Screening for the first time ever in New York City, Kurokawa Yoshimasa’s MOTHERS is a rare primary-source document of radical dissent during the era of Japan’s supposed postwar economic miracle. Spectacle presents the film alongside a reprise of Kim Mirye’s 2017 documentary LOOKING FOR THE WOLF (aka EAST ASIA ANTI-JAPAN ARMED FRONT.)

MOTHERS
(母たち)
dir. Kurokawa Yoshimasa, 1987
120 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MAY 2 – 5 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 11 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 17 – 7:30 PM followed by Q+A with Ken Sasaki and Hajime Imamasa
TUESDAY, MAY 28 – 10 PM

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MOTHERS was conceived and directed by the filmmaker while he was in prison, a member of the “Scorpion” cell of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (EAAJAF), incarcerated after the1974-1975 bombings of major construction companies Kashima Corporation and Hazama-Gumi for the massacres of forced laborers. (He remains there to this day, although he maintains an active presence on social media.) During Kurokawa’s incarceration, Ken Sasaki helped complete the project.

“This film depicts transformation the mothers of the members of the East Asia Anti-Japanese Armed Front underwent as they begin to reflect on themselves born and raised in the time and space ruled by Japan’s Emperor System that led Japan into wars of aggression against China and the rest of Asia as well as the post-war corporate economic aggression through the struggles of their sons and daughters. I hope the audience learn that people can change and that we can also change our attitudes toward the wars that are happening now, and discrimination and oppression of others.” – Ken Sasaki

Program notes from the 1997 Yamagata Documentary Film Festival read:

“As testimony to Kurokawa’s idea that “the emperor system is not only an incarnation of the patriarchal principle but also the embodiment of the female principle,” the film aims “to critically examine the essence of the Japanese maternal image.”

In it, Sasaki Ken and other film crew members interview the mothers of those in prison, including Kurokawa’s mother, on 8mm camera. Daidoji’s and Kurokawa’s mothers gradually begin to learn more about the “emperor system” because of the crime their sons committed, and another woman chooses to adopt Masunaga Toshiaki as her son after the incident. The film describes the mothers shouldering the heavy burden of the bombing and their calm acceptance of reality, even as they continue the campaign against their sons’ death sentences. The mothers’ honest discussion of their feelings is interspersed with humorous analytical short plays and scenes of Hokkaido, which refer to Daidoji’s most central experience. The film concludes with a confession of the “pathos of self-hatred for having no choice but to live as a native of Imperial Japan.”

LOOKING FOR THE WOLF
(aka EAST ASIA ANTI-JAPAN ARMED FRONT)
(동아시아반일무장전선)
dir. Kim Mirye, 2018
74 min. South Korea.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MAY 3 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 16 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 20 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28 – 10 PM

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A blast shook the office buildings in Tokyo on August 30th, 1974. A time bomb had detonated and blown up part of the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, leaving eight people dead and hundreds injured. The ‘Wolf’ cell, a unit of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, claimed responsibility. Others, claiming to belong to the cells ‘Fangs of the Earth’ and ‘Scorpion’, carried out a series of bombings, targeting major corporations. Deeply conscious of Japan’s imperialist heritage, the members of the horizontal network EAAJAF were committed to ending the history of Japanese capitalist exploitation in Asia. More than 40 years have passed since then. Some members are no longer in the world, others remain incarcerated, while still others remain at large. In search of traces of these revolutionaries, the Korean documentarist Kim Mirye makes a painstaking trip through the Japanese archipelago, from the day-laborer district in Osaka to the northern marshes of Ainu Mosir (known as Hokkaido). Looking straight in the eyes of those who came together in support of the EAAJAF, despite the glaring shortcomings of the group’s project, she challenges us to discover what is left unthought and unimagined within our notions of Japan and East Asia.

KIM MIRYE‘s work has constantly zoomed in on the experience of exclusion in the everyday life of ordinary people, compelled by their energy. While her films investigate a nd uncover the structural and historical roots of their dehumanization, they invite viewers to share in the protagonists’ perspectives on life, prompting them to reflect on their own grasp of life in relationship to others and the world. Her films have won awards at Fribourg International Film Festival (2004) and DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (2015). Spectacle first showed LOOKING FOR THE WOLF as well as her documentary NOGADA – about the migrant laborers who constitute “the scorned base of the pyramidal system that rules the construction sector in South Korea and Japan” – in 2022.

Special thanks to Hajime Imamasa, Sabo Kohso, Ken Sasaki and Kim Mirye.