Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

CUTE AS A BUG In Japan, this photo gets an “Aww” reaction.

Taking as her subject the Japanese fascination with insects, botanist/filmmaker Oreck discovers a world of wonders, and though some of the things she treats as revelations will seem like old news to Japan-ophiles, Beetle Queen offers one more path to understanding Japanese culture. The first surprise is that the Western revulsion for insects is not, as you might assume, a “natural” feeling passed along in the genes. Oreck treats us to the sight of Japanese children who get as excited about purchasing a beetle as they might about, say, a hamster.

And it isn’t confined to kids; in Beetle we meet a professional bug hunter who has turned his trips into the woods into a hugely profitable business. Oreck’s style is expressive and artistic rather than pedantic. In between chunks of poetic narration (delivered in Japanese), we get long sequences of people and their bugs, offered without any direct comment on what we are seeing. Not that the film doesn’t throw around ideas: With help from noted philosopher Takeshi Yoro, Oreck makes bold, if sometimes strained, connections among insects, haiku, rice-paddy plantations and the hard-to-translate concept of mono no aware (roughly, a direct appreciation of nature and the fleeting quality of beauty). Even samurai get pulled into the mix. We weren’t always convinced, but we were certainly fully engaged from start to finish.

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