>>Part 3
All of Gotanda's plays that I have mentioned in this column are collected in two volumes: Fish Head Soup and Other Plays and No More Cherry Blossoms. The latter contains four plays, including "Sisters Masumoto" and "Natalie Wood is Dead," all of which have female protagonists. Cherry blossoms are a symbol of beauty, but they also evoke the traditional Eastern world in which women are expected to be submissive. Gotanda's intention can be seen in the title, which indicates a break from that tradition.
Each play includes the cast and director of the original production, and when you look at the cast, you can see that Gotanda does not necessarily use Japanese actors in every production. He also likes to use Korean and Chinese actors. I once asked him about this.
"Today's fourth- and fifth-generation Japanese Americans are completely American and have no interest in Japanese history. Young Koreans are second-generation Japanese now, so they can more accurately express the second-generation Japanese experience."
His answer was very interesting. The world that Gotanda depicts in his plays is a Japanese society, but the world that is performed on stage is an Asian American society.
The theme of the film is the bond between people.
Gotanda has directed three films, "The Kiss (1992)," "Drinking Tea (1996)," and "Life Tastes Good (1999)," and also starred in "The Kiss" and "Life Tastes Good." Gotanda is used to performing in front of people as a musician, so his acting is impressive.
The protagonist of "The Kiss" is Wilfred Funai, an office worker who is bullied by those around him. His coworkers force him to do more work, and his lunch sandwich contains women's underwear. He reluctantly goes into a restaurant to have lunch, where he finds an AIDS patient there. The patient collapses due to respiratory distress. While everyone around him stands there in shock and does nothing, Funai stands up resolutely, gives the man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and saves his life. When he returns to the office, Funai tells the coworkers who are bullying him:
"I saved a person's life." This is Funai's only line in this 13-minute short film, in which the actors' lines are kept to a minimum. This is a work that depicts the inner world of a man whose life is about to change.
"Drinking Tea" depicts a Japanese-American couple who have lost their son. The protagonist, Kang Ogawa, has been with Mary for nearly 50 years, but he has always blamed his wife for their son's death. Kang had a lover, but when he faces her death, he returns to Mary. Kang has also been ill for a long time, and asks his wife to be with him until the end. It is only when he becomes aware of his own death that he understands the pain and bitterness of life, and accepts that his wife is not responsible for his son's death. The tea in the title is used as a symbol of the bitterness of life.
"Life Tastes Good" is the story of a man named Harry Sado, who was handling money related to crime. After getting into a dispute with his friend Jones over the money, Harry is living in hiding in a warehouse. With only a short time left to live, Harry tries to repair his relationship with his children, with whom he had severed ties. He also becomes close to a white woman in the warehouse. As he approaches death, Harry realizes the meaning of life and mutters to the woman, "Life Tastes Good." This part has something in common with "Drinking Tea."
"Life Tastes Good" was Gotanda's first full-length feature film and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999. I saw it at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival in March of the same year, and I still remember that Gotanda was still excited as he greeted the audience at the event right after it had finished.
As an aside, Coca-Cola is now using the phrase 'Life Tastes Good' as a promotional slogan. Gotanda writes on his website:
"I can't believe it, but Coca-Cola uses this phrase all over their advertising. Don't you know it's the title of our movie? We were the first to use it."
"The Kiss" and "Life Tastes Good" are not stories that are particularly conscious of Japanese Americans, nor do they depict strong, independent women. But they share with Gotanda's other works the point that they depict the relationships between people and the bonds between people. Gotanda has attempted many things in both his plays and films, but I think this is what he wants to portray most in his works. How are people connected to each other, and what kind of bonds should bind them? Such big themes are dealt with in the films.
Someday I'll tell a story about Japanese and Americans.
In 2001, Gotanda visited Japan for the first time in over 30 years. It was no longer a journey of self-discovery. It was a trip to visit a country with which he felt a special connection. He says that he is connected to Japan deep in his heart. He also visited Japan in 2003 and 2004 when his plays were performed in Japan, and watched the Japanese versions. In the United States, the audience is made up of people of various races and has a variety of reactions, but in Japan, everyone reacts the same way. This was a fresh discovery for Gotanda.
In 2006, he participated in the Japanese American Leadership Program, co-hosted by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As one of the panelists, he said:
"I want to tell a story about how Japanese and Americans can work together."
I really hope this will come true.
(Titles omitted)
*All translations of poems and essays quoted in the text are by the author.
Reference material: "Yellow Face" by Yumiko Murakami, Asahi Shimbun, 1993
"Eloping: The Choice of Former Top Model Nobu Atsumi" by Shunsaku Yoshimura, Tokyo Shimbun Press, 1998
Asian American Culture on Stage, Yuko Kurahashi, Garland Publishing, 1999
Identity Politics of Asian American Drama; the theoretical landscape of Philip Kan Gotanda and Velina Hasu Houston Masayuki Takashi "Osaka University of Foreign Studies, British and American Studies 26" 2002
"Japanese American Leadership Symposium: From the Arts to Business: Japanese American Contributions through Diverse Professions" The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, 2006
"Asian American Theatre" Hideyuki Yamamoto Sekai Shisosha 2008
Reference Websites
http://www.philipkangotanda.com/
His website was launched in November 1999. It contains columns such as Floating Weeds and Joe Ozu, and is actively written about Gotanda's activities in theater and film, critiques, play drafts, poems, etc., but it has not been updated for the past two years. Floating Weeds is also the subject of a play of the same name, and seems to represent Gotanda's outlook on life. Joe Ozu is a character who appears in Day Standing on its Head and In the Dominion of Night, and is also the name used in his email address. Ozu is taken from Yasujiro Ozu, a film director he admires, and Joe is taken from a typical name for an American manual laborer. Joe is a name that cannot be shortened any further, and it also has the meaning of going back to basics. There is also a pun on the fact that if you pronounce the name in succession, it becomes the Japanese word for "jozu."
*This article is a reprint of the fifth installment of the column series "From the Perspectives of Two Countries" in Renso Publishing 's online magazine "Kaze," which features information about new books, such as articles linking new books to current issues and daily topics, as well as monthly bestsellers and review columns of new books.
© 2009 Association Press and Tatsuya Sudo
