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Felicity Tillack's "Impossible to Imagine"

Writer's picture: The Hafu ExperienceThe Hafu Experience

Updated: Oct 31, 2023

監督フェリシティ・チラックのデビュー作、『想像が出来ない』は業績の芳しくない京都の着物屋を営む女性と、その手助けをするために、やって来た、異人種間の子供として生まれた生い立ちを持つ、企業家の男性の物語。お互いに惹かれ合いながらも、彼の変化を求め心が、今のままの生き方を守りたい彼女の気持ちと衝突する。お互いために彼らは変わることが出来るのだろうか?


映画は2019年に公開し、現在はVimeo、またはAmazon Primeでご覧になれます。監督とのインタビュー(英語のみ)は下記に掲載しています。


Independent filmmaker Felicity Tillack's first feature film "Impossible to Imagine" is the story of a traditional, Kyoto woman who runs a failing, kimono business and the biracial entrepreneur who comes to help keep it solvent. Along the way they fall in love but his need for change clashes with her desire for the world to stay the same. In the end, can they change enough for the other?


The film came out in 2019 and is currently available on Vimeo and Amazon Prime in Australia, America, Japan, UK. We spoke with Felicity to understand her motivation for making the film.


Could you share your background and motivation for making the film?


I am originally from Australia. I grew up in north Queensland, which is quite remote. I went to school in the 90s, and the Australia I knew was much different to the Australian my parents grew up in. My classmates were First Australians, and the grandkids of post-war Greek, Italian and Maltese migrant Australians whose families had come over to work in the sugarcane fields. Australia was becoming the diverse, proudly multicultural country it is today, but it was experiencing growing pains, so there was a lot of racism in the conversations and mindsets around me, and also in the media at the time.


Japan was still seen as the implacable war-time enemy. North Queensland had been a base for American fighter planes, and had experienced Japanese bombing (though not as badly as Darwin and Broome). If Japan had invaded Australia, all the cities north of Brisbane were to be ceded to them. I grew up hearing a lot of negative comments about Japan.


But, by the late 90s and early 2000s, Japanese anime was changing the narrative to a country that was cool and mysterious. Japan had also become a huge trading partner, which is maybe why Australian primary schools started teaching Japanese. I realised early on that Japan was really different from Australia, and all I wanted to do was see it.


I came to Japan in 2006 as an English conversation teacher, initially for a year or two. But then I met my husband, who is Japanese, and stayed longer. We tried to live in Australia around 2011, but he experienced racism, both from a stranger who told him to “go home”, and a family member: my great uncle who opposed my marriage to one of the “enemy” he fought in the war. So we came back to Japan in 2012 and have been here since then.


We came to Kyoto in 2016 so I could work at the local international school. It’s a pretty chill place, so I found my feet and began the film in early 2017.


After being in Japan for more than 10 years at the time, and meeting more biracial and bicultural Japanese people, the main motivation for making the film came when my husband and I started seriously thinking about starting a family and wondering how they would fit into Japan, or if the concept of what it means to be Japanese might widen in the future to accommodate them and other hafu people like them.


How has your experience as a primary school teacher in Japan impacted this film?


My experience as a teacher hugely impacted this film. Language and culture impacts our identity, and when you grow up confident in your place within a culture, you draw a lot of strength from that. I am anglo-Australian, so growing up, no one ever asked me where I was from, or where my family originally came from. We were accepted as Australian. My husband, growing up in rural Japan, in a small community, with grandparents and cousins, also has a very strong identity and knows who he is. But the hafu kids I work with don’t always know who they are, and they are often doubted as being “Japanese” in Japan, or, as their other ethnic identity when they visit their non-Japanese parent’s country. One of my 10 year old students expressed it as having to do “double the work”. Having to learn English AND Japanese, having to understand two (sometimes conflicting) sets of cultural mores and priorities. My students sometimes feel more connected to their foreign parent’s culture, even though they’ve never lived in it, just because they don’t feel accepted in Japan. Some kids reject English and hate being in international school, because it separates them from their Japanese friends and cousins. For parents of hafu kids in Japan, the question of where to school their kids is always the hardest, and I’ve seen students flip-flop between systems as they struggle to fit into one or the other.



What research did you do into understanding the hafu experience?


I based the character of Hayato Arai around his actor, William Yagi Lewis, and another young man, Luke Heerin Fuji, who is actually an alumni of Kyoto International School. William, unlike Luke, didn’t go to international school, but rather a local Japanese school in rural Japan. William spoke to me about not wanting his dad to come to the open days at school, or his soccer matches. He spoke about his constant inner conflict, about fighting with himself over his own actions and reactions to situations: “why are you being so Japanese?” “why are you being so American?”. Luke spoke with me about wanting to be the bridge between cultures, and help give the answer to the frustrated, “why are they like this?” that intercultural interactions sometimes provoke. I also interviewed Koko Price, who spent her high school years in Australia, is married to a mixed roots African American/Japanese man and has two children with him. She acts as Ami’s friend in the film, and a lot of her dialogue is directly lifted from our interview.


What were some of the key messages you wanted to address through this film?


I wanted the film to ask questions and, hopefully, start conversations, rather than having a message of what I thought was right or wrong or how I think Japan should be.


The main question of the film is where Japan might be going in the future. Change is a constant thing. I saw Australia change dramatically over my life-time with migration and while this is still very low in Japan, I’ve seen it becoming more comfortable with international visitors especially over the last 10 years. Will Japan become more multicultural? The percentage of biracial kids in the birth rate is rising, and, at least in the cities, there’s a lot of Japanese kids going to international schools and becoming bicultural. There are conversations about having more migrants come in to support the rapidly aging population. Some of them will stay long-term, have kids here, and build communities. Will the concept of what it means to be Japanese, traditionally an identity based around ethnicity, language and culture, widen to fully accept the hafu, the new migrants, or the returnees who grow up abroad?


What has been the response from Japanese audiences?


The response at screenings has been generally positive. Often people connect to different themes in the film, and tell me about the family with hafu kids they know, or how over-tourism (pre-covid) is affecting their town, or express a desire to visit Kyoto. A Buddhist monk friend said he’d never considered the identity struggles of hafu Japanese before, and that the film has made him consider the “next step” between old Japan and future Japan more deeply.


Some people don’t like it, but when the negative comments are because my main actress isn’t a 20 year old idol, I tend to ignore them.


What would you like to see happen in Japan?


I just hope for greater acceptance and awareness that Japanese people can come in all shapes, colours, sizes, accents, mindsets and backgrounds. That’s a general wish for all countries and people though, not just Japan and Japanese. That we all start recognising what microaggressions sound like, and how to avoid them; and model open-mindness and kindness to children so they can pass it on. One thing I do love about my class is how accepting they are of gender identity, race, beliefs, language... I have hope for the future when I am with them.


What kind of stories do you want to tell in your upcoming films?


More stories about identity and belonging. I think that if you can understand the other side then that’s the first step to acceptance. I’ve been working on a piece about being LGBT in Japan, about how some in the community here fear coming out because they would become as strange as “aliens” to their friends and coworkers. I’m hoping though that this feeling will change over the next few years too, especially as there have been successful cases suing for recognition of same-sex marriages.





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