2024年11月19日
A Reflection on ‘Cats of Gokogou Shrine’
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of watching Cats of Gokogou Shrine, a deeply thoughtful documentary by Kazuhiro Soda and Kiyoko Kashiwagi. As someone who loves quiet, observational filmmaking, I was completely drawn into this serene world set at Gokogou Shrine in Ushimado, Okayama Prefecture, where the filmmakers themselves live.
The film focuses on the stray cats that call the shrine home, capturing their daily lives with an affectionate but unsentimental lens. These aren’t house cats playing up for the camera—they’re independent strays, sunning themselves, roaming the grounds, and competing for fish scraps from locals. While Soda avoids anthropomorphizing them, their presence reveals so much about the balance between humans and animals in this small, aging community.
One of the more striking moments for me was watching volunteers from the Street Cats Control Association trap the cats for neutering. It’s a bittersweet act of care, meant to prevent overpopulation but also aiming to eventually eliminate the cats from the shrine entirely. It made me think about how coexistence often requires difficult choices, both for the cats and the people.
What I loved most was how the film subtly connects the lives of these cats to the challenges facing the town itself. Ushimado is a community in decline, with an aging population and fewer young residents. The parallels between the impermanence of the cats’ lives and the fragility of the town are poignant without ever feeling heavy-handed.
If you’re a fan of documentary filmmaking that finds beauty in the everyday or if you’re curious about the subtle ways humans and animals interact, this film is a must-see. More than a documentary, it’s a meditation on life, change, and the connections that sustain us.
The film focuses on the stray cats that call the shrine home, capturing their daily lives with an affectionate but unsentimental lens. These aren’t house cats playing up for the camera—they’re independent strays, sunning themselves, roaming the grounds, and competing for fish scraps from locals. While Soda avoids anthropomorphizing them, their presence reveals so much about the balance between humans and animals in this small, aging community.
One of the more striking moments for me was watching volunteers from the Street Cats Control Association trap the cats for neutering. It’s a bittersweet act of care, meant to prevent overpopulation but also aiming to eventually eliminate the cats from the shrine entirely. It made me think about how coexistence often requires difficult choices, both for the cats and the people.
What I loved most was how the film subtly connects the lives of these cats to the challenges facing the town itself. Ushimado is a community in decline, with an aging population and fewer young residents. The parallels between the impermanence of the cats’ lives and the fragility of the town are poignant without ever feeling heavy-handed.
If you’re a fan of documentary filmmaking that finds beauty in the everyday or if you’re curious about the subtle ways humans and animals interact, this film is a must-see. More than a documentary, it’s a meditation on life, change, and the connections that sustain us.
Posted by teachers at 14:14│Comments(0)
│Jason先生
※このブログではブログの持ち主が承認した後、コメントが反映される設定です。
