When I talk about documentary film, I don’t mean a movie which simply describes or tries to analyze something. The movie I make is not objective, but extremely, and honestly subjective. I have no intention of making another NHK documentary, trying to analyze and break things apart. Instead I just want to tell truth.
In Japan, society has many invisible rules, and people don’t normally talk about their emotions. These rules of society are taught to the children since their birth. For example that it’s unacceptable to cry or laugh in public. If you ask children if they like their parents, most of them won’t say they do. People think it’s natural. Why?
Children are supposed to go to kindergarden, and all kinds of schools after that, as long as they are not home. To say “I want to walk through my life, my child by my side”, for example, would sound strange. Why?
Your child is like a god. You can learn many things from him. He is you. Of course, you want to spend as much time as possible with him. Who wouldn’t want to spend time with god?
I believe that the present day loneliness is a situation produced by the society. This theme was well described in Naomi Kawase’s Moe no Suzaku. This movie is a story of me and my son, and a kind of separation. Not only separation that takes place every day when I take him to the kindergarden, but also separation that I feel as a human. So in fact, this is a personal matter.