Hirokazu Kore-eda || THE SATURDAY PROFILE | NYTimes

Noriko Hayashi photo for The New York Times

Hirokazu Kore-eda

NYTimes´ THE SATURDAY PROFILE || ‘Shoplifters’ Director Pierces Japan’s Darker Side

By Motoko Rich

…

“I don’t portray people or make movies where viewers can easily find hope,” said Mr. Kore-eda, during an interview in his studio in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo. “Some people want to see characters who grow and become stronger over the course of a film. But I don’t want to make such a movie.”

“It’s such a lie,” he added. “And I don’t want to tell a lie.”

… after he won the Palme d’Or, the country’s education minister invited Mr. Kore-eda for a congratulatory meeting, the director demurred.

“I didn’t get the point of why they were trying to congratulate me,” Mr. Kore-eda said. “I don’t think it’s right for the government and moviemakers to get too close. So I wanted to keep a distance from the government.”

“Shoplifters” was made in part with government funding, and some critics on social media have bashed the director as anti-Japan or hypocritical. “You took the money and then say that you want to keep a distance” from the government, wrote one blogger. “What a convenient excuse you make.” On Twitter, Tsuneyasu Takeda, a conservative commentator, accused Mr. Kore-eda of being a “shoplifting director.”

Mr. Kore-eda told an interviewer from Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese daily, that he was grateful for the public money but viewed it as a subsidy from taxpayers rather than a grant from any particular administration.

“If you think of culture as something that transcends the state,” he said, “then you understand that cultural grants don’t always coincide with the interests of the state.”

…

In their own way, Mr. Kore-eda’s movies offer slivers of optimism as well as moments of impish humor. But does he still have hope for his country?

He paused for several beats.

“I have not thrown away hope,” he said.