Tokyo — Japanese film director Chie Hayakawa sprouted the idea for a script when she decided to test her assumptions on the premise of her mother and other acquaintances’ older friends. Her question: If the government sponsors an euthanasia program for people over the age of 75, do you agree with it?
“Most people were very positive about it,” Hayakawa said. “They didn’t want to burden others or their children.”
For Mr. Hayakawa, the seemingly shocking reaction was a strong reflection of Japanese culture and demographics. In her first feature film “Plan 75” Special distinction At this month’s Cannes Film Festival, the near-future Japanese government will promote the quiet institutionalized death and mass burial of lonely elderly people, giving them as if a hilarious salesperson had travel insurance. I will propose.
Hayakawa, 45, said in an interview in Tokyo before it was screened in Japan on Friday, “The idea is that if the government tells you to do something, you have to do it.” She said that following the rules and not imposing on others is a cultural obligation to “make it inconspicuous in group settings.”
With a lyrical and unobtrusive touch, Mr. Hayakawa challenged to tackle one of Japan’s largest elephants, the world’s oldest society.
Nearly one-third of the country’s population is over 65, and Japan has more. People over 100 years old Per capita than any other country. In Japan, one in five people aged 65 and over lives alone, and the percentage of people suffering from dementia is the highest. Due to the rapidly declining population, the government is facing the possibility of pension shortages and questions about how the country cares for the longest-lived citizens.
Aging politicians dominate the government, and the Japanese media emphasizes the rosy story of aging fashion masters and retailers for the elderly. However, for Mr. Hayakawa, it was not easy to imagine a world where the oldest citizens were abandoned in a bureaucratic process. The series of thoughts she said can already be seen in Japan.
Euthanasia is illegal in this country, but it occasionally occurs in the context of horrific crimes. In 2016, 19 people died while sleeping at a disability center outside of Tokyo, claiming that they should be euthanized because “living at home and social activities are extremely difficult.”
The horrific incident provided Mr. Hayakawa with a seed of ideas. “I don’t think it was an isolated event or thought process in Japanese society,” she said. “It was already floating. I was very afraid that Japan was becoming a very intolerant society.”
The film didn’t look like a dystopia to Kaori Shoji, who wrote about The Japan Times and the BBC’s films and arts and saw the previous version of “Plan 75.” “She just tells it that,” Shoji said. “She tells us:” This is where we are actually heading. “
Associate Professor Yasunori Ando, an associate professor of spirituality and bioethics at Tottori University, said that the potential future is more and more believable in a society that is driven to death by overwork.
“It’s not impossible to think of a place where euthanasia is acceptable,” he said.
Mr. Hayakawa spent most of her adulthood thinking about the end of life from a very personal point of view. When she was ten, she learned that her father had cancer and he died ten years later. “I think it influenced my view of art because it was my formation,” she said.
Mr. Hayakawa, the daughter of a civil servant, began drawing picture books and writing poetry from an early age. When she was in elementary school, she fell in love with the Japanese drama “Muddy River,” which depicts a poor family living on a river barge.A movie directed by Kohei Oguri has been nominated Best Foreign Language Film at the 1982 Academy Awards..
“The movie expressed feelings that I couldn’t put into words,” says Hayakawa. “And I also wanted to make such a movie.”
She eventually applied for the School of Visual Arts film program in New York and believed she could lay the foundation for filmmaking in the United States. However, given her moderate English proficiency, she thought she could take pictures herself, so she decided to switch to her photography department within a week of arriving at campus. did.
Her instructor was impressed with her curiosity and work ethic. “If I mention a movie empty-handed, she goes home and borrows it. If I mention an artist or an exhibition, she studies it and wants to say something about it. “There is,” said Tim Maul, a photographer and one of the Ms. .. Hayakawa’s mentor. “Chi was the one who really had the momentum and the peculiar drive.”
After graduating in 2001, Mr. Hayakawa gave birth to two children in New York. 2008, she and her husband, painter Katsumi HayakawaDecided to return to Tokyo, where she started working for the satellite TV station WOWOW and helped prepare for the screening of Japanese films in Japan.
At the age of 36, she continued to work during the day and enrolled in a one-year film program at night school in Tokyo. “I felt like I couldn’t put all my energy into parenting and filmmaking,” she said. In retrospect, she said, “I think it’s okay. Enjoy parenting. You can start making films later.”
In the final project, a young woman leaving the orphanage where she grew up created “Niagara,” when she learned that her grandfather had killed her parents and that she thought her grandmother had died. The car accident with her parents was alive.
She submitted a film to the Cannes Film Festival in the student films category and was shocked when she was selected for screening in 2014. At this festival, Mr. Hayakawa met Hideko Mizuno Gray, who is in charge of film public relations, and then she invited Mr. Hayakawa. Make a short film with the theme of Japan 10 years from now. It will be part of the anthology produced by the famous Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda.
Mr. Hayakawa had already developed the idea of ”Plan 75″ as a feature film, but decided to make a summary version of “Ten Years Japan”.
While writing the script, she woke up at 4am every morning to watch a movie. She cites Taiwanese director Edward Yang, South Korean director Lee Chang-dong, and Polish art house director Krzysztof Kieslovski as her key influences. After her work, she wrote a letter for several hours at the cafe while her husband was taking care of the children. This is relatively rare in Japan, where women still bear the disproportionate burden of housework and childcare.
After Hayakawa’s 18-minute contribution to the anthology was announced, Mizuno Gray and her husband Jason Gray worked with her to develop an extension script. By the time the shoot started, it was in the middle of a pandemic. “In Covid, there were countries that didn’t prioritize the lives of the elderly,” Hayakawa said. “Reality has surpassed fiction in a way.”
Mr. Hayakawa decided to adopt subtle tones in the feature film and inject more hope. She also added several stories, such as one about an elderly woman and a group of her close friends, and one about a Filipino caregiver working at one of the euthanasia centers.
In contrast to the dominant culture, Hayakawa said she included the scene of the Japanese Filipino community. “Their culture is that if someone is in trouble, you’ll help them right away,” Hayakawa said. “I think that’s what Japan has lost.”
Stefanie ArianneHayakawa, the daughter of a Japanese father and Filipino mother who plays the caregiver Maria, said she urged her to show emotional restraint. In one scene, she said, Alianne had the instinct to shed her tears.
Mr. Hayakawa said he didn’t want to make a movie that simply considered whether euthanasia was right or wrong. “I think the end of life and the kind of death you want is a very personal decision,” she said. “I don’t think it’s that black or white.”
Hikari Hida Report that contributed.
