The audience that works is rewarded

Published on Monday 30 March 2009 19:54

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate, BBC4 The Wire, BBC2

WESTERN documentaries about Japan frequently concentrate on the wackier aspects of the country's culture in lieu of actual depth and are often superficial and patronising. So hallelujah for British director Sean McAllister's refreshingly perceptive film, Japan: A Story of Love and Hate, which picked apart the clichs to reveal the truth behind the regimented faade of Japanese city life.

After living in Japan for two years, McAllister was getting nowhere in his efforts to make a revealing documentary about the country. Depressed and drinking too much (the film began with him jogging, out of breath and sweating profusely, delivering a desperate monologue to camera), he had almost given up – until he met Naoki, 56, a part-time postal worker. This seemingly unremarkable man turned out to be the perfect subject for McAllister's documentary. Naoki – a lean, toothsome chap, with a wry smile and wheezing laugh – had once owned a thriving private business, but when Japan's economy crashed in the 1990s, he lost everything, and now was scraping by on the equivalent of about 4,000 a year. Enter the harsh reality of Japan's "working poor".

A thin wall away from homelessness, Naoki lived in what was laughably described as a one-room apartment. In reality it was more like a windowless, strip-lit box. Living there alone would be hellish enough, but the box actually belonged to Yoshie, 29, Naoki's girlfriend.

She worked 15 hours a day in three jobs, the worst being as a hired date for married businessmen. It was sleazy and bleak, and obviously pained her greatly. Returning home from drunken evenings, she would often berate Naoki before falling asleep from a cocktail of booze and sleeping pills. In the morning she wouldn't remember a thing.

Naoki and Yoshie's relationship was one of desperate co-dependence, rather than a romantic partnership, as Naoki was unable to perform sexually since the financial crash. We never even saw them kiss.

And yet, rather than wallow in self-pity, Naoki regarded his situation with a kind of hard-won irreverence. Within a society shamed by a shockingly high suicide rate, Naoki refused to be destroyed by his relentlessly unrewarding work-cycle and seemingly hopeless prospects.

It was this, plus the affectionate interplay between McAllister and Naoki, that gave the film its heart. With Naoki finally accepted into Yoshie's hitherto disapproving family, it even had a happy ending of sorts. This was an exemplary film, featuring perhaps the most eye-opening depiction of modern Japan I've ever seen.

When I originally watched the first episode of The Wire last year, I was baffled and disappointed. This is supposed to be one of the greatest TV dramas ever? Why? It was slow and almost incomprehensible at times, and nothing really seemed to happen.

With hindsight, however, I appreciate that the seeds of the impending bloom were being methodically sown – that the writers were introducing us gradually to this world, and demanding that we concentrate.

It was one of the most unhurried and potentially alienating opening episodes imaginable. And that's why I love The Wire: it assumes that you're intelligent and attentive enough to absorb something bereft of heavy-handedness, and refuses any concessions to the casual viewer. So don't be a casual viewer.