On the last day of a shoot that lasted an entire school year, Ema Ryan Yamazaki could bear witness to exactly the kind of education that she sought to illuminate when she embedded in a Japanese elementary school. A group of first graders can be seen preparing for a musical performance of “Ode to Joy” where each of the students has their part to play in the amateur orchestra, and without prompting, the kids started reflecting on in profound terms about working towards something larger than themselves.
“I felt like it was like a reward from some sort of documentary gods for all the work we’d done the whole year. Using the music metaphor to show the collectiveness of a Japanese elementary school experience, but also the pressures of it,” Yamazaki recently recalled. “That scene is just a filmmaker’s dream. These kids are six, seven years old, having a philosophical question about what are we, [this idea that] we’re just instruments and [interconnected] pieces of a heart, and being so unforgiving in being part of the group.”
Yamazaki was so enamored with this particular climax and the storyline that led to it in general that she ended up carving out the story of a larger project she was working on to chronicle what a public education in Japan now looks like. Even the title came easily after her producing partner – and husband – Eric Nyari suggested the name, “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” or you could simply call it one of the finest documentaries of the year of any length as Yamazaki comes to focus on Ayame, an enthusiastic girl who upon learning of a year-end concert sparks to the idea of participating in any way she can. However, her teacher Enemoto isn’t about to hand out random assignments, instead putting the class through their paces with auditions where Ayame comes up unfortunately short with her initial choice of the drums. Although the feeling of rejection is clearly heartbreaking, the tears that stream down Ayame’s face soon turn to sweat as she practices diligently for cymbal tryouts and Yamazaki observes with remarkable sensitivity how the seemingly minor moment of adversity is bound to make a lasting impact on the person Ayame will grow up to be.
Beyond Yamazaki’s skill behind the camera, some of what makes “Instruments of a Beating Heart” special is the perspective that the director can draw on as a former product of the same school system that Ayame is a part of, understanding the discipline that can be regarded in other cultures as perhaps a bit excessive yet sees how rewarding it can be when it’s applied with a certain level of compassion. Having received another kind of education under the wing of filmmakers such as Sam Pollard and Marc Levin (“Class Divide”), for whom she was an editor, Yamazaki has shown a keen eye when it comes to looking at Japanese society after first making a splash with a lovely biography of Hans and Margret Rey, “Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators” and subsequently following a high school baseball team in “Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams” where principles for success hardly have much to do with the game, and working as an editor with director Shiori Ito, who harrowingly plumbed the depths of her own sexual assault in this year’s “Black Box Diaries” to show all those who contribute to a seemingly impenetrable dome of silence.
With “The Making of a Japanese,” Yamazaki’s feature about school life still awaiting an American distributor, “Instruments of a Broken Heart” is both a tantalizing teaser and deeply moving achievement that can stand entirely on its own and after the film premiered last week as a New York Times OpDoc and promptly recognized by both the Cinema Eye Honors and IDA Awards in their nomination announcements, the filmmaker graciously took the time to talk about how she ended up with a perfect short film in the midst of a grander endeavor and more broadly finding microcosms that can illustrate larger societal trends.
Since I have heard that there was this larger feature, how did this emerge as something that could stand on its own?
Yeah, there is a feature project called “The Making of a Japanese” that is the reason I was at this elementary school. I filmed for one school year, focusing on the incoming grade one and the outgoing grade six and in the feature, there’s no one main character. The school itself is the main character. [And this story started to develop during] months 11 and 12 of a one-year shoot. Ayame was clearly a very special student and at this point, we have the support of the right teachers, the right parents, the right kids and the [director of photography] has been in there for a hundred-plus days, shooting every day, so we were just fine-tuning our mechanical systems and I was waiting for that one story that I could capture the beginning, middle and end. When the music thing started to unfold, the crew was ready, the relationships were ready and it just did happen in a perfect way. Then as the story was unfolding, I [thought], “There has to be a separate project for this. This is too good to be true.” When I finished shooting, I started pitching the project at places like Hot Docs and Doc Edge and I connected with the New York Times OpDocs team that asked me if I was interested in doing an OpDoc. And I said, “You know what? I have the exact version of the project that would be perfect for a short.” That’s how “Instruments of a Beating Heart” came about.
This may have been an organic part of the process since Ayame was one of many students you were following for this feature, but there are some pretty intense scenes and I would think the camera night add attention at times she might not want – or any student. What was it like navigating those sensitivities?
In the short film, it looks like we were filming with her a lot, but until the very end of the school year including the music performance story, we were filming with so many kids all the time, so I don’t think she or any of the kids felt like we were filming just one person. It would have been tough on everybody if it was one person that we were filming all the time and that was actually the one request from the school was not to film one student [specifically] because it would defy [the principles of] the education system. So we really were filming with lots and lots of [students] and I knew that she was going to be a main character, but I was always following the sub story, which is why you see a little bit of the boy that cries and the other girl that cries, and we made sure that we knew who the kids who wanted to be filmed were and wanted to get a microphone on them, so sometimes we would do that, even though I knew that would really be part of the main project. We did a lot of stuff to keep up relationships and also played with all the kids who wanted to play with us when we weren’t shooting, so it all worked out.
It was interesting to learn because this was in part financed by NHK in Japan that it was incumbent upon you to work with a Japanese cinematographer, though I imagine what might not have been there in terms of personal familiarity may have been made up for by familiarity with the school system. What was that relationship like?
Yeah, for my previous project “Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams,” about Japanese high school baseball, I brought my former NYU classmate and an American to Japan and I had my reasons for that. But for this, I just knew we had to have a Japanese-speaking DP and in working with NHK, it was strategic because I knew I wanted to shoot every day of the school year if I had to. Ultimately, we shot 150 days, but that can get expensive for an independent filmmaker and it was part of NHK’s co-production contribution to give us a camera person essentially for no out-of-pocket costs from our side. When I found this out, I watched over a hundred of NHK programs to find who I wanted to work with and I eventually found Kazuki Kakurai, who was even younger than me, but he was so talented. In the preparation of the shooting, we did some online sessions between him and my favorite DP from the U.S. because the shooting system is so different in Japan and so different with NHK and I wanted some of that, but also for him to understand where I was coming from and what I expected. We had these test shoots and feedback sessions leading up to the project, so by the time we started shooting, Kazuki really understood what I wanted. Once he was in a classroom, he was really on his own. If I was in the classroom, I would be in the shots and the classrooms are so short, often I was in the hallway or right outside, so I really fully trusted him and ultimately by the time the short film story came along, it’s his best work also at the end of the project. I think he’s basically the most talented DP in Japan.
Was there anything that happened that changed your ideas of what this could be?
It took me years and years to find the right school and the right circumstances and do this one year in a Japanese school, and as you can tell from the title of my feature, “The Making of a Japanese,” the concept is that in these six years, a Japanese person is made, so to speak. That comes from my own experience. I went to a Japanese public school and I like to think I was that little girl, looking back in my life as an adult and realizing how much of the foundational values as a person I was given at that time – the work ethic, being part of a group, being responsible to your tasks, all those things that I’ve carried with me and have become my strength as an adult. In New York, I would be working there and people would be like, “Oh, you work so hard. You’re so responsible,” and I [would say], “I think I’m just Japanese.” So this was my idea for the project. I went in and I wasn’t interested in the math or science class. It was about the character-building parts of school and what the Japanese system is about.
That concept didn’t really change, but of course I spent 4,000 hours at this school, and I saw a lot of things and tried to keep an open mind, noting things that were different from 25 years ago from when I was a student. Ultimately, I know people will probably see the film and think, “Oh, the collectiveness and the group aspect is so strong,” but as you see in the short, compared to 30 years ago, I think [how the system] caters to individual needs has really come a long way. There are multiple times I saw one student struggling and the teacher would stop the class to take care of that child. That didn’t happen in my time. You would have been left behind, and you see that with the female teacher [who works with] Ayame. She was always a little bit slower and needed a lot of attention, and ultimately the teacher supported her and she blossomed at the end of the school year. So I think those kinds of things have evolved. People might still think the system is strict based on my film, but the school system – and this may be everywhere in the world – it’s just not as strict as it was. It also may be why I kept those scenes [of adversity] because I get school should be fun and full of joy and that’s important, but I think you need to be challenged and overcome something to also know the value of accomplishment. Those things are important in education and it’s harder to be a teacher that’s strict. It’s more fun if you’re friends with your students, so I wanted people to think about those things.
You mentioned “Koshien” and like that film and I would add your work as an editor on “Black Box Diaries,” you’ve found your way into capturing broad truths about Japanese society through a narrow subject here. It’s really impressive and as you’ve moved forward, has it become easier to get at a larger picture?
That’s what I’ve tried to do with my films. I don’t narrate my films. I have some intentions, but it’s only a multiplication between what you already might think about Japan or the world you’re seeing through my film. I don’t have the answers, and I want to be clear about that. But I think Japan is so known for specific things internationally, like our food or anime or our samurais and these cool historical things, and I’m interested in a modern Japan that isn’t as explored outside of Japan. It was hard to fully grasp unless you really know it inside and out and I want to explore Japanese society, but I can’t do that by shooting on the streets. You need a place to do it.
Whereas high school baseball might’ve been a bit unique to Japan, education is essential everywhere. Every society and country is trying to raise the next generation and the system is not perfect [in Japan] and I’m not suggesting anybody should fully copy it anywhere. But I think there are interesting hints of how we could approach raising the next generation because it is so much about community building, whereas I also admire the American system, which is about so much about individuality and uniqueness and that’s the strength of that. I just think in the 21st century [especially after] the pandemic, we just have to figure out how to work with each other and respect and consider others as though it’s your own problem and I think the Japanese school system does that well, so I wanted to share that, but also use it as a mirror to each education system as a chance to think about how we want to raise our kids because it will reflect the societies we live in in the not-so-distant future.
These things are all made on different timelines, but it does seem like you’re having a real moment getting this out there and you’ve got “Black Box Diaries” too. What’s it like having all this work come out at the same time?
This week with the OpDocs release – and I’ve heard it’s the most watched OpDoc of the year so far – and getting like the IDA nominations, which was both for the short and “Black Box,” it’s been one of the best weeks of my career. Both of these projects we’ve worked for many, many years on, and it’s a dream [where] you make the film so that people see them and talk about them. I’m not doing art for art’s sake here. And I’m really happy because it’s one thing to talk about the films, but then eventually to bring it back to Japan and talking about the societal topics that we’re dealing with, it’s really important.
“Instruments of a Beating Heart” can be streamed at New York Times OpDocs.