JAPAN CUTS July 26-August 6, 2023

[Chris Knipp]

YUSAKU MATSUMOTO: WINNY (2023)


MASAHIRO HIGASHIDE, CENTER, IN WINNY

Cyber innovation on trial in Japan - a pessimistic portrayal

Young director Yusaku Matsumoto, who's only thirty, probably has a sense of involvement in the storyline of Winny. His generation grew up in a cyber world that was threatened when the Japanese system arrested the talented programmer Isamu Kaneko for his person-to-person, aka peer-to-peer, file sharing software Winny, ostensibly since it had been used to violate copyright or propriety in sharing files. To do this was crushing an aspect of tech in the country and punishing a creator for the actions of the users. Compare the file sharer Napster in the US. It was shut down due to copyright infringement suits and is no more; but Sean Parker went on to become, as shown in Fincher's The Social Network a very young billionaire. Winny lacks the brilliance and wit of Aaron Sorkin's screenplay and David Fincher's direction in The Social Network and also paints a grimmer picture of cyber freedom - in Japan.

Japan Times film writer James Hadfield suggests that Masahiro Higashide, who plays the beleaguered Kaneko in this film, has benefitted from his "fall from grace" to play more interesting roles. (Higashide lost contracts and licenses after discovery of his affair with an underage woman during his former wife's pregnancy.) The tall Kendo adept put on 18 kilos and wore Kaneko's glasses and watch to assume the identity. Reportedly he at first thought he was playing a "villain," but learned otherwise. He is playing a kind of martyr.

What appears initially is that Kaneko is either naive or a fool, because he signs any confession the police hand him, and in conviction-mad Japan, confessionss are hard to shuck off. Kaneko should not have been hounded. A lawyer suggests in the film that charging the creator of Winny for copyright violations was like jailing a knife manufacturer for a stabbing death; but this is a bad image, because it links sharing files with committing murder.

The film has a subplot about an attempt to expose corrupt police practices in the country - something about fake receipts for payments to witnesses that were never made that I'm not sure I quite fully grasped. It's peripherally relevant, because this revealed the dishonesty of the police pursuing the Winny case. Likewise with the retro judges who followed their bidding and crushed Kaneko's innovative gift. there must be something complicit and dishonest in the stoniness of prosecution, judge, and police in a country where the conviction rate is 99.9%. We see how Toshimitsu Dan (Takahiro Miura), a lawyer specializing in cybercrime, takes on the unusual case. An unusually successful and colorful criminal lawyer is also called in, but his success in getting a cop to admit his lies has little ultimate effect.

As Hadfield says this is a film that "educates more than it entertains." Unfortunately the excitement Winny generates at the outset dissolves into numbing, repetitious legal procedures and concludes on concluding mood of pessimism.

A Wikipedia article reports both that "File sharing in Japan is notable for both its size and sophistication," and that in Japan "Unlike most other countries, file sharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one," with 10-year penalties for uploading and 2-year ones for downloading, and a lot of ISP cooperation in entrapment. The downloading penalties came in a national law passed by a wide margin in 2012, year of the release of Winny, according to an item in Wired. Perhaps this explains why this film may inevitably feel timid and pessimistic, despite its trappings of a big legal procedural.

Winny cases against Kaneko dragged on and it took lawyers seven years to gain his acquittal, and two years after that he died of a heart, at 42. The main body of the film ends before his court ordeals were even half over, with an initial guilty verdict by a judge who was obviously closed minded from the start and imposes a big fine. This scene moves on to an open air scene with grim followup pronouncement to Kaneko from Toshimitsu Dan, who seems less optimistic then he is. "In Japan," he says, once you are convicted, it's difficult to restore your honor, even if you are acquitted next time." In a little weepy coda Kaneko's grieving sister assures Dan he meant a lot to her dead brother. Couldn't the film have ended on a more positive, energetic note?

Winny, 127 mins., opened in Japan March 10, 2023, also shown in festivals at Jeonju and Shanghai in Apr. and June. Screened for this review as parat of thhe July 26-August 6, 2023 NYC series, Japan Cuts when it was shown Wed., Aug. 2, 2023 at 9pm.

[Chris Knipp]

SUICHI OKITA: A FISH TALE さかなのこ (2022)


HARUKA IGAWA AND NON IN A FISH TALE

A fish-obsessed oddball's meandering path to celebrity ichthyologist

Meebo, known as "Sakana-kun" or "fish person," is a portrait of the origins and slow development real-life TV "celebrity ichthyologist" Masayuki Miyazawa. This non-binary individual, neither fish nor fowl in personal gender terms in their real life, is shown in this oddball, anecdotal biography as obsessed with fish life long. The male-by-birth Meebo is played by females in the film, ending with Non - the perky actress of the "Amachan" TV series about a high schoolgirl who becomes a shell diver. You have to figure this one out for yourself. Not everything is explained, or can be in this sui generis meandering "tale."

Meebo spends most of their early days obsessing over fish encyclopedias. Other school kids find them odd, but they achieve acceptance for their newsletter featuring excellent drawings, especially of fish. Meebo isn't a good student. They bond with the similarly obsessed adult local well-known boxfish cap-wearing oddball "Mr. Fish Man," (played by the real-life Sakana-kun, whose trademark is this cap) who gets taken to the police station for keeping Meebo at his little aquarium-shack till after dark sitting and drawing together. Meebo protests that it was harmless. (Others later assume Meebo was abused.) Much later, a woman who has been dating Hiyo, Momo (Kaho), comes to stay with Meebo with her little girl for a while, and eventually the little girl, a convert, will become the owner of a fish encyclopedia sponsored by celebrity Meebo.

Meebo comes out of the water one day "wearing" an octopus - their favorite sea animal - almost as big as they are. Their permissive oka-san (Haruka Igawa), who is ever supportive, says they can raise the big octopus at home. Dad (Hiroki Miyake), who always has doubts, doesn't agree. He rips the big octopus' head off Meebo, then beats its tentacles on the ground to tenderize it and cooks it seaside for people to snack on. Oddly, Meebo never appears conflicted about switching from admiration to consumption of their finny friends. (One may remember Lewis Carroll's famous Walrus and Carpenter and the crowd of baby oysters they greet, and then eat.)

What happens to "Mr. Fish" after the trip to the police station one hates to think; he'never seen again. The film jumps to high school (with Non now playing the lead) when Meebo stands off classmate gang toughs, especially leader Hiyo (Yuya Yagira) who object to their depicting their gang in their (continuing) newsletter. Several gangs, whose battles are staged here like a comic dance, are impressed by Meebo's culot, or ballsyness.

While Mark Schilling in The Japan Times is impressed by Meebo's way of "enthusiastically tackling every obstacle the 'normal' world throws" at them, thinking this "suits" director "Okita's talent for mixing quirky observational humor with heartfelt but laid-back human drama," this rather facile formula won't get you through the whole two hours and twenty minutes. The justification for such a run time is the film's depth and specificity, its patient observation. Meebo fails at one fish-related occupation after another - aquarium, sushi bar, etc. - till a bit of drunken vandalism reveals unexpected skill at mural painting, leading to the opportunity provided by two old classmates to paint the walls and front of their nice new sushi bar. This in turn leads to illustration work, and only then at long last to the offer from Hiyo to be on
TV doing what they do best: catch people's attention and talk about fish.

A Fish Tale さかなのこ ("Fish", 139 mins., debuted at Montreal Jul. 2022, Beijing Aug. 2022, and had its theatrical release in Japan Sept.2022. Screened for this review as part of New York's Japan Cuts Jul. 26-Aug.6 2023, shown Sat., where it was shown Aug. 5, 2023 at 12:00 pm.