Ren Kujo to Play a Window-Room Reporter — New Film 'Shiozakai' Begins
A quiet actor will play a quiet reporter. Star Mist Pictures announced on the 1st that it is producing a new film, 'Shiozakai' ('Where the Tides Meet'), about a newspaper reporter who keeps watch at a window room, with Ren Kujo, 34, cast in the lead. It marks the feature directorial debut of veteran screenwriter Shoko Miyoshi, 42, with a release targeted for next spring.
A quiet actor will play a quiet reporter. Star Mist Pictures held a press conference at a Kyobashi hotel on the afternoon of the 1st to announce a new film, "Shiozakai," about a fictional newspaper reporter who spends long hours at a window room, caught between endlessly watching another world and being unable to change anything in it. Lead actor Ren Kujo told reporters, "I'd never played a reporter before. Reading the script, once I realized how few lines the role had, it actually put me at ease." As is customary, he spoke exactly three sentences at the event.
Shoko Miyoshi, 42, a screenwriter with more than ten credits already to her name, makes her feature directorial debut with the film. "Reading the Dimensional Survey pages, I felt like I'd found the shape of journalism itself in the sadness of a position where all you can do is watch and nothing more. That's why I made a reporter the protagonist," Miyoshi said of the project's origin. She also wrote the script herself; the title, "Shiozakai," refers to a boundary where two bodies of water meet without ever mixing.
As previously reported, Kujo announced his marriage in September to actress Hikari Shinomiya, 27, his co-star on "The House by the Window," and the proximity of their planned spring wedding to the film's release became a topic at the press conference. Kujo answered briefly, "I'm taking the wedding just as seriously as the script," drawing laughter from the room. Filming is set to begin in mid-month on a Fukagawa set built to echo the silhouette of the observation rig off Haneda, with all window-room interior scenes shot entirely on set. "I have no intention of showing the other side on screen. I only want to film what a reporter thinks, standing in front of the glass," Miyoshi said, describing an approach that mirrors the Dimensional Survey pages' own principle of not showing too much.
A Dimensional Survey Division spokesperson, also invited to the event, commented, "We have no particular objection to the window room being depicted as fiction. We hope people enjoy it as something separate from the actual work of our window keepers." One staffer at Window 1's window room said, "It was strange to see our work seen that way. There were lines in the script I found myself nodding along to." Distribution, a joint release with Kyobashi Pictures, is planned nationwide next spring.
