Description
How might we think about the place of marginal or minority groups in contemporary Japan? Traditionally, the Burakumin have played a significant role in Japanese society and culture, occupying a marginal place, between the inside and outside of the social structure, at once human, non-, or even super-human. While the problematics of subalternity have been taken up in a number of celebrated films — e.g., Ichikawa Kon's The Broken Commandment, Oshima Nagisa's The Sun's Burial, and Higashi Yoichi's A River with No Bridge — in effect these questions have been marginalized in the Japanese cinema as well.

Please join us for a work-in-progress screening of a new film that explores perceptions of marginal identity in contemporary Osaka, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Fujiwara Toshi, and Mark Roberts of UTCP.

Fujiwara Toshi studied Film Studies at Waseda University, and in the School of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California (USC). His films include: Independence: Around the Film ‘Kedma’ by Amos Gitai (2002), We Can’t Go Home Again (2006), Cinema is about Documenting Lives: the Works and Times of Noriaki Tsuchimoto (2007), Fence (2008), and No Man's Zone (2012).

Organized by The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP), Uehiro Research Division

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