Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

The movie is making box-office record here in Japan.

 I went to see the movie. The story is about Japanese soldiers in historical battle place of WWII, Iwojima Island.

I was really impressed. I cannot believe the Hollywood provides almost all Japanese language movie to us.

Clint Eastwood was a director for the film. How come he did it, I wondered.

The movie taught us how life is precious and to live as long as you can is beautiful.

The movie clearly described dark history of Japan. How people are sacrificed in the name of patriotism. That kind of things is gradually reviving today's Japan. Like, not setting up a national flag at home means "non-Japanese."

 Because it was made by Americans, we could see our own history from objective perspective.

I've been moved by the film for more than a week since I saw the DVD of it. I playback it over and over.

 The story is that two young cowboys met in Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming and fell in love with each other. Even after they were apart and married to women, their love had never faded. Then they got into a big trouble.

The theme is not about homosexuality. It is about love and agony in life.

Besides love story element of the film, I could learn so much about American country life including what cowboys are doing for living. Cowboys are tough guys. They can live in a tent on the prairie. They have to be very strong to take care of livestocks.  

Country music played in the film were so great.

 I never experienced such wonderful feeling by other films. The feeling remained for more than a week. This can even change my way of living.   

This movie was a kind of remake of 1960's movie "Guess who's coming to dinner?".

But this movie is a comedy and the story takes place today's America. In the old movie white person is a woman, this time it was a man. I've heard the things got much better these days.

I remember 10 years ago, when I lived in US, I saw some interracial couples. I know a Japanese friend who married American guy who is white. But black and white was rarely seen.

Although the story was comedy, it tells how difficult black and white marriage still is.

In NBC show "The West Wing" a young Black man called Charlie became a boyfriend of the President Bartlet's daughter. But as that show describes, interracial marriage is still some issue in US. Charlie became the scapegoat for white supremacist group.

Racism still is. But the society should encourage the interracial marriage. It is a good thing.

Such marriage not only represents the love between two people but also the unity of different races.

Of course it is not comfortable for the couple to be symbol of the social reform but they would contribute to the society anyway.

I remember when I was in China last spring, I fell in love with a Chinese woman. I thought if I could marry her, this might some way help repair the worsened relationship between the two nations.

Let's get over the differences.

I went to see the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha." Here in Japan the title was changed to "SAYURI."

The movie was kind of strange but also very interesting.

The characters in the movie speak in English. The hairstyle of the Geishas were appearently different from real Geishas walking on the streets in Kyoto.

The story was good in first half but the latter half was kind of difficult to understand. I actually did not like the story.

Some of Japanese argue Japan portrayed in that film was too strange to see. But how many of Japanese know the old time Japan, especially the life of Geisha? How many of us know how to wear traditional kimono?

So in that sense Hollywood made the best of their efforts.

One thing I find they are better than Japanese films is the scenes of the evening party. Usually those scenes are very bright like today's party room with fluor lamps on the ceiling. That never happened in 1930's. But in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha," the room was not very bright and the Geisha's face was lit by orange paper lantern. That should be real scenes of those days, I think.

The thing I was kind of disturbed by was the main character was played by Chinese actress, Zhi Zhang. She is a great actress, but the point is the character she played might aggravate Chinese people. The story took place in 1930's Japan. It was a time Japan was invading China. The Geisha fell in love with Japanese rich man who once fought in Manchuria. Then after the war she helped him with reconstructing his business sleeping with American military man.

Today is the time the relationship between China and Japan has become worst in post-war time. It is due to our stupid prime minister and his uneducated conservative supporters.   

As one of Japanese citizen who is very aware of how apologetic Japan should be to China, I could not enjoy this movie although the Chinese actress did played that role as Hollywood actress.