Today we had our very first meeting with the director Akio Nishizawa, the producer Masahiro Murakami and the production crew.
Although one of the most important elements of "JAPAN, Our Homeland" is the 31st year of the Showa Era (1956), the crew member couldn't clearly picture the period as most of them were born after that time. So the first thing for us to do was to get to know about the town and the people in those days.

Since the original story was written, the crew, especially Mr. Watabe, often visited the libraries and museums to gather materials such as photographs and historical documents to help themselves properly transcribe the atmosphere of the era. These visual resources are extremely useful for the animators to draw storyboards. Coincidentally, today (December 12th) marks the centennial birthday of the famous movie director Yasujiro Ozu.

The NHK BS television channel is currently broadcasting all of the 57 movies directed by late Yasujiro Ozu. His movies, both in color and black and white, are entertaining to watch even today. The director Yasujiro Ozu thoroughly visualized the lifestyles of people who lived in the 40's and 50's. His movies are valuable materials to help our crew to picture sceneries of 1956. We had fun watching his movies "Soshun" and "Umaretewa Mitakeredo" during the meeting. Even the trams and the laundry poles that appear in these movies give us food for thought.

The story is set in old downtown Tokyo. First of all, we had to clarify the location of each character’s house, the elementary school, the playground and the shopping arcade. The director Nishizawa took out a sheet of paper and placed it in front of the crew. It was the detailed sketch (above) that he drew with 4 different-colored pens while he was traveling on the bullet train. How did the playground and the shopping arcade look like? What was a rich family’s house like in those days? The director Nishizawa explained: "Rich families had their houses surrounded by a sort of a hedge, which created a very peculiar atmosphere. People used to align flower pots on the street in front of their houses. They weren’t as fancy as today’s popular gardening style, but people tried to humbly decorate around the house". "Popular flowers then were different from those of today, weren’t they? Celosia was very popular, and also salvia especially during summer", adds Mr. Murakami, the general producer, recalling his own childhood.

"Low dining table" and "black telephone"

In those days a family used to have a "low dining table" (now replaced by Western-style dining table) in their dining room. What was it like? What kind of meal was usually served on the table? A telephone appears in one of the scenes from the movie, but no one of the staff even knows how a telephone from those days looks like.

Then Mr. Watanabe starts to explain the old way of life in details while referring to the documents he gathered: "This low dining table is covered with too many side dishes. Back then, we had thought that cooked rice, miso soup and fish on the table would be enough. In summer, children were running around in a tank top."