The city of Kobe houses one of the largest Zainichi Korean populations in all of Japan, a result of its historic status as a port city where many Koreans entered Japan during colonial rule. Those with Zainichi Korean status have a difficult legal situation that’s a legacy of occupational rule. They’re permanent residents to Japan, but even if they’re born in the country aren’t considered Japanese citizens. The status is a marker that can lead to them being discriminated against in work and rental situations, meaning Zainichi Koreans were often forced into low-wage manual labor jobs and into housing zones that could be segregated from the rest of Japanese society.
Zainichi Koreans in Japan are a close-knit community, but one whose complicated tensions with their home country causes problems. The Harbor Lights tells two stories within its two-hour runtime: that of Akari, a young girl dealing with depression that inhibits her ability to work, and her attempts to continue moving forwards as she learns to handle this while working as part of her community. The other is a story about the tensions she has with her family as a third-generation Zainichi Korean and the lingering trauma of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake.
Akari’s mother and father are going through divorce. Further inflaming intra-family tensions is the decision by Akari’s sister to get married and, in turn, begin the process of naturalizing as a Japanese citizen. The process can shed some of the discriminatory barriers inflicted by this legal status and the whole family begin this process as a result, except for the father who only feels further ostracized by their decision.
The film is the work of director Mojiri Adachi, the feature film directorial debut of this NHK TV drama veteran. Their career includes leading credits directing some of the more prominent dramas from Japan’s public broadcaster, including the morning dram Beppin-san also set in the city of Kobe. Notably, in 2020 the director worked on the series To Heal Wounds of the Heart, a drama that follows a doctor in Kobe shortly after the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake who treats and listens to the stories of those who survived while processing his own emotions from surviving this traumatic event.
In this sense, The Harbor Lights is a return to familiar territory for Adachi, a topic of great personal interest for the director as someone from the region who remembers the events personally. Indeed, the jump from TV work to first-time original movie director is one motivated by a desire to further explore how the lives of people in the region continue to be influenced by generational scars left by the devestation.
“[After making To Heal Wounds of the Heart in 2020] I was asked to make a film to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake in Kobe,” explains Adachi. “I was thinking a lot about what I should make this time. While the city and place has been restored and recovered since the earthquake, the feelings and hurt of the people who lived it have not yet healed, so I wanted to touch on that this time. I decided to explore the parent-child relationship of one person who survived the earthquake and one person who was born later, and how that impacts how both these people feel and experience the earthquake.”
A Kyoto-born creator who was in the old capital at the time of the earthquake, the distance from the epicenter meant that the director didn’t directly experience the devestation first-hand. Although this fact makes him admittedly uncertain of how worthy he is of telling the story of those who experienced the events directly, his love for the region and work on other series centered in the region made him determed to explore the city through this painful lens and bring a new perspective.
The result is a story as much about building and protecting a community as it was about dealing with the pains of the past.
The town of Nagata in Kobe where the film is set is notable not just for its large Korean population, but the way the city has developed into a multicultural home for Japanese people and those from all over the world. While not all of these people experienced the 1995 disaster either, all are at least aware of its undeniable impact in shaping the region. This was important for Adachi when exploring not just the Zainichi Korean experience but the community of this town within the film. Over the runtime of this story we see Ukranian refugees, Vietnamese, and other international citizens of the town existing as people just as important to the local community in the shopping street of Nagata as anyone else.
“When I was doing research in Nagata there were a lot of Zainichi Koreans and Vietnamese people and other people of the like living in the area. Rather simply, I wanted to capture this side of the town, and the space that would build such a community.”
In an attempt to tell such a diverse story, especially as the process and generational conflicts on the idea of naturalization plays such a core role in this story, greater understanding of the issue would be necessary. As Adachi explains, “I did some research on the processes that would be needed in order to become Japanese citizens, and then I would speak to various families who each had different thoughts about why they would or wouldn’t naturalize. I found a lot of families where the parents and children had different views [on whether it would be the right thing to do].”
One of the core threads driving the story of the film is the idea of community. Where do Zainichi Koreans belong in this community when their legal status is a source of discrimination? How does community fit within the family unit when this begins to fracture? How can community uplift strangers and bring people together? Especially at a time when Japan is facing a crisis of an aging society and a reality where many rural towns are slowly dying out as younger people move to big cities for the opportunities they bring, where does a community and space like Nagata and Kobe belong in this narrative? Can the past be saved, and how can this merge integrate with the diverse present?
The Marugo Ichiba shopping street in the film is an area which, as part of Akari’s work new work following an extended period receiving treatment for depression, she plans to rejuvenate as part of a project with her new employer, a small architecture company in the region. The restoration is a personal project for the company’s founder, who is local to the area and cares about the enduring existence of this space even as events like COVID threaten the possibility of being able to do what they once hoped to achieved.
Today, this town is still a hub of the community, with kids playing and people coming together within the boundaries of these enclosed shopping streets. But it’s changed. It’s more diverse too: a Vietnamese man who moved to the area more recently now runs a restaurant, yet is no less a beloved member of the community.
To maintain the past exactly as it was is impossible, and at times not even desirable. What’s more important is keeping its ideals while bringing as many people into that next step. That attempt to understand from new generations and cultures is the thread that ties the story of community rebuilding, Akari’s own battles with depression, and the family’s fracturing relationships as a result of their Zainichi Korean status, together.
“There’s a lot of people from all over the world who live in Kobe, and everyone came to the city at different points for different reasons,” Adachi ponders. “I was born around there, and Kobe is a very welcoming city to people from all over the world. I spoke to a lot of people who work and live around the Marugo Ichiba shopping street, it’s a place where everyone from everywhere is really connected to one another. It’s important that there’s this community, but more recently these communities are disappearing, which is sad to think, and there’s a hope that young people will return and continue these communities into the future as well.”
It's important to protect these things for the sake of the next generation. For locals, for refugees, for immigrants, for communities, these people and places are important, and they all want to protect these spaces as well. Indeed, community beyond Japanese people is a topic becoming more common within Japanese cinema in recent years. Beyond The Harbor Lights, recent films such as with Emma Kawawada’s My Small Land have also considered the growing diversity of experiences living in Japan today and their space in these communities. These stories are just as much a part of the fabric of modern Japan.
“Japan is moving into a more globalized era, and we need to consider how we can all live together through that. I want to keep thinking about what I can do and help that.”
Adachi’s career is one that’s influenced by his time working abroad as well as his life in Japan, and his work focuses on the diverse lives of people, particularly those in Kyoto and Kobe that have become regular settings of his work throughout his career. The Harbor Lights is a story that seeks to shine a more personal light on these stories and put a face to the stories of Zainichi Koreans. Not as someone different from Japan, but as a member of a community who shares the same joys and, yes, in the case of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake that looms over both this family’s strained relationship and the shopping street, the same tragedies.
They’re important stories, but they’re also stories pertinent to the modern moment in Japan and how the country makes its move into the future. The Harbor Lights puts these diverse voices to the forefront, and takes a step into that uncertain future.
