Millions of Japanese have become fans of things Korean, from weepy TV dramas to perky girl pop groups, since the start of the hanryu￣ (“Korean Wave”) popular-culture invasion over a decade ago. Many of the younger generation, however, have only a hazy awareness, if that, of the dark period between 1910 and 1945 when Japan ruled Korea as a colony.
Banmei Takahashi’s “Michi — Hakuji no Hito (Takumi: The Man Beyond Borders),” which exposes the inhumanity of that rule and celebrates the glories of traditional Korean ceramics, may not sell a lot of tickets to the hanryu￣ crowd, who are more interested in entertainment than history lessons.
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