Things I Watched: Inland Sea - A Low-key but Mesmerising Portrayal of an Ageing Fishing Town

Ethnography and film have a lot in common with each other. Documentaries follow the act of observing real world phenomena. They present real-life moments back to us in edited form. Watching them we almost become like researchers ourselves, meticulously drawing attention to the minutiae of events or things or characters or people or cats as they happen.

In my opinion the best documentaries don’t demand that we agree with their world. It's a viewpoint shared by New-York based filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda. His latest film Inland Sea aired recently on MUBI, and I'm happy to report that it's an excellent piece of cinema verite - important in presenting a different side to Japan than what we're usually afforded to in popular media.

The film depicts an ageing fishing community, Ushimado - a favourite setting of legendary Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura. It follows the town's citizens as they live lives determined by the tradition of catching and selling fish - a important part of the local economy but one facing real problems owing to mass industrialisation of Japan's fishing industry.

I was particularly taken aback by the charismatic nature of some of the characters. This includes a 90-something year old man who still goes out to sea every morning to catch fish.

I don’t usually put up trailers but in this case I think it's much easier: