by Chris MaGee
A few days ago my girlfriend asked me “have you heard anything more about the ‘Nobody Knows’ kid?” The kid she was referring to is Yuya Yagira who starred in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2004 film “Nobody Knows” and subsequently became the youngest Best Actor recipient at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. As many of you know Yagira was rushed to hospital in August after an overdose of prescription tranquilizers. Whether it was suicide attempt or an accidental overdose as Yagira maintains will probably never be known, but since then the 18-year-old young star has been keeping a low profile. That is until now.
Cinema Today is reporting that Yagira is returning to the spotlight not as an actor but as an author. As Yagira explains it at the website for publisher Stardust Press he had an idea for a film after ending a relationship with an old girlfriend, but the pieces never came together to make the idea a reality, so with the help of writer Rin Inoue he adapted the story to the page as “Yama nai ame,” a novel to be released in Japan on November 5th. It tells the story of two young men, Katsura and Tachibana, who work as couriers. They both fall for the same girl, a waitress at a local café, an already complicated situation, but things are complicated further by the pair’s drug and alcohol abuse.
Really sunny material, but if you remember no one is particularly sunny at 18. As to whether people will draw parallels between the characters in the novel and its young author remains to be seen. I think it’s just good to see that Yagira is working things out with the written word and not more trips to the hospital.
A few days ago my girlfriend asked me “have you heard anything more about the ‘Nobody Knows’ kid?” The kid she was referring to is Yuya Yagira who starred in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2004 film “Nobody Knows” and subsequently became the youngest Best Actor recipient at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. As many of you know Yagira was rushed to hospital in August after an overdose of prescription tranquilizers. Whether it was suicide attempt or an accidental overdose as Yagira maintains will probably never be known, but since then the 18-year-old young star has been keeping a low profile. That is until now.
Cinema Today is reporting that Yagira is returning to the spotlight not as an actor but as an author. As Yagira explains it at the website for publisher Stardust Press he had an idea for a film after ending a relationship with an old girlfriend, but the pieces never came together to make the idea a reality, so with the help of writer Rin Inoue he adapted the story to the page as “Yama nai ame,” a novel to be released in Japan on November 5th. It tells the story of two young men, Katsura and Tachibana, who work as couriers. They both fall for the same girl, a waitress at a local café, an already complicated situation, but things are complicated further by the pair’s drug and alcohol abuse.
Really sunny material, but if you remember no one is particularly sunny at 18. As to whether people will draw parallels between the characters in the novel and its young author remains to be seen. I think it’s just good to see that Yagira is working things out with the written word and not more trips to the hospital.
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