story
In the summer of her 15th year, Natsume, a popular model, moves from Tokyo to a country town. In this town, where she was fed up with boredom, Natsume encounters a "spark" that pierces through her body, something she had been seeking for a long time. It was a boy called Koh. He is the heir to a family of Shinto priests who rule the town. Natsume is repelled by his arrogance, but is strongly attracted to him. Ko also senses in Natsume's beauty an "invincible power" similar to his own, and the two begin dating.
But the happy days are smashed by a tragedy that occurred on the day of the fire festival.
As a high school student, Natsume stays away from the entertainment world, and Koh leads a rough life. One day, Natsume, driven by a long-suppressed infatuation, pursues Ko and expresses her feelings for him, but Ko rejects Natsume with cruelty and coldness. When Natsume regains her smile with the support of Otomo, Ko's best friend, she is offered a chance to star in a "much talked-about" movie.
Natsume faces her dream once again and wishes to see Ko again. To overcome the tragedy of that day together, and to confirm Ko's true feelings...

From aspiring philosophical researcher to film director.

-I am a little puzzled by the gap between the image and the words of the film, which give the impression of a sharp and brilliant mind, and the soft and fragile impression of Mr. Yamato himself (laugh).

Yamato:(Laughs). My friends usually ask me, "How are you doing on the set? Are you okay?" But in fact, when I get on set, I am exactly the same. I am often told that my voice is not so loud when I say, "Yoi, start!

-When I saw your work, my first thought was that if you have such an excellent sense of images and words, you could have been a photographer, a writer, or any number of other possibilities. What made you decide to become a film director in the first place?

Yamato:In college (Sophia University), I was ahead of my time in the philosophy department and thought I would become a philosophy researcher.

-I was in the same department at the same university, although from a completely different generation, so I know the atmosphere of that environment well enough to grasp it, but to become a philosophy researcher there is quite an oddity (laughs).

Yamato:But it was comfortable. It was an environment where I felt isolated from my surroundings, even though it was in the middle of a city. I was thinking that I would probably continue my research in philosophy here, but then a girl who happened to sit next to me in English class asked me if I wanted to join the Eiken group. She asked me to join her. At the time, there were many popular film clubs on campus that made commercials and music videos, but the Film Society, which had existed for a long time, was barely functioning, as if only the club room remained. That was the end of my sophomore year, and when I recruited for the new semester of my junior year, for some reason, more than 2 or 3 dozen new students, all girls, showed up. I looked at those sparkling first-year girls and thought, "I've got to take some pictures of them.

-External factors were significant.

Yamato:Yes, it really was. I wrote the script as it was and shot one film after the summer break. I had studied philosophy up to that point and had come to feel the limitation of words coming from a single person, but in a film, for example, there are coincidences, otherness, and externality that you cannot control, such as an old man who was filmed as a passerby looking at you. That's something new. That was very new to me. In my first film, "Ano Musume Dancing on the Beach," the scene at the end was actually a scene in which I was staring at the camera with sadness in my eyes. But a girl in my class who was playing that role couldn't stand the sadness of the scene, so she laughed. In the end, that cut was so good that we ended up using it as the last scene. I thought, "If it's this interesting, I want to make another film. That was the beginning of everything.

-So you were not a particular movie buff before then?

Yamato:I also liked music, manga, and theater. I like music, manga, and theater, but movies were not special among them. It wasn't until I started making films that I really began to watch films with enthusiasm. But what I still remember well is that when I was in the 6th grade, I happened to watch "Mezamashi TV" and they were showing "All About Lily Chou-Chou" directed by Shunji Iwai. When I saw the shot of a boy or a girl wearing headphones standing in a rice paddy...I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl...but when I saw the shot of that one person standing there, I thought, "Something's wrong! I was so excited. When I finally saw the film in the first year of junior high school, I thought to myself, "If there is such an amazing expression in this world, I will never make a film. On the contrary, it was such a shock to me that it made me move away from movies.

A talent that even makes Nana Komatsu say, "It's so frustrating.

-I think the theme of "The Drowning Knife" is "THE WORLD IS MINE," as expressed in the line between Natsume and Koichiro used in the trailer. There is no basis for anything there, but it captures the moment of adolescence when you feel that "the world is your own. And it is this sense of "THE WORLD IS MINE" that I sense in your work.

Yamato:Ah, you may be right. When I was filming "That Girl Dancing on the Beach" during my summer vacation in college, I had no basis in fact, but I thought, "I want all the girls in Japan to see this film. There was no way it would actually come to that situation, though. I always thought that way when I was shooting the film. So far, the setting of each film has been getting bigger and bigger, so I don't feel that I crossed a certain line with "The Drowning Knife," but rather that it has been spiraling and getting bigger and bigger. I feel as if the filming of each film will become more difficult than the one before it, and that it will continue like this for a long time. It's just a feeling I have, but I don't think it's because I'm in a transitional period; I think it's because this might continue for the rest of my life.

-I see. You mention it casually, but you have great confidence. At this rate of growth, it will be extraordinary in a few years.

Yamato:(Laughs.) Well, it certainly will.

-The other day, I asked Nana Komatsu about this film in another interview, and her impression when she saw the film was "frustrating. When she saw the film, she said, "It's frustrating." She meant that she was surprised that a woman in her 20s could make a film like this. I was really impressed that the director could make the lead actress say that.

Yamato:Yes? Komatsu-san, that's... that's nice to hear!

-I think that is because you shoot your films with such absolute confidence. Even if we exclude the condition that she is a young female director, I don't think there are that many directors like her in Japan today. But I think that expressing something to people is rude to the recipient unless you have that kind of confidence.

Yamato:It is very strange that when people who know me well watch my films, they say, "You really are just like that. Unlike novels and manga, films are expressed through the bodies of other people, so my films are far away from myself. I think Nana Komatsu is the most beautiful girl in Japan right now, but....

-I guess so (laughs).

Yamato:She is very aesthetically pleasing in her photographs, but they are not just photogenic, they are too amazing as raw bodies. There is a power to her that even makes me think that her awesomeness is not being fully realized. She is really beautiful in motion. When I saw her in front of me, there was no way I could, as an animal instinct, project myself onto her. But when the film is actually completed, it becomes an expression of myself, which is perhaps the interesting thing about film.

Taking pictures of boys, listening to music in the oppressive countryside.

-I was also pleasantly surprised to see that director Yamato's previous works had a strong image of "girls," but in this film, he also shot some very attractive "boys" such as Masaki Sugata and Daiki Shigeoka.

Yamato:Of course, I love shooting "girls," and we have talked about it a lot in past interviews, but I really think that the reason I have shot only "girls" in the past - and this is exactly what I did in the first film I shot with an all-girl circle - is purely situational, because I was first blessed with the opportunity to shoot such works. I think that was a big part of the reason why I have shot only "girls" so far.

-You have not arbitrarily taken pictures of the girls.

Yamato:That's right. However, in this film, I felt like I was shooting with the passionate gazes of girls all over Japan behind my back, whether I was shooting Mr. Sugata or Mr. Shigeoka. I knew I had to capture their appearance in a way that would satisfy the girls. I had to capture them in a way that they would be convinced, not just nodding their heads and saying, "Oh, yes, that's what they want. I wanted them to be surprised at the brilliance of the work, but also to be convinced that "Yes, yes, that's how he really is! I hope people will be surprised by his brilliance and be convinced by his true self. So I am looking forward to going to the theater when the movie comes out. I can't wait to see it with the girls in the audience and see how they react.

-In addition to the theme song by the Dresscodes (Ryohei Shima also appears in the film), songs by Yasuko Omori and tofubeats are used in a very impressive way in this film. Music has always played a very important role in your films, hasn't it?

Yamato:In the countryside where I spent my high school years, everyone used to listen to music on MDs with earphones on their way to school. The countryside is very repressive, so the only time I felt free was when I was listening to music. For me, I even feel that my memories are preserved in the music I used to listen to back then, rather than in the friends I had back then. That is why I used music by Yasuko Omori and tofubeats in this film, because I thought that this kind of music might be heard in the place where the characters in this film and the world we live in blend together. I shot this film in the summer of 2015, and I wanted the music to sound like the memories of the characters when they look back on the summer of 10 years ago in 2025. It is not music that accompanies the real-time emotions of the characters, but music that looks back from the future and sounds in that nostalgia.

Someday he will remake the film himself in Hollywood.

-I am sure that "The Drowning Knife" will undoubtedly draw even more attention to the talents of Director Yamato.

Yamato:Basically, this kind of interview is difficult to conduct unless you have a strong will and control the world with that will, so I try to force myself to put it into words.

-I guess so (laughs).

Yamato:To be very honest, I think that the work of a film director is very much influenced by external influences. In order for a film to be successful, it needs a variety of things, such as the current trends of the time and the right subject matter at that time.

-I don't think that Director Yamato's current success is at all due to his ability to get around in the world (laughs). He doesn't look like that type at all, and I think he has successfully proven with "The Drowning Knife" that no matter how major the subject matter and how many major actors he works with, he is still a director who can demonstrate the same or even stronger auteuristic skills than he did with his independent films.

Yamato:You've seen right through me, thank you (laughs). Yes. ...... Oh, I had one ambition, one ambition!　This time "The Drowning Knife" was really tough on the set, both in terms of the shooting period and the production situation, and I got covered in scars there, but because I was able to make a fresh work like this, I would like to go to Hollywood one day and do a perfect remake there myself. When I told this dream to George Asakura, the author of the original work, he said, "What? He laughed and said, "You don't seem like you'd really do it. He laughed and said, "You're really going to do it. I will continue to work on one film at a time in Japan, and I really hope that one day I will be able to make that happen (laughs).