Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 145 Sachiko comes to understand and prove herself. Hajime’s train (both its literal form and the tiny apparition that erupts from his head) symbolizes his helplessness and isolation in the face of change. The departure of his old crush changes his society without warning just as the train itself changes the scene by changing Hajime’s location. In both instances, Hajime has no choice but to accept where the train takes him. The symbolism of unease and changing identity forms a consistent theme, but the form of the monstrous and the way in which characters choose to face it are individual. In The Taste of Tea , characters usually must face the monsters of contemporary society alone, either in a real, solitary encounter or within their own imaginations, which further isolates them as they come to terms with the monstrous fantastic. Napier refers to such personal monsters in contemporary Japanese literature as “internal aliens” and emphasizes their relationship to the isolation and vanishing identity in contemporary Japanese society (113). Responding to the Monstrous By forcing each of his characters to confront a personal vision of the monstrous fantastic through a personal effort, Ishii creates space within the film to compare the methods characters use to come to terms with their monsters and, through them, with culture. Everyone in the film becomes obsessed with a different pursuit—Yoshiko barely leaves her kitchen-turned-studio as she works to recover her skills and her profession as a television animator, Akira isolates himself in his small apartment to work on a secret project, Hajime spends all his free time playing Go to impress his new crush Aoi, and Ayano simply observes the world around him. Yet in their own ways, the members of the Haruno family all gravitate toward the creation and appreciation of the beautiful in a series of more or less deliberate responses to the monstrous in their lives. Ishii’s characters create their monsters and cope with the monstrous through art and aesthetics. As a result, the film becomes cluttered to the point of confusion with art and the artifacts of the artistic process. Artistic production plays such a prominent role in the life of the Haruno family that Western viewers may find it difficult or impossible to approach the film without becoming bogged down in scenes that appear tangential to the progress of the plot; they may instead focus completely on the appreciation of art. Rather than simply portraying the actions of artists and thereby making the finished artistic production merely incidental to the forward motion of a film about family interactions, Ishii makes time within the film for the characters to appreciate the art itself. When the vice-principle of Sachiko’s elementary school gives a lengthy poetry recitation at a school assembly, the performance furthers the immediate aesthetic purposes of Ishii’s scene by creating an environment that showcases Sachiko’s penchant for observation, her passive position relative to most of the elements of modern life around her, and her introspective preoccupation with the giant apparition of herself. It also furthers Ishii’s ongoing development of the themes of obligation to family, connection to the transcendent, and receptivity to growth and change. However, the context of the recitation makes it unlikely that the views stated in the poem are the primary reason for its position in the film. Given the subtle hinting and veiled approaches to knowledge through the rest of the film, it seems unlikely that Ishii would choose such a clumsy outlet as the key to his own artistic expression. Similarly, if the main