Japanese film festival decides to pull documentary on comfort women issue

Film director Miki Dezaki poses for a photograph during a screening for his film “Shusenjo” at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Oct. 4. (Hankyoreh archives)

Kawasaki Shinyuri Film Festival cites telephone complaints and safety issues

Film director Miki Dezaki poses for a photograph during a screening for his film “Shusenjo” at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Oct. 4. (Hankyoreh archives)

The decision by a Japanese film festival to pull a comfort women documentary has prompted criticism by a participating production company, which has asked the festival to stop showing its films too. There are similarities between how this affair is developing and Aichi Prefecture’s suspension of the exhibition of a comfort woman statue because of security concerns during the Aichi Triennale, an international art festival.

On Oct. 27, the organizers of the Kawasaki Shinyuri Film Festival announced they’d cancelled plans to screen the documentary film “Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue.” This small film festival held in the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, receives 6 million yen (US$55,056) in funding from the city, nearly half of its budget.

“Concerns were raised by Kawasaki, a co-host of the festival. We concluded that incidents that could occur during the screening left us with no choice but to suspend it,” the festival organizers said.

In response, Wakamatsu Production announced on Oct. 28 that it was cancelling screenings of films it had submitted to the festival, including one called “11:25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate.” This is reminiscent of the artists who withdrew their pieces from the Aichi Triennale when that festival halted an exhibition featuring the comfort woman statue.

Repetition of Aichi Triennale censorship

In the documentary “Shusenjo,” Japanese-American Miki Dezaki presents the arguments of progressive intellectuals and activists about the comfort women alongside those of Japanese right-wing figures. When the film was released in Japan this past April, it made a big splash and was even shown in regular theaters.

Some of the Japanese right-wing pundits who appear in the film claim that they agreed to the interview without realizing it was for a commercial film. In June, they filed a lawsuit in June against the film director and distributor, asking for the film to be removed from theaters.

Countering these claims, Dezaki has said that all participants signed a form acknowledging that the interview would be used in a documentary. This lawsuit effectively gave Kawasaki a pretext for asking the festival organizers to pull the documentary.

In a statement criticizing the festival’s decision, Wakamatsu Productions said that Kawasaki’s expression of concerns about screening “Shusenjo” represented “clear censorship by the authorities.” The production company also said the festival organizers were “killing the freedom of expression with excessive sontaku” ― a Japanese word that means acting preemptively to meet a superior’s implicit expectations ― when they justified suspending the film on the grounds of telephone complaints and the difficulty of ensuring viewers’ safety.

The production company also linked the cancelation to the suspension of the “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” exhibition at the Aichi Triennale that featured a comfort woman statue.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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