Why a female protagonist?
That’s particularly interesting because I think it’s about language … it was the women, sitting in their dark little houses, as basic concubines for the pleasure of men, who were inventing the Japanese language. That’s where it came from, it came from the female writing, not from the male writing. What became Japanese was the privatized language of the country, spoken basically at home. That’s what finally produced the fully fledged language. It was exactly the same in England. This is a very striking film visually: You’re trying things that no other director is trying. I’ve heard you call your approach a version of the television language. What do you mean by that? I’m going to be very jingoistic and nationalistic and say that English television is the best in the world. Through accidents of creation in England we always regarded it as a medium of education, whereas I think most of the world regards TV as basically a medium of entertainment. We can complain bitterly about the conten
