Side Job.
彼女の人生は間違いじゃない
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Weekdays she works in a Fukushima town hall; weekends she takes the bus to Tokyo to do 'delivery health' — after the tsunami.
Five years after the 2011 disaster, Miyuki Kanazawa lives with her father, Osamu, in temporary housing in Iwaki, Fukushima. Her mother was taken by the tsunami and her body never found. Osamu, a farmer whose fields were ruined by radioactive contamination, spends his compensation money on pachinko and his evenings drinking and talking about his wife. On weekdays Miyuki works at the city office. At weekends she takes the highway bus to Tokyo, puts on make-up in a station toilet and goes to Shibuya, where, under the name Yuki, she works for an escort service. Her father thinks she is taking English lessons. Miura, the young man who hired her, drives her to hotels and comes when a client turns violent.
Her former boyfriend, Kenta, wants to start again. After the disaster, crushed by guilt at having survived, he hurt her with a thoughtless remark. When he waits for her at the housing complex, she takes him to a hotel and tells him about her work. He still wants her. She realises that she is the one who cannot, and leaves. Her colleague Nitta cannot answer a Tokyo student's questions about the disaster; his family survived, but his father's factory was washed away and his home has come apart. With Saori, a photographer who shot the area before the disaster, he and Miyuki mount an exhibition of what was lost. Stung by Miyuki's anger, Osamu comes home early from pachinko one day and stops a neighbour, whose husband works at the nuclear plant, from taking her own life; from then on he stops drinking.
Then, with a temporary permit, Osamu enters the restricted zone and visits their house for the first time, gathers his wife's clothes, and with a fisherman friend takes them out to sea and throws them into the water so that she will not be cold. In Shibuya, Miyuki learns that Miura has quit to concentrate on acting. She watches his play and walks away smiling. Back in Iwaki she buys a puppy and tells her father she found it abandoned. He takes it in his arms. Miura sends a picture of his newborn twins, and Osamu begins to work a field again.
Starring
Kumi Takiuchias Miyuki Kanazawa
A city-office worker in Iwaki who lost her mother to the tsunami and spends her weekends working for an escort service in Tokyo, telling no one.
Miyuki Kanazawa’s story
Miyuki works at the Iwaki city office on weekdays; at weekends, for two years, she has taken the bus to Tokyo to work for a Shibuya escort agency as Yuki, while her father thinks she is learning English. When a client hits her, Miura, the driver, comes. Kenta, the former boyfriend who hurt her with a thoughtless remark after the disaster, wants her back; she takes him to a hotel and tells him about her work, and when he still wants her, she finds she is the one who cannot, and leaves. She rages at her father over the pachinko, and with her colleague Nitta mounts an exhibition of what was lost. When Miura quits to act, she watches his play and walks away smiling. Back in Iwaki she buys a puppy and tells her father she found it abandoned.
Ken Mitsuishias Osamu Kanazawa
Miyuki's father, a farmer who lost his wife to the tsunami and his land to contamination, drifting through pachinko and drink.
Osamu Kanazawa’s story
Osamu farmed until contamination ruined his fields; the tsunami took his wife, and her body has never been found. In temporary housing he feeds his compensation money into pachinko and spends his evenings drinking and talking about his wife. Stung by Miyuki's anger, he leaves pachinko early one day and, coming home, stops a neighbour, the wife of a nuclear-plant worker, from taking her own life. From then on he stops drinking. With a temporary permit he enters the restricted zone, gathers his wife's clothes from their house, and has a fisherman friend take him out to sea, where he throws them into the water, calling out that she must have been cold. When Miyuki brings home a puppy, he takes it in his arms, and he begins to work a field again.
Kengo Koraas Hideaki Miura
The escort agency's driver and minder in Shibuya, who watches over Miyuki and has another life in the theatre.
Tokio Emotoas Hayato Nitta
Miyuki's colleague at the city office, whose family survived the disaster but came apart in the years after.
Atsushi Shinoharaas Kenta Yamamoto
Miyuki's former boyfriend, haunted by guilt at having survived, who once hurt her with a careless remark and wants her back.
Why it matters
Side Job is about the part of recovery that official reports leave out. Five years after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident, a young municipal worker in Iwaki spends her weekdays helping others rebuild and her weekends in Shibuya selling sex, and the film treats that choice neither as a scandal nor as a cry for rescue, but as one way of carrying a grief that has nowhere to go. Around her are the quieter damages: compensation money fed into pachinko, a nuclear worker's family shunned by the neighbours, a family pulled apart by a religious group, a home that can be visited only with a permit. Ryuichi Hiroki, born in Koriyama, Fukushima, filmed his own first novel. The writer-director Haruhiko Arai was not persuaded, saying it leaned too heavily on the disaster. What it offers in the end is small and exact. A father throws his wife's clothes into the cold sea. A daughter brings home a puppy.