See what the world does to a new gifted child over time.
Mike sent me a text message at 4 am.
Chang in NYC. Northeastern style food at a Chinese restaurant in Flushing. The Museum of the Moving Image with Xi Shi and Chang. Metropolitan Museum. Central Park. Vietnamese restaurant. MoMA. T-mobile. 53rd street. Shanghai food. Strand. Not for Sale in Astoria Park with Sarah Ip, Joseph Chan, Ada Lin, Becca Wong, Gene Carmichael, Chang, Xi Shi, and Mike.
I watched Inugami by Wasato Harada in my first Contemporary Japanese Cinema class with Professor Bong-Jung Choi.
I guess the biggest conflict in the story is whether Miki should leave or stay in Omine.
Miki does not leave because she loves the village's closeness to nature. She grew up there, has never been outside, loves her job in the paper mill (although she denies that it's a mill), and doesn't seem to have any burning desires except for a big regret about her past, which is her lost baby.
However, Miki also has two violent emotional breakdowns where she speaks out loudly that she does want to leave. She isn't being explicit as to why she wants that both times, so we are free to fill in the gaps, which isn't that hard. Her family does not show her much respect, probably because she is a spinster, even though her paper business must be supporting her family in one way or another; she is not jealous of anyone for what he or she has -- for examples, Rita's youth (her young, beautiful, and perfect body as she walks out of the bath naked), Sonoko and Takanao's defiant sex play in her paper mill (somewhere near the beginning of the film), etc.-- but her sister-in-law bites her whenever the occasion arises just because she looks younger and younger each day; and most of all, her identity as a Bonomiya woman who is thought to be cursed, who gets blamed and hated for bringing bad luck.
Another major conflict that Miki has, i guess, is whether to accept her role as the protector of Inugami. Her attitude changes from suspicion to submission. Even though she is saved in the end, she is still on the way of sacrificing herself in order to save and protect, maybe not the rest of her villagers, but those whom she loves.
I think both of these conflicts give us a chance to appreciate the idea of virtue in a woman in Japanese culture, that such a woman is and should be altruistic.
On another note, the film gives us so many perspectives to experience the story that it does produce a kind of dizziness. Sometimes the camera travels through space, there are some awesome panoramic shots, as if we are the powerful dog gods ourselves; sometimes it is static, making us the complete outsider, or the objective speculator; and some other times we got put in the shoes of the minor characters in the story, like Seiji's grandmother who died of a heart attack. I think we can definitely say more about these deliberate choices.
