Visiting the VIENNALE (part 2)

A report by Michikazu Matsune

23. Oct. 2007
Yokohama Mary by Takayuki Nakamura     [previous] [next]

Again, the story of a former prostitute. This time in Japan after World War II.

She was called Mary. She was called Shinny. She was called the Ghost. No one knew her real name but everyone spoke about her. She became a legend in the red light district in Yokohama. Kids knew her in the neighbourhood. She always dressed herself in a pretty white dress just like a princess from a European fairy tale. She always put on a completely white make-up like a Geisha. She was a prostitute for American GIs. And she was homeless. She stayed homeless and a prostitute until she was very old.

Back then some years after the war in Yokohama, there was a famous café called Negishiya and that was where many GIs and Yakuzas (Japanese "Mafia" members) spent their free time. American army and Japanese Mafiosi? I would not be surprised if they were having some business agreement there. Mafiosi, army and police, aren't they all just one organisation? Negishiya was a café where prostitutes, too, were hanging out. They picked up customers there – or was it the other way around?

Americans must be surrounded by prostitutes wherever they go for wars. They like that, of course. Japan, Korea, Vietnam. Now in Afghanistan and Irak, perhaps. There must be such cafés like Negishiya in Kabul or Baghdad where women don't put that kind of black cloth over themselves but are almost naked. They must be performing belly dances and snake dances, just like Japanese Geishas performed kimono strip dances back then.

By the way, a female Japanese friend of mine who also lives here in Vienna saw a group of Islamic women covered with their traditional black cloth in a lingerie shop. They were discussing enthusiastically what they liked, and recommended to each other what they thought the other should buy. The underwear they were inspecting was fancy stuff. G-string in red, white panties with lace, ones with flower patterns, etc. And each one of them bought four or five goods at the end and went out. My friend added: "You know, I don't think they're wearing this black cloth all the time; they wear mini-skirts at home and underneath, G-strings."

No idea.

"In Negishiya then", says a man, a researcher of sexual subculture in Tokyo, "there were three kinds of women: Mutes, women for whites, and women for blacks."

Oh yes, we shouldn't forget that this was before the official equality of whites and blacks, and that it was unthinkable that a white man would sleep with a Japanese woman who had already slept with a black man. Ok – but what about the mutes? Were they also divided into two groups?

Perhaps yes. But maybe NO! And maybe it was right there at Negishiya in Yokohama that the equality of blacks and whites began with the support of mute (and yellow!) Japanese prostitutes. Some fifteen years before Martin Luther King held his speech. Oh, history!

Mary had been supported by some neighbours, intellectuals and artists. She had brought inspiration to many artists because of her look, her outfit and most of all, her way of living. And she herself loved stage art and went to see theatre pieces and concerts. She appeared in one of Kurosawa's films. Yoshito Ohno, Kazuo's son, danced Ophelia from Hamlet inspired by Mary. Ganjiro Nagata, a gay chanson singer, supported her a lot. He says, "She never accepted bare cash. I always put money in an envelope and wrote "Flower Money" on it. Then she accepted."

She had been in the minds of many people and everyone talked about her in the film. The film builds up with stories of her told by people who knew her or saw her. It comes as a surprise that she is still alive and lives in a home for old people back in her home town. A friend of mine who I saw the film together with was disappointed that Mary herself never spoke in the film – after all, she's still alive. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I want to hear her story from Mary herself. On the other hand, I think that it is about ourselves who are touched by Mary, who are talking about the Mary in us. At this moment, I feel I would like to leave her in peace. I simply would like to think of her, of a woman who has been strong all her life.

Best wishes from Vienna!

25. Oct. 2007
The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming     [previous]

This film project started from a very personal interest of the director, who wanted to find out about her own great-grandfather who was called Long Tack Sam. He was a very famous acrobat-magician who originally came from China. He staged huge magic and acrobatic shows with his own troop in big theatres all over the world. He was sensational, and the shows went very well. Long Tack Sam's special trick was this: He held up a small towel and showed its front and back. Then he put the towel on his shoulder. Then, he turned head over heels – and already he held the towel before him again. He took the towel away – and there it was, a big bowl with goldfish in it! (With water, of course.) The show of his troop was highly spectacular with high rope balance acts and jumping through a circle of inward-pointing knives. Most of them only possible with lots of physical exercise and extreme discipline.

Long Tack Sam met an Austrian girl from Linz when he was on a short visit in Austria, and they got soon married. Times were getting complicated. He was Chinese, and it was not easy to be in Germany or Austria then in the Thirties. On the other hand, they had a problem going to England because she was from Germany-Austria. They moved to America, then to Australia and China. At this point, Long Tack Sam's life and the film about him by his great-granddaughter become a huge culture-historical study through the two world wars.

Chaplin, Keaton, and all the others, are remembered because we see them in films. "Long Tack Sam probably was forgotten because he never played in films", Ann Marie Fleming guesses. Long Tack Sam was against the image of the Chinese transported in Hollywood films, and he never accepted a film contract although he had many offers. Ann Marie Fleming gathers information through old newspapers, through the archives of magic societies and through meetings with her relatives. In her film she shows the process of search and research for the past of her great-grandfather and eventually, through many difficulties, manages to tell us who Long Tack Sam was. The film partially was created using photomontage and animation in such a fantastic and entertaining way that it's like seeing magic.

It is the true irony of history and generations that Long Tack Sam, who refused to be in films, now is made famous (at least to me) by his great-granddaughter's film!

By the way: Long Tack Sam and his wife's small tomb lies in a cemetery just outside Linz. In prayer.

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It has been really exciting to watch the films I watched this week. Thanks for reading till here. See you soon and keep on watching good films!
MM