THE REVERSE SIDE OF JAPAN

A part of the film – the part without the cast – required, as a photographer, to spend a lot of time looking for things to shoot in the streets of Tokyo, in order to enrich the film. One of the goals of the filmmaker was also to show Tokyo as we rarely have a chance to see it. He wished to capture “Nippon no ura” (the reverse side of Japan).

BOKEH

Phantom was fully shot with a narrow field of view (a 50 mm lens) to “trap” the characters in the frame. The lens was always widely opened (f/1.8) to keep the shallowest depth of field and to be more sensitive to light. It created a very strong “bokeh” (the background blurriness) and put the subject in and out of focus.

A PRECARIOUS YOUTH

The main character is a “freeter” (a part-time worker in Japan) and she earns money with small jobs, waiting to find a real one. The “freeters” show the job insecurity of contemporary Japanese youth for whom it gets harder to find lifetime employment, a typical Japanese system that tends to disappear.

LITERARY CONNECTIONS

In the film, the couple mentions some Japanese novels. Takiji Kobayashi’s Kanikōsen (The Crab Cannery Ship) is a novel that returned to popularity in 2008 when the working conditions of young Japanese workers were compared to those described in this novel. Fumiko Hayashi’s Hōrōki is an autobiographical novel in which she describes her life in poverty and her complicated love stories. Some of Hayashi’s works have been adapted into movies by Mikio Naruse. Kōbō Abe’s The Box Man is quoted as an example of alienation that the characters of the film would like to avoid.