Last month, I was asked to take part in a public panel discussion on the recently released Harrison Ford blockbuster "Crossing Over." In the film, Ford plays an L.A. Immigration and Customs officer with a conscience, increasingly disturbed by the human consequences of his job.
My first impression was that the film would be a hard sell in Japan. America is a country founded on immigration, and is said to be host to some 12 million illegal immigrants. In Japan, on the other hand, legal foreign residents make up just over 1.7 percent of the population, while the number of over-stayers was estimated at only 113,072 as of January 2009. Thus, in contrast to the situation in America, where immigration reform is a highly contentious issue, few Japanese even noticed far-reaching revisions to the Immigration Law that passed this July. In short, what could a Japanese audience hope to get from the film?
Like the 2006 film "Crash," "Crossing Over" is made up of a series of small but interconnected human dramas. It focuses on what the Japanese call ninjō, meaning "heart" or "humanity." This is clear from the accompanying Japanese pamphlet, which proclaims, "Even (immigration) inspectors have ninjō."