DISCLAIMER: You may wish to watch the films before reading this review as plot details are discussed

Third Window Films is by now established as the foremost label for new Japanese films, especially those of an indie bent, that may otherwise remain unseen on our shores. The launch of a series dedicated to Jishu eiga – Japan’s very low budget independent filmmaking scene (often released in only a handful of small cinemas) – is cause for significant excitement. Kicking off with the feature (just about) debut by Ono Takashi, a young Arts student and indie amateur, now a budding professional filmmaker, these upcoming releases promise an enlightening jewel in this company’s crown – a home video correlative to the theatrical collections of, say, the annual Japan Foundation touring programme of themed screenings – and the bright, accessible, thoughtful work of Ono will prove a vibrant discovery for many.  

Collected in this release are said almost-feature (it is an hour in length) alongside three earlier short works. The shorts – from Ono’s very first work whilst still a student, Fashion Runner (2016) to those produced by his small collective Kabukenkyukai – demonstrate a quirky sense of humour and a playful approach to genre, even if they at times index themselves rather too eagerly to a vision of triumphant femininity that can feels a little simplistic. In Fashion Runner and Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy (2017) the female protagonists develop overtly from withdrawn to self-assured and forceful; from dependency to self-reliance. It is an attempt to become fashionable and personally stylish as a riposte to snobbish university associates that drives the witty, 9-minute long Fashion Runner, but this development is made physically manifest in the latter work, as the retiring girl of the title follows a turbulent affair with her boss by (randomly) learning kung fu, which then comes in handy when said boss’ and his wife are causally revealed to be an alien.   

There is an intriguing approximation of the kaiju narrative here – a favourite genre of the director and redolent of an era (Showa) whose culture he has repeatedly lionised – and Ono makes the most, indeed leans into, his micro-budgeted production with comically low-grade aliens (imagine an upturned waste bin repurposed as a bug-eyed Dalek and worn over the head atop a plain black silk sheet). Sexual agency and imagery are prominent yet ambiguous. Male rape and visions of combined male and female genitalia (the aliens’ vagina-like mouths that conceal long and weaponized tongues) are teasingly thrown out, and the framing of these physical traits as distinct from the protagonist and her journey of empowerment – the fact that she comes to revel in herself as an autonomous woman – offers a telling suggestion of a fixity of biology that shows (refreshingly, in today’s climate of culture wars and gender ideology) a woman as a woman. With said politics in mind, this empowerment is arguably somewhat facile, beholden as it is to a championing of the protagonist breaking free of any need for a man in her life. However, against all this the homogenous depiction of the aliens as apparently male and female yet at the same time androgynous is significant.

Ultimately, the ways in which they themselves are riven with relationship woes that mirror the protagonist’s, offers a correlative to rather than a contrast with the ‘human drama’. Is this, then, a metaphorical narrative? Its playful tone plays fast and loose with any magniloquent ideas that may permeate its almost bubbly façade, though it does take its characters and their intergalactic yet personal travails wholly seriously. The mundanity of being an alien is a comic touchstone throughout, a bass line against which the more penetrating aspects can work, and it is an alluring mix.

The later Pick it up and Throw it Away! (2019) offers a less serio-comic vision, though one built once again around a young woman who, because of a compulsion to pick up litter, begins working with a group who are apparently intent on the same, especially looking forward to the then-upcoming second Tokyo Olympics. Within this she becomes embroiled in a physical, yakuza-like, turf war with a gang of local hoodlums, which becomes increasingly fractious and violent to the extent that bodies begin to pile up. The sense of dismay, even cynicism, over the 2020 Olympics is writ large here (contrast with the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad). It is a fascinating theme, and a potent backdrop to a narrative that progresses along ambiguous lines vis-à-vis its protagonist’s ‘development’ as she is cured of her apparent mania for litter-picking and left, like her forebear in Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy, alone. Unlike said forebear there is a distinctly unheroic poise this time around. One is unsure whether she was better as a manic trash collector, as someone fitting in with a like-minded collective rather than as an individual. And is Japan better clean or with litter? And indeed does the Sisyphean task of perennial cleanliness worthwhile? These questions permeate as the film wears on, and Ono offers few if any clear answers.

The visions of perceived gender disparity and female empowerment that is variously lionised or at least a point of departure in these shorts feed directly into I Am Baseball (2023), with some intriguing twists on this conceit. The protagonist here is Mizuhara Natsuko, a young woman whose husband, Ken, is obsessed with baseball but who, after an apparent accident, is found dead. Following his passing, his widow is made to train herself by Ken’s coach, Sigano, forced to so as a means of paying of a debt by a man who has seen potential in this woman (when she practiced briefly with him). The tale darkens when it transpires that Ken was killed by Shigeno, and that he sees something like as violent a victory over Natsuko as his goal: not for her sporting prowess so much as a perceived existential threat that she presents to his apparent need to be a father figure. He is thus an extreme rather than a representative patriarch, one with an entirely benevolent opposite number (a scout), and Natsuko’s is thus not a battle of the sexes. The clash is not woman against man. It is Kill Bill (2003/04) with baseball.  

Once again physical training features prominently, as Natsuko is put through her paces in a vibrant montage of pleasure and pain. Her attainment of the skill to play the game is quick in arriving, yet conflict with Shigeno looms large. Success and violence become almost inextricably intertwined in a way that complicates what could have been a wish-fulfilment tale of personal triumph over institutional opposition. Not that Ono magnifies the gloom. There is, for instance, a perky theme song here that is performed in a musical scene that punctures any mounting tension with a boundless joy. It bespeaks a joie de vivre, a joy in making, and being able to make, a film, and is infectious. To this end Natsuko’s ascension to success is framed not with recourse to fitting into a team or even finding her way in a man’s world. There is very little institutionalised gender bias or inequality to conquer or even to navigate. Notably, these remain all but absent throughout. It is, in fact, entirely natural here that a woman should play and excel at sports, and this focus, again, is refreshing, especially with the sense of symbolic womanhood that has long been central to Japan’s so-called feminisuto filmmaking.

Although the Jishu eiga scene is more diverse and often less bright and vivacious than Ono’s work might suggest, this is a shrewd first release, especially as Ono’s work shows a consistency that suggests if not authorship then at least a cinematic sensibility – a body of work to be discovered rather than simply a film or two to watch. The transition to the mainstream, should Ono wish to undertake such a transition, appears achievable and could be an interesting development of his career rather than a volte face. Until then, catch these films and look forward to the next batch of releases in this promising series.