Some interviewees - most famously, perhaps, the outspoken British Labour MP, Tony Benn - insist on turning on their own tape recorders when they speak to the media, to ensure they are not misquoted. The Japanese film-maker, Masayuki Suo, went a step further when I interviewed him in London recently. He videotaped the entire interview, took notes along the way while his interpreter translated his quotes, and shot a still photograph of his interviewer when we finished. However, Suo's intentions were rooted not in distrust or paranoia, but in the work of compiling a video documentary and possible a book on the lengthy world tour he has undertaken to promote his charming romantic comedy, Shall We Dance? The movie has been a major hit in its native Japan, where it received 13 of the 14 awards at the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars in 1996, and it was the most commercially successful foreign-language film released in the United States last year.
Its focus is Shohei, a conservative businessman ostensibly happy with his wife and daughter, their newly-acquired home with its own garden, and his job. But he is tired, stressed out, and his life revolves around such a rigid daily routine that he feels unfulfilled. Every day he takes the same train from the same station at the same time - and commuting home every evening, he is drawn by the sight of a melancholy young woman, Mai, looking out the window of a ballroom-dancing studio.
In this humorous and touching story, Shohei eventually plucks up the courage to enrol there. His tentative first steps build to a new confidence on the dance floor and in life, and so changed is his behaviour that his wife, becoming suspicious, hires a private detective to follow him. Although tagged as a Japanese Strictly Ballroom, this "heel-good movie", as one US review described it, is altogether more reserved than that Australian movie, a contrast reflecting the different cultures which produced the movies.
"The Japanese are not known for enjoying themselves," Suo explains. "There is a feeling that to enjoy yourself is not a virtuous thing to do. Our culture teaches us that reining in our emotions is a virtue. It starts in childhood and with the adage: "From the age of seven, seat the sexes apart". Children are defined as boys or girls before they are defined as individuals.
"As the film says at the beginning, married couples don't go out arm in arm, much less say `I love you' in public. The idea that a husband and wife should embrace and dance in front of each other is beyond embarrassing. In Japan, ballroom dancing is viewed with suspicion." In the movie, Shohei embarks on his new life of the cha-cha and the rumba in strictest secrecy, as does a colleague who happens to turn up for lessons at the same studio. "Imagine the office gossip," says his colleague, who wears a wig as part of his transformation into an ace Latin American dancer. To play Shohei, the director chose the versatile Koji Yakusho, who starred in Juzo Itami's witty and mouth-watering Tampopo and played the lead in Shohei Imamura's intense drama, Unagi (The Eel), which shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year.
Suo's imaginative choice to play Mai, the reclusive woman who once sparkled on the floor at a ballroom-dancing championship in Blackpool, was the award-winning ballerina, Tamiyo Takenaka, who makes her film debut in Shall We Dance? "She is so graceful," Suo says. "Everything about her, from the way she stood to the way she moved. It just took a few months' practice for her to perfect an entirely different form of dancing."
Shall We Dance? is Suo's fourth feature film as a director and it was highly anticipated in Japan in the wake of his major popular success with the intriguingly titled Sumo Do, Sumo Don't. "That was the story of a young man who thinks he knows everything about life," Suo smiles. "He's old before his time. Then, for the first time in his life, he has to do something he doesn't want to do - he has to take sumo tests in order to graduate. Through this, he changes his outlook on life."
Sumo Do, Sumo Don't initially attracted a large young audience in Japan but strong reviews and word-of-mouth gradually broadened its audience as more and more adults came to see it. "In Japan it's not just film but all aspects of our culture that are geared towards the youth audience," says Suo. "There are many Japanese intellectuals who refer to Japanese culture as a culture of children. There is now a movement, in which I am involved, to escape from that and reach a more adult audience."
Turning 40 himself, Suo consciously decided to make the central character of his new movie a middle-aged salary-man. "In Japan we have this term, salary-man, and all the stereotypes that go with that, but the fact is that we are all individuals living completely different lives and I wanted to break down that stereotypical salary-man image. "I was thinking along the lines of doing a love story. It took me a while to come up with it until one day when, exactly as in the film, I was on a train going into Tokyo and saw this ballroom-dancing classroom by the station. I began to imagine this middle-aged commuter who looks up at this dancing-school and sees this beautiful woman at the window, and how he might long to dance with her."
As he researched the project, Suo himself took ballroom dancing lessons for six months. "I couldn't say I was very good at it, but I learned the basic steps - and I enjoyed it," he says. "The dancers were mostly middle-aged and there was something about them that inspired me to show a culture where people are embarrassed to dance together that Japanese people can experience the release that music and dance can bring."
Suo says he does not see his films as comedies. "That is part of them, an important part," he says, "but if you set out to capture real life you are sure to capture the tears as well as the laughter - it just happens that way."
In real life, the off-screen story of Shall We Dance? had a happy ending. Shortly after shooting finished on the movie, director Masayuki Suo married his leading actress, Tamiyo Takenaka. "Yes, that was good, that was very good," says Suo, smiling broadly as he switches off his camcorder.
Shall We Dance? opened yesterday at the Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin