“Nagi Notes”, interview with the director Koji Fukada

At the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Koji Fukada presented “Nagi Notes”, a film in Competition that moves away from the theatrical origins of Oriza Hirata’s celebrated play “Tokyo Notes” while preserving some of its emotional and thematic echoes.

Fukada explained that the project initially emerged through Hirata himself, who suggested adapting “Tokyo Notes” into a film set inside the contemporary art museum in Nagi. In this rural Japanese town, the playwright had been involved in cultural initiatives.

Yet, after visiting the location, Fukada felt that simply transplanting the original play into another setting would not be enough.

“I thought it would be a waste to go all that way and make a story based in Tokyo,” the director explained. “So I decided to move away from the story of Tokyo Notes and come up with a completely new story.”

The resulting film keeps the contrast between city and countryside that defined Hirata’s work, but reverses the perspective. Instead of observing rural Japan through an urban lens, “Nagi Notes” looks at Tokyo from the countryside, examining the emotional and cultural distance between the capital and peripheral communities.

Loneliness as the central human condition

lthough “Nagi Notes” addresses social themes such as patriarchy, gender expectations and the invisibility experienced by sexual minorities in Japanese society, Fukada insists that loneliness remains the true core of the film.

“We are all born alone and die alone,” he said during the interview. “More than any social issue, loneliness is the problem that interests me most.”

For Fukada, this condition extends beyond Japan and reflects a broader existential fragility. He described contemporary society as increasingly detached from the structures that traditionally offered emotional comfort, including religion, family and romantic relationships.

The director openly acknowledged his own distance from religious belief, connecting that absence to a deeper sense of isolation. In his view, modern life continuously weakens the communal bonds that once helped individuals confront solitude.

That recurring concern has shaped much of Fukada’s cinema, in which intimate relationships often reveal emotional gaps that cannot be fully resolved. In “Nagi Notes”, companionship exists, but always alongside the awareness that human connection remains temporary and fragile.

Art as observation rather than completion

Art and artistic practice occupy a central place within the film, particularly through the relationship between an artist and their model. Rather than focusing on completed works, Fukada chose to emphasise the act of creation itself.

“The process of creating art is a way of observing the world in higher definition,” he explained.

The director considers the act of making art less important than production and more as a form of attention. Drawing, observing and representing another person become ways of understanding both others and oneself.

Fukada also noted that cinema rarely explores the relationship between artist and model without ultimately prioritising the finished artwork. In “Nagi Notes”, the unfinished process becomes the emotional destination. What matters is not the final painting, but the gradual attempt to see another human being clearly.

That approach mirrors the film’s broader structure, in which quiet gestures and everyday interactions slowly accumulate meaning rather than culminating in dramatic revelation.

Rural peace under the shadow of war

One of the film’s most striking elements is the intrusion of military sounds and radio announcements into Nagi’s peaceful atmosphere. Fukada revealed that these details were drawn directly from his own experience living in the town for nearly a year.

The radio broadcasts heard throughout the film are based on the real disaster-prevention systems installed in local homes. At the same time, the sounds of military exercises come from nearby Self-Defence Force activities.

For the director, these sounds function both as realistic details and as reminders that even isolated rural communities remain connected to global conflict.

While writing the screenplay, the Russia-Ukraine war had just begun, reinforcing his desire to juxtapose distant violence with the apparent calm of daily life in Nagi.

“When you live in a city, it is easy to forget that wars are happening,” Fukada observed. “But we are all connected.”

Relationships that survive beyond family

Another emotional thread in “Nagi Notes” concerns the bond between two women who continue seeing each other even after divorce has formally ended their family connection.

Fukada traced this idea back to a secondary element in “Tokyo Notes”, in which a character fears losing contact with her sister-in-law after a separation. He became interested in imagining what might happen if such a relationship survived beyond legal and familial structures.

That question eventually became one of the foundations of “Nagi Notes”, transforming a brief dramatic detail written thirty years ago into a meditation on chosen emotional ties.

In Fukada’s cinema, family is rarely defined by blood alone. Instead, relationships persist through memory, care and emotional recognition, even after official bonds disappear.

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