【Director Haruka Komori Special Feature: Three Places, Many/One Time】

【"Always Singing in the Tea Fields" (2026 / 37 min)】

【"the place named" (2012 / 36 min)】

【"Spring, on the Banks of the Aga" (2025 / 64 min)】

【"Oagarincho" (2026 / 56 min)】

Cinema is often called a reproductive art, but for the audience, it is also a singular, one-time experience.

So, here is the background leading up to my attendance at this screening.

The first time Director Komori and I met was in 2016 at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, when we were both guests at the talk event "A New Generation Meets Makoto Sato." Chikako Kobayashi, who appeared in "Spring, on the Banks of the Aga," was also a guest. (Part of that talk has been published in a book. Although it is not listed in the table of contents, my talk is included as well. As for Komori-san's part, a different session is recorded in the book.)

At that time, we only exchanged greetings, but later we began to meet at gatherings of the Meido-ren (such as the memorial meetings for "Living on the Aga"), which is depicted in "Spring, on the Banks of the Aga."

It was after that, I think—though I have forgotten the exact chronology—that I watched "Traces of Breath" (2016) at Cinema Chupki Tabata in early 2018. It was a very good work, filmed with sincerity and at a human scale. (Filming at a "human scale" is something that sounds easy but is not easily achieved. Many filmmakers tend to film excessively, treating their subjects as spectacles.)

After that, Komori-san showed me some footage of a new project. Honestly, I did not find it appealing. (I will refrain from mentioning the title, as I might have a different impression if I watched it now.)

Since then, I haven't watched her work at all. (My apologies.)

This time, since it was at OTTO, where I always go, and because I wanted to see Mr. Hatano and the members of the Meido-ren, I went along feeling nervous, wondering, "What if I don't have a good impression of it?"

At first, while I didn't have a bad impression, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was "loose" or "soft." However, as I carefully watched all four works, I began to realize that within that "looseness" was a "softness" and "kindness." The surface is soft, but the core is firm. I thought, "Ah, this feeling is the same brilliance I felt during 'Traces of Breath'." (I feel a similar softness in the works of director Mitsuko Sakai, such as "Taiwan Identity.")

It is easy to think that a "sharp perspective is the essence of documentary," and in the past, when that belief was stronger in me than it is now, I might not have been able to appreciate works that I might see differently today.

(Besides, Komori-san mentioned that these three works from 2025-2026 were screened like an installation, and in that sense, there were parts she "intentionally kept loose." I see, I see.)

【"Always Singing in the Tea Fields" (2026 / 37 min)】 documents how the tea farming business that Komori-san's family ran as a side job is coming to an end along with the closure of the factory. Her own father and his younger (or older?) brother are the protagonists, or rather, the center of the film. The two of them also sing original songs, which is another highlight.

【"Spring, on the Banks of the Aga" (2025 / 64 min)】 focuses on Hideto Hatano, who was one of the initiators of Director Makoto Sato's film "Living on the Aga" and a supporter of the Niigata Minamata disease patient movement. While recording Hatano-san's activities related to Minamata disease, it also documents the end of Hatano Juken, the business he had run for many years. (It also depicts people like Chikako Kobayashi who support Hatano-san.)

I realized while writing these thoughts that the two works resonate with each other exquisitely.

Also, 【"Oagarincho" (2026 / 56 min)】 captures the figure of Minako Nakamura, Hideto Hatano's younger sister. Although she left Niigata and Tokyo when she was young, she returned to Niigata around the time her child (the nth one?) was born, and while working in the fields, she also worked as an office clerk at Hatano Juken for a long time. Now that her husband, who was a chauvinist, has passed away, she feels a mix of loneliness and a sense of freedom... it's exquisite. She seems to be enjoying her daily life now, working hard in the fields while also doing exercise (yoga?) and playing soft volleyball. I thought she was a physical type, but she also reads a lot of books (she is an intellectual), and she seems to have lived with the existentialist question typical of the student movement generation: "How should one live?" It feels like she has "finally grasped it at this age." (Also, her violent father is briefly depicted, as well as her mother who endured it.)

It feels like a "life of a nameless woman," or perhaps a way of living, and it also feels like a modern version of Fumi Ichijo's "Mugi," whom I love so much.

Thinking about it that way, Hideto Hatano's life is also a "man's life," and
Komori-san's father's life is also a "brother's life."
(Note: These days, it is said that using descriptors like man or woman is unacceptable, but there is a sense that it can only be written that way.)

Hatano-san might seem a bit flashy, but
fundamentally, these are records of people living their daily lives quietly, earnestly, and seriously.

That way of living itself is what one might call a philosophy, or perhaps a song.

Even for works that might seem "loose" if viewed individually, as they accumulate, the threads woven into that "looseness" connect in countless ways, creating a spiderweb-like intensity.

Of course, since these are not the lives of extraordinary people,
they always return as a question to the audience: "How do I live my own life?"
It is as if I am also within that mesh. The totality of that is "history."

Oh, the more I look back on it, the more I think what a wonderful body of work it is.

Thank you very much.

Ah, I forgot to write about "the place named" (2012 / 36 min).
I watched it without reading the flyer properly, so I kept wondering, "What is this?" Since there are no famous actors, I didn't know who they were. The script seemed to be about the earthquake disaster, so I over-interpreted it, wondering, "Are these disaster victims themselves acting?"
In reality, it seems to be a work from her time in the Fiction Department at the Film School of Tokyo.
It is said that actors, not ordinary people, are performing,
but even so, it was a work where the bodies of the actors living in the post-disaster world resonated with the script (Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" is nested within Komori-san's original script), and the vibrations of the living actors themselves were recorded.
I thought, "This is like Jacques Rivette," and when I asked, I heard that at the time, she had been watching works by directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pedro Costa, and was influenced by the space between documentary and fiction.

The "sense of overreaching" is intense, but it was a strange film that also felt like it had elements that would carry through to her later works.

It looks like an "ideological film," but it is actually rooted in "physicality," or perhaps the works are structured based on how one perceives "living."

They say that "an artist puts everything into their first work," but perhaps that kind of sharpness is lying dormant within Director Komori?
Does it connect to works like "Double Layered Town / Making a Song to Replace Our Places" (Directors Haruka Komori + Natsumi Seo / 2019 / 79 min)?

The screenings are until the day after tomorrow, so I think I will try to watch the works I haven't seen yet.
If you are nearby, please do!