Actor Ryunosuke Kamiki stars in the TBS Sunday Theatre drama "Diamonds in the Sea" (Sundays at 9pm). Set on Hashima Island (Battleship Island) in Nagasaki Prefecture, which developed through coal mining from the beginning of the Meiji era to the postwar high economic growth period, and in modern-day Tokyo, the drama tells the story of love, friendship and family spanning 70 years. It is the first attempt to film Hashima in a serial drama. We spoke to screenwriter Akiko Nogi and director Ayuko Tsukahara about the behind-the-scenes production of the drama.
◇Director Keishi Hayashi of "Idaten" cooperated with the interview
The story depicts the "era of nothing but dreams and vitality" from the postwar reconstruction period to the high economic growth period, and the "era of today when at first glance there is everything but young people cannot have dreams." The drama is produced by the team behind the dramas "Unnatural" and "MIU404" (same network) and the movie "The Last Mile," with screenwriter Nogi, director Tsukahara and producer Junko Arai.
--I heard that you conducted a lot of research in order to produce this drama.
Nogi: To write the script, I spent about a year doing research starting from last summer. Tsukahara-san and producer Arai (Junko) were working on other projects, so it was difficult for them to participate in the research beforehand, but I really wanted to avoid writing the story without being able to do enough research, and there is a limit to what one person can do, so I asked Nagasaki-born director Hayashi Keishi (Idaten: Tokyo Olympic Banashi, etc.) to help me.
I actually visited Nagasaki to interview former islanders, and most of them were in their 80s and spoke in the Nagasaki dialect, so I think it would have been very difficult for me to do the research alone as an outsider with no knowledge of the area. Without Hayashi-san, this film would not have been possible.
--When did you first visit Hashima?
Nogi: Actually, I had visited Hashima once on a private motorcycle trip before it was registered as a World Heritage Site. At the time, it had not yet become a tourist destination, and there was no Gunkanjima Museum. So I only landed on the island.
The second time, I happened to visit with Arai and was able to listen to a guide from a former islander, and I felt that this could be a drama. There was no water source on the island, so life was very difficult, and they lived in an environment that is unthinkable today. I wondered how people living today would view the people who survived in such a situation. This project was born because I visited with Arai at that time.
--Hashima Island was home to Japan's first reinforced concrete housing complex. What were your impressions of the buildings and other things?
Nogi: It's really dilapidated now, but the concrete blocks remain firmly in place, and the visual impact was amazing. However, to recreate the scenery of Hashima Island at that time for a drama, it is necessary to find similar places all over Japan and combine them... and Tsukahara is struggling, saying, "There are no similar places in the first place!"
Tsukahara: That's right. I have looked for locations for many of my previous works, but this time it is especially troubling. In terms of size, Hashima Island was a place where various facilities were condensed into an area about the size of Shinjuku Station, and about 5,000 people lived together. Such a special place doesn't exist in the modern world, so no matter where we film, we have to add something to make it work.
◇Director Tsukahara takes on new CG filming
--This is a work that has a very high hurdle to overcome when it comes to filming.
Nogi: We always have a strong team that can make any difficult scene work, but this time it seems like they're really struggling. We were like, "This is impossible..." for each and every heading (the part of the script that specifies the location and time of the scene), and it was the first time we were so overwhelmed (laughs).
Tsukahara: In the film, there is a shrine at the top of the island, and filming there was the most difficult part. Even if we built a shrine set at the top of the island in the same way, we had to add the houses of Hashima that appear in the background with CG. Furthermore, we had to recreate the "greenery-less Hashima" of the 1950s, but there is no isolated island without greenery in Japan today (laughs). We somehow overcome such difficult challenges every day.
--What kind of ingenuity do you actually use in filming?
Tsukahara: Currently, only the ruins can be filmed on Hashima Island, so in this film we have used CG technology to recreate it. When recreating Hashima from an aerial angle, parts of the set are pasted into the footage. The island is divided into about 15 pieces, which are fitted into the circular island like Lego blocks, and then a drone shoots modern-day Hashima to show the whole view.
Nogi: I heard that when shooting the island scenes in real life, they don't just look for the island itself, but rather look for the necessary parts, such as the port and streets, and combine them...I think they've really started something difficult.
Tsukahara: The challenge on set this time was how to proceed as reasonably and quickly as possible while using CG. Usually, the main subject is filmed against a green screen and the CG is composited later, but that takes a lot of time and money. It would be impossible to keep up with the production speed of 10 serial dramas.
So this time, we tried a method of first creating CG to match the dimensions of the current Hashima island, and then filming on site at the same angle. Due to time and budgetary constraints, it has been difficult to create dynamic images using CG in a serial drama series, but if this method works, I have a faint hope that it will be a pioneer of new filming techniques in the future. In a sense, this is a new challenge project, so I would be happy if you could keep an eye on it. It's difficult because Nogi-san writes various things one after another... (laughs).
Nogi: He says, "Just write it," so I just write it! (laughs) After that, I consult with Tsukahara-san and I have made many corrections...
Tsukahara: Whenever the art department sees a new script, they first spread out the lineup and check the headings, but when a new heading comes up, they close the script, look up at the sky, take a breath, and ask, "Where are we going to do this...?" (laughs). We all rack our brains, saying, "Let's think about it!" But we overcame "The Last Mile" with the same team, so I believe we can do this one too!
Nogi: The script is complete, but we're shooting all over Japan to create a landscape that doesn't exist in the present day, so we need to work efficiently to avoid running out of time. In such a tough shooting location, the staff is running around trying to make the footage, and with Tsukahara, the general director, at the helm, everyone is working together to make the film. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Hashima, a small piece of land lined with skyscrapers and the most densely populated island in the world at the time, will be portrayed.
--In your works, you often focus on things that are usually overlooked, but how do you portray them in this film?
Nogi: What I felt while doing the interviews was the "love for Hashima" of the former islanders. Everyone talks about the hardships of those days, but they are proud to be from Hashima. On the other hand, I heard that some people have been hiding their origins for decades. It was a time when we couldn't survive without coal, but there was still discriminatory views towards coal mining in general. This perspective is naturally what motivates the protagonist Teppei to cherish his hometown of Hashima, so we portray it in the drama as it is.
Tsukahara: This work captures occupational discrimination in the age of the energy revolution, but unfortunately, occupational discrimination and prejudice exist in the past and present. However, it is sad for those who take pride in their work. Every occupation must have its keys to being proud of your occupation, such as the colleagues you work with and the joy of seeing things through. With that in mind, I think one answer lies in the expressions on the faces of the people who lived on the mining island depicted in this work. I wanted to portray "pride in one's occupation" in a way that conveys this gently.
Nogi: Many of the episodes in this work are based on research, but each character is not modeled after a specific person. Since it is purely fiction, fictional events do occur. I hope that you will enjoy this ensemble drama that depicts the people who live there, based on the historical facts of Hashima from 1955 to the closure of the mine.
