In the sleepy coastal town of Uobuka, the statue of a googly-eyed green sea monster named Nororo towers over a precipice. According to legend, Nororo is an evil presence from the sea and whoever looks into its eyes will be damned. In ancient times, annual sacrifices were made every year during Uobuka’s own Nororo Festival — two villagers would be chosen to jump off the cliff; one would be saved, while the other would sink and drown.
This slice of Japanese folklore is merely an appetizer for the real bizarreness to come in The Scythian Lamb, the latest film by Daihachi Yoshida, which won the prestigious Kim Ji-seok award at last year’s Busan International Film Festival. Based on a manga by Tatsuhiko Yamagami and Mikio Igarashi, this offbeat black comedy is a fine blend of droll humor, drama and romance spread out across a substantial 126-minutes running time.
Tsukisue (Ryo Nishikido) is a city official in charge of a new government resettlement project that grants parole to low-risk prisoners in Uobuka, a coastal town known for its “nice people” and “great seafood.” If these prisoners stay here for 10 years, their sentences will be reduced, and they will be free to go. Tsukisue’s boss believes it is an effective way to kill two birds with one stone: not only will it curtail public costs of keeping inmates, the injection of new blood will simultaneously fight the problem of rapid depopulation in Japan’s rural towns.
photo courtesy of Far East Film Festival
It is soon discovered that these six prisoners, in fact, were convicted of murder, and it’s up to Tsukisue to ensure that their true identities remain concealed to the general townsfolk. But it doesn’t take long before a body washes up on Uobuka, and Tsukisue begins to doubt the seemingly reformed ways of the new residents.
Yoshida continues his trademark of whimsical genre hybrids with The Scythian Lamb, though his latest feature is considerably toned down compared to previous works such as The Kirishima Thing.
We are introduced to a colorful, motley crew of flawed characters, including the likes of jittery barber Fukumoto (Shingo Mizusawa), who slit his ex-boss’s throat with a razor, the sexy Ota (Yuka), who finds love again in Tsukisue’s elderly father, former Yakuza member Ono (Min Tanaka), the questionable Sugiyama (Kazuki Kitamura) and the courteous and placid Miyakoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda), who begins dating Tsukisue’s surly crush Aya (Fumino Kimura).
photo courtesy of Far East Film Festival
For a bunch of stock prisoners defined by the same cold-blooded crime, Yoshida has done well to craft distinctive personalities for each individual, alongside humanistic backstories capable of inducing pathos. With that, it’s even more of a pity that equal character development is not followed through across the board — the terrific Mikako Ichikawa is sorely underused as an ex-victim of relationship abuse, and a recluse who buries dead animals in the soil of her backyard.
Buoyed by a rock soundtrack with bewitching guitar riffs, The Scythian Lamb unfolds with an unhurried pace that often lulls the audience into a false sense of security before the rug is pulled out from underneath. Tonal shifts are skilfully executed, with dramatic tension ratcheted up in the second half of the film, alongside bouts of chilling violence dished out in a casual, low-key fashion.
Drawing on elements of an animal fable, The Scythian Lamb refers to the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, a zoophyte believed to grow sheep as its fruit. The sheep were connected to a plant by an umbilical cord, and once they had finished grazing on the surrounding greens, both sheep and plant would perish.
Some interesting questions about the mutability of human nature and the deceptiveness of appearances are also raised: Can a leopard really change its spots? Should we grant second chances to sinners? Does karma really exist?
The omnipresence of Nororo and the exploration of the rituals in a small-town festival further ground the narrative in the mystical and mundane, creating an intriguing world far detached from reality.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
For many people, Bilingual Nation 2030 begins and ends in the classroom. Since the policy was launched in 2018, the debate has centered on students, teachers and the pressure placed on schools. Yet the policy was never solely about English education. The government’s official plan also calls for bilingualization in Taiwan’s government services, laws and regulations, and living environment. The goal is to make Taiwan more inclusive and accessible to international enterprises and talent and better prepared for global economic and trade conditions. After eight years, that grand vision is due for a pulse check. RULES THAT CAN BE READ For Harper Chen (陳虹宇), an adviser
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