Bright Midnight in the Fake Japan

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Mika Martineau in Netflix’s Kate

Kate (no last name) stalks Tokyo’s midnight streets, enforcing terminal contracts on behalf of… someone, it’s never made particularly clear. Despite her gaijin status, she’s become one of Japan’s top contract killers, available on a moment’s notice. Until, that is, someone slips her a lethal dose of radioactive poison during her latest caper. With mere hours to live, Kate has to find her killer and exact her revenge.

What exactly about Japan makes filmmakers believe round-eyes develop superpowers? This isn’t the first movie I’ve watched where the creative team thinks a White character wanders into a world of paper houses and Armani-clad assassins, and begins moving fast enough to dodge bullets. The White Euro-American fetish for Japan as a land of comic-book exaggeration worked when it only happened occasionally, but now, it’s become cliché, bordering on racism.

Netflix’s Kate is merely the latest Western movie I’ve watched that depicts Japan generally, and Tokyo specifically, as a manifestation of anime excess. Like Kill Bill and The Wolverine before it, Kate’s Tokyo teems with bright colors suffused against a background of steel-framed technocratic excess; in several scenes, anime scenes are literally projected onto the surfaces of gleaming skyscrapers. This, of course, when Kate isn’t barging into tatami-mat paper houses.

We’ve seen movies like this before. The tall, unflappable protagonist strides, god-like, through a world of highly choreographed violence, and somehow never gets hurt badly enough to stop her. In substance, Kate is neither revolutionary nor controversial. It’s just another Western attempt to recreate the magic of John Woo “gun-fu” thrillers like Hard Boiled and A Better Tomorrow. It’s silly and grotesque, but not particularly dangerous.

The parts that frustrate me appear in the background. Kate’s Tokyo is always night, and frequently rainy; the movie’s only visible daylight occurs in the prologue scene, in Osaka. (Even then it’s overcast, and the wet pavement suggests recent drizzle.) The blackened midnight gloom is anything but dark, however, as oversaturated neon colors occur everywhere, from the backlit advertisements littering every street, to the kids’ brightly painted hair and clothes.

Hugh Jackman in James Mangold’s The Wolverine

I’m reminded of James Mangold’s The Wolverine. Though Mangold permits Japan more daylight, multiple important scenes occur in color-soaked midnight. Mangold repeatedly frames scenes so traditional rice-paper houses and cherry-blossom landscapes exist in the foreground, against a skyline of glass-and-steel skyscrapers. Even Hiroshima, for Mangold, becomes a moment of transcendent glory. Mangold’s Japan, like Kate's, is a deliberate mix of Orientalist exoticism and excessive modernity, the hungry Japanophile’s dream landscape.

And, like Kate, Mangold’s Logan engages in battles that only make sense if we pretend we aren't’ aware of flight rigs and fight choreographers. The characters feel compelled to engage in hand-to-hand combat, or even ritualized swordfights, despite everyone carrying fully automatic guns in armpit holsters. Throughout these battles, the White hero never gets hurt, not badly enough to stop fighting anyway, while sharp-suited Yakuza extras die like flies.

At least Mangold’s White hero has literal superpowers: a healing factor, metal skeleton, and retractable claws. Logan’s inability to suffer real pain makes sense, within the character’s X-Men context. Kate somehow suffers advanced radiation poisoning, multiple bullet wounds, fall injuries, and plain old exhaustion, yet nevertheless keeps killing anyone who challenges her. Because of course she does, she’s a White gunslinger in Japan.

Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill

I’m reminded of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, in which the nameless antihero apparently gains killing power by purchasing a katana. Throughout the movies, Uma Thurman’s “The Bride” character slaughters every challenger, apparently because her sword gives her superpowers. Historically, katanas were made of pig iron and, despite Western myths, were actually cheap swords for soldiers. But give a katana to a White woman, and she apparently becomes Death incarnate.

These movies share the mythological backstory of ancient Bushido traditions kept alive amid technocratic modernism, an oversaturation of colors, and a warrior ethos. Japan, for action filmmakers, isn’t a place; it’s an ethical situation into which they ship White characters. Like Neverland or Narnia, Japan becomes a place where laws of physics are suspended and death is paused, so White people can test their mettle and emerge renewed.

Ultimately, these stories, with their White protagonists and dreamlike settings, aren’t really Japanese. For too many White filmmakers, Japan isn’t a place where people live and work and aspire and die; it’s a color-soaked fairyland. It becomes a recipient of Western ideals of magic and transcendence, stripped of anything authentically Japanese. It becomes a cartoon, in the worst sense. Maybe it’s time for Westerners to give Japan back.