The A Series Captured Aum Shinrikyo from Within
The work that made director Tatsuya Mori widely known was the 1998 documentary A. Centering on Hiroshi Araki, then deputy head of public relations for Aum Shinrikyo, it filmed the relationship between society and the group's believers from inside Aum after the Tokyo subway sarin attack and prompted a major response. The title's "A" is said to derive from the A in Araki and the A in Aum.
The filming began as a program project for Fuji Television, but Mori was ordered to stop because it did not "portray Aum Shinrikyo badly." He continued independently and completed it as a self-produced film. It screened at festivals around the world, including Berlin, Hong Kong, Busan, and Vancouver, and received high praise.
A, which became the starting point for Mori's visual work, did not simply use a sensational method to peer inside a criminal organization. It attempted to illuminate society in reverse through a group that had been simplified into "absolute evil." This shift in perspective can be seen as the heart of Mori's creative stance.
Documentary Films Lie Questions Media Literacy
The sequel A2 (2001) portrayed friction with society, including confrontation and reconciliation between local residents and believers driven from their facilities and dispersed around the country. At the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, it won both a Special Prize and the Citizens' Prize. Mori subsequently published A3, a book about Aum Shinrikyo, which received the Kodansha Nonfiction Award in 2011.
In 2006, he planned and supervised the program Documentary Films Lie. The work takes the process of documentary production itself as its subject and argues for the importance of media literacy. Featuring prominent directors including Kazuo Hara and Makoto Sato, it is effectively a documentary about documentary, questioning the common belief that "documentaries show the truth."
During this period, Mori's work grew increasingly self-referential, exploring not only social themes but the possibilities and limits of visual expression itself. By experimentally demonstrating how unconsciously viewers believe documentary to be nonfiction, he raised the importance of reading media critically.
i: Documentary of the Journalist Follows a Tokyo Shimbun Reporter
In 2016, Mori released FAKE, his first solo directorial work in 15 years since A. The documentary closely followed composer Mamoru Samuragochi, who had attracted attention in a ghostwriter controversy. Once called a "modern Beethoven" and said to compose despite a hearing impairment, Samuragochi was shown after the allegation that musician Takashi Niigaki had in fact served as his ghostwriter.
FAKE does more than pursue the problem of Samuragochi as an individual. It broadens its view to the structure through which media and society consume "stories." The theatrical release attracted attention and large audiences with the promotional phrase "the shocking final 12 minutes." The title carries meanings such as pretense, fraud, and false reporting, and Mori poses the questions, "What is truth?" and "What is falsehood?"
In 2019, he released i: Documentary of the Journalist, following Tokyo Shimbun social-affairs reporter Isoko Mochizuki. Through a journalist who repeatedly asked incisive questions at government press conferences and attracted attention through sometimes fierce exchanges with the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the film approached problems in Japanese reporting and the current state of journalism. It won Best Film in the Japanese Cinema Splash section at the 32nd Tokyo International Film Festival, sharply questioning the contemporary relationship between media and power.
His First Fiction Film, September 1923
In 2023, Mori released his first fiction film, September 1923. Released on September 1, the 100th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake, it takes as its subject the actual massacre that occurred in Fukuda Village, Chiba Prefecture, on September 6, 1923, five days after the disaster. It portrays itinerant merchants from Kagawa who were mistaken for Koreans and killed by villagers, approaching the universal theme of how group psychology can run out of control.
Starring Arata Iura and Rena Tanaka, the film cast light on an incident buried in historical darkness and raised issues that also apply to contemporary society. In 2024, it received high praise including Awards of Excellence for Picture and Director at the Japan Academy Film Prize, attracting attention as a new challenge for Mori.
Tatsuya Mori's films consistently step deliberately away from the perspective considered "socially correct" and look at events from another angle. This does not simply seek the unorthodox but arises from an honest attempt to grasp truth from multiple perspectives. Another defining quality is the way he reexamines the structures of media and society themselves.
From documentary to fiction, Mori continues to question the very act through which we "look." His films sometimes prompt controversy, but this is precisely what gives viewers a valuable opportunity to reconsider their own values and frameworks of thought.
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