The interview was interpreted between Japanese and German by Mariko Wakayama.
Barbara Wurm (BW): I am very pleased that we have managed to come together. I would like to start with the question of crisis and the question of death. And of life. Nao, how did you perceive the interplay between your own life and this film? Does your life accompany this film, or does the film accompany your life? Or is that a completely pointless question?
Nao Yoshigai (NY): It's very difficult to say which side has had the upper hand here, because both sides are closely combined and their interaction is deeply intertwined. The starting point for this film was actually a commission. I was asked from outside whether I would like to make a film on the subject of the human body. And I was told that I could deal with this subject completely freely.
BW: And who commissioned you?
NY: Aichi Arts Center [in Japan]. It's a centre for contemporary art, and every year an artist is commissioned to create a work on the theme of ‘the body’ – and this year it was my turn. I decided to shoot in this Zen temple because I had had a very powerful healing experience there during a retreat earlier on. When I started working on my film, I went back to this temple to continue my spiritual exercises, which I then integrated into my everyday life and became much healthier during the filming. In this sense, working on this film had a profound impact on my everyday life. On the other hand, the film absorbed a lot of my experiences outside of filmmaking. I couldn't say who accompanied whom here. My life and the film were leaning on each other.
Christiane Büchner (CB): I'm a little surprised that your experience at this retreat was the starting point for the film. I would have thought it was the death of your mother. Would you say that in this film, the question of the body encountered the narrative of your mother's death?
NY: Yes, exactly. When I got this commission, I was in a state where I didn't know if I can continue making films or even continue living. This was very, very much influenced by the death of my mother, which had an immense effect on me. It was at precisely this moment that I received this commission. And then, in the Zen temple, I had the experience of how I could live again. It was an experience of rebirth that I had there. It was almost fate.
It was a rebirth experience that I had [in the temple]. It was almost fate.
CB: I was moved by how your film works its way from an avant-garde aesthetic through various forms of staging. And how it repeatedly produces new states of being in the process. Right up to that insanely great poo animation. It feels like everything is taking place in a single breath, and I'd like to know how this flow came about.
NY: When I make a film, I don't start with a script, I start with images, a bit like a picture book. And then I shoot along this first rough series of images. During filming, something unexpected always happens, for example the snow at the beginning. It wasn't supposed to snow that day. Snow wasn't planned for the scene, but then it turned out that the element of snow connected quite organically with other elements in the film that had been planned from the beginning. I always try to see these random elements as a given, a gift, and weave them into the film as much as possible, letting them inspire me. For example, the animation of the poo, which was added later. And in the end, I have a mixture of scenes that were planned in advance and others that happened by chance and were then added to the film afterwards. That's how I usually work.
BW: I'd like to pick up on your artistic expression here. In addition to working with film, dance and performance are also part of your forms of expression, as is photography. Perhaps you could say something about how much this theme of the body as an expression or also as a recipient of impulses and emotions from the environment has influenced you. Especially in the scenes where the body that has fallen or can no longer move on its own is caught by the others and is held up by the group.
NY: As for the scenes involving the fallen body, I have to mention a form of movement that I practise myself in my everyday life. It was developed by the gymnastics teacher Michizo Noguchi in the post-war period. His philosophy had a profound influence on me. Noguchi assumed that the human body is a sack of skin in which various fluids, i.e. blood and organs, move. The body is regarded as a ‘living water bag’ that flows through internal impulses and external influences, as if on imaginary strings. ‘Oh, I see!’ I thought, ‘so the human body is a sack of flesh!’ And the scene you mention really wants to show the body as such. The body is fluid and so is the world. These fluidities exist in parallel, one within the other. That's why I wanted the motionless person – the ‘bag of flesh’ – to lie on the floor in the stage scene, touched by others and gently rocked. For me, this was very close to the experience of a ‘good life’ in the temple, where we supported each other and helped each other to stand up through shared prayer, eating and conversation, as if with small, gentle movements. This experience then radiated throughout the entire film, because I didn't want it to be just about my story, but to tell the story of many and for everyone to appear in the group dynamics that arise.
‘Oh, I see!’ I thought, ‘so the human body is a sack of flesh!’
CB: I read the abbot's speech together with the scene in which the cook mixes the rice. The abbot says that all things happen, no matter what we do or don't do. But the cook still tries to mix the rice perfectly for those who will eat it. What I find impressive about your film is that it tries to connect these two perspectives through its images. Without constructing a cinematic narrative, it can show me how I am in the world. And I find that quite incredible. What do you think is the purpose of a film?
NY: First of all, thank you very much for seeing the film in this way and for telling me your reaction. It means a lot to me. The purpose of the film is a difficult question, because I think it also depends on the sensibilities of the person watching it. But for me personally, this film has been a healing experience, a recovery experience. By making the film, I have found a new foundation for my decision to continue living. In that sense, this film had a very important purpose and has fulfilled that purpose for me.
CB: Thank you. I'd like to take it a step further. At the beginning of the film, there is talk of a war, and from that point on, I see it in a larger context, in the sense that political narratives also plays a role. Perhaps you could say how the film relates to this?
NY: That's also a very, very difficult question. I couldn't answer what the film's role is in the context of political narratives through the film. But I can talk about the time before making the film when I was so ill. During that time, war broke out, climate change became increasingly noticeable, and Covid also happened during that time. All these serious problems came into the world at the same time, and I wanted to deal with them properly, to do them justice. I tried to be responsible for everything and to let all these things get very close to me. So close that I couldn't distance myself from them anymore. But working on this film made me realise that you can't live like that. To live in the world, you have to draw a line between yourself and the world.
BW: I'd like to pick up on that: this world is, at least at the beginning in the collage of images, a very typical Japanese one, an absolutely urban one, in which this overflow and overkill becomes apparent. And in contrast to this is the retreat to the temple. And then the film slowly opens up to a world of its own, which is also captured in great photographs, alongside the filmed material. Can you say something about your work as a photographer, as an observer of everyday life and the world, and how you collaged that for this film?
NY: The photos are from the time when I was ill. Back then, I had an urge to document everything, everything, everything. And it's not just about photos. I also recorded thousands of voice memos on my iPhone. Sound recordings, videos and photos. I always had my camera with me and I photographed absolutely everything I observed. And when I later returned to these photos, I could see from their sheer volume how ill I was. I couldn't understand how I could have taken so many photos at once. But I could still see in each photo what had been interesting to me about the subject it depicted.
Back then, I had an urge to document everything, everything, everything.
I decided to have prints made of all the photos and use them for the film. And after I came back from the temple and was a little healthier, I started photographing my breakfast every day. And I thought that this kind of documentation was a bit more moderate and could be good. And it was. It helped me recover. It was, so to speak, the flip side of that urge I had before. And after a while, these photos of my meals seemed like my self-portrait. I recognised myself in the photos of my food.
BW: It's funny how, on the one hand, there's this story of digital detox, but on the other hand, media plays a big role within the temple, whether it's the iPad the abbot reads from or the mobile phone that contains the recipe for the cook. So digital devices aren't disappearing, and this breakfast ritual of taking photos is also an ironic reference to Instagram. I think it's great how the film doesn't play these things off against each other, but allows them to coexist. How different is the relationship when you're not behind the camera yourself, but working with a respected cinematographer and fellow director, Kaori Oda, who was a guest at the Forum last year with her film UNDERGROUND [2025]? In this film, the roles were reversed, and so a very nice little story emerges within the Forum about the unfolding of the enigmatic shadow [that you portray in UNDERGROUND] into an incredibly talented and sensitive artist who looks both inward and outward.
NY: I also shot some sequences, but Kaori Oda shot the scenes in the temple, the beginning and the end, and also the stage scene. In other words, the scenes that really appear as the cornerstones of the film's structure. Because she works mainly as a director, I had a great deal of confidence in her. When I was a little unsure or didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, she always had good advice. For example, in the snow scene, when there was no snow in the script, I wasn't sure if I should shoot on another day because the snow in the picture might not fit the scene. But Kaori immediately said, ‘I think the snow will fit well,’ and we did it that way – and she was right. Her advice came very much from a place of feeling and the senses, and was less theoretical or logical. And that was very convincing for me. The film was also very much influenced by her.
CB: Is there anything you would like to tell us about the film that we haven't asked you yet?
Food became the leitmotif of the film
NY: Yes, you've asked pretty much everything that's important, but perhaps one small thing at the end. Many of the sequences in the Zen temple have to do with food. We filmed ‘how’ people eat in this temple. And this ‘how’ is very important because there are many rules there. For example, you have to eat everything quite quickly, and you're not allowed to talk to the others while you're eating. On the one hand, it looks as if eating in this small dining room is an activity that simply has to be done as shown. But it was in this temple that I experienced for the first time how good plain rice, simply cooked rice, tastes. And I never liked plain rice before. It was something I didn't really like because it always tasted – excuse me – like my own spit. But because of the way they treat food as something very, very important there – that was probably the central experience that stayed with me from my first time at the temple – I got the idea to make that the central theme of a film. And so food became the leitmotif of the film.
BW: That's a wonderful conclusion, because it also brings a wonderful food artist figure into the picture and makes us want to do the same. Thank you all very much for the interview, and especially you, Mariko, for the translation, and you, Nao, for your answers.
