Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society

Interview: Director Gakuryū Ishii spoke to The Natural Aristocrat® about his latest film ‘The Box Man’ at Japan Society NYC while promoting the movie at the Japan Cuts 2024 Film Festival.

This Gakuryu Ishii interview contains spoilers for the film, ‘The Box Man’.

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT (NIR REGEV): I know ‘The Box Man’ is based on a novel by Kōbō Abe originally but was your film supposed to be an allegory for the way homeless people are boxed in?

Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

GAKURYŪ ISHII: Where usually we see homeless people as a sort of a dropout from the society. Somebody to be looked down upon.

But Kōbō Abe, he put them in a box, but he gave them a window to see. So, they are unseen, but they have the ability to see the world, to see the society.

So in a way, he sort of changed and flipped the status of regular people, if you will.

Tadanobu Asano. Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

They get to see what we don’t see. And so they observe the system and the society from the other side. The Box Man visualizes things we don’t see in our every lives. It was the invention of Kōbō Abe.

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: What was it like shooting scenes where the two ‘box’ men fight with the boxes on from a technical standpoint?

Director Gakuryū Ishii. Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

GAKURYŪ ISHII: The original novel has a part focusing on which one is a ‘real’ box man. And there’s actually a spinoff story that was written by Kôbô Abe about this, while the film only depicts the battle of the two box men.

So, the fight scenes are based on the idea of the author, and the air guns and the stuffed animals, are all in the original novel as well. And I thought it’d be interesting if I could depict that cinematically. That’s what adaptation of a novel is all about. So I tried to make the battle scene more dramatic.

The clashing of the two boxes was actually suggested by Tadanobu Asano, He saw a video on the internet radio-controlled robots battling and he was inspired by that. Two inorganic materials clashing each other was really interesting for him to watch. I thought it was a great idea and so we used it in that scene.

Koichi Sato. Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

So yeah, we tried to be creative and experimented a lot of different things to make the film more entertaining.

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: The scene in which Yoko (Ayana Shiramoto) and The Box Man (Masatoshi Nagase) are boxing an entire house into cardboard, was that supposed to mean The Box Man never wants to escape the box?

Was there a deeper meaning there about there being a level of comfort in staying homeless on the streets than going back into the world? A stasis of sorts. There’s that quote in the film about going into labyrinths when you try to leave to the ‘other world’.

GAKURYŪ ISHII: That scene is also as depicted in the original novel. He realized that he doesn’t have to be stuck in that small box if the environment around him or the world itself is in a box. So he’s just acting out his progress way of thinking. His action was proactive.

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: From my understanding, ‘The Box Man’ film was actually supposed to release many years ago but was frozen in place due to a production budget issue at the time. I was wondering what it means to you to get this true passion project out as a filmmaker?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: It’s been just too long… It took me too long to materialize it, but with that said, because I had the time, my understanding of the novel has become much deeper.

Masatoshi Nagase. Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

And the times really caught up to the novel. Everyone now has their own smartphones and computers and have shelled up in this information bubble, myself included. So I feel that every man and woman have become a box man or box woman.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Interesting point, so you’re saying the smartphone itself creates socially acceptable ‘box men’ and ‘box women’?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: There’s a visible box and an invisible box. There are many layers to the “box.”

Ayana Shiramoto. Photo Credit: ⓒ 2024 The Box Man Film Partners.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: There were points of this movie where I honestly thought that maybe the woman, Yoko, isn’t real or maybe none of the characters outside The Box Man were real. That they were all figments of his imagination so to speak. I take it she did exist but can you confirm?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: (smiles) Yes, she does exist. She is probably the most solid existence in the story.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Is it a common but ‘invisible’ occurrence for a doctor to be practicing without a license in Japan? How regular is that kind of white collar crime?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: If you practice medicine without license in Japan, then yes, that would of course be a crime. But with that said, I think what Kōbō is trying to do is… he himself was a doctor as well, but he’s questioning, “does the license make you a doctor if you have one?”

The fake doctor does not have a license but he’s extremely good at healing people. I think there is a criticism to that. He’s always questioning the meaning of having a license.

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: In your opinion, what matters more then, the experience or the license?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: I think that the most important qualification for being a doctor is that you have the ability and are good at healing somebody. That’s how doctors should be, Just because you graduated from college and you have a license doesn’t necessarily make you a doctor. So I kind of question that whole system.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: There’s a scene early on where a sniper is taking aim at The Box Man. Were those tranquilizer darts or actual bullets? Basically, was he intending to eliminate The Box Man or just make him go to sleep to capture the box?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: As a narrative, the purpose of that attack was to hurt him to lure him to the hospital. That’s why he’s using a gun with a scope to be more accurate. So the point was to hurt him, but I just didn’t want to make it too clear because that’d be boring to the audience. But from the point of view of The Box Man, the sniper is trying to kill him.

Major Spoiler Warning

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Why did Yoko appear to be pitying The Box Man towards the end of the film when he was scribbling notes in their makeshift ‘boxed’ house covered in cardboard.

Does she close the door on The Box Man’s way of life because she believes he will never change? Was Yoko turned off by the fact that entering his world changed nothing?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: I think that’s really for the interpretation of the viewer.

/End Spoiler

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Do you have a lot of films like this in the ‘vault’ that have been shelved for years that you’d love to get made?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: There are numbers.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Is a Punk Samurai sequel, one of them?

Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

GAKURYŪ ISHII: (smiles) Well, the script for Electric Dragon 2, does exist actually for example. There are more film projects that I didn’t get to make than the ones I made. Movies that require a lot of money or films that are complex to make are the ones that I never got to make.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: There’s a certain aesthetic in ‘The Box Man’ movie where you see things from his first person point of view through a strip of the box. How did you go about structuring a storyboard of this ‘inside the box’ perspective before filming it?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: Since that goes into the theme of the whole film, I definitely gave a lot of thought before shooting it and how I would structure it. But I didn’t really make any storyboard for this time. Usually I do make a storyboards, but this time only for camera works on how each scene might be shot.

The cinematographer and the other crew were extremely talented, so they suggested ideas and we adopted some of them, but for scenes where I knew I had to go with my own, we stuck to the original.

We had to shoot many shots during a very short period of time, so we needed to take advantage of what was happening on the spot – sort of a nouvelle vague style. I always choose what’s most thrilling and right for the piece. The (Jean-Luc) Godard way, if you will. I tend to do camera blocking that way for every film.

And then there are scenes where we focus on the performance of the actors, to highlight the contrast between the two.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: I’m curious as a creator, if it’s important to kind of stay in a creative box of isolation and avoid reading too many comments about your work online?

Or if it’s important to be immersed in live reactions of people to actively evolve your work? Which side of the coin are you on, creatively speaking?

GAKURYŪ ISHII: I can’t really say which one is better, but we all are ‘box men’ in this society to an extent and there’s definitely inherent dangers with becoming one.

There’s a lot of malice going on. There could be anonymous comments that are aggressive, and negativity if you’re shielded in a self-bubble. On the other hand, by discarding every worldly and negative emotions, and by accessing your consciousness universe, like a Zen training, you may reach a clearer understanding of the world.

So there are pros and cons and it’s really up to you. But we need to be aware that there’s always positive potential and like two sides of the same coin, danger too as well.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Thank you Gakuryū!

GAKURYŪ ISHII: Thank you very much!

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Gakuryū Ishii Interview: The Box Man movie at Japan Society. Photo Credit: © 2024 Nir Regev – The Natural Aristocrat® [TheNaturalAristocrat.com]

– Check out our Punk Samurai Blu-ray Review!

More Japan Society NYC Film Interviews & Reviews:

Be sure to read:

– Naoko Ogigami Interview: Riverside Mukolitta @ Japan Society

– Mayu Nakamura Interview: ‘She is me, I am her’ @ Japan Society

– Japan Society NYC: ‘Sailor Suit and Machine Gun’ Film Review

– ‘Love Letter’ Movie Review – Japan Society NYC Film

– ‘April Story’ Review – Japan Society NYC Film Screening

– Japan Society NYC Film Review: ‘Fireworks Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?’

Visit our Japan Cuts 2024 Film Festival site to see the full lineup of films that screened there this month!

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