Why I Write Stories

—

There really is a family theme running through your previous work, like I Wish and Like Father, Like Son. Do you have any particular views on family?

Koreeda

Nothing in particular, actually.

—

Really?

Koreeda

Yeah. I don’t hold any particularly unique family values. But when I shoot scenes of families, I just keep in mind that families are annoying, yet irreplaceable.

—

Family’s irreplaceable, but that’s not all.

Koreeda

Yes, it’s sometimes irritating. There are many things made more difficult by blood ties. So I like to show both sides of what it is to be “family.”

—

Yes, there are all kinds of family difficulties in your movies, like the husband-and-wife relationship in I Wish.

Koreeda

But that’s really all there is to it. I’m not trying to propose any overarching theory. I’ve come to realize, now that I have a family of my own, that I’m actually quite conservative.

—

Really? What do you mean by that?

Koreeda

For example, when I attended the sports day at my child’s school, I tried to cut a prototypical fatherly figure. (Laughs)

—

Do you mean with the way you dressed?

 

Koreeda

Yeah, I found myself wanting the people around me to see me as a clean-cut, proper father. We can’t all be totally unconventional… unless we’re Yuya Uchida. (Laughs)

—

Yup. (Laughs)

Koreeda

When I think about how I can’t quite break away from convention… it’s actually more interesting that way.

—

It’s a big discovery to make about yourself.

Koreeda

When I would drop off my daughter at kindergarten, the school staff would call me “___’s Papa.”

—

Yeah, they usually do.

Koreeda

My daughter’s friends and their mothers would call me that, too! And I thought, what the heck?

—

Yeah. (Laughs)

Koreeda

But it was refreshing—it actually made me kind of happy. It even made me happy to be in charge of the kindergarten graduation video. And I was surprised to see myself so pleased by all of it.

—

So you just kind of noticed all this?

Koreeda

I realized a lot of interesting things about myself. So I’ve tried to keep in mind the various ways and situations in which people are conservative while portraying characters.

—

So these discoveries make their way into your work.

Koreeda

Before I had a family of my own, I felt I was connected to the world through my work. But after I started a family and became a father, I came face-to-face with a conventionality that I never thought I had when I was young.

—

Yeah.

Koreeda

Having that personal experience now helps me to avoid creating families that seem more like academic concepts than real people.

—

The father in I Wish, played by Joe Odagiri, is a washed-up rock musician. That’s not a conventional family.

 

Koreeda

That’s right.

 

—

He’s very cool, as far as father figures go.

Koreeda

Yeah.

—

And even though he was not like my own father, he didn’t seem unrealistic. Perhaps it felt realistic because of what you said earlier, about family being a pain but also irreplaceable. Or because peoples’ natural conservatism shows through. Or because you portrayed both sides, the whole picture.

Koreeda

Hm… I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just because I don’t portray unusual situations as particularly unusual.

—

I see. That would explain why the unusual circumstances in I Wish and Like Father, Like Son don’t feel unrelatable.

 

Koreeda

If you think about it, there’s something quite awful happening in Our Little Sister.

—

That’s true.

Koreeda

In real life it would be an enormous undertaking to take in your half-sister after your father abandoned your family for another woman.

—

Yeah.

Koreeda

There was a reason we didn’t portray that unique set of circumstances in a dramatic way. It’s because each event is a single page in a diary. One page is about living with their half sister, another is about drinking plum wine together, another is about riding a bike through a path lined with cherry blossom trees.

—

Oh, you’re right!

 

Koreeda

And another page was about losing someone close. Situations may contain a mixture of darkness and light, but they’re all equal. Meeting someone for the first time, parting ways with someone, and watching a soccer match.

—

It really is a diary.

Koreeda

In the story, life and death, meeting and parting, are all equal things that come and go. That may have been difficult to portray in a live-action film, but I think that was the greatest charm in the source material, Akimi Yoshida’s original manga.

—

After talking with you, I can see that the diary pages each turn at the same pace. It’s almost as if there’s a philosophical stance that everything that happens carries equal weight. Have you always felt that way?

Koreeda

I’m not sure. I do now, but I haven’t always. It probably came with getting older.

—

I see.

Koreeda

Although, really, it’s something that was also in the original manga. I may have just drawn closer to an idea that was already present there.

—

Ah.

Koreeda

I think I’m more resistant to things, but I’ve started to feel that calm sense that life and death, meeting and parting, are all equal.

 

—

Oh, really?

 

Koreeda

I’ve come to understand that that’s what it means to live life.

2016-12-06-Tue

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