The Face of Jizo

by Yorogawa NagaTOM <Yorogawa NagaTOM's CINEMA recommendations> (Japanese), Translated by Michi Kaifu

Hi, everyone. Have you seen the "A-bomb Dome" in Hiroshima? I saw it for the first time 10 years ago, and I was shocked. My image from TV and photos was monotone gray, the ruin with naked iron pillars and old concrete with weeds on it. But I had a very different impression when I actually looked up the Dome from the inside. "What? What is this red color? Why is it so red?" In the backdrop of bright early summer blue sky, the concrete ruin I saw was not a monotone, but I felt the red color, oozing out from the whole body.

The iron pillars were rusted, but it was treated with preservative coating, so it was not exactly the rust. I don't have much of a supernatural power, so it was not the color of blood. I am usually sensitive to colors due to my profession, so maybe I felt a gap from my pre-perception. Anyway, I still cannot forget that impression of red color in Hiroshima Dome.

"The Face of Jizo" (The original Japanese title's literal translation: When I live with my father) is one of the major work of the prominent playwrite Hisashi Inoue, but I did not know that the story is staged in 3 years after A-bomb attack in Hiroshima, and the heroin has a tragic life history, when I went to the movie theater.

Rather, I believed that it was a comedy with a touch of sarrow, as the catch said "story of a funny life of a daughter and her father, who came out as a ghost worrying about his daughter's future", and that it was written by Hisashi Inoue, known for comedy plays. I was wrong.

The original is a stage play, and the movie also takes after that format, so the characters are only the daughter and the father. Daughter's boyfriend appears, but fonly breifly. This movie takes a unique format of two-person play.

The daughter is played by Rie Miyazawa, and the father Yoshio Harada. The daughter is a librarian. Good age and good looking, so she has some opportunity for love, but she keeps refusing them, just like she is afraid of becoming happy. the only person she opens up her heart is her cheerful and generous father. He sometimes complains, concerned about her future, but he takes care of her with good housekeeping skills, learned from the time when he worked in an inn before the war.

But something is wrong. Father seems to live with her, but sometimes disappears all of a sudden. Daughter comes back home from errands and sees her father, and says "thanks for coming again" with a smile.

No wonder, father is not a person in this world any more. But the pair's time goes by like it is no big deal. Everyday converasation is full of humor and the heart-warming atmosphere.

But the things starts rolling when a young man comes to the library and she starts to see him with a special feeling. She gets confused with the irresistible love in her heart, but still tries to confine herself in the shell. She keeps saying "I am not allowed to be happy," and the father finally gets impatient. Then, little by little, what happened to the daughter and the father 3 years ago comes out in light.

It is no secret that Hisashi Inoue's original story, Director Kazuo Kuroki's direction, and Shinya Ikeda's screenplay are all great, and the acting of both Rie Miyazawa and Yoshio Harada is simply superb. For that matter, I don't have to say much.

It is basically the "two-person play", so there is no big set, and the story happens mostly in the house, but on the other hand, small items and trifling episodes have meanings behind them. As the story reveals and as we know the real meanings of these items, we find out that this low-key looking story started with a shocking event in the past, and we start to understand the meaning of daughter's stubbornness and her lines. And I found out that the pair was planting a root deep inside my heart.

On April 21, 2005, this film was shown in MIT in Boston, MA, USA, with Hisashi Inoue and four A-bomb surviving victims on stage. The audience was only 150 people, and it was shown only once, but the shocking key scene gave a strong impression and won their support.

Actually, I believe that such a movie should be introduced more widely in the world.

(My opinion) Nuclear weapon is the war itself

For the people with no experience, it means only the destructive power at the moment, but the real threat is the living-hell that lasts eternally after it is used. And the biggest fear is that there are so many people who don't understand it, and they hold the grip on the world's fate.

It is not only about the political people. People who would be drafted if the war happens, and the people who remain at home and gets hit by the war, should understand it as well.

And at last, I wonder how you understand the last scene of this movie. I felt it was very shocking, but the brochures and official site are describing it with more positive view. As I was walking out of the theater, I was praying that my understanding was wrong.

The movie's DVD was released on June 24, 2005 in Japan.