December 7, 2020
A.C.E.
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 13
Actors connect in “subconscious”
to play young, old Hokusai
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By Yuri Kageyama
The Associated Press
OKYO — A new film portraying the life of Edo-era
painter and printer Hokusai features the artistry
of two modern-day Japanese actors.
Yuya Yagira, who won a Cannes Best Actor award for
his role in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows, plays the
younger Hokusai. Internationally acclaimed dancer Min
Tanaka portrays the older Hokusai.
Although Yagira and Tanaka don’t particularly look
alike, their intense expressions are so similar, viewers
will have no problems accepting they’re the same person.
Hokusai was the closing film of the Tokyo International
Film Festival, which ended last month. The festival
featured online events as well as real-life film screenings
with social distancing for the pandemic.
Tanaka and Yagira talked at length just once, and
Tanaka had suggested they don’t try too hard to work at
portraying the same character, and instead just follow
their own “subconscious.”
“I chose to believe in the script, the director, and Yuya
Yagira the actor, and believe they have already prepared
what is to be inside of me. And that is enough,” Tanaka
said, stressing that mimicking Yagira’s portrayal of his
character as a youth wouldn’t be particularly interesting.
Their interpretations of Hokusai underline the
determination of artists to pursue their voice, a calling
that appears to lie deeply in Tanaka and Yagira, as well as
in Hokusai.
Yagira sees Hokusai as a feudal-era Banksy, the British
street artist, and was excited to be in a samurai film with
no sword fighting scenes, featuring an artist with whom he
could identify.
“There are common feelings, such as wanting to be
recognized but not getting recognized, basic feelings like
jealousy or envy, or we want to be better,” he said. “We
decided to create our own Hokusai as a young man.”
The story traces Hokusai’s struggles, enduring
economic, psychological, and artistic hardships amid the
cruel, oppressive social backdrop of feudal Japan. The
struggles culminate in Hokusai’s arriving at the
spectacular waves of his famous woodblock print in the
“36 Views of Mount Fuji” series.
Yagira said he suggested the scene, in which a youthful
Hokusai in despair walks into the ocean, almost giving up,
but returns and starts drawing in a frenzy on the sand.
“Why did he feel so much for waves?” he said. “I
suggested maybe he had once given up on life. If you had
T
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ARTISTIC PORTRAYAL. Actor Min Tanaka performs in a scene
from Hokusai. The new film, which portrays the life of Edo-era painter and
printer Hokusai, features the artistry of two modern-day Japanese actors
— Min Tanaka (pictured) and Yuya Yagira. Tanaka portrays the older
Hokusai in the film. (2020 Hokusai movie via AP)
that kind of extreme passion, then you will find the energy
to create such a world-famous painting.”
The scene that’s key for Tanaka is when the older
Hokusai revels in arriving at his own shade of blue.
“That scene is about achieving that blue, the color that I
love, and so it is with sheer joy I go into the rain. And I
want to become that color, making my whole body that
color,” Tanaka said with a smile, initially denying
playfully that he was dancing.
“The director had asked me that, if a dance becomes
born, then I should create dance. It worked out fine. Yes, I
danced,” he said.
Hajime Hashimoto, the director, believes movies have
long lived in “the world of darkness” — known as theaters
— despite the challenges of various times.
“That place where strangers huddle close, cry, laugh, get
outraged, and have fun together,” he said. “Hokusai brings
together all our feelings for that place.”
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