For US firms concentrating on Japan, every thing it’s essential to find out about succeeding there could be discovered by watching the Japanese film Swing Ladies. Effectively, not fairly however let’s preserve this gentle! Swing Ladies is what would occur if the Unhealthy Information Bears met your native highschool jazz band. Within the course of it says quite a bit about Japanese tradition and what it takes to succeed there. The film is about in Yamakawa Excessive College in Yamagata Prefecture, deep within the northern backwaters of Japan. The ladies are in remedial math class when they’re roped into changing into the brand new college pep band. As a result of there aren’t sufficient of them to kind a full band, after listening to a recording of Glen Miller’s Moonlight Serenade they determine to develop into a jazz band. How onerous can that be, proper? The ladies face many obstacles, not the least of which is their full and utter lack of musical coaching. However they persist, they “ganbare” as a result of that is what it means to be Japanese: to persist. The ladies finally handle to discover a band director who, regardless of his love of jazz and his timeless devotion to the saxophone, is a complete failure. Undeterred and now hopelessly smitten with jazz, the women proceed practising and finally develop into ok to enter a regional highschool band competitors. Predictably, the forces of nature, their very own self-doubt, and any variety of minor disasters conspire in opposition to them however ultimately they prevail. That is ganbare! It is what Japanese do. It is what they admire in themselves, and in others. At about 16:30 within the above clip the women make their debut at regionals. For those who can final that lengthy, I dare you to not smile when the women launch into Louis Prima’s Sing, Sing, Sing at 21:00! Perseverance have to be genetically encoded in Japanese DNA as a result of they like nothing greater than arising in opposition to lengthy odds and dealing onerous to beat them. Wish to achieve Japan? Ganbare! (Postscript: For those who’ve gotten this far you will in all probability have an interest within the backstory to this film. Solely one of many band members had really performed an instrument earlier than filming. Everybody else needed to study to play from scratch! Get the concept?
