TOKYO — Japanese film director Chie Hayakawa conceived the idea for a screenplay when she decided to test her premise on her mother’s older friends and other acquaintances. Her question: If the government sponsored a euthanasia program for people over 75, would you agree?
“Most people were very positive about it,” said Ms. Hayakawa. “They didn’t want to be a burden to other people or their children.”
For Ms. Hayakawa, the seemingly shocking response was a powerful reflection of Japanese culture and demographics. In its first feature-length film, “Plan 75,” which won a special award at this month’s Cannes Film Festival, the government of a near-future Japan promotes silent institutionalized deaths and group funerals for lonely elderly people, with cheerful salespeople pitching in. them as if they were tearing down travel insurance.
“The mentality is that if the government tells you to do something, you should do it,” Ms Hayakawa, 45, said in an interview in Tokyo ahead of the film’s opening in Japan on Friday. Following the rules and not imposing on others, she said, are cultural imperatives “that keep you from standing out in a group setting.”
With a lyrical, understated touch, Ms. Hayakawa has taken on one of the biggest elephants in the room in Japan: the challenges of coping with the world’s oldest society.
Nearly a third of the country’s population is 65 or older, and Japan has more centenarians per capita than any other country. One in five people over 65 in Japan lives alone and the country has the highest percentage of people with dementia. With a rapidly declining population, the government faces potential pension shortfalls and questions about how the country will care for its surviving citizens.
Older politicians dominate government and the Japanese media is highlighting rosy stories of happily aging fashion gurus or retail accommodations for older customers. But it wasn’t hard for Ms. Hayakawa to envision a world where the oldest citizens would be cast aside in a bureaucratic process—a line of thought she said could already be found in Japan.
Euthanasia is illegal in the country, but occasionally occurs in horrific criminal contexts. In 2016, a man killed 19 people in their sleep at a center for people with disabilities outside Tokyo, claiming that such people should be euthanized because they “have extremely difficult living at home or being active in society”.
The horrific incident sparked an idea for Ms. Hayakawa. “I don’t think that was an isolated incident or thought process within Japanese society,” she said. “It was already floating around. I was very afraid that Japan would become a very intolerant society.”
To Kaori Shoji, who has written about film and art for The Japan Times and the BBC and has seen an earlier version of ‘Plan 75’, the film didn’t come across as dystopian. “She’s just telling it like it is,” Ms. Shoji said. “She tells us, ‘This is where we’re going, actually.'”
That potential future is all the more believable in a society where some people are driven to death by overwork, said Yasunori Ando, an associate professor at Tottori University who studies spirituality and bioethics.
“It’s not impossible to think of a place where euthanasia is accepted,” he said.
Ms. Hayakawa has spent most of her adult years contemplating the end of life from a very personal position. When she was 10, she learned that her father had cancer and ten years later he died. “That was during my formative years, so I think it influenced my view of art,” she said.
The daughter of officials, Ms. Hayakawa, started drawing her own picture books and writing poems at an early age. In primary school she fell in love with ‘Muddy River’, a Japanese drama about a poor family living on a barge. The film, directed by Kohei Oguri, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1982.
“The feelings I couldn’t put into words were expressed in that film,” said Ms. Hayakawa. “And I thought: this is how I want to make films.”
She eventually applied to the film program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, believing that she would gain a better foundation in making films in the United States. But given her modest English skills, she decided to transfer to the photography department within a week of arriving on campus, thinking she could take pictures herself.
Her instructors were struck by her curiosity and work ethic. “If I casually mentioned a movie, she’d go home and rent it, and if I mentioned an artist or exhibit, she’d research it and have something to say about it,” said Tim Maul, a photographer and one of Mrs. Hayakawa’s Mentors. “Chie was someone who had real momentum and a unique drive.”
After graduating in 2001, Ms. Hayakawa gave birth to her two children in New York. In 2008, she and her husband, the painter Katsumi Hayakawa, decided to return to Tokyo, where she started working at WOWOW, a satellite broadcaster that helped prepare American films for Japanese display.
At 36, she enrolled in a one-year film program at a Tokyo night school, while continuing to work during the day. “I felt like I couldn’t put all my energy into raising kids or making movies,” she said. Looking back, she said, “I’d tell myself it’s okay, just enjoy raising your kids. You can start filming at a later time.”
For her graduation project she made ‘Niagara’, about a young woman who, on the point of leaving the orphanage where she grew up, learns that her grandfather had killed her parents and that her grandmother, who she thought had died lived in a car accident with her parents.
She submitted the film to the Cannes Film Festival in a student works category and was shocked when the film was selected for screening in 2014. At the festival, Ms. Hayakawa met Eiko Mizuno-Gray, a film publicist, who then invited Ms. Hayakawa. Making a short film about Japan 10 years in the future. It would be part of an anthology produced by acclaimed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Ms. Hayakawa had already developed the idea of ”Plan 75″ as a full-length film, but decided to make a shortened version for “Ten Years Japan”.
While writing the script, she woke up at 4 a.m. every morning to watch movies. She cites the Taiwanese director Edward Yang, the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong and Krzysztof Kieslowski, the Polish arthouse director, as important influences. After work, she spent a few hours writing in a cafe while her husband looked after their children – relatively rare in Japan, where women still bear the disproportionate burden of housework and childcare.
After Ms. Hayakawa’s 18-minute contribution to the anthology came out, Ms. Mizuno-Gray and her husband, Jason Gray, worked with her to develop an elaborate script. By the time filming started, it was in the midst of the pandemic. “There were countries with Covid where they did not prioritize the lives of the elderly,” Ms Hayakawa said. “Reality surpassed fiction in a way.”
Ms. Hayakawa decided to take a more subtle tone for the feature film and give more hope. She also added several storylines, including one about an elderly woman and her close-knit group of friends, and another about a Filipino caregiver who takes a job at one of the euthanasia centers.
She shot scenes of the Filipino community in Japan, Ms. Hayakawa said, as a contrast to the dominant culture. “Their culture is that if someone is in trouble, you help them right away,” said Ms. Hayakawa. “I think that’s something Japan is losing.”
Stefanie Arianne, the daughter of a Japanese father and Filipino mother who plays Maria, the caretaker, said Ms. Hayakawa urged her to show emotional restraint. In one scene, Ms. Arianne said she had an instinct to shed tears, “but with Chie, she really challenged me not to cry.”
Ms. Hayakawa said she didn’t want to make a movie where euthanasia was simply right or wrong. “I think what kind of end to life and what kind of death you want is a very personal decision,” she said. “I don’t think it’s something so black or white.”
Hikari Hida reporting contributed.