Plenty of Japanese directors make films about socially awkward or marginal guys: Given all the on-screen examples (as well as their many real-life inspirations), it seems that the onetime country of the samurai has become the land of the otaku and freeter (unemployed or underemployed), clasping to emotional childhood and/or the economic bottom rungs.
Shuichi Okita has also focused on nonmainstream men in his three features to date: the perfectionist Antarctic base-camp cook of 2009¡¯s ¡°Nankyoku Ryorinin (The Chef of South Polar),¡± the nervous tyro film director of 2011¡¯s ¡°Kitsutsuki to Ame (The Woodsman and the Rain)¡± and the eponymous hick hero of his latest, ¡°Yokomichi Yonosuke (A Story of Yonosuke).¡± Okita may have his gentle if comically pointed fun with them, but ultimately he is more interested in their not-immediately-obvious strengths.
Also, despite their feel-good elements, his films are not simplistic crowd-pleasers. Instead Okita avoids obvious messages, while opting for methods that may be unusual in their indirectness but are never obscure.
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