Portraying Society from the Perspective of Those Excluded
A consistent feature of Tatsuya Mori's work is his examination of Japanese society from the perspective of social minorities and those who are excluded. This creative attitude functions not simply as sympathy or advocacy, but as a means of bringing the majority's patterns of thought and behavior into focus.
The A series, for example, depicts society through the eyes of Aum Shinrikyo followers after the subway sarin attack. It does not glorify criminal acts; instead, it attempts to reflect society from inside a group simplified as absolute evil. Through the followers' perspective, the mass media of the time and those of us consuming it become clearly visible.
In bringing the work into being, Mori himself experienced exclusion. Filming began as a television project but was ordered to stop because Aum Shinrikyo was not portrayed negatively, and his production company notified him that his contract was terminated. He nevertheless continued filming independently and completed it as a self-produced film. The experience itself can be seen as a microcosm of a society that seeks to exclude departures from the supposedly correct perspective.
Sharp Insight into the Relationship Between Media and Power
In i—Documentary of the Journalist, Mori examines the relationship between media and power through Tokyo Shimbun reporter Isoko Mochizuki. By showing questions restricted at press conferences and particular reporters excluded, he warns of the gap between journalism's role in a democratic society and its actual condition.
Rather than simply praising Mochizuki, Mori analyzes why she attracts attention: because she is doing what should be ordinary. This highlights how other media outlets and reporters have departed from their proper role. Through a specific individual and her actions, he questions the closed nature of the press-club system and the media's attitude toward power.
At the same time, Mori films himself trying to attend press conferences with a camera and repeatedly arguing over admission: 'Let me in' and 'You cannot enter.' This is more than staging; it is an attempt to experience Japan's closed media environment firsthand and convey it to viewers. His work always contains the dual perspective of observer and participant and emerges from the tension between them.
Dissecting Group Psychology and Conformity Pressure
One theme Mori repeatedly addresses is conformity pressure and group psychology in Japanese society. His latest film, September 1923, particularly uses a massacre following the Great Kanto Earthquake to depict the psychological mechanisms by which groups driven by anxiety and fear exclude those perceived as different.
Its portrayal of an incident in which rumors amid post-earthquake chaos led to the killing of itinerant merchants speaking the Sanuki dialect, suspected of being Korean, raises universal issues relevant today. It suggests the danger of similar group psychology operating in contemporary digital society, including social media pile-ons and the spread of conspiracy theories.
FAKE likewise uses the ghostwriting scandal surrounding Mamoru Samuragochi, once celebrated as a modern Beethoven, to depict how the media constructs narratives and audiences consume them. Rather than focusing only on Samuragochi's personal issues, it examines the process through which truth is socially constructed and questions that structure itself. Particularly interesting is how the debate over his hearing impairment shows the media seeking a simplified opposition of good and evil. The demand for a binary truth—whether he can hear or cannot hear—rather than attention to the complexity of his actual condition and degree of impairment reveals problems in today's media environment.
The Possibility of Dialogue and Coexistence
Mori's approach to September 1923 shows courage in confronting Japan's troubling history. The massacre of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake has long been treated as taboo, and recreating part of that history as fiction on the earthquake's centenary carries great significance.
While acknowledging local concerns, Mori has stated that looking back at history does not mean blaming people who live at the site of the incident today. This view—that facing past events also matters for us in the present—symbolizes his approach to social issues.
Throughout Mori's work runs a commitment to seeking the possibility of dialogue, however difficult the circumstances. A2 depicts unexpected relationships emerging between residents campaigning against Aum and its followers, showing how direct communication can overturn preconceptions. People in different positions may deepen their understanding through dialogue. His films convey that this is not easy, but should not be abandoned. In a contemporary society of deepening division and conflict, Mori's questions lead to the fundamental issue of how we can coexist.
