The century-old juniper forest.
Nara is noted and well underlined in all the lists of what to see yes or yes on a first trip to Japan . To the city of nara, capital of the Prefecture of the same name, you arrive by train and from there you walk only the street that takes you to the natural park where deer roam and bite tourists at will and in which the Buddhist temple is located Todai-ji or Kasuga Shrine.
That's what we mean when we talk about Nara, normally, but Nara is much more and holds many more secrets. In fact, It is the prefecture with the most places considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. One such place is Mount Yoshino, important for its history and legacy of pilgrimage, its shrines, and for its rich and abundant nature.
Fall in love with Japan and Juliette Binoche... all over again.
Probably for all those reasons Japanese director Naomi Kawase _ (A pastry shop in Tokyo) _ chose it as the location for her new film.
Titled in Spanish Trip to Nara (Theatrical release December 28), is a journey for its protagonist **(Juliette Binoche) ** and a journey for the viewers whom Kawase's camera takes into the forest through sensory images of trees that seem to breathe and speak and panoramic views of green density that fills with orange and red spots as the story progresses.
That sea of green mountains, of very long juniper trunks is crossed by the train in which Jeanne (Binoche), a travel essayist, arrives, accompanied by her interpreter Hana (Minami) to that abandoned place in Japan where you have to move on foot or in small vehicles entering the steep and narrow roads.
Jeanne and Hana meet Tomo (Masatoshi Nagasse), a forest ranger who lives alone there. Why? “Because he was tired”, he says and explains his ascetic life dedicated to “saving the mountain”.
Feeling very small under there.
Jeanne has traveled there in search of a plant or fungus called vision (like the original title of the movie) that is only born every 997 years and releases its spores in that forest. And according to legend vision has the power to "end agony and pain". Tomo doesn't seem to care much because he lives in peace with himself under the idea that "Happiness exists in all of our hearts."
That is why he is happy there, alone, with the company of his dog, the trees, the wind and the silence. Although he also appreciates the company of Jeanne or Rin, the new forest ranger to whom he teaches the ancient tradition of planting and cutting trees on that mountain so that the cycle continues.
Breathe green.
Trip to Nara it is so, a metaphor of the or the lack of human connections, of the beginning and the end, of past, present and future, and of what binds us to nature. Everything that would give us to think if we spent some time alone in Yoshino. As happened to Juliette Binoche who, in the two months that the shooting lasted, she was housed in temples in those mountains, leading the same sober life as her monks, breathing the air that carries this fable of time travel.
An idea for your next trip to Japan that also includes Nara, but another Nara. Views and big cities is time for reflection in natural and rural Japan.
As Binoche did: "I dreamed of going to Japan one day outside the big cities," she told the Japan Times after filming. “Because when you stay in hotels, doing interviews, you don't see reality. Of course, they give you gifts, they treat you to wonderful meals in amazing restaurants, but that doesn't replace the need to meet the people and experience what it is like to live in that country in a traditional way”.
Masatoshi Nagase, Naomi Kawase and Juliette Binoche in Nara.