A series of short biographies of several Japanese women’s lives. Among them was a women who grew up in America during World War II who later went on to become an English teacher and community leader in her rural home town in Japan. There was a woman who became interested in English from pop music and eventually became a university professor at NC Chapel Hill.

They interviewed an artist who was also a single mother and who had worked as a foreign reporter in Latin America. Also there was a woman who moved to America when she was 26 because of an arranged marriage and later moved back to Japan and now helps run a charitable organization. In addition there was a Korean girl who moved to Japan when she was 18 to become a dancer but she ended up marring a farmer after an extended courtship (of five years) against her family’s wishes.

Finally they featured a young woman from China who moved to Japan to study and married a country farmer who her landlord set her up with.

The thing the women had in common is that they all differed from what is considered to be the average Japanese woman. Some qualities that separate them are: becoming a community leader, finding a new job after retirement, moving abroad, being a single mother, being an artist, being a reporter, becoming the organizer for a large NGO, acting against family’s wishes, and moving from the city to the country.

There are two quotes that I remembered that also illustrate this. The first is from the artist: “People are obsessed with money…Japan is the Titanic.” this kind of public statement of criticism against Japan is something I’ve never heard a Japanese person make before. The second quote was: “Dad was angry, (that I moved to Japan) but what could he do?” in this statement the Korean girl shows her disregard toward the traditional value of respecting and following family/parental advice.

I’ve seen this film twice and the only thing positive about it I can say is that it seemed to be shorter the second time. It has a very dry, micro biography style that would be best split up into several smaller five minute programs and shown one at a time as a discussion topic for a class. Watching them all back to back was very boring, I would not have been able to stay awake if I had not been taking extensive notes.