In Australia, men are generally expected to stoic. Japanese men are much the same. Any inner turmoil is expected to be hidden under a facade of politeness. For the women of both countries, the restraint of emotions can be a cause of frustration.

In Japanese Story, Director Sue Brooks tries to explore the stoicism of both countries with a love story between a Japanese man and Australian woman. The basic plot revolves around a Japanese man, Tachibana Hiromitsu, opening his heart to an Australian woman, Sandy Edwards, in the Australian outback. After making love a few times, Hiromitsu has an accident and dies. Sandy then drives his body to the nearest town. Hiromitsu's wife arrives to collect the body and is able to publicly grieve while Sandy is forced to bottle up her grief inside.

Although the plot of Japanese Story is an interesting one, the movie fails because, quite ironically, the movie is devoid of emotion and sensitivity. Viewers are never left with any understanding about what Sandy found special and beautiful about Hiromitsu. He never did anything romantic, never really showed his emotions, and never did anything in super-cool Japanese style. In a nutshell, there is nothing to explain why Sandy turned away from a tough Australian miner to be touched by a Japanese man in a business suit. Likewise, Brooks never showed anything in Sandy that would warrant Hiromitsu turning away from the femineity and sensuality of Japanese ladies for a rough and ready Australian sheila. Sandy is a very masculine woman, has short hair, wears trousers and in Hiromitsu's own words, she is stubborn, rude and has a big bum. Typifying the lack of emotion is their love scene, which has to be one of the coldest love scenes ever shown in the history of cinema. Sandy gets undressed, stands naked, puts on some trousers without wearing her panties, hops on Hiromitsu, while Hiromitsu lays like a dead fish.

Instead of revealing subtleties of romance and emotion, or showing passionate encounters, Japanese Story gets distracted with cultural misunderstandings and political concepts. The movie begins with Hiromitsu and Sandy offending each other. Sandy comes to pick Hiromitsu up from an intersection. Sandy arrives late and in dishevelled attire. Hiromitsu, wearing a black suit in the Australian outback, gives her a business card. She then offends him further by looking at it briefly, hitting it, and then slipping it into her back pocket. Sandy opens the back door of the car so that Hiromitsu can put his suitcase in. Hiromitsu stares at her in bemusement and Sandy is forced to put the suitcase in herself. Hiromitsu offends Sandy further by sitting in the back seat of the car as if Sandy is some kind of chauffeur. Once in the car, Sandy tries to engage him in a conversation, but he is very reluctant to talk. Later Hiromitsu is treated rudely in a bar because his karaoke is bad. An old Australian man also brings up the touchy subject of World War II, and complains about Japan owning the whole country.

The result of introducing the cultural misunderstandings and political concepts is a jumbled mess of unrelated themes that are boring in themselves and just don't add to the main plot.

Mixed it with the political concepts and cultural misunderstandings are beautiful outback scenes. Many of these are also unnecessary. In recent years, outback scenes have become to Australian directors what special effects are to American directions. Impressive as they are, they are often used to compensate for a lack of character development, and/or plot weaknesses.

The failure of Japanese Story to realise its objectives can be attributed to two reasons. One possible reason is the masculinity of left-wing Australian women, who are themselves lacking in the emotional sensitivity necessary to make a movie like Japanese story work. From the movie, it is difficult to conclude that Sue Brooks is a woman in touch with the realm of the senses, or the triggers of emotion. While there is nothing wrong with women being masculine if they so desire, a hard bitten women was never going to have the ability to make a movie like Japanese Story work. Ironically, a female Japanese director probably would have done a better job. Alternatively, a feminine Australian woman could have been found to direct the movie.

A second explanation for the movie's failure is an excess of cognition and politics in the Australian movie industry. Modern Australian artistic culture reflects the fingerprints of the public servants that choose to fund them. As a general rule, public servants are more governed by the cognitive and morality, than they are by emotions. Again, there is nothing wrong with public servants being moral or cognitive, but such a frame of mind is not conducive to making a movie like Japanese Story.

In 2003, Japanese Story won the Australian Film Institute award for best Australian film. The fact that a movie so lacking in cognitive stimulation, humour, excitement, or emotion was considered the best film in Australia was either a sad indictment on the quality of the judges, or the standard of Australian films in general.

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