User Reviews

Director: Yukisada Isao Duration: 122 Minutes

Almost two years ago in my War and Memory in Japanese Film Class I watched a film called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence by the controversial film director Oshima Nagisa. One memorable scene in this film, amongst many others, is the cruelty displayed played by Sgt. Hara, Beat Takeshi, towards an imprisoned soldier named "Kanemoto." However, this is not the soldier's real name. He, like thousands of other Korean men, was forced to adopt Japanese names, because of the difficulty for the Japanese to pronounce Korean names, and serve in the Japanese military. Of course, this character comes to a pretty brutal end. Having to write a paper comparing one of the films in the class with another, I decided to compare how the Other is represented in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and Yukisada Isao's Go and let me say that it was indeed an eye-opening experience.

Sugihara seems like a normal enough Japanese high school kid. He goes to class, plays basketball, reads books that his friends lend, etc. However, there is something different about Sugihara: he is not Japanese, but Korean, and not South Korean, but North Korean. Attending North Korean school until the time he enters high school. Sugihara spent his school days marching, learning the ideologies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and participating in classes devoted to self-criticism, which basically consisted of the teacher Mr. Kim beating students who broke the rule of speaking Japanese in school, but after he gets caught by the police after he and his friend Tawake and Wonsu attempt the Super Great Chicken Run, Sugihara ran in front of a train without getting killed, his father changes the family's nationality to South Korean, and soon after Sugihara decides to attend a Japanese high school. However, things do not go easy for our hero.

Being a Korean, although born and raised in Japan, Sugihara is bullied at his new school. However, unlike many who are bullied, Sugihara knows how to fight from studying boxing with his father and after a particular fight where he takes on the school's entire basketball team; he becomes the target of students who want to prove themselves as fighters. He defeats all of them quite easily.

The ideas of race and nation never crossed Sugihara's mind until one night at a birthday party for his friend a girl named Sakurai shows considerable interest in him. As their relationship grows, the burden of revealing his Korean heritage begins to weigh heavily on Sugihara. However, he is afraid that revealing his background will destroy the precious relationship he has developed with Sakurai.

When Iwai Shunji released Swallowtail Butterfly in 1996 considerable interest within Japan's film industry was placed on minorities in Japan and films such as Yamamoto Masashi's Junk Food were created. However, almost four decades before similar issues were taken up by Oshima Nagisa in Death by Hanging and Imamura Shohei' My Second Younger Brother and more recent films tackling the issue include Sai Yoichi's, of Korean stock himself, Blood and Bones. However, where most of these films are quite serious, Go is a quite enjoyable film filled with humor while not becoming too didactic as a social commentary. The first half of the film is truly a delight with Sugihara's unusual relationships with his parents and the growth of his affection for Sakurai. The second half of the film tries to be a bit heavier and it sometimes comes off as being a bit forced. However, Go is a valuable film in introducing viewers to one group of Japan's little known minorities.

"This is a story

about my love." With the movie GO young Sugihara (wonderfully portrayed by Yôsuke KUBOZUKA) tells his story-the story about his life, the story of a generation, of two nations, but most of all a story about his love. He tells his story in his own speed, his own pictures-sometimes fast forwarding (but never hectic), sometimes in slow motion, he speeds forward, he looks back, yet doesn't lose count. GO for freedom It's not easy being Sugihara--raised as a Zainichi, a Korean who lives in Japan, by a father (helplessly lost: Tsutomu YAMAZAKI) who usually speaks with his fists and who'd rather be a Spaniard, a mother (secretly unhappy: Shinobu OTAKE) who is always trying to run away and this time maybe for good; his friends live in constant war with society (and the police). Violence is a daily routine, at home and at the North-Korean school Sugihara attends, where corporal punishment is a legitimate way of teaching and speaking Japanese is strictly prohibited. So Sugihara tries to fight through, constantly angry, constantly hostile. GO for love But something changes when Sugihara starts to visit a Japanese school, to outrun his patriotic teachers and their brainwashing methods, and first meets Sakurai (lovely: Kou SHIBASAKI) who decides that he should become her boyfriend. Sugihara's attention turns from violence to Shakespeare, but the anger grows to live among people whose intolerance is only exceeded by it's ignorance. And he learns that he will have to fight for acceptance-with words, with bare knuckles and maybe all alone, because Sakurai turns away from him when she finds out he's not Japanese. But he also understands that nobody is really free from prejudices, when one night he meets a young Japanese police officer who actually listens to him. GO to fight „No soy coreano; ni soy happones; jo soy desaraigardo" (I'm neither Korean, nor Japanese, I'm just grass without roots), Sugihara explains to his father and tells him about his future plans: He wants to attend College, wants to take a chance on his life. But most of all, he wants to accept and respect himself, for that, he understands, is the necessary first step. And because GO is a film about love, Sakurai returns to him, having overcome the xenophobia indoctrinated on her by her father, giving their love another chance. GO is fast, GO has speed, GO has action, GO has humour and GO has love. Director Isao YUKISADA characterizes a generation, a society, a nation and creates something unique: he lends the desperate his voice, that is loud enough to be heard without pointing fingers. GO is like it's protagonist-fresh, energetic and hungry for life; unwilling to give in to his fate.

c by Leska Beikircher

Most reviews here reduced "Go" to a simple love story with great acting and a critique of the racist, Japanese society. I disagree, and rather think that the movie focuses on what it means and feels like to be of foreign descent in any country really.

First, the love story does not take place for about the first half of the movie. Rather, the daily life of the protagonist who visits a North Korean high school and has a violent, communist father is shown. It is made clear that both sides, Japanese and Korean tell him that he is different than the ethnically Japanese. For instance, everyone who speaks a word of Japanese gets beaten up by the teacher, which, some might not believe it, is not normal or legal in Japan. From the Japanese side, a constant fear is shown. The peak of this is when a Japanese high school student kills the protagonist's old, classmate out of reaction. It gets very clear that the boy did not have any intention but rather felt afraid and intimidated by the "evil North Korean". Even the protagonist's communist father is aware of the difficulties that this stark difference brings and thus suggests him to change nationalities when having the opportunity to.

The love story, which everybody seems to focus on, really takes place in the second part of the movie. It is rather another tool the director chooses to convey the feeling of being of foreign descent. It is not the object of the director to make a Bollywood-like love story, as some suggested here. To make this point clear, just think of the protagonist as ethnically Japanese. Critical scenes which made me like the movie, would not take place. The couple would not have stopped their attempt to have sex for the first time because the protagonist confessed that he is a Zainichi (Japanese. for being of Korean descent). She would not have told him that her father used to say that Chinese and Korean have "dirty" blood. He would not have to face an awkward family dinner in which the girls' father, who thought that he is Japanese), talked about how great and virtuous Japan is and how lucky they all are to be of this ethnicity.

But why use a love story in the first place and not show daily microaggressions such as the American counterparts do, you may ask? The answer is because there are hardly any. The Japanese culture is very much formed by the concept of Honne and Tatamae. A person would never show his or her true face (Honne) to a stranger. You have to get very close to a person for him or her to say what is really on their mind. In addition, the protagonist puts an effort to seem as Japanese as possible. He hardly tells someone his Korean first name and instead introduces himself with his Japanese last name.

As a German of European descent whose ex-girlfriend was Korean American, I can confirm with great confidence that this does not just take place in "evil, racist" Japan. I heard numerous times why I speak German so well and that I do not look Turkish because of the way I dress. I have even felt great improvements in my dating game after dying my hair brown/blondish for fun.

At the end, my personal relation is maybe the reason why I liked this film so much. I, too am a Zainichi, who is not Muslim and does not agree or relate to Turkish or Muslim culture at all. Yet I am the first person who is asked to explain actions of the ISIS and the Turkish president, I know nothing about. The movie ends with a scene where the protagonist screams: "Where am I from? Why are you all afraid of me?!". I would recommend everyone to watch the movie and think of it of more than "just a love story with a critique of Japanese society".