The Japanese film industry has one of the world's highest levels of output, with numerous films being released despite the restrictions placed by the pandemic. Mini-theaters and film festivals provide viewers with opportunities to see all kinds of cinema, from commercial films to independent films, selected through the unique aesthetic tastes of their organizers. They are an important presence, supporting the diversity of Japanese cinema.

From August 1st, the Japan Foundation will launch "JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA 2023", streaming twelve Japanese films including indies that reflect “Japanese culture and society” recommended by mini-theaters and movie industry members from around the world.

In conjunction with this project, we've asked seven members of the global industry to introduce the recent independent Japanese films they particularly recommend. Among these are "Bachiranun" and "Techno Brothers", which will be streamed by JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA 2023. Japanese independent cinema are more artist-driven and experimental than commercial films. How do these Japanese indie films come across to people in other countries? Film experts, from critics to film festival programmers, with deep knowledge of Japanese cinema, shared their own insights.

Editor: Minami Goto（CINRA, Inc.）　Main photo: ©FOOLISH PIGGIES FILMS

Films That Ask Complex Questions about Life in Modern Japan (Chris Fujiwara)

Japanese independent cinema provides spaces for social criticism, the subversion of genres, and the exploration of cinematic form. Deeply meditated and elegantly designed, these three films are notable examples of recent works that pose complex questions about life in contemporary Japan.

"The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)" (2020), directed by C.W. Winter and Anders Edström, portrays an elderly couple’s daily life in a rural village. A long film, it requires patience from viewers, which it repays with density of detail, quietness of tone, and subtlety of observation. The filmmakers’ insistence on the rhythms and routines of both work and intimate communication makes the film a uniquely rich experience.

The protagonist of "Small, Slow but Steady" (2022) is a young deaf woman who aspires to become a champion boxer. Under Sho Miyake’s taut and sensitive direction, the film draws emotional force from an accumulation of precise gestures and looks. The heroine’s athletic training becomes a journey through which she learns to accept the mystery and beauty of her world.

"In Living in Your Sky" (2020), a young publishing-company office worker who has recently lost her parents in a car accident moves, together with her cat, into a high-rise apartment and becomes involved with a neighbor, a famous actor. Shinji Aoyama’s final film unfolds with deceptive calmness in a limpid, gliding visual style. As the characters circle around an inner void that appears ever more inescapable, the mood of the film becomes increasingly grave and tender.

Shaking audiences with sharp social perspectives and cinematic experiments (Maggie Lee)

The COVID pandemic ravished mini-theaters and made the industry more risk-averse. Perhaps realizing it’s now or never, filmmakers of “jishu eiga” (Japanese indies) seem more fearless than ever, speaking out on controversial topics and running with the wildest ideas. These three films, two by arthouse veterans, jolt audiences with their experimentation with form or powerful messages.

To watch Toshiaki Toyoda’s films ("The Blood of Rebirth", 2009) is often like standing in the front row of a punk concert. The avant-garde stylist has a cult following for hypnotic scoring and edgy visuals, which soar to new levels in "Shiver" (2021), a non-verbal rhapsody on Kodo, Sado Island’s renowned Taiko (traditional Japanese drum) ensemble.

Employing music composed for the film by techno-wizard Koshiro Hino, the performances make percussion primal again. Whether it’s drumsticks softly tapping on wooden blocks or a thundering big drum solo shot in one take before a roaring waterfall, the musicians’ virtuosity will make your skin prickle.

"Company Retreat" (2020) explores secondary victimization based on a real case of workplace sexual harassment. Atsushi Funahashi ("Nuclear Nation", 2012) originally embarked on a documentary, but fictionalized it to protect the subjects’ identities. Shot in stark monochrome, with actors improvising all the lines, the toxic sexual and office politics, including a shocking twist, ring so true one forgets it’s a narrative film. By turns subtle and confrontational, the director demonstrates great courage with an uncompromisingly bleak take on gender inequality.

"An Ant Strikes Back" (2019) is one of the most harrowing, yet impactful social commentaries in years. Tokachi Tsuchiya, whose documentaries centered on labor issues, follows a salesperson’s three-year battle against his corporation’s unfair treatment after he joined a union. Eschewing fancy techniques, the film stays unwaveringly focused on the protagonist’s tenacity. A gripping procedural arguing that dignity and justice are worth fighting for.

Japan Is an Indie Movie-Friendly Country (Haochen Xu)

I think Japan is a very indie movie-friendly country. There are mini-theaters and film festivals that support new filmmakers, movie industry members who provide support for indies, and many people who go to watch films made as university student final film projects. This isn't something that you really find in other countries.

Film festivals focused on discovering, introducing, and nurturing young talent, like the Pia Film Festival (PFF) show wonderful movies every year. "Bachiranun", the 2021 film that won the PFF Award Grand Prix in the same year, is by newcomer Aika Higashimori, who hails from Okinawa's Yonaguni Island. The movie's use of the culture and language of the director's home, Yonaguni, showed audiences something new, which went beyond the bounds of typical Japanese films.

Another recent independent film that has really stayed with me was 2021's "Let Me Hear It Barefoot", which was created as a PFF Scholarship film by director Riho Kudo, who won the Grand Prix in 2018. It feels in a sense like an homage to director Wong Kar-wai, but the love it depicts through physical clashes, leaves an extremely powerful and beautiful lingering impression.

The independent film that I've found the most striking in recent years was Yujiro Harumoto's 2020 film "A Balance". The script is intricately crafted, and the directing, which rivals the Dardenne brothers and Asghar Farhadi, shows the potential for Harumoto to take a position on the world stage.

However, not everything about the Japanese independent cinema scene is a positive. The business end of the industry often struggles, and there have been several mini-theater closings in recent years. We've entered an age of streaming, and the independent cinema system will also be forced to change.

The Creativity of Independent Filmmakers as They Forge Their Own Paths (Mark Schilling)

The independent film sector has long been a source of much of Japan’s most interesting cinema. But under severe financial pressure, the arthouse theaters that show indie films have been forced to close one after another.

Indie filmmakers have pressed on nonetheless. Pre-pandemic, Malaysian director Kah-Wai Lim filmed "Come and Go" (2020), an intricately layered ensemble drama that examines the lives of Asian migrants in Lim’s adopted city of Osaka. The perspective is that a perceptive long-time observer and a perpetual outsider who ignores industry conventional wisdom that films about non-Japanese are bad box office.

Also making his own path is director Hirobumi Watanabe, who has partnered with composer brother Yuji to make a series of inventive and often funny minimalistic films. For their latest, Techno Brothers (2023), the Watanabes took inspiration from the German electronic ensemble Kraftwerk, as well as The Blues Brothers (1980) and Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), to craft an offbeat road movie that throbs with an infectious techno beat and comically comments on the harsh realities of the Japanese music business.

Actor-director Ryutaro Ninomiya broke fresh ground with "Minori, On the Brink", his 2019 film starring Minori Hagiwara as a young server in a trendy café/ramen shop who pushes back hard against male sexism. Fierce-eyed and outspoken, she is a new type of Japanese film heroine.

Ninomiya’s latest, "Dreaming In Between" (2023), has been selected by France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (ACID) for screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Further proof that Japan’s independent filmmakers are still creatively alive, though their corner of the film business is anything but well.

An Animated Film Filled with a Sense of Urgency to be Created (Alex Oost)

A big budget isn’t necessary to make a strong film, to be able to tell a good story well is. An excellent case in point of this is Junta Yamaguchi’s "Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes" (2020). Technically a science fiction since it is partly set two minutes in the future but manages to build an entertaining film around a fairly simple idea without losing the viewer’s attention.

In recent years the number of films dealing with non-ethnically Japanese people living in Japan has steadily increased, often about recent migrants to Japan. Ainu Mosir (2020) by Takeshi Fukunaga is a well-balanced story about the identity of a boy of Ainu descent (the original inhabitants of northern Japan). It both deals with universal issues of modernity and identity and with culturally specific elements without ever being exploitative about it.

A completely different kettle of fish is animation. Next to the costly big-budget animations by major studios are the more delicate works by small studios made by a small crew. The crew couldn’t be much smaller at Koji Yamamura’s Dozens of Norths (2021) which is pretty much a one-person-show with one person handling everything except for the sound and music.

The director made full use of his artistic freedom and created a captivating dreamlike journey of an artist’s struggles and societal ills. This applies also to many other independent Japanese films but what sets these apart is their sense of urgency of having to be made and the use of the filmmaker’s creativity despite, or perhaps thanks to, limited funding.

The Hope Represented by Japanese Independent Cinema (Sanghyun Hong)

I think back on Soseki Natsume's "Kokoro". The story is often mistaken as being a love story, but in fact it is a bold Japanese declaration of the spirit of freedom, resisting the grinding wheels of modernity. The fact that the title could have been translated as "Heart" but instead was left as "Kokoro" is an example of how Japan's unique culture has gained universal recognition around the world. The same is true for Japanese independent cinema, which is sharing the value of the movie experience while surrounded by streaming services.

First, let's look at "Jazz Café Basie: The Ballad of Swifty" (2020). This work, which intentionally avoids the use of digital technologies, uses an acoustic, jazz-like experimentalism to break through the blind spot of film technology, which is focused on optical mechanisms. It's truly a 21st century version of Surprise (* another name for Hayden's Symphony No. 94).

What about "Minamata Mandala" (2020)? Genius Kazuo Hara breaks down the good-and-evil clichés with the documentary, rebuilding it as a world of film.

Next is "In Her Room" (2023), which elevates literature to the shared communication of film. I was overjoyed to see its aesthetic explorations paired with the production design of up-and-coming scenographer Naoka Fukushima.

It may be impossible to rapidly turn around the harsh market environment that surrounds independent cinema. However, film creators are certain to keep on fighting. Without anyone even realizing it, Japanese independent cinema may have become the last ray of hope for the cinephiles of the world.

Dark gems in the mainstream shadow（Benjamin Illos）

In spite of the hostile financing landscape, many independents continue to tackle, through the prism of the genre, burning questions: class struggle, generation divide, gender gap…. Aiming for theatrical exhibition, they match or surpass wealthier but somewhat chastised features. Lack of budget isn’t their excuse not to be daring, formally refined and ambitious.

Daisuke Miyazaki for instance released in 2019 his best film to date, VIDEOPHOBIA (2019), an uncomfortable rape and revenge tale for the age of the internet, where identities shift, dipped in deep, sticky, black surreal atmosphere.

Not long before, Seiji Tanaka made his debut with "Melancholic" (2018), a whimsical crime comedy where a socially awkward graduate from Japan’s top university starts questioning the rat race. Some are born with leadership skills, not him. He finally reveals himself and the truth of people around him through the most abhorred job, janitoring crime scenes for the local yakuza.

Organized crime is said to be declining but in 2020, Oudai Kojima rejuvenated the genre with a true-to-life dive into complex digital schemes, identity thefts and banking cons. The tightly scripted "JOINT" (2021) remains miraculously limpid from start to finish, razor-sharp, snappy, and tremendously engaging.

"Baby Assassins" (2021) is another blissful ride hardly summarized. Gangster comedy, slacker chronicle, odd couple slapstick… It is generous in ideas, punkish Gen-Z punchlines against social norms, phony jobs and authorities, and infused with an infectious girl-power spirit. Physical comedy is risky, especially on the cheap, but Yugo Sakamoto pulls it with a great cast, inventing with his two actresses a formidable duo.

Finally, in 2023, Keisuke Sakurai surfaced with "God Bless You". A debt collector is forced to confront his inner child when assigned a sweet but mentally challenged new recruit, who mirrors all his actions. Some can’t escape their fate, and underneath its dark humor points deep existential angst, aligned with the compass of film noir.