[Exclusive Coverage] 'Travel and Days' Filming Location, A Journey to Snow-Covered Yamagata with Actress Shim Eun-kyung ①

In early March this year, I received exciting news. It was an invitation to the set of 〈Travel and Days〉 from Shim Eun-kyung. When we met previously, I heard that director Miyake Sho was heading to Japan for filming, and now the shoot was nearing its end. I had to hurry and pack my bags to see the set. The meeting of the two was a combination I had never imagined. Although it seemed like they were not trying too hard, Miyake Sho's camera work, which delves into the inner lives of wounded characters, possesses a subtle yet strong power that captures human emotions. This is a different realm from actress Shim Eun-kyung's performances, where she embodies characters like a tailored suit within various genres and narratives. It seemed that a new gap would emerge between their respective styles.

Leaving the City for Nature, Towards a Breakaway

To pinpoint the coordinates of where actress Shim Eun-kyung is currently 'located', we must look within the structure of this film, 〈Travel and Days〉. First, the emergence of the one who writes the script with great care. It is Shim Eun-kyung. The scenes she writes on paper immediately unfold on screen as a meeting between two men and women who travel to the seaside in the hot summer. And soon, the one who watches the scenes realized on screen, and the one who steps onto the stage with the director for a conversation with the audience after the film ends, expresses to a professor who attended after the event, “I can’t concentrate on my work.” The professor then advises, “Why don’t you take a trip to clear your head?” Ultimately, the words exchanged during their last meeting prompt her to leave.

Looking back, the beginning of this film was also from a talk event. At the screening of director Miyake's film 〈If You Look into Your Eyes〉, which was invited to the Busan International Film Festival, actress Shim Eun-kyung was invited as a guest to recommend the work, and at that time, the two parted ways saying, “Let’s work together someday.” Not long after, director Miyake proposed to Shim Eun-kyung to collaborate. The film, which is based on Tsuge Yoshiharu's manga 〈The Seaside's Serenade〉 (1967) and 〈The House of the Eye〉 (1968), was inspired by her casting, as the writer is Korean, and the male and female characters from Tsuge Yoshiharu's original work were changed. Thus, the character could be concretized through inspiration from the actress.

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In the first part of the film, titled 'Summer', set on the island of 'Gozushima' in Tokyo, the characters created by the writer travel along the blue coastline, while in the 'Winter' part, the space here serves as the writer's own journey outside the film. Thus, the winter travel destination where the writer departs and where the second part of the film unfolds is located in the Shonai region of Yamagata Prefecture in northwestern Japan. Shim Eun-kyung has been filming her 2-night, 3-day journey here for over a month, where small but unexpected events occur.

The filming location is a quiet place with few people, but if we expand our view of the area, we find the Ginzan Onsen area, which influenced the animation 〈Spirited Away〉. Above all, this place is adjacent to Akita and Niigata in Hokkaido, both of which are famous for heavy snowfall in winter. This is also the reason why this location was needed for the winter part of 〈Travel and Days〉.

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Looking back, this film by director Miyake Sho is perhaps the first encounter with the great outdoors. Although he recorded characters collecting plants on the road in 〈Wild Tour〉 (2019), Miyake's characters have mostly stayed in familiar places in the heart of the city. From the youthful spaces and bookstores in 〈Your Bird Can Sing〉 (2018), the shabby boxing gym in 〈If You Look into Your Eyes〉 (2022), to the small business office making science kits in 〈All of Dawn〉 (2024), the characters who were exposed to ordinary life in familiar spaces, emitting emotional turmoil, are now given a moment of respite from the everyday urban life, a journey closer to nature, through the protagonist of this film, the screenwriter.

A Mysterious Inn Not Marked on the Map

The filming site is an hour away by plane from Tokyo. However, due to an unexpected heavy snowfall, the flight was canceled, and we had to delay our plans and hurriedly depart the next morning. It is a place known for heavy snowfall even in March. At dawn, the filming team had already arrived at the site, which is quite far from the village. The filming takes place somewhere in the mountains that embrace a small village. In the film, the inn is located beyond the mountain, as indicated by the hotel staff when it is fully booked. It is an unknown area that did not appear on the map, which made the writer very nervous.

Looking closely, before embarking on this journey, the writer who settled in Japan from Korea must have felt the same tension of being a stranger upon arriving in Japan. As time passed and he gradually became accustomed to daily life, the screenwriter, who fell into a slump, took a chance and stepped towards the 'unknown' and 'adventure' relying on an uncertain map. Will there really be the inn that the hotel staff described when he arrives there? There are no guarantees. However, there is a strange urgency that if he does not go through this process, he may no longer be able to write. As he gets closer to the filming site, it feels like he is following the path of a protagonist in a fantasy genre who passes through the gates of death.

Getting into a small van, we left the village and got closer to the filming site. The landscape outside the window vividly reflected actress Shim Eun-kyung's words, “I saw snow to my heart's content throughout the shoot.” All that could be seen was pure white snow. Looking at the road through the piled snow, the snow stacked higher than the car became a wall. It was literally a path through the middle of the snow. Experiencing snow on this scale is unlikely to happen again. For anyone who is not from Yamagata, such a sight of piled snow would be something they see for the first time in their life.

A staff member, worried that “the weather is too nice,” repeatedly apologized to the guests, saying, “I’m sorry the path is muddy.” The winter shoes worn to the site quickly became dirty. As the temperature rose, it was an emergency for the staff today. Since there must be snow throughout the film, they were busy shoveling snow from here and there to pile it in front of the inn, the filming location.

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​And finally! The place where the writer stayed, and another protagonist of this film. A space that gives him a special experience outside of daily life! This unfolded before my eyes. A small wooden house with about 200 centimeters of snow piled on the roof. All the filming today takes place here. Although it is daytime, the scene in the film is a night scene where the innkeeper Benzo (Tsuzumi Shinichi) and the writer sit across from each other. The production team approached me with a large black cloth and explained, “This is how we create the latest night in Japan. (laughs)” as they darkened the interior with analog skills.

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It feels like arriving in the past on a time machine, the inn resembles a traditional Japanese house exhibition, or a form seen in an old film by Imamura Shohei. With the snowy mountains behind, entering the dark interior, there is a central hearth that passes on the chill, filled with old furnishings. To the writer, these items may seem like museum exhibits, but to Benzo, who lives here, these are the tools of daily life that maintain 'normalcy'. As a writer who penned the adventure of those who set out on a journey with a treasure map, Robert Louis Stevenson, who settled in a strange land, left the words, “There is no such thing as a strange land. Only the traveler is strange.” My journey may be someone else's daily life. Thus, the writer, having traveled far to be close to nature, experiences and shares the daily life of others, emptying his stagnant heart and filling it with fresh thoughts. In this way, he gains the strength to write again.

※ The coverage of the filming site of 〈Travel and Days〉 will continue in the second article.