Does Your Soul Have a Cold?

D: Mike Mills

Many Americans’ fascinations with Japanese culture and Tokyo in particular stem from the categorical differences between our lives. Acclaimed music-video and Thumbsucker director Mike Mills accentuates those differences in his simple doc, Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, an exposition on the effects of depression in Tokyo and the trusting nature of its inhabitants. Culled from a series of translated interviews with four depressive Tokyoites –Êa young woman who works in a T-shirt factory, a middle-age semitransvestite, a medical-supplies saleswoman, and a computer-programming pack rat – Mills’ film traces the recent appearance of Western pharmaceutical companies and new discussions on utsu, the Japanese word for depression, to company-owned “educational” Web sites. Not that the people profiled aren’t truly depressed, but as Japanese society becomes increasingly globalized, elements of honor and privacy are slowly dissolving.


9pm, Austin Convention Center

This article appears in March 16 • 2007.

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