The name of the writer Yasutaka Tsutsui might not ring a bell for many spectators, yet he is responsible for writing the source material for some of the most beloved Japanese films of all time: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983) and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006).

While Tsutsui wrote many more novels, not many of his other stories made the transition to the silver screen. Daihachi Yoshida, however, loved Tsutsui’s novel Teki [enemy] (1998) so much, he had to do what the writer considered impossible – to turn it into a film. Yet, Yoshida, armed with the belief that “when you genuinely love something, you’ll find a way to make it work” (General-note 1) (Interview-note 1).

Yoshida’s Teki Cometh follows the 77-year-old Gisuke Watanabe (Kyozo Nagatsuka), widower a retired French Literature professor. He lives a peaceful life in his old Japanese-style house, taking the days as they come. He welcomes former students in his house, remains willing to give lectures – for those who pay his set-price, while keeping a close watch on how long his savings account will hold out and how many years he has financially left. He has, in other words, no unfinished business. Yet, one night, he receives a disturbing e-mail – “Enemy. They say the enemy is coming and everyone is fleeing.”

The narrative and compositional focus on mundane acts – e.g. preparing food, brushing his teeth, hanging the laundry, grinding coffee beans, weeding the garden, taking medication, shopping, reading books before sleeping, … – do not merely emphasize the peaceful quality of Gisuke’s retired reclusive existence, but also lulls the spectator into believing that he is merely watching a mundane slice-of-life narrative, an a-dramatic and slowly unfolding character study of a retired professor.    

Yoshida, however, immediately shows that the mundane rhythm of Gisuke is often disturbed by incidental events – e.g. an unexpected visit from Yasuko (Kumi Takiuchi), a former female student, rough shouting by the neighbour concerning dog-poop, being introduced to Ayumi Sugai (Yumi Kawai), a third-year university student studying French literature at Rikkyo, the discovery of blood in his stool, … etc. Gisuke fully understands, even vocalizes it evocatively at one point in the narrative, that joy is not to be found in the mundane repetition of everyday – the repetition that erodes one’s sense of time and eats away at one’s ego, but in the unexpected, in the waves the incidental causes in the still sea of dull repetition and the titbits of signified these waves wash ashore.   

While most incidental events fleetingly brighten his day – breathing life into his stale rhythm, there are also unexpected intrusions that arouse a subtle arrhythmia into his subjective equilibrium and disturb the mundane quality of the surrounding Other. For Gisuke, the sudden confrontation with the signifier enemy has such disquieting and ultimately destabilizing.

Even before Gisuke’s dreams – the hospital nightmares, the dreams of seduction, … – the spectator, who gently followed the rhythm of his interactions and noticed certain implicit associations called forth by Yoshida with his thoughtfully structured narrative, realizes that, for Gisuke, said signifier is, first and foremost, associated with the riddle of femininity.

The introduction of the signifier enemy also affects the structure of the narrative and the film’s visual flow. The observant compositional style, which up until then merely framed Gisuke’s external reality, suddenly offers the spectator a glance into his unconscious and the way the signifier affects his psyche. However, what makes this sudden shift in the narrative so compelling is Yoshida’s playful refusal to clearly signal to the spectator where reality ends. Time and time again, the spectator is duped into taking fantasy as lived reality. However, this playful trickery allows Yoshida to expose the fact that our subjective state affects the currents of our unconscious and the way we experience reality.

While the subject can rely on others to support his ego and the meaning of his reality – subduing his lingering uneasiness, the lack of such physical support – the confrontation with the abyss of one’s own symbolic existence – has profound effect on subject’s continuous push to produce meaning. In Teki Cometh, the increased isolation of Gisuke from the societal field does not merely crumbles his ego, but, by way of a reparative response, activates his unconscious, introducing him to a world where fear of the unknown and the desire for connection intermingle.   

Yoshida ultimately utilizes this intimate logic of Gisuke associating the signifier enemy with femininity – does he have to resilience to defuse this self-imposed fictional threat? – to expose a wider societal dynamic: the creation of social-political fictions (e.g. fake news and conspiracy theories) to transform the subject’s diffuse discontent into a fear for an imaginary object (Narra-note 1 (spoiler)). However, as the finale of Teki Cometh evocatively implies, the true meaning of the signifier enemy lies beyond any kind of meaning – it concerns something Real.

To bring Teki Cometh alive, Daihachi Yoshida relies on a simple measured concatenation of static shots and fleeting tracking movements (Cine-note 1, cine-note 2). The camera, whether static or in movement, always focuses on Gisuke, on his acts and signifiers. The fact that Teki Cometh mainly takes place in an old traditional house is not without any impact on Yoshida’s composition. His composition is quite rich in frame-within-frames. However, it is not by mere choice that he utilizes frame-within-frames for his shot-compositions; it is equally forced upon him by the architectural lay-out of the house.

The use of a monochrome colour-palette to bring his narrative visually alive allows Yoshida to rely on lightning-contrasts to interweave many moments of visual beauty within his composition. He utilizes incident light or single light sources to create evocative glances into certain spaces of the traditional house and lets light encounter mirroring surfaces or architectural features to create poetic patterns within his visual frame. What also elevates the visual beauty of Yoshida’s composition is his use of depth-of-field and film-grain. The former transforms certain architectural elements of the house into soft abstract patterns, while the latter adds a subtle textural dimension to the visuals.     

Teki Cometh offers the spectator a vivid and mesmerising experience that does not only illustrates the subjective impact of increased isolation on giving meaning to one’s own life – on the stability of the frame of one’s ego, but also shows the equivocal nature of the signifier. The latter revelation allows Yoshida to confront the spectator with the problematic way the contemporary subject often deals with his own discontent and the abyss of the unknown. Highly recommended.

Notes

General-note 1: Teki Cometh had his world premiere at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival in 2024, but its general release in Japan was in January 2025.

Interview-note 1: Read the full review with director Yoshida Daihachi at: https://2024.tiff-jp.net/news/en/?p=19280.

Cine-note 1: In some rare instances, Yoshida also employs spatial dynamism in his composition.

Narra-note 1: The film also shows that subjects readily install an external threat to cover up the confrontation with the threat emanating from their own unconscious. Or, to put it even more evocatively, the external threat we, as subjects, happily accept to subdue our own lingering uneasiness is, firth and foremost, a secondary elaboration of our own Otherness – the things we unconsciously struggle with (e.g. sexual appetite, the lack of connection, the dark shadow called death, …).