A Japanese porn star, sushi and a gay man known for his mastery of fellatio are the elements that promise an evocative film about food and sex. But director Pan Chih-yuan (潘志遠) quickly exposes his filmmaking incompetence in Sashimi (沙西米) and kills the story. Also gone to waste is the potentially interesting cast led by Lee Kang-sheng (李康生) — muse to auteur Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) — and Yui Hatano, a big-name star in the world of Japanese adult video (AV).
The film opens with Hatano going through the motions of a sex act in an adult video. The pixelated close-up of her face reveals an empty simulation of eroticism. It is a stroke of genius, but unfortunately, the whole film quickly goes downhill after the opening scene. Set in the immediate aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the drama revolves around Natsumi (Hatano), a porn star who learns that her boyfriend is HIV-positive. Taking advantage of the rumor that she died in the devastating tsunami that struck Fukushima, Natsumi leaves her old life behind and comes to stay at a bed and breakfast in Taiwan with her agent, Tamura (Iguchi Daiyu).
What brings Natsumi to the B&B is its owner and sashimi chef Chen-ming, played by Lee.
Photo courtesy of Good Day Films
At the B&B, things start spinning out of control with the arrival of Natsumi. Having enjoyed Chen-ming’s sashimi so much that she has formed a habit of exchanging sex for food, waitress Hsiao-ming (Teresa Daley, 紀培慧) is driven mad with jealousy at Chen-ming’s passion for Natsumi.
Meanwhile, Chen-ming is determined to find out who Natsumi really is. Years ago, the chef prepared a banquet of nyotaimori, a Japanese culinary practice that involves serving sushi on a naked woman’s body, with his then-wife Yoshiko as the living sushi platter. The banquet went terribly wrong, prompting the wife to leave. He’ll now perform the same culinary ritual on Natsumi to see if his suspicions are correct.
Pan’s cinematic approach to sex and eroticism is tedious and bland. Even the nyotaimori scene is lifeless.
Photo courtesy of Good Day Films
The film further suffers from a lack of coherence and focus. In between the boring sex scenes, some cheap laughs are thrown in, awkwardly delivered by a few sidekicks, including the character played by Daiyu, a Tokyo gay bar owner-turned-celebrity after giving a blow-job to an AV actor adept at holding back orgasm and making the man come in a television show. The instant celebrity, like the rest of the cast members, is merely used to move the tedious story to its end.
Wedding a high-profile cast with a script to explore the rarely visited territory of sex and sexuality, Sashimi surely started out as an ambitious project, which makes it more regrettable that it’s a tedious flop.
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Over the past year, a peculiar phrase has begun to litter Asian women’s social media accounts: “Oxford study.” An Asian woman vlogging about her dating life — and particularly about dating white men — gets commenters reacting to her updates with the words “Oxford study.” A young Asian student showing off her prom dress with her white boyfriend sees “obligatory Oxford study comment” on her TikTok. “I can already hear the oxford study comments coming,” one Asian woman captions a video of her dancing with her white partner. The phrase “Oxford study” refers to just that: an academic study out of Oxford
In spite of the next local elections being over two years away, there is already considerable intrigue and jockeying for position by politicians and their supporters. The local press runs quite a bit of content, mostly speculative, on who will run in what races and what the outcomes might be. This is an overview for English language readers to get a taste of the state of play. Four races in particular are drawing a lot of heat, those of mayors of New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung because in all four the incumbent mayors will be term-limited out. In