Fireside Chat with Shinsuke Sato
August 2, 2013, San Francisco Japanese Film Festival—Shinsuke Sato, director of the film “Library Wars” talked about his film and the inspiration for this work. Censorship is becoming a world-wide issue, and the ongoing challenge is to balance freedom and public interests. This film looks at the possible responses and intents in both parts of the debate.
One challenge was to film battle scenes in Japan, which is a small country with limited space. This limitation on scale within an urban environment requires an internal war strategy that is very hard. In some respects, this is a type of civil war.
Some inspiration came from the book and movie “Fahrenheit 451”, which is also about book burning and thought repression. The original movie showed a system of control leading to a dark feeling about the future. This film tries to look at a lighter side in the struggle under oppressive control. Other influences include Orwell’s “1984”. These books show the insider’s view of repression and some things are going the same way in Japan. The loss of freedoms in any country is usually an insidious process, but in Japan is seems very hard to make censorship happen.
The whole idea for the movie comes from an anime TV series. TV series have short episodes, and are shown on a weekly basis. Overall, the series is much longer than the movie, so I had to change the script and story to fit into a 2-hour movie. This time reduction also changed the mood of the story. The movie covers the first 4 episodes of the TV series.
The battle scenes have greater tension and have movie specific features. For example, Dojo, the team leader, loses his gun in the last fight, so has to revert to one-on-one martial arts. The film actions is different from the TV series because of the large screen and the need to fill a larger space with the action.
Since the anime series is still going on, there is a good likelihood that there will be a sequel. “When I started filming, my focus was on the story and fitting the story into the cinematic frame. Everything had to be reasonably realistic, or at least not too unreal so I didn’t think about any follow up movies. If there is a good demand for a sequel, I will make it.” Sato remarked.
The Library Defense force is like the Japanese Self Defense Force, in that they are supposed to be there only for defense, and not for aggressive actions. Although they use force, they try hard to ensure that the force in not lethal to the other side, something the other side is not concerned with. The Library Force tries to control the battles by aiming at the attackers’ feet. The controls within the war system are very formal and Japanese. In this sense, the Library Force is like the Self Defense Force.
In fact, the Self Defense Force was very supportive. They got to use a Self Defense Force base and equipment for some of the scenes, and the bath scene used a bath at one base. The Defense Force sees itself as a symbol for freedom, so supported the project as something within its vision.
Censorship is insidious. First controls are towards the youth, to restrict violence and sex. The controls create grey zones where the degree of violence is OK for some but on t ofr others. One challenge is to keep restricted materials out of the hands of the young people while allowing older people to still have access. As we all know, kids are very resourceful in getting their hands on contraband. In addition, there is a strong following for anime in the arts. Inhibiting the content restricts the artists and their legal followers. Any restrictions are not good for the flow of ideas.
On the other hand, there is growing control of verbal terms from the media. For example, “tokuya” is an older term for barber, but is has become not politically correct. Another word is “hyakusho” an old term for farmer. A lot of the media are forcing political correctness on the to general population by eliminating parts of the language. News and media organizations are making these changes slowly. The creeping control is like Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm”.
However, these language changes are not resulting in any policy changes. The general topic is not making any impact on the general public. As a result, the movie is seen as entertainment and not as a social or political statement.
The movie sound track is available on Japan iTunes, but probably is not on the US iTunes. It may be on Amazon on CDs.
