Turning a lens on the past

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sexual relationships just aren't the same anymore for Japanese documentary filmmaker Tomoko Kana.

Ever since she started filming Mardiyem last year, sex has stopped being fun and games for Kana, 29.

Mardiyem is Kana's first long documentary film, a 92-minute work which tells the story of Mardiyem, a former Indonesian comfort woman. It will be screened on Tuesday at the Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest).

Being involved with several women who were forced into sexual slavery and raped over 15 times a day had an effect on the filmmaker.

"It was like it was me who was being raped. It made me feel afraid to make love to my boyfriend. He's my lover and I like him very much, but sometimes I had the feeling he was in the Japanese army. I felt so frustrated," she told The Jakarta Post recently.

"I felt dizzy and everything .... My boyfriend didn't understand at first. But when I explained it to him, he understood," she said.

Making a documentary film about women who served as sex slaves, or "jugun ianfu", for the Japanese army in the Second World War has been Kana's obsession since she was 13 years old and first learned about the issue at school.

"It was so shocking for me. I was so surprised that my grandfather's generation could do such a horrible thing to women," said the Tokyo resident.

After graduating from Japan Women's University in Tokyo, where she majored in Asian history with a focus on World War II, she began working at Japanese television station NHK.

Kana approached the station about making a documentary film on the comfort women, but her vision proved difficult to realize.

"It's because the Japanese government wanted to deny the facts. So many people from the older generation wanted to hide the truth," said Kana, who funded the film herself.

After working as a director at NHK for more than eight years, Kana quit her job to pursue her obsession.

"I just wanted to record why those men did such a thing. Within five to 10 years, those comfort women will die. I'm a Japanese woman, I think I have some responsibility to record the testimony of comfort women for younger generations," she said.

Her contacts led her to Indonesia, even though former Japanese military comfort women are also found in other countries, such as Korea.

"Of the other Asian countries, I like Indonesia. It just feels different. I love the place, the food, the atmosphere, the people ... ," Kana asserted.

Here she met Mardiyem, now 73 years old, a former comfort woman who lives in Yogyakarta. From September last year to early this year, Kana documented her life.

"I chose Mardiyem because she is the most vocal of the former comfort women (who are demanding an apology and compensation from the Japanese government).

"She has a strong personality and is very noble. She always sits straight, full of pride and full of passion. That was why I chose her as the main character," she said.

Kana followed Mardiyem as far as Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, to trace Mardiyem's past.

She also followed Mardiyem and her fellow former comfort women to Tokyo last December, where they testified before the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery.

Making the film, Kana said, was exhausting because she shot it continuously from morning to night.

But hardest of all were the emotional aspects.

"I had to ask them difficult questions, like how many times they were raped a day. But I had to, otherwise I would not have been able to show other people how bad it was," Kana said.

The stories of the comfort women were grim, which left Kana depressed.

"Most of the ibu-ibu (older women) live in poverty. Most of them couldn't marry because they can't have children.

"And when it comes to sex ... I like sex, but I only do it with my lover. But for them, they don't have sexual relationships with their lovers. I mean, sex is a wonderful experience but for them it's always been violence and violence ... ," she said.

Mardiyem was completed last July and screened at Japan's Yamagata Documentary Film Festival in early October, where it received a good response from younger Japanese.

However, she said she was worried that she would return to Japan and find that some people opposed her film.

"Recently, there was a Korean film about Japanese comfort women, and some people from a right-wing party came to the theater and tried to slash the screen.

"I'm very worried, but I'm not the one who was raped 20 to 30 times a day, so it's OK," she said.

As for the problem with her boyfriend, it's settled now.

"I told him, 'If you have to go to war, please don't rape women'. And he said he wouldn't," Kana said.