Mark Schilling
Is the Japanese film industry coming down with Hollywooditis? Every other new film
seems to be either a sequel, spin-off or remake. The 1970s, when many of today's
directors and producers were avid young manga readers and anime and film watchers,
is the most popular source of material, though other eras are not being ignored. One
recent samurai period drama is almost a shot-for-shot remake of Tange Sazen, a 1935
Sadao Yamanaka classic
Some industry critics point to creative exhaustion as a reason, others to rising costs as
local studios compete with Hollywood for multiplex screens. More and more films are
passing the Y1.0 billion ($9.2 million) budget mark -- once considered the limit for all but
the most super-spectacular live-action films. Before producers start writing checks for
them they want the security of a proven property, even one that is thirty years old.
(Big-ticket animations, with a surer shot at overseas sales and auxiliary revenues, have
been breaking Y1.0 billion barrier for some time now.)
A more charitable view is that Japanese filmmakers are blessed with a treasure trove of
media contents, including those hundreds of old genre pics that time -- and the young
mass audience -- forgot (or never know about in the first place). Why not make the most
of it?
One prominent example is The Big Spook War (Yokai Daisenso), a Y1.3 billion ($12
million) film based on the 1968 Yoshiyuki Kuroda hit of the same title. The story: a
young boy joins with local goblins and other supernatural folk -- called yokai in Japanese
-- to battle spooks who have crossed over to the dark side. The tone will be closer to the
Harry Potter films than the Japanese horror that has proven so exportable.
Long popular in among Japanese under-twelves, yokai films and TV shows has been
scarce in recent years. Kadokawa, with cult fav Takashi Miike at the helm, hopes to
bring the genre back -- and sell it abroad.
Another blast from the past is Sasori, the latest in a long series of remakes and
reworkings of a series of 1970s women-in-prison movies starring Meiko Kaji. Now hot
for her work in Lady Snowblood, a 1973 period actioner Quentin Tarantino referenced in
Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kaji played the title character, a long-haired beauty whose name meant
Scorpion -- and lived up to it in her battles with guards and fellow inmates. Directed by
Kenji Sonoda, the new film stars Takami Mizuhashi as Sasori. Horror and action genre
specialist Art Port is producing.
Not all filmmakers are looking to the seventies and beyond for inspiration. After Fuji TV
uber-producer Chihiro Kameyama and his team had the biggest Japanese live-action hit
ever with Bayside Shakedown 2 (domestic gross: $159 million), they decided to build an
entire film around one of the supporting characters -- the thoroughly professional, but
winningly nerdy hostage negotiator Masyoshi Mashita. Starring comedian Yusuke Santa
Maria, reprising his BS2 role, and helmed by BS2 director Katsuyuki Motohiro,
Negotiator will plunge Mashita into the midst of a hostage crisis in the Tokyo subway
system. Release is scheduled for May of 2005.
