2008<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell talks with Japanese-Australian photographer Mayu Kanamori about the 2008 OzAsia Festival event, CHIKA, a multi-dimensional performance work about the ten year imprisonment of Japanese tourist, Chika Honda.<\/p>\n
When she first heard of the arrest in Australia in 1992, for alleged heroin smuggling, of Japanese tourist, Chika Honda, media artist and photographer Mayu Kanamori gave it only passing consideration. \u201cI thought: they\u2019ve arrested a group of mafia types, how embarrassing \u2013they\u2019re Japanese.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gradually though, spurred by investigative journalists in Japan and then with publicity in the mainstream press, momentum was gathering to have \u201cthe Melbourne case\u201d of wrongful arrest and misplaced baggage re-examined. This again brought the matter to Mayu\u2019s attention. A civil rights activist, Hideko Nakamura, was visiting Chika Honda in prison in Melbourne, and was part of a network providing Japanese food and other comforts. Familiar with Mayu\u2019s previous performance media work, The Heart of the Journey, Nakamura encouraged a meeting at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in April 1992.<\/p>\n
Kanamori recalls the visit. \u201cI read up about the case before they took me to the prison but I wasn\u2019t 100% sure that she was innocent or not. Until I met her – and then I knew. I thought: \u2018she is innocent and her story needs to be told.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It was then that she called on collaborators from the Heart of the Journey project – director Malcolm Blaylock and composer Thomas Fitzgerald – to begin what she calls a documentary performance. Fitzgerald prepared the Japanese-influenced music, some recorded, some to be performed live, and Mayu also edited some of the material for a Radio National feature for Radio Eye which was nominated for a Walkley Award in 2004. <\/p>\n
The current stage version, using documentary images, archival footage, recorded interviews and featuring dancer\/choreographer Yumi Umiumare, was first performed at the Malthouse in Melbourne in 2005 and again at the Performance Space in Sydney earlier this year. The performance at the Festival Centre\u2019s OzAsia Festival this month is the third season of the work.<\/p>\n
After the initial visit, Mayu Kanamori spoke to Chika once a month, gathering material for the production. She could not take tape recorders or video cameras into the prison and she also had to reconstruct a chronology which had begun ten long years before. <\/p>\n
\u201cI found by the time I had arrived on the scene the core of the story was finished- in Chika Honda\u2019s case all the hardship, the arrest, the Federal Police investigation and the disastrously incompetent mistranslations and misunderstandings of the court case had finished. Even from the human emotion point of view she had already gone through depression, panic attacks, suicide attempts and by the time I saw her she was no longer bitter. Of course, she wanted her name cleared, but she\u2019d learnt English, made Australian friends, and was well-adjusted prior to her release in that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first went to see her I asked her if she was sure she wanted to do this. I said : \u2018I\u2019m not Sixty Minutes, getting you millions of viewers in one go.\u2019 But I could tell her story in a slow and gentle way, I could find out how she feels and take as long it takes to do that. The context of live performance is very strong. You watch a documentary on TV and think : \u2018Wow, what injustice, and when the commercial break comes, that\u2019s it. Screen culture doesn\u2019t have the energy and intensity of live performance where performers and audience get much closer to the story.<\/p>\n
Asked what conclusions she came to about Chika Honda\u2019s experiences, Mayu Kanamori reflects : \u201c I didn\u2019t know where this was going to take me. What I felt most was Chika\u2019s humanity, eventually she was not bitter. She decided to make the most of her life. Her heart is very beautiful. She took me through. At first I thought: \u2018this story is about injustice\u2019, and it is \u2013 but it has changed, it is also about human endeavour.\u201d <\/p>\n
CHIKA is playing at the Dunstan Playhouse on September 26 and 27. Mayu Kanamori and other supporters are hoping Chika Honda will be granted a visa to return from Japan to attend the performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnchained Heart\u201d The Adelaide Review, No.343, September, 2008, p.26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2008 Murray Bramwell talks with Japanese-Australian photographer Mayu Kanamori about the 2008 OzAsia Festival event, CHIKA, a multi-dimensional performance work about the ten year imprisonment of Japanese tourist, Chika Honda. When she first heard of the arrest in Australia in 1992, for alleged heroin smuggling, of Japanese tourist, Chika Honda, media artist and photographer Mayu Kanamori gave it only passing consideration. \u201cI thought: they\u2019ve arrested a group of mafia types, how embarrassing \u2013they\u2019re Japanese.\u201d Gradually though, spurred by investigative journalists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-international","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}