In this paper, I’ll mainly focus on movie Swallowtail Butterfly (1996) and discuss it from three perspectives: its artistic filming style and techniques, passive kokusaika and it influenced by exotic culture. Despite some similarities with other movies, Swallowtail Butterfly is trying to set itself apart from convention by highlighting its unique artistic value and presenting unconventional perspective of a trendy topic. If I regard the appreciation of Swallowtail Butterfly as an evolutionary process, the first thing I realize might be its very artistic filming style. Shunji Iwai adopts some film techniques which often appear in the movies of 6th generation directors. But unlike 6th generation directors who constantly pursue realism in their movie, by the use of color, music and composition, Shunji Iwai injects considerable artistic value into this movie and he makes use of the artistic value to achieve an utopian vision of Yen Town. The artistic filming style and utopian vision of Yen Town There is a series of scenes depicting their seemingly utopian life in Blue Sky after accidentally causing the death of Suto (45:00). They are collecting reusable garbage in the waste yard; Arrow is teaching Ageha boxing; Feihong, Glico and Ageha accidentally find a piano in the waste yard; Ageha and Glico laugh, sing and play piano on the truck. First of all, the scene is just so beautiful and dreamlike. Even though collecting garbage, having no stable job and no settled living
