Osaka finds film on Japan’s slum too hot to handle
Print Edition
JAPAN’S biggest slum is visible just blocks from bustling restaurants and shops in Osaka, the country’s second-largest city. But it cannot be found on official maps.
Nor did it appear in the recent Osaka Asian Film Festival, after the director of a new movie that is set in the area pulled it, accusing city organizers of censorship.
Osaka officials asked Shingo Ota to remove scenes and lingo that identify the slum, on the grounds that it was insensitive to residents. “To me, what they were asking was a cover-up attempt to make this place non-existent,” he said.
This place is Kamagasaki, home to day laborers, the jobless and homeless, where one in three are on welfare.
About 25,000 people live in this compact area, mostly single men who stay in free shelters or dozens of cheap dorms that charge as little as 800 yen (US$8) a night.
The day starts early at the welfare-employment center, where hundreds line up for manual labor work. Those not picked stroll the backstreets aimlessly, queue for free meals or resort to cheap alcohol. In the evening, the homeless line up at the center to get tickets for the shelters.
“I’m jobless, for months,” said a 52-year-old resident who came to Kamagasaki after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. He gambled away his monthly welfare money of 70,000 yen (US$700). “Now I’m doomed.”
Ota’s movie, “Fragile,” tells the story of a TV assistant director who heads to Kamagasaki to make a film about a teenage boy, and whether success and wealth are necessary for happiness. But he quickly falls into trouble, and his plan unravels. The feature film shows the protagonist receiving an amphetamine injection from a drug dealer operating in the slum. Ota says Osaka officials wanted those scenes and others deleted, as well as the slang words “doya” (cheap accommodations) and “shabu” (stimulants).
Osaka official Kazumitsu Oue said the film festival organizers wanted to protect the area and its people from exposure to prejudice.
“We felt that the film lacked consideration to the area and its people,” he said.
The city provided a 600,000 yen grant for the director on condition that it premieres at the Osaka film festival.
Ota says he has offered to return the grant, but the city wanted him to keep it and not disclose details of the dispute to the media.
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