Evil Does Not Exist

Shifting perspectives through a modern movie masterpiece

I was back at my favorite local stream in the Quiet Hills a few weeks ago, tenkara fishing with a friend for the wild yamame that hang out there. It’s the same magical mountain stream I wrote about here, which we were both happy to see mostly recovered from a massive flood that devastated the area several years ago.

It was a rare weekend afternoon when I was free from the work of shuttling my kids around to their various sports activities, but with the family car unavailable, I asked my friend to drive us up to the river.

We parked on the dilapidated concrete bridge that marks the end of the drivable portion of an old logging road that traces the river’s path. We then fished on the downstream side of the bridge for a while before hiking upstream on foot to explore the numerous other pools where fish sometimes also gather.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon we saw lots of yamame darting around, had a few strikes from the skittish and discerning Japanese river trout, but we both came up empty in the end. Still, we enjoyed the sunny July day, climbing in and around flowing water, going our separate ways to cast our lines in silence for long periods of time, and then when our paths crossed now and again, chatting about whatever topic happened to come up.

On the walk back down the stream-side trail to the car, perhaps inspired by the scenery, I started telling my friend about a movie I’d seen recently that’s been on my mind ever since. It’s a deep and powerful Japanese film called “Evil Does Not Exist” that was released in 2024. And though I sensed my fishing friend might not have much interest—being 15 years younger than me and preferring Marvel movies to arthouse econarratives—I couldn’t help myself.

Graciously though, my buddy listened patiently to my rambling summary, and when I sensed he’d never end up watching the film, I asked him if he wanted to know the strange and disturbing ending. He did, and so I told him, after which he remarked, “Sounds interesting. I think I want to see it now.”

Back in the car, we’d driven just a few meters—moving at a snail’s pace to avoid rock damage to the chassis—when we were greeted by a 1 - 2-year-old fawn in the middle of the gravelly road. It paused, stared at us for a moment—in the proverbial ‘deer in the headlights’ style—and then nonchalantly ambled to the other side of the road, in and out of the ditch, and up into the undergrowth of bamboo, pine, and Japanese maple. We watched for a while as the doe casually grazed the sloped forest floor that was still littered with rocks from the flood.

Wild deer never fail to enchant, and for a moment I thought of the entry on these mysterious animals in The Book of Symbols, which describes the Kasuga Deer Mandala:

Hovering in the full moon’s luminous path, between above and below, stepping lightly forward between here and not-here while gazing back over its shoulder, this shimmering white deer bridges the earthly and the spiritual realms, embodying and leading us into the symbolic, intermediate realm of the soul. With its velvet coat, soft moist muzzle, brown eyes glistening beneath long lashes and slender, delicate limbs, it seems the deer’s very nature to symbolize purity and sublimity.

In fact, deer play a significant role in Evil Does Not Exist (which I’ll tell you about now while avoiding spoilers¹), and so encountering this doe was an odd and eerie coincidence that added to the moment’s magic.

Evil Does Not Exist is—to my mind—a timely masterpiece by auteur writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the filmmaker behind Drive My Car, an existential drama adapted from a Murakami Haruki story. I didn’t see that one, and I can’t call myself a film aficionado by any stretch, but I can say that Hamaguchi’s powerful blend of sound, color, camera motion and perspective, and narrative tension in Evil Does Not Exist created a haunting and incredibly meaningful fable that effectively captures deep contemporary feelings of displacement and unease.

Like Murakami Haruki’s fiction, this movie is clearly a cultural product meant for audiences in the East and West. But in Hamaguchi’s film, which is set mostly in a rural Japanese village, the writer/director never panders to either audience. Rather, his film paints a vivid and unflinching multi-perspective picture of some of the deep spiritual and ethical currents that undergird Japanese society’s relationship to itself and nature. It’s also a time capsule portraying Japan during the end of “Covid” that—at least for me—resonates strongly with the spirit of those times here.

The only other work of art that affected me similarly in terms of perfectly capturing the feeling of a time I lived through is Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Bleeding Edge. That story—set in New York City at the crest of the Dotcom wave just before 9/11—vividly rendered the zeitgeist as I’d experienced it in NYC at the turn of the millennium. Just before everything changed.

By contrast, Evil Does Not Exist is set at the tail end of the slow motion “event” that was the global phenomenon called “The COVID-19 Pandemic.” Whereas 9/11 was a local event with global consequences, “COVID” was (narrated as) a global event with local consequences. It was a time when the meaningless malaise of late-stage techno-capitalism in Japan seemed to be reaching a tipping point, prompting many who’d never done so before to turn to nature for solace and peace of mind.

It is this turn that a talent agency called “Playmode” seeks to capitalize on in the central plot conflict of Evil Does Not Exist. Early in the story, we learn that the company has used the last remnants of its government Covid subsidies to buy a plot of land in in Mibiki, a densely forested rural community several hours from Tokyo. The idea of the venture is to use the site as a new “glamping” (glamorous camping) facility to take advantage of a newbie camping boom that is sweeping the nation. As the adage goes, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”²

In an early scene in the film, we watch two employees who have been dispatched to the area trying to appease locals who have gathered for an information session about the glamping facility plans. The two employees are Takahashi, a middle-aged manager and former actor, and Mayuzumi, a relatively new hire who has recently joined “Playmode” for a change of pace after having worked in an elder-care home. To start the meeting, Takahashi and Mayuzumi play a slick marketing video about the glamping site plan before opening the floor to questions.

The two seem to be caught off guard by the detailed, sincere, passionate, incisive, and sometimes even accusatory questioning and commenting that ensues: Will the site’s septic tank pollute the pristine stream running through the area? How will deer and other local wildlife be affected? What about the risk of forest fires that campers will bring? One highly skeptical (and visibly angry) local resident even brings up the issue of the COVID subsidies that he rightly suspects to be driving the project.

After the meeting, Takahashi and Mayuzumi return to Tokyo, and the next morning they and their manager join a video call from their small open-plan office space while their boss Zooms in from his parked car somewhere. They all discuss the local resistance, an obstacle that must be overcome, and the CEO suggests that the best way to appease intractable locals might be to bring one of them into the fold, as it were. They decide on a man named Takumi, who seemed to speak for the community in his comments at the info sessions while also appearing somewhat open to compromise. Takumi is a soft-spoken and stoic handyman and woodcutter who is raising his elementary-school aged daughter, Hana, alone in Mibiki after his wife’s passing.

The Playmode CEO thinks Takumi’s involvement will lend the project credibility with the townspeople, and so Takahashi and Mayuzumi are told to return immediately to the village with the mission of persuading him to accept a job offer.

On the long highway drive back to Mibiki, we get to know Takahashi and Mayuzumi as their relationship deepens a bit, and we also get a glimpse into their very human vulnerabilities and emotional struggles. As he does throughout the film, director Hamaguchi deliberately films characters (and nature) from multiple perspectives, highlighting their subjectivity and ours. Though he is driving to Mibiki, at one point Takahashi vents deep frustration at his role in the company’s scheme: “How the heck did I end up in this mess?”

The tension of this outburst is broken after a long and uncomfortable silence when a notification about a new “match” for Takahashi pops up on the screen of his car navigation system. Seeing this, Mayuzumi can’t contain her chuckles, causing embarrassment and a brusque response from Takahashi who, nevertheless, admits wanting to marry. He admits that he is quite lonely and desperate to settle down. But he can’t even keep a pet because of the frequent travel that his job requires.

As their flirty conversation continues, Takahashi indulges his own mind and his passenger in a flight of fancy about escaping his city hustle for a quiet life in the country. Maybe he should take the caretaker job. If he can’t find a wife maybe reinventing himself in the woods will bring his life meaning.

Takahashi’s move-to-the-country pipe dream is given additional fuel after he and Mayuzumi arrive at Takumi’s property. In a poetically crafted scene rich with symbolism, the two find the woodcutter at work in his element, splitting logs. Perhaps driven to impudence by his latest vision of escape, Takahashi can’t resist asking Takumi if he can try taking a few swings of the axe. Gripping the handle tightly and bearing down with firm resolve, the city slicker’s first three attempts fail miserably, but after receiving some curt instruction from Takumi, he finally succeeds in splitting a single log on his fourth try.

The three then head to a local Soba restaurant to discuss the caretaker proposal. The restaurant is run by a couple that moved to the area a few years ago from Tokyo, drawn by the pristine spring water they use to cook their noodles. Takumi helps with the frequent chore of collecting this water, and after their meal Takahashi and Mayuzumi tag along with him to help with this task.

The forest is beautifully dappled in afternoon sun, but there are ominous clouds looming. Returning to Takumi’s car, the three hear a hunter’s gunshot in the distance. A little while later, while enjoying a cigarette, Takumi suddenly remembers he’s again forgotten to pick his daughter up from daycare. Amidst all his wood chopping and water carrying, Takumi has become quite forgetful recently. And thus begins a final act like no other.

More than an “Econarrative”

Evil Does Not Exist is often described as an econarrative, and I’d say that’s accurate, but I think this framing misses the essence of the film’s deeper messages and its religious and culturally-rooted ethical commentary. No movie is just one thing of course, but after giving it some thought I’m now convinced that one thing it could be is an allegory about 共生, the Japanese and Chinese concept for coexistence that is rooted in Asian religious and philosophical traditions.³

The first of the two characters in this word, 共, means “together,” “shared,” or “common”; the second kanji, 生 stands for “life,” “to live,” or “birth.” Together, the term thus literally means “living together” or “coexistence.”

In modern Japanese, one usage of 共生 denotes the idea of “symbiosis” in biology, describing different organisms living together for mutual benefit; but in the past few decades it has also started to appear in vernacular political contexts to express an ideal of harmonious coexistence among humans and with the natural world. As a foreign language educator teaching coursework in cross-cultural communication, I’ve also been aware of the the term’s increasing prominence to describe an ideal of multicultural coexistence (tabunka kyosei, 多文化共生). The prefecture where I live, which has growing populations of people from Brazil, Peru, The Philippines, China, Vietnam, and many other countries is one that strongly emphasizes tabunka kyosei, though not always without pushback⁴.

Harmony, symbiosis, mutual benefit, coexistence. If these sound to you like Buddhist and Confucian values, I’d agree. Some readers might associate these terms with communist rhetoric, and there may be some overlap there as well, but I’m going to stick to the religious and cultural roots of these ideas.

Religion in Japan is a fascinating subject. If you’re intimate enough with a Japanese person to ask them about their religious beliefs, you may get a response like, “I have no religion” or “I’m not religious.” And though this may be true in the sense that the person doesn’t make regular visits to a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine, it doesn’t mean that the many rich spiritual and moral values of Japanese religious traditions don’t inform the person’s life, as they do society.

I think it was Martin Buber who said something to the effect of “when there is no religion, there is nothing but religion.” And though I don’t want to engage in fetishization of the ritual politeness and general conviviality that is on display every day in Japan, it does seem that—irrespective of people’s proclaimed secularism—the beautiful civility apparent in Japanese social life is a testament to the enduring influence of Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto (and even Taoist) values in this society.

In Evil Does Not Exist, once you notice some of the Buddhist symbology, it’s hard to unsee it, but that doesn’t mean the movie’s message is insincere or heavy handed. On the contrary, noticing that Takumi’s main vocation is to “chop wood, and carry water” only affirms the truth of the popular Zen Buddhist belief that satisfaction, even enlightenment, can only be found in one’s mundane everyday activities—in the natural relationships with/in one’s own environment rather than in the story of some far away place.⁵ Unlike Wim Wenders’ perhaps orientalizing portrayal of a serene Tokyo toilet cleaner in Perfect Days, Hamaguchi’s depiction of Takumi the woodcutter in Evil Does Not Exist offers a more honest character study. The portrait encompasses Takumi’s moral failings and rejects the valorization of any kind of meditative escape to chopping wood and carrying water that is divorced from one’s obligations to others.

“Water Always Flows Downhill”

This sentence of self-evident wisdom is one articulated by the village leader after he is prompted to speak by the expectant eyes of local residents gathered at the glamping site information session. He continues, “What you do upstream will end up affecting those living downstream. I’m not even talking about conservation. But any activities upstream will add up, leaving a huge impact downstream.”

The village leader’s comments might as well be a Dharma talk because he’s just describing the nature of the world and the ethical implications that flow naturally from that nature, which humans are a part of. I remember learning in Thailand, decades ago, that the Pali word Dhamma—precursor to the Sanskrit word Dharma—is basically synonymous with the idea of “the nature of things.”⁶ It is the law of the universe. Easily observable and undeniable. Like gravity. Like water flowing downstream.

In Zen Buddhism and the its broader Mahayana Buddhist traditions, Dharma (法, hō) is not just doctrine but the very nature of things as they are: inextricably interconnected, symbiotic.

But just seeing everything as interconnected is not the point. The village leader ends his soliloquy by driving home the ethical implications of our interconnectedness in a statement that also speaks to Confucian values of duty and obligation: When the water is polluted,

. . . the people upstream have to take the blame for that. It leads to disputes. To prevent this, upstream communities are expected to act responsibly. That’s our duty. We can’t let dirty water flow downstream just for the sake of some quick profits. We need to understand that. In order to be part of this community, that’s the first thing you need to know.

This Buddhist and Japanese ethos—that humans have a duty to carefully consider how their actions affect other beings—makes perfect common sense, which is another way of saying it is—or should be—natural.

“In a way, we’re all outsiders . . . Balance is key.”

These words are from another comment during the movie’s early community meeting scene, this one by Takumi (the woodcutter). For me they may best encapsulate the film’s core Buddhist message. Takumi explains that his grandparents came to the rural town of Mibiki after the war as part of a government-sponsored rural farming initiative. Thus, his own roots in the town are not so deep that he instinctually rejects outsider perspectives. In fact, he humbly admits that during Mibiki’s brief history there have been several excesses that led to environmental problems. He recognizes the value of outsiders coming to the place, but also knows the importance of humility. This is why he stresses that balance is essential.

Buddhism rejects excess, instead recommending The Middle Way of balance that Takumi advocates (though eventually fails to follow). As I’m sure most are aware, the Buddha’s teaching of The Middle Way, is based in his experiences in the excesses of asceticism to escape the emptiness he felt in his earlier life of luxury.

The Romantic Poet, William Blake wrote “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” but to me this has just come to mean that humans often need to learn things the hard way, through suffering. Buddhism, like many other ancient wisdom traditions, seeks to offer its adherents a kind of shortcut: skip the excess and follow The Middle Way.

A movie about The Middle Way might lack drama but it would make up for it with harmonious serenity, and there is plenty of that in various long, wandering scenes that dwell on Mibiki’s quiet, natural beauty. But Hamaguchi also wants to show us that beneath this calm is a current of pain and delusion that leaves its own trail of damage.

Those Downstream of the Covid “Crisis”

There is a new movie out now called Eddington⁷ that seems to be the quintessential dramatization of the Covid era’s effect on society in the U.S., and when compared to what that movie dramatizes, Japan’s navigation through the Covid crisis may look like a happy “middle way.” Indeed, civility continued to reign in Japan throughout the crisis. But to me, Evil Does Not Exist also reveals the excesses of Japanese society during this time, and some of the damage done.

You might remember that Takumi has a daughter with a mother who died before her time. She is small, mostly quiet, and thus easily overlooked, but she certainly has needs like anyone else. Even more so, we imagine, after losing her mother. Is this character a stand-in for the countless children whose schooling was interrupted, whose parents’ marriages broke-up under the stress of sudden work-from-home lifestyle shifts, whose voices were ignored as parks and other green spaces were being eyed for commercialization at a rapid pace throughout the country? Or for those who lost loved ones for some reason or another during the crisis?

Though “lockdown” never really happened in Japan, the atmosphere of vigilance and associated social anxiety lasted longer here than in many places. And though reporting these facts might make you look at me sideways, it’s a matter of public record that excess Covid hospitalizations and deaths, and also overall excess mortality in Japan only began to rise significantly after the rollout of Covid “vaccines.” Death by suicide also rose sharply during the prolonged atmosphere of crisis in Japan. Further, the increase in such ‘deaths of despair’ shifted to include younger and younger age cohorts, even tragically extending to include elementary-aged children of Hana’s generation.

In the film, Hana is metaphorically downstream of her father, Takumi, who—absorbed in his wood chopping and water carrying—sometimes forgets about or ignores her needs. In reality, all the young people of Japan who suffered immensely during the “pandemic” were downstream of adults who did the same.

Though the only reference to the Covid crisis is the mention of government subsidies that (perversely) incentivized Playmode’s venture, the era of late capitalist excess nevertheless serves as a fitting backdrop, a time when an epidemic of loneliness, social anxiety, and personal pain were thrown into stark relief.

Hurt Beings Hurt Beings

Hana seems to find solace in nature, and she is enchanted by her occasional encounters with the deer that haunt the forest near her home. But as we know from the gunshots that ring out in two of the movie’s scenes, these deer are prey to hunters as well.

In another artfully composed multi-perspective car scene, Takahashi and Mayuzumi discuss the deer trail that runs through the proposed glamping site with Takumi:

Mayuzumi: Can I ask you something?

Takumi: Yeah?

Mayuzumi: Do deer attack people?

Takumi: No

Takahashi: But I’ve heard of them attacking people in tourist spots.

Takumi: They see people a lot⁸. The deer here don’t attack people.

Mayuzumi: You’re sure?

Takumi: I’m sure.

Unless it’s a gut-shot deer or parent.

Mayuzumi: Gut-shot?

Takumi: Hit by a bullet. It might fight back if it can’t run. Very unlikely though. Wild deer are timid. They avoid people.

Mayuzumi: In that case, the deer trail might not be a bad thing. It’ll be a chance for city people to interact with wild animals.

Takahashi: Good point.

Takumi: Touching them is risky. They [may] carry disease.

Mayuzumi: But they avoid people, right? So they won’t get touched.

Takahashi: Maybe the deer won’t even come near the glamping site

Takumi: Where would they go?

Takahashi: Somewhere else, I guess.

The dialogue in this scene is about the nature of deer, but also, the nature of nature. Wild deer, like all wild animals, generally act in accordance with their nature. This is not a matter of nature worship or enchantment with wild beings, it is just common sense. It makes me think of Chris Rock’s classic bit about a “crazy” circus tiger.

But the scene also speaks to human nature, aptly encapsulating the suffering of the movie’s three protagonists. They (/we) are all suffering in their (/our) own ways, in their (/our) own delusions, and where can they (/we) go? Takumi is chopping wood and carrying water, but he must also be carrying the heavy grief of losing his wife. And while his physical work with wood and water seems to bring some peace of mind, it may also be what keeps him inside his own head and aloof to some of his daughter’s immediate needs. For his part, the talent manager, Takahashi, is lonely and suffering a career path that has lost all meaning for him. Finally, Mayuzumi is similarly adrift, having joined the entertainment industry for a change of pace after burning out in her work as a certified care worker.

So, Hana is certainly not the only being who suffers in Evil Does Not Exist. The film gives us perspective on the suffering of multiple characters and beings in nature, including the putative gut-shot deer. The prospect of a gut-shot deer lashing out when injured or cornered, though, points to Dharma (and Karma!) as well. The contemporary self-help and pop-psychology proverb, “hurt people hurt people” applies, indicating that human nature is not so different from nature nature. We might even make the phrase more inclusive: hurt beings hurt beings. When beings are injured—physically, psychologically, spiritually, or emotionally—they may fall into delusion and act against (their) nature. Deer, given their symbolic association with both earthly and spiritual realms, are a perfect embodiment of this principal. The Book of Symbols continues:

A pair of deer is often depicted flanking the throne of the Buddha, who is said to have incarnated in a previous life as a honey-voiced, golden stag whose mission it was to calm the passions of humans lost in despair and lead them to the eightfold path.

This passage will make a bit more sense if/once you’ve seen the film.

So, Evil Does Not Exist?

If you say so. Call this title a Zen Koan if you like, but in Hamaguchi’s world—and in Buddhist thought—what might be called “evil” is less a cosmic force than the outcome of ignorance, delusion, and suffering, unfolding through natural (common sense) processes of cause and effect. Like water running downstream.

The actual world is 共生, co-becoming. But real tragedy emerges from hurt beings hurting beings, acting out of desperation, like the gut-shot deer Takumi describes. In nature, the human concepts of good and evil do not, in fact, exist; all that exists is a web of interdependencies among all beings.

Hamaguchi’s quiet, moving, and enigmatic parable asks us to question our binary labels, accepting uncertainty and ambiguity, and to find compassion by seeing the world from various perspectives. From a Buddhist point of view, whether or not evil exists is something all of us will need to look inward to discover ourselves.

And yet . . .

What shall we call war, if not some kind of immense, pathological “evil” that must be resisted?

Well, we’re not going to solve that here, so let’s just end this rambling post with a song by Jesse Welles out in nature that asks us to contemplate this big ol’ messy moral universe of ours:

1. That said, my plot summary is pretty detailed—maybe I got carried away—so if you’d prefer to watch the movie first, please do. You can buy or rent it on Apple TV or Amazon Video. I’d love for you to then come back and leave a comment about what you think of my reading of the film!

2. For my fellow fans of intertextuality who are down here with me again in the footnotes (thanks!), you’ll be amused to know that the actual quote was spoken by Rahm Emanuel in the context of the fallout of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. He said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Interestingly, Emanuel was the U.S. ambassador to Japan during most of the Covid “crisis,” including the period during which Evil Does Not Exist is set.

3. Translated in a recent book on the concept as “co-becoming,” pronounced kyosei in Japanese and Gongsheng in Chinese.

4. For readers of Japanese, this recent article notes that prefectural offices received many emails and telephone complaints (both, no doubt anonymous) after the prefectural governor emphasized tabunka kyosei in a speech.

5. The proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water” is widely attributed to Zen Buddhist tradition, summarizing the teaching that spiritual insight does not remove one from the ordinary tasks of life. Instead, enlightenment reveals the profound meaning in everyday actions. While the exact origin is unclear and it does not appear in classical Buddhist scripture, the saying has been popularized through modern Zen writing and Western Buddhist literature as a way to express the continuity and groundedness of true spiritual practice.

6. The Thai word for “nature,” thamachhat (ธรรมชาติ), is formed from “tham” (ธรรม)—from Pali “dhamma,” meaning natural law, truth, or the Buddha’s teachings—and “chhat” (ชาติ), meaning birth or life. Thus, in Thai, “nature” literally conveys the sense of “dhamma-born” or that which arises according to the fundamental law/order of reality.

7. You can find the movie’s trailer here, but if you’re like me, reliving a dramatization of American Covid madness might not feel very appealing. A headier but maybe just as valuable way to understand the incredibly important social commentary the film seems to offer is to check out this excellent interview with the movie’s director, Ari Aster. I can’t recommend this conversation enough.

8. In the Japanese, それは人に慣れすぎているせいで, literally “they are too accustomed to people.”