It's hard to watch a documentary when you don't like the narrator or don't share their world view. I didn't hate Dr. James Fox but something about his whispered hushed tones, and taking photographs of crappy stone buildings in Tokyo with literally no windows and calling it "post-modern futuristic" architecture rubbed me the wrong way entirely. I also think anyone who believes scribbles and strokes on a sheet of paper are art worth paying someone thousands or millions of dollars for is a pretentious kook who is only trying to look smart to other rich people. Calligraphy is an art, you'll get no argument from me there, calligraphy looks highly difficult to me. But. Making splish splashes of black paint on canvas "inspired" by calligraphy is what every angsty teenager does in 10th grade high school art class, James.
I also felt my intelligence was being insulted when he mansplained that apartments are tiny in Tokyo and his interviewee said people living in Zen balanced wooden homes is "fake news" about Japan. What in the world. I love RURAL Japan, I have never once confused Tokyo with rural Japan, I think Tokyo is one of the circles of hell. Yes, people live in terrible cramped coffin-like apartments there. But as you pointed out yourself, narrator, most of Japan is uninhabited. Is there a particular reason why people who work from home or are retired or well-off can't live in one of those undeveloped areas instead of a one-room hovel?
There are some good parts. I'll give it an average 6.