I saw this movie a long time ago and enjoyed it very much.
I'm trying to find out the name of the actress who played Yuki Kudoh's friend; she was the one who died in a fire in the fields (IIRC).
The reason I am interested in this is because I think she was in another movie I am looking for.
It is a Japanese movie set in rural Louisiana, and was about dealing with Alzheimer's disease. It may have been called something like "Isoation Point".
It was Tamlyn Tomita
Aubrey O'Day - "Wrecking Ball" - the brilliant new single on iTunes now
Yes, it was Tamlyn Tomita who was featured in Karate Kid 2, and two other films whose titles escape me at the moment. But in MY memory - her daughter dies in the sugar cane burnoff fire, and she dies by setting off to swim home t Japan. That struck me as a very unusual way to commit suicide.
I miss Big Band music and talented singers. Leonard Cohen is my idol. Civility, harmony, unity!
Tamlyn's character "Kana" didn't commit suicide. She died in the cane fire with her daughter. When Riyo sees her on the beach, it is actually Kana's ghost.
shareOhhhhh. I am sometimes oblivious to what others can perceive. Too literal. Thank you -- next time I see it I will look for clues to that kind of mystery.
shareNo problem! Glad I could help. :)
shareA couple of clues as to Kana's fate. One: She's wearing a white kimono. In the East, white is a color associated with death -- as black is in the West. Two: In the movie, it's O-Bon Season. It's a time similar to "The Day of the Dead" in Mexico. O-Bon Season is a time when the dead come back to visit the living. The lamps that Riyo and her husband (Masuji) light are meant to guide Riyo's parents as well as Kana and her baby Kei back to the spirit world.
This custom is still practiced today...both in Japan and in places like Hawaii -- where there is a sizeable Japanese population. It's quite a beautiful ceremony.
As luck would have it about 25 years ago I was in Maui driving the coast road toward Hana when we passed (my Japan born wife Junko Ojichi) an obon fesitval taking place next to a graveyard. We stopped, never made to Hana. The festival was fascinating with family picnic style spreads by the graves. I've seen obon here in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo and various other venues but this one in Hawaii was special.
I've also seen the 2008 film DEPARTURES with an out of work musician apprenticing to an undertaker. And of course the classic 1999 After Life where the modern dead go to a bureaucracy to apply for one (?) video tape memory to take with them to eternal rest. I think it was Keiko Kagawa's final film appearance.
Junko's ashes were scattered off the California coast in 1997.
But I still find the ghost swimming in the direction of Japan completely mystifiying, but poetic and touching as you've described.
Tamlyn Tomita was the only Japanese celebrity in Karate Kid 2 who came from Japan while Pat Morita, Danny Kamekona and Yuji Okumoto were born in the USA and Nobu McCarthy was born in Canada and the part of Japan that Tamlyn Tomita comes from is Okinawa which is also the part of Japan where Karate Kid 2 took place while the part of Japan that these 3 Japanese celebrities, Yuki Kudo, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Yoko Sugi she starred in this movie with come from is Tokyo.
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