Zenshin shosetsuka

Zenshin Shosetsuka is a portrait of the controversial Japanese post-war writer Mitsuharu Inoue. Inoue was born in 1925, the year that Emperor Hirohito ascended the throne. He died in 1992, three years after the emperor's death. His work describes the changes Japanese society went through during this eventful period. Although Inoue was a very prolific and popular author, he did not belong to the literary and academic mainstream of Tokyo. Initially the film would cover ten years of Inoue's life, but when he was diagnosed with cancer, the film turned into an account of the progress of his disease. After Inoue's death director Kazuo Hara paid a visit to his friends, relatives and students in order to complete the film. A series of enacted scenes in black-and-white round off the image of the poet and his time. For Hara these fictional elements intensify his search for the process in which fiction originates from experience and reality. This transition from reality to fiction is an important theme for Hara, not only in this film but for him as a filmmaker in general. He is not sure whether this film can still be called a documentary due to the enacted scenes. At the same time he thinks that even a documentary can never be wholly truthful, since anybody standing in front of a camera is conscious of that, in one way or another.