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the
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LAFORET MUSEUM
LaForet museum opening party for “Kitty
EX”
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| Clockwise
from top left: bar owner Reiko, fashion designer Jeremy
Scott, stylist Kei; party guests Tim and Chihiro; art
director Nagi Noda flanked by Laforet employees Mi and
Si; Helmut Lang merchandiser Keita Takada |
star struck
In love and war
Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s
latest epic takes martial arts to a new level
By Marie Iida
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Andy Lau, Zhang Ziyi,
Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Yimou
Credit: Marie Iida |
Zhang Yimou, who won zealous acclaim for
his emotionally evocative work as The Road Home and Raise
the Red Lantern, first surprised fans when he tried his hand
at an action movie in 2003 with the hit Hero. The Chinese
director has done it again, taking the standard wuxia, or
martial arts movie, to a new, artistic level with House of
Flying Daggers, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi and
Andy Lau.
Set in the year 859, in the waning days of the Tang Dynasty,
the film centers on three lovers caught up in the tides of
history. Two deputies of the dynasty Leo (Lau) and Jin (Kaneshiro)
are given a mandate to capture a leader of the rebel army
known as the House of Flying Daggers. They cross paths with
a beautiful blind dancer named Mei (Ziyi) who is suspected
of being the daughter of the army’s old leader.
“I had the most difficult time,” Kaneshiro said
of the shoot during a promotional stop in Tokyo. “I had
to spend a whole month just learning the difference between
the weapons. I thought I would be simply taught step-by-step
the action sequences, but I had to learn the basic disciplines
first. Then, we would go on location and actually create each
technique and shoot with the weather and time in check.”
At its heart, House of Flying Daggers is a love story. The
fight scenes are not intended to showcase action but emotion.
“Because I was already familiar with the basics of the
action sequences, I was able to devote most of my time to
my acting,” Lau explained. Ziyi spent two months with
a blind girl in preparation for her part. “I did everything
with her so that I could make the way she led her life a part
of my lifestyle as well,” she said. “I studied the
way she touched a person’s face to learn how to emulate
it.”
The film’s debut at the 2004 Cannes Festival received
a standing ovation that lasted for more than 20 minutes. In
China, it has outperformed US movies and Yimou has high hopes
for Japan. He is confident that the universal message of love
will be delivered into the hearts of international audiences.
“Andy Lau once asked me if his character is a good or
an evil one,” he said. “But in the end it doesn’t
matter if the character is evil or good. What’s expressed
is the humanity of the character. The point of the film is
that the characters are all human beings simply in love.”
q&a
Jane Yonamine
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Her husband may be the first Asian-American
to play in the NFL and the first foreigner to play baseball
in Japan after WWII (joining the Yomiuri Giants in 1951),
but Jane Yonamine is a legend in her own right. The Hawaii-born
nisei founded the Wally Yonamine Pearl Company (janespearl.com)
in Roppongi in 1964 and has since adorned celebrities from
Brooke Shields to Hillary Clinton, as well as thousands of
Tokyo residents and tourists. The 74-year-old mother of three
and grandmother of seven now splits her time between Tokyo,
Hawaii and Los Angeles. Who was your first celebrity client?
It was Major League ballplayers back in ’65, ’66
who first started coming in—all of Wally’s friends,
like Cal Ripken, Carl Yaztremski. Then we had the golfers
like Lee Trevino. Ballplayers play golf, golfers play with
movie stars...it all goes in one big circle. What’s
the best part of your job? You get to see [the celebrities]
on television and you see your pearls out there. That’s
half the fun. That and working with the customers. Pearls
are the one piece of jewelry that’s ageless. People buy
them to cherish. What’s the most unusual request you’ve
had from a client? We had one man who wanted 53 10mm Japanese
cultured pearls that matched exactly. I collected up to 19
and then had to give him his money back. Like I say, you can’t
tell the oysters what to do. What’s the one piece
of jewelry should every woman own? If you have one single
strand of white pearls, you can go anywhere with it. That
and a pair of studs and that’s all you need. What
makes you happy? I think anyone at my age should have
a job, or keep a regimen. I take a month off and I’m
sick half the time. So when people tell me I should retire,
I ask them, “Why?”
Credit: Tama Miyake Lung
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