Katharine Round’s documentary “Ghost Town” traces the lingering impact of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami through conversations inside taxis travelling at night through Kamaishi, on Japan’s east coast. Drivers and passengers return to memories of loss, while some recount encounters they interpret as supernatural.
Several drivers say they picked up passengers who later disappeared from the back seat. One veteran taxi driver recalls seeing what seemed to be spectres gathering in a phone booth after the disaster, while another describes dreaming of a drowning white horse. In a separate dream, a passenger was warned away from a road that was later submerged. Other people in the film doubt the supernatural explanations or question whether the figures were really there.
The documentary also finds possible traces of the absent in more ordinary sights, including deer near hillside cemeteries or at the roadside. One devout driver calls the animals “messengers from God.”
Kamaishi is presented as a place shaped both by the tsunami and by an ageing population. Many of the featured drivers and passengers are older and speak of the shortage of young people. Journalist Shiori Itō, an outsider to the city, connects the film’s segments, which eventually turn towards more personal accounts: one driver recalls his youth as a local thug, while another discusses gambling and carousing.
Round’s film uses the taxi rides to bring together stories of grief, memory and belief, setting intimate conversations against the city’s wider sense of loss.
Sources: The Guardian Film.