Film directors from Japan

"Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it."

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane!"

"I like silent pictures and I always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they had to be. At any rate I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film."

"A film should appeal to sophisticated, profound-thinking people while at the same time entertaining simplistic people. A truly good movie is really enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it. A truly good movie is interesting and easy to understand."

"Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself."

"No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?"

"Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public."

"命は闇の中のまたたく光だ。"

"We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation."

"Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world."

"I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy."

"It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more."

"You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, 'Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.' If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!"

"Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn't be defeated by life without them."

"If it is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilisation moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era."

"Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do."

"Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

"I conceived this story [ MW ] with the intention of presenting readers a picaresque drama that distort the traditional atmosphere of my stories leave them stunned."

"I wish that all the ills of society - conformism, laziness, indolence, betrayal, violence, lust, rape - and especially the evils of politics will be represented in the form of an absolute depravity."

"Now I feel a great regret. My style inadequate forces me to complete the work without being able ..."

"When Superman and Batman came to Japan, it was right after the war, right? Together with the G.I.s. In other words, our height and theirs was completely different. We were totally overwhelmed physically, and got this complex about being unable to compete with White people. It was just then that Superman arrived, the White man’s representative, and I thought who the hell does he think he is? And then Lois Lane, the classic American beauty. Even her outfit and her makeup were like a foreign woman’s. Of course today Japanese make themselves up more like foreigners than foreigners do. Ha ha ha."

"Ha ha ha. But at the time, everyone in Superman looked like an alien from another planet. Compared with that, Mickey Mouse was just an animal, and so was easier to use. That’s the side I got consumed with. So just maybe, had I felt more in common with Superman, my drawing style would have been different."

"The children face problems such as violence, abuse, suicide etc. that medicine can not heal. It will never help these children psychologically and be his support ...? Even when they are in difficulty, in principle they do not speak with adults, or confide about their true intentions. However, expect some serious messages from adults. I will continue to send messages through manga. Children avoid them what force or what they want to impose anything. That is why I will continue to look for those things that [...] inspire their hearts."

"The new readers have mentality, fashions, feelings completely different from those of previous readers. Should I draw comics following my first readers in their growth? Or should I stop doing the cartoonist? ... More or less every three years a cartoonist for children is cornered. I, too, every three years, living a crisis. So I decide and I get back to work for my new readers as if they were the first. ... This is why I am certain that the good work that will draw able to make happy readers of all time."

"The science fiction and manga readers had the same ... Most fiction writers then had had some experience in the comic and some of it had even been absorbed completely ... I can not understand why those who love science fiction also loves the manga and vice versa. There are two kinds characterized by a biting satire and at worst are called "extravagant". ... Both are aimed toward the future, and therefore contain romantic adventures for young people."

"I feel there is sensuality ... eroticism in the primary things that move, like animals and insects. Being able to inspire the movement to still images ... gives me the joy of the creator that breathes life into things that do not have life. The movement must be sufficiently round and sweet ... so express its eroticism. In creating cartoons I always think of an ideal, but ... half the finish to doubt the rightness of what I'm doing. So I put all my expectations always work next. * * [...] I often say jokingly that comics are my true wife and that the cartoons are my lover. The fact that I am fully dedicated to animation, my lover ... is because it allows me to express in a sublime ... the interesting metamorphosis of a changing body. For me, the greatest fun, no doubt, lies in the draw and give movement to change processes. Always look in my cartons this metamorphosis."

"I am convinced that comics should not only make people laugh. For this in my stories found tears, anger, hatred, pain and end not always happy."

"Long ago, many of the small hells that took place in the camps right next to my house showed the joy of living, and tirelessly despite everything"

"What I try to appeal through my works is simple. The opinion is just a simple message that follows: "Love all the creatures! Love everything that has life"! I have been trying to express this message in every one of my works. Though it has taken the different forms like "the presentation of nature," "the blessing of life," "the suspicion of too much science-oriented civilisation," anti-war and so on."

"Comics are an international language, they can cross boundaries and generations. Comics are a bridge between all cultures"

"I first followed the comics of Tagawa Suihō and Yokoyama Ryūichi. But suddenly, once I became devoted to Disney, I set out to copy and master that stuffed-animal style, eventually ending up with how I now draw."

"Those American comics themselves were heavily influenced by Keaton’s comedies, Mack Sennett, those sorts of films from the golden age of comedy. The gagmen that appeared there, for example Roscoe Arbuckle or Ben Turpin, there were lots of comics that used their style, their faces just as is. Especially Chaplin with his bowed legs and over-sized shoes. Those sorts of features were used directly in comics. In that era, all American cartoonists imitated the stars of comedy. That is what I worked so hard at copying, and so that’s why my comics are bowlegged and big-shoed. At the level of content too I was deeply influenced by the strong social caricatures of Chaplin’s comedies, the tears mixed with the laughter. The biggest influence of all was the rhythm."

"Around 1945, daily life might have been hard, but the reputation of Disney was at its highest. The voices of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had stabilized, Snow White and Bambi were huge hits and had received a number of international prizes. It really was like the brightness of a rising sun. And then Japanese children after the war had no choice but to face the flood of Disney comics that accompanied the brainwashing of “American democracy.” That was their merit as propaganda against the Japanese."

"Tezuka (1928–1989) was a frail child with a limp who spent his spare time drawing insects. By high school he had seen several doctors, most notably one who treated drawing-related arm injuries. Ironically, he chose to study medicine because of the physically and financially straining prospect of being a cartoonist, but he continued to draw throughout his years at Osaka University Medical School. His first book of manga (Japanese for comics), which he published in 1947 at the age of 19, sold 400 000 copies."

"After graduation, Tezuka became a full-time cartoonist and hit the big time with Astro Boy, about a robot boy who is rescued by a sympathetic doctor. In 1963, Astro Boy became the first homegrown animated cartoon to air in Japan, giving birth to the billion-dollar anime industry. Tezuka had created one of Japan’s most enduring post–World War II cultural exports. But in the late 1960s people started to complain that cartoons were rotting kids’ brains and teachers began enforcing a “no comics” rule in the classroom. Tezuka’s cutesy animated television shows, so novel in the 1950s, became laughable during the 1960s. Tezuka responded by creating some of the most outrageously racy, controversial, morbid adult-oriented comics, ever."

"Tezuka Osamu was born the eldest son of three children on November 3rd, 1928, in Toyonaka City, Osaka. An extremely witty and imaginative boy, he grew up in a liberal family exposed to manga and animation. As a boy he also had a love for insects reminiscent of Fabre, and, reflecting the level of his interest in the insect world, later incorporated the ideogram for "insect" into his pen name. Having developed an intense understanding of the preciousness of life from his wartime experience, Tezuka Osamu aimed to become a physician and later earned his license, but ultimately chose the profession he loved best: manga artist and animated film writer. Tezuka Osamu's manga and animated films had a tremendous impact on the shaping of the psychology of Japan's postwar youth. His work changed the concept of the Japanese cartoon, transforming it into an irresistible art form and incorporating a variety of new styles in creating the "story cartoon." Changing the face of literature and movies, his work also influenced a range of other genres."

"His enduring theme that of the preciousness of life, formed the crux of all of Tezuka Osamu's works. Tezuka Osamu, creator of a great cultural asset and gifted with an unbeatable pioneering spirit combined with an enduring passion for his work and a consistent view to the future, lived out his entire life tirelessly pursuing his efforts, passing away at the age of 60 on February 9th, 1989."

"Tezuka is a hero in Japan, a pioneer on equal standing with the world’s other great illustrators and animators, including Walt Disney. This high status is a result of his prolific output, innovative style and the role he played in elevating manga to a form of art. Tezuka’s legacy continues to grow in Japan and abroad as new reissues or translations of his more than 700 publications are released — from tales of robot “Astro Boy” to the troubled world of doctor “Black Jack.” Then there are the ongoing exhibitions of his work at museums across Japan, including the Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum in his hometown of Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture."

"Tezuka amazed all with his attention to detail and drawing abilities, and some teachers were so impressed that they nurtured his talents through the difficult years of World War II. In 1944, when all students were required to leave school and join the war effort by working in factories, Tezuka would draw manga and leave it in the toilets for other workers to read. But one memory from his childhood would linger longer than the others: the firebombing of Osaka. The devastation of that event, and the war that caused it, left a lasting mark on the young artist."

"Tezuka could never completely abandon medicine. Although he never actively practiced, he became a licensed doctor later in life, and one of his most famous manga series stars the rogue genius doctor, Black Jack. But life as both a doctor and an in-demand (though underpaid) young artist was difficult. Tezuka struggled to meet deadlines and commitments. His family feared for his health and begged him to focus on medicine, but he had become too successful, and too passionate, to stop."

"Tezuka continued producing work at an astounding pace right up until his untimely death from stomach cancer at 60. Nothing could slow him: not censorship, the demands of various editors nor changes in drawing trends (even when more realistic — i.e., more time consuming — illustrations became popular)."

"Tezuka was born in Toyanaka City, Osaka, in 1928. Though he attended medical school and became a licensed physician, he chose not to work as a doctor and instead devoted himself to writing and drawing manga and making animated films. Over the course of his long career Tezuka became a defining force in shaping the genre, publishing more than 700 manga running to more than 150,000 pages. Early Tezuka characters had large eyes, inspired by their American counterparts Betty Boop and Disney's Bambi. Large eyes have since become a stylistic hallmark of the whole genre."

"For Tezuka, a doctor is not just someone who heals the body, but someone who appreciates the value of life, and inspires others to value it as well. In Tezuka's Buddhist cosmology all life is sacred and nothing is more valuable than creating or continuing life."

"Would we have manga without Tezuka? According to Gravett, the question "is rather like asking if we would have French-language comics without Herge, or American comic books without Jack Kirby. Tezuka was pivotal and a huge inspiration [for manga artists].""

"He had few opportunities to talk with foreigners in Japanese. And Tezuka was an intensely curious person, because he was drawing so much. He always needed stories, he always needed information. Because he often had in parallel three or four stories that he was working on. He was like a sponge. He was a real intellectual, kind of unique, differentiated a little from other manga artists in the sense that not only had he gone to college, but he had gone to medical school. He was a licensed physician. He had read German literature, Russian literature, American literature, Japanese literature. He was from a completely different orbit. An anomaly in the industry, and he remains so. So I think he was always interested in what’s going on in the outside world, and I think with Jared and me, since we both spoke Japanese very well, he found some value in a friendship with us. He was very nice to me, I must say. He changed my life. I only knew him from 1977 to when he died in 1989, so a relatively short time. But I often wondered how is it that he had time to even think about some things. Like sometimes he’d send a postcard, or sometimes he’d call, he wanted to know something like, “what do you think about this?” And then he would always say something like “when you going to get married?” Something like that, like a father almost, because he was older than I was. I’ve often wondered how he had time to think about it, or write. I have letters that he wrote, I don’t know how he had time."

"After Tezuka passed away there were so many memorial publications and documentaries. He was so lauded, it was a huge national event in Japan. And then of course inevitably after a certain number of years there’s this “anti-Tezuka movement,” simply because his influence was so great, at some point you have to revolt against him. Some people have said, “how could he possibly have done all that stuff? It’s not possible.” From the standpoint of Americans, they would think nobody could be that productive. You could not draw that amount of stuff. But of course in the case of Americans, they’re usually not aware of the Japanese production system that Tezuka was responsible largely for developing, how that operated. He was like a movie director: He had people who would fill in the bushes in the background, spot the blacks and that kind of thing, but he was in charge, he drew the characters and he broke down the story. He may have had all kinds of assistants drawing the squares on the page for the panels and spotting the blacks and doing background designs and stuff, but it was his work."

"Q: Tezuka passed away in '89. He didn’t live to see Evangelion or Pokémon happen. Of course it’s difficult to speculate, but what do you think he would think to see what happened since then?"

"[H]e also saw manga and anime as a vehicle for — not to sound too idealistic — international peace. And he really believed in international communication. He believed that better communication was the key to world peace. In today’s world that sounds almost naïve."

"Most of the time he was outside of the system in a sense because he was a manga artist. Manga were not as accepted as they are today. So he was this highly intellectual individual working in a field that doesn’t have a lot of legitimacy like it does today. So in that sense he could comment on things as an outsider. He tended to sometimes stake out slightly different positions. Let’s put it this way: sometimes he would modify his positions a little bit depending on who he was talking to. But he was very anti-war, anti-military, that is through and through in all his life. And actually it’s not just Tezuka, but also everyone in his generation. It was an ideology."

"Q: You could read some lightly anti-capitalist themes in some of his work, but it’s hard to say how much is just anti-authority."

"Q: There’s been this roller-coaster ride of Tezuka’s reputation in the West. He went from being unknown to being known as the “Astro Boy guy” to it being almost reversed and people knowing him for super dark adult comics. How do you think he ought to be remembered?"

"Q: It’s been pretty rare that we’ve gotten good adaptations of Tezuka’s work. Pluto is one of the rare ones that's really good. Why do you think that is?"

"My nightmares are almost always about war - wandering the streets, searching for something that's lost forever. But it's possible for me to will myself to have pleasant dreams. For me, the most wonder fragrance in the world is new film. You open the canister for the first time and breathe deeply. That night, the same wonderful fragrance fills your dreams. It's grand."

"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, they are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. After several stories such as this, people end up having a kind of affection for the monsters. They end up caring about them."

"The intention of not only the screenwriter, but also the entire production staff, was to focus on how people would react if a creature such as Godzilla really did appear. What would the politicians do? How about the scientists? How would the military handle the situation? Given this, it was inevitable that the film would seem at least somewhat like a documentary."

"Ghidrah was merely meant to be a modern interpretation of the eight-headed snake of Japanese myth."

"The original idea [for Destroy All Monsters!] was to show all of the monsters. We then started thinking about undersea farming. Eventually, we came up with the idea of an island on which all of the monsters had been collected for scientific study. You see, we imagined that undersea farming would be required to feed all of the monsters. I very much wanted to explore that idea, but because of financial constraints, I was not allowed to do so. Only the idea of an island of monsters survived."

"I don't really have a positive or negative opinion about them [the Heisei Godzilla films]. The special effects technically are very sophisticated, but the films lack imagination. It seems as if all Toho is trying to do is show things being destroyed. I don't fault the members of the production department, though, because I know that that is what Toho's executives are demanding."

"Godzilla was a product of the times. There previously had been no monster like him. So, people were frightened, and shocked, by him. Now, when Godzilla appears in a city, most of the buildings are even taller than he is! The image of what a monster is shouldn't stay the same. It should be different so that people will be shocked and surprised, just as they were by GODZILLA - KING OF THE MONSTERS in 1954. Something new, and strange, must be created."

"Yeah, he'd said, maybe it's just my idea, but really it always hurts, the times it don't hurt is when we just forget, we just forget it hurts, you know, it's not just because my belly's all rotten, everybody always hurts. So when it really starts stabbing me, somehow I feel sort of peaceful, like I'm myself again"

"And just because I've written this book, don't think I've changed. I'm like I was back then, really."

"Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down."

"Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary , deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally."

"People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder."

"Buying and selling is the basis of all social intercourse, and the commodity an actor or model offered for sale was nothing less than her own being."

"Advertising departments, as you know, are crawling with people whose frontal lobes are so under developed that if you flatter them a bit they'll swear shit is platinum!"

"But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar."

"One of the photographs in the magazine caught his eye. A homeless youth in New York City. It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever."

"In the old days, things like tropical fish or imported wineglasses weren’t within reach for the average person. Now when you walked down the street you passed shop windows full of the finest quality goods from around the world. Any of these things could be yours if you were willing to sacrifice a little, and many people ended up sacrificing a lot. It’s difficult to control the desire to accumulate things."

"In Japan, even when you’re alone, you’re never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel among people with differently colored skin and eyes, whose language you don’t even speak very well – that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones."

"“I really did suffer a lot,” she said, “and for a lot longer than I even care to remember. I was sure I’d never find anything to take the place of ballet, and it took all my energy just to get through each day. My parents and my friends all said that time alone would heal the wound, and I guess I knew it was true, but I wished I could hibernate or something, and let time go by without having to suffer through it. But of course the clock just kept slowly ticking away. Tick, tick, tick- like it was chipping away at at me, at my life.“"

"“You have to watch your step with women these days, Pops. She could be involved with Yakuza or something. Even some of the girls in my class -- you should hear the stuff they talk about. Fifteen years old, and there's nothing they don't know. We're not in the age of Peace and Love anymore.”"

"To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.”"

"My theory is that sushi and kaiseki are dishes that evolved in peaceful, prosperous times, when eating well was the normal state of affairs. In this country we have the illusion that there's always this warm, loving community we belong to, but the other side of that is a sort of exclusiveness and xenophobia, and our food reflects that. Japanese cuisine isn't inclusive at all-infact it's extremely inhospitable to outsiders, to people who don't fit into the community."

"The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke:you think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose. But it makes her hard to figure out.”"

"“Nice person, bad person -- that's not the level this girl is at. I can see you're crazy about her and probably won't be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you'd be better off staying away from someone like her. I can't read her exactly, but I can tell you she's either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between.”"

"That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask."

"When you think about it, even little kids can draw the face of Spider-Man. But no one can really draw Bumblebee from Transformers. We've deliberately chosen these designs so even little kids can take a crayon and draw an I or an X and make these characters. We made their characters red and blue so they can pick up one crayon and draw them. This is the simplicity we were going for, so anyone can easily draw these characters. I'm designing these characters as if they were actually American comics, so we are going on the idea that there were simpler designs that gradually became more complex until there's a movie. When they're in a movie, it's even more complicated!"

"Japanese manga is accepted in foreign countries. I could say the opposite is true too: American comics didn't click with Japanese people at first, but compared to 20 years ago, more people in Japan who recognize Spider-Man and Batman. So after Japanese people started to accept American comics, and American people also started to like manga"

"I was already fourteen when Japan lost the war, so it was a very tragic event for me that the U.S. forces occupied Japan. The scenario for that film was written by a poet who was six years younger than I am and for people in that age group, seeing the American occupying forces -- jeeps, tasting delicious Hershey's chocolate bars melting in their mouths -- that was all indications that there would be a wonderful bright future ahead for them. But I was thinking at that time that we were going to face some dark times in the future. So there is a mixture of that kind of optimism as well as despair and sadness that were the reactions to the end of the war."

"I think that the shock I received when my elder sister died when I was ten years old was the first personal knowledge I had that people die. And since the conditions were very bad in wartime I lost two other older sisters in the wartime and right after the war to tuberculosis as well. This really brought home to me the ephemeral nature of life, the vanity of life, the lack of meaning that might be seen in life. Those were very close to me, personal events that happened in my own life. But during the war I lived in the spirit that I would die for the emperor because the emperor was a god. When after the war, when it was announced the emperor was no longer a god, he was just a human being, it was a great shock to me and I felt that all the gods who had lived in Japan had all become mortal rather than being gods. Of course, this threw me into great despair. But then it led me to have a curiosity about dealing with this type of theme afterwards -- that perhaps people become gods, gods may crash down and become people. So that kind of fluidity is something that became of interest to me as a fifteen-year-old boy."

"In actual life, of course, we live and have experiences, have certain emotions. But I think movies have shown depths of emotions and kinds of emotion that we might not normally come across in our own lives. So we are emotionally educated by seeing films. And some of our emotions might be much more heightened than they are in real life. I wonder sometimes and I worry that I might have become a person that is capable of a murder, for example, because of that deep emotion that we are able to feel through movies."

"One thing I can say is either to look at films very carefully, watch a lot of films, or don't see any films at all. Just imagine!"

"I think I have an advantage because I know what my husband is trying to create in a film from the preparation stage. I don't have to ask him anything once it is in production, so that is a great advantage. But in another way, it is a disadvantage that I know in terms of his private life whether he has a cold, whether he is not feeling well, whether he has a stomach ache. Sometimes I worry about those physical conditions of my husband on the set and that might reflect into my acting."

"The internet itself is just a modern technology originally invented for US military information network. Yes, we cannot live without it anymore, It does amplify people's dark emotions, but if you can have a good happy real life with friends and family, you can realise there is just nothingness in the internet. There aren’t two worlds really, we should just use it as a useful tool."

"Film making is a miniature sized capitalism. Money and money people talk. Some people tend to think they can be more creative than the director they hire."

"I usually start with an outline and the basic idea. But I keep the idea simple enough so that everyone on set can have it in their head. Everyone working on the film has to, as we say in Japanese, “put their antennas up,” and be aware of what is going on at all times, because at any given second we could be filming, we could be capturing a moment. Everyone on set has this understanding, and works toward this. The rough guidelines of the story, from point A to point B, are basically followed, but how you get there is a collaborative process. The audio guys on my films keep a wireless mike on me, because they never know when the camera is rolling! (laughs) Because they never know, they have to keep in close contact so that everyone’s on the same page. (discussing her creative process)"

"I didn’t come into filmmaking from, as you say, watching other films and then wanting to be a director. Fundamentally, it was my love of the medium of film as a tool to capture the moment, the moment that’s happening right now. When film was first invented, there was that excitement about its ability to capture a moment in time, the here and the now. And that’s really the starting point for my interest in the film medium."

"I don’t think being able to see is the only thing cinema can offer. Other than that, it’s a media that lets you feel. The world portrayed on screen is something that’s seen, but what you hear and how you feel comes from a 2D screen to the 3D world we really live in. Cinema reminds us of this fact because the visually impaired live in this big world that is cinema. They feel cinema as if they are lying in the cinema itself, so by having audio help there’s the possibly that they understand the film even more than those who do not. I was talking to the producers of audio guides and their love for cinema was very close to mine. These encounters instigated the making of this film. (about the portrayal of visually impaired people in Hikari (Radiance), and how or in what ways cinema can relate to them)"

"My early works were shot mostly in 16mm and on Super 8. The great thing about Super 8 is that it captures details so well. It can be very subtle in how it communicates them to the public. Digital video has it own benefits, but screening Super 8 films had to be done in a private room, with a projector. This was the only way to share my work with the audience, and it felt private and intimate, like a diary. It was an ideal format. And I don’t mean just for conveying the materiality of objects, but also capturing things you cannot see with a naked eye, the internality, feelings. Digital just feels to me a lot more objective. (experience and influence of filming across different formats on her work)"

"Nature is something that lies above humans. Us, humans, have ended up damaging nature and destroying ecosystems for our own comfort, and have thus managed to exhaust the very planet on which we live. I think that it’s time for us to realize how precious it is to have the gift of living on this beautiful planet. Even though my powers are limited, I wanted as many people as possible to know the beauty of this world through the images in my films, and to realize that it’s not eternal, and so, in my work, I always treat nature like another character in the film, to which I have always paid respect. (discussing nature's dominating role in her films)"

"I feel that copying western storytelling wouldn't help tell my story, to communicate who I am fully. You know maybe I've been influenced by these different cultures, but I wasn't taught filmmaking by anyone in particular, I wasn't told what sort of eye to have or how to see the world. I just on set cut out the sort of images and the moments that really touch me and share that, and that's what I do as a filmmaker and I think the world needs individuality, it needs uniqueness, but it's so it's important to be different from others and I think that's what it's all about. I think it's about enjoying life and showing what is different about how you see things through film and that's the most important thing that we can do through filmmaking."