John Williams
The following interview was conducted via email with John Williams, director of Firefly Dreams.
Firefly Dreams
Julien R. Fielding: Were you always interested in film? What was your background before going to Japan to teach English?
John Williams: I studied French and German literature at University, then another degree in Education. I was interested in film from about the age of 14 when I saw Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God, but at that time (seventies and eighties) there was only one film school in the UK and the average age of entrance was 27, so I got sidetracked by literature.
JRF: What inspired your story for Firefly Dreams? Was it your students? Life in Japan? Cinema?
JW: My grandfather died of lung cancer when I was about ten years old. I was too young at the time to really talk to him about his life, but when I got older I really regretted not doing so. Then I met a young, troubled girl in Nagoya, who became the model for the Naomi character in the film. I put her and myself together to make a story about the difficulty of communication between generations, which had both a personal element, and which I felt, still feel, was a big problem in contemporary Japan.
JRF: Your film feels very “authentic” to me. In fact, it’s reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rhapsody in August.” Did you have any cinematic references?
JW: It is really hard for me to talk about “authenticity” as I think the whole concept is very fraught with difficulty. I could probably write a book on the subject, and I know a lot of people have written on this, including a whole book on authenticity in Japanese Jazz by Taylor Atkins. (Blue Nippon.) What I try to do as much as possible is just forget about the issue, because I think most good works of art erase the artist in their making. What is more important is what the audience experiences, rather than whether the experience is real or not. However, this is a bit of a flippant answer, I know. Since I also love Philip K.Dick I should probably think about this more, but I’d be worried about disappearing into some self-reflexive vortex if I thought about it too hard. I haven’t seen Rhapsody in August I’m afraid, though I love Kurosawa’s early films.
JRF: Also you see to capture the very Japanese idea of mono no aware - you find this in Hayao Miyazaki’s work - a nostalgia for the past. And yet, you aren’t Japanese. How do you think you were able to express such a deep sense of “lost Japan”? How has the environment changed since you arrived in Japan? Are you seeing more deforestation, etc?
JW: Nostalgia is another difficult word. Around the time I made Firefly Dreams there a lot of sentimental nostalgic films. I also felt strongly that nostalgia in Japan can have a very reactionary, dangerous element, just as it can in any culture I suppose. The good old days were never really so good in Japan. If you look at recent films, such as Always, which paint highly idealized versions of the Post-war period, it is actually quite sickening. I really didn’t want to make a “socially nostalgic” film. If the film is nostalgic I think it is more of a personal nostalgia for my childhood in Wales. This was a result of the place we shot. In a very real way, the location (Horaicho) took over the filming process on many days. It was such a beautiful location that the film became as much about nature and the natural world as about the other topics.
JRF: How much of your script was altered to accommodate suggestions, etc? You said in an interview that the actress who plays the grandmother added some details about working in the factory during WWII.
JW: Minami Yoshie’s speech about the factory is almost entirely in her own words, which we then scripted. The aunt’s speech about the decline of the hot-spring town was stolen verbatim (with his permission) from the owner of the ryokan where we shot. The story that Masaru tells about the village in the dammed lake is true, though the part about the old lady was made up. Here and there, throughout the script are whole sections based on improvisation. However, the script itself was rewritten over fifteen times, so it is actually a very script-based film.
JRF: What would you say are some symbols in Firefly Dreams? I would definitely say the wind chime, the kimono, the photographs … What meaning, if any, do these have?
JW: I also think the wind chime is symbolic of something, but I’m not sure I know what. I wish I could say that I was consciously making an association with temple bells, the famous opening lines of The Tale of Heike, about the impermanence of the world told in the sound of the temple bells, but . . while these “exotic” elements look and feel like symbols, they are actually what they are – the wind chime was set-dressing, the kimonos are worn in the summer, the photographs are just a bunch of old photos in a drawer. Unfortunately, or fortunately, in cinema, everything is a symbol, and also, it is what it is. To me, the most symbolic thing in the whole film is Naomi’s red bicycle, but nobody seems to mention the bicycle much.
JRF: I’m curious about the scene during which the chicken was killed. How was that done?
JW: Sorry to report that the chicken was actually killed on screen, by a woman who worked in a chicken plant. She dispatched it quickly and professionally, as seen on screen. None of the cast or crew had ever sent his done before, though it was a feature of country life here until the sixties or seventies. I personally think that if you are going to eat meat, then you ought not to be squeamish about these things, so I was glad that we ate the chicken later in the day. However, it did seem a terribly brutal thing to do at the time, as it felt as if we were doing it for the film rather than for the food. The chicken is one of the famous Nagoya Kochin chickens, which are a bit of a delicacy. I’m not sure why, as they are a bit tough and chewy actually.
JRF: I didn’t see much in the way of religion in the film, except for a glimpse of a religious statue and the Buddhist funeral. Any comments on religion in your film? Or your impressions of religion in Japanese society? Any surprises?
JW: I do think of this film as being a kind of Buddhist film in a way. Naomi achieves a kind of enlightenment in her journey. She becomes sensitive to the living world, and she accepts and even affirms impermanence. Mrs. Koide is also a kind of living Buddha who guides her to an understanding. Though I am not at all religious myself – my father is a scientist, and I have no personal mystical or metaphysical beliefs about the universe, I do find Buddhism’s philosophical and moral positions very interesting, and I do think that science alone cannot answer all our emotional and philosophical needs. I don’t think we need to delude ourselves, but we do need to make sense of our world in a holistic way. I think science can do this too, but I cannot imagine a world without stories, and stories are lies . .
JRF: How have you been viewed as an “outsider” working in the Japanese film industry? Do your films prove successful in Japan or more so outside of the country?
JW: Firefly Dreams was pretty successful for a small Japanese film outside of Japan, but it was also very well received within Japan. My second film, Starfish Hotel, had mixed reviews, both within and without Japan. I’m also more ambiguous about it, though I’m glad I tried to do something different from Firefly Dreams. Though I do feel like an outsider at times, I’m also probably more of an insider now, since I speak Japanese and cannot pull the “I’m a gaijin so I don’t understand” trick.
JRF: How has the industry changed since you first arrived in Japan?
JW: The Japanese film industry has become more and more commercially driven and successful. With an annual output of 400 films a year, and half the market share (compared to British films only having 20% of the UK market) Japanese cinema is very healthy from the business point of view. Also, there are some great artists working here, such as Kawase Naomi (The Mourning Forest). Unfortunately, most Japanese cinema is complete trash in my opinion. The logic of consumerism drives most films, with little attempt to make a quality film. It’s a shame and I hope it changes, but it probably won’t.
JRF: Who influences you as an artist? Writers, filmmakers, etc.
JW: This would be a very long and inconsistent list. Kafka, Philip K. Dick, Haruki Murakami, Joseph Cornell, Ken Loach, Frank Capra . . . . Charles Mingus, Aretha Franklin . . Ozu . .
JRF: Have you worked much with any Japanese filmmakers? What seems to be the trend now in Japanese film? Are you interested in exploring other genres?
JW: I’ve not worked with other directors, but I hope to work with some more Japanese writers in future. At the moment I really want to make a horror film. I used to really hate horror films, but the more I learn about the ghost story tradition in Japan, the more I love the possibility of doing something interesting within this genre. I’ve been trying to figure out why there are so many horror films about children that go missing – Poltergeist, Dark Water (especially the original version), The Orphanage, The Dark. There seems to be some deep ur-story here that I cannot fathom.
JRF: Starfish Hotel - I’m curious why you decided to draw upon the Ramayana. That’s an unusual source, as far as the West goes. What about it appealed to you? How did you find out about it? And why noir? What reactions have you received to the film?
JW: The Ramayana was simply a starting point I think. I’ve always loved the Ramayana story, simply because I traveled a lot in Asia, and found it everywhere I went, in murals, dance, song and literature. I was fascinated by the story’s power to travel and morph and entertain for so long. I was also interested by the moral ambiguity in certain versions of the story. Ravanna is not necessarily a cardboard cut-out villain, and Rama actually orders Sita to be burned to death in some early versions of the tale, I read. The more recent versions seem to be sanitized and air-brushed for our sensitive modern tastes.
Anyway, this Ur-tale, of a man who goes in search of his missing wife, was a starting point, as was the Orpheus Myth and Alice in Wonderland. In a way there’s a bit too much of everything in the film, and I should have probably just stuck to one source, but I see a lot of overlap in these stories and I wanted to make a film set a world of shadows, about a man trying to wake from the world of shadows, but always getting dragged back into the shadows . . . . so it’s the opposite of Firefly Dreams, in that the central character cannot achieve any kind of enlightenment in his life . . . he is always doomed to repeat the same mistakes, and never be released from the wheel of fate.
About John Williams
John Williams was born in St. Albans, England but his parents are Welsh and he spent most of his childhood in Wales.
John began making films at the age of 14 on a second-hand 16mm Bolex camera, which he bought after seeing Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ (1972). Another film which made a powerful impression on him at the time was Kurosawa’s ‘Dersu Uzala’ (1975), which was his first contact with Japanese cinema.
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Filmography
Starfish Hotel (2006)
Ichiban utsukushî natsu (aka Firefly Dreams (International: English title)) (2001)
Official Website
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