Sushi, Masala Soaked

First catching unprecedented attention at the Fantastic Tokyo Film Festival in November '97, then promoted intensively by a consortium called Japan Cinema Associates (jca), Muthu-The Dancing Maharaja, a typical south Indian masala film produced by Kavithalayaa, washed over Japan like a tidal wave last year. Around 12 lakh spellbound Japanese watched the Tamil film hero, Rajnikant, play Muthu. They thrilled to his lover's (actress Meena) iridescent hued dances; and wept at his noble, unflinching magnanimity. Thus, in a line, goes the story: Muthu, a servant in a zamindari house, is buffeted by the indignities of class differences; he later discovers that actually he is the zamindar's real son but refuses to dethrone his cruel impostor of a master. Oddly, the emperors of the automated world were smitten by this fantastic fable of good's victory over bad. Andamazingly, Rajnikant-loved even by India's front-benchers more for his flamboyant antics than his crusading zeal-was born into Japan's consciousness as a superhero, a grand moral being bearing a potent message for a fatigued nation: money and power is not everything.

More recently, on the evening of July 30, a distinguished gathering of about 500 people came to watch a screening of the Shahrukh Khan-Kajol Bollywood blockbuster, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. It was an incongruous scene. Imagine corporate bigwigs like TV Tokyo, Yoshida Corporation, Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi among others tittering at Shahrukh's antics and sniffing sentimentally at his displays of true love. Yet, presented by India Center, a non-profit organisation promoting Indo- Japanese relations, and hosted in posh Otemachi by Kiedenran (Japan's Chambers of Commerce), this screening was, in a sense, epoch making. It marked, as Vibhav Kant Upadhyay, project leader, India Center, says, "the official recognition of Indian films by Japan's captains of industry-not just as business propositions but as tools of cultural and political relations".

And perhaps even more urgently as stress busters. Japan is a nation in distress. Fifty years of fevered economic reconstruction and nation- building post-Hiroshima has created a people severed from their emotional and cultural moorings. Suicide rates in Japan are among the highest in the world and now with its bubble economy bust and recession firmly in, Japan's whirring elevators, steel skyscrapers and cosmopolitan affluence conceals, as Haruyoshi Mori, legal advisor to India Center, so eloquently puts it, "a war inside us." The Japanese desperately want a reprieve from reality, a potion of wish-fulfillment, a dose of fantasy, a taste of lost innocence.

But what can provide that? Hollywood films, Japan's staple entertainment, with their penchant for seat-holding tension, are ceasing to beguile; Korean and Hong Kong action thrillers have become largely passe; and Japan's own commercial film industry has a predilection for the horror film genre. In this scenario, Muthu, Yajaman, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and a flush of such films have started to make Bollywood something of an ironic Japanese equivalent to the Kathmandu Trail and the jaded West's search for love, nirvana, and spiritual solace from India in the '60s! Except here it is not gurus the Japanese want, but unlimited song and dance numbers, extravaganzas of colour and feel- good happy endings. As Upadhyay comments perceptively: "They've achieved everything, but they cannot be gods. So now they've to learn to be human." Difficult as this may be to swallow, the masala Indian film provides the Japanese their missing emotional quotient. (Interestingly, films like Border and Bandit Queen, screened in Japan recently, didn't find favour. Uninhibited exotica seems to be the order of the day, not attempts at deep sociological understanding.)

Says Sayako Hirao, a young curator of an art museum, "Indian films give us energy, different levels of freedom and spirit." Oda Yukihiko, a digital professional, echoes the sentiment: "Movies are a way of knowing India in a compressed form. I've been to India and I feel a power there. Even street children there smile." An easy upper for most, for Michiko Kurosawa, member, India Center and a partner of India Action Plan (IAP), distributing Indian films is almost a mission. Watching the Hindi film Tezaab at a time of deep personal and family stress, she was struck by the idea that Indians really love each other and value the family. "That's when I decided to promote Indian films here," says she, "I want people to think: 'We're Japanese. What does it mean to be that?'"

Whether tapping time to the rousing rhythms of Tilana Tilana, Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna and Chaiya Chaiya will help them answer that weighty question is anybody's guess. But for now, the Japanese are content to flirt with their new-found spirit booster. Mention Muthu, and their normally impassive, reticent features burst into broad smiles; Tamil filmi dancers add fizz to an advertisement for Hi Ball, a Japanese brand of beer; and Kobayashi Sotomi, an actress, runs Japanese versions of Indian filmi dances on Channel IV! Add to that a star-struck Miki Fujiwara, a trading company employee who's roped in some friends to start a Shahrukh Khan Fan Club; waitresses squealing with excitement over Meena and Kajol at a tempura restaurant in upmarket Ginza and the 2,000 girls who reportedly applied to be among a troupe of five Masala Girls, created by India Center to promote Indian culture-and you pretty much have the buzz around Bollywood in Tokyo.

Small as this trend is in real terms, one is moved to ask: what does it portend and what triggered it? In '54, two south Indian films, Chandralekha and Sansar, screened commercially in Japan sank without a trace. Why this surging interest from "the captains of industry" now? Apart from being a sort of pseudo-spiritual Mecca, is there a pot of gold at the end of this trail?

At this juncture, it seems not. Japan is the largest market for Hollywood films after America, but the market for Indian films is nascent and though it has potential, industry hands feel it'll take 5-10 years to mature and needs to be very carefully monitored at this stage. The price of distribution rights for an Indian film in Japan currently ranges between $10,000 and $20,000, but to make a film click in Japan requires big money and almost an eight-month promotion cycle. Theatre, video and TV rights of a film have to be given to one distributor who is then able to bring an elaborate machinery of gimmicks, press and television coverage into play. Muthu, the biggest grosser so far, apparently drew in about $3 million in sales, but almost half-a-million was ploughed into its promotions by jca. DDLJ is being distributed by IAP, but its promotion is being backed by Hitkari Tsushin, a multi-billion-dollar communications company, Lawson Group, which has a chain of 5,000 convenience stores, Toei, a cinema theatre hall chain, and Sony pcl. Smaller players like Japan Skayway, Sansamuran and Park of Asia Films, who bought around 10 Tamil films after the success of Muthu, are hard put to just break even.

Part of the problem has been created by the unprofessional norms followed by Indian film distributors, some of whom have sold the rights of the same film to two companies. Yajaman, another Rajnikant-Meena starrer, is a case in point. Bought by jca and Asia Films from separate sources, the film was released by both under separate titles-Muthu, Dancing Maharaja II by jca and as Dancing Paradise by Asia Films. Partly because of the ensuing bad blood, partly because it played too close to the original Muthu, Yajaman has failed to gather momentum.

Why the sustained interest in the films then? Upadhyay of India Center would have you believe that Indian films in Japan are only a preparatory ground for a new Asian era in world politics, a "vision" he cradles dearly. Interestingly, heavyweights like Yoshimi Ishikawa, respected writer, opinion maker and chairman of the think-tank iseis (Institute for Socioe-conomic Infrastructure & Services), and Hitoshi Yoshida, one of DDLJ's promoters, confirm this. India, they say, is necessary for Japan in the 21st century. "Maybe we're beginning to realise we're not western and are starting to think of our Asian identity," says Ishikawa.

The poor Indian masala film probably never bargained to be such a portentous player-spiritual guru and vehicle of international political egotiation. More plausibly perhaps, Michiko Kurosawa ventures a rather hilarious explanation for Rajnikant's runaway success: "He's not tall, not handsome, and not at all like American superheroes," says she. "In fact, he's just like a Japanese!" So there it is. Proof that Japan is starting to look inwards and-and more crucially-Eastwards. The west is done. Enter the Asian era. And long live Bollywood, our brave new cultural ambassador.