Collapsed roofs, broken windowpanes, withered plants, dead animals – a deserted place. A grocery store looks almost exactly as it did on that day in March 2011. The few people one sees wear white paper suits and surgical masks. They are the ones who lost the world they lived in on that March day. One of them is aunt Kuniko. “It’s only natural to look for new sources of energy.” These words once advertised the construction of a nuclear plant in this now dead region. “Beyond the Wave” is a unique demonstration that after the disaster of Fukushima this sentence should become the leitmotif of our future. Caught between the grief of having lost their past and hopes of a personal perspective, the protagonists are forced to redefine themselves in their ruined home, this no-man’s country that many left long ago. Kyoko Miyake shows, not least through her personal voice-over, how a fairly atypical, albeit non-angry rebellion starts to germinate in the remaining Japanese citizens, and how her businesslike aunt and many others are ceaseless attempting to reclaim the meaning of their lives, against all prejudice and in the spirit of “I cannot let this disaster ruin all my efforts.”

Claudia Lehmann

As a book designer, Kikuchi Nobuyoshi has drafted more than 10,000 covers. Working the traditional way, with graph paper, ruler, printed-out Kanji (the Japanese letters) and tape, every copy is first created by the most delicate haptic work, before his assistant, with whom he has been collaborating for more than thirty years, transfers the finished design to the computer. Kikuchi’s books represent a considered, minimalist aesthetics in which every single element – cover, binding, spine, marker ribbon – continues the story he encountered while reading it. Renowned writers like Furui Yoshikichi, who translated Robert Musil and others into Japanese, trust the intuition and skill of Kikuchi, who claims that he has grown increasingly empty over the decades. In her gentle portrait, director Hirose Nanako shows a man whose whole lifestyle is shaped by an elegant and cultivated attitude to things – whether it’s brewing freshly ground coffee, using an old gramophone or strolling through a Tokyo flea market.

Carolin Weidner

The film covered a residential area with a superb view of both ocean and mountain. From that day this town became pitch-dark. Hidden in this darkness were lights of the town, my way home, my mother, and my expected my baby in my belly.

Using a sheet of graph paper, typically used for architextual drawings, Mizue combines straight lines which stretch out in three directions as a result we receive a driven animation of changing geometrical figures and rhythm.

Nunu is raised by her father. He tells little fibs to try to make his daughter believe in an ideal world as long as possible. These lies become a problem as Nunu grows older.

The Japanese have a special relationship with mountains, and not just since the cheesy film adaptation of “Heidi”. The snow-covered Fujisan (the correct name of Fujiyama) is probably the most popular picture postcard. Katsushika Hokusai’s coloured woodcuts are a masterful visualisation of their respect for the natural powers. Hardly surprising: two thirds of the archipelago are mountains and situated on the fault line between two tectonic plates. This fragile underground, which regularly triggers earthquakes and devastating tsunamis, has shaped the lives of its inhabitants. But they have also learned to live with it. Installation artist and filmmaker Nina Wiesnagrotzki’s film “Sansui, Landscape” is a kind of visual examination exploring the history of the Japanese mentality. She moves in ever widening circles of thinking which incorporate the image arsenal of popular cinema, comics and legends. Ever since the Fukushima disaster we know that Godzilla as the embodiment of a nightmare is no exaggeration.
Cornelia Klauß