Mitsuhiro Toda's Lounge Discussions

Hello, everyone. My name is Mitsuhiro Toda, and I write screenplays in Japan. Originally, I was a film historian and an archaeologist of cinema. I'm a screening organizer, working to find and release films that have never been released in Japan, regardless of nationality, age, or genre. I have also screened recent Japanese independent films.

On the other hand, I am interested in the spiritual world. So the genre of my screenplays is spirituality. Or as I like to call it, "synchronicity films" or "forgiveness films".

Like many people who are interested in this field, I was abused for many years by my classmates when I was a child. I also experienced the early death of my mother when I was nine years old. What surprised me more was that my father remarried six months after my mother died. My father, who was a busy businessman, was worried about raising a small child like me, so he remarried a woman he had been introduced to by an acquaintance. He died when I was thirty years old, so I live with my stepmother.

Through these experiences, I came to feel that it is very strange to be born and die, and to meet someone. The invisible world, the universe, God, angels, spirits, heavenly destiny, fate, yoga, reincarnation.... A lot of people start to get interested in these things. What is the "Force" in "Star Wars"? That's how I feel. So I came across a book called "A Course In Mircles". This book explains the relationship between forgiveness and miracles, and I was very much influenced by this book.

It was when I was in the 5th grade of elementary school, and at that time I wanted to die because my classmates were abusing me so badly. They kicked me so hard that I cut my mouth. As I was washing it off in the tap, a girl from my class approached me from behind and asked, "How's your injury?" She gave me a white handkerchief. At the time, I thought the whole world was full of enemies, so I thought she was an angel. I was so happy that I thought she was an angel. But I was so exhausted from the abuse that I didn't even dare to say thank you.

There was a junior high school reunion in 2012, and I attended it, even though many of my former "enemies" were there. "I had read A Course In Miracles, so I no longer had a problem reconnecting with them. I don't want to go into the details of this internal change, because it would make this already lengthy article impossibly long, longer than the running time of a Michael Cimino movie, but anyway, this was the effect of the "forgiveness" that "A Course In Miracles" had taught me. I was able to enjoy the reunion. But anyway, I enjoyed the reunion and found out about the girl who gave me the white handkerchief, and later I went to thank her for that time.

Of course, she didn't remember such a long time ago, but she was happy with tears in her eyes that I was still alive. Immediately after that, I decided to write a script using this incident. So I started writing a script in which such an event happens to the main character's mother and the main character learns "a Course In Miracles" from her classmates.

As a non-professional, it took me a huge amount of time to finish it, from May 2012 to June last year. Well, it turned out to be a long story, but that's another story.

Well, well! I have to make a movie out of this. But what should I do?

That's when I was told about this Stage 32, and I registered a few days ago.

I couldn't find any filmmakers around me who were interested in Spiritualism. Rather, this field is untouched in the Japanese film industry, only somewhat visible in documentary films. With this platform, I think I can find collaborators. Thank you for this encounter. Thank you for reading.

Mitsuhiro Toda

The photo shows one of the stages, Soni Village, Nara Prefecture, Japan.