Jun Ichikawa speaks exclusively to easternKicks about directing Tony Takitani, and just how he managed to get permission from the story’s author, Haruki Murakami, to make the film in the first place…
Jun Ichikawa is rightly pleased of Tony Takitani. It’s the sort of film he always wanted to make, one that ‘whispers’. Even when he used to direct commercials, and made rather a successful career out of it, people would ask him to be louder or noisier. Haruki Murakami’s short story was the perfect match to make that ‘whisper’ happen. The only thing is, Jun is so quietly spoken I begin wonder how metaphorical he is being.
Jun is dressed smart casual, a man in his late fifties, distinguished by grey hair with a warm smile. There’s an openness about him, an unfiltered honesty in which he gives his replies. He seems calm and relaxed, which is more than I can say for myself. I do worry about how he must feel when I explain that I’m not a professional journalist, as he must have presumed. In fact I’m just a guy that runs a fan website. However, when I tell him my real job is as a graphic designer that seems to carry some weight, perhaps due to his own background in advertising. (Coincidently, the translator Takako’s son, it appears, is also a budding designer.)
He literally beams with the distinction of being one of the few directors to have been given the opportunity to adapt Haruki Murakami’s work. ‘It has been more than 20 years since someone had turned one of his stories into a feature film,’ he tells me, ‘but he didn’t like it so much.’ Murakami, himself a film fan, was very critical of the result, and became very precious of his own work. For years filmmakers have wanted to adapt his work, particularly Norwegian Wood, the book that propelled him to such huge status in Japan, but to no avail. Murakami said he would never allow anyone to make a film out of one of his novels, probably realising how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to bring them to the screen fairly.
So how did he convince Murakami to bestow him this honour? The opportunity came through a female producer that Ichikawa knew from the commercial world who also happened to be a very old friend of Murakami’s. She introduced them, and Murakami, who had seen and loved several of Ichikawa’s previous movies, agreed to the idea of adapting Tony Takitani. ‘I was surprised Murakami gave his permission!’
Other directors must be quite jealous he was given the opportunity? ‘Maybe,’ he laughs.
What attracted him to the story in particular? ‘I find the pace of novels very interesting. That a short story can cover a long period means time passes very quickly. The characters die, and quickly disappear. And there’s no sentimentality with which Murakami deals with his characters, which I find very attractive’
Does he feel he has anything in common with the lead character Tony Takitani? Jun laughs again: ‘It’s not similar to myself. Perhaps he is similar to Haruki Murakami. Maybe.’
He admits he does share some feelings with the character. Ichikawa belongs to the same generation as Murakami, who saw the passion and excitement of the late sixties in Japan slowly fade, at the same time their own passion faded with age. They cooled to a ‘different temperature’, as he puts it.
He enjoyed the process of adapting someone else’s work, rather than creating an original piece. But, at a relatively brief 75 minutes in running time, did he not feel tempted to flesh out characters and situations in the film that were only hinted at in the original story, like Ang Lee did with his adaption of Brokeback Mountain? ‘No,’ he replies, smiling when I tell him it was over two hours long. ‘I liked the format of the camerawork, passing from scene to scene smoothly, as the passage of time moves quickly. We don’t stop. I didn’t think it necessary to make a much longer film!’
I tell him I love the simple, almost minimalist, approach, not just to the story, but the cinematography and in Ryuichi Sakamoto’s soundtrack. ‘It was my intention to make such a film. There’s a lot of space, empty space. I was always trying to think about how I could reduce extra elements, or leave them out completely. I tried very hard not to add at all. Maybe Murakami’s original story has a lower temperature than others, so for me the idea of “less is more” is more important in creating this film.’
Was getting funding difficult for the film? ‘It depends on the situation. Originally I worked for one of the major studios in Japan, Toho, but gradually my work moved towards independent, art house cinema. Always low budget, but I’m lucky I’ve won many awards! Sometimes it can be very weird, there’ll be a very low budget but there will be four different companies investing, dividing the profits between them. Very often it’s like that. I guess it’s a low risk, high return industry.’
Jun is quite pragmatic about the part DVD plays in the movie industry now. ‘Definitely my films can get profit, or at least cover the cost, from DVD sales.’ That does seem to be quite a big factor all over the world now, doesn’t it? ‘Yes, everyone’s thinking that way.’
Did he encounter any problems making the film? ‘The scariest thing was the weather! The sets for the film were not set up in a studio but in the open air, so I knew if we had rain the shooting schedule would fall behind and everybody would get very nervous about it. But fortunately we had good weather, sunshine and wind, which we used throughout the film when something blew in. So it was windy all the time, but no rain, which was perfect.’
Two years on from the original release of the film, how does he feel about it now? ‘My feeling was very pure when I made this film. I didn’t know why it seemed to purify my soul so much during shooting. Later I realised that I had needed to make such a film, and I had actually done it. It was a very personal film. The most important thing to me was to make the film as I liked, rather than listen to other peoples’ opinions. I realised that I would be proud of the result.’
Perhaps it comes down to his background in advertising. ‘When I was a commercial director people often said “You’re whispering, can you make it louder, or noisier.” It was a very common thing. But I didn’t want to.’
‘Maybe when you saw the film you noticed how quiet it was. That’s the sort of film I really wanted to make!’
Does he know how Murakami feels about the adaptation? Sadly no, due to his busy schedule Murakami never even made the screenings, and Jun’s more than a little afraid to know the answer. ‘I’ve never asked him! And Murakami is a real movie freak, so maybe he didn’t want to criticise it. But his wife liked it, and the producer that first introduced us said it was a brilliant film.’
So what directors have influenced him most? ‘I think so many. Also I draw on my background as a commercial director and adopt techniques from someone like Ridley Scott or Akira Kurosawa. I see myself as having something of a ‘Zeitgeist’ inside, which means I have many doors to go through in all sorts of directions. But I’m always thinking about how I can be original.’
‘I’m always thinking about who am I? What am I? How can I put my own identity on to this film? That’s my honest approach to film.’
I point out it’s interesting he mentions Ridley Scott, a British director from that same generation who also made the transition from directing commercials to films, as was so often the case before MTV made music video directors stars. ‘The most important thing is to try not to rely on technique, especially in commercials. Many people have a lot of technique, but that shouldn’t be all they have.’ He’s right, it’s easy to forget that what made Scott, and other directors like Alan Parker, so good in the first place was they relied on good ideas, not flashy film techniques, for their craft.
‘I try to be as far away as I can from technique. It important to have as simple an approach to film as I can.’
I ask him whether he has any idea why it’s taken such a long time for the film to be picked up in the UK, despite Murakami’s popularity here. ‘I’m not sure about the film market in this country,’ he replies.
Ichikawa’s next film, Aogeba tôtoshi – another adaptation of a novel – is already on release in Japan. A real departure from Tony Takitani, it explores the effect of the internet on a primary school child, as his teachers worry that he has been brainwashed by it.
And beyond that, has he got anything lined up? ‘I hope so!’ comes the rather honest reply. I hope so too…
Many thanks to Jun Ichikawa for his time, to Lisa and Hayley of Axiom Films for setting up the interview, and to the translator Takako Imai.
