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Kering Women in Motion, an allied program of the Tokyo International Film Festival, held a talk event on Tuesday at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills for a packed crowd.
Director Kore-eda Hirokazu (“Shoplifters”) opened the
event with brief remarks. “In recent years, I’ve been hearing people at international film festivals say, ‘Japanese films are really interesting right now.’ That’s a sentiment we didn’t hear 10 years ago,” he said. “Led by Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Fukada Koji, directors in their 20s and 30s have been taking their works overseas, and through their accumulated efforts and recognition, the attention given to Japanese films has been increasing. How to pass this on to the next generation and spread it further is a challenge for the older generation, and I think it’s also very important for film fans who are exposed to these works.”
The panelists – Arashi singer and actor Ninomiya Kazunari, producer Murata Chieko and Amy Homma, director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Academy Collection – spoke about the present and future of Japanese cinema, as well as diversity and inclusion in the industry, with journalist Tatsuta Atsuko serving as facilitator.
“I’m a Japanese-American woman and I’m a Jewish American woman – and both of those cultures and ethnicities carry deeply long lineages of history,” Homma said. “I’m very lucky to have been raised with the awareness that multiple truths can exist at the same time.”
National cinemas also exist parallel to each other, she added, but “that does not make one more important or one more harder than the other,” she said. “American film history is just as important as Japanese film history and just as important as French film history.”
By taking a broad view of film history and experiencing different types of cinema, she said, “We allow ourselves to learn so much more about a lived experience that’s outside of our own, because there’s no better way to develop empathy to develop cultural understanding than through watching a movie.”
Ninomiya, who first came to international attention for his starring role in Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-winning World War II drama “Letters from Iwo Jima,” said that working on an international production “presented both differences and learning opportunities for me as an actor.” One difference, he found, was the staff’s tendency “to ask more questions” than they would on a Japanese set. “They ask things like, ‘What is this?’ or ‘How do you use this?’” The result, he said, was a conversation leading to solutions, instead of a top-down explanation that might result in confusion.
Murata, the producer of the 2025 smash-hit kabuki-themed drama “Kokuho,” which received rave reviews abroad and was nominated for a Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar, said she wanted to “create something that will move as many people as possible, make as many people laugh as possible, and make as many people cry as possible.”
For that to happen, she added, tolerance of varying cultural perspectives is essential. “The worst case is a world in which that becomes difficult,” she said.
Homma commented that as a museum director in charge of various teams doing everything from research to marketing, “It’s always about who the best person would be.” Her aim, she added, was “for many people to bring their own cultural differences or their own unique qualities and have that be seen as a strength. I don’t want anyone to shy or hide their individualism.”
Diversity “across gender expression, across ethnicity and across ages,” she said, “is what makes for a great team,” adding, “It’s about plural thinking, not individual thinking.”
