西村修平、米新聞に登場で日本の・・②
投稿者： i_am_not_ill 投稿日時： 2010/06/21 14:13 投稿番号： [168953 / 230347]
A few businesses are resisting the nationalists’ pressure. The Internet service company Niwango plans a free streaming of the film on Friday, though for only 2,000 viewers.
But three theaters canceled runs of the film in early June after Mr. Nishimura’s group warned on its Web site that it would stage demonstrations outside two theaters in central Tokyo. Twenty-three others are still mulling whether to show the film. Not one is currently screening it.
Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the manager at Yokohama New Theater, said he was postponing screenings of the film. “Of course it upsets me,” he said, “but I must consider the trouble it would bring to my neighbors.”
Though the film was never slated for a blockbuster release in Japan, organizers now fear that there will be no run at all. “I had a sense of mission,” said Takeshi Kato, president of the film’s distributor in Japan, Unplugged. “I knew from the moment I watched it that this issue was something the Japanese needed to see and think deeply about.”
Two years ago, nationalist protests prompted some theaters to cancel screenings of a documentary by a Chinese filmmaker on the Yasukuni shrine, a contentious war memorial that honors Japan’s war dead, including executed war criminals.
“Everybody is so scared,” said Tatsuya Mori, an author and film director who has been a particularly outspoken critic of the right-wing protests and of the theaters for backing down so quickly. “The Japanese tend to imagine worst-case scenarios, but we need to remember that they are in fact a very small number of people.”
Public fear of the far right stems from bouts of violence over the years that, while isolated, are deeply etched into the national psyche. There was the 1960 assassination of a socialist lawmaker, Inejiro Asanuma, by a sword-wielding right-wing sympathizer, for example, and the attack a year later on the president of Chuokoron, the publisher of a magazine that printed a satire about the royal family.
In 2006, a rightist burned down the house of a member of Parliament after he criticized Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine. The same year, a right-wing group hurled a firebomb at the offices of The Nikkei, a leading daily newspaper, after it published reports on the emperor’s views of the shrine.
The rightists’ latest campaign has been one of the most dogged to date, though there is evidence that public interest in the film has risen with news media coverage of its difficulties in Japan. More than 700 people lined up to attend a one-time screening last week in central Tokyo organized by free-speech advocates. About 100 people were turned away for lack of space.
“I’m glad I saw it,” said Tamaki Iijima, a 53-year-old homemaker from Saitama, west of Tokyo. “We live in a society that hides away the dirty things. To know is a big first step.”
But three theaters canceled runs of the film in early June after Mr. Nishimura’s group warned on its Web site that it would stage demonstrations outside two theaters in central Tokyo. Twenty-three others are still mulling whether to show the film. Not one is currently screening it.
Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the manager at Yokohama New Theater, said he was postponing screenings of the film. “Of course it upsets me,” he said, “but I must consider the trouble it would bring to my neighbors.”
Though the film was never slated for a blockbuster release in Japan, organizers now fear that there will be no run at all. “I had a sense of mission,” said Takeshi Kato, president of the film’s distributor in Japan, Unplugged. “I knew from the moment I watched it that this issue was something the Japanese needed to see and think deeply about.”
Two years ago, nationalist protests prompted some theaters to cancel screenings of a documentary by a Chinese filmmaker on the Yasukuni shrine, a contentious war memorial that honors Japan’s war dead, including executed war criminals.
“Everybody is so scared,” said Tatsuya Mori, an author and film director who has been a particularly outspoken critic of the right-wing protests and of the theaters for backing down so quickly. “The Japanese tend to imagine worst-case scenarios, but we need to remember that they are in fact a very small number of people.”
Public fear of the far right stems from bouts of violence over the years that, while isolated, are deeply etched into the national psyche. There was the 1960 assassination of a socialist lawmaker, Inejiro Asanuma, by a sword-wielding right-wing sympathizer, for example, and the attack a year later on the president of Chuokoron, the publisher of a magazine that printed a satire about the royal family.
In 2006, a rightist burned down the house of a member of Parliament after he criticized Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine. The same year, a right-wing group hurled a firebomb at the offices of The Nikkei, a leading daily newspaper, after it published reports on the emperor’s views of the shrine.
The rightists’ latest campaign has been one of the most dogged to date, though there is evidence that public interest in the film has risen with news media coverage of its difficulties in Japan. More than 700 people lined up to attend a one-time screening last week in central Tokyo organized by free-speech advocates. About 100 people were turned away for lack of space.
“I’m glad I saw it,” said Tamaki Iijima, a 53-year-old homemaker from Saitama, west of Tokyo. “We live in a society that hides away the dirty things. To know is a big first step.”
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