Movie Makers Bow Out of Japan

Godzilla has finally met his match: Japanese red tape.

Pity Toshimasa Ishii, the 29-year-old location manager for the latest Godzilla film. His job is scouting out sites where Japan’s most famous monster can strut his terrible stuff.

Godzilla first stomped across the silver screen in 1954, so American fans might assume that getting permits to shoot the Tokyo background for the reptile’s special-effects rampage would by now be fairly routine.

But filming a Japanese movie on location--even one starring the iconic Godzilla--can be a nightmare. There are bureaucratic runarounds ending in refusals, low budgets clashing with gargantuan costs, and public intolerance of the noise, traffic jams, crowds and chaos that movie-making causes.

“Maybe it’s because Godzilla trashes the city,” says Ishii, only partly joking. “When we request permission to shoot, many times the first thing they ask is: ‘Is Godzilla going to smash our building? If so, we must humbly refuse.’ ”

The land of legendary directors Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, whose films defined postwar Japanese society for a rapt world audience, has become a country where it is virtually impossible to exercise creative freedom on location, Japanese filmmakers complain.

They say the restrictions and requirements have scared off major foreign film productions and are a factor in the plunge in both the quality and box-office appeal of Japanese films.

For instance, the movie-making community here is rife with rumors that much, if not all, of Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the novel “Memoirs of a Geisha” may not be shot in Japan because of the difficulties of filming in Kyoto’s historic districts.

A spokeswoman for Columbia Pictures said no decision has been made on where to shoot “Memoirs,” which is still two movies ahead for Spielberg. But if the legendary American director skips Japan, it will be another blow to the local film world.

Strikingly, Japan’s loss of competitiveness comes at a time when Hollywood is making an increasing number of films in cheaper locations abroad, including Canada, Mexico, Australia and the Czech Republic’s scenic Prague, all of which offer lovely settings at prices Southern California can’t match.

In fact, Japanese movie-makers sound far more frustrated these days than U.S. trade negotiators hammering for Japanese telecom deregulation. In February, 30 industry luminaries launched a group to study creation of film commissions to cut red tape. Others are lobbying for legislation to bolster the ailing domestic film industry--one of the few sectors of the Japanese economy that has no government protection.

“Excluding Communist countries like North Korea, of all the democratic countries in the world, Japan is the most difficult place to make a movie,” says Sony’s Tetsuji Maezawa, one of the leaders of the film commission group. “Every single permission is a hassle.”

Koji Wakamatsu, who has directed 140 films, agrees.

“I’ve shot in Hawaii, Colombia, Tunisia, Morocco, France and Germany, and it’s totally unlike Japan,” he says. “You can shoot anywhere if only you apply for permission. In Japan, you simply cannot.”

Japanese movie crews are not allowed to film in Tokyo’s subway or Ginza shopping district, at Tokyo Tower, in the neon jungle of the capital’s gritty Shinjuku neighborhood or in most of the ancient temples of Kyoto. Police will not close city streets, parks or bridges to permit filming.

Nor may filmmakers shoot inside public buildings--not schools, not museums, not the parliament building. Even the exteriors of some buildings are off limits. Director Yoichi Sai says he tried six years ago to film actors walking up the front steps of the distinctive Tokyo Metropolitan Police building but couldn’t even get permission to put his cameras on the sidewalk in front of the building. He ended up with a less dramatic wide-angle shot taken from across the street.

“We are angry because they refuse permission but won’t disclose any information about what conditions we would have to meet to fulfill their requirements,” Sai says. He argues that it would be impossible to make an Oliver Stone-style political thriller in Japan. “The White House will not let cameras in during national emergencies--but in Japan, they won’t let you in even when nothing is happening.”

Film Industry in Prolonged Decline

Despite those obstacles, a few fine pictures are still made in Japan. Shinji Aoyama’s “Eureka” won critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival last month, and directors Nagisa Oshima and Takeshi Kitano have an international following, particularly in Europe.

Still, by every standard, the Japanese film industry is in a prolonged decline. Only 66 films were made last year, down from 545 in 1960, during the heyday of Japanese cinema, and from 129 in 1985. Distribution income from domestic films in 1999 was 25% less than in 1985, not accounting for inflation, according to the Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan.

Hollywood--and to a lesser extent, Hong Kong and India’s “Bollywood”--rule Japanese movie screens. Foreign films had a 68% share of the Japanese market last year, domestic films just 32%. In 1960, domestic films had 78% of the market, the Motion Picture Producers statistics show.

The giant Shochiku Co. caused much hand-wringing last winter over its decision to sell its venerable but money-losing Ofuna studios, where many postwar masterpieces were shot.

Even as the domestic film industry shrinks, pricey Japan is not considered competitive as a setting for foreign films. About 280 film commissions around the world--including California’s--are vying to lure major film productions, with their multimillion-dollar budgets and potential for creating subsequent tourist attractions. Some bill themselves as low-cost locations, others offer one-stop permitting, still others will negotiate with labor unions, fire marshals or other authorities to help a production.

‘Cooperation’ Redefined

Japan has had a bad reputation in Hollywood particularly since director Ridley Scott came to Osaka to shoot his 1989 film, “Black Rain,” then ended up having to re-shoot chunks of it in California.

Several Japanese who worked on that film say that the Americans thought they had secured the cooperation of the Osaka authorities but that the Japanese definition of “cooperation” didn’t include shutting down streets for filming or letting film crews loose in the subways.

“They wanted to use a subway in Osaka to shoot a murder scene but couldn’t get permission, so they ended up using a parking lot in L.A.,” says Takamichi Kuzuhara, a Tohei Co. executive in Kyoto who worked on the film. “It was almost comical to see the wide perception gap between the American and Japanese staffs.”

After a decade of economic stagnation, though, some Japanese towns and tourist boards are beginning to view film production as a boost to local development. The depressed rust-belt city of Kitakyushu aspires to form Japan’s first film commission this fall--but even the city’s public relations spokesman, Kazuhisa Taoya, warns not to expect too much.

Taoya recently talked to the city police department and was told that stopping traffic on a highway would not be permitted, although crews may film on roads that are under construction or closed.

“They said they cannot do what they cannot do,” Taoya reports. “We will not be able to provide any [special] types of service that other cities or prefectures cannot.”

In general, Japanese authorities take the view that public property should not be used to benefit a private profit-making business, including a film company, explains Tadao Sato, chairman of the film commission study group. In particular, the idea of snarling Tokyo’s already horrendous traffic for the convenience of a private entity is frowned upon, he says.

However, Japanese law does permit street closures for marathons and temple festivals, and filmmaking should be given the same kind of status as a cultural activity, Sato argues.

In reality, since Japanese filmmakers can’t get permission to film where they want, they unapologetically engage in what they call “guerrilla shooting.”

Director Wakamatsu recalls how he and his colleagues once dressed up as police officers, made themselves fake police badges and drove a bogus police car onto the landmark Kanmon Bridge, which connects the islands of Kyushu and Honshu. They put out orange cones to stop traffic and pretended to conduct sobriety checks on the unsuspecting motorists, all the while filming the scene using a telephoto lens, he says.

By the time a real patrol car was dispatched, the mammoth traffic jam snagged it. A lookout with a radio alerted the filmmakers, who got back into their ersatz cruiser and fled with their illicit footage.

“The police must have figured out where we shot it, but they never bothered us,” Wakamatsu says.

Apologies Serve as Punishment

Guerrilla crews frequently designate one person to negotiate with and apologize to the police--and stall for as long as possible so everyone else can escape with the equipment, other industry sources say.

Even when crews are caught filming without a permit, the usual punishment is to have to go to the local police station and write a letter of apology, promising never, ever to do it again.

“I’ve written 13 or 14 of them,” Wakamatsu says.

By contrast, the California Film Commission--the model that Japanese filmmakers would like to adopt--is a one-stop permitting agency that will arrange for traffic officers or fire marshals to monitor a shoot. No location fee need be paid to film on state beaches or freeways, in prisons or parks, but a production is required to pay for the law enforcement or transportation officials who supervise, commission director Karen Constine says.

If state property might be damaged during a shoot, the commission in some cases will arrange for the production to agree to pay to restore the property to its original state, Constine says.

Defense Forces Lend a Tank

Japanese filmmakers--most of whom must recoup their production costs in the domestic market--can’t afford to build expensive studio sets, and at the same time they don’t have the money that Hollywood producers can throw around to compensate for the inconvenience they cause on location, says “Godzilla” location scout Ishii.

The Toho Co. studio’s budget for “Godzilla vs. Megagilas, G Extermination Strategy,” which began shooting this month, is just $9 million, Ishii says. But that’s triple what many Japanese films cost. So location shooting often depends on the goodwill of property owners or of authorities who can work miracles when the top boss says yes.

The Japanese Self-Defense Forces allowed one of their tanks to be used without charge for the last “Godzilla” film, Ishii says, though it had to be shot at a base and superimposed on backgrounds filmed elsewhere. Ishii says the filmmakers didn’t even dream of asking permission to drive the tank through Tokyo.

This time, director Masaaki Tezuka wants to shoot a scene of a computer genius buying components in Tokyo’s famous electronics district, Akihabara. Ishii went recently to beg the indulgence of the cooperative that runs the warren of tiny booths that sell everything from circuit-breakers to semiconductors. Since the stores stay open in the cramped space year round, Ishii cannot shoot on a holiday or use extras and will need to film the real booth owners and their customers.

“I used to be a video salesman, and I bowed a lot, but I’ve bowed more since I started this job than ever before,” Ishii says. But he adds, “Bowing costs nothing, and if that’s all it takes. . . .”

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Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.