Among all the many trips American film director Mike Mills has made to Japan since he first started coming here in the mid 1990s, one incident in particular has remained with him.
"One time, I was having coffee with a friend," he told The Japan Times in a recent interview, "and in the middle of our conversation she took some anti-depressant pills out of her bag. Up to that time, I was aware she was having a bad time, having some problems. So I shouldn't have been surprised. But watching her take those pills was a very strange moment for me. I realized that globalization had come this far — Western pharmaceutical treatments were being adopted and these pills, this American product, was actually being used to change brain chemistry in another country."
Mills, who spoke as if he was reliving that moment, went on to say that the following year he saw an article in The New York Times about GlaxoSmithKline marketing its products in Japan. He took note, and got to thinking. But at the time he couldn't foresee that the coffee shop incident would inspire him to make "Does Your Soul Have a Cold?" (Japanese title: "Mike Mills no Utsuno Hanashi") — a documentary about depression in Japan.