Remembering Tomonari Nishikawa
A brilliant ecocritical filmmaker, creator of my favorite experimental film of all time-- gone too soon
In Tomonari Nishikawa’s sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars (2014), scratches move over celluloid like the film’s eponymous stars, or perhaps the darkest depths of the ocean. The sound is produced by projecting the scratched film, but it could also be distant cicadas. After about 75 seconds or 1800 frames, the film reveals its conceit: that it is “a print from a 100-foot 35mm tungsten film which was buried… about 25 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, from the sunset of June 25, 2014, to the sunrise of the following day. The area has been decontaminated by removing surface soil, and the Japanese government says that it is safe for people to return to their homes in this area.”
When I first saw this film about 7 years ago, reading these words on screen knocked the wind out of my lungs. They continue to do so, every time I watch the film, and every time I teach it, in both documentary and Japanese film courses. For me, it is the most powerful and most affecting film about nuclear disaster ever made, despite only being not even two minutes long, and despite— or perhaps because— of its lack of characters, script, or discernible imagery. On sound of a million insects, nuclear radiation speaks, is embodied; it becomes a spirit that possesses celluloid like a vengeful ghost (yurei in Japanese). It is so powerful because it is able to capture something that is not only invisible, and that only exists in traces (and in the pain it inflicts upon humans, animals, and plants over a very long period of time); this is something is also, according to official government statements, nonexistent. The film gives the lie to government propaganda: if radiation did not exist, if the soil was still safe, would it cause those etchings, those million insects and thousand stars?
I found out Tomo had cancer in early November, through a GoFundMe passed around on social media by an acquaintance. I contributed, as did many friends in our interlocking fields of experimental film and Japan Studies. The cancer was extremely aggressive, and he passed away on April 20 after at least 7 rounds of chemo. I don’t know all of the medical details, but from what his wife Miki wrote on the GoFundMe, it seems relevant that his pancreas was affected. Pancreatic cancer is linked to exposure to high levels of radiation. At the memorial in Binghamton University last Sunday, some of us spoke in hushed tones: was there a link between sound of a million insects and Tomo’s tragic, seemingly sudden illness? Could the mere handling of radiated film, placing it in soil and removing and then developing it, be enough to cause such horror? It is hard to not watch the film now and not imagine the etchings on the film are also literally embodied in our cells. The etymology of celluloid (a combination of nitrocellulose and camphor), by the way, comes from cellulose, a complex carbohydrate named as such because it is the chief component of the walls of plant cells.
Perhaps I am so fixated on this film because of my own history of cancer and radiation (this information is probably not a surprise to anyone who read Soviet Daughter). Were my cel(l)s as etched as sound of a million insects, the radiation traveling through my body for all of my 20 years before a nodule was discovered on my thyroid? I was born two years after Chernobyl, 100 kilometers or 62 miles away, on the third largest metropolis of the Eastern bloc. Other post-Soviets talked about radiation from the Chernobyl disaster as a literal cloud that passed over Ukraine, Belarus, France, and Sweden. The Soviet government sent around chocolate and red wine to the citizens of Ukraine because of their alleged antioxidant qualities. They did not send around information. Two years later a substantial quantity of the soil of Ukraine was contaminated. When I think about the physical, tangible objects that caused my diagnosis, I imagine milk and strawberries. I imagine that many in Japan continue to eat milk and strawberries grown 62 miles away from Fukushima Daiichi. Yet the forces of capital continue to evade the question of nuclear contamination. (During my year at the Inter-University Center in Yokohama, a classmate who received the same grant as me spent his entire career proselytizing nuclear power; he went on to be a salaryman and nuclear lobbyist.) I’ve also met well-meaning leftists who evangelize nuclear power for being more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. Listening to both the right and left speak approvingly about nuclear power makes me want to commit egregious acts of violence. I couldn’t listen to my lobbyist classmate without wanting to gouge out his eyes.
Tomo’s film, of course, carries none of this violence, except for the violence of radiation itself. And perhaps it is unfair for this one two minute film to represent the entire expansive career of one person, just because it is especially relevant to my own personal history. Many of Tomo’s other brilliant films are also accessible on his Vimeo page, such as the beautiful Tokyo - Ebisu (2010) and Amusement Ride (2019). I especially love Market Street (2005), filmed, I believe, in San Francisco. Here, graphic matches proceed in a hypnotically Vertovian fashion, as manholes become clocks become stickers become placards, and lines cross exuberantly across the frame. It made me think: this is what a city must look like to someone who has never seen it before, a constructivist composition of lines and shapes, pleasurably bombarding the senses.
I saw this film first at Penn in October 2021, when I invited Tomo to present his short films as the inaugural event of the Japan Global Issues film series that I’ve helped run over the last four years. Penn is not really an institution particularly interested in experimental film, and in fact this was the only experimental film of the series. It was also the first public event held after the “post”-pandemic opening of campus, and KN95s were a requirement. Yet the event was an extraordinary success, by all counts. I don’t remember whether it was me or Tomo who decided that we should have discussion after every film (average: around 5 minutes), but I remember thinking it resulted in a much more lively and engaging discussion. It reminded me of the way Getino and Solanas’s Hour of the Furnaces (1969), another film I teach in almost every class, was meant to be shown with breaks for discussion after each of its 14 chapters in Part 1. Film, I think, should always be discussed— pored over, debated, analyzed, questioned. We aren’t meant to watch films passively, and especially experimental films. Imagine how much more engaging film like this would be to a non-specialist audience, if we were meant to respond with discussion between each short, rather than sitting quietly.
Films like Tomo’s make me want to make films— which, I believe, is the highest compliment. He had so many more to make. In 2018 when we met at Binghamton— I had a campus visit there, and watched his films as prep for my interview— I was starstruck. He seemed to have zero ego, which shocked me. In fact saying kind words about his films made him visibly uncomfortable. We bonded, however, over Japan, and especially over wanting to research Hokkaido and the Ainu, the Indigenous group. I remember our animated conversation over lunch the next day, and him saying, repeatedly— wow! So interesting! We’re both interested in the Ainu, wow!
I don’t think he ever got to make his Ainu film. I asked him about it in 2021, and he asked me about my own project. We both got too busy to go to Hokkaido, it seems. I feel so deeply lucky to have known him, and to have seen his stunning work.
