Bringing the Voices of the Vulnerable to the World: People Living at Society's Margins in the Films of Kazuo Hara

Cinema Exists for the Vulnerable: Kazuo Hara's Enduring Conviction

'Cinema exists for vulnerable people and the masses.' One filmmaker has kept these words of Kirio Urayama close to heart and continued to turn his camera for more than half a century: Kazuo Hara. He has consistently stood beside people pushed to society's margins and brought their voices to the world. People with disabilities, feminists, victims of war, victims of pollution, and political minorities: Hara's viewfinder has always captured people excluded from mainstream society.

Hara has said that, alongside Kirio Urayama's principle, Shohei Imamura's view of humanity greatly influenced his own approach to film. Imamura's words—'People are cowardly, lustful, and vulgar, and that is precisely what makes them interesting'—gave Hara a perspective from which to examine human nature. Hara never allowed that gaze to become cynical, however. Instead, he accepted vulnerable people's human contradictions and conflicts as they were and maintained a commitment to protecting their dignity.

Hara's encounter with education for children with disabilities prompted him to enter film. His experience working as an aide at Komyo Special Needs School in Setagaya, Tokyo, fundamentally changed his view of life. His 1969 exhibition at the Ginza Nikon Salon, 'Don't Take Us for Fools!,' captured children with disabilities full of life. The anger and affection contained in that title became the spiritual origin of Hara's later work. People with disabilities had been separated from society and their existence concealed. Hara sought to use the weapon of the moving image to confront society with their voices.

In 2022, the British magazine The Economist published an article titled 'Kazuo Hara's Documentaries Speak for the Oppressed.' The assessment is apt. Viewed as a body, Hara's films reveal the mechanisms of structural discrimination and exclusion within Japanese society. Through each individual subject, he has continued to question problems in a much larger social system.

At the Forefront of the Disability-Liberation Movement: 'Goodbye CP'

Kazuo Hara's first film, 'Goodbye CP' (1972), is a documentary following the independent-living movement of people with cerebral palsy. It closely observes the activities of Koichi Yokozuka and other members of Aoi Shiba no Kai, a disability independence group in Kanagawa Prefecture, as they challenge established welfare systems and an able-bodied-centered society. Hara presented their speech, difficult to understand because of their disabilities, directly to the audience without subtitles. By intentionally showing images that able-bodied viewers might find 'uncomfortable,' he forced society to confront its prejudice.

The film's most shocking scene shows its protagonist reciting poetry in a busy shopping district and, when stopped by a police officer, stripping naked in protest. At the time, a person with a disability asserting himself in public was taboo. Hara, however, understood the desperate cry behind such extreme action. He inscribed directly onto film the appeal from their souls: 'We are human too' and 'Why must we live in hiding?'

Japanese society then viewed people with disabilities as subjects of 'protection' and considered their segregation in institutions natural. Hara exposed the deception of this 'benevolent discrimination.' People with disabilities sought the right to live in their communities rather than institutions. Although they needed assistance, they asserted their dignity as independent human beings. Hara's camera showed that contradictory reality as it was.

What Hara portrayed in 'Goodbye CP' was more than an issue concerning disability. It was the very structure of exclusion and inclusion in Japanese society. How can people marginalized by able-bodied-centered values assert their own existence and find a place in society? The record of their struggle has not faded even fifty years later and continues to confront us with that question.

From 'Extreme Private Eros,' on Women's Independence and Contradiction, to Contemporary Pollution

In 'Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974,' Hara followed the feminist life of his former wife, Miyuki Takeda. Declaring that she did not want to depend on a man, she moved to Okinawa with her child, became pregnant by a Black American serviceman, and gave birth without assistance. Hara documented the process in detail. The film presents a woman wavering between the ideals and reality of the women's-liberation movement.

Miyuki Takeda was full of contradictions. While seeking independence from a male-dominated society, she depended on a new partner and suffered between ideals and reality. Hara documented her without either criticism or idealization, simply as she was. His film brought into relief the difficulty for a woman of living independently in 1970s Japan. At the same time, it showed both the strength and vulnerability of a woman who continued to seek her own path despite those difficulties.

Decades later, 'Sennan Asbestos Disaster' (2017) documented over eight years the struggle of asbestos victims in the Sennan region of Osaka. Sennan was the birthplace of Japan's asbestos industry, and many workers and residents suffered serious health damage including asbestosis and mesothelioma. Hara followed painstakingly the activities of a victims' organization seeking compensation from the state. As elderly victims die one after another, the sight of their surviving families continuing the lawsuits is deeply moving.

Released in 2021, 'Minamata Mandala' was the result of fully twenty years of reporting. Across its 372-minute running time, it depicts the lives and struggle of people with Minamata disease. Hara carefully portrays not only their pain and suffering but also their joy in living and their dignity. The complexity of living as a victim in Minamata, a city that prospered as a company town for Chisso; relationships with family members employed by the company responsible; isolation within the local community—Hara presents these multilayered problems through the story of each patient.

The Politically Vulnerable and New Hope: A Record Without End

In 'Reiwa Uprising' (2019), Hara documented the election campaign of the new political organization Reiwa Shinsengumi. He followed representative Taro Yamamoto and candidates with severe disabilities as they challenged established politics. Hara viewed their activity not merely as a political movement but as an effort by people alienated from society to have their own voices reflected in politics. The election to the National Diet of Yasuhiko Funago, an ALS patient, and Eiko Kimura, who has cerebral palsy, was a groundbreaking moment in the history of Japanese parliamentary politics.

For Hara, they were successors to Koichi Yokozuka and the other participants in 'Goodbye CP.' Instead of remaining confined in institutions or homes, people with disabilities advanced into the Diet at the center of society. It was one culmination of half a century of the disability-liberation movement. Hara's gaze, however, is never optimistic. He also calmly records the difficulties they encounter and the friction with the existing political system.

Even now that he has turned eighty, Kazuo Hara continues producing new work that he positions as a 'testament trilogy.' At the end of 2024, he launched crowdfunding for the production of 'Minamata Mandala Part 2.' His passion does not fade, because people pushed to society's margins continue to exist. Poverty, discrimination, pollution, war: even as their forms change, the structures that create vulnerable people remain.

Kazuo Hara's films are more than records. They are media that carry vulnerable people's cries from the soul across eras. Through his work, we are forced to confront realities we prefer not to see. People with disabilities, women, pollution victims, and political minorities are never 'others.' As human beings living in the same society, we need to listen to their voices. For more than half a century, the singular filmmaker Kazuo Hara has continued to serve as that bridge. His films will keep posing questions to us as an enduring medium that brings the voices of the vulnerable to the world.