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is his “true” identity — he is biologically Japanese but was brought up as Chinese. 12. Miramax initially turned down The Crying Game, though later they picked up the film for distribution (Yoshizaki interview 2006) 13. Michiyo Yoshizaki, interviewed by Yoshi Tezuka, on 26 December 2006, 15 January and 10 February 2007 in London. 14. The public support for film production had been nominal in Japan historically . Although some help becomes available when the government adopted the so-called “Cool Japan” policy in the early twenty-first century, financial support for film production remains scarce. 15. It is worth noting here that the surge of Japanese yen power coincided with the shift of cultural policy and reduction of public funding of arts in Britain. Thus, many British artists and filmmakers were looking to Japan for alternative sources of finance. 16. The first Tokyo International Film Festival was held from 31 May to 9 June 1985 and aimed to be the “Cannes Film Festival of the East” (Watabe 1987: 90). Michiyo Yoshizaki was in charge of organizing the competition juries and guests and so forth while Masato Hara was one of the masterminds behind the organization of the festival as a whole (Yoshizaki interview 2007). 17. Jurmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise was a phenomenal success in the minitheatres (Otaka and Inaba, 1989: 43), and Japan became the single most important market for New York independents — Jurmusch’s Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) were all financed by JVC entertainment. 18. Hiroaki Fujii interviewed by Yoshi Tezuka on 5 August 2005 in Tokyo. 19. Average studio features cost approximately 60 million yen and independent films cost approximately 20 million yen in the late 1970s (Fujii interview 2005). 20. Fujii produced a Japanese film shot on location in Italy, Eden no sono (The Garden of Eden, Yasuzo Masumura, 1980). He also produced a film directed by the fashion designer Kenzo Takada, called Yume, yume no ato (Dream, After Dream, Kenzo Takada, 1981) in France, and facilitated the Japanese location part of Joseph Losey’s Trout (1982). 21. The interpreter, Jun Mori, used to work in my production office in London and we chatted a lot about Fujii. 22. Fujii is known for his close friendship with the controversial writer Yukio Mishima. After Mishima’s death, Fujii became in charge of looking after the film rights of all Mishima novels for his estate. However, according to Fukushima (the line producer of The Grudge 2 who was close to Fujii) this does not mean Fujii shared Mishima’s political views. Fujii was also close to the progressive left-wing writer Kobo Abe — the author of Suna no onna (The Woman in the Dune); Tanin no kao (The Face of Another) amongst others (Fukushima interview 2006 ). 176 Notes to pages 97–123 23. Toho Studio, where Shogun was shot, was the site of the fiercest labour struggles in post-war history, but its labour union was weakened considerably by the 1970s (Sato 1995b: 189–205). 24. Masaichi Nagata’s Daiei, where Fujii was the head of script development, went bankrupt in 1971. Since then, Fujii has produced films through his independent production company and occasionally freelanced. 25. Kiyoshi Inoue, interviewed by Yoshi Tezuka on 4 and 12 August 2005 in Tokyo. 26. Inoue worked on Hentai kazoku aniki no yomesan (Abnormal Family, Masayuki Suo, 1983) as an assistant director; Masayuki Suo later directed Shall We Dance? (1996). Inoue worked on numerous low-budget exploitation films in the 1980s before he went to the US. After the collapse of the Japanese studio production system in the 1970s, these sex exploitation films were one of only few places where young filmmakers could gain working experience. 27. Nevertheless, the production budget of Lost in Trasnlation, that is $4 million, does not really qualify to be called “low budget” for the Japanese standard. 28. For example, based on my own experience, an average rate of pay for a first assistant director in the early 2000s in the US was about US$650 for ten hours a day, whereas in Japan, ¥30,000 (approximately US$250) would buy a very experienced first assistant director for a flat day, which normally means over 14 hours. 29. Satoshi Fukushima interviewed by Yoshi Tezuka, on 11 August 2006 in Tokyo. His contract did not allow Satoshi Fukushima to tell me actual numbers from the budget. However, he did not deny these “estimated...

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