AustLit

'Sue Brook's film, Japanese Story (2003) lends itself to many peculiarities. Upon hearing its title and having some perfunctory knowledge of its association with Australia, one might - due to this overt incongruity - be tempted to assume the film to be either an exercise in the nation's exoticisation of Japan, or even likening it to a Japanese production. Less impetuously and pejoratively, some would think it a film typically belonging to the pantheon of the transnational due to the presence of a Japanese actor in a supposedly all-Australian cast. Yet, should a deeper study be effected, we find Japanese Story to be substantially complex and more problematic than that, leaving the above suppositions surface and simplistic. In Japanese Story, polymorphous and fluid (conceptual) worlds imbricate and synthesise, forming a melange thick with complexity, movement and definitional subjectivity. Owing to the presence of Asian characters in the film and the external but consonant dialogue on Australia-Asia relations, the positions of Japanese Story in the film industry both nationally and transnationally are also inescapably implicated. My task however will be to argue for Japanese Story as being quintessentially national though it may not possess any ostensible nationalistic overtones. Before I proceed with an analysis of the film, contextualisation in terms of Australia-Asia relations and national cinema is a necessity: both these concepts are inextricably connected and therefore jointly scrutinised.' (Author's introduction)