March 2024 will be extra busy for director Kahori Higashi. She is a director rising through the indie ranks who has two films that will be screened in the month. At the end, she will be unveiling Toritsukushima とりつくしま, a film based on a collection of stories written by her mother Naoko (source) but before that, her sophomore feature, Memories of His Scent (2024), will be screened in the Competition section of the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024.
Actually, it was through this festival that I first encountered director Higashi when her works, her feature debut Melting Sounds (Interview), and the short film The Residents were programmed back in 2022 because she was that year’s Director In Focus. Two years on and her latest work has been screened at Osaka.
Memories of His Scent is a melancholy movie with themes of memory, mortality, and the recording of them. It features a teenage girl named Hinoki (Reira Ikeda) who is seeking to capture the last trace of her late father, a coffee shop owner/master, through a search for a phantom mini theatre and the unearthing of particular smells and memories related to him at each location. With a nose attuned to scents leading her, she embarks upon her journey and a road movie/coming-of-age tale ensues. It bears a lot of similarities to Melting Sounds, save for its more reserved protagonist and the scent of smell as the medium through which ideas are explored.
The evocation of memories through the senses has been thrillingly explore in cinema ever since the medium first came into being, but smell is a harder sell. One-off attempts like Odorama and Smell-O-Vision have been tried but never stuck while 4DX isn’t widely available. In the absence of scent, it is down to beautiful writing of the screenplay to signal just how important this sense is and Memories of His Scent has beautiful nad moving passages of writing where its transient nature is linked to wider themes of mortality and it reminds viewers to treasure the different elements of an atmosphere surrounding people and places.
For this interview, Higashi gave some details on the origins of her new film, from dreams to people in her life, and what she considers to be memorable smells.
It has been a couple of years since our last contact. In our last interview, we talked about Melting Sounds and I was curious as to how you viewed the reaction to the film inside and outside of Japan?
I had the opportunity to ask questions at the film festival, and I had the sense that what I wanted to convey was being conveyed. I think we often received warm feedback about the sounds of life and sound graves.
Also, in our last interview, you mentioned how you had grown from being shy into someone who can connect with others proactively. How do you feel you have you progressed?
As I grow older, I think I feel less and less embarrassed. I became much less shy because I wanted to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, even if someone laughed at me.
Well, congratulations on making Memories of His Scent and its screening at OAFF 2024. It’s another film with themes of mortality, memories, and human connections and you have once again created a unique way to explore those subjects. With Melting Sounds, it was… sound. For this one it is smell.
This isn’t Smell-O-Vision, rather, it is an exploration of how memory is made up of atmospheres built from all of the senses and activated by smell. This made a compelling story where the main protagonist desperately struggles to captures the atmosphere of places that are important to her family. It felt poignant and heartfelt, especially in a world where mini theatres are closing and depopulation is an issue and it felt like a natural extension of your previous work.
Where did the inspiration for Memories of His Scent come from?
Thank you very much. We are very happy to be able to screen our film at OAFF2024.
I am very sensitive to smells, and smells remind me of memories. Especially when I smell spring, I have flashbacks of my childhood memories. School, friends I was close to back then, etc.
And my father has a unique smell. When I smell it, I feel very calm. My father’s smell is the inspiration for this story.
What sort of research did you do into the mechanics of smell and did you manage to capture what you had envisioned in the final film? Would you have liked to have used 4DX multi-sensory experiences to give viewers the smell of coffee and more?
I went to interview a company that researches smells. I am really thinking about having the theater smell like coffee.
It’s interesting that Hinoki is a girl who claims to hate other people and has difficulty connecting with others. She is a contrast with Koto from your last film, an upbeat person who collects others. Why did you write Hinoki to be like this?
Hinoki is more like my personality than Koto. As a child, when I set goals, I often immersed myself in my own world. It may still be the same now. I am still a bad sleeper and I have grown up without losing the feeling of childhood. I am projecting a part of myself onto Hinoki.
Okay, this may be a leap but I’ve read that Hinoki trees are rare in Japan and that keys into themes of things disappearing. Was that deliberate?
I was not really conscious of that, but the smell of hinoki is very familiar to the Japanese, and it is often used in bath salts and fragrances.
The bathtub at an inn where I used to stay was made of hinoki, and it is a nostalgic scent that holds fond memories for me.
I also like the sound of the word “hinoki,” so I named her so.
Reira Ikeda has a background in comedy. Why did you cast her in a dramatic role?
When I first met her, I heard about the way she sometimes smiles innocently like a child, how she loves to smell, how she loves to eat, and her own father’s story, and I felt that she was very close to the Hinoki I had envisioned, so I asked her to help.
The predominant colours and tones of the film have serpia-like quality. It feels like the time of day is dusk, things are a little faded, the bloom in shots accentuates darkness. I felt that this was another nod to themes of fading away. This all gave the film an elegiac texture. Can you explain your approach to the visual design?
The scene in the dream and the evening scene at the time of shooting were truly beautiful, so I wanted to create a color palette that would make everyone feel nostalgic.
The film starts with a striking image of a gallery space with artefacts that once belonged to Hinoki’s father. How did you come up with that?
This is based on a dream I actually had.
A young girl, who in my dream was 13 years old, was guiding me to a display table in a museum. For each age, there was an exhibit of her happy memories. But there were no exhibits for ages 13 and up.
I woke up feeling kind of sad. When I woke up, many stories ran through my mind and I decided to include them in this script.
Did you draw on anything from your life, such as the details of mini theatres, to make this film?
It reminded me of the movie theaters I went to see with my father when I was a child. Watching a movie at the cinema is something special.
What do you want audiences to take away from this work and the idea of “(re)capturing” something that is fading?
You may one day forget the smell of your loved ones. In my mind, smells disappear before memories. I may forget the smell, but the memory remains. Even if they are gone, the fact that they were there does not change, so I would be happy if this film makes you think more about the movie theaters that are disappearing and the people you love.
Memories of His Scent was screened at Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 on March 03. It will play again on March 07 at ABC Hall at 15:40.
You can read my review here.