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Scout Man
Masato Ishioka: I can't say I don't like them, and I even can't say I like them. But what I wanted to do was to stay near them, and try to watch them evolve into more refined persons. You said about your direction style that you wanted to be neither too close nor far, to achieve some kind of neutrality. Isn't it hard to keep the balance? This is a very difficult question. I think that more than defend my characters, I only wanted to see them and in a certain sense analyse their behaviour, so that I could comprehend it. Mrs Matsumoto, it's your first feature, what did you think of your character and her job in the film?
Didn't you expect a more traditional role for your first feature film experience? Something maybe more romantic... MM: (laughs) I am really a very romantic person, but I nevertheless feel happy that I got the opportunity to play such a challenging role for my first film. Are Japanese boys romantic? MM: (laughs) No! Yuka Fujimoto (laughs) No! Did you gather such an opinion from the film? MM: No, I have learnt that from daily life! Mr Ishioka, why did you choose to make Miku's character lame? MI: I wanted a character who had some sort of complex. By doing this, I felt it was easier to understand her motivations. What do you think you really stressed by making this movie? MI: I really wanted to show that young people in Japan live in the streets, and they really have to fend for themselves, without the support of the family, the school or any other institution. Do you think Japanese men still entertain a kind of twisted approach to sex? MI: I think the only big change I can analyse in Japanese society is the fact that women have become more open-minded about sex. There has been a growing difference between what men feel and what women feel about sex. But I don't know if Japanese men entertain a kind of perverse, fetishistic or sado-masochistic relationship with sex. I only know that the difference between the two sexes is bigger than ever. Did the script change a lot during the shooting? The main changes were about the characters, to always make them less simple, more complex.
I can say that I am very happy in a certain sense to have had a contact with the world of enjo kosai and the industry of sex in Japan, because I had never heard of that before and never had a direct experience of that. So in a certain sense it has become something that I learnt from the film. What about you, Mrs Fujimoto? Playing the role of
a girl who practices enjo kosai, I wondered: "How would I behave
in such a situation?" And I thought that I would probably have had
the same reactions Kana has in the film...
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Mr
Ishioka, you are in your forties now, in what way do you feel related
to the youth described in 
Miku
Matsumoto: I'm not even able to think about something like enjo kosai,
sexual engagements with old men. I even hate people like Atsushi, the
main male character. He is a weak character. So in a certain sense I dislike
both characters. But it was challenging to play such a character as Mari.
Mrs
Matsumoto, what lesson did you learn from making this movie?