy having his daily bath at the public bath and eating from the same stall at the food court. Once in a while, he would visit a lady who runs her small restaurant and sometimes sings for her customers.

A few things happen in his mundane life. His niece, his sister's daughter, runs away from her wealthy home for a few days. Hirayama's sister turns up, and we learn about his animosity or disagreement with his ailing father. The lady restaurant, whom Hirayama secretly fancies, is seen caught in a passionate embrace with an unknown man.  

He threads everything in a stride and never fails to catch up by reading classic short stories and essays before he retires for the night, including Shakespeare and Faulkner. 

Our minds like to wander. Probably because of that, a regimental style of life is prescribed to live right. We are told to live simply. Unfortunately, it does not work at a collective level. If everyone maintains an Epicurean form of living, being content with the bare minimum and not venturing beyond his comfort zone or, like Sissyphus, accepting his fate as someone who needs to find happiness within his endless rolling up the boulder and it rolling back, the human race would still be dwelling in caves! 'Now is now' and 'next time is next time', as Hiroyama advocates, give peace of mind to an individual, not protect the community from adversities. 4.5/5.

* Komorebi is a Japanese word that means the play of sunlight through leaves. 

** Hirayama's excellent cassette collection includes Lou Reed, the Kinks, Otis Redding, Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, and more

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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death. Arthur Schopenhauer.

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Just to de-stress!

Bullet Train (2022)
Director: David Leitch

This movie gives a feeling of watching 'Kill Bill' or 'Pulp Fiction'. There is a Quentin Tarantino feel to it with much chaos and twists in its storyline. There are mindless fighting and meaningless killings. The storyline is so convoluted that it makes a Bollywood offering an Aesop fable with a straightforward storyline. Despite the violence and gore, the dialogue paints a picture of a dark comedy. And the scriptwriter must have been trying very hard to sound philosophical by inserting Eastern philosophy here and there. Coincidentally, the film is an adaptation of a Japanese story.

The story revolves around the high-octane somersaulting and shooting action upon a speeding bullet train travelling between Tokyo and Kyoto. A self-proclaimed harbinger of bad-lucked assassin codenamed 'Lady Bug' embarks on the train with a mission to seize a particular suitcase. He is merely filling in for another hitman who is hit with a bug. Unknowest to him, a gang leader and his henchmen are to get the absent hitman. Now, the gang leader's daughter also wants to kill her father. To lure another old enemy of his father aboard the train, she drops his child from a building.

This confusing plot forms the background of a CGI-filled meaningless entertainment that would excite the feeble-minded. Along the way, to lure intellectual discourse, they threw in hints of chaos theory, the randomness of life and the possibility of how the flutter of a butterfly can start a tsunami!

The makers of the movie have been accused of whitewashing the whole story. Even though the setting can be anywhere, not necessarily in Japan, and the characters just carry codenames, the filmmakers cannot be made to go off the hook. They stereotype Japanese service workers as docile, unresponsive people who are ready to take a proper bow in salutation even though there is total destruction and mayhem around them. And that is supposed to be light entertainment.

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Do we really know?

Drive My Car (Japanese; 2021)
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Based on Short Story by Haruki Murakami

I have not read any of Murakami's works; I guess I should. His body of work is said to reflect the deep, dark corners of human consciousness. After watching this highly engaging movie, I think I should engage time to appreciate his writings.

As in all good movies, the viewers are clueless for a good one hour into the film. I was wondering where the story was going. Why was the protagonist, Kafuku, a theatre actor, who was acting in 'Waiting for Godot', keeps driving around? Why did he not react when he caught his wife, Oto, sleeping with another man? What is this about Oto and telling stories? Then there is the history of a dead child. And then the wife dies too.

Two years on, Kafuku is on a directing stint in Hiroshima. The company insists that they hire a chauffeur for him to drive his 1987 Saab Turbo. The chauffeur, Misaki, a young 20 something woman, seems to carry a massive burden upon her shoulders. She had lost her mother in a landslide. There is more to that.

The man who was seen in bed with Oto earlier, Kōji, auditions for the play and is selected. The play is Chekov's 'Uncle Vanya'. The crux of the story is how all these characters resolve their respective deep-seated unresolved issues by their actions or inactions. Just like the pandemic that jolts us from the lull of comfort, at the end of the film, the reboot button is set.

We think we have an explanation for everything. Yet, many things do not make sense. We seek clarity but still, the answers elude us. Peace of mind is disrupted by carrying these unresolved matters in our psyche. Maybe, we should let it be. Move on.

(P.S. Another introduction to another of Russia's many talented writers, and considered to be one of the world's greatest writers of the world, Anton Pavlovich Chekov. A doctor by profession, he wrote stories to support his family. Famously is quoted to have said, 

"Medicine is my lawful wife, literature, my mistress."

.)

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