The pre-dawn hours in the waters off the secluded fishing village of Po Toi O are quiet. Deceptively quiet.
Po Toi O is located on one of the outer tiny islands of the British territory of Hong Kong and, we are soon informed, in the “old days” anyone who settled on one of those islands became instantly the owner of the occupied land.
That’s exactly what the older members of the Chi family did after escaping Mainland China at the time of the Communist take-over at the end of the 1940s.
By now, the Chi’s are a large family, living in a sprawling estate of ramshackle houses right on the coast of the island. Chi means crazy in Cantonese slang.
There we are once breakfast time has arrived… a very noisy Hong Kong family, one talking louder than the other. It’s a family of small-scale scammers and sellers of fake watches, getting by just fine.
They got big news this morning. All the family members won a sort of lottery, their prizes being trips to various countries across Asia. The father will go to Thailand, the mother will go to Bali, eldest son Chi Gau Shin (Tse Wai Kit) and his girlfriend Yaolan will go to Japan.
Just that Yaolan breaks up with Chi Gau Shin right before the departure. So, he will go alone.
Chi Gau Shin translates to “batshit crazy”, we are informed in the subtitles. But for Hong Kong movie standards, he is just a bit foolish. He certainly doesn’t come off as “batshit crazy”.
Cut to Osaka. A hectic fly-by-night travel agency tells their new tour guide Yumi (Reiko Arai) that she has her first customer – a guy named Chi Gau Shin from Hong Kong. She has been chosen for the job because she speaks Cantonese (barely) and some English.
Turns out that Chi Gau Shin’s Japanese is much better than her Cantonese. So, they head into Osaka, to Dotonbori where else. Yumi strictly follows the schedule laid out by the travel agency.
That schedule involves Gau Shin staying for the night in a capsule hotel. Hilarious moments take place there.
An excursion to Kyoto follows the next day, to the usual sites. Kinkakuji temple and so on. Just that during those tourist strolls Gau Shin discovers that all his luggage had been stolen from the van.
Yumi knows how to handle the situation. She heads to a fortune teller at Kyoto’s Yasaka Shrine and the fortune teller gives her cryptic advice on how to find the thief.
Following the fortune teller’s directions, Yumi and Gau Shin make it to the Shin Sekai area in southern Osaka. Sure enough, they encounter the thief in a kushikatsu eatery. The thief is easily spotted, after all, wearing Gau Shin’s stolen clothing.
Akane, the “old lady thief” (Hideo Murota) is a Kamagasaki resident, living in a tiny apartment in Osaka’s notorious homeless area in Nishinari Ward. Confronted, she returns the clothing but Gau Shin’s money she has already spent, his return ticket to Hong Kong sold.
From that moment on, Gau Shin, Yumi and Akane become a trio. They raise some money to keep on going, they manage to drive to Tokyo (with Akane as a stowaway hanging on underneath the van) because Tokyo Disneyland is Gau Shin’s dream destination.
Instead of Tokyo Disneyland, they arrive by mistake at Hanayashiki, Japan’s oldest amusement park in the heart of the historic Asakusa district.
There, Gau Shin wins a prize for being the 5th million’s visitor to the park, the prize being a trip to Hong Kong. He takes Yumi and Akane along for the ride home.
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What’s Up Connection (Japan, Hong Kong 1990) てなもんやコネクション
By that time, we aren’t even half-way through the movie, titled Tenamonya Connection in Japanese. Sending the Chi family abroad was just a ruse by a multi-national company, sending the family off so they could survey their land, we learn.
The corporation plans to build a world trade center right on their island, anticipating big business once Hong Kong is reverted to China in 1997.
The family will soon start to fight back against the evil corporation. There is no point going into those efforts here. Let’s just say, they involve a lot of magic, pre-teen hackers stealing billions of dollars, and a lot of colorful village celebrations.
Stop Making Sense
Though the plot may somehow sound like it, What’s Up Connection is in no way a typical over-the-top Hong Kong comedy. Rather, it’s a deeply anarchic Japanese independent production, switching genres whenever the director sees fit.
There are a lot of funny scenes, to be sure and the film does tell a story. But that story seems to follow impulses (and perhaps budget necessities) rather than narrative consistency.
Be ready for unexpected turns in the story at any moment. So, just relax and take in the wild panorama unfolding. The multitude of strange characters on display, the gorgeously shot scenes of old-fashioned village festivals in Hong Kong, the wild old Japanese traditions coming to the fore in the scenes taking place at the Hanayashiki Amusement Park in Tokyo… and yes, the Osaka scenes.
The film documents the real Tobita Shinchi brothel district in Nishinari Ward. An area where any photography is strictly forbidden even today. Director Masashi Yamamoto doesn’t care. He has actors Tse Wai Kit and Reiko Arai walk right through the area. Yumi’s mother is a hooker madam there after all and she takes Gau Shin to her mother’s place to stay overnight.
The arrangements of girl-for-hire sitting next to her mama-san in a large open space on the first floor of their respective houses are clearly on view in the film. Documentary style.
Director Yamamoto goes even further in the homeless district of Kamagasaki. There, he trains his camera directly at the day laborers, receiving comments from some like “What do you think you are doing? Starting shit? Just coming in, shooting like this…”.
They don’t get mad at him, though, because he acts and talks like being one of them. Some offer him drinks. He blends in perfectly. Yamamoto’s films always show great sympathy for social outcasts, he shares their attitudes and humor. Traits that make things easy for him around the Kamagasaki homeless.
Director Masashi Yamamoto
Masashi Yamamoto (born in 1956) is a native of Oita Prefecture in Kyushu, southern Japan. Oita and Osaka are just an overnight ferry ride apart and Yamamoto claims that he acquired his special Osaka humor early on.
Yamamoto attended Meiji University in Tokyo in the late 1970s but dropped out early to pursue his filmic interests. Namely, underground movies with a strong punk connection.
It was a time when punk rock (in the widest sense) fueled Japanese underground and independent movies. Musicians and aspiring film directors closely collaborated, musicians acting in movies as well as providing the sound tracks.
A contemporary of Sogo Ishii (Crazy Thunder Road, 1980) and Yoshihiko Matsui (Noisy Requiem, 1988), Yamamoto set out to explore the darker fringes of Japanese society. First with his 8mm epic Saint Terrorism (1980), then with his more ambitious Carnival in the Night (1982), a film involving legendary underground band Jagatara.
You can watch here the opening of Carnival in the Night, featuring singer Kumiko Ota on stage with members of Jagatara in a tiny dirty Shinjuku club.
Carnival in the Night then follows Kumiko Ota on her harrowing journey through the darkest, most violent and nihilist corners of Shinjuku, Tokyo.
It was Yamamoto’s breakout film. After playing the Berlin Film Festival, it gained international cult movie status.
Yamamoto’s 1987 film Robinson’s Garden focused on an abandoned industrial property on the outskirts of Tokyo, taken over by a group of outlaw hippies spearheaded by Kumiko Ota who turn the wasteland into an island of freedom, creating a lush paradise in the process.
Robinson’s Garden was clearly a model for the scenic Hong Kong coastal hamlet the Chi family inhabits and protects at any cost in What’s Up Connection.
What’s Up Connection was Yamamoto’s first international movie, shot on location in Hong Kong, Osaka and Tokyo in Cantonese, Japanese and English.
Yamamoto who speaks fluent English continued this international trajectory by making movies both in Japan (like his 1998 Tokyo outlaw drama Junk Food featuring a large and very international cast) as well as by shooting a movie right in New York (Limousine Drive, 2000).
Yamamoto is still active as movie director today. Most of his films have been written and produced by himself, making him one of the true independent filmmakers in Japan.
Actor Tse Wai Kit
Tse Wai Kit, playing the central character of Chi Gau Shin in What’s Up Connection, was a Hong Kong actor active mainly from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. He made his debut in 1988 in the crime thriller Gangs aka The Young Gang. The following years saw him in a number of roles as young criminal in various crime action films, including Ringo Lam’s gritty classic School on Fire (1988).
Perhaps most famously, he played a bully harassing Stephen Chow in the 1991 Stephen Chow action comedy Fight Back to School. At the time, Stephen Chow was well on his way to become the absolute king of comedy in Hong Kong.
Tse Wai Kit always played roles representing young characters grappling with social issues. Sometimes in very violent ways, sometimes in a rather humorous way, as he did in What’s Up Connection.
Tse Wai Kit seems to have largely retired from the movie industry since the mid-1990s.
Actress Reiko Arai
There was an actress named Reiko Arai active in Japanese cinema in the 1960s. That’s obviously not the Reiko Arai who appeared in What’s Up Connection. The actress playing tour guide Yumi in the latter film is of a much younger generation.
Not much is known about her and What’s Up Connection may well have been her only major role on screen.
She proved to be a great actress in that film, though. And damn, there were some scenes where she had to scream very loudly to diffuse some complicated situations. Not screaming in horror, screaming to alert everyone around that something was heading a fishy way. A screaming voice fitting any Osaka noise band. A voice to behold.
Actor Hideo Murota
While info on Tse Wai Kit and Reiko Arai may be sketchy at best, that certainly cannot be said about some of the supporting actors.
Take “old lady thief” Akane for example, played by prolific yakuza movie actor Hideo Murota (1937 – 2002) in a cross-dressing role.
According to the Internet Movie Data base (IMDb), Murota acted in (at least) 271 movies, mostly playing villains. Those included the Osaka movies Violent Panic: The Big Crash (1976) and Authentic True Account: Osaka Shock Tactics (1976).
The character he plays in What’s Up Connection, Akane, goes to Hong Kong with Chi Gau Shin and is then seen residing in the Chi family village. She becomes pretty much an abandoned character, we don’t see her doing much in Hong Kong besides sometimes washing the dishes.
Murota didn’t travel to Hong Kong for that part of the movie. Instead, an intertitle informs us that the “old lady thief” will from the time of Chi Gau Shin’s return to Hong Kong on be played by various actors, both male and female.
Actor Toshinori Kondo
It’s quite the opposite with Toshinori Kondo (1948 – 2020). He only appears in the second half of the movie, playing the smooth talking but ruthless Mr. Yasaki, the main representative of the corporate giant trying to take over the island the Chi family calls its home.
Mr. Yasaki is Japanese, a hired agent to do the dirty work. He enjoys his job, even getting intimate with Chi Gau Shin’s ex-girlfriend Yaolan for a time. Mr. Yasaki always speaks English, with a Japanese accent.
Toshinori Kondo comes across as quite a fine actor playing a villain in a suit. Kondo was however not a career actor. He was an internationally renowned jazz trumpeter who lived in New York City for an extended period in the late 1970s (hence his fluent English) where he worked with free jazz greats like Bill Laswell and John Zorn. Kondo was always open to even the most unusual collaborations. He toured Europe with wacky guitarist Eugene Chadborne, he closely worked with German extreme saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, he joined bands like Yosuke Yamashita’s free jazz Jam Rice Sextett but also worked with sound pioneers exploring the outer fringes of avant-garde music like Cellist Tom Cora and Japanese electronic Hip-Hop performer DJ Krush.
Naturally enough, Toshinori Kondo was also in charge of the soundtrack of What’s Up Connection. He did a very fine job there.
Kondo did act in a few more films, though, perhaps most notably in Sogo Ishii’s thriller Angel Dust (1994) but also in crime dramas like Sadao Nakajima’s Yakuza Ladies 6 (1996).
Osaka Locations
Chi Gau Shin travels to Osaka to receive a tourist tour. He arrives at Osaka Itami Airport, tour guide Yumi takes him to Dotonbori, following the tour script she had received from her tour company.
The two of them frantically search the markets and eateries of Shin Sekai for the thief who stole Gau Shin’s luggage, they take a breath at Tennoji Zoo before finally heading into “deep Osaka”: the brothel district of Tobita Shinji and the neighboring homeless area of Kamagasaki including shots of the notorious Airin Labor Welfare Center.
Director Yamamoto offers outstanding images of both areas, considered unfilmable at the time he made his movie. Tobita Shinji is still off limits to any visual depictions today.
Though the Osaka part of the film doesn’t much exceed 20 minutes, Yamamoto really packs it in there. Delivering real slice of life images from the fringes of south Osaka.
