Director, screenwriter and cinematographer.
In his second blog post, Arnaud Bouquet takes us to Tokyo, Japan's dynamic and enchanting city, to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the documentary series Espèces d'ordures, broadcast this spring on TV5. Through his encounters and experiences, he reveals the city's ecological initiatives, which surprised him and his team. From waste management to social responsibility, these innovative solutions provide food for thought and hope for the future of our planet.
Committed and respectful citizens
To shoot my second episode in the Espèces d'ordures series, I travel with the team to Tokyo, Japan," says the show's co-director. After a long journey, we arrived in the Shinjuku district at dawn. Fascinated by Japanese culture, I decided not to rest and set off to explore the district. A district of several million inhabitants in its own right. My steps lead me to a park with century-old trees, where a temple stands in homage to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. They modernized this country, which for a long time was determined not to abandon its traditional culture, remaining impervious to any foreign influence. But what I notice first is the incredible cleanliness of the park. I'll have the same feeling a little later as I stop at a small counter where you first order your Ramen soup from a ticket machine before being served. The cleanliness and meticulousness with which everything is maintained are obvious.
After excess, good garbage management
And that's what will emerge from our shoot, a sense of civic responsibility towards garbage that sometimes borders on mania. So, when we were lucky enough to do our first shoot on the Shibuya intersection - Tokyo's Times Square - in the middle of the Halloween festivities, we noticed at dawn that not only had the majority of the 40,000 party-goers left with their garbage but that several hundred volunteers were still on hand to clean up the area. We'll be making the same observation throughout the week, even meeting employees who join forces at lunchtime to clean up the streets adjacent to their offices.
Educating the next generation
Visiting an elementary school to film a sequence, we realize that this is a story about education. In Japan, it's the pupils who clean the classrooms and corridors; no maintenance staff is hired for this task. As the school's principal tells us, Shinto and Buddhist traditions teach that cleaning one's living space is also a purification of the soul.
Find out more about the filming of the Espèces d’ordures in Brasil.
Goodbye public garbage cans, welcome accountability
This principle comes to the fore when we note that Tokyo has no public garbage cans on its streets. The world's largest megalopolis went through a traumatic experience in 1995, following a terrorist act organized by a cult. Since then, all garbage cans have disappeared to prevent dangerous packages from being deposited in them. As a result, the city's citizens have taken to keeping their garbage with them, in their pockets or in a bag, so that they can sort it when they get home.
Mission reduction and refusal: lessons from Tokyo
This relationship with waste borders on the artistic, as we'll see when we visit the base of a fleet of dump trucks, each more kawaii - adorable, like many things here - than the next. Trucks that the garbage collectors conscientiously clean every day after their rounds to keep them looking their best. Schuchui, a garbage collector who also works as a comedian, proudly explains this to us. He and his wife have written a manga on the subject of garbage, which has become a bestseller in Japan. They too stress the importance of education. We are reminded, however, that Japan is far from perfect: consumerism is endemic, people buy and consume as they breathe in Tokyo, and all consumer goods - even fruit and vegetables - are over-packaged. A hygienist obsession coupled with an artistic vision, as we even talk about furoshiki, a traditional packaging technique in which the beauty of the container is as important as the content. This is one of the reasons why the country's numerous incinerators are unable to sufficiently reduce the amount of waste going to saturated landfills. The challenge now is to reduce and refuse rather than recycle.
We couldn't escape the temptation to consume throughout the shoot, and at the slightest opportunity, the numerous boutiques were beckoning: on the second day, for example, I fell for a plastic Casio watch like the one I used to wear as a child, realizing after the purchase that these nostalgic beauties are no longer even made in Japan... but in China. Reduce and refuse: we have to repeat this phrase to ourselves like a moral principle derived from bushido, the code studied by samurai warriors.
A creative and moral initiative
And warriors we will meet. The "waste-punishing samurai" we film on the last day. These three street comedians, saddened to see their theatrical activity banned by the authorities because of the garbage abandoned by the public on the sidewalk, have decided to dress up like the famous feudal warriors, replacing katanas - swords - with long tongs with which they pick up garbage on the ground in the streets of Tokyo, following a choreography worthy of a Kurosawa or Takeshi Kitano film. Very popular on social networks, they hope to raise awareness among young people and provoke vocation.
As the sun sets, it's time to head off to another destination. Not without a sake toast to this always stunning country: kampai!
Find out more about the Espèces d'ordures series.
Watch the series trailer.
Director, screenwriter and cinematographer.
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