Nippon koku: Furuyashiki-mura

In the 1960s, the Ogawa Productions film collective started documenting resistance movements in close cooperation with those involved, thus merging political and cinematic commitment. By the early 1980s, the members of the collective had already been living in a village in northern Japan for several years and working on projects about agricultural production and life, when a cold air front one summer ruined the rice harvest in the nearby mountain hamlet Furuyashiki. With great curiosity and scientific meticulousness, the collective conducted experiments with cold air, creating a raised-relief map to explore the effect of air flows on crops, coming across ancient deposits in soil samples. The first part of the film uses the conventions of scientific cinema whereas the second part delves deeply into the village’s past. Though it comprises only eight households, their past and present reflect all of Japan’s.