W-TV Office

In Tokyo, a Goth girl and an Internet voyeur connect in the post 9-11 world of surveillance and paranoia.

A troubled teenager only lives through her camera and the Internet. Fascinated by science, she experiments on various animals, and her own mother, poisoning her with thallium and documenting the results.

After producing several experimental video art pieces, Tsuchiya first came to prominence with A New God, a personal documentary shot on video about his relationship with a right-wing, neo-nationalist punk rock band. Even though Tsuchiya is on the left, he ended up marrying the singer for that band, Karin Amamiya, who has since emerged as a spokesperson for disaffected Japanese youth in the media. The New God won an award at the 1999 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

The filmmaker looks into problems of personal communication by focusing on the letters of a woman who has done enjokosai, that is, a young woman who agrees to talk with or meet or go to a hotel with (usually older) men for money. The director himself met Ryoko, the film's subject, via her telephone messaging system. Discarding the flood of sensational images found in the mass media, this film illustrates the thoughts of Ryoko and others from the perspective of those actually involved.

Third film of W-TV (Without Television) shareware series. Director Tsuchiya asks visitors at Yasukuni Shrine about Emperor Hirohito's complicity in the Second World War.