The Japanese Film Festival Online 2024 is now offering free screenings of a range of films and two TV series in the UK and other territories up until the 5th of July. This is another venture for the Japan Foundation and some of the films may have been seen in cinemas on Japan Foundation tours over the last few years. We’ll attempt to review a selection of titles. First up is this very entertaining feature described in the catalogue as ‘Business, Drama, Mystery’. That’s a fair summary but there is more to it and it draws on other genre repertoires. My first observation is that the film is something of an in-house investigation. The opening credits announce the traditional Japanese studio distributor Shochiku and then the publishing company Kadokawa. Over the last few years Kadokawa has been through several re-organisations and is now a large media conglomerate. As we’ll see, the story of KIBA follows a similar path.
The narrative begins with the death of the CEO of Kunpu, a traditional Japanese publishing company. In a TV interview, a literary critic explains the fundamental problem for Japanese publishing in the 2020s. Traditionally, novels have been serialised in various magazines. These magazines are funded by advertising which is drying up for print publishing as digital expands online. Even if people still want to read novels, they may not be accessible because the magazines that might serialise them are in danger of collapse. There is also the suggestion that traditional mainstream literature is failing to keep up-to-date with cultural changes and that established writers are being indulged with only ‘light’ editing of their work by publishers. A crisis looms. As discussions commence about who will be the next CEO of Kunpu, two central characters come to the fore. Hayami (Ōizumi Yō) is a senior editor who has been away in the US until he suddenly re-appears, still a relatively young man but now clearly with new ideas. Takano Megumi (Matsuoka Mayu) is a younger woman who bucks the trend and is a diligent editor working for the Kunpu Literary Review. At this point, however, she feels that her ideas are not being appreciated.
The plotting is quite complex. In the background the jostling for power at boardroom level involves senior figures in the company while the CEO’s son is still in America. Megumi is to some extent disgraced as she insults one of the company’s most experienced novelists by daring to suggest he has problems with gender roles in relation to his characters and she is marginalised at the Literary Review. Hayami meanwhile is made editor of Trinity, a ‘culture magazine’ dealing with a range of popular culture forms. Recognising Megumi’s talent and work ethic he gets her to work for him and challenges her and the other staff to think of exciting new ideas that will stir up the company.
We learn that Megumi’s father still runs a traditional bookshop but that it is struggling to make money. Hayami is a dynamic character and he soon commissions writing from a celebrity model and pop culture icon while Megumi discovers the whereabouts of a missing writer whose long-delayed and much re-written novel might prove to be popular. He’s played by Lily Franky, a star of Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son (2013) and Shoplifters (2018). Meanwhile the battle at the top of the company seems to be going in the direction of closing down the more traditional types of publishing. This is one of the themes of the narrative that is connected to the much more personal narrative about Megumi and Hayami in quite complex ways. I don’t want to spoil the narrative but there are some twists before the final resolution. I did at one point feel that the relationship between the young woman and the slightly older man might be similar to those Cary Grant-led screwball comedies with Katherine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby, 1938) or Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday, 1940). I’m impressed by both Ōizumi Yō and Matsuoka Mayu. He’s perhaps best known as a voice artist on several big anime hits while she was another actor in Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and also Tremble All You Want (Japan 2017). Much of the time Hayami is the one in control by Megumi, though sometimes embarrassed is not to be deflated. She has good ideas and strong principles and we hope she will win out. I won’t reveal the final resolution.
I don’t know much about the director Yoshida Daihachi and I don’t think I’ve seen any of his other films. The same goes for the other creatives on the production. The film is presented in ‘Scope. Its visual style is clean and sharp with tight editing over its 113 minutes runtime. I found it a riveting watch and very entertaining because of the strong performances of the two leads. I think it could succeed overseas – do watch the trailer to get a feel of its presentation. It reminds me of French films about creativity and business culture and made a great start to my festival viewing. KIBA is an acronym for the son of the CEO who died – Koretaka Iba, who appears later in the narrative. The ‘Fangs’ of the title are presumably the infighting senior staff.
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