Publications > Cambodian Taxi Driver
monochrome edition
Cambodian Taxi Driver
Format: A4, 48 pages, saddle-stitched, monochrome offset print on uncoated paper
Format: A4サイズ 48ページ 中綴じ 上質紙 モノクロオフセットプリント
Cambodian Taxi Driver — a photo-essay film that began as a novel, twenty years on, remade as a monochrome zine.
How did Cambodia come to be where it is today? What do the people who live here now carry inside them? What does this society still leave unresolved? And where does that smile, that richness of spirit, come from? Out of those questions came Cambodian Taxi Driver, released in 2010 — a photo-essay film built from still images of my own unfinished novel, set to music. This zine is my own attempt, looking from where I stand today, to revisit Cambodian Taxi Driver and reassemble it in monochrome.
The work premiered at the Cambodia International Film Festival 2011. Music direction by Isao Yamazaki. It was screened, with an accompanying photography exhibition and sale, at an event in Waikiki hosted by e-mail foster parents — a volunteer organization supporting Cambodian orphans. DVD booklets were sold at several shops around Siem Reap. After a series of gallery showings in Japan, the work eventually came to a quiet pause.
In 2025, fifteen years after the work first appeared, I returned to Siem Reap — my first visit in twelve years. The pandemic had thinned the Japanese crowd to almost nothing. Korean capital, once the dominant presence, had given way to Chinese; the West has come back in force, and around Angkor it's Western visitors you see almost everywhere. Guides who once spoke fluent Japanese now move more easily in English. Across the country, crackdowns on the scam compounds keep coming, though how clean things will really get, no one yet knows. Tensions along the Thai border have surfaced again.
The world, this country, Japan — none of them are what they were. Some things have changed. Some things haven't. And some things, it turns out, were only ever what I had imagined them to be. Age makes visible what younger eyes could not see. The goodness of this country has not yet reached the world. That is what drove me to make this zine.
Twenty years since that journey.
The search continues.
Story
Cambodia, 2008. Thirty years after the civil war, Siem Reap is riding high on the Angkor tourism boom. Son, thirty, lost his father to the war. His mother stayed behind in the countryside. He lives with his two younger brothers and makes his living as a motorbike taxi driver. Sa — his childhood friend, his best friend's younger sister — left her family a year ago and has been working at a karaoke club ever since. When Son drops off a customer there one night, the two come face to face again. The same day, Sa loses her place to stay. She turns up at Son's door, and with her comes Takuto, a Japanese backpacker who had been Son's fare that morning, now stripped of everything he owned. An unlikely household begins. Somewhere along the way, Son and Sa fall in love. But the tuberculosis that has been quietly hollowing Sa out begins to show. Son puts her on the back of his bike and starts riding into the dark, heading for Takeo, where her family lives. A reunion that came too late — and from here, their fates begin to bend.
小説から立ち上げたフォトムービー『Cambodian Taxi Driver』を、20年の時を経てモノクロzineへ。
カンボジアという国はどうしてこの状況に至ったのか。今を生きる人々はなにを想い、社会の何に苦しみ、その笑顔と精神の豊かさはどこから来るのか。そうした問いから生まれたのが、2010年発表の『Cambodian Taxi Driver』ー 自作の未完小説を視覚化した、写真と音楽によるフォトムービー。そしてこのzineは、今の自分として『Cambodian Taxi Driver』をもう一度解釈し直し、再構成したモノクロ作品である。
カンボジア国際映画祭2011にてオープニングプレミア上映。音楽監督は山崎功氏。ワイキキで開催された、カンボジア人孤児支援ボランティア団体 e-mail foster parents 主催イベントにて上映および写真展示販売。DVDブックレットをシェムリアップ市内の複数店舗で販売。その後、国内ギャラリーでの展示を重ね、作品はひとつの区切りを迎えた。
そして、作品発表から15年が経った2025年。最後にこの地を踏んでからは12年ぶりに、シェムリアップへ戻った。パンデミックを経て日本人観光客は減り、かつて主役だった韓国資本は中国へと比重を大きく移した。近年は欧米の関与も増え、特に遺跡を歩く観光客は欧米人ばかりだった。日本語が達者だったガイドも、今は英語のほうが滑らかに口から出てくる。国内各地に乱立する国際詐欺拠点の摘発が続くが、どこまで膿が抜けるかはまだわからない。タイとの国境問題も再び表面化している。
世界は、この国は、そして日本は、あの頃とは大きく違う。変わったもの。変わらないもの。そもそも、あの頃から自分の思い込みだったもの。歳を重ねて初めて見えてくるものがある。この国の良さを、まだ世界に伝えきれていない。その想いでこのzineを作った。
あの旅から20年。
問いはまだ続いている。
＜Story＞
2008年、カンボジア。内戦後30年、アンコール遺跡観光の拠点として沸き立つシェムリアップ。内戦で父を喪い、田舎に母を残し、弟2人とバイクタクシードライバーとして暮らす30歳のソン。幼なじみで親友の妹だったサーは、家族のもとを離れカラオケ店で働いて1年が経った。客を店に連れて行ったことから2人は再会する。同じ日、サーは住処を失い、身ぐるみを剥がされた日本人のタクシー客、タクトとともに、ソンの家に転がり込む。奇妙な共同生活のなかで、ソンとサーはやがて惹かれ合い、恋に落ちる。だが、サーを蝕んでいた結核が発症する。ソンはサーをバイクに乗せ、実家のあるタケオへ送り届ける道を走り始めた。その遅すぎた出会いが2人の運命を翻弄するー