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ABSTRACT
Over the past eight years, independent documentary filmmakers in Japan have produced over one hundred works concerning the 3/11 disaster in Tōhoku. Since the controversy over Mori Tatsuya's film 311, the issue of documentary ethics has loomed large in the discussion of these films. Specifically: how may we understand the filmmaker's social and ethical responsibility in documenting a disaster such as 3/11? Despite the importance of this sensitive issue for audiences, it has received little scholarly attention. In this article, I analyse three exemplary films which are directly concerned with 3/11: Ōmiya Kōichi’s The Sketch of Mujō, Fujiwara Toshi's No Man’s Zone, and Funahashi Atsushi's Nuclear Nation. While all three films focus on the survivors of the disaster, each takes a distinctive approach: Ōmiya reflects on the interplay between impermanence [mujō] and collective memory; Fujiwara queries our presuppositions and place as spectators of disaster; and Funahashi explores the system of power that maintains the nuclear village. I propose an axiographic analysis of these films as a contribution to our understanding of the disaster, shedding light on not only the ethical stance of the filmmakers, but also on the mechanisms of the larger, mass-mediated image regime in contemporary Japan.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano for her encouragement and support during the publication of this article, Atsushi Funahashi and Toshi Fujiwara for their patience answering my questions about their work, Max Ward for his thoughtful comments and suggestions, and especially Junko Satō for her discussion of the text and generous help with translation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
M. Downing Roberts is a Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP). His research interests include: East Asian and European cinema, theories of film, media, and aesthetics, visual and literary studies.
Notes
1. 311 premiered at the Busan International Film Festival on 7 October 2011; two days later, a slightly longer version (105 vs. 94 min) was screened at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. A shorter 92-minute version opened in Japanese theatres on 3 March 2012.
2. This figure is based on the number of films in the YIDFF 311 Documentary Film Archive, which is still growing.
3. In 2013, the Yamagata Film Festival included a special section on the ethics of documentary film. While none of the programmed films concerned 3/11, the panel discussion proposed consideration of post-3/11 documentary. Although not present for that discussion, I assume it addressed some aspects of the approach that I propose here (‘The Ethics Machine’ Citation2013).
4. While Sobchack confines her analysis to Western culture, and while the historical account of the taboo that she offers is almost certainly different in other cultures, similar prohibitions concerning contact with death do exist in Japanese society, such as its status as kegare (i.e., pollution, uncleanliness) requiring various purification rituals [misogiharae].
5. The Sketch of Mujō opened at the Auditorium Shibuya on 18 June 2011 Japan (i.e., before Mori Tatsuya’s 311 screened at Busan), 99 days after the disaster; that is, on the eve of the day for the traditional Buddhist service known as hyakkanichi hōyō, to support the deceased souls who have already passed to the pure land.
6. The Buddhist ritual of shijūkunichi hōyō, performed on the forty-ninth day after the death of loved ones, is intended to help the living pass beyond mourning.
7. A longstanding theme in Japanese letters and art, the classical expressions of mujō appear in the opening passages of Kamo no Chōmei’s The Ten Foot Square Hut [Hōjōki] and the epic Tale of the Heike [Heike monogatari]. Indeed, the title of the film — Mujō Sobyō — rhymes with shogyō mujō ('all realms of being are transient'), the first of the 'three marks of existence' in Buddhist scripture.
8. Nuclear Nation screened at film festivals in Berlin, Hong Kong, and Zurich, and Nuclear Nation II screened at Berlin and Cinéma du Réel in France.
9. This sequence was filmed by some of the Futaba residents, as the Japanese government would not grant Funahashi permission to join them.
10. The politico-economic structure of the nuclear village is explored in greater detail by the lawyer Kawai Hiroyuki, in his documentary film Nihon to genpatsu (2015).
11. Satō’s thought is also significant in this context, for he and Funahashi worked together at University of Tokyo, and discussed documentary practices at length.