Tokyo-based filmmaker Ark Miura talks about her latest documentary, Keiko by Ark, as well as about her experience of living in Japan as a Japanese person with African roots.

Born in Tokyo in 2003, Ark Miura is a filmmaker of mixed Ugandan and Japanese heritage and serves as a representative of African Youth Meetup (AYM). Through her Instagram account, @jeunnedark, she shares original music and short films. Her earlier works include Hair (2020), which follows her journey toward accepting and loving her Afro hair, and Je veux être une fille belle (2020), which questions media representations of women and Japanese beauty standards such as “fair skin,” while exploring self-acceptance. She also directed Ark & Maya: All Mixed Up, which received a special screening at the Tokyo Documentary Film Festival in 2021. In her first narrative work, Emily and Blakey (2022), Miura portrays two students struggling to fit into a Japanese high school, tracing how they gradually find friendship and a sense of identity while feeling that their very existence “disrupts harmony.”

First, I want to ask a few questions about the particular route you travel from the initial conception of a film project to its realisation. Could you walk me through how Keiko by Ark came together? Do you have any rituals or habits when starting a new project? And were there moments along the way where things got difficult — and if so, how did you find your way through?

I’ve been making short films about identity since high school. One self-documentary I created with a friend of mine who has mixed American roots was selected for a special screening at the Tokyo Documentary Film Festival in 2021. When I make films, I always start with the questions and emotions that are deep inside my heart.

I was born and raised in Japan, and as someone with African roots, I have lived with a very particular set of difficulties. Especially after entering the Japanese school system at the age of 12, I experienced different kinds of distortions and pressures, and those experiences gradually affected my mental health. In many ways, I feel that I have spent the past 22 years having to overcome one barrier after another. 
Since high school, I had been wondering: if life has been this difficult for me even now, what kind of lives did mixed-race people born in the postwar period—who were called konketsuji (“mixed-blood children”) at the time—live, and what kinds of feelings did they carry? Those questions pushed me to start looking for books, videos, and other materials. The first book I came across was Keiko the Japanese by Keiko Clark, a mixed-race woman navigating postwar Japan. In it, I found the honest feelings and cries of a woman with African roots, feelings I myself had never been able to fully put into words in everyday life.
This film, Keiko by Ark, began when I spoke with producer Yuki Sakamoto, whom I had met on a previous project, about my desire to bring Keiko Clark’s story to the screen.

When you first started writing the script, what emotions were most strongly stirring within you?

I live with bipolar disorder and am still in treatment. When filming began, I was actually going through a manic episode (symptoms of abnormally high mood, excessive talkativeness, insomnia, and a chaotic state of mind). Even though I had shared my condition with the crew beforehand, once we started shooting, I wasn’t able to fully carry out my role as director. I burned out quickly and ended up pushing myself too far.
Later, during a debriefing session, the crew criticised me, saying things like, “You’re inconsiderate,” and “Are you even aware of what’s going on around you?” It was incredibly frustrating and disheartening to feel like it was being blamed on my personality, when in reality, my illness was severely limiting my ability to function. However, after explaining my symptoms again, and despite some misunderstandings afterward, I was able to create a schedule that didn’t overwork me during the final shoot, and I believe it led to mutual understanding. 

The film is experimental; I did not write a script in advance. Instead, I observed the passage of time and filmed whatever I felt I could capture in the moment. The work follows me over eight months as I read words written in Keiko’s book, confronting various conflicts and going through different experiences. My main intention was to capture my genuine emotions.

In 2003, the year you were born, I think general awareness of multi-racial and multi-ethnic identities and related issues was still quite low in Japan. What changes have you noticed since then?

Compared to when I was little, I now feel glad to see more people with African roots active across many different fields—advertising, television, literature, music, and beyond.  Since I was sixteen in 2019, I’ve been involved with the NPO Africa Japan Forum, helping to organise events for young people with African roots. Around 2020, when media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement also increased in Japan, I gave several interviews, both as part of organisations and as an individual. What I felt through those experiences was that there had previously been so few opportunities for our voices to be heard that many interviewers were hearing these stories for the first time and reacting with, “I see.” 

The same was true even within my own family. Until I began speaking out publicly and organising events, I had never really had in-depth conversations with them about the barriers and challenges I faced because of my African roots. I think part of that was due to stigma. 

Today, though, we’re living in a time when micro aggressions are being talked about more openly, and people can share their own experiences through social media. I hope that, moving forward, society will come to recognise people’s full stories—the positive, the difficult, and all the complexities in between.

This film, dedicated to Keiko Clark, engages deeply with the idea of being seen and unseen in society. How would you like the tenderness and pain within this work to reach Japanese audiences? And what possibilities do you see in this ethical gesture of “uttering silence”?

This is a deeply personal story for me, for Keiko, and for the other people who kindly appeared in the film. But through this work, I want people to understand that there is a reality in which one can be placed at a disadvantage because of one’s unchangeable “roots,” and that when this overlaps with crucial stages of development, it can have a profound impact on a person’s mental health. 

At the same time, I hope viewers will sense, as one of the film’s messages, just how much healing can happen through meeting people who genuinely try to support you. Film is an art form that cannot exist without its audience. For me, the “silence” in the moment of receiving and feeling a work is itself a form of compassion. It is a desire to know, to understand. That silence is also a kind of “language.”

What do you most hope viewers of the documentary will feel? Who do you want this film to reach?

This film blends fictional scenes with real ones, and I hope audiences will enjoy that movement between the two. Music is also a very important element. I want people to listen closely to the feelings I’ve poured into the lyrics. I am still in the midst of my own struggles, so I do not want to speak too grandly, but I do hope the film will resonate not only with people in Japan who have African roots and their families, but also with anyone who has ever felt that it’s hard to navigate school, work, or society.

Finally, do you have a message for the audience?

I’m very grateful to everyone who has sent kind messages to help make this film possible, and to those who have supported the crowdfunding campaign. We are still in the editing stage, but I am truly looking forward to delivering a film that can create a sense of togetherness, something that makes us feel, “Let’s keep living today as well.”  I’m also very excited for audiences to encounter Keiko as she really is a vibrant, joyful person.

Visit her website: https://arkmiura.co