The third Okinawa International Movie Festival held its opening ceremony on Tues., March 22, after going through a traumatic week in Japan and coming out of it dramatically changed.
In the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, sponsor Yoshimoto Kogyo, an Osaka-based powerhouse in comedy-talent management, considered canceling the festival. Dozens of entertainment events were then being scratched in the name of jishuku (self restraint), and one more cancellation would have struck no one as strange.
But Yoshimoto CEO Hiroshi Osaki decided that, as he put it to the press, Japan needed "not jishuku, but action." Yoshimoto would hold the festival as scheduled, but as a charity event to raise money for the victims and to send them a message of support. Since the latter can be phrased eru o okuru, with "eru" being a katana version of the English "yell," the festival slogan was changed from Laugh and Peace to Yell, Laugh and Peace.