TIFF is pairing their Japanese cinema series with an art show

For filmmaker interviews, in-depth discussions and what to watch at this year's festival, check out the full slate of TIFF 2023 coverage from Q with Tom Power, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud and CBC Arts.

To walk into the atrium of the Toronto International Film Festival's Bell Lightbox right now is to be hit with a wave of wild and often fantastical imagery. A whale emerges from the sea, its innards visible, x-ray style. A goblin walks down a city street. The neon-lit skyline of Tokyo at night takes over a wall.

TIFF's new slate of programming, Pop Japan, is a broad look at the last century of Japanese cinema, split up into three series: a look at the work of Japanese New Wave auteur Seijun Suzuki, a retrospective of anime classics, and an examination of animator Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Studio Ghibli. 

The film series will be accompanied by an art show — called Reimagining: Narratives of tension and wonder — featuring works by two Canadian-based Japanese artists, Mitsuo Kimura and Toko Hosoya, as well as a mural by Japanese-Canadian artist Tim Fukakusa. Elysse Leonard, TIFF's manager of community and public spaces, says that the TIFF curatorial team selected these artists because their work invoked similar themes and feelings as the featured films.

Leonard explains that they were looking for artists that evoked "Suzuki's experiments in form and storytelling [and] bold use of colour, the wondrous and mythical worlds of Miyazaki, and this theme of transformation that unifies all the world of anime films."

"After we had that sort of curatorial frame established, we approached programming partners and artists and invited them to co-create a showcase of their work with us that would bring their own practices and experiences into dialogue with these elements."

Kimura grew up in Japan, and came to Canada in 2009 to study at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His work combines the dark lines and natural themes of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking with elements of fantasy and to create work that is riveting, unique and, in his own words, occasionally "grotesque."

He says that he was surprised to be selected for this show — he's not actually a huge movie guy.

"To be honest, I only know very major movie directors," he says. "I am not so into watching Japanese animation."

Still, he does see some commonalities between his work and the films being shown. "Visually, maybe [the curators] found similarities [between the directors'] depiction of fantasy and mine," he says. 

He adds that, at the risk of generalizing, he thinks that many Japanese artists share an ability to bring what he calls "imaginary expression" into their depictions of day-to-day life.

Fukakusa, a.k.a. Ekwal, started doing graffiti as a teenager in the early '00s. As an adult, he says, his work has become a way to connect with his Japanese heritage, including working on various projects for the National Association of Japanese Canadians. That said, he says that usually when he's asked to do Japanese-themed murals, the request is to do something traditional. 

"It's usually, 'Paint a waterfall or a tiger or a stork,'" he says. "A lot of Japanese iconography and ukiyo-e."

For Pop Japan, though, he was able to tap into the modern Japanese culture that has fascinated him since he was a kid. His piece "Neon Otaku" is influenced by both anime and Japanese noir cinema.

"When [TIFF] told me the theme of this, it was right up my alley," he says. "It was a no-brainer."

"[The title] has to do with neon lights, that classic kind of anime [visual] of Tokyo at night. An Otaku is a person who's obsessed with a certain character or a particular anime or something like that. And earlier in my life I would define myself as that. There's certain anime that I was obsessed about. I had a huge action figure collection from it. I still have it, actually — it's just not displayed."

Fukakusa says that he's also happy to be included in the show because Japanese film has always been important to him. Growing up in a family that he describes as "whitewashed" — something that was a long-tail result of his grandparents undergoing internment during the Second World War — film was one of the ways he was able to access Japanese culture as a kid. 

"My aunts and uncles and my father, they don't speak Japanese," he says. "My grandmother spoke Japanese. A lot of these movies, these old Japanese movies, I used to watch with my grandmother." 

He adds that, overall, he sees Pop Japan as a celebration of how Japanese popular culture has entered the North American mainstream, and he's glad to be a part of it.

"When I was growing up, I was almost embarrassed to tell people how much I was into anime," he says. "And now it's so mainstream. Everybody loves Ghibli, and this is just celebrating the fact that it's not such a niche anymore."

Pop Japan runs at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto (350 King St. W.) until June 27.