A touching and heartfelt exploration of Japanese identity

What makes a person Japanese? Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s latest documentary, this Japanese productiondepends on the question. The 99-minute film begins with 6-year-old Yutaro neatly placing his shoes on the doorstep of his home, holding his breath, and placing a plate on the table. He is practicing for his first day of elementary school in Japan, where he will face challenges inside and outside the classroom – including placing his shoes perfectly in his cubby. The film tells the story of an entire school year, which begins with shiny new Landoseru backpacks and little legs walking in a straight line under the anxious gaze of parents and teachers.

The upbringing of the Japanese Carefully trace the complexities of the Japanese public school system and gain an unprecedented understanding of what happens in daily life. “Our goal is to become part of the system,” Yamasaki explains. “We work very well together and the children and teachers have reached the point where they should behave [in their usual way]whether we are there or not. “

The film immediately details the normality and rigorous intensity of daily life in Japanese elementary schools: shoeboxes of order, an emphasis on responses with a clear “Ha!” Always wear a mask when called (this documentary was filmed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic). The main characters who spice up school life include Yutaro, the wild child; Ayame, a motivated little girl who is chosen to play cymbals for all-school assemblies; and Mr. Endo, a sixth-grade teacher who expresses his feelings by banging an egg on his head. The “breaking out of the shell” perspective.

one of the most impactful scenes this Japanese production The story takes place when Ayame makes a mistake while practicing her cymbals. The teacher scolded her in front of her classmates, and Ayame burst into tears. In the final rehearsal, she was afraid to perform at first for fear of being scolded again, but with the encouragement of her classmates and teachers, she performed perfectly.

“The strictest teachers — they were my teachers, and I felt like I was Ayame,” Yamazaki said. “I didn’t understand it at the time, but 20 years later, this is the basis of my strength. Nowadays, it is harder to be a stricter teacher; it is much easier to be everyone’s friend. But what is education? I think schools need all kinds of The type of teacher I really want people to consider is the balance between pushing and respecting students.”

Ema Yamazaki in the classroom mirror in Tokyo, Japan.

film director making

Yamazaki is a half-Japanese, half-English documentary filmmaker who grew up in a suburb of the Kansai region and attended Japanese public schools until she was 12. The Japanese school system had a major impact on her life: it feels like if you’ve ever experienced In Japanese elementary school, you are Japanese. I consider myself Japanese in everything, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot in these six years. “

Yamazaki’s mixed-race identity complicated her experience in the Japanese education system, as she sometimes felt like an outsider in her own country. On the one hand, she is a “very Japanese girl, with a very Japanese education, at the center of the Japanese system.” On the other hand, she “was always the only one around who had foreign parents. I distinctly remember thinking that it was a bad thing that I could speak English,” she recalls.

After graduating from elementary school, Yamazaki transferred to an international school with a less typical educational style. Then, while in college, she decided to move to New York to pursue her long-held dream of studying filmmaking. In the United States, she experienced some unexpected culture shock: she was praised for qualities she considered natural. “I would constantly get compliments, like, ‘You work hard, you’re always on time, you’re a good team player.’ “I would think, ‘I’m just Japanese.’ ‘”

Yamasaki’s passion became clear when she was admitted through NYU’s Tisch program. “I quickly realized that all I wanted to do was make documentaries, even though most of the students at my school actually [specialized in] Fiction film,” she said. “I realized I didn’t have any extraordinary story in mind that I wanted to tell. This is just using myself as a filtered perspective to share some of the things I find interesting. “

After graduating, she worked in the film industry as an editor, but she struggled with a lack of creative freedom. “I stayed in New York, editing documentaries for networks like CNN and HBO. But when you’re an editor, you can’t control the story you tell because it’s someone else’s idea. As much as I love learning about these American stories, I’m always playing catch-up and I want to see what it feels like to be in control. [the narrative]and tell the story I want to tell. “

looking for narrative

Surprisingly, when Yamazaki made the leap to becoming a film director, her first feature film wasn’t about Japan at all. “I made a documentary about the author curious george,” she said. “Growing up with him, I thought he was a Japanese monkey. I was like, “Oh, you guys have him too?” It’s one of the few things I have in common with some of my friends. ”

When Yamazaki saw this story, he was immediately intrigued. “Facts have proven that curious georgeThe authors of this book are a couple. They were German Jews who fled on bicycles, taking with them the first unpublished curious george Book with them. The love story and the way they tell their story… the whole thing is so amazing. I thought there was already a movie about it, but when I realized there wasn’t, I thought, wow. I tried to keep the project a secret because I was like, ‘Spielberg would do this. ‘”

After completing her first passion project, Yamazaki was eager to tell a story through which she could share her own vision of Japan. “I’m tired of everything to do with sushi or samurai or ninjas; it’s a limited view of Japan,” she said.

Living abroad gave her a new appreciation for her home country and drew her attention to Japanese culture that she had previously taken for granted. “Over the course of nine years in New York, I came to see Japan in a completely different light. When you get to New York and you don’t know when the next subway is coming, there are rats everywhere, and it’s really dirty, you think, ‘What? Isn’t it natural that our train should arrive on time?’

Yamazaki wanted a way to document the country she grew up in—not just the superficial “what Japan is like,” but a deeper “what Japan is like.” For her second film, Koshien: Japan’s Dream Landshe delves into a uniquely Japanese topic: the competitive world of high school baseball. It’s the first time she’s tackled the re-emerging theme The upbringing of the Japanese;This documentary deftly investigates issues of uniformity versus individualism and shows students both thriving and struggling within a rigid system.

There’s a pivotal scene near the end of the film in which a coach tells the students that they no longer have to shave their heads to be a part of the team. While this may seem trivial to outsiders, it actually represents a huge cultural shift. High school baseball in Japan is known for its intense, high-energy practices, and mandatory short haircuts were the norm for decades, becoming a symbol of each player’s dedication to the team. “I knew I was witnessing a unique moment of change,” Yamazaki said. In fact, in the six years since the filming, the rate of head shaving among Japanese high school baseball players has dropped from 90% to 30%.

Ultimately, Yamazaki is not trying to propose a particular view or grand theory of Japanese society. She wants to show her subjects as they are, without judgment or assumptions; the results are always complex and often mind-boggling. “I have theories about systems or whatever, but I love telling human stories about human challenges and human triumphs and human struggles,” she explains. “The upbringing of the Japanese Ultimately it’s about how hard it is sometimes to be a first grader, or how hard it is to be a teacher, it’s an impossible profession. I just wanted to capture it in a way that more people could understand. “

Through this empathy, she hopes to allow viewers to truly engage with complex issues—thinking about how they play out in individual lives, rather than critiquing the system in general. “The most important question is, ‘What traditional ways should Japan preserve, and what factors should influence change?’ But I don’t have the answer,” Yamasaki said. “What I try to do this Japanese productionAnd all my films are about making people think about that. You can’t have our trains running on time and also have a hyper-individualistic, I do whatever I want society, so where do we want to land? ”

The upbringing of the Japanese It will be released in Japanese theaters on December 13, 2024. In select theaters, including Cine Switch Ginza, English subtitles will be available via UDCast tablets.