It's been a long while since the Korean Wave first washed through the Japanese entertainment industry and altered the landscape forever. Not a day goes by without a Korean star making an appearance in the Japanese media. DVD rental stores devote huge sections of floor space to hanryū productions.
It seems, however, that this adoration is one-sided; plenty of Korean performers find raging success in Japan, while their Japanese counterparts are rarely invited to work on the peninsula. Full-fledged collaborations are practically unheard of. And this is why "Michi — Hakuji no Hito (Takumi: The Man Beyond Borders)" is a bit of an eyebrow raiser.
Directed by Banmei Takahashi, it's a biopic of Takumi Asakawa (played here by Hisashi Yoshizawa), a Japanese forestry expert and bureaucrat who first went to Korea in 1914 to prevent the Japanese Imperial government from devastating the nation's timber resources. It's a touchy subject all around: Asakawa deliberately went against Japan's imperialist/colonialist policies; in the process, he made many friends among the Korean populace but was alienated from the Japanese community.
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