精神（MENTAL）

I saw 『精神』(MENTAL) in Shibuya, Tokyo. An excellent documentary cinema.
I had always had a somewhat strange feeling in the characeters「精神」because 「神」 basically means, in Japanese, the 'God.' However, 『精神』is a 'good' title.
「精神」 is a common word originally in Chinese, diffused to Korean, and to Japanese. In Chinese, 「精神」 also means 'vigor' or 'vigorous,' and I certainly saw 'vigors' of people in this movie and could laugh many times. And, the original meaning of「神」is wonder natural powers of the sky; the sun, moon, wind, rain, thunder, and so on (cf.「鬼」means the spirits of humans, 「祇」means the natural powers of the earth). As the director Kazuhiro Soda called his documentary cinema "observation film," actually, 『精神』is like an astronomical and meteorological "observation" into the 'sky,' there is a very, very, clear vision. (Additionally, it would not be a "film", but would be shot via a high image-quality digital video camera, which is probably 'naturally' suitable for documentary works now, I think.) The sky is just above us but we so often forget it. Maybe mentals are just little bit sensitive to the 'sky' and 'heavenly bodies', and probably mentals themselves are little bit similar to the sky.

Labratory X, led by Kazuhiro Soda