Writer and Director: Go Furukawa
This strange, unpredictable film from Go Furukawa gives us a glimpse into the Japanese prison system. This insight is fascinating, but it also presents us with some moral issues that to a European audience might seem a little suspect, especially when it comes to the murder of a sex worker who has forced her young daughter into prostitution too. Furukawa certainly gives us much to think about in his portrayal of murderers and ineffectual mothers.
Kaneko runs a low-key commissary where he takes provisions to inmates at the Chufo Prison on behalf of their friends and family who can’t attend themselves due to the strict and seemingly arbitrary visiting hours. Some family members hire Kaneko to read letters that they have written to their jailed husbands and sons. One woman even gives him divorce papers for her unsuspecting husband to sign.
As an ex-con himself, Kaneko is familiar with the prison system and with the angry reactions of the inmates. However, when he is commissioned to take in letters and blankets to a child killer by the latter’s insistent and overbearing mother, Kaneko begins to question the ethical positions of his job, particularly when his visits become known to the local community, who knew the murdered schoolgirl.
He doesn’t appear to make much money from his commissary. When he’s not in the prison, he takes care of his tired-looking convenience shop that he has built in front of his small house. His wife, Miwako, picks up shifts, when she can, in another employment, but these become scarce when her co-workers hear about Kaneko’s visits to the child killer.
Kaneko and Miwako have a son, whom they both dearly love, and Miwako’s relationship with the young boy contrasts with the rest of the other mother-child connections in the film. Kaneko’s own mother throws herself at younger men and only comes to see her estranged family when she wants money. Furukawa seems to suggest that she is responsible in some way for Kaneko’s history of violence. Likewise, are we to blame the sex worker and cheer when she dies? And should we blame the brutal killing of the young girl on the killer’s mother rather than the killer (a very sinister Takumi Kitamura)?
There’s an implication that Japanese society is to blame for the brutal crimes, but we are not shown how this society operates. The focus is very much on family here, rather than on the influence of the media or the brokenness of capitalism. And the happy ending for one of Kaneko’s clients comes across as another form of abuse. The strawberries that he’s given as a thank-you should taste bitter, not sweet.
Holding together these mixed messages is the performance of Ryûhei Maruyama, who, as Kaneko, is a sympathetic character, fighting his own demons, as well as everyone else’s. By visiting those exiled by society, Kaneko is doing good, something that only his wife (a strong turn by Yôko Maki) can see.
Kaneko’s Commissary is certainly an ambitious film with plenty of storylines bridging the two-hour running time, but putting the blame on mothers is an uneasy thesis.
The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2026 takes place in cinemas around the UK from 6 February to 31 March 2026
