Fall 2025

by Sonya Friedman

After an 18-hour flight (before jets, and after refueling in San Francisco), I stumbled out of Japan Air into the frantic Tokyo airport.  As I scanned the huge, waiting crowd, each of them seemed to be an exact twin of the many others: small male Japanese, black suit, white shirt, black tie, forced smile. How would I ever find the film producers who’d hired me?  Ah, now I saw a group of five of those identical men on one side, waving a large white banner with the words “Sonya Friedman.”  Wow, I thought, I’m going to like Japan.

But the group tried to whisk me straight to the recording studio—where we would be casting actors for the dialogue and narration of a docu-drama about the end of the Samurai class.  Start work right away?  I was bleary eyed and exhausted.  “No way!” I said firmly, trying immediately to assume authority over the project.  “Hotel time.  We’ll meet in the morning.”

So the producers of Nikkatsu Films reluctantly dropped me at the hotel (which they owned, along with a cinema, a publishing firm, and a zoo).  I dropped off to sleep at once.  But not for long.  Suddenly, the bed was shaking, the walls were shaking.  I ran out to the hall, only to be reassured by the floor-clerk that it was a very usual and very minor earthquake. “Nothing to alarm, sir,” he said.  I replied, “Thank you, ma’am,”  then retreated and fell back to sleep.

More disagreements the next morning.  In New York City, I had written the English dialogue and narration for this doc, hired by a part-time film-producer who was also a dentist with offices at 43^rd and Broadway.  (Who can explain the mysteries of financing in the film biz?) He and the Japanese producers had been so impressed, they’d hired me to direct the sound recording in Tokyo.  I don’t think the Japanese producers had realized I was a woman.  Right off, at every turn, they told me what they had already arranged.   I was auditioning for the voice-overs and narration, but every actor Nikkatsu presented had a strong German accent!  I explained I needed American or English actors, but they insisted I use their choices (“all tried and true,” they said).  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll just get the next plane out and go from whence I came.” The auditions were rescheduled for two days later.  Giving me time to reconnoiter.   Luckily, , my Japanese co-producer was Yoshi, amiable, experienced, and fairly fluent in English.  He was my guardian angel from day one—and left a red rose at my podium during every session.

Meanwhile, breakfast at the hotel had become weird.  A few minutes after I was eating my American-style eggs, toast, and coffee, a bouquet of flowers appeared.  “From gentleman there,” the waiter said, gesturing toward a white, European man who was beaming at me, expectantly.  I ignored him.  However, the next morning, more bouquets appeared, and even some small gifts. The White Gentlemen were desperate for the company of the White Lady. From then on, I had breakfast in my room.

Outside the studio, my hosts didn’t know what to do with me.  They’d never had a woman to entertain—previously, only male directors/producers.  The first night, they took me to a geisha club.  We were entertained royally by beautiful geishas with their lovely dance and songs.  But I felt vulnerable sitting with the others on a round bench with our feet dangling down into a large, empty hole.  What went on there with male visitors?

The next night, they took me to a strip-tease show.  The stadium had runways that extended deep into the audience. The music was deafening.  Women in full kimono-dress stepped out and began flinging off their outer, then inner, layers.  But not fully, before male customers leapt onto the ramp and, howling, tore off their remaining garments.  It looked dangerous to me, but my hosts were relaxed and chuckling.

When I managed an evening alone (assuring my hosts I was meeting a male friend in the city because they’d said it was IMPOSSIBLE for a woman to be out alone at night), I wandered the streets which were lit by huge, hanging lanterns, imparting an other-worldly, magical aura. (This was before all those skyscrapers.) At a restaurant, I pointed to dishes that looked tasty—and they were superb.  As soon as I’d finished a portion, they’d quickly rearrange what remained on the plate, to retain its pleasing composition.

One afternoon, we finished early and I took a taxi (absolutely NO tipping in Japan) to the Kabuki theater, long dreamed of.  The expressive pantomime was easy to follow, given its fabulous actors, makeup, and costumes.  Suddenly, the stage action stopped, and the entire audience jumped up and pounded onto the wooden stairs to the exit. Assuming there was a fire, I ran up, too.  Only to find it was lunch break—in the cafeteria.

There was a three-day hiatus while sound fx and music were added.   I escaped from my hosts (who’d firmly warned me that NO WESTERN WOMAN CAN TRAVEL ALONE) for Kyoto, the ancient religious center.  This was the highlight of my trip.  Exquisite Buddhist gardens have “pools of meditation”: One can sit and gaze at a tranquil pond in which large stones are placed in such a way that you can never see all of them at once, without turning your head—adding a touch of yearning (or excitement) to your contemplation. The local shops had exquisite fabrics, art, and books. (I purchased three huge art volumes and still don’t know how I lugged them home.) As I wandered around the ancient streets, abodes, and temples, I never encountered anything but courtesy, assistance and curiosity.

Back in Tokyo, the sound track finished, Yoshi and I celebrated our last evening together at a high-end restaurant.  Yoshi’s wife and baby son were in “North Country,” visiting his father, a Buddhist monk.  That was the profession Yoshi had been destined to follow, before he’d rebelled.  As the night went on and Yoshi was drinking more than he ever had in his life, he suddenly rose and started to stomp around in a hectic dance—startling the other staid Japanese—and shouting, “Sonya Friedman, I no want to be Buddhist monk!  I want to be INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MAN!”  I assured him that, once sober, he’d be well on his way to success.

Early on, I’d phoned my husband in New York to say I was experiencing a terribly unsettling sense of disorientation, not being able to read or hear with any understanding—true “traveler’s angst.”  It was as if the world I came from was spinning on entirely without me.  “Well,” he said, “doesn’t anyone there speak English?”  “Oh, they all speak it,” I said, “but nobody understands it!”  (“How you are?”  “You like Japan?” “You from where?”  Then, blank stares as I answered.) Later, even given my inability to read, write, or speak the language, my encounter with Japan remains an endearing memory.

Sonya Friedman:  Writer/director of documentary films, notably “The Masters of Disaster,” an Oscar nominee, and broadcast on national PBS.  Writer/translator of subtitles for foreign films, innovator of “supertitles” for opera at the Metropolitan Opera and at companies throughout the US and Canada. 

by Sonya Friedman

Around 1960, my close friend, Norton Juster, received a Guggenheim grant, ostensibly to write a book about architecture and urban renewal, fields he had diligently studied and practiced.

Now, Guggenheim didn’t hold you to producing a specific work.  And when Norton took up his pencil to write about architecture, the pencil started writing a children’s book about a boy named Milo who was always bored—a book full of puns and word play and endless intellectual adventures (all disguised as fun). Milo goes on a long road trip accompanied by a dog-clock named “Tock” and an insect, named “Humbug.”  An orchestra plays the sunset; there’s a “which” instead of a witch, as Milo stumbles through the land of Rhyme and Reason.

You get the idea.  So did readers when the book came out in 1961. And they keep on reading it to this very day.

Norton used to phone me when he’d finished each chapter and read it to me.  He didn’t want me to comment; he wanted me to laugh.  He fretted when I didn’t.  “But, Nort,” I told him, “that was a chuckle.”  “Well, then, SAY ‘chuckle’ out  loud so I’ll know,” he said.

He was writing almost full time now, happily stealing hours from his architectural work  until one day, out to dinner, he got a fortune cookie that read,  “Your dreams are getting dusty.”

Not usually a superstitious type, Norton took this very badly.  He felt ill and even took to his bed. But not for long.  He couldn’t resist all the verbal tricks he was playing to enliven young minds.

“The Phantom Tollbooth” became so popular that—naturally—a film of it was produced. It animated the wonderful drawings that Jules Feiffer had made for the book.  When the film was completed, there was a private screening. Norton had me sit in with him.  As the film rolled, he kept nudging me, anxiously, fretting. “That’s too heavy handed; they needed my lighter tone.”  “That’s the wrong costume for ‘which!’”  “Damn! Who asked them to use those colors for Chroma?”  On and on, squirming uncomfortably as the characters in his book took physical shape on the screen.  I thought he was going to erupt and nix the whole project.  But then, as the end credits began to roll, he stopped his laments, turned to me and asked eagerly, excitedly, “HOW DID YOU LIKE IT???”

Norton went through the same agony with his next (delightful) book: “The Dot and the Line.”  He created the illustrations himself this time, using ingenious geometric shapes and forms.

Today, those books remind me of our inventive life in the 60’s.  Just as Nort spontaneously wrote a children’s book, I introduced “supertitles” to opera, and my husband Herman used his formidable documentary skills to strike out against the Vietnam War.

We weren’t paying attention to marketing or focus groups or test audiences or even to budgets.  We were having a good ride.

Sonya Friedman:  Writer/director of documentary films, notably “The Masters of Disaster,” an Oscar nominee, and broadcast on national PBS.  Writer/translator of subtitles for foreign films, innovator of “supertitles” for opera at the Metropolitan Opera and at companies throughout the US and Canada.