Japanese Story – (2003) This is a story of apologies and unspoken understandings across a cultural horizon. Sandy Edwards (Toni Collette), a geologist employed by a mining company in Australia, gets assigned to chauffeur a Japanese visitor, Hiromitsu Tachibana (Gotaro Tsunashima), the son of a major client, about the Pilbara desert.

A character remarks that while Japan lost the war, it now owns Australia; economic necessity links these two countries of very different ethnics. Sandy resents the assignment, and Hiro seems displeased at having to be in her company. Nevertheless, he is ensorcelled by the vast openness of the landscape and tells her that Australia has so much space with so few people while Japan has millions of people with so little land; the spaciousness, he admits, scares him.

They become temporarily stranded for a day and a night in the desert after he demands that she drive beyond where she says travel is appropriate. The relationship soon after (somewhat inexplicably, though being away from his cultural restraints, Hiro feels liberated) becomes intimate, and Sandy discovers Hiro has a wife and two children back in Japan. But the story then takes another turn into tragedy.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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