Tracing Her Shadow
Director: Song Peng-fei
Year: 2020
Rating: 6.5
This Chinese-Japanese co-production is very gentle, calm and at times
painstakingly slow moving but beneath this it addresses a social issue that
was new to me. It never rants or gets angry but over the course of the film
it brings to the surface an historical tragedy. After the end of WWII and
the surrender of the Japanese, thousands of Japanese families who had settled
in Manchuria had to flee the country. Many of them felt the trip would be
too dangerous for their small children and so they left them with Chinese
families to be brought up. And they were brought up as Chinese often with
no idea that they were of Japanese heritage. In the 1980s the Chinese government
made public who these children were. They had struck a deal with the Japanese
that these children could return to their homeland. But once people knew
of their ancestry they were often treated badly in China. So thousands returned
though they spoke no Japanese and knew nothing of their customs. And found
themselves treated just as badly in Japan. Japan has a history of treating
"outsiders" very poorly. The Koreans who moved to Japan generations ago are
still discriminated against. Even Japanese who spent large parts of their
lives overseas due to their parents work are not completely accepted. Every
country has its racist aspects. Japan for sure.
The female director Song Peng-fei distills all this down to one small personal
story. It is set in 2005 in the city of Nara. Chen Hui-ming (Wu Yanshu),
an elderly woman comes to Japan to look for her foster child Chen Li-hua
who she has lost touch with for a few years. Li-hua had been left on her
doorstep in 1945 but in the 1980's had gone to Japan to look for her parents.
The old lady (who is quite wonderful) gets the help of a family friend -
the half Chinese-half Japanese Hatsumi (Ying Ze) whose parents are still
in China but she decided to live in Japan. Again though never really addressed
she finds herself in a nether world of not being either Chinese or Japanese.
Early on a man says to her "Where are you from? I hear a slight accent" and
she defensively yells she is Japanese. She had a boyfriend whose parents
would not give him permission to marry her because of her half Chinese identity.
Through letters sent to the mother and the help of a retired lonely policeman
(Kunimura Jun), they attempt to track the foster daughter down. From place
to place. The letters are heartbreaking once you begin to read between the
lines of despair. Li-hua never was able to fit in - keep a job, keep an apartment,
able to learn the language. At one point she thought she had found her family
but a blood test came back negative and the family wanted nothing to do with
her. It is a trail of tears. But the film never devolves into sodden melodrama
- the threesome just keep looking and at times is quite sweet and humorous.
Along the way they meet up with other War Orphans (riben yigu) who are all
between countries and belonging to none. The ending is . . . left very much
up in the air and I found that frustrating after spending 90-minutes with
the trio and getting quite fond of them. I like clear endings. Some may find
the relaxed narrative and the offshoots into aspects of Japanese life that
have little to do with the story perplexing but in some ways those were my
favorite parts - tofu donuts anyone.
