Constructing an Intimate Sphere through Female Bodies:

Kawase Naomi’s Films as Women’s Self-documentary

Abstract

Since the 1990s, a lot of women filmmakers have started to become involved in making self-documentary (or serufu-dokyumentari). Here, filmmakers feature themselves, their families and their communities in their films. This phenomenon has brought about great changes in the movie world, where it used to be common for men to take on major roles such as producing or directing. This essay examines the documentary films of Naomi Kawase (born 1969) as an example of women’s selfdocumentary. In doing so, I will clarify both the characteristics and the social significance of women’s documentary. Firstly, this essay argues that a consistent characteristic of this oeuvre is performative self-representation that focuses on the filmmaker’s own private life and blurs the boundary between fiction and documentary.Secondly, I argue that, by connecting such self-representation to material corporeality, Kawase demonstrates the process whereby people try to construct intimate relationships that go beyond conventional family relations. Through close analysis of two documentary films thematising childbirth, Tarachime (2006) and Genpin (2010), I argue that Kawase’s work emphasizes the importance of creating relationships with concrete and individual others rather than with an abstract society. Kawase does this by depicting various acts conventionally associated with women as performances. Thus, her works show communal alternatives based on self-determination in terms of illustrating the connection between the public sphere and an alternative intimate sphere where material corporeality exists as the most concrete form of self.