YAMATO (CALIFORNIA)
(大和（カリフォルニア）)
dir. Daisuke Miyazaki, 2016
Japan. 119 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18 – 5 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM

Sakura (Hanae Kan) is an angsty teenager living near a U.S. military base in the Tokyo suburb of Yamato. Sakura aspires to one day become a rapper like the American MCs she admires, but is constantly struck with stage fright when performing in front of an audience. When Rei (Nina Endo), the daughter of her mother’s American soldier boyfriend, comes to visit from California, she and Sakura strike up a rocky bond over their shared love of music, setting Sakura on a course towards facing her fear and making her dream a reality.

For his second feature, Miyazaki largely drew from his own experience growing up in Yamato, where the local culture was heavily influenced by the U.S. military’s Atsugi Airbase located in the center of town. Sakura’s rebelliousness reflects the tension many local residents felt being torn between the Eastern and Western world; on the one hand cultivating their own individual Japanese identities, while on the other, having Western cultural influence frequently imposed on them. In a sense, Sakura’s coming-of-age against the vacant, capitalism-driven landscape of Yamato is as much her own story as it is the story of Japan’s own global identity and complex relationship to Western extraterritoriality and colonization that persists to this day.