“Forget Femininity! Give us Liberation!”

MEGUMI decided to enter the world of producing after a reading a concerning report about the low self-esteem of Japanese women and realizing that she could use the medium of film to empower female subjects within the Japanese societal field. When Taichi Kimura shared with her story inspired by his own mother’s life, she did not hesitate and took on the project – this would be her first statement as a producer, a celebration of her own personal conviction:  the female subject’s right to dictate her own destiny.

1982. Shizuoka. Fujiko Suganami (Yuki Katayama) strikes up a conversation with hotel cook Sasaoka (Lily Franky) in the hope of selling him insurance. In response to her insistence, he subjects her to a series of questions: You need to make money for your man? Did he rack up debt or ran out on you? To respond to his questions, she ends up showing a picture of her daughter Mari (-) and, when lightning hits and power fails, tells him that her daughter was born on a stormy night as well and starts telling her story.

Her story begins in 1977. A few months after giving birth during that stormy night, Fujiko is forced by her husband Jiro (Jun Hashimoto) to help out at his family business. That same day, Jiro’s mother (You) nicely demands that she, to be able to focus on work, leaves Mari in her care. Yet, when she refuses, Etsuko (-), Jiro’s sister, pulls Mari out of her hands and drives off. 

The way Taichi Kimura opens his narrative exposes, from the get-go, the ease by which discourses within the societal Other – i.e. patriarchal ideological discourses about family, male and female identity, and desire – colour the frame by which one looks at others. Sasaoka, via his questions, immediately forces upon Fujiko a logic of being animated by a male subject. He readily assumes that she works because she has subjected herself to a pristine male object, an imagined holder of the non-existent phallus.    

The second time that Kimura touches upon the presence of ideological discourses of the Other is with the discussion between Jiro, his older sister Etsuko – “Lucky her, we work, she slacks off” – and his mother – “Soon after I had Etsuko, I was working properly”; “A man’s gotta take the lead” and the subsequent conflict between him and Fujiko. In the initial discussion, Jiro’s sister’s frustrated retorts and his mother’s calm passive-aggressive attacks by pushes him to the edge of the abyss of castration sketched out by the patriarchal frame – You cannot take the lead. The subsequent clash between Jiro and Fujiko is a violent attempt by him to cover-up his induced castration with a mendacious image of manliness – male imposture – to please the (m)Other and the patriarchal expectations his mother and his sister represent (Narra-note 1).       

This sequence, moreover, introduces a fact that should not shock anyone: that the proponents of the patriarchal system and traditional family structures are, quite often, female. Kimura puts the spectator into touch with the idea that the fiction of masculinity stands or falls with female support – Behind any phallic man stand a woman to prop up his fiction, the overvaluation of the phallic position starts in the lap of the (m)Other.

After retrieving Mari, Fujiko is, once more, confronted with the violence by a different representative of the traditional Other, her own mother Chiyo (Kayoko Kishimoto). Her assertion to “raise her alone” is squashed down by her mother with the violent retort: “A kid like you can’t raise a kid! No way”. Fujiko’s mother attempts to disrobe her ambition by telling her that she does not fit the ideological mould of motherhood. Not long after she has left her parental home, she hits a seemingly unsurmountable wall – No childcare for infants, a limitation at the level of policies and civil services that is the direct consequence of adhering to the ideological image of the traditional family. Ideology speaks through politics.

In it by introducing this limitation that Taichi Kimura establishes the main question he will elaborate in his film: How can Fujiko, in a society unfit for and even dismissive of single mothers, realize herself as a single mother? Can she force things herself or wait for lucky contingencies? Will she succumb to the ideological expectations imposed on her – i.e. women should depend on men – or will she keep resisting and carve her own space? 

Taichi Kimura brings Fujiko to life with a composition that thoughtfully combines static moments and dynamism. He does not merely create a smooth flow that invites and pulls the spectator into his narrative, but a visual fabric that interweaves subtly moments of visual pleasure and elegantly puts Fujiko as a subject subjected to and responding to the signifiers and act of others, central.

Kimura reaffirms this approach by resorting to shaky framing to frame the brutal infraction of certain acts and signifiers on Fujiko as subject. In this way, Kimura enables the spectator to taste the brutal traumatic impact of what, due to the radical adherence of traditional ideals and discourses, is radically imposed on certain subjects.

However, Kimura also turns to shaky framing to signal the resistance against the traditional Other and the impact of the way certain subjects wield its discourses, its ideals. The tremble of resistance is, often, emphasized by being accompanied by energetic and rebellious seventies blues-rock inspired music.

Given the fact that shakiness, within Kimura’s composition, is used to amplify the effect of being radically subjected to how certain subjects put the Other’s patriarchal discourses into practice of as well as the rejection of accepting its brutal consequences, we are led to argue that the tremble stages the often-dismissed truth of the subject is always at odds with the Other (i.e. expectations, ideals, … etc.) that surrounds him as well as the fact that the Other, due to its ideological nature, does not treat all subjects equally (Cine-note 1, Cine-note 2, Cine-note 3).

This reading also allows to correctly frame the few dramatic moments (e.g. Fujiko’s mother verbal clash with Jiro’s mother, …) that are framed with dynamic restraint. By resorting to more static framing and relying on the dramatic effect of cutting, Kimura does not only allow the performances of his cast come to their full right – emphasizing their bodily presence and the way of enunciating in a way that puts the spectator on the edge of his seat, but also echoes that all actors are operating within the frame of the traditional Other, dispelling the infectious fantasy that adhering to the Other’s discourses, by definition, creates social harmony.  

Kimura utilize music in a very expressive manner throughout his narrative. He utilizes energetic and rebellious seventies blues-rock inspired music to decorate certain narrative turns. More bluesy pieces are interweaved throughout the film to echo the depressed mood aroused by being radically subjected to a societal field that, riddled with prejudices and judgemental thinking, effaces and silences subjectivity (Narra-note 2). The light-hearted rockabilly music, on the other hand, decorates those moments within his narrative where Fujiko harbours some hope; where the lifestyle of single-mother, despite its challenges, attains a certain stability (Cine-note 3).  

While Kimura pleases the spectator with his visual composition, delivering a budding flower, the performances deliver the necessary water to let the emotional flow of his narrative to come to full blossom. Kayoko Kishimoto and You allow Kimura to deliver one of the most memorable cinematic moments of drama of this year and Yuki Katayama, with her grounded and emotionally layered performance, charms the spectator, allowing Kimura’s message of holding of one’s own desire to inspire men and women alike.  

Taichi Kimura’s Fujiko offers the spectator an incredibly satisfying feel-good experience about personal freedom, about holding on to one’s desire within a societal field that seeks to suffocate it. Kimura does only stage, via deliciously dramatic moments, how patriarchal discourses curtails and complicates certain individual choices, but also emphasizes how survival within a societal field unable to make space for different versions of woman- and motherhood depends on contingencies: pre-existing connections and encountering feelings of compassion.  

Notes:

Narra-note 1: We hope the spectator notices that Jiro only explodes after Fujiko identifies that his demand – Tomorrow, you work! – is not rightly his; They are the signifiers of his mother and sister, the representatives of the patriarchal Other. 

Jiro explodes because Fujiko’s question punctures his attempt to mendaciously affirm his manliness; she exposes the fact that he is merely an imposter. His outburst of anger is a renewed attempt at establishing the Other’s manly ideal and subjected Fujiko to its relational consequences – I order, you shut up and do what I say.

Cine-note 1: The shakiness that marks the framing of the protest fuelled by “ugly women’s hysteria” fits within both readings. The shakiness highlights that the demonstration renews her confrontation with the oppressive effects of the traditional Other – the cause of her depressed state, but also shows her that she, as subject, has the possibility to refuse and reject the Other’s ideal image of femininity.  

Cine-note 2: Later in the narrative, Kimura utilizes shakiness to emphasize, beyond the stressful impact of certain events, the very shakiness of Fujiko’s endeavour of single motherhood within the Other. This, however, is another way to express the same idea, the idea that the subject, some more than others, are at odds with the Other.

Cine-note 3: Kimura, in some rare instances, resorts to floaty zoom-in movements to subtly infuses a sense of intimacy in certain interactions and certain enunciations.

Narra-note 1: People silence Fujiko by blaming her current struggle on her decision to divorce her husband and refusing to function as a mere support to reflect the fiction of harmonious family life to the outer societal field.  

Cine-note 4: The light-hearted mood of the music is accentuated by Kimura’s cutting and his integration of playful visual decorations.