A balancing act between dependence and self-determination characterises Yuma Takada’s (Mei Kayama) story as told in 37 Seconds, a film by Hikari which won the Panorama Audience Award at the 2019 Berlinale. The film opens with a shot of Yuma on the train in Tokyo, her head at the level of other passenger’s crotches. As she exits the train, she is revealed to be in a wheelchair – Yuma has cerebral palsy. When she arrives home, she and her mother (Misuzu Kanno) take a bath together. This tender moment captures the best of the intense care between the two, the complexities of which become more apparent throughout the film, while the shot of Yuma at hip-level foreshadows the film’s focus on her budding sexual curiosity. This is something that will trouble her relationship with her protective mother.
Yuma is a talented manga artist. She works for her cousin, Miss Sayaka – who it quickly becomes clear, is exploiting her, keeping her hidden and taking credit for her work. A businessman encourages Miss Sayaka to come out as having a disabled assistant, suggesting it would make her more popular, but she refuses, relishing her fame. As this increases, so does her reliance on Yuma. Meanwhile Yuma begins to submit her comics for publication in her own name and is rejected repeatedly as her drawings too closely resemble Miss Sayaka’s. Running out of options, she phones a hen-tai publication who is eager to attract more female readers. But when she arrives to the office with her drawings, an editor (Yuka Itaya) asks with suspicion if she’s ever had sex: a question not likely posed to abled artists. When Yuma says she hasn’t the editor replies “Thought so” and asks her to return when she’s had more sexual experience.
Thus begins Yuma’s sexual exploration. She tries dating men online, and meets many strange ones and many mean ones. The most promising contender eventually confesses, “I never thought I’d be comfortable around people with disabilities”, though says he’s open and seems sincere – until he stands her up. Already dressed up and downtown, Yuma decides to get what she came for and hires a male sex worker. He tells her he charges extra for girls in wheelchairs, refuses to kiss her when she politely asks, and leaves in disgust, telling her he can’t “get it up”, still charging her 18,000 of his 20,000 yen fee. The scene is incredibly painful to watch, his treatment of her awful. After Yuma leaves her room in the love hotel, she finally meets someone kind: she struggles to navigate the inaccessible building and a woman who has just proclaimed her love to a man who also uses a wheelchair offers her a ride. Yuma seems to think that perhaps wheelchair users can be loved after all; the scene also suggests that men might discriminate more harshly against non-normative bodies. But it turns out the woman (Makiki Watanabe) is not in love with him after all. She’s a sex worker and caretaker; many of her clients are disabled, and she becomes a key mentor figure for Yuma, whose female role models thus far are her over-protective mother and exploitative cousin. Her mentorship is one of a woman experienced and versed in the varied needs of disabled people who discusses sexuality freely.
Yuma’s mother thinks her too vulnerable to date and does not even allow her to wear dresses when she leaves the house alone. Her voice is soft and her movement limited, and since these attributes characterise agency in an ableist and patriarchal culture, others constantly assume her to be passive and weak, not an actor. Yuma’s mother also thinks that sex would be dangerous for her, never considering that it might be pleasurable and desirable: a scene in which she screams upon finding Yuma’s dildo is one of several in which drama and humour are seamlessly woven. It’s true that disabled people are two times more likely to be sexually assaulted, and that young girls are often targets, too. Viewers are confused about Yuma’s age until quite late in the film, when her mother tries to report her as kidnapped and the police tell her that you can’t kidnap an adult. She’s actually 23. Yuma is a virgin, has no friends her age, lives with her mother, and is not allowed to leave the house in a dress. Being both disabled and a young woman twice negates her perceived capacity for sexual agency. She starts wearing dresses because she wants to be looked at as an object of desire. And when she comes home drunk for the first time, she retorts to her mother that nobody has the slightest interest in her anyway.
Yuma never ‘succeeds’ in having sex. Although allowing her to ‘score’ might make for a disappointingly simplistic resolution, it’s troubling that the film contributes to the de-sexualisation of disabled bodies by dooming her to constant rejection. It’s also a shame that her exploration of sexuality in the first place is prompted not by her own desires, corporeal or romantic, but by a woman who tells her she must gain sexual experience to make hen-tai. Importantly, 37 Seconds uses an actress who in real life has the disability she represents. I’m not sure to what extent it’s fair to hold a Japanese film up to Western disability politics, so my observations should be taken with a grain of salt. But it’s still imperative to note that 37 Seconds falls short in several areas. There has been much criticism against the frequency with which movies with disabled protagonists focus only on a life of struggle, perpetuating an understanding of disability as a predominantly tragic state: the textbook definition of ableism. This is explicit in a scene in which Yuma asks her new mentor if it’s very different to have sex with disabled people: she responds that some seem like they are mad at the world. There is also the trope of structuring films with disabled protagonists around narratives of ‘overcoming’, which 37 Seconds does – but, ironically, what Yuma has to overcome is largely the internalisation of ableist assumptions imposed upon her by her family members, rather than her own actual limitations. Even the film’s title implies that the thirty-seven seconds for which Yuma did not breathe when she was born define her entire story. We learn little about Yuma that does not relate to her disability.
Despite this, the film elegantly rewrites dependence as interdependence: Yuma learns to explore the world and herself with the help of new friends, moving beyond the limits her family has placed upon her. Looking for sexual intimacy, she finds a number of non-sexual intimate relationships: with the sex worker who takes her shopping, with a male caretaker, and with estranged family members. Even when her relationship with her mother grows bad – she goes so far as to lock Yuma in the house without a phone – Yuma still returns home, aware that her overprotective impulses were motivated by care: a care she needs and appreciates. Yuma is newly aware that her mother needs her companionship after learning more about her family’s history: their reliance is mutual, and they offer different kinds of care to one another. But Yuma has learned to define this care on her own terms, which requires her mother to acknowledge her agency. She proves to her mother that she can dress and bathe herself, and finally proves to the editor that her comics are worth publishing even if they are not sexual. In other words, she shows those who doubt her for her failure to assimilate that her alternative way of doing things is valuable, too, and that a love which allows for the space to fail and get hurt can be just as sweet as sharing a bath.
