Kamataki

Kamataki is a Canadian-Japanese co-produced drama film, directed by Claude Gagnon and released in 2005. The film stars Matthew Smiley as Ken-Antoine, a young Canadian man of mixed Japanese and European descent from Montreal who is distraught over the recent death of his father, and who is sent to live with his uncle Takuma (Tatsuya Fuji) in Japan after a suicide attempt. Takuma, a master craftsman in traditional Japanese pottery, consumes alcohol heavily and navigates casual sexual relationships with several different women, thus confounding many of Ken-Antoine's expectations; nevertheless, Ken-Antoine finds new meaning and purpose in life through his developing relationship with his uncle and his reconnection with his Japanese heritage. The film's cast also includes Naho Watanabe, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Lisle Wilkerson and Christopher Heyerdahl. Production According to Gagnon, the film was originally inspired by the fact that his own daughter had at least six of her school friends commit suicide while she was a teenager. The original draft of the screenplay, written in the 1990s, did not incorporate the Japanese aspect, with the uncle instead being a painter to be played by Anthony Quinn; however, as Quinn was elderly and in poor health at that time, Gagnon had difficulty securing production funding and was eventually forced into bankruptcy after having to invest his own money in the film. After rebuilding his career and financial stability through other writing, directing and acting work, he rewrote the film's screenplay and commenced production in the 2000s.