Foolish Piggies - Interview With Hirobumi Watanabe

Written by Hayley Scanlon on 11 Jun 2015

We sat down with first time director Hirobumi Watanabe, whose film And the Mud Ship Sails Away features in Third Window Films' New Directors from Japan box set, to discuss the film and his career to date.

Is this your first time in London, how are you liking it so far?

Hirobumi Watanabe: Yes - I came with the whole family today, we went to Liverpool yesterday and I grew up listening to the Beatles so I’m just enjoying it so much! 

And the Mud Ship Sails Away is your first feature film - how did you get into filmmaking? 

Hirobumi Watanabe: I always loved watching movies - I watched so many but when I went to university I went to one cinema everyday to watch movies and eventually I realised I’d have to make films too, not just watch them. 

You’ve got quite an interesting name for your production company - Foolish Piggies, how did you come up with that? 

Hirobumi Watanabe: Daisuke Tengan - the son of Shohei Imamura - was my mentor and he named my company. He said it’s because I was foolish and I was fat and from Otawara so he thought “Foolish Piggies” would be a suitable name and it stuck. 

The title of the film is quite enigmatic too - could you explain where that came from?

Hirobumi Watanabe: First of all the Japanese title is similar to the title of a Fellini film - The Ship Sails Away - so I just added the “mud” bit as I’m a great admirer of Federico Fellini’s films. Also there’s an old folk story in Japan called the “Kachi-kachi Yama” where a tanuki and a rabbit have a fight, but the rabbit is a nice guy and the tanuki is sly and horrible. The tanuki makes a mud ship and the rabbit makes one out of wood and because the tanuki was foolish once they sail away the water sucks up the mud and his boat collapses, so that’s where the mud ship comes from. 

The film is structured into three sections - Inertia, Fossil and A Mud Ship - did you always intend to give the film a three act structure? 

Hirobumi Watanabe: It’s more appealing to the audience, I just thought dividing my story into three might be more appealing. The action in the film is so repetitive - someone sleeps and wakes up and something happens and they go back to sleep, and because it gets so repetitive I thought it would be better to have the partitions from time to time to make it easier to distinguish all of the stories.

The first two sections are quite straightforward but then the third goes off on a completely crazy tangent - what was your intention in changing the tone so markedly?

Hirobumi Watanabe: The first two are kind of based on my lifestyle so I used myself as a model and the third part - every single interviewer asked me and I’m struggling to answer. This is such a boring movie so I had to spice it up a little bit, that’s why I added the third part. Also I really respect sci-fi directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick etc, but with such a low budget trying to make a science fiction film this is what happens.  

More so with the first two sections but you’ve been compared quite strongly with Jim Jarmusch, probably because of the black & white and the long static takes, breaking each section with long stretches of black frames - was Jarmusch a particular influence? Who are some of your other influences?

Hirobumi Watanabe: The director I admire most is Akira Kurosawa. Jim Jarmusch definitely inspired me making this movie - especially the long shots and static camera but also his story style too - he finds comedic moments in ordinary life and that probably inspired me more than his shooting style. 

Was there a reason you decided to make the film in black and white - was it just an aesthetic choice or did it have some deeper meaning? 

Hirobumi Watanabe: I discussed it with the cinematographer; how we were going to get our message across to the audience, and we decided black and white was most suitable for the story so that’s why I chose it. Also colour represents emotions and feelings - I didn’t want to add those meanings to the film so that’s why I decided to take everything out and keep it black and white. 

But you chose to film the anti-nuclear rally in colour - was that an attempt to wake the audience up to the issue or just make it clear that it’s taking place in a slightly different space?

Hirobumi Watanabe: The terrible events that occurred in Japan - those of us in the countryside only really know about them from TV. I wanted to distinguish between the reality we’re living in the countryside and what’s happening inside the rest of the country.

Did you film a real rally or did you re-stage any of it?

Hirobumi Watanabe: Yes, we filmed a real demonstration in front of the parliament in Tokyo. 

Did you need any permission to film there or was there any problem with including something like that in the film?

Hirobumi Watanabe: Of course we didn’t get any permission! It was all shot guerrilla style.