SE : I assume "Coin Locker Babies" came out before "Tokyo Decadence." Did "Tokyo Decadence" have the same impact in Japan that it had outside of Japan ?

RM : In Japan, it was almost neglected. Of course the young people seemed to have liked it but the academic movie critics almost ignored it.

SE : I first saw "Tokyo Decadence" (Japanese title "Topaz",1988) at the 1992 Toronto Film Festival. People lined up for hours in order to see it. It was THE sensation of the film festival. I've now seen it three times. The third time was yesterday in Nagoya. The first time I saw it. . . . Being squeamish about certain things and worrying about the young woman in the film, I watched it in a state of anxiety. And the second time I saw it I had the reaction that the audience at Toronto had, which was finding the film in some ways outrageously funny, with the emphasis on "outrage." And the third time I saw it, it struck me as a really lyrically beautiful movie. The decadence, and even the depravity at times, had a lyricism about it that I found hypnotic and sometimes very sexy.

But here is the strange fact: I've never seen the end of it. The first time, I left ten minutes before the end because I had to go to another screening of a film that I'd been assigned to write about by a newspaper. The second time, I was watching it on the video. I was house-sitting at my parent's house and my mother came home early, so I had to hastily turn the video off. And the third time was yesterday in Nagoya where we had to turn the video off because my hosts in Nagoya were determined to take me to see a Buddha shrine.

And each time I have been interrupted at exactly the same place in the movie. Now it's become like a sexual dream that always gets interrupted. . . you always wake up right before the climatic moment. I suspect that, just for some reason that only the universe understands, I'm not supposed to know what happens at the end of this movie.

RM : Maybe so. Maybe you should tell me where you were interrupted so I can cut the movie there.

SE : It's where the heroine is stoned and out of it, and she has gone to look for the man she is in love with and the police are dragging her off.

RM : Yes, maybe that IS a good place to end the movie.

SE : I was struck, in one way, by the courageousness and braveness of the performance by the lead actress, Miho Nikaido. And I wonder if she has ever appeared in another film after "Tokyo Decadence."

RM : Now she is the wife of Hal Hartley, an American film director but is still an actress. She did once appear in Hal Hartley's movie called "Flirt"(1993/1996).

SE : I think I haven't seen it. There is a movie that just started in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, called "Breaking the Waves" (1996). It's a Dutch film actually, but the lead actress is an English woman. It, too, is her debut film. And even though the roles and the performances are in some ways quite different from those in ”"Tokyo Decadence," the startling, wildly courageous act of self-exposure is the same. It is startling especially for somebody who has never been before a camera. Although it's possible that only somebody who is basically a "camera virgin" would have the courage to expose herself in that way.

RM : The movie "Tokyo Decadence" was based on a couple of my short stories. When I was writing the stories or directing the movie, there was something that I was not aware of and only recently have I realized, which is the sense of aim or goal.

Recently in America, the sense of values, the confidence in your way of life have become quite bit shaky, but you still have the sense of fairness, a hatred toward being unfair or hatred for unfairness. This is like the core in American society.

Meanwhile in Japan, modernization revolved around economy. Economy was the reason for the war itself. However, in 1978, the Japanese yen rate turned to less than 200 yen per dollar. And it was probably at this point when Japan, as a nation, lost its goal of modernization. Their aim was already achieved. However, the Japanese people were reluctant to actually acknowledge this fact, even though they subconsciously knew it. They didn't have an aim to live for anymore and obviously they had to build up another one. But they didn't.

It was right after this that the children became very unstable. For example there is a phenomenon in Japan called "ijime" which means bullying. Or the prostitution of high school or even junior high school girls. Or domestic violence where the children physically abuse their parents. This is all because the Japanese people have pretended to live for a "national goal" even though they knew that it had already been lost. The children have sensed this deception or hypocricy and that led to prostitution: the girls who are prostituting are unconsciously trying to revolt against the

Japanese society by way of sex.

I wasn't aware of this while I was writing Tokyo Decadance, but now it has become clear. For these girls, prostitution is not only a means to make money, but it is also a way of healing themselves. It is the only way they can be healed. Through prostitution, they are looking for something about which the teachers nor parents nor country would tell them.