Japanese culture places huge emphasis on honour and saving face. Many feel it is better to die than live in shame. Nonetheless, there are those who, when they get into difficulty in their lives, want to “reset” in some place where no-one knows them, and start again. They are known as the Johatsu, “the evaporated.” They have all sorts of reasons for disappearing. They may have gambling debts or be in abusive relationships or facing financial problems at work.
Their story (and that of the so-called ‘night movers’ who help them vanish) is told In Into Thin Air, the new feature documentary from Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori that premieres in the International Competition at Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival.
In 2014, German artist and filmmaker Hartmann was living in Japan where he had an artist’s residency. This was when he began making A Free Man, his 2017 documentary about a young Japanese man who decided, of his own free will, to join the homeless and live on the streets. Through his work on the film, Hartmann began to meet people on the edges of Japanese society, often managing to survive without identities or passports. He also heard about the “night moving” companies. By then he had met his Japanese co-director Mori and they felt this was a fascinating subject for a film.
“In Japan, they [the night movers] are on the internet. They basically advertise their work on their websites. So we contacted them through the websites and started to meet with them.”
For obvious reasons, the night movers and their clients weren’t keen to be shown on camera. They went to great lengths to vanish and didn’t want filmmakers prising them back out into the open.
“They don’t want to expose themselves to the media, especially the Japanese media, too much,” Hartmann recalls. “Our first meeting was a very secret meeting in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Yokohama. We had a very anonymous meeting with one of these night movers – and she ended up being one of the main characters in the film.”
Gradually, the directors gained the respect of their subjects. Even so, they had to promise that their film would not be shown in Japanese cinemas, TV or streaming services. (The challenge now is to stop it leaking).
“I think that’s a great pity,” Mori laments. “This subject, it is not only for an international audience. Actually, this is something Japanese people should be aware of.”
At least, they hope to screen the documentary privately for the subjects.
The filmmakers also met some of the relatives of the disappeared people. These relatives were desperate to find out what had happened to their loved ones but when they tried to investigate, they ran into the very strict Japanese data protections laws. If the police had information about where a missing person was hiding, they weren’t allowed to share it. As Mori puts it, the relatives were “ignored and abandoned.”
Hartmann describes Into Thin Air as “an emotional human drama film.” It’s not intended as a dry investigative documentary. The director talks of trying to “understand what it means when you run away – but also what it means when you are left behind.”
The directors received their first research funding for the project back in 2017. There were many logistical hurdles to overcome. Hartmann doesn’t speak Japanese. During the pandemic, he wasn’t allowed into Japan. The documentary took a long time to complete. One advantage, though, was that the longer the filmmakers worked on the film, the closer they became to the subjects.
“It was a kind of special collaboration. They also wanted to participate in this film to tell their own stories which otherwise they couldn’t tell,” Mori suggests.
Into Thin Air uses different visual styles, Some scenes are shot in traditional verité style. Others are filmed in a more poetic way. At one stage, for example, we see a character in a laundromat, his face reflected in the glass door of a washing machine.
It was a struggle to come up with a structure. This is a story about characters living very fractured lives. Hartmann acknowledges that editing was very complicated. They filmed multiple characters (some of whom didn’t make it into the final cut).
The martial drum rolls on the sound track helped give the documentary a dramatic intensity. It was a suggestion of the editor, Kai Eiermann. At first, the directors were reluctant to adopt it. As Mori notes, in Japanese films, the use of drums can become clichéd. Filmmakers from Kurosawa to Imamura have filled their work with these kinds of sounds and so have many others.
Soon, though, Mori and Hartmann started to work with percussionist Mika Takehara in collaboration with German composer, Jana Irmert. “We thought it was a great combination, these two styles of music, drum which really creates a tension and draws an audience into the film with the spacious atmospheric sounds of Jana Irmert which are more contemplative.”
Into Thin Air includes moments of adrenalin-driven panic and tension when the night movers are picking up new ‘clients’ who are fleeing their old lives.
“Of course, it was not easy,” Mori recalls. “Andreas was shooting and I was sitting in the car, communicating with the night mover and her assistant. Obviously, for us, it was unexpected. We didn’t want know what would happen. Obviously a guy came [running] out of the house and we took him to a safe place. We tried our best to capture this moment. That scene was very important for us, to really show the moment of a disappearance. We really needed that scene.”
The project has travelled widely. It was first pitched at DOK.fest Munich in 2019 and then at DOK Leipzig. This helped them find broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, ARTE, SRF Swiss Radio and Television & yesDocu. They went back to DOK Leipzig in 2023 for a work in progress screening and that’s where sales agent CAT&Docs came on board.
After Thessaloniki, the film will screen at CPH:DOX. Several other festivals will follow. German theatrical distribution is being handled by Real Fiction who will release the film in the autumn. Then, in 2025, it will surface on ARTE and other broadcasters.
