Why Japan and Why Alone?

How could I have been so naive?

I knew exactly how a documentary was supposed to happen– the pitch, the research, the fixers, pre-interviews and a full script, then a "talent" and five-man camera crew with two tons of equipment and ten days to rush from one location to the next, trailing cables and lights and a huge crowd of curious locals. A couple of hours to get some country’s thousand-year-old tradition in the can and then off to the next place on the schedule, and too many beers in the hotel bar at the end of the day.
I wanted something – different. To make an adventure documentary where the adventure was completely true to life and the camera just came along for the ride. No five-man crew, no fixers, and no security to hold back the crowds. In fact, no crowds at all, because there would be nothing to see. Just me.

And I knew just where I wanted to go – Japan. The country had captivated me ever since I first took up judo, over a decade ago. After several years I began to realize that if I was truly going to master the sport, I’d have to understand the culture that it came from. Japan was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, an Escher painting of convoluted contradictions. Few foreigners had managed to get behind the tatamae – the carefully powdered face that Japan presents to the world. Nobody had ever caught it on film. I thought, naively, that if I just learned the language, stayed long enough, and was sincere enough, then I might be the one.

But judo was more than just a personal obsession – it was my secret weapon.

I hoped to use it as a wedge to pry the door open wide enough for me to slip through and – hopefully – blend in. But I was 34 and the judo mats weren’t getting any softer. I wasn’t bouncing nearly as well as I had in my twenties, and the injuries were piling up. And Japanese tatami, I had heard, was a thin sheet of plastic laid over cement. It was now or never.

The Discovery Channel never answered any of my queries. PBS was putting all their money into children’s programming. National Geographic was interested, but I quickly ran athwart their rules – namely, that they allowed no more than 5 weeks in the field to film an hour’s documentary. Five weeks! I couldn’t begin to learn the language, join a monastery or find my way into Kyoto’s geisha community in so short a time. I offered to stretch a one-month budget into a year, by eating Ramin noodles and sleeping on the sidewalk, if necessary. They wouldn’t budge.

I almost gave up. I did give up. But then, an idea wormed its way into my brain. It was a foolish, unrealistic thought, the ultimate Walter Mitty fantasy. I could do it on my own – research it, live it, shoot it, write it, edit it, narrate it, produce and direct it – from titles to credits.

I thought about it every waking minute – while I was folding laundry or riding my bicycle or scrubbing the kitchen floor. And then, one day I decided to go out and make it come true.

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