Inspired by the denou-sen competition between a shogi-program and a professional in 2015, Atsuhiro Yamada set out to write a screenplay that fictionalized the event and turned it into his second-feature film – Happy Ending (2010) is his debut feature film. The resulting filmic experience was, a least for the director, a success as he managed to win the first Kinoshita Group New Director Award Grand Prix.
Yamada’s narrative opens in 2015. Riku Asakawa (Ryuya Wakaba), a 7-dan shogi player, is about to face Awake, the latest version of the software-driven Shogi-player developed by Eiichi Kiyota (Ryo Yoshizawa), a former rival of him. How did he end up in front of the Shogi table and what led Kiyota to turn to software to engage with the game of Shogi?
Everything begins in 2003, when a young Eiichi Kiyota (-) is led by Riku Asakawa (-) into the Shogi Kaikan hall to start their trajectory at the Shorei-Kai (The Shogi Apprentice Association), to embark on a brutal and near impossible attempt to become professional shogi players. Not long thereafter, Asakawa inflicts an imaginary injury on Kiyota when his answer to a shogi-riddle appears to be correct.
Awake is, in our view, nothing other than a shogi-thriller. Yes, you read that right, a shogi-thriller. Yamada utilizes all the tricks in the book – script-wise, visual, musical – to slowly increase the spectator’s anticipatory tension to put him on the edge of his seat when the showdown between Riku and Kiyota unfolds.
However, the foundation upon which Yamada skilfully heightens the tension within his narrative, is a psychological portrait of Eiichi Kiyota, a precise sketch of the relational events that shaped his trajectory, events that, by sorting subjective effects, ultimately led him to combine programming and Shogi and develop Awake.
To stage Kiyota’s subjective trajectory, Yamada relies heavily on the signifying effect of concatenating images – he articulates Kiyota’s truth by creating a pattern of image-signifiers. He tasks the spectator to read the patterns of images – the reoccurring images, the subtle differences between reoccurring images – as a reflection of the desire that propels him forward and the imaginary injuries inflicted by reality.
Kiyota, who, just like all the others, joined the Shorei-Kai in the hope of becoming a professional shogi player, stands out due to his radical fixation on logic – shogi-boards as merely logical puzzles to be solved. However, Yamada’s visual puzzle immediately reveals that his radical calculative approach splatters on the incalculable nature of his opponent – he loses, he is confronted with failure. There is an element, let’s call it the Other’s desire, that he cannot grasp nor erase with logic.
His functioning, as his response to failure and the incalculability of the Other reveals, appears to be one intricate attempt to erase the dimension of desire from the interactional field – within as well as outside the world of Shogi. We should, moreover, consider the game of shogi to be Kiyota’s sinthome, the solution that hold him, as subject, together. However, as shogi is a sort of subjective fundament for Kiyota, the social frustration of his solution renders negative effects – the ebb and flow of unmoored jouissance creating depression as well as violent reproaches. It is, however, by mere chance that Kiyota discovers a hitherto unknown way to re-instate shogi and logic as his subjective compasses and resolve his depressed state: programming and the burgeoning field of computer-shogi.
Some spectators might wonder whether knowledge of the game of shogi is a prerequisite to enjoy Yamada’s narrative. While being deeply familiar while surely enhance the experience and increase the tension the spectator feels, Yamada ensures, via a well-structured narrative and effective visual and musical support, that even spectator who do not know the game at all can enjoy the way the narrative unfolds and its engaging finale.
Atsuhiro Yamada brings Awake visually to life with a balanced mix of static and dynamic shots. The elegancy by which he is able to combine both is most evident in the way he frames the game of shogi. Dynamism is not merely used to bring some energy to the rather static game of Japanese chess, but also to subtly emphasize the flow of time, the time that passes between the alternating touching of the taikyoku-dokei – the static shots of shogi-clock that limits thinking time for each player. The fluid interweaving of more static facial close-ups and medium-close-ups as the shogi-match unfolds unfolding, on the other hand, aim to put the spectator into touch with the mental effort of the players – the concatenation of calculations within their minds.
However, to bring his introduction to life, Yamada leans heavily on dynamism – i.e. restraint dynamic shots and floaty framing. This dynamism does not merely create a pleasant inviting flow, but also breathes the necessary energy into the delivery of the narrative hook – the question of the past and what led to this moment and the anticipation of the future, the outcome of the game between software and human subject.
What also helps smoothen the visual flow and ensures that the spectator remains engaged in Kiyota and Asakawa’s story is the rich use of musical accompaniment. Music, in general, is utilized to decorate visual sequences that condense time and blend two difference narrative spaces – sequences that frame the effect of certain subjective decisions, commitments, and statements.
While Awake offers an experience quite similar to other sport-related films, Atsuhiro Yamada ensures, by delivering an effective visual and musical frame, that his poignant psychological portrait result into a thrilling finale and, ultimately, a heartwarming conclusion. Due to Yamada’s approach, even spectators who are unfamiliar with the game of shogi will be kept on the edge of their seat.
