The Real Thing
本気のしるし
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
An indecisive man rescues a woman who wrecks every life she enters — four hours of moral drift.
Kazumichi Tsuji is a pleasant, hollow office worker secretly sleeping with two colleagues: Naoko Hosokawa, his senior, and Minako Fujitani, the junior everyone calls Mitchan. One night he saves the life of a stranger, Ukiyo Hayama, when her rental car stalls on a level crossing. She borrows money and does not repay it, gives a false address, and says "I'm sorry" instead of explaining. When a yakuza, Wakita, threatens to sell her to a club over a debt of 1.2 million yen, Tsuji pays it.
Ukiyo is married, with a child. Her husband Tadashi, a car salesman, sold her a car she could not afford, coerced her into sex, got her pregnant and married her; she once attempted a double suicide with a lover. Mitchan sends the company a photograph of Tsuji holding Hosokawa, and Hosokawa is transferred. Tsuji agrees to marry her, then breaks it off to help Ukiyo; Hosokawa, crushed by her family's illness and debts, turns on him in despair. He goes to Tadashi's family to demand Ukiyo's release; when she vanishes, he finds her at a harbour and asks her to live with him.
The calm does not last. Daisuke Mineuchi, the figurehead president of his father's IT company, offers Tsuji a job and reveals that he was the lover in that suicide pact; he wants Ukiyo back. Tsuji quits his own job instead. When scandal hits Mineuchi and he flees a press conference, Ukiyo goes to him, and Tsuji lets her go. Learning that Tsuji lost his job because of her, she realises she loves him, but he has moved out and vanished.
Four years later Ukiyo lives alone, sells health foods, sees her daughter, and is still searching. She pays Wakita two million yen for an address that has burned down, and that night finds Tsuji asleep on a park bench, destitute. She takes him home. He is her destiny, she says; there is no such thing, he answers, and leaves. She follows him and tries to take her own life. He saves her, as he did the first time. She tells him she loves him, asks if they can start again, and they hold each other.
Starring
Win Morisakias Kazumichi Tsuji
A pleasant, empty company man seeing two colleagues at once, who cannot stop rescuing Ukiyo even as it costs him everything.
Kazumichi Tsuji’s story
Tsuji is a pleasant, bored office worker secretly sleeping with two colleagues. After saving Ukiyo on a level crossing he cannot stop saving her: he lends her money she never repays, pays off her debt to a yakuza, and refuses when she invites him to a hotel. He agrees to marry Hosokawa, then breaks it off and is hurt when she turns on him with a knife. He frees Ukiyo from her husband's family, asks her to live with him, and quits his job rather than work for Mineuchi. When she goes to Mineuchi, he lets her go and vanishes. Four years later she finds him sleeping rough in a park. He says there is no such thing as destiny and leaves, but when she tries to take her own life he saves her again, and they hold each other.
Kaoru Tsuchimuraas Ukiyo Hayama
A woman who apologises instead of explaining, bound by debt and a coerced marriage, who leaves trouble wherever she goes.
Ukiyo Hayama’s story
Ukiyo apologises instead of explaining. Her husband, Tadashi, trapped her with a car debt, coerced her into sex and married her when she became pregnant; she once attempted a double suicide with a lover. Saved by Tsuji on a level crossing, she borrows from him and vanishes, lets him pay her debt to a yakuza, and goes back when Tadashi kneels and begs. She lives with Tsuji until Mineuchi, her partner in that pact, flees a press conference and she goes to him. Told that Tsuji lost his job because of her, she finds him gone and realises she loves him. Four years later, still searching, she finds him on a park bench, follows him when he walks away and tries to take her own life. Saved again, she tells him she loves him and asks to start over.
Kei Ishibashias Naoko Hosokawa
Tsuji's senior colleague and secret lover, who hopes to marry him while carrying her family's illness and debts.
Shohei Unoas Tadashi Hayama
Ukiyo's husband, a car salesman who used a debt to trap her into marriage, and who blames Tsuji for her leaving.
Shugo Oshinarias Daisuke Mineuchi
A young company president set up as a figurehead by his father, once Ukiyo's partner in a suicide pact, who wants her back.
Yukiya Kitamuraas Shinichi Wakita
A yakuza who holds Ukiyo's debt and keeps turning up, curious to see what she will do to Tsuji.
Why it matters
The Real Thing takes a figure familiar from men's manga, the fragile, pliant woman who drifts from man to man and ruins each of them, and refuses to leave her as a fantasy. Ukiyo apologises instead of explaining, and the people around her call her a liar, a user, a jinx. The film lets another woman answer: a woman who is pushed until she gives in is only bad at protecting herself, and is that really so wrong? The issues it raises are sexual coercion and debt, the blame placed on women for what men do to them, and a man's boredom that passes for kindness. Made as a ten-part late-night drama for Nagoya TV and re-edited into a film of almost four hours, it was chosen for the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection 2020. It leaves an uneasy question: whether what the two of them find at the end is love, or only a shared pull towards the brink.