A Normal Life, Please! (フツーの仕事がしたい Futsu no shigoto ga shitai)

“…shows us Japan not as we Westerners want to see it, and definitely not in the way that most Japanese want to see it, but the way it actually is…”

- Chris MaGee, The Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Imagine driving a cement truck 552 hours in a single month. With 730 hours in a month that would leave you with only 5.7 hours a day to eat, shower and sleep. It’s an insane schedule, but it’s one that 37-year-old truck driver Nobukazu Kaikura kept up for a hellish period during 2006. Kaikura drives for Toutou Transport, a small independent 18 truck fleet that hauls cement for the large Tokyo-based corporation Fucox to construction sites throughout Japan. Not collecting a set salary, but instead being paid per load Kaikura and his fellow truckers nearly worked themselves to death in order to make ends meet. When Kaikura seeks the protection of a labour union he incurs the wrath of his bosses at Toutou Transport and the thugs they hire to intimidate Kaikura and his family day and night.

Kaikura’s struggle to have a normal life is captured on camera by documentary filmmaker Tokcahi Tsuchiya. Infuriating and inspiring A Normal Life, Please! has become a film phenomena. Screened throughout Japan it has also won major awards overseas including Best Documentary at the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival, and Best Documentary at the 17th annual Raindance Film Festival in London.

Director: Tokachi Tsuchiya

Producer: Group Low Position

Narration: Tokachi Tsuchiya

Cinematography: Tokachi Tsuchiya

Editing: Tokachi Tsuchiya

Music: Margaret Drawers

Cast: Nobukazu Kaikura

Released: 2008

Running time: 70 minutes

Trailer /  Official Website

Director’s Bio

Born in 1971 in Kyoto Tokachi Tsuchiya grew up in a military household. His father, an officer in Japan’s Self Defense Forces, passed away when he was a teenager. As a young man Tsuchiya worked as a bookseller, a videographer chronicling the homeless in Shinjuku and in 2000 he was hired by a company who streamed videos online. Two years later Tsuchiya was fired from the company and has been a freelance filmmaker ever since. With the severance payment he received from his dismissal he purchased the video camera he used to shoot A Normal Life, Please!