FILM
Invited by the local film commission to set a film on the island, Williams said he was stunned by the“ astonishingly beautiful” scenery but baulked at the idea of making a promotional film that revolved around the crested ibis that are slowly being returned to the wild.
Instead, Williams said, he was far more interested in the island’ s history as a penal colony and, in particular, Emperor Juntoku( 1197 – 1242)— who shares his name with the lead character in the film and was banished to Sado in the 13th century for plotting to overthrow the Kamakura shogunate.
“ I was very interested in his story, about his exile there in 1242 and his death at the age of 46, although it is said that he achieved enlightenment before dying”, Williams said. Thus, the tale of an exiled artist was applied to a rock band similarly detached from mainstream society.
The Noh lyrics were inspired by another of the island’ s famous exiles, the Noh playwright Zeami Motokiyo, who did his best work during the early 1400s.
“ There were a lot of hurdles in terms of the material. I went to Sado about 20 times over three years before we were able to start filming in March 2011”, said
Williams, who has lived in Japan since 1988 and teaches film and translation at Tokyo’ s Sophia University.
“ I loved all the cultural history that had been left [ on Sado Island ], and that it was different from the rest of Japan. There was a palpable sense of being different and, in some ways, odd”, he said.“ It was the thorny otherness of the island that I liked”.
Williams, who won critical acclaim for his first two Japanese-language feature films, Firefly Dreams( 2001) and Starfish Hotel( 2007), admitted that he had problems, at times, superimposing elements of the original Tempest with his own interpretation, but he is satisfied with the final outcome.
“ I had wanted to turn [ the story ] on its head and ask a lot of‘ what-ifs’”, he said.“ The outcome is something of a hybrid film, an odd hybrid creature, but I’ m happy with that.
“ This is a film about Japan now, not just a Tempest adaptation. It is also a reflection of what is going on in Japan today, and some of the problems that we have here at the moment”.
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