- The Cats of Gokogu Shrine is a quiet gem, about people as well as moggies -
Anyone who's been owned by a cat will find something to love about The Cats of Gokogu Shrine.
I never thought of myself as a cat person, until a wee ball of fluff named Koha arrived in my life in 2010. My friend Sharon needed someone to look after her “for a month or two”, and since she had deformed back legs and feline epilepsy - the cat, not Sharon - I figured she wouldn't pose much danger to the birds in my backyard, so I agreed.
Five years later, when I moved out of my shack in Paekakariki and back into central Wellington, I figured the kindest thing was to leave Koha with my neighbours. She had no traffic sense left by that time, and wouldn't have lasted a day in the city.
After another year, as I was leaving New Zealand, I went to visit my old neighbours and maybe see Koha, only to find out she had run away only weeks after I left, and hadn't been seen again.
I had a cry on the drive home. Losing an animal has a way of opening us up to all sorts of of grief. And for the next six years I felt some guilt that I had let down my wee mate, and that I hadn't been there for her at the end.
Until, late in 2021, I got a call telling me to check the Paekakariki Facebook page. And there was my Koha. She had been living with a bloke from a few streets away for all that time, and had a great life. She had died earlier that month, and he had decided to finally solve the mystery of where she had come from.
I'm pretty sure I had a bit of a cry reading his emails too.
So I know what it is like to let a cat into your life, and then discover you have become besotted with it for no good reason.
Which is why I think Kazuhiro Soda, who directed The Cats of Gokogu Shrine, has made one of the wisest and most deftly insightful films about attachment I've seen in years.
The Cats of Gokogu Shrine does exactly what it promises. There are gokogu shrines all over Japan. But Soda chose to visit one in the coastal town of Ushimado, which has a population of 8000, many of whom are elderly.
The main business of Ushimado was fishing. The population of cats came about because the strays who haunted the docks were well fed. So their numbers grew and spread up the hill - and onto the land the shrine is built on.
Because the shrine attracts visitors, and people love to feed cats, an eco-system of moggies queuing up for scraps and belly rubs has arisen.
But Soda isn't here to tell us that story. The Cats of Gokogu Shrine is a purely observational documentary, with no narration or title cards. Soda’s camera simply watches, and we are invited to watch with him.
Although, if we care to see it, a theme begins to emerge. The people who look after the shrine are often the same people who care for the cats. But there is a battle being waged to control the cat population, by trapping, neutering and releasing the animals. Eventually, if the program is successful, the cat population might die out.
There is even some mordant conjecture as to which of the two communities will vanish first: the de-sexed animals, or the geriatric phalanx of well-wishers who look after them.
If The Cats of Gokogu Shrine has a lesson, maybe it is that all of us are not much more than a pack of vulnerable animals, scratching out a living in a place that has seen better days. And that all our fates are intertwined with those of the species around us.
But if we have a few friends, a plate of food, somewhere dry to sleep and someone to rub our belly once in a while, then that is all we need to be happy, and everything else is just frippery.
Or, maybe it is just a film about some cats. All I know for sure is that I loved it, and you possibly will too.
- Graeme Tuckett, SUNDAY STAR TIMES
The Cats of Gokogu Shrine is now playing at Light House Cinema!