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The movie "Deep River" has won acclaim at New Delhi's International Film
Festival. It depicts how a few Japanese tourists find their "lost Indian
roots". According to Kei Kumai, "We Japanese are very much influenced by
Indian culture and, from the point of view of a Japanese, India is our
motherland".=20
Many Japanese travel yearly to India (65,000 in 1996), often to visit
Buddhist holy sites. Japan is the largest donor nation to India, and, aft=
er
the economic reform, India's fifth largest investor.=20
"Deep River" is based upon Shusaku Endo's award-winning novel of the same
name. It is an exploration into the meaning of India for four individuals.
One is a World War II veteran (played by the legendary Toshiro Mifune),
desperate to quell horrible war memories experienced on India's Burmese
border. The second is a businessman looking for his wife who died and who=
,
he is told, has been reborn near Banaras. He is torn by the guilt that al=
l
during their marriage, while she loved and served him with extraordinary
selflessness, he gave her very little affection. The third and central
character is Mitsuko (Kumiko Akiyoshi, Japan's top film actress), a
divorc=E9e, lost at midlife and looking for meaning.=20
The fourth is Otsu, a spiritually reflective man whom Kumiko seduced on a
dare from her friends and then cruelly dumped. He was a Catholic--rare in
Japan--who went to a seminary in France, then to a monastery in Israel.
Finally finding no comfortable place in the Western expression of
Christianity, he came to Banaras, joined an ashram, and took up work at t=
he
cremation grounds. "Europeans consider God and man to be mutually opposed
but, being Japanese, I cannot ignore the great vital energy of nature,"
Otsu explains to Mitsuko. "I believe God exists within man, while embraci=
ng
man, trees and flowers, the Great Life Force. And the most important thin=
g
is love."=20
By the movie's end, each has found some form of resolution: the veteran, =
a
difficult realization of the honor of men within the horrors of war; the
businessman, the futility of finding his wife; Mitsuko, absolution for he=
r
self-centered life by bathing in the Ganga; and Otsu, death in his chosen
service.=20
Much of the movie was shot in Banaras by a cast and crew of 50 Japanese a=
nd
70 Indians. After the production, director Kumai said, "I think our staff
each encountered the Ganga just like the movie's characters. The holy pow=
er
of the Ganga revealed Herself through them. We received awareness of the
spiritual world, so forgotten in today's consumerist society of Japan.
Since World War II, we have developed materially, but are we happy? My fi=
lm
shows how these characters come to find in India what they could not find
at home. They ask, 'What is the most important treasure in one's
life--material pleasure or spiritual pleasure and contentment as is found
in the Hindu religion?'"=20
(Source: Hinduism Today, March 1997)
After reading this article, I am looking forward to reading this book and
watching the movie.=20
Om Shanti!
S.L.
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