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Generous Complicity | “Complicity”



While China has become the world’s second largest economy and the No. 1 source of overseas visitors for Japan, the film Complicity runs in the opposite direction and tells a story about a much less glamorous community, the Chinese illegal workers sojourning in Japan: usually young, less educated, and the main earners in their families. Before arriving in the neighboring country, which is known for a higher income level and better social welfare, many of them have the dream of finding a foothold and bringing over the family or returning to their homes flushed with earnings, after working hard and alone while pinching pennies for years. Some lucky ones make it. Others like the protagonist in the film arrive at the wrong place or wrong time, or get misled by fraudulent agencies, or simply make helpless irrational choices. This is one reality of domestic migration when the cost of living increases sharply in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen while the income level goes unchanged for low-end workers, only about one fourth of that in Japan. In the flashbacks, the film honestly points the camera at the China that is still lost and poor, which hasn’t become a minority. It’s an image of China that the authorities want to file in the past, which continues to this day and for the foreseeable future in many parts of this vast territory.


Nonetheless, the general tone of the film is very soft core when dealing with social reality. Opening with a group of illegal workers, it quickly moves away from this social condition issue to the human kindness found at the individual level. The film rests itself on the eternal theme of human nature over nationality, an easier topic to address than the current global and Japanese immigration inequalities. Although facing visa problem, the case of the protagonist, who is well fed and sheltered by a Soba making family, can’t compare with the severe living condition and fundamental hopelessness of hundreds and thousands of immigrants who work in Japan with legitimate documents as what are called “technical intern trainees”. This is the case not only for the Chinese, but also the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, etc. The cultural connection between China and Japan makes it less difficult: for instance, the protagonist is able to communicate with the Japanese family in written characters; noodles serve a symbolic function both in China and in Japan. If the protagonist is already muted and trapped in the film, where does that leave the Southeast Asian immigrants who have even less means to communicate and stand for themselves?


In its treatment of the subject matter, the film is also very nostalgic. The theme song by the 1980s cultural icon in Greater China, Teresa Teng, who was also popular at the time in Japan, first came out in Japan as Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase (“Give yourself to the flow of Time”, 1986) then in the Chinese world as Wo Zhi Zaihu Ni ( “I Only Care About You”, 1987). It was a time when Japan enjoyed its postwar prosperity and mainland China just opened up itself to the world after putting behind decades of trauma over the Cold War Communist myths. China was fast becoming a considerable follower of Japanese popular culture. For the first time after the epic narratives of the World War II, ordinary people from both countries encountered each other in their daily lives, realizing the other was as kind and honest as themselves, just like what’s depicted in Complicity. But this was before China became the world’s factory and Japan’s economic rival, before the Chinese people started to travel around the world and flaunting their wealth. The notion of the craftsmanship, the setting in the countryside, and the natural visual aesthetics of the film inferring a modest budget, all hark back to a pre-Internet and pre-globalization time when people were simpler and nicer.

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