Why is Japan's population in decline? One need look no further for answers than to popular art in the country, 2004's The Place Promised in Our Early Days (雲のむこう、約束の場所, "Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place"), for instance, though one might have to look carefully. It's the first feature film from Shinkai Mokoto, a filmmaker who's recently been hailed as a successor to the increasingly outre Miyazaki Hayao, though with this feature the predominant influence of Anno Hideaki is unmistakable. It's not a film that quite struggles out from under the shadow of this influence but it does feature hints of the longing and disconnect between a boy and a girl, Shinkai's most interesting artistic preoccupation, which peaked in 2016's Your Name.
Set in an alternate universe, The Place Promised in Our Early Days finds three Japanese junior high school students dreaming about flying the little plane they built into Ezo airspace. Ezo is the new name for Hokkaido which, in this history, has been annexed by the Soviet Union. The Soviets have built a thin white tower that extends into infinity and is visible from as far away as Tokyo.
The three students are two boys and a girl. One of the boys, Hiroki (Yoshioka Hidetaka) is usually the point of view character and he falls in love with the girl, Sayuri (Yuka Nanri). As in Your Name, sci-fi elements present obstacles between the two, taking the form of dimensional separation and dream sharing.
Japan has the highest average IQ in the world and has a culture that stresses the importance of indirect communication. So when a young person's imagination runs rampant, provoked by natural instincts, it's easy to see how Shinkai's sci-fi plots function as metaphors, even allegories, for shyness and endless second guessing. Every second guess could be an alternate timeline. The film's also peppered with distinctly Evangelion-ish scenes of secretive meetings between military and intelligence officers at ramen restaurants as well as scenes of command rooms where staff scream technical jargon at each other while screens flash alarmingly.
As in Evangelion, the complicated professional and bureaucratic crises are reflections of and metaphors for personal psychological agonies. Shinkai is not as adept at lending the same complexity to female characters as Anno is and Sayuri is presented as innocent of carnal appetite, though she does have an interesting scene in which she contemplates her empty desk at her school, years after her graduation (and possibly in another timeline).
So it's not hard to see why it's so hard for young people in Japan to find romantic partners and why the divorce rate's so high. I'm sure by now you're thinking of that classic opening scene from Idiocracy. I often think of it now that I live in Japan.
The Place Promised in Our Early days is available now on The Criterion Channel as part of a playlist of Shinkai Makoto movies this month.
No comments:
Post a Comment