Reconfiguring the Japanese Melodrama:

Crying and Return in Crying Out Love, In

the Center of the World

Amy Lai

Introduction: The Junai Boom

Kaori Shoji, in her feature article "Japan Gripped by Obsession
with Pure Love," describes 2004 as the "year of junai (pure love)'"
for Japan. The "junai boom" manifested itself in the huge popularity
of Korean television soap dramas and a craze for sentimental love
stories in films and novels all over the nation.- Shoji defines a "junai
relationship" as a first-love relationship, even a "platonic" one, which
typically involves a couple falling in love in high school and managing
to keep those pure emotions intact in spite of the passage of time
(Tong 118).-' A "junai couple" encounters many obstacles that keep
them apart, and either the man or woman dies at the peak of their love,
thereby preserving forever the memory of the relationship in all its
purity and beauty. In a more recent article (2005), Shoji observes that
the junai boom, which once affected the behavioral patterns mainly of
high school students, has finally reached Japanese men over forty-five.
While there have been company-sponsored communication classes,
as Shoji describes, there is now a proliferation of support groups that
coach men how to talk to their wives who will become their "best
friend" to fall back upon when they are in despair or have retired from
their jobs. That these middle-aged men try to rekindle love and passion
in their marriages was even reflected in a boom in the sales volumes at
renowned jewelers such as Tiffany's.

20
 Mariko Shigemoto, researcher at advertising agency Dentsu Inc.,
believes that the junai boom has social and historical implications, as
it coincided with the rise in late marriages and the growing single
population in contemporary Japan, where the general skepticism
towards real-life relationships and marriage has generated a need to
satisfy the longing for romance through the media (Shoji, "Middle
Aged Men," 117). In fact, the boom is not new. It has struck Japan on
a periodic basis about once every ten years, accordingly marked by the
huge popularity of certain novels and films. It first struck the nation
in 1963, when A Record of Love and Death (Ai to Hi no Kiroku), a
Japanese novel about a terminally-ill girl, was published and made
into a film and a television drama. Later works include the Hollywood
production Love Story in 1971; Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian
Wood in 1987; and another Hollywood film. The Bridges of Madison
County, in 1995. The junai boom of 2004 can be divided into two
phases, the first one marked by Korean television drama Winter
Sonata and Japanese director Isao Yukisada's film Crying Out Love,
In the Center ofthe World (Sekai no Chshin de. Ai wo Sakebii), and
the second consisting of two films, A True Love Story (Densha Otoko)
and Be With You (Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu); the craze for "pure love" drew
to its close by the re-publishing of A Record of Love and Death in late
2004.
In examining the junai phenomenon, other social and cultural
factors should be taken into account, one being the changing
masculinity of Japanese men. Gordon Mathews (2003) uses the
concept of "ikigai," or "that which most makes life worth living," to
explore how Japanese men define themselves. Mathews found out
that there has been a clear gender-role division of ikigai: men have
tended to devote to their work to support their families, while women
have nurtured their families and worked only part-time at most.
Other studies prove otherwise. Masako Ishii-Kuntz (2003) notes
the emergence of diverse masculinities in contemporary Japan, as
fathers try to balance fatherhood and work by creatively participating
in childcare. These recent studies about Japanese men's changing
masculinity turn out to be pertinent to the understanding of the junai
boom in 2004. Jeff Yang (2006) at Iconoculture, a market research
company, contends that romantic love is largely a Western invention
and, until half a century ago, an alien concept in Asia; yet, as with
a lot of Western imports, Japan embraced and reinvented romantic

21
love by crafting it into the "junai" formula. Junai, premised on "re-
orienting one's world view to center on another individual and seeing
that person as the most important thing in one's life and existence,"
then rose into a significant phenomenon in contemporary Japan which,
unlike in the older days, allows more room for individualism. In fact,
a junai relationship could only have flourished in a society in which
the traditional gender division has dissolved, so that being sentimental
would not be considered feminine and poked ftin at by others. It was
the longing for a romantic, "pure" love relationship, coupled with
the crumbling of traditional masculinity, which gave rise to the junai
boom.
Struck by Shoji's belief that the notion ofjunai between a married
couple, once thought of as a "ridiculous notion" (funpanmono), is now
becoming possible, this article aims to examine one of the major junai
films of 2004, Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World, to explore
how the film transforms the impossible into possible. Part I will
provide synopses of not only the film, but also the novel on which it is
based. Part II (A) provides a brief overview of melodramas in both the
Hollywood and Japanese traditions. Part II (B) then adopts a hybrid
approach in the study of Crying Out Love, combining traditional film
theories with cognitive psychology, especially the physiology of tears
in connection with the ritual space of crying, to examine how the
melodrama is reconfigured in twentieth-century Japan, to the extent
that it no longer targets the female audience but appeals to both male
and female spectators. Part II (C) continues with this hybrid approach
by discussing how the use of magic - another ritualistic element -
creates contradictory meanings in the film: while the magic show and
its related visual symbols suggest that the protagonist lets go of his past
by marrying a new woman, they also complement the circular time and
endless returns typical of a melodrama through the creation of a filmic
double of his dead love in this new woman. Part III completes the
discussion by briefty introducing the genre theory and conceptualizing
the film as a ritualized drama that fulfills audiences' collective desires
by its very own ritualistic elements. Owing to these techniques, the
film enables its audience to realize "pure love" after marriage.
I. Crying Out Love: Fiction vs Film
Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World (Sekai no Chshin de. Ai
wo Sakebu) is based on a Japanese novel of the same title, which tells

22
the puppy-love story of Sakutaro and Aki, who are in the same class
at a junior high school in Shikoku. The young couple's story, told in
the first person by Saku, is framed by his grandfather's story. The old
man fell in love with a woman when he was young, and although she
later married another man in obedience to her parents, he remained
deeply in love with her. Now that the old woman has died, he travels
with Saku to her grave, where he steals a small amount of her ashes
and orders Saku to mix them with his after he has died and scatter
them anywhere deemed suitable. When Aki is sixteen, she contracts
leukemia, and despite Saku's efforts to take her on a school excursion
to Uluru in Australia, she must remain hospitalized. After Aki's
funeral, Saku travels with her family to Uluru and scatters some of her
ashes on the red sand. At the end, Saku returns to the school campus
after some years have passed, accompanied by a female character who
might be his new girlfriend but whose identity remains obscure. Here,
back on campus, Saku scatters the remaining portion of Aki's ashes in
the winds.
When the book was released in 2001, only eight thousand
copies were sold, but one year later, Japanese actress Shibasaki Kou
wrote an article describing its impact on her: "I cried as I went through
the story. I wished to have such a relationship in my life,"* and the
book almost instantly became a bestseller. In 2004 it was adapted into
a film,' of which Isao Yukisada serves as director, and which differs
from the novel in several ways. First, much more screen time is
devoted to 2003, when Saku has grown into a mature, brooding thirty-
three-year-old man, than to 1986, when he was still an adolescent.
Second, the grandfather figure is replaced by Uncle Shige, Saku's
distant relative who runs a photography studio. Uncle Shige, who has
been in love with the principal of the high school, bids the young
couple to steal a piece of bone from her grave not long after she died.
Third, Ritsuko, the fiance of adult Saku, appears in the film, though
she does not appear in the novel, unless the obscure character who
accompanies Saku is Ritsuko.
As the film unfolds, Ritsuko turns out to be the little girl who
once helped Aki to deliver cassefte tapes to Saku's school mailbox
when Aki was in hospital, so that the young couple could continue to
communicate. She follows Saku to Shikoku, where she discovers that
Aki died seventeen years ago. Finally, following the request of Aki in
her last audiotape, Saku goes to Uluru with Ritsuko to scatter Aki's

13
ashes in the winds. This gesture suggests to the audience that Saku
finally decides to leave behind the burden of his first romance and to
lead a new life with Ritsuko. The film opened on May 8, 2004, and
became the most popular non-animated film of the year. By that time,
three million copies of the novel had been sold, surpassing the sales
of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, the record-holder in Japan
since 1987.
Although readers have found the novel very moving, even
calling it a "modem romantic fairytale," all characters are in fact
doubtful that love can last forever (Lai). Despite the title, therefore,
the "center" does not seem to exist; on the contrary, the protagonist,
whose life is deprived of meaning and purpose afler his beloved died,
soon loses his focus. In fact, the film does not raise questions about
the everlasting nature of love as much as it emphasizes the necessity
of living meaningfijUythis is what Aki asks Saku to do in her last
tape, and what Uncle Shige has in mind when he urges Saku to look
for Ritsuko. Uncle Shige (like the grandfather in the novel) thinks
that heaven might well be a human invention, and the fact that human
beings might not continue to exist afler death makes it even more
necessary to focus on the here-and-now. The film's optimism comes
from the multiple meanings it confers upon "the center": it does not
have to be Ulum; it might be Shikoku, the smallest and least populated
island of Japan, where almost the rest of the story is set. In a number
of episodes, the audience finds only Saku and Aki togetherplaying
on the dyke or in the school playground, on the remote small island
where they spend one night (not long before Aki is found to be sick).
Although none of these episodes is unrealistic given the Shikoku
setting, they create a strange yet intimate impression that there are
only two people in the world. Even in the time frame of 2003, we
oflen find Saku alone, listening to the tapes Aki sent him years ago as
he revisits the places where they spent their adolescence. The "center
of the world," therefore, is where a person creates it, and the center
exists as long as one is in love.
Jeff Yang contends that the novel is about "healing and growth
- about replacing Pure Love with Real Love, which, as with all
things, sometimes ends"; Yang adds that "beneath their longing for
the idealized past, the readers are unconsciously seeking a lifeline,
a motivation to move on." However, Yang's comment more readily
applies to the film, which has a much more positive ending than the

24
novel and appeals not only to Japanese. Film critic Sanjuro calls the
film a melodrama, although he comments on its fine execution, which
is "head and shoulders above the kind of cloying, overly sentimental
pap that is often associated with the genre," and says it is not hard
to understand why it was such a box office smash. Similarly, Travis
Crawford appraises the film as "a grand, sweeping, hugely effective
romantic melodrama," and appreciates the "complexity and sensitivity"
with which the director deals with the "potentially formulaic material"
of a romantic tragedy. Nevertheless, it is imperative to examine how
the film departs from melodramas of the Hollywood and Japanese
traditions and to analyze the strong aesthetic and emotional appeal
that arises out of such departures.
II. HolUywood and Japanese Melodramas: Conformities and
Departures
Steve Neale (2000) cites Ben Singer, who explains that
"melodrama" refers to "thriller" in Hollywood film history but to the
woman's film in film studies, is "synonymous with a set of subgenres
that remain close to the hearth and emphasize a register of heightened
emotionalism and sentimenality: the family melodrama, the woman's
film, the weepie, the soap opera, etc." (Genre, 180-1 ).^ As the definition
of melodrama raises issues about generic terminology and the
differences between critical and industrial definitions, Michael Walker
suggests that it may be best to divide the heritage into "melodramas
of action," typically about the hero in conflict with the enemy, and
"melodramas of passion," as exemplified by the woman's film (Neal
202).' Wimal Dissanayake (1993) expounds on yet another aspect of
the genre, stressing that melodrama was used "pejoratively" to typify
"inferior works of art that subscribed to an aesthetic of hyperbole,"
and "given to sensationalism and the crude manipulation of the
audiences' emotions"; since its rehabilitation in film studies in 1970s,
melodrama nonetheless has been used as "a forum for the expression
of repressed feminine voices," as it tends to "give prominence to the
experiences, emotions, and activities of women generally submerged
in other genres" (191-2).
Yet there are "male weepies," not only female ones. The most
well-entrenched myth about masculinity connotes "total control of
emotions." (Shamir and Travis 1). Hence, from Warren Farrell's The
Liberated Man to Robert Bly's Iron John, men's "liberation" has been

25
tied to the release of the emotional self, whether by creating a space
for sharing their feelings with other men or by calling upon men to
embrace the "female" component of their psyches (Neale 5). Thomas
Lutz (2002) studies how male weepies in the 1950s both conform to and
subvert social gender roles by articulating a partial revolt against the
so-called breadwinner ethic, one that was caused by the absorption of
many individuals into very large organizations, businesses, industries,
and colleges, which turned them into organization men, status seekers,
and anomic individuals in the post-WWII period.
Melodrama was an important genre in Japan. Catherine Russell
(1993) contends that "emotional intensity" is "a key attribute ofthe so-
called Japanese character," and melodrama indeed finds "deep roots
in Japanese cultural history" and "might even be said to dominate
Japanese cinema as a kind of metagenre" (143-4). In the shinpa-
derived* melodramas in the 1920s and 1930s, female characters,
who exist merely within a masculine consciousness, have little
individualify and are punished when they transgress traditionally-
defined feminine roles (Standish 154). Melodrama continued to
dominate Japanese cinema from the 1940s to the 1960s. As Russell
notes, however, their emotional intensity is articulated not so much
in relation to women as individuals, as to the community and the
nation (Russell 143-4). Maureen Turim (1993) contrasts Japanese
melodrama with the Hollywood tradition: in the former, domestic
issues are fused with the historical; in the latter, character psychology
is reiterated on its own. Ayako Saito (2003) uses Twenty-Four Eyes, a
1954 film directed by Kinoshita Keisuke, to illustrate how a woman's
tears are anything but her own in classical Japanese melodrama, where
crying enables the male subject to construct or reconstruct a national
identity and fabricate collective memories in times of social crisis,
first of modernization in the 1920s and 1930s, and later of post-war
democratization in the mid-1950s. The 1950s into the mid-60s saw the
rise ofthe "bar-hostess genre" (Desser 87).' This small corpus of films
depict women who sacrifice their desires by not marrying the men
whom they love - who are most often married - as they recognize that
in following their desires, the social standing and careers of those men
would suffer (Desser 90). This genre reflects the displaced anxiety
of a newly emergent economic power in postwar Japan, as well as
the plight of women who were left behind in the economic boom and
its veneer of modernization and remained trapped by the patriarchal
culture (Desser 92).

26
 The rise of television and changes in lifestyle in the 1960s had a
detrimental impact on the major Japanese film studios. As television
was associated with the domestic and attracted large female audiences,
the major studios increasingly sought to attract male audiences with
both soft-core pornography and new action genres built around the
star persona of male actors (Standish 270-1). The revival of Japanese
cinema in the late 1990s saw Japanese films reaching both international
and domestic markets again. While the melodramas of the 1950s and
1960s can be considered political tools in which the individual was
sacrificed in favor of larger social goals, the melodramas of the 1990s
no longer served this function. In fact, since many were spin-offs of
television dramas, they have been generally criticized for a lack of
social vision, thought-provoking content, and deptha major contrast
to the films of the 1950s and 1960s. One exception is Love Letter
(1995), directed by Iwai Shunji, with which Crying Out Love has often
been compared. It is a very sentimental film that tells of a woman's
chance encounter with her deceased fiance's high-school crush, who
bears an uncanny resemblance to her. Criticsboth Japanese and
foreignhave found it mesmerizing but not overly melodramatic.
Nonetheless, because the male protagonist is dead, the film focuses on
the living female characters and, in this regard, it follows the tradition
of Japanese melodrama (Standish 68-9).'" Moreover, the film does
not explore the issue of romantic love so much as the theme of double
personalities and the philosophical issue of whether it is possible to
know a person completely, especially when he or she is deceased and
has left behind fragmented impressions in the minds of the living.
Such subject matter is very different from that of the junai films of
2004.
A. Crying Out Love: Who is Crying?
Joan Copjec (1999) contends that "crying was an invention of
the late eighteenth century" when a new literary form, the melodrama,
emerged, but the fiood of tears then was not so much a personal
expression as a political tool, "not immediately the expression of a
sentiment, of a bond of sympathy between citizens, but rather evidence
of the fact that something had become unassimilable in our society"
(252). Ayako Saito notes the significant melodramatic moments
in which the heroine in Twenty-Four Eyes cries over the children's
suffering, observing that "it is almost as if thefilmorchestrates the fiood
of tears to the extent that the act of crying feels almost independent
from the narrative." Saito stresses that the tears are not for the heroine
but for others, and they are also a sign of the heroine's "inabilitj' to act:
she cannot do anything but cry with and for" the children. Through
these crying scenes, the film provides the audience with a "ritual space
for affective release," and "the viewing experience of this film has
become a pseudo-funeral without the audience knowing exactly why
and for what it is crying."
Tom Lutz makes use of the physiology of tears to illustrate
how men's crying both conforms to and subverts social gender roles
in male weepies of the 1950s. Citing experimental psychologists
and neurologists, he contends that crying is "sympathetic," a sign
of arousal and distress, as much as "parasympathetic," or a sign of
recovery and relaxation (187). The male protagonists finally retum
to their appropriate male roles, but the tears that they arouse are
parasympahtetic - "recuperative tears of letting go" that reflect the
relief in the audience, as much as sympathetic - "tears of demand"
that request a resolution even more dramatic than those the films
employ, thus implying that the terms of role fulfillment required at
least some rewriting. Hence, the films represent the protagonists as
" 'within and against' their own worlds," as "rebels without fully
articulated causes" (201).
Lutz's analysis, coupled with Saito's description of the ritual
space, enables an insighful reading of Crying Out Love. As the
title indicates. Crying Out Love is dominated by crying scenes.
Nonetheless, crying is performed not so much by Aki, who contracts
terminal illness, as by Saku, who, as an adolescent, cannot help her,
and as an adult has continued to live in sadness for many years after
her death. Although Ritsuko also cries for her fianc, who is burdened
by his past, and for her own guilt for failing to deliver Aki's last tape
to him seventeen years ago, it is Saku who cries the most.
Not only does the frequent crying seem to have become a ritual,
but in several episodes the film also draws in the audience by providing
a ritual space for affective release. A few remarkable examples of such
a space are facilitated by the gigantic typhoons in both time settings
of the film. The first happens in the early part of the film, when Saku
as an adult travels back to Shikoku in search of his past. As he enters
the school hall and listens to one of the old tapes sent to him by Aki,
Aki's voice asks him to walk onto the stage, stop in front of the piano.
and close his eyes; then, she tells him that she is going to perfonn a
piano score for him. As the camera pans to the piano, all of a sudden
we find adolescent Aki, clothed in school uniform, sitting in iront of
it, and performing the piano with ease and grace. Saku has been in a
light-hearted, nostalgic mood, but as he listens to the song, his eyes
closed, he gradually becomes more melancholic. When he opens his
eyes, he sees the deceased Aki in front of him. This reliving of his
tragic past leads to an emotional breakdown so that when his friend
rings him up, he weeps, "Aki is not a memory!" However, the depth
of the scene is conveyed to the audience not only by the slow, sad
music and Saku's words, but by the remarkable cinematography. As
the camera focuses on Aki's upper body, the shadow of the rain has
obviously stolen into the hall through the windows and the door and
is reflected on her face and arms; the rain is also reflected on Saku's
face in a close-up of him that follows. Finally, in a long-shot, the rain
is reflected on the light blue curtain at the back of the hall. It indicates
that the hall, which should serve as a shelter from the approaching
typhoon, has nonetheless been invaded symbolically by the rain. The
long-shot also alienates the audience, for whom the rain becomes
reminiscent of tears.

The second rain-inspired example occurs when Saku tries to

take Aki to Uluru in Australia. They are stopped by the typhoon
not long after they have arrived at the airport. Aki faints and falls
onto the floor, and Saku helplessly holds the dying girl in his arms
and cries for help. The ritual space for crying is established by a
long-distance shot again, which both emphasizes the helplessness
of the two characters and alienates the audience from the scene. In
this shot, the rain hitting the glass roof of the airport is reflected on
the floor, flowing over the bodies of the two characters. Because
of the emotional nature of the episode, this shot, albeit alienating
in nature due to the distance between characters and audience, should
trigger even stronger emotions in us than the previous typhoon scene.

29
 The third example of such a ritual space is seen when Saku
hurries to the old photo studio owned by Uncle Shige in hopes of
meeting up with Ritsuko. We follow several rainy long-shots, all in
the form of long takes, in which Saku takes a bus to get from the high
school to the studio. Upon finding that Ritsuko has already left the
studio, Saku nonetheless stays with Uncle Shige pondering what to do
because it is pouring outside. In these rainy scenes where we find Saku
running on the street and crying at the studio, there is an increase in
momentum and immediacy, and we are encouraged to empathize with
Saku, who is thinking not so much of his deceased lover but of his
present fiance. Finally, he reunites with Ritsuko at the airport, where
they agree to travel to Uluru; unlike the previous airport scene, we see
the rain not in the form of a reflection, but instead hitting the glass wall
in the background.

The frequent crying of the male protagonist might be an

indication of a deliberate shift of traditional gender roles in the film, in
which crying is not the behavior of a "wimp" or "loser." While Saku
at least as an adolescentis unattractive timid, and always late for

30
school, Aki is not only physically aftractive but also a class prefect and
a trained athlete. It is therefore no surprise that Aki takes the initiative
in getting to know Saku by asking him to take her for a ride on his
motorbike, even though they live on opposite sides of town. As Saku
remembers her, even during her illness she remains strong and is the
one who offers comfort to him, not the other way around. ("I swear not
to die. I want you to believe it too. Believe it"). As she lies dying, she
demands, in the last tape that she plans to send him, that they do not
see each other anymore: "You'll grow up, get married, do your work."
After thanking him for being with her and asking him to scatter her
ashes in Uluru, she tells him, "Live your life."
Lutz's contention about the contradictory nature of tears in
male weepies and its paradoxical impact on the audience sheds light
on this film: as Saku cries for Aki and evokes tears in the audience,
those are "sympathetic" tears owing to their vicarious participation in
his pure love story; yet the tears also become "parasympathetic," as
Saku unites with Ritsuko at the airport and opens up another space of
crying, and we too sense the necessity to tie up loose ends, to move on
and begin a "real love" story.

B. Male vs Female Spectatorships

As we find Saku and Ritsuko in an embrace, another question '
arises: is Crying Out Love a male or female weepie? It would be useful
to examine the issue of spectatorship at this juncture. Despite the
male weepies in Hollywood, Mary Anne Doane (2003) contends that
Hollywood melodrama caters to the male gaze, whereas the spectator's
pleasure is produced through the framing/ negation ofthe female gaze
(Doane 68); accordingly, the female spectator can be understood as
the site of "an oscillation between a feminine position and a masculine
position": the woman who identifies with a female character adopts a
passive, "masochistic" position, while identification with the active
male hero leads to the "masculiniation" of spectatorship (65)."
Nonetheless, Crying Out Love, by focusing on the inner thoughts
and emotions ofthe male protagonist, does not negate the female gaze.
Far from it, the film elicits tears from its audience irrespective of their
gender, hence caters to the female gaze as much as the male gaze.
The female spectator can indeed be said to oscillate between feminine
and masculine positions by shifting their perspectives among Saku,

31
i'

. ;J
Aki, and Ritsuko. Yet, as the female spectator identifies with the male
character, she does not undergo "masculinization" as understood in
the conventional sense, because the film subverts gender stereotypes.
When she identifies with the female characters, she does not sink into
a "masochistic" position either, but feels as if she is endowed with the
empowering voice of Aki, or readily identifies with the living Ritsuko,
who will finally marry the mature Saku.

C. Three Magic Shows: Melodrama and the Return of the Dead

Lutz supplements his discussion of tears in male weepies by
refering to Steve Neale (1986), who contends that melodrama's effect
is conditioned by the powerlessness of the viewer - that the resolution
of melodrama is always "too late" for the characters; thus, the
audience's mourning response is "accompanied by the extemalization
of the wish," as if both their mourning for lost possibility and their
demand for continued possiblity combine to elicit tears (201).
In the film, it is not difficult to find out why there is a mourning
for "lost possibility" - as Taku has failed to take Aki to Australia and
marry her at the end - but the demand for "continued possibility"
merits more discussion, as is what Neale calls "tears of demand" and
the request for a more dramatic resolution than is presented in the film.
This section thus turns to a very impressive aesthetic aspect of the
film, the magic show. Like crying, the performances of magic convey
contradictory meanings, and in a symbolic and rather surprisingly
manner, both articulate the "sympathetic" aspect of crying and satisfy
the request by the "tears of demand." As a result, "too late" might not
really be "too late," and neither the male protagonist nor the audience
really feels that "helpless" after all.
Aki performs a magic show that she has learned from a fellow
patient. She stuffs a red handkerchief into her hand, and after casting
a magic spell, releases her hands to reveal that the handkerchief has
turned into tiny snowy feathers. She does not perform the show for
Saku, but for the young Ritsuko, just before Ritsuko heads off to
deliver Aki's last tape to Saku but gets hit by a bus while crossing the
street. At the moment Ritsuko is hit by the bus, she opens her hand
and her red umbrella fties into the air, in a manner highly reminiscent
of the handkerchief and its metamorphosis in the magic show.
 Magic has a symbolic dimension. Critics have generally noted
the presence of the Sony Walkman in the film,'- which was considered
the latest hi-tech gadget in 1986. The Walkman, Aki's huge, bright red
Sony cassette recorder, and the radio program are means to conjure
nostalgic sentiments in the audience, particularly those who spent their
childhoods and adolescences during that period. Yet the tape recorder
and the tapes the young couple have relied on for communication also
serve as what I deem to be symbols of "containment," being tools for
containing memories. What the magic show does is to work against
such containment, as the gesture of opening hands and the flying
feathers suggest letting go, not containing. The magic show and the
flying umbrella are juxtaposed with Aki's last words to Saku, asking
him to carry on with his life without her. Although the magic show
is truly performed once in the film, not only is its symbolism picked
up by the flying umbrella, but the magical element is also completed
at the end: as Saku opens the bottle and lets Aki's ashes scatter in the
wind, Ritsuko remarks, "It's like magic." Because the scaftering of
ashes has appeared in numerous films and novels,'^ like the shedding
of tears, it is very familiar and becomes like an established ritual. By
scattering ashes, Saku both satisfies Aki's last wish and lets go of his
past, so that at the end, he is able to take control of his fate. Although
the film does not state this explicitly, after Saku has reconciled with
his past, he might find a new "center" for his life, which is no longer
in the quiet and nostalgic Shikoku, but might possibly shift to big-city
Tokyo, where he and Ritsuko have been living and are about to get

33
married. The film thereby suggests that the center can indeed be any
place where Saku is able to "live his life."
Tania Modleski (1987) observes that unlike most Hollywood
narratives, which give the impression of a progressive movement
towards an end that is different from the beginning, melodrama gives
the impression of "a ceaseless retuming to a prior state, as the important
moments of the narrative are eruptions of involuntary memory, to the
point where the major events are repetitions of former ones" (330).
This endless retum is closely linked to the experience of the hysteric
who, according to Freud, suffers from reminiscences; that not only
women, but men may be hysterical is an important point for feminism
(Modleski 331-2).''' As Freud suggests that the hysteric is a "visual"
type of person whose cure consists in making " 'picture' vanish 'like a
ghost that has been laid to rest',"" the melodrama informs us that one
must put away old things and repudiate the self-indulgent life s/he has
been leading in order to become a responsible adult (Modleski 332).
It appeals to men by providing them with "a vicarious, hysterical,
experience of femininity which can be more definitively laid to rest
for having been 'worked through'"; and it appeals to women because
of "its tendency to feminize the man, to complicate and destabilize his
identity" (332).
Modleski's theorization of time in melodrama, and its
applicability to Crying Out Love, fiirther explains the film's appeal
to both men and women - the male spectators take this as a golden
opportunity to indulge in a sad love story, and the female spectators
are glad to see that men do cry. There is, moreover, a stronger motif of
retum than is found in ordinary melodrama. That Saku finally gets over
his "pure love" and pursue a "real love" relationship has been noted,
but in the light of the magic performances, the film's ending is much
more ambiguous than first meets the eye. Does Saku's scattering of
Aki's ashes in the winds mean that Aki will remain in Saku's memory
forever, although he will be married to Ritsuko and love Ritsuko as a
flesh-and-blood person? Or is he more like Ritsuko's father, who has
remained single after his wife (who was hospitalized during the same
period as Aki) dieda fact that is revealed in a seemingly unimportant
phone conversation Ritsuko has with him at the beginning of the film?
The real magic show, followed by the red umbrella in the air,
tums Ritsuko into a filmic double of Aki, a doubling process initiated
by the dying girl and completed when Ritsuko reunites with Saku

34
at the airport and tells her, "That day, Aki was there, and she only
made it that far. Let's tie up loose ends." This doubling effect both
contradicts and complements the magic ritual and the "letting-go"
gesture within italthough Saku should "live his life," he will do
so by marrying a woman who is strongly associated with his past.
It seems as if the magic of the show lies less in the "letting-go" than
in the magical strengthening of the bond between Aki and Ritsuko,
who have otherwise enjoyed only a casual friendship. In the light of
this, the sense of return, therefore, is stronger and more ominous than
Modleski has described: it encourages "living one's life," but at the
same time is about fidelitythe importance of remaining loyal to
one's love partner even after she is long gone. This message weighs
heavily on the audience, especially since Aki is a more impressive and
memorable character than Ritsuko. The heaviness of such a message,
above all, owes to the implication of destiny: as Aki asks Ritsuko to
deliver the tape and then, by performing a magic show, delays the
delivery of the tape, she arguably brings about Ritsuko's accident.
Hence, it looks as if Aki is "destined" to create a double of herself in
Ritsuko and Saku is "destined" to marry this double. Quite ironically,
though, pursuing a new life with Ritsuko is gratifying to both the male
protagonist and the audience, who otherwise would feel victimized
and helpless by feeling "too late": marrying Ritsuko enables the male
protagonist to continue his first, "pure love" story in his marriage, and
convinces the audience that such "pure love" is indeed possible.

III. Crying, Magic, and Ritualized Drama

The crying scenes and the magic motif in Crying Out Love
remind the reader of the genre theory conceptualized by such critics
as Thomas Schatz, which is used to explain the rise of genres, hence
the popularity of junai films like this one. Schatz (1981) believes that
genres should be seen as a "collective cultural expression," (13) hence
"vehicles of and for the exploration of ideas, ideals, cultural values
and ideologial dilemmas" central to society (Neale 223). Schatz's
conception (1986) was derived in part from the anthropological
theory of Claude Levi-Strauss, which sees genres as ritualized dramas
resembling holiday celebrations that reaffirm cultural values while
making the audience forget the more disturbing aspects of the world.'^
John Cawelti (1976) observes that when the group's attitudes change,
new formulae arise and existing formulae develop new themes and

35
symbols; these stories, produced and distributed almost entirely in
terms of commercial exploitation, both aftirm existing attitudes and
resolve tensions arising from the conflicting interests of different
groups within a culture (34-5).
Crying Out Love can be considered a commercial enterprise that
exploits the audience's yearning for pure love; in particular, it resolves
the tension and difficulty in seeking and preserving such "pure love"
relationships in real life. Whereas the genre approach originally draws
an analogy between ritualistic acts and going to movies, thus turning
Crying Out Love into a ritualized drama, it is interesting that the film
itself is made up of rituals - crying and magic - that both satisfy
audiences' desires and reinforce their values.

Conclusion: Junai Beyond 2004

Crying Out Love does not offer us a glimpse of the married
life of Saku, which would have enabled us to see whether he treats
Ritsuko as he treated Aki, and whether his "new life" is lived in
the shadow of his past. "Junai" in a married couple is nonetheless
suggested by the motif of magic that brings the first love back to
the protagonist and that satisfies his/ our tears of demand. The film
therefore creates a make-believe world in which it is never "too late,"
and in doing so, inspires Japanese men to remain faithful and loving
to their wives and reassures Japanese women that love as "pure" as
first love exists. While the film articulates and satisfies the need for
"pure love" in contemporary Japan, contrary to what critics have said
about melodramasthat they are either too social or too personal
this individual romance transcend its social backgrounds or historical
period. One may wonder why Crying Out Love, despite its universal
elements and its popularity in Japan, was not well received in the West
like another Japanese romance Love Letters. Its lack of popularity
might be due to its relatively simple storyline, or the "purity" of its love
theme, unlike Love Letters, which tackles multiple issues, including
lost love and fragmented personalities, which accordingly broadened
its appeal to audiences from various cultural backgrounds.
It may be a little early to conclude whether Japan will
experience another junai boom in 2014, yet a number of films that
appeared during this interim period which, though neither depicting
first-love relationships of a platonic nature nor dwelling exclusively
upon romantic relationships, have been compared to junai films of

36
2004. One example is Anh Hung Tran's 2011 film Norwegian Wood
(Noruwei no mori), which is based upon Haruki Murakami's novel of
the same title. Another example is Yoshihiro Fukagawa's 2010 film
Into the White Night (Byakuyako), based upon Keigo Higashino's
novel of the same title. Interestingly enough, in 2007, an independent
filmmaker, Kobayashi Keiko, produced a film called Jun-Ai, which
has been slowly gaining recognition in Japan and abroad over the
past few years. One would only hope that this film, which is set in
China immediately after the WWII, and which describes the love
and friendships between its Japanese and Chinese protagonists, will
herald a series of junai films that are transnational, transcultural, and
humanistic in their significance.

Notes
' Japanese short word referring to stories of pure love. The actual
phase is junsui na ai.
- Philip Brasor describes the seemingly inexhaustible attention paid to
Korean star Bae Yong Joon in Winter Sonata, a drama with a convoluted
plot involving romantic triangles, amnesia, and incest. Penning the
article at a time when the drama was broadcast for the third time on
NHK (a Japanese television station) in June 2004, Brasor observes
that Bae's Japanese fans come from all age groups, but mostly the
forties. He contends that even though Japan was relatively late to the
Korean wave (kanryu boom), as compared with other Asian countries,
the boom might well help alleviate the discrimination against Korean
residents in Japan.
^ Tong adds that another typical feature in a "junai relationship" is that
the characters, not merely the couple but their offspring, are all good-
natured and down-to-earth, hence "pure," and junai films usually
contain no "evil" characters.
'' See Schwarzcher's article. In fact, the remark by this celebrity has
been cited not only in this article but also in various Japanese and
Chinese media.
^ The story was also turned into a television drama in Japan and was
broadcast on the TBS station in the summer of 2004.
^ Originally from Ben Singer, "Female Power in the Serial-Queen
Melodrama: The Etiology of an Anomaly," Camera Obscura 22
(1990): 91-129. ;

37
'' Originally from Michael Walker, "Melodrama and the America
Cinema," Movie 29/30 (Summer 1982): 16-7.
* Shinpa means the new school of drama, in contrast to the old school
of Kabuki drama, developed in the Meiji period to depict the manners
and customs of contemporary Japan; Shinpa is characterized, among
other things, by more naturalistic style of acting.
' These were mainly made by Daiei and Shchiku studios, and the
latter was well-known for its woman-centered films and "feminist"
style directors.
'" Male protagonists did play a significant role in certain Japanese
melodrama, but the genre was dominated by female characters. The
Matatabimono (the masterless samurai) film is considered the male
weepie of the 1920s-30s, while the 'drifter' films became the male
weepies of 1960s.
" Originally from Laura Mulvey, "Afterthoughts on 'visual pleasure
and narrative cinema' inspired by duel in the sun," Framework 6: 15-7
(Summer 1981): 13.
'^ See, for instance, Tong Ching Siu's article. Aki invites Saku to
compete with her to see whose lefter is selected first to be read on the
late-night radio talk show "Midnight Wave," which rewards the letter
writer with a Sony Walkman.
'^ In The Bridges of Madison County (1995), the mother asks her
children in her letter to scatter her ashes over the bridge where she
met with her secret lover for the first time. In the Hong Kong film City
of Glass (1998), the young couple mixes the ashes of their parents
into the fireworks that are displayed over the Victoria Harbor. In the
popular Korean drama Everlasting Love (2000), after the death of the
heroine, her family also scatters her ashes across the sea.
''' From Catherine Clement's formulation, women feel in the body what
comes from outside the body ("Enslaved Enclave," in New French
Feminisms, eds. Elane Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1980, 134).
'^ This is quoted in Joan Copjec, "Flavit et Dissipati Sunt," October
18 (Fall 1981): 21.
'* Schatz studies the HolljAvood studio system and its privileging
of certain stories that served a culturally therapeutic purpose with
their predictability and their ritual certitude (16, 34). Though Schatz

38
-t . _' ' -.:.-
focuses on the westem, the musical, the screwball comedy, the thriller,
the family melodrama in Hollywood cinema, the same can be said of
Japanese pure-love films.
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40
Standish, Isolde. A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of
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apop.DTL

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