Kayako No Tameni
Japan,
1984, 115 min
Shown in 1986
CREDITS
- dir
-
Kohei Oguri
- prod
-
Fujio Sunaoka
- scr
-
Shogo Ohta, Kohei Oguri
- cam
-
Shohei Anado
- cast
-
Sunghil, Kaho Minami, Jun Hamamura, Kayako Sono
- source
-
Shibata Organization Inc., Tokyo
OTHER
Director Kohei Oguri, after being much admired for his first film, Muddy River, took four years before bringing out his second, For Kayako, in 1984. It, too, is a work of beauty that takes as its subject humiliation and its comprehension. It is a love story about a young Korean—a minority ethnic group discriminated against in Japan—and a Japanese raised as the adopted daughter of a mixed Korean and Japanese marriage. The girl’s adoptive mother is very much against her daughter marrying a Korean and her interference, as well as the girl’s own doubts, causes the affair to founder. Oguri avoids describing the specific facts about discrimination against Koreans in Japan. As a result, the film had a poor reputation among those who had anticipated a film of social criticism. Perhaps Oguri considered it too easy to describe and reflect on Japanese racism. Japanese know the facts about discrimination against Koreans in Japan, but they don’t want to know about the suffering of Koreans, or the inner beauty that suffering brings. Oguri depicts the beauty that dauntless endurance of discrimination has brought to the long suffering Koreans. It is exactly that which Japanese don’t wish to face that he depicts with such strength. For Kayako is one of the most beautiful Japanese films of recent years.
-Tadao Sato, American Film
FACTOID #202
At the 1978 SFIFF, Paul Mazursky received a tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently, the facility’s janitorial staff had not been notified, and the padlocked doors of the Palace had to be cut so the filmmaker and his audience could be let in.
