A film-maker imagines a Japan where the elderly volunteer to die

TOKYO (NYTIMES) - Japanese film director Chie Hayakawa was germinating the idea for a screenplay when she decided to test her premise on elderly friends of her mother and other acquaintances. Her question: If the government sponsored a euthanasia programme for people aged 75 and above, would you consent to it?

"Most people were very positive about it," said Hayakawa. "They didn't want to be a burden on other people or their children."

To Hayakawa, the seemingly shocking response was a powerful reflection of Japan's culture and demographics.

In her first feature-length film, Plan 75, which won a special distinction at the Cannes Film Festival this month, the government of a near-future Japan promotes quiet institutionalised deaths and group burials for older people who are lonely, with cheerful salespeople pitching them the idea as if hawking travel insurance.

"The mindset is that if the government tells you to do something, you must do it,"said Hayakawa, 45, in an interview in Tokyo before the film's opening in Japan on June 17.

Following the rules and not imposing on others, she said, are cultural imperatives "that make sure you don't stick out in a group setting".

With a lyrical, understated touch, Hayakawa has taken on one of the biggest elephants in the room in Japan - the challenges of dealing with the world's oldest society.

Euthanasia is illegal in the country, but it occasionally arises in grisly criminal contexts. In 2016, a man killed 19 people in their sleep at a centre for people with disabilities outside Tokyo, claiming that such people should be euthanised because they "have extreme difficulty living at home or being active in society".

The incident gave Hayakawa an idea.

"I don't think that was an isolated incident or thought process within Japanese society," she said. "It was already floating around. I was very afraid that Japan was turning into a very intolerant society."

To Ms Kaori Shoji, who has written about film and the arts for The Japan Times and the BBC and saw an earlier version of Plan 75, the movie did not seem dystopian. "She's just telling it like it is," said Ms Shoji. "She's telling us, 'This is where we're headed, actually.'"

The daughter of civil servants, Hayakawa started drawing picture books and writing poems from a young age. In elementary school, she fell in love with Muddy River, a Japanese drama about a poor family living on a river barge. The movie, directed by Kohei Oguri, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1982.

"The feelings I couldn't put into words were expressed in that movie," said Hayakawa. "And I thought, I want to make movies like that as well."

She eventually applied to the film programme at the School of Visual Arts in New York, believing that she would get a better grounding in film-making in the United States. But given her modest English abilities, she decided within a week of arriving on campus to switch to the photography department because she figured she could take pictures by herself.

Her instructors were struck by her curiosity and work ethic. Photographer Tim Maul, one of Hayakawa's mentors, said: "If I mentioned a film offhandedly, she would rent it, and if I mentioned an artist or exhibition, she would go research it and have something to say about it. She is someone who really has momentum and a singular drive."

After graduating in 2001, Hayakawa gave birth to her two children in New York. In 2008, she and her husband, painter Katsumi Hayakawa, decided to return to Tokyo, where she began working at satellite broadcaster Wowow, helping to prepare American films for Japanese viewing.

At 36, she enrolled in a one-year film programme at a night school in Tokyo while continuing to work during the day. For her final project, she made Niagara, about a young woman who learns that her grandfather had killed her parents, and that her grandmother, who she thought had died in a car accident with her parents, was alive.

She submitted the movie to the Cannes Film Festival in a category for student works and was shocked when it was selected for screening in 2014.

At the festival, Hayakawa met film publicist Eiko Mizuno Gray, who subsequently invited Hayakawa to make a short film on the theme of Japan 10 years in the future. It would be part of an anthology produced by celebrated Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Hayakawa had already been developing the idea of Plan 75 as a feature-length film, but decided to make an abridged version for the anthology, Ten Years Japan.

While writing the script, she woke up at 4am every day to watch movies. She cites Taiwanese director Edward Yang, South Korean director Lee Chang-dong and Polish art-house director Krzysztof Kieslowski as important influences.

Hayakawa decided to adopt a subtler tone for the feature-length movie and inject a sense of hope. She also added several narrative strands, including one about an elderly woman and her tight-knit group of friends, and another about a Filipina caregiver who takes a job at one of the euthanasia centres.

She included scenes of the Filipino community in Japan as a contrast to the dominant culture. "Their culture is that if somebody is in trouble, you help them right away," said Hayakawa. "I think that is something Japan is losing."

Stefanie Arianne, the daughter of a Japanese father and a Filipina mother, plays the caregiver. She said Hayakawa had urged her to show emotional restraint. In one scene, said Arianne, she had the instinct to shed tears, "but Hayakawa really challenged me to not cry".

Hayakawa said she did not want to make a film that simply deemed euthanasia as right or wrong. "I think what kind of end to a life and what kind of death you want is a very personal decision," she said. "I don't think it's something that is black or white."