Tokyo pulse

Tokyo lives! It is vibrant, energetic and unpredictable….

…and it forms the décor for an amazing cooperation between directors Joon-ho Bong, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry for the triptych Tôkyô! (Shaking Tokyo, Merde and Interior Design), which premiere at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard programme. Three completely different stories, but all situated in a city that is definitely a great subject, and background, for inspirational cinema.

Ever since Venetian explorer Marco Polo mentioned a country the Mandarin Chinese called Cipangu in his 13th century account of his travels to the Far-East, Japan has intrigued westerners immensely. Nippon, The Land of the Rising Sun, draws us in with its mystique and doesn’t let go. No wonder then that Japan has been featured in western cinema from as early as 1901, when a short American documentary called Asakusa Temple, directed by Robert K. Bonine, depicted, among other things, some early tourists admiring the impressive temple in Tokyo. This silent film already showcased what would become a niche within western film; films about Japan, and especially about its capital.

Perhaps it’s the way the Japanese culture seems to cherish purity that we rugged westerners crave for depictions of it. In Wim Wenders’ Tokyo Ga, the director went in search of just that; to find pure images. Images that he so admired in the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. What he found was a much-changed society, where the mystique had been replaced by Pachinko arcades and wax effigies of restaurant food. However, in a way these images are as pure and no-nonsense as the ones he was searching for. The endless shots of trains, metal Pachinko balls and people among the cherry blossoms in a graveyard have an almost meditative quality to them.

Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola has that same reflective atmosphere. It provides a view of Tokyo as seen by foreign visitors. Literally lost among the confusion of the vast city’s dynamics, the main characters search for some kind of piece of mind, in each other’s company. Piece of mind, it turns out, is hard to find.

It’s not only foreigners who search for ways to connect within the city. The Japanese characters in Jean-Pierre Limosin’s Tokyo Eyes are also looking for a connection, albeit of a different kind. K tries to change wrongdoers by shooting at them with a rigged gun that (nearly) always misses, whilst 17-year-old Hinano searches for affection and adventure. The film contains many cinematic references, adding an extra dynamism, which makes one wonder how the film would have turned out had the director followed his initial idea to shoot it in Paris. In fact, Tokyo seems to fit the story like a glove - or put better, like a well-oiled train. Trains seem to be the common denominator in films shot by foreigners in Tokyo, even by those who originate from the East. The simple voyage from ‘a’ to ‘b’ becomes a journey inward, an almost philosophical search for meaning. In Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Café Lumiere, the network of trains resembles arteries that feed the city, and the main characters’ activities. The films pulsates with the sound of metal wheels on the tracks, the movement of the wagons and the soundtrack of Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen-Ye. The city as a living, breathing organism; but still as pure as in the films of Ozu it was inspired by.

Just as jazz musicians hear music in the heartbeats of cities like New York and Paris, filmmakers will keep finding rhythms in Tokyo’s pulse that drive their films, feed their narratives and give them a spirit that can’t be found anywhere else.

Itxaso Elosua Ramírez