Amid massive urbanisation and modernisation, rural Japan persists in idiosyncratic corners

As of 2015, an estimated 93.5 per cent of Japan’s population live in cities, making it one of the most urbanised countries in the world, and the trend towards city living has been growing for decades. In Yadorigi: A Village in Portraits, the London- and Tokyo-based director Eiji Iwakawa profiles three inhabitants of a small, secluded farming village in southern Japan. Following the lives of an organic farmer, a junk collector and a circus trainer, each of them with his own distinct reasons for calling Yadorigi home, Iwakawa’s amiable short documentary discovers a small but enduring side of Japan rarely seen on television or in movies, or presumably, by the vast majority of Japanese people.