Okinawa International Movie Festival: Interview with GACKT (Karanukan)

It’s a double return to his source that GACKT did while he’s presenting his new movie, Karanukan by Hamano Yasuhiro, with his comeback to the cinemas after 14 years in his actor career, at the Okinawa International Movie Festival. The legendary Malice Mizer singer, whose 20 years of career has been a never stopping success, is in fact born in the archipelago in the extreme south of Japan.
We took advantage of his presence at the festival to talk about his career choice, his emotional attachment to Okinawa and his beliefs.

Karanukan and the career as an actor

«I never stopped my career as an actor. I continued with some dramas for television, but my main activity is music. I had many offers for the cinema, but in fact, the schedules were never matching. Due to production reasons, I was never able to participate and I had to refuse a lot of opportunities.

When I look back at my deepest self, I don’t categorize myself neither as a musician nor an actor. I don’t divide myself to be enclosed in one of these two cases. I see myself as an expressionist: I express some things, I am neither an actor, nor a musician. With this point of view, I wonder how to express these things: with music, or with acting? Here’s the difference. I don’t make a choice for my career based on such a distinction. In fact, I am personally not really interested to be a comedian for Japan. However, if I have to do it, I’d love to do it outside Japan. But the offers are not so numerous and at the same time when they arrive, my busy schedule won’t allow me to accept them.

In the American movies, especially in Hollywood, the production is immense and the budget is really important compared to Japanese productions, where the planning is very strict in terms of filming days. In light of this difference, things are more difficult here. But this doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love to work on Japanese production. I love the fact that people try to do their best starting in this environment and with a limited budget. I’d love to work with those people. There are actually really talented people. But when I consider the Japanese cinema industry in its ensemble, I have the impression that the profit is low. And it gets worse slowly. I find this very worrying. I think that the Japanese government should bring more solutions to the entertainment industry, and not just the movies, but also music. A more active help would be a really good thing.

Regarding Karanukan, the position arrived just before a tour, and the schedule was perfect for me. It was one for the reasons why I was able to accept. But I was also born in Okinawa and I wondered what I could do for Okinawa and its inhabitants as a native of the island. This is the main point, extremely important, that convinced me to join this project.» 

Okinawa 

«I always try to come back to Okinawa at least once a year. But this time, I filmed this movie in the north of Okinawa and also in the southern islands, especially in Iriomote. These are places that have kept the traces of historic Okinawa. These are the scenes that I was able to see when I was a kid. All this atmosphere put me in my past in Okinawa. In fact, I went back to Iriomote for the first time in my life thanks to this tour and I was really shaken by its beauty»

Spirituality

«In Japan, we have many religions, but it’s finally close enough to the fact of not being religious. In other countries, there are too few people that don’t believe to what religions teach like Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism, among others. While in Japan there are quite a few. It’s the same when the parents are religious people, the kids don’t know what to believe. Okinawa is truly unique. My family believed that the members of the family that passed away became gods, and that we had to venerate them. So we have these two conceptions in Okinawa: venerate the ancestors or the nature. Therefore we have gods in the water, the ocean, the mountains… to have a relation with these gods is very natural.
It’s almost as if we have to acknowledge everything that surrounds us. Thanks to all that we have, beauty is everywhere. To venerate nature doesn’t have a detailed theorization nor well defined rituals. Those who practice this simply love the nature and the mountains. For what concerns me, when I have free time, I love to go in a place where I can enjoy nature and the wind.

In Karanukan (GACKT plays a photographer from Tokyo, coming to recharge in Okinawa – ndr) my character is tired of the life in a big city, even if he became famous and successful. He’s tired of all this. His travel to Iriomote allows him to find something that he lost. I myself am a person very cald and I don’t love too much big cities. But I do not really do anything about going to the countryside. While coming back to Iriomote, the character of the movie revives with something essential, basic. He starts travelling the land. A lot of citizens go to Iriomote and start a new life, they become farmers. But this doesn’t necessarily means that they are tired of living in bigger cities. It’s like as if Japan is sick. In Tokyo, people seem not to be satisfied by anything, they don’t feel anything. I have the feeling that the world itself is sick. The more advance technology are present, the more people disconnect from one another. There are no more connection heart to heart between people. The information transit from one person to another, but no real communication takes place. Technology develops, but the heart is put aside. People understand what’s happening, but the heart is empty.»

Interview by Victor Lopez in Naha on 23/04/2017.
Translation (French): Eiko Mizuno-Gray
Photos by Elvire Rémand.

Thanks to: Momoko Nakamura, Aki Kihara and all the Okinawa festival team

Source: japanlifestyle.fr

Translation: GACKT ITALIA Team

Translation © GACKT ITALIA