Japan with bounce

Press, 19 October 1977, Page 19

Japan with bounce

By

KEN COATES

Hanafi Hayes bounced around Japan with an exuberance that left viewers slightly bemused in his “Hayes Over Japan” programme from TVI on Monday night. His documentary was the first of seven made by independent film companies, or by TVI in cooperation with outside organisations, combined into a series called “Scene.” Hayes, with his delightful knack of describing with a chuckle his own h a I f-embarrassed reactions, plunged headlong into his “Japanese experience." The result was no gilded, lake-side tea-house version of a calm, cherryb 1 o s s o m-scented Japan from the glossy tourist brochures. Two main impressions emerged from Hayes’s whirl — a country with immense population pressure, and a vastly different culture with strange customs, within a modern industrial society. But Hanafi Hayes is not one for social essays. As a professional film-maker with a flair for the

unusual he got on with it, smelly socks, lace-ups, and all. The result was mostly amusing and diverting. Hayes chose to take the line of the bemused New Zealander quite taken with the idea of himself in unfamiliar kimono, tasting Japanese food, and indulging in strange customs. To the casual visitor in Japan, who is excused all manner of social gaffes oh

the grounds that he is a foreigner, this is the overwhelming appeal of the country. But in doing this Hayes ran the risk, here and there, of appearing to look down his Kiwi nose at the Japanese with a quiet snigger, rather than explaining just what was going on and why. However, a Johnny Morris-type series of comments helped explain. Effective use was made of contrast in the documentary — from the assault on the senses of an “electro-dynamic emporium” to the “peace and solitude” of ready-made, guaranteed fishing; from the regimented squads of tourists and visiting school parties to the quiet seclusion of a school for dancers.

Hanafi Hayes donned an All Black jersey and had a run with a veteran rugby team, but was a little short on wind and on information about the aged gentlemen. The _ same could be said of his antics with the dancers.

There were a number of delightful shots capturing the contrasts of Japan — for example, a weatherbeaten rubbish woman, hauling her cart over uneven paving stones, and the pride of Japan’s national railways, the bullet train. One major attribute of Hanafi Hayes is his ability to laugh at his own reactions —- as for example, his sef-conscious awareness that the female shop assistants were staying while he tried on the kimono outfit, and his awareness that he was not making a very good fist of Japanese food. I had hoped he would sample two of the customs in Japan which seem to be a means of combating the tensions and problems inherent in an overcrowded and highly-structured society — that Japanese bath, and patronage of the small Japanese bar after work. The encouraging feature of “Hayes Over Japan” is that it was an entertaining, imaginative and creative effort by a New Zealander determined to take a look at a people who are very much a part of this country’s world. Hanafi Hayes set out to make his offering entertaining, and generally it succeeded. Was the request for a pavlova cake at the end just a trifle forced? I cound not help feeling that somewhere down in that basement cake shop, Mitsukoshi had a cake resembling our beloved pav, and that the real problem was communication.