In Japan, a film about the assassin of Shinzo Abe agitates the spirits
Tetsuya Yamagami, arrested after the tragedy in Nara, western Japan, Friday July 8, 2022. AP - Katsuhiko Hirano
Text by: Bruno Duval
3 mins
Should we sometimes, and can we, limit the freedom of artistic creation?
And in this case, here, the freedom of cinematographic creation?
This is the question of the moment in the archipelago, and it is generating heated debate.
“
Yes
”, answer a certain number of Japanese.
A filmmaker has just paid the price.
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From our correspondent in Tokyo
,
This is unprecedented in Japan: a film released in theaters on Tuesday September 27 is already no longer showing!
Revolution + 1 is
the biopic about the life of Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who, in early July, assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
He reproached him for being linked to the Moon sect, a sect which ruined the family of this man, because his mother, a follower for thirty years, gave him colossal donations.
► To read also:
Japan: the Moon sect confirms that the mother of the alleged assassin of Shinzo Abe is a faithful
Director Masao Adachi has chosen to retrace Tetsuya Yamagami's journey and the double ordeal he endured, indoctrination and over-indebtedness: "
What interested me was to understand what led him to such extremity: how could he have felt so cornered that he had come to this?
And then, also, ask a question: what is this society that is not capable of preventing such murderous excesses?
»
A film shown on Japanese screens
Politically, Masao Adachi is on the far left.
He embodies the ultra-radical and even revolutionary left, which also earned him a long stay in prison because he was part of the Japanese Red Army, the terrorist group which, in the 1970s and 1980s, carried out attacks murderers around the world.
And his film unleashed an anthology storm on social networks: "
A terrorist who glorifies another terrorist... creative freedom has its limits!"
»
This is what we read on Twitter, where millions of disgusted commentators called for the film to be banned.
The outcry was such that after three days, the cinemas which screened it deprogrammed for fear of incidents after having received thousands of phone calls or insulting, even threatening emails.
Difficult topics to deal with
In Japan, it is not uncommon for filmmakers to be criticized for “
going too far
” in their creative freedom.
A few years ago, two documentaries – one Chinese, the other American – were the subject of legal complaints, protests and boycott calls in Tokyo and across the country.
They dealt with war crimes committed by Japan in China or Korea in the 1930s and 1940s.
In 2006, the Japanese film
Confessions of a Dog
had some success abroad, but was banned in Japan.
For three years, the time it took his director to manage to find a distributor, the entire profession boycotted his film.
He denounced corruption and violence in the police.
Four years later, the American documentary
The Bay of Shame
won an Oscar, but it too experienced major distribution and exhibition problems in the archipelago.
It dealt with the hunting of dolphins (in Japan, each year, several thousand of these cetaceans are massacred Editor's note).
Japanese filmmakers have the right and the freedom to tackle ultra-sensitive subjects, but when they do so, it is at their own risk.
► Also to listen
:
In Japan, the stories of the victims of the Moon sect have been pouring in since the assassination of Shinzo Abe
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