Nihon Cine Art

Notes #19 - Cache Cache Pastoral

2012-01-31T12:29:00.003Z

(Den-en ni shisu, 1974)

By Hariu Ichiro

Typically, images and photographs serve as the base for a commanding view of several objects as well as the space that surrounds them, which is to say that they occupy a comprehensive position. Words, in contrast, constitute only a partial essence of an individual object and, as Saussure has claimed, communicate according to a linear sequence. As such they are not able to form a complete narrative unless several narratives are woven together. However, in Terayama's works these two elements are continually confused in a characteristic form. In his tanka, an image swollen with intense emotion is suddenly interrupted and collides with yet another intense image that has transcended time and space. Alternatively, two images are freely displaced. In his theater, stereotypical images doused in folk psychology along with words soaked with emotion, such as delirious nonsense or magical spells, are pulled together into an assemblage. As the established meanings are eviscerated and the audience is assaulted with violence like bullets. In his films, and particularly in Pastoral, after differentiating the links between images from the flow of the dialogue into a strict duality, the dialogue hints at desires hidden behind the discourse (the statements) and the images unfold psychoanalytically toward the root of desire. Furthermore, when both are linked up in order to construct a plot the scene changes, an uncanny image emerges, and the flow breaks off completely.

The Ceremony [Gishiki]

2012-01-19T16:57:00.010Z

Download the Entire Issue
(All ATG Issues Here)

Mandala [Mandara]

2012-01-15T16:10:00.008Z

Download the Entire Issue
(All ATG Issues Here)

初恋・地獄篇 OST - Various Artists

2012-01-13T16:27:00.007Z

Nanami: The Inferno of First Love [Hatsukoi: Jigoku-hen]

Directed by: Susumu Hani
1968

Download

(Thanks H2O)

Whispering of the Gods #16

2012-01-11T19:44:00.003Z

"Since many years now I happen to think of Portugal when I make my films. It's something that comes from (Manoel de) Oliveira, César Monteiro or Pedro Costa. Once in Lisbon, I understood completely why I have this influence. The Buddhist way of thinking comprehends the notion of cycle, birth and rebirth. Maybe in my previous life I have been Portuguese and lived here." - Shinji Aoyama

それから OST - Shigeru Umebayashi

2012-01-08T03:29:00.005Z

And Then [Sorekara]
Directed by: Yoshimitsu Morita
1985

Download

She and He [Kanojo to Kare]

2012-01-05T14:24:00.005Z

Download the Entire Issue
(All ATG Issues Here)

Lovers Corner #6 - ATG Music Files

2012-01-02T22:28:00.020Z

As you might know from now, ATG (or the Art Theatre Guild) has been having an enormous influence on Nihon Cine Art's posts. Just read our analysis, our article's choices, the issue project together with Robert Nishimura, just to name a few of the projects that revolve around ATG's mythic legacy.

Well, two months ago, our kind reader H2O shared with me a seven part compilation of music from every film from the ATG's catalogue - foreign films included! Basically each CD has one track that corresponds to one movie and even though it's not the entire OST from each film, it's still a great job and it shows the passion that H2O has for music and film. In order to celebrate (early) the 3rd anniversary of this blog next February, I will share with you all this astonishing compilation of ATG sounds!
Keep in mind that you can share the link to this post in your blogs and websites, however H2O requested me not to share the megaupload links of each CD elsewhere. I would like if you respected his decision.

[New Links]

Disc 1 [Foreign Movies --- 1962 - 1964]

Tracks:
01 - Matka Joanna od aniolów (Adam Walacinski)　
02 - Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi（Georges Auric）
03 - Due soldi di speranza (Alessandro Cicognini)
04 - Hets (Hilding Rosenberg)
05 - Umberto D. (Alessandro Cicognini)
06 - Smultronstället (Erik Nordgren)
07 - Aleksandr Nevskiy (Sergei Prokofiev)
08 - Pociag ("Moonray", Wanda Warska and Andrzej Kurylewicz　Quintet)
09 - L'amour à vingt ans (Georges Delerue)
10 - Cléo de 5 à 7 ("Sans toi", Corinne Marchand)
11 - Niewinni czarodzieje (Krzysztof Komeda)
12 - Tirez sur le pianiste (Georges Delerue)
13 - Ivanovo detstvo (Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov)
14 - Det sjunde inseglet (Erik Nordgren)
15 - Ilektra (Mikis Theodorakis)
16 - Le amiche (Giovanni Fusco)
17 - Ivan Groznyy (Sergei Prokofiev)
18 - That Kind of Woman (Daniele Amfitheatrof)
19 - L'année dernière à Marienbad (Francis Seyrig)
20 - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner ("Jerusalem", Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry)
21 - Såsom i en spegel (Erik Nordgren)
22 - Une aussi longue absence (Georges Delerue)
23 - Viridiana ("Hallejujah Chorus", George Frideric Handel)
24 - Pasazerka (Tadeusz Baird)
25 - Neotpravlennoye pismo (Nikolai Kryukov)

Disc 2 [Foreign Movies --- 1965 - 1967]

Tracks:
01 - Shadows ("Nostalgia in Times Square", Charles Mingus)
02 - Advise & Consent (Jerry Fielding)
03 - This Sporting Life (Roberto Gerhard)
04 - Gycklarnas afton (Karl-Birger Blomdahl)
05 - Dama s sobachkoj (Nadezhda Simonyan)
06 - Prawdziwy koniec wielkiej wojny (Adam Walacinski)　
07 - 8 1/2 (Nino Rota)
08 - I compagni (Carlo Rustichelli)
09 - The Sun Shines Bright (Steven Foster)
10 - Citizen Kane (Bernard Herrmann)
11 - King & Country (Larry Adler)
12 - I sequestrati di Altona (Dmitrii Shostakovich）　
13 - En lektion i kärlek (Dag Wirén)
14 - Pather Panchali (Ravi Shankar)
15 - Giulietta degli spiriti (Nino Rota)
16 - Il bell'Antonio (Piero Piccioni)
17 - Il momento della verità (Piero Piccioni)
18 - The Loved One
19 - Pierrot le fou　("Ma Ligne de Chance", Anna Karina)
20 - Bronenosets Potyomkin (Edmund Meisel)　
21 - La guerre est finie (Giovanni Fusco)
22 - Fahrenheit 451 (Bernard Herrmann)

Disc 3 [Foreign Movies --- 1968 - 1974]

Tracks:
01 - The Servant ("All Gone", Cleo Lane)
02 - Loin du Vietnam
03 - Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis (Chantal Goya)
04 - Hitler, connais pas (Georges Delerue)
05 - Démanty noci
06 - Marat/Sade (Glenda Jackson)
07 - Le petit soldat
08 - Tini zabutykh predkiv (Miroslav Skorik)
09 - Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (Michel Legrand)
10 - Week End (Antoine Duhamel)
11 - Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (Francis Seyrig)
12 - Oktyabr (Dmitrii Shostakovich）　
13 - Au hasard Balthazar (Jean Wiener)　
14 - Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Paul Misraki)
15 - O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro (Marlos Nobre)
16 - Aparajito (Ravi Shankar)　
17 - Cul-de-sac (Krzysztof Komeda)
18 - The Boys in the Band ("Anything Goes", Harpers Bizarre)
19 - Dyadya Vanya (Alfred Shnitke)
20 - Play It Again, Sam ("Blues for Alan Felix", Oscar Peterson)
21 - The Liberation of L.B. Jones (Elmer Bernstein)
22 - Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour (Hans Werner Henze)
23 - Andrey Rublyov (Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov)

Disc 4 [Japanese Movies --- 1963 - 1969]

Tracks:

01 - Pitfall (Toru Takemitsu)
02 - Ningen (Hikaru Hayashi)
03 - Kanojo to Kare (Toru Takemitsu)
04 - Silence Has No Wings (Teizo Matsumura)
05 - Yukoku ("Tristan und Isolde", Richard Wagner)
06 - Band of Ninja (Hikaru Hayashi)
07 - Ningen Johatsu (Toshiro Mayuzumi)
08 - Death By Hanging (Hikaru Hayashi)
09 - Nanami: Inferno of First Love ("Kamome", Maki Karumen)
10 - Nikudan (Main Theme, Masaru Sato)
11 - Saraba Natsu no Hikari (Toshi Ichiyanagi)
12 - Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
13 - Double Suicide (Toru Takemitsu)
14 - Boy (Hikaru Hayashi)
15 - Funeral Parade of Roses (Joji Yusasa)

Disc 5 [Japanese Movies --- 1970 - 1973]

Tracks:
01 - Apart from Life (Teizo Matsumura)
02 - Eros + Massacre (Toshi Ichiyanagi)
03 - The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Toru Takemitsu)
04 - Mujo (Toru Fuyuki)
05 - Heroic Purgatory(Toshi Ichiyanagi)
06 - Evil Spirits of Japan (Nobuyasu Okabayashi)
07 - Demons
08 - Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets ("Peace ~ Dadada", Hideki Ishima)
09 - The Ceremony(Toru Takemitsu)
10 - Mandara (Toru Fuyuki)
11 - Lost Lovers ("Mary Jane", Hiro Tsunoda)
12 - Confessions Among Actresses (Toshi Ichiyanagi)
13 - Ecstacy of Angels ("Umitsubame", Rie Yokoyama)
14 - Poem (Antonio Vivaldi)
15 - Summer Sister (Toru Takemitsu)
16 - Gozenchu no Jikanwari (Maple Leaf)
17 - The Music (Hikaru Hayashi)
18 - Aesthetics of a Bullet ("Fuzakerunjyaneeyo", Zunoukeisatsu)
19 - The Wanderers (Yukio Asami, Tei Kurisu)
20 - Coup d'Etat(Toshi Ichiyanagi)
21 - The Heart (Hikaru Hayashi)
22 - Jongara

Disc 6 [Japanese Movies --- 1974 - 1980]

Tracks:
01 - Himiko (Toru Takemitsu)
02 - Carol ("Kodomo tachi ni Yume wo", Carol)
03 - The Assassination of Ryoma (Teizo Matsumura)
04 - It was a Faint Dream (Ryohei Hirose)
05 - Death in the Country ("Kodomo Bosatsu", J.A. Shiizaa)
06 - Human Bullet ("Ransei", Masaru Sato)
07 - Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Filmmaker (W.A.Mozart)
08 - Death at an Old Mansion (Nobuhiko Obayashi)
09 - Preparation for a Festival (Teizo Matsumura)
10 - Variations ("Ai no Kageri", Shin Nakamaru)
11 - Dead Horizon ("Kuroinu", Noboru Ando)
12 - The Youth Killer (Godiego)
13 - Japanese Navel ("Aishiteiruyo", Mako Midori)
14 - Kuroki Taro: Love and Adventure (Masaru Sato)
15 - Nuclear War (Teizo Matsumura)
16 - Third (Michi Tanaka)
17 - Double Suicide at Sonezaki (Ryudo Uzaki)
18 - New Disqualified Person (Akira Otsu)
19 - Keiko (Jun Fukamachi)
20 - No More Easy Life (Sachi Arai)
21 - Disciples of Hippocrates (Shuichi Chino)
22 - Mr. Mrs. Miss Lonely (Shuichi Chino)

Disc 7 [Japanese Movies --- 1981 - 1992]

Tracks:
01 - Zigeunerweisen (Pablo Sarasates)
02 - Empire of Kids (Kosei Yamamoto)
03 - Distant Thunder (Takayuki Inoue)
04 - Hear the Wind Sing ("California Girls", The Beach Boys)
05 - At This Late Date The Charleston ("Mapel Leaf Rag", Scott Joplin)
06 - Exchange Students (Robert Schumann)
07 - Lonely Hearts Club Band in September (Ryudo Uzaki)
08 - Tatoo Ari ("Hashabye Seagull", Ryudo Uzaki)
09 - Kidnapping Blues ("Mai no Snow Samba part 2", Yosuke Yamashita)
10 - The Family Game ("I Could Have Danced All Night", Oscar Peterson)
11 - The Mosquito on the 10th Floor (Katsuo Ohno)
12 - The Deserted City ("End Title", Nobuhiko Obayashi)
13 - Mermaid Legend (Toshiyuki Honda)
14 - The Crazy Family
15 - Farewell to the Ark ("Main Theme", J.A. Shiizaa)
16 - Funeral (Joji Yusasa)
17 - Until the Party Declares Itself Dead, I Live with Flowers (Ryudo Uzaki)
18 - Typhoon Club ("Kurayami de Dance", Barbee Boys)
19 - Snow Mountain ("Tokyo Boogie Woogie", Ryoichi Hattori)
20 - Nostalgia (Toshinori Kondo)
21 - The Strange Tale of Oyuki (Hikaru Hayashi)

Notes #18 - Cinema (I)

2012-01-02T19:12:00.001Z

(Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki, 1960)

The petrified screen
walls, bones,
the rough camera movement
of universal laws,
the strict calculation of light
wherein the material, already weary
automatons, metals,
wrap little by little
in the slow loveness
which is the almost indistinguishable work
of the mould splotches
the rust, the rarified space
and a hasty clock on my chest.

- Carlos de Oliveira

Deciphering "A Page of Madness"

2011-12-31T22:25:00.006Z

(Kurutta Ippeji, 1926)

By Donald Richie

Teinosuke Kinugasa's "A Page of Madness" ("Kurutta Ichipeiji," 1926) was long thought lost. Only some 75 years later did the discovery of the missing negative allow the picture to be finally viewed by the present generation. At the same time there emerged a critical need to evaluate it because it seemed a somewhat strange entertainment.
Nominally scripted by Yasunari Kawabata, directed by Kinugasa, a shimpa drama specialist formerly an onnagata (female role specialist), it seemed stylistically advanced. It was composed of well over 800 shots, many more and often much shorter than those of the average film (estimated at between five and seven seconds during this period), with some scenes only a few frames in length.
These sketched the story of a man who takes the job of janitor in an insane asylum in order to be near his wife whose madness he feels responsible for. The asylum was vividly rendered but conventional narrative was so ignored that the picture was said to be impossible to understand. It was thus early agreed that here was an avant-garde film, one from outside the industry, made by a group of youngsters (the average age of staff and cast was 25) who created a personal and poetic film, with Kinugasa as an early auteur.
Since stylistic revolutions come from outside, critics noticed that this film and the seminal "Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" (Robert Weine, 1920) shared an insane asylum locale, recalled the experiments of Abel Gance's "La Roue" (1923) and the fact that Kinugasa had several times seen F.W. Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924) and had cited it as the "best artistic film" of 1925 in a magazine poll.
In general it was thought Kinugasa was influenced by the French avant-garde film (impressionistic), not the German (expressionistic), and that the editing could not have profited from famous Russian examples since the first Soviet film was not imported into Japan until 1927. This early reading of the picture is still with us, but the burden of Gerow's often brilliant book is to show us that there are other readings.
One is that the Japanese audience was not all that baffled by the imported extremes of impression/expression since they had already encountered these in foreign film imports. And since one of the qualities of the Japanese audience was to find foreign influences as merely "foreign," the differences between avant-garde and avant-derriere are not useful.
The Kinugasa "experimental" film is also larded with scenes that could have come straight from old-fashioned shimpa, and if this is not now apparent, it is because several such scenes are no longer in the available prints. (The original print was 103 minutes, the existing print at the National Film Center is 78 minutes.) The lost scenes are, however, in the extant scenario. Gerow here translates them and very shimpa-like they indeed are.
Other readings are possible. In his autobiography Kinugasa says he decided to make a film about the insane after having seen "the entourage of a certain noble gentleman," one whom "secret whisperings" identified as Yoshihito, who later became the Emperor Taisho. The film could thus also be read as political allegory.
Gerow, who is just as interested in film theory as he is in "A Page of Madness," says reading the film as melodrama or avant-garde, as naturalism or modernism, as literature or cinema is a tempting prospect. But "we would be remiss to simply impose an external privileging on a film that complexly and sometimes contradictorily navigates between such poles."
His advice is to follow the film's lead and ourselves navigate among the various definitions. A single perspective cannot do justice to Kinugasa's picture. Rather, it is important for us "to understand the ways in which people have tried to deal with this text, as well as our own role, through reading this film, in continuing the debates on cinema and modernity that 'A Page of Madness' originally posed."
This Gerow firmly accomplishes giving us the fullest account so far of the film and, particularly, of its reception. Heretofore the most satisfactory have been those of Vlada Petric and Marianne Lewinsky. That of Audie Bock, in some ways the fullest, has never been published and hence does not appear in Gerow's otherwise complete bibliography.
It is indeed fortunate we have this book since our chances of seeing the film itself are slight. Besides the isolated print in the National Film Center, there are in Japan only two rentable versions — identical but one 16 mm and one 35 mm. So far as I know "A Page of Madness" has never been commercially available on VHS or DVD.

Notes:
- The situation described by Richie at the end of the article changed this month. An astonishing new print aired on TCM this month and the quality is just great. Be sure to grab it here.

Akira Kurosawa: Tradition in a Time of Transition

2011-12-29T23:48:00.008Z

(Akira Kurosawa filming Dersu Uzala, 1975)

Known as the ‘Emperor’, Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) began his career as a painter, did illustrations for popular magazines and joined Japan Proletariat Artists’ Group in the late 20s. In 1936 he answered an advertisement seeking assistant directors in the studio that later came to be known as the Toho Motion Picture Company. He learnt basic filmmaking in Kajiro Yamamoto’s group for six years, wrote scripts and began to direct films. His Rashomon, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 1951, gave him international fame and recognition. No Regrets for Our Youth, The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Ikiru established him as one of Japan’s leading directors.
He won the Academy Award for his Siberian epic Dersu Uzala. After Kagemusha won the Golden Palm at Cannes it was distributed worldwide by 20th Century Fox.
Kurosawa is also known for his adaptations of western classics like Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Gorky’s The Lower Depths, Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Throne of Blood) and King Lear (Ran) as well as his use of elements from Kabuki and Noh and his work with his regular actors, Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. He innovatively used new cinema techniques like long lenses and multiple cameras in his sword-fighting and samurai films and Panavision and multitrack Dolby sound in Kagemusha.
He was preparing a new film when he died on September 6, 1998.
Tadao Sato looks at Kurosawa’s work in the context of postwar Japan and the ‘discovery’ of Japanese cinema by the west.

(Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune)

By Tadao Sato

In the postwar period, Japan found itself oscillating between the extremes of an inferiority and a superiority complex vis-a-vis the west. In this article I will discuss what bearing this had on Japanese films in general and on Akira Kurosawa in particular.
When Japan opened its doors to the outside world, breaking the shackles of isolation in the mid-19th century, it was shocked to find that most of Asia had been colonized by the west and Japan lagged far behind in terms of scientific advancement. This gave birth to a deep sense of inferiority and in order to overcome it Japan tried to emphasize its spiritual tradition which was believed to be superior to that of the west. One such tradition was bushido – the feudal samurai spirit characterized by values like valor, loyalty, a sense of mission and self-sacrifice. A number of people believed that if this samurai spirit were enhanced, Japan might be able to unite Asia under her lead and pose a strong challenge to the might of the west. This in turn, gave birth to a feeling of superiority with regard to Asian countries which suffered a crushing blow during the Second World War. Japan then entered its most humiliating period ever. The postwar history of Japan is one of a recovery from this inferiority complex and a regaining of self-confidence.
For more than 50 years from 1910 when mass production of films started in Japan, nearly half of the 300-odd films produced annually had feudal themes where the protagonists were either samurai or gangsters (yakuza), who had a samurai-like code of conduct. Such films were called jidaigeki (period films). Feudal themes being filmed in such large numbers over such a long period is something that has no parallel anywhere in the world.
Such themes, which could be said to belong to the genre of action or stunt films loved by audiences the world over, also reflected the Japanese desire to identify with the samurai. The positive impact of these films was to lift the morale and the self-respect of the Japanese, but at the same time they definitely led to the growth of a militant spirit in the country.
Kurosawa made his directorial debut in 1943 with Sanshiro Sugata, just before the Japanese collapse. It is the story of a judo expert who was inspired by the samurai spirit at a time when the samurai class had ceased to exist. The scene where the protagonist knocks down an American boxer was seen as symbolizing the victory of the Japanese samurai spirit against western aggressiveness. The film was a runaway hit so a second part was also made.
In 1945, after Japan was defeated in the Second World War bushido came to be regarded as an outdated reactionary sentiment. The Japanese wanted to forget about bushido altogether and learn, instead, about democracy. However, surprisingly enough, it was the samurai films that came to be known and appreciated by westerners, principally after Kurosawa won international renown with Rashomon in 1950.
While jidaigeki became famous the films that portrayed modern Japan were ‘discovered’ by the west only in the 70s, through the works of Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura. Kurosawa himself made several films on contemporary life, starting with Ikiru. For my generation of Japanese who spent their youth in the immediate postwar years, films like No Regrets for Our Youth, One Wonderful Sunday, Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, which vividly portrayed the realities of that age and carried a strong moral message, gave us the courage to live. And additional factor was that we discovered that films could also be a source of entertainment. However, in my opinion, only a handful of people saw these films outside Japan.
For foreigners, the modern lifestyle of the Japanese, where people seemed to have lost their traditional values, were morally confused and were only imitating the west, was of little interest. In contrast, the jidaigeki, in which the pre-modern lifestyle and the value system of the Japanese was portrayed in a glorified manner, proved more attractive to the outside world. But not all Japanese jidaigeki were appreciated by the foreigners. Among the films which won international acclaim in addition to those by Kurosawa were only a handful such as Harakiri by Kobayashi Masaki, and Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff by Kenji Mizoguzhi.
In the mainstream jidaigeki there were many stereotyped stories and acting styles and most of them were associated with the thoughts and emotions typical of a feudal society. The manner of expression of loyalty between the ruler and the ruled was stylized to the minutest detail and was embedded in tradition. Breaking the shackles of such a stylized from was the hallmark of Kurosawa’s jidaigeki.
These period films were made in special studios, by specialist directors and stars and enjoyed tremendous popularity. Interestingly, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Kobayashi were not products of these studios. All of them made primarily gendaigeki (contemporary-life films) and took to making jidaigeki as an experiment. They believed that employing the realism of modern drama while making jidaigeki could by highly interesting.
In his first jidaigeki – Men who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)– Kurosawa took up a noted work entitled Kanjincho, known for its accurate representation of feudalistic behavior patterns with various Kabuki themes and, while retaining its basic form, he made a daring and successful experiment by parodying it into a modern musical comedy.
His second jidaigeki was the famous Rashomon but in this work he took up a story set two centuries ago when feudalistic thought and behavior patterns were yet to be established. It was thus a unique film which was totally unrelated to the mainstream jidaigeki.

(Rashomon, 1950)

Rashomon

Rashomon won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in 1951. It came as a complete surprise but, subsequently, when it was screened in many countries, it won widespread acclaim. With Rashomon Japanese cinema arrived on the world map which was a significant development not only for the history of Japanese cinema but also for world cinema since, until then, only American and European films were shown and appreciated worldwide and there was almost complete ignorance of films being made in other countries. In a number of Asian countries, films were being made in large numbers from the beginning of this century and there were many which were classics. But they were not known internationally.
Teinosuke Kinogasa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, among others, had been making films since the 20s that were well-known within Japan but not internationally. Even if there was a rare opportunity of showing them in the west, they did not attract much attention. The Japanese, therefore, tended to believe that the standard of their cinema was much lower than in the west and that since Asian films were very slow, they were unacceptable to outsiders. No Japanese was present at the Venice film festival when Rashomon was screened, because no one expected it to win the Golden Lion.
Westerners also could not imagine that films with international appeal could be made outside America and Europe. For that very reason, Rashomon came as a big surprise to the outside world and paved the way for a new age when it was accepted that good films could be conceived and made throughout the world and not just in America and Europe. Kurosawa’s films made an impact because they had thoughts and emotions which were universally understood.
Rashomon opens with a robber who meets a travelling samurai and his wife in the woods, dupes the samurai, ties him up and rapes his wife in front of him. Such a shocking story had never been filmed anywhere before this. That such a barbaric act had been filmed at wall was symptomatic of the transitional period that Japan was passing through after World War II and it also symbolized a liberation from existing morals. Kurosawa was the most celebrated Japanese director of the time and he not only successfully filmed such a shocking scene but showed deep insight into people’s emotions. The film offered a sophisticated analysis of attitudes and feelings: the tendency to over-estimate oneself, the tendency of the protagonists to fabricate tales to suit their own ends, the strong sense of honor. The film had a unique beauty and intensity – neither purely Japanese nor western – and it was this fusion of traditional Japanese and western aesthetics which impressed people everywhere.
The nucleus of the story is three eyewitnesses who make contradictory statements; they fabricate their statements not to save themselves but to present themselves in the best possible light. They even stake their lives on the question of honor.
This was the intrinsic part of the samurai culture and the main theme of traditional drama. The most representative work on this theme was the noted Kabuki work, Chushingura, the story of 47 samurai who were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the honor of their lord. This is linked with the feudal values of loyalty to one’s master and the pre-modern attitude of vendetta. Although one of the most representative works of Japanese traditional drama, the story cannot be called universal in the modern context. Rashomon, while retaining the behavioral pattern of proud men with these feudal values from the traditional theater, analyses the pattern from the modern point of view of individualism. It tries to show that the desire to show oneself in a good light can easily end up in self-deception. It liberates the Japanese from the traditional them of belief in loyalty, honor and pride and develops it into a more universal theme. Moreover, by showing Japanese women with strong sense of self, under-played in traditional theatre, he provides a counterpoint to the theatre of men. Here the strong character of women as seen in modern western theatre or literature is quite apparent. In the court scene Kurosawa uses traditional Japanese landscape architecture very skillfully, making it seem like modern abstract painting. In the scene where the spiritual medium (miko) appears, the effects of both the tradition of Shamanism and the surrealism of modern western art are present. In this way, Rashomon is a unique blend of elements from traditional Japanese and modern western cultures.
Japan’s Pacific war against America and England was, in a sense, a violent outburst of its long-held inferiority complex as much as an expression of a distorted sense of honor. Samurai pride which was damaged by this inferiority complex against the west gave rise to an illusion that Japan had a mission to fulfil – to guide Asia, to liberate it from western imperialism. It will be an exaggeration to say that in Rashomon there is a criticism of the extreme sense of honor among the Japanese. But making this film in the fifth year after the debacle of the war had a historical meaning. Rashomon was a special film which was totally different from the mainstream jidaigeki. Usually in the sword-fighting scenes in mainstream jidaigeki, the spectators would become active participants. For years, therefore, specially trained actors enacted these sequences so acrobatically that they became unrealistic. Since Kurosawa did not want an unrealistic sword fight between the robber and the samurai, he used actors like Toshiro Mifune and Masayuki Mori who had never acted before in a jidaigeki, gave them swords and made them engage in a realistic fight which was totally different from other films.

(Shichinin no Samurai, 1954)

The Seven Samurai

The Seven Samurai was an attempt, after the experiment with Rashomon, to look again at a fight set in the 15th century between a bandit gang and a group of farmers led by samurai. This too was totally different from mainstream period films.
However, it is debatable whether Seven Samurai was really a work of realism. Since at that time there was hardly any historical study of the lifestyle of the masses, Kurosawa used his imagination and came up with a story where farmers who did not know how to fight, took on a group of bandits by engaging the samurai. Today, however, studies are available about the life of Japanese farmers of those times which provide much greater detail. According to these studies the farmers, when threatened, were well-equipped to take on even the regular forces of the Daimyos, what to speak of bandits. Not only were they well-equipped, they also had an elaborate set of rules. For instance, there was a rule that if an intruder entered the village, the first person to notice him would shout for help and everyone would immediately rush there, leaving whatever work they were doing. Those who failed to do so would be punished by the village authorities.
If we take these recent studies to be accurate, then the portrayal of farmers in this film who, without the guidance of the Seven Samurai would have been defenseless, is not correct. In fact, Kurosawa tended to glorify the samurai but did not have much regard for the traditions of the farmers, merchants and artisans. This is amply substantiated in subsequent films like Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and Sanjuro.
However, it was customary in mainstream jidaigeki to portray samurai as heroes and the common masses as ordinary people with no courage, and Kurosawa was not the only one to do so. Moreover, in the mainstream jidaigeki, men who did not come from the warrior class but still behaved in a heroic manner, were mostly the yakuza or professional gamblers. Yakuza films – which are a genre by themselves – are mostly of this type. Kurosawa, being a moralist, did not think of glorifying such rogues or, in other words, of making a yakuza film. However, he once cast Mifune in the role of a yakuza, The Drunken Angel, which was of course not a jidaigeki film. Kurosawa portrayed this character in a highly critical manner, as a weak-willed, foolish person. But young cinegoers idolized and appreciated him. Subsequently, Kurosawa cast Mifune in a youth’s role who had a strong sense of justice in The Quiet Duel and Stray Dog, as if trying to prove that he had no heart for yakuza.

(Ikiru, 1952)

Of Morals and Men

Kurosawa was critical of himself for glorifying the samurai too much. He cast Mifune as a strong samurai, a superman in Yojimbo and Sanjuro. The violent scenes in these films had an influence on the mainstream jidaigeki and brutal sward fights became popular. Kurosawa held himself responsible for this new phenomenon and he went on to make Red Beard to counter this trend. It portrayed a team of doctors who devote themselves to the treatment of the poor, the weak and the sick.
Shugoro Yamamoto, on whose novel this film was based, was an exception among period novel writers who always wrote entertaining works glorifying the samurai. Unlike the others, Yamamoto wrote about the moral behavior of the common masses – poor people who have self-respect and the forms in which it manifests itself. In Red Beard too there are several episodes where poor patients maintain their moral stance even in trying circumstances. After Red Beard Kurosawa made Dodeskaden based again on Yamamoto’s novel, on the moral values of the lower classes.
However, Kurosawa who showed an unusual power of expression when portraying strong samurai, did not show the same sort of expressive power when portraying self-respect among poor and weak people. Dodeskaden was not as successful as his other films – either in Japan or abroad.
In the later part of his life, Kurosawa maintained his international reputation with Kagemusha and Ran. These films were excellent works which were as beautiful, as paintings, but they did not carry a powerful message. His old Japanese fans defended Kurosawa by saying that he was accepted internationally only when he made jidaigeki. On the other hand in his modern films, Dreams and Not Yet, he displayed his talent as a painter, but as drama they were tame and, therefore, not successful.
In conclusion, one can say that Kurosawa drew upon the positive elements of past morals, like bushido and other traditional forms, and offered them as a moral support for the Japanese who were shattered and were suffering from an inferiority complex. In this respect, he showed an unparalleled creative power. But the work that was a true expression of these bushido morals was ironically not one whose protagonist was a samurai; in Ikiru the protagonist is an ordinary civil servant who is ‘doomed’. This petty official, on learning that he has only six more months to live due to cancer, tries to fulfil his obligations within the limited time, devotes himself to the masses and then quietly dies a satisfied man.
This was the true bushido spirit that was revived after World War II and it was this spirit which led to the recovery of Japan after the war.

Notes #17 - Cinema (II)

2011-12-27T19:57:00.003Z

(Narayama Bushiko, 1958)

The image's slowness
recalls
the car in the garage
the suicide with the gas from the exhaust pipe,
which means,
the vertiginous heart
and the slowness of the world
darkening
in the foggy reels
of the smooth crepuscular motors
or, in other words,
flashes, combustions,
delivered at random in the arteries,
better saying, the pulsations.

- Carlos de Oliveira

A gesture and a pose: the cinema of Mikio Naruse

2011-12-23T04:46:00.008Z

(Naruse filming Onna ga Kaidan wo Agaru Toki, 1960)

By Audie Bock*
(Original text here)

Mikio Naruse won his accolades in a film world that allowed him to avoid directorial bravura while celebrating the challenges of everyday life. A prolific filmmaker in both the silent and sound eras, he received Japan's "Best One" award in 1935 for Wife! Be Like a Rose! and again two decades later for Floating Clouds. Both of these films show the determination of ordinary young women to find happiness, a theme that pervades most of Naruse's more than eighty works. The vivacious star of Wife! Be Like a Rose!, Sachiko Chiba, would tell me a half century after her divorce from the quiet filmmaker that he was the only man she had ever really loved and that she never should have left him. Late in life her tears atoned for the mistakes of a young star who had failed to see that it was the director who created her winsome screen presence, and not the reverse. A contemporary of first-generation filmmakers Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, a teacher of postwar humanists Akira Kurosawa and Kihachi Okamoto, and an inspiration to "Japanese New Wave" directors of the '60s and '70s such as Shohei Imamura and Nagisa Oshima, Naruse continues to be rediscovered by twenty-first-century directors like Hirokazu Kore-eda. His posthumous international reach has touched the likes of Martin Scorsese and numerous European filmmakers.

(Ukigumo, 1955)

The Sidelong Glance

The brilliant Japanese actress Hideko Takamine, star of Lightning (1952), Floating Clouds (1955), When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), A Wanderer's Notebook (1962), and Yearning (1964), among other Naruse films, recounted her last conversation with the director as he lay in a hospital bed in 1969. "He wanted to make a movie with no sets at all," she recalled, "just two actors in front of a white curtain backdrop." Even facing death, Naruse's thoughts were caught up in his metier. He was crafting a drama he believed he could still realize. At the end of a long career, he had reached a point where he could conceptualize a film in which scenery was totally superfluous. All that mattered was two people's chemistry bubbling up on the screen.
For Naruse that chemical reaction barely required any dialogue. Those who worked with him over the years, both actors and crew, adjusted with difficulty. Tatsuya Nakadai, known for numerous samurai roles and as the young villain with a gun in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), remembered with frustration how he, a Shakespearean actor, saw line after line of his dialogue disappear under Naruse's murderous pencil. Each deletion made him feel less worthy. He described Naruse as a taciturn and thoroughly intimidating presence.
What remained after all the deletions was a language of gesture, slight shifts of body weight and sidelong glances. Watch the eyes of Takamine (as Yukiko Koda), her costar Masayuki Mori (as Kengo Tomioka), and the young woman playing the Annamese servant in the opening flashback scenes in Dalat, Indochina, in Floating Clouds. Over a tray of cocktails, the servant girl lets Yukiko know with a long look after the departing Tomioka that he is her man. Tomioka, trying his best to appear gruff and critical over dinner, stares at her hard enough, while insulting her, to reveal that he is attracted to the fresh-faced Yukiko. It is the eye movement, not the dialogue, that lays out the characters of the players who will react to one another in an intense emotional cauldron.
Tomioka, while writing to his wife with faithful regularity, can't keep his hands off any young woman. Yukiko the survivor, running away from the brother-in-law who raped her, will run again--this time from the advances of a forester who claims he replaces the thoughts of women with the scent of perfumed trees--directly into the arms of the feckless Tomioka. The signs are all there in the opening glances. What is maddeningly obvious to the viewer escapes the judgment of the wide-eyed Yukiko, and this is how Naruse introduces the theme of Floating Clouds: We are about to watch a young woman grow up painfully in the moral chaos of wartime and postwar Japan.
Later in the film Yukiko will cry over Tomioka's lies and unfaithfulness. But what we see in the sidelong glances of the flashback fully reveals his character. He is a man superficially devoted to his work and his wife but capable of carrying on affairs with various women. If Yukiko had gained any worldly wisdom from her suffering prior to arriving in Dalat, she too would see it and avoid him; but she is twenty-two and still optimistic, seeing only what she wants to see: an attractive and authoritative older man. She will pay dearly for trusting him.
While watching the sidelong glances, we must also listen for the expressive silences. When Yukiko stands in the entryway of Tomioka's house back in Tokyo, the flute-and-drum music associated with the exotic happy memories of Dalat ceases. Tomioka's wife comes to the door and quickly looks her up and down. The look makes Yukiko lower her eyes ashamedly, then blurt out that she has come as a messenger from the Agriculture and Forestry Department. This little white lie elicits a welcoming, cap-toothed smile from the wife--a complete change of attitude. This exchange is offered in neutral medium shots without any rise in tone of voice or any abrupt movements. It's all very matter of fact: Have an extramarital affair, go looking for your man, instinctually lie to his wife because you can't withstand the suspicion in her look.
Japan is a culture of reticence. Naruse's use of the sidelong glance and small gesture, and blue pencil on the script, creates an economy of cinematic style unparalleled East or West.

(Meshi, 1951)

The Relentless Editor

Naruse's most frequent producer at the Toho Studios, Sanezumi Fujimoto, told me he found the director's pacing extremely irritating. He complained bitterly that there were no peaks and valleys in Naruse's style, no moments of relaxation between the battles the way Kurosawa fashioned his films. In a Naruse film, there could never be a dance like the fire festival in Hidden Fortress (1958) or the rice planting at the end of Seven Samurai (1954). Naruse's characters never get relief or release, even if they are watching a festive performance. The pace of their rush toward destruction never lets up, pile upon pile of medium shots, thousands of fast cuts pushing the protagonist toward a life of loneliness or self-sacrifice or oblivion and death.
Like life, Naruse's films are composed of thousands of short shots of mundane activities and objects. If Ozu can imbue a film with transcendance by holding a shot of a vase in the corner of a dark room while the soft murmur of a father's snoring continues on the sound track (Late Spring [1949]), Naruse will use a cutaway to an inanimate object for a completely different purpose. Both Floating Clouds and Repast (1951), among other Naruse films, offer cutaways to pairs of men's shoes (Japanese, as is well known, remove their shoes on entry into the home). In Floating Clouds the shoes are Tomioka's worn-out footwear, and their condition reveals his failure in life. He has lost everything trying to start a lumber business to supply the postwar housing boom, and now he has sought out Yukiko to borrow money. It is her maid who grasps and straightens the broken-down shoes; Yukiko notices only that Tomioka is wearing an eye patch. Again the viewer is given information that the protagonist ignores. Housed and clothed in luxury by her brother-in-law, Yukiko is only too thrilled to see her old lover.
In Repast the shoes again reveal something about the characters. We see a shot of a husband's brand-new two-tone shoes as he walks into the office; they draw the criticism of a colleague. Though Okamoto (Ken Uehara) claims they are cheap and that he saved up for them by cutting down on cigarettes, his colleague says he would do better to buy something for his pretty wife, Michiyo (Setsuko Hara). Later, when his shoes are stolen from the entryway of his home while he is tending to his niece's nosebleed, his wife remarks that the loss of his shoes is a "punishment." After devoting his attention, money, and time to his uninvited runaway niece instead of his wife, he fails to grasp why he might be being punished.
Naruse's cutaways, whether they are of shoes in the entryway or neatly folded and wrapped clothes in a basket outside the bath, are integral to the storytelling. He does not let them breathe or distract like the clotheslines and chimneys in an Ozu film. He does not let them stand for something outside of the human interaction. His concentration weighs evenly on the verbal and the nonverbal, the establishing shot and the close-up. Nothing appears that does not serve the human story. The stolen shoes in Repast, which require Okamoto to get an advance on his salary to replace them, show the precariousness of these characters' place in the middle class, as well as the fragility of their intimate relationships. It is difficult to imagine an American film where a pair of shoes could be so loaded with the affects of society and intimacy.
Fujimoto's complaints notwithstanding, and screen credits to an editor notwithstanding, we must recognize that Japanese directors of the midcentury era all did their own editing, much of it in camera. I never had the opportunity to see Naruse work in postproduction, but I did watch Kurosawa pull yards of footage through his old Moviola and do the cutting himself, listening to an inner rhythm in his head. Naruse's personal rhythm is that annoying relentlessness of daily life, the rhythm that will not let go. If his characters try to break that rhythm by grasping at something that looks more like happiness, they are quickly recaptured: The family disapproves, the lover betrays, economic necessity interferes. In one of his earliest films, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (1935), the young heroine struggling to make her way in the big city as a cafe musician is delighted to be asked to pose for the camera by a passing photographer. When she takes out her compact afterward to look in the mirror, she sees a large cake crumb stuck to her cheek. She frowns a moment and then goes about her business. Something as trivial as a cake crumb can prevent a poor girl from getting a big break like a magazine cover.

(Midaregumo, 1967)

Icons of the Urban Poor

Although Naruse's characters moved up the socioeconomic ladder, as did Ozu's, in the course of his nearly four decades of filmmaking, there is a recurrent symbol of a folksier time that lingers in most of his films. This is the chindonya, a group of street musicians in traditional costume with drums, flutes, and shamisen strings who parade around neighborhoods advertising the opening of new businesses, usually on the local shopping street.
Nobody knows why Naruse had such affection for these almost comical folks. In Repast the young wife and her school friend laugh at them because they can see from the rhythm two chindonya share that they are husband and wife. In this case, calling attention to the marital relationship makes Michiyo think about how much worse her situation could be. Her war-widow school friend with a young child appears later passing out leaflets to commuters, her economic situation clearly deteriorated. The contemplative look on Michiyo's face conveys her realization that her marriage--childless and suffering from poor communication--is still far easier than life as a single mother.
The chindonya image belongs to the Tokyo neighborhoods that Tomioka ridicules in Floating Clouds--Katsushika and Yotsuya, places where country people with thick dialects and few possessions gathered to make their way in the big city. Naruse knew these neighborhoods from his own orphaned and impoverished childhood. He was one of those who did make his way in the big city, through years of apprenticeship for low pay and self-education in poetry, philosophy, and cinema, finally reaching a place where he could pay his own artistic homage to the industriousness of the human race. His characters are seldom happy with the place fate sets for them. They have a yearning for something better, and even if they go back to a dull life, like the young wife in Repast, their awareness of a better reality does not dim. The perfume of the trees in the jungles of Dalat--a place where society does not condemn and love is totally available--always returns, with the haunting beat of the drums accompanied by flute song and strings.
Naruse may have annoyed producers like Fujimoto with the sameness of his rhythms, but he always came in on time and under budget. His films celebrate, without extravagance, the lives of ordinary people struggling for something better than the hand fate has dealt them. Performed with quiet certainty by superb actors, shot and edited with a sure and relentless hand, they raise the ordinary and even the sordid to a quality near sublime. They never succumb to the triteness of a Hollywood happy ending but show instead a noble and stubborn fortitude, proud individuals bumping into one dead end after another, twisting elegantly in the wind.

-----------------------------
*Audie Bock is the author of Japanese Film Directors (Kodansha, 1978) and Mikio Naruse: A Master of Japanese Cinema (1983) and the translator of Akira Kurosawa's Something Like an Autobiography (Knopf, 1982).

A Man Vanishes - Two Views

2011-12-20T19:07:00.013Z

(Ningen Johatsu, 1967)

I.
Ningen Johatsu

By Shohei Imamura

In the spring of 2002, after receiving a leter detailing her recent situation, I met up with a woman whom I hadn't seen for 25 years. The letter read: "I gained great strenght from advice to "live brazenly". I've told my husband everything about all those years ago - and the fact that I'm going to meet you.
Carefully watching her seemingly serene demeanour, I was surprised by the memories that came flooding back. At the age of 32, this woman, whom we'd nicknamed "The Rat", appeared in my documentary film Ningen Johatsu. I first came across her in 1967 - she was searching for her fiancé who had gone missing, and I decided to film the process of her investigation.
The police authorities had over 80.000 incidents of missing people. I chose the most "ordinary" case I could find: a salesman from northeastern Japan called Oshima Tadashi. The Rat was his fiancée. At the time, newspapers and TV bulletins were full of reports about this phenomenon of missing persons in Japan. This was in an era of rapid economic growth, when droves of young people were leaving the provinces and their rural communities and flocking to the major cities. Many of them were to go missing, their dreams shattered. These young people had suddenly dropped off the face of the earth - where had they gone? How did their home communities cope with their disappearence?
My deep interest in these disappearences was piqued. But to be perfectly honest, I never really warmed to this woman, the Rat. She came across as haughty and completly self-centred.
Runaways weren't treated with any great seriousness by the police authorities, and one would be justified in asking what could a mere film director hope to achieve. Even when we were negotiating her appeareance in the film, the Rat lashed out at me: "You're not at all interested in trying to find him, are you?"
It was through talking with to the Rat that I realised I could make a film focussing on her search, irrespective of wether we found Oshima or not. In order to peel away her mask, so to speak, firstly I decided to examine her daily life with no real preconceptions. The Rat quit her hospital job in Tokyo to take a starring role in my film. I sent a film crew - unbeknown to the Rat - to her leaving party, and this footage became the opening scene of the film. Accompanying the crew was the actor Tsuyuguchi Shigeru who played the role of reporter gathering information on the Rat. I installed a second camera fitted with a long lens on the roof of a building opposite.
When Tsuyuguchi and the camera crew entered onto the scene through a back door, sure enough all hell broke loose! This was because the Rat hadn't told her colleagues anything about the film project. I thought, with her angry and in tears, her secret out in the open, the true character of this woman would be revealed to me. However, my scheme quickly backfired.

(Ningen Johatsu, 1967)

The Rat became more and more "actress-like" as soon as she was in front of the camera. What I wanted to capture on film was a person coping with the harsh reality of the disappearence of a loved one. I was thwarted though, by the Rat's affected performance. I realised she couldn't care less about Oshima Tadashi - all she was interested in was walking around with Tsuyuguchi, to whom she'd taken a great liking.
We searched high and low for Oshima trawling the bars in Fukushima where he'd last been seen. To no avail. We'd hit a brick wall. I'd given up ever tracing Oshima and I was now more excited by focussing the film on the character of the Rat. I wanted to inject more passion into the film. If my subject insisted on becoming more actress-like, then I had a counter-response in mind. On days when no filming was scheduled, I tailed her with hidden cameras. When she was being ferried between sets and her lodgings. I installed hidden microphones inside the cars. At a coffee shop in Shinjuku, I managed to record a secret tryst between the Rat and Tsuyuguchi, where she told him, in tears, how much she liked him.
Then we became embroiled in the Rat's antagonistic relationship with her elder sister, whom we nicknamed "The Rabbit". She was the mistress of a businessman, and the complete opposite in temprerament to her sister. She was rather scruffy in appearence, but she had a broadminded tolerance about her.
I came to the realisation that this triangular relationship could be the reason behind Oshima's abscounding from the scene.
I hadn't shown the Rat any footage until the film was finished. She viewed it with the affectation of a leading lady. But she was startled by the images of herself on screen and she ran screaming from the screening room at Nikkatsu studios. "I've been tricked! It's an invasion of my privacy!" she complained in magazine articles, placing me in a predicament within the wider film world. I realised it was highly remiss of me to have shown her beforehand any footage from the hidden cameras. But in the meticulous work of scrutinising the true nature of a person's character, to a great extent there can be no such thing as privacy. One can't invade someone's privacy without hurting them - frankly it's unavoidable. Our method for disclosing this stranger's dark past created a moral conundrum for Tsuyuguchi and the production crew.
I was absolutely open to a debate on the ethics of confidentiality and privacy, and I prepared myself for an onslaught from the media. However, Nikkatsu initiated a press campaign to counter any scandalm and the brouhaha died down pretty quickly. A short while after that, I met the Rat again at an inn in Yotsuya. By then, I had accepted the quirks of her personality. I prepared myself to be castigated vehemently by her, but she was simply relieved that at last the whole thing was over. I bitterly regretted not filming those scenes with a hidden camera! Here I was, standing on the edge of an abyss, witnessing part of a woman's psyche that was beyond my understanding.
The Rat had become an instructor in needlework and she was now the mother of two married daughters. I received a New Year's card from her telling me that her husband had passed away. I prayed for the response of his soul.

(Ningen Johatsu, 1967)

II
The error of mere Theorisation of technique

By Nagisa Oshima

Director Imamura Shohei's Ningen Johatsu was flung just as it was into the midst of the Japanese film world, and that was sufficient to provoke debate. I was shooting in Kyoto at the time and so wasn't able to participate in the debate, but read later what had been written, and I sensed danger. Everybody was talking about technique. And their way of debating was to say that technique exists a priori and Imamura either had used it well or hadn't. In particular, most pointed out that he had used it well, which will probably give rise to many imitators. Of course, imitators don't usually get as far as the filmmaking stage, but I can easily imagine many spiritual imitators coming into being. This will exert a bad influence on young people who are interested in film. Even if it doesn't, now is the time to flee. People start to avoid discussing theme. At such a time, the dominant tendency is to want to discuss technique only. The discussion of Ningen Johatsu on the basis of technique alone intensified this tendency. I would therefore now like to discuss the significance of Imamura's technique.
What did Imamura think would emerge from the pursuit by his fiancée of a man who had disappeared? Had he known, he could have written a script and made it into a dramatic work. He didn't know what would come of it. Or, if he did know, he felt it would be dangerous to draw a conclusion based on it. He felt that it wasn't quite enough. One of these two motives, probably the latter, caused Imamura to start using documentary technique. (He later said that this was fiction, but it is a fact that he started by using the documentary technique and nothing can change that.)
Next there is the problem of theme. Was there a theme from the beginning, was it anticipated to some extent, or was there none at all? I think that there was hardly any theme.
If you combine the above two points, the result is that Imamura had, to a certain extent, assumptions about how the situation would evolve, but he couldn't anticipate the type of theme that would result. But itsn't it likely that Imamura set out with thoughts along the lines of "We'll probably find a theme to go along", or "Let's get on with it?"
This is the crudest starting point for a documentary. From the perspective of today's television documentaries, it is probably about five years behind the times. Of course, stupid directors influenced by the experimental "happening underground" might proceed this way. (In the future some fools will probably attempt to imitate Ningen Johatsu). Superior television documentarists, at least, wouldn't start out like this. However, there must have been a strong inner tension in Imamura as he dared to use the documentary technique, which he had never used before, even if it was a crude technique. I don't know much about Imamura's relationship with politics, nor can I be sure about the kind of pressure that forced him to change his technique. However, there was no likelihood of his being able to produce the film he had been wanting to do, Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubo, and he was probably driven by his reputation as an erotic artist. It may not be possible to ascertain the reason, but something in Imamura made it inevitable that he choose a new technique. Once he got started, Imamura showed great tenacity. It is only his inner tension that makes the first half of Ningen Johatsu worth seeing. If vulgar artists and imitators had set out from the same starting point, it would be impossible to sit through ten minutes of their work.

(Ningen Johatsu, 1967)

But, but... It is totally untrue to say that a documentary's theme is discovered in the process. Imamura realised that, of course, midway through the film. A decisive change in direction takes place there. It turns toward fictionalisation. After that Imamura's inner tension changes qualitatively as well. His desperate effort as a professional artist who has to make the story consistent at all costs comes to the surface in the way it gropes simultaneously for technique and theme. Mori Kota's Kawa: Ano uragiri ga omoku contrasts with this. Mori also sets out thinking that he'd discover a theme along the way, or that it would at least become clear, and although he despaired of this during the proces, he brazened it out. The freshness of an amateur is there, but there is a limit. The relationship between the fiancée and the older sister becomes interesting and Imamura focuses on them persistently. However, this turns out to be a vicious circle, and no theme is discovered there. At that point, the concept is brought out high-handedly for the last time: "I don't understand the truth."
"I don't understand the truth": is that the theme? I put this question to the many reviewers of Ningen Johatsu? This is neither a theme nor anything else, since this type of conclusion can be drawn from any work. Also, it has no connection with the themes of any of Imamura's other films. An abstract theme like "I don't understand the truth" may be of interest to would-be essayists who find it clever, but if true authors make it an issue, it should always be argued in the context of the specific truth that is not understood. If he has no general understanding of the truth of facts, an artist should just give upwriting. It would be distressing if a fraudulent concept of this type were to pervade the critical world like a form of mas hysteria. Ningen Johatsu is a film that started off with the very mistaken notion that a subjective theme would emerge midway through, failed marvellously, made a tremendous effort to redeem itself, and had charm in that great effort. Although most of those who reviewed Ningen Johatsu should see this mistake in technique, they see a triumph of technique. Actually, this must be considered a film that exmplifies the failed documentary.
Imamura probably said that he doesn't understand the truth because he thought he doesn't understand "truth in the documentary". Thus he declares his revocation of the documentary technique that he had once used. Conceivably, people will differ as to wether they view this delcaration of revocation and the high-handed way of redeeming the work as sincere or not.
In any case, Imamura will probably come to see the error of his ways and cease making work depicting truth. Imamura does not worry me, but those, fascinated by his example, who consider only technique are the ones who distress me. They demean themselves and lead others into error. For their benefit, I wanted to talk about how strange it is for technique to be debated in isolation from the artist and his theme.

Between Comedy and Kitsch: Kitano's Zatoichi and Kurosawa's Traditions of "Jidaigeki" Comedies

2011-12-18T23:05:00.022Z

(Takeshi Kitano on the set of Zatoichi)

By Rie Karatsu, Massey University
(in Scope, #6)

Introduction

"If I make a film starring Kitano, it will be Zatoichi. (Akira Kurosawa, quoted in Sugimura, 2003: 96)."

The "jidaigeki," or Japanese historical drama, has seen a resurgence in recent years, fuelled by interest in the genre and action by Japanese and Western directors. Films such as Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2003 and 2004) and The Last Samurai (2003), have produced interesting and popular films borrowing from the style and conventions created much earlier in the development of Japanese jidaigeki films. Any samurai film, whether made in or outside Japan, undoubtedly draws comparisons with Akira Kurosawa's samurai classics. In none of these works is recognition of a specific cultural context more important than in Takeshi Kitano's recent adaptation of the original Zatoichi (1962).
Set in nineteenth-century Japan, Kitano's Zatoichi (2003) tells the story of Ichi (Takeshi Kitano); a blind, wandering masseur with a gambling problem and sword-fighting skills. Ichi wanders into a remote mountain town ruled by corrupt officials and a gang of rough mobsters. When he befriends a widow (Michiyo Ookuso) and her nephew Shinkichi (Gadarukanaru Taka), a dice gambler, he learns that the town is in the middle of a massive gang war in which two mob bosses (Saburo Ishikura and Ittoku Kishibe) lay waste to the competition with the help of the highly skilled ronin named Hattori (Asano Tadanobu). Hattori takes a job as an assassin for one of these gang lords in order to pay for treatment for his sick wife. Meanwhile, Ichi meets and attempts to help two geisha assassins, Okinu and Osei (Yuko Daike and Daigoro Tachibana), who seek revenge on the criminals who slaughtered their family. Ichi eventually finds himself in conflict with Hattori, and demonstrates the virtues of training and humility in equal measures in despatching the arrogant forces of wickedness afflicting the lives of those he cares for. Having done so, he continues his wandering, not unlike an ancient version of Shane (1953).
Zatoichi is Kitano's biggest domestic box-office success to date, with around two million Japanese theatre admissions. Like Kurosawa, Kitano has had more success abroad than in Japan. Foreign audiences began to take notice of Kitano after the 1993 release of Sonatine. Hana-bi (1997) paved his status internationally as one of the foremost Japanese filmmakers of his time. For years, Kitano's largest audience had been the foreign highbrow or non-mainstream audience. Zatoichi was consciously targeted at a younger, more mainstream Japanese audience, for the first time taking advantage of moving cameras as opposed to his more characteristically static method to the action.
The film was both a commercial and critical success; it won several international film awards, including the Silver Lion (Special Director's Award) at the sixtieth Venice Film Festival. The success recalls the moment when Japanese cinema first hit international headlines, when Akira Kurosawa won the Gold Lion at Venice in 1950 with Rashomon, deconstructing the code of the jidaigeki genre. Needless to say, Kurosawa's classics influenced not only Kitano's remake, but also the very Zatoichi original. Kurosawa's classics influenced the director, Kenji Misumi, in filming the original Zatoichi. Misumi made an intensive study of Yojimbo (1961), Seven Samurai (1954) and other Kurosawa samurai classics. Misumi assembles some kinetic and visceral elements of Kurosawa's cinematic actions and violence, but he does so to reassure audiences and eradicate difficulty. Kitano's remake is both parody and homage to the reassuring aesthetics of the original Zatoichi.

(Zatoichi Royaburi, 1967)

In this paper, I contend that Kitano offers us a vivid, comprehensive example of how a Japanese artist can translate both Kurosawa's classics and the myth of Zatoichi, reflecting on contemporary Japanese concerns about the gap between youth and their preceding generation. To bring about this achievement, Kitano deploys both the comedy inherited from Kurosawa and the aesthetics of kitsch translated from the original Zatoichi. The points of reference in this paper are not only divided between Kurosawa and Kitano, but also triangulated across the comic, popular and critical. In order to meet the triangular points of reference, I will first trace how Kurosawa's classics have influenced the original Zatoichi, before dealing with Kitano's adaptation.
Divided into two parts, Part I of this article examines the receptions of Kitano's Zatoichi in order to explore how they reflect Japanese social anxieties caused by the generation gap. Part II examines how Kurosawa's classics have influenced the original Zatoichi. I argue that the original Zatoichi assembles some of the kinetic and visceral elements of Kurosawa's classics, but it does so to soften the "facts of life and death." I present arguments which claim that the original Zatoichi replaced Kurosawa's ethic and aesthetic goals with commercial ends, namely cynicism, fetishism and iconicity, an amalgamation of which is regarded as ethically and aesthetically immature. Part III discusses Kitano's adaptation of the original Zatoichi, and Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies, in particular those with "happy endings." Among them are The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945), Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo, and Sanjuro (1962). Kitano's Zatoichi, it will be argued, draws on the comic code that his predecessor, Kurosawa explored in his early jidaigeki. Like Kurosawa, Kitano explores the balance between the facts of life and death, the theme of individual and society, the relationship between audience and the film. It should be noted, however, that Kitano reinforces non-authenticity, fragmentation and repetition, and places comedy in a quite different context from Kurosawa. I shall further argue that Kitano adopts Kurosawa's critical comedy without discarding the aesthetics of kitsch from the original Zatoichi. Thus, Kitano both reflects and resists Kurosawa's comic traditions simultaneously.

(Zatoichi Royaburi, 1967)

1. Two Generations and the Receptions of Kitano's Zatoichi

Kitano's Zatoichi's domestic commercial success was unexpected considering that the jidaigeki movie seems to have fallen out of favour with Japan's young audience and jidaigeki's popularity has tailed off dramatically since its heyday over thirty years ago. Today, as a genre, jidaigeki is as deeply unfashionable as the Western movie has been perceived in America. NHK's (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, Japan's public broadcaster) Sunday night historical drama, Yoshitsune (2005), failed to invigorate the jidaigeki's declining popularity, despite a desperate effort from NHK to get a young audience by casting a pop star in the leading role. A majority of jidaigeki fans are of the older generation. For this older generation, the original Zatoichi represents what jidaigeki should be like.
The original Zatoichi franchise has its roots in the stories of writer Kan Shimozawa, and was first brought to the silver screen in the 1962 film entitled Zatoichi Monogatari, starring Shintaro Katsu and directed by Kenji Misumi. Ichi is a blind wandering swordsman who disguises himself as a masseur and occasionally hires out his skilful sword-fighting services to various clans in order to make a living. The character of Ichi proved highly popular, repeated by Katsu in the original series. The original Zatoichi turned out to be one of the longest running series in the history of jidaigeki. It consists of twenty-six films and one hundred TV episodes spanning almost three decades (1962 -1989).
Kitano's Zatoichi (2003) is a completely different style in every conceivable way from the original. It is interesting to note that Kitano's first reference to the original Zatoichi appeared as a ten minute parody sequence in his 1995 comedy Getting Any?, in which he lampooned the character of Ichi. Although Kitano had little interest in this character other than as a foil for a parody, he later revealed that his affection for the character of Ichi did have a place in his creativity. His 2003 remake was a fresh take on the character of Ichi.
The original character of Ichi has been virtually synonymous with the late Katsu. Some unfamiliarity of Kitano's remake troubled the jidaigeki fans, in particular those of the original Zatoichi, while it enjoyed a positive reception from a younger audience who are not jidaigeki fans. According to Asian film scholar, Tatsu Aoki:
Katsu freaks are everywhere in Japan, because he's one of the biggest heroes for the older generation. They felt this role pretty much belonged to Shintaro Katsu and didn't want to see Ichi played by a different actor. I talk to younger people now, who kind of like this new Zatoichi. We are of the generation to say, "No, this is not the real thing," but to them there wasn't any real thing to begin with. So we split our opinion on that. (Hart, 2004)
The jidaigeki convention represented in the original Zatoichi does not appeal to the younger generation. Jidaigeki is saddled with the conventions and stereotypes, formulas and clichés which were established in postwar Japan. All these are codified into the jidaigeki genre. Jidaigeki has epitomised Japanese national identity, its masculine past and the dialectic of the relation between individual and society, modern and traditional. In today's Japan, these boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred, and what has emerged is the fashionable cult of cool mixed with individualism. Jidaigeki is what Japanese young people come to regard as "oyaji-kusai," "jiji-kusai," "toshiyori-kusai," "ossan-kusai" (meaning "old fashioned"), "sekkyo-kusai" (preachy), "shibai-kusai," and "engi ga kusai" (overacting/artificial). "Kusai" (smell) is here referring to emotionally-charged atmosphere.
To Japanese young people, the jidaigeki offers incongruity. It is precisely because the cult of cool has taken root with Japanese youth. The unaffected and unaffecting culture is represented in the slang, the despised "uzai," an adjective for young people to describe older people who are "uncool." The Japanese young audience can sit back and be amused rather than being affectively involved. In today's Japan, indeed, the very notion of an embodied engagement is eschewed. The challenge Kitano has to respond to is the radical detachment of the postmodern kind, different from what Kurosawa did in his time. In contrast to Kurosawa, who challenged the postwar collective conformity and sentimentality, Kitano tackles the contemporary context in which the cult of cool mixed with individualism imposes ethics, and in which society is undervalued.
The current Japanese cultural shift to the overvaluation of individualism, the undervaluation of the society is caricatured by Kitano's Zatoichi. Kitano's concern is expressed in one of his books, in which Kitano criticises Japanese young people's unconditional worship of North American individualism as the best policy to emulate without considering its historical background. The Japanese conceptualisation of "individualism" is, in his view, merely "me-ism." (Kitano, 1998: 177) According to Kitano what has emerged full-blown in today's Japan is the state of "super-free." (Kitano, 2003a: 204)

(Zatoichi Royaburi, 1967)

Such a cultural and social climate provides some insight into how he approached updating the Zatoichi legend for contemporary young audiences. Kitano tackles this generational incongruity and misunderstanding in a new Japan, which is quite different from the Japan of postwar decades. Kitano creates a comedy of misunderstanding with the mobster who, in the enthusiasm to attack Ichi, draws his sword with such force it cuts his comrade's arm standing next to him; the merchants who want to test their new sword on a passing Ichi, suffer similar consequences; "the idiot son of a neighbour," a semi-naked lunatic man with a spear who runs around yelling and bumping into things. These scenes caricature the generational malfunctioning of communication. They could also allude to the old generation's perception that young people are so self-absorbed that they are not able to focus on their surrounding and the impact of their actions.
The most hilarious scene of misunderstanding involves the formation training sequence in which Shinkichi attempts to train a group of neighbours in the art of combat with swords, while three men wind up taking turns beating Shinkichi on the head rather than striking his sword. This scene is reminiscent of the young generation's perception that the old generation is obsessed with archaic ritual and routine. Kitano's success lies in his ability to comically deal with the generational incongruity that prevails in contemporary Japan. Playful anachronism can be found everywhere: not in the least by representing Ichi with blonde hair and tap dancing.
Comedy and dance decentre main characters and the narrative effect. That is to say, comedy and dance are located beyond the primacy of narrative or diegesis, and the limit of realist film. Comedy and dance remain a source of audience fascination that compete directly with plot and character development. Comedy and dance develop in sufficient number and demand enough interest that these comic and dance details cease to be servants of the narrative. They instead assume a greater affective charge than the narrative within which they are embedded. It is Kitano's way of embedding the modern inside the traditional. Such an extensive use of comedy and dance is absent in the original Zatoichi, as it is strictly within the scope of the generic conventions of realist jidaigeki, and its dominant tone is cynicism. In the following section, I contend that the original Zatoichi, in comparison to Kurosawa's films, is immature cynicism, which renders the film ethically and aesthetically imbalanced.

(Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Kasama no chimatsuri, 1973)

2.1 Critical vs. Popular: From Kurosawa's Comedy to the Cynicism of the Original Zatoichi

"Yana tosei dana" (It is a terrible world) is a catch phrase of Ichi, the protagonist of the original Zatoichi. Ichi, a wanderer, has a sense of justice, protects the weak, and criticises society from an outsider's "objective" point-of-view. Ichi, in the original Zatoichi, is a cynical, victimised thinker. As Stuart Kaminsky points out, there has been a tradition of physical deformity in postwar jidaigeki resulting from the disgrace of defeat (Kaminsky, 1972: 313). Ichi is an example of such a victimised hero; discriminated, shunned and ridiculed because of his disability. He is treated like an outcast in every town he visits. Like the samurai in a jidaigeki, and the gunman in a western movie, Ichi is driven by a desire for revenge. [1] What makes Ichi a hero is that he is always one step ahead of society: The blind man "sees" much more than those who have perfect eyesight. The original Zatoichi invokes and satisfies audience expectations, allowing an uncritical identification with Ichi.
The original Zatoichi emphasised liberal-individuals and their values to such a degree that the film departed from jidaigeki tradition because jidaigeki traditionally showed the samurai acting as part of a group. The huge commercial appeal of the original Zatoichi is predicated on the growing belief in liberal-individualist values in postwar Japan. David Desser positions the original Zatoichi as a Sword Film, a subgenre of jidaigeki in his essay, "Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film." Desser states:
The Sword Film, as defined here, begins with Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). Although typically described as a "Japanese Western," Yojimbo has much in common with American gangster films, hardly surprising … The introduction of elements from the Westerns and gangster genres (with their very different mythologies) marks a change in the mythos of the Samurai Film. (Desser, 1992: 156)
In new or postwar jidaigeki, liberal-individualism has been defined as a powerful cultural drive. Traditional or prewar jidaigeki shares the characteristics observed by Desser as "the overvaluation of society, the undervaluation of the individual." (Desser, 1992: 162) Darrell Davis draws attention to the effects of government intervention on prewar jidaigeki and its changes toward nationalistic collectivism between the years of 1936-41. He has dubbed the prewar jidaigeki the "monumental style." The style is best exemplified in Genroku Chushingura (1941), which prizes loyalty to one's lord over all other virtues (Davis, 1996: 131).
The original Zatoichi reversed this, instead emphasising the undervaluation of society, the overvaluation of the individual. Initially, the traditional jidaigeki was the dominant form of samurai drama but, with the new wave of directors in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a shift in focus towards the new jidaigeki with morally ambiguous, troubled and, at times, narcissistic heroes/anti-heroes.
Needless to say, Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo helped free the samurai genre from traditional collective morality. He popularised the figure of the "ronin" who mocked conformity and compliance. Kurosawa's jidaigeki were all created in a historical context in which authority strongly imposes ethics and morals upon an individual. Disturbed by the fanatical militarism present in Japan during World War II, and ruthless postwar capitalism, Kurosawa aimed to reshape Japanese society for ideals of individual autonomy. As examined by Stephen Prince (1991), Kurosawa forged a politically committed model of filmmaking, and participated as a filmmaker in the tasks of social reconstruction. The image of Toshiro Mifune on the watchtower in Yojimbo, watching the conflicts below with amused detachment, is an apt metaphor for individual autonomy. Prince refers to the ethics of Yojimbo as "one of isolation, a celebration of alienation." (Prince, 1991: 235) Like a typical new jidaigeki, Kurosawa's Yojimbo and its follow-up, Sanjuro, mock the over-valuation placed on "bushido" (the Way of Samurai) and the samurai's loyalty to the clan as being more significant than life itself.
Despite his emphasis on the liberal-individual, Kurosawa maintains the composition and balance of contrasts with society, in particular through the use of comedy. In Yojimbo, the playful music fitting the scruffy hero scratching his unclean head, the dog trotting with a human hand in its mouth, and foolish villains, all provide the audience with the significant mood of a sometimes savage comedy. In Sanjuro, much of the humour emerges from the contrast between Mifune's shabby samurai, always asking for money, and his incongruity with the stereotypically noble, virtuous behaviour of nine clean-cut samurai and two genteel ladies.
Kurosawa mentions in an interview that he ensures that comedy is activated in balance with dramatic tension in his film (Shibutani, 1993: 26). Comedy is a significant means by which Kurosawa creates a certain moral equilibrium of power between individual and society, life and death.
Kurosawa's first jidaigeki, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, is a comedy and an adaptation of a famous medieval Japanese tale that became a "kabuki" play, Kanjincho. [2] The film was shot under the strict regulations of the Japanese military authority during World War II, and the American authority during the early days of American occupation. The story relates to Yoshitsune (1159-1189), who is a fugitive from Yoritomo. Kanjincho tells the story of Benkei's desperate attempt to protect his young lord Yoshitsune by disguising him as his servant and beating him, in order to pass the barrier at Ataka which is guarded by an officer. Kurosawa criticises the way modern kabuki sentimentally rationalises bushido, including its rigid sense of loyalty and duty. Kurosawa comments on his claim that Kanjincho as a modern kabuki exposes unnecessary sentimentality:

(Shin zatô Ichi: Yabure! Tôjin-ken, 1971)

For example, out of sight of the barrier, Yoshitsune thanks Benkei for his resourcefulness. Bursting into tears, Benkei excessively apologizes to his lord for what he had to do to fulfil his duty. I feel that there is something wrong about pushing sentimentality forward in this manner. (Shibutani, 1993: 46)
In Kurosawa's adaptation, the kabuki repertoire of feudal devotion was parodied as a musical comedy. Challenging domestic viewers' familiarity with the kabuki format, Kurosawa creates a new role of the porter as fool. As a result, the film was the object of double censorships: Japanese censors accused him of trivialising an authentic historical drama, and postponed the release of the film. Ironically, the American Occupation authority also delayed the film's release, because they perceived that the film promoted a feudalistic loyalty. The film finally reached cinemas in 1952, seven years after its completion. The porter's constant comic presence is Kurosawa's ingenious way of both playfully mocking the deadly-serious proceedings, and allowing the audience to participate and witness the action through his eyes. The porter is both an insider and an outsider; an insider in that he is a character in the film, an outsider in that he does not quite understand the meaning of samurai conventions. The porter plays an essential role as a comic character caught betwixt and between, "neither the one thing nor the other." By making the porter play the role of the catalyst for the threshold between "play" and "real," Kurosawa stimulates his audience's critical self-reflexivity.
Such an artistic homage to comedy given by Kurosawa to his jidaigeki is absent in the original Zatoichi. The director, Misumi, only makes a half-hearted effort in humour. For example, Katsu stumbles at the beginning of the original Zatoichi. As the tone of the comedy is attempted but is not established successfully, the audience do not find this scene funny. Despite some awkward humorous scenes and slapstick touches like this example, comedy never plays any significant role in Misumi's original Zatoichi. The overall tone of the original Zatoichi is static cynicism, which replaced Kurosawa's comic dynamism and integrity. Cynicism in the original Zatoichi is particularly evident in the scenes where the protagonist overhears the villains' secret conversation involving their doubts and fears over the effective usefulness of a blind swordsman in the upcoming war with a rival gang. When Ichi eavesdrops on villains' conversation, confronts them and gives a speech of victimisation, he has a highly ironic tone. In contrast, a similar scene in Kurosawa's Yojimbo has a clear playful and comic tone: The swordsman played by Mifune listens to the villains plotting his death with jocular flippancy.
While Kurosawa's Yojimbo has a comic tone, the original Zatoichi is predominated by a tone of cynicism. The shift from comedy to cynicism clarifies what differentiates Kurosawa's jidaigeki from the original Zatoichi. The original Zatoichi inherited the liberal-individualist dimension of Kurosawa, by adapting the image of the anti-hero wanderer. The individual-oriented Kurosawa's style was persuasive in the original Zatoichi, even as the comical and balancing integrity of Kurosawa's filmmaking was not. The original Zatoichi is a cynical indictment of the society, and the over reliance on the individual destabilising the balance of work.

(Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Oreta tsue, 1972)

2.2 Comedy to Kitsch Abuse

The original Zatoichi replaced Kurosawa's cinematic goals with a further commercial end, namely not only cynicism, but also kitsch abuse. In his influential 1939 article "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," Clement Greenberg defines kitsch as "vicarious experience and faked sensation." (Greenberg, 1965: 10) He defined kitsch broadly to include Hollywood movies, jazz, advertising, commercial illustration -- all of which are generally regarded now as popular culture. What may mark kitsch as low-brow, especially in cinema, is the perception that kitsch is a form of popular discourse that aim primarily for a physical rather than an intellectual response. Kitsch creates a mood of intimacy, and calls for the spectator's bodily, affective immersion. In this sense, kitsch can be regarded as necessary for successful cinematic communication. In this paper, beyond the conventional negative view of kitsch, kitsch is viewed as a necessary, heavily but not entirely, commercial mode of discourse. That is to say, kitsch can be employed for good cause, or abused for bad cause.
The aesthetic problem with the original Zatoichi is not that it is kitsch, but that it misuses or indulges kitsch. In the original Zatoichi, Ichi is not only a killer but he is a masseur who gives comfort and erotic pleasure to people. Katsu played Ichi as a lovable character, a teddy-bear persona who hides a sense of justice and skill for swordplay. While tenderness and eroticism are at odds with the cynicism-oriented dimension of the anti-hero, they are deployed to make him and the film more sexually available. For example, in the first episode, when Ichi meets rival Master Hirate Miki, he realises that they are akin to one another; both are for-hire lone swordsmen. In the original Zatoichi, Ichi and the bodyguard become friends, sympathise over their tragic history, dream of escaping their irreversible plight and fight, however reluctantly, in the final scene. As the original Zatoichi series developed, subtle touches in homoeroticism, romance, and Ichi's "nureba" (love scenes) with bawdy women were added. The indulgence of kitsch is what destabilised the balance between audience and work in the original Zatoichi. These misused qualities make the audience respond to the film in an uncritical way. Such a relationship between the audience and the film leaves the audience emotionally saturated.
Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies restrain their kitsch elements by means of laughter. A prime example can be seen in Hidden Fortress which revolves around two comic peasants, Tahei and Matakichi and their journey with more "serious" main characters, General Rokurota and Princess Yuki. In the plot, the peasants are coerced into a scheme to smuggle a fugitive princess and her cache of gold back to her homeland.
A clichéd romance between the Princess and the General is absent, in spite of Tahei and Matakichi taking for granted that the Princess and the General are sexually involved. The peasants are depicted as sexually uninhibited, licentious and indulgent, repeatedly attempting to make sexual advances towards the young princess. Kurosawa tackles voyeurism by "presenting" the audience's expectation through the actions of Tahei and Matakichi. The fetish gaze toward the princess's body is presented through the eyes of the peasants only to be playfully mocked at the next moment. On one hand, Kurosawa deploys "serious" characters, The General and the Princess, to satisfy audience desire for heroism, loyalty and honour. On the other hand, he deploys comic characters, Tahei and Matakichi, to tease the audience so that the audience acquires critical self-reflexivity. The two comic peasants are employed as a mirror to reflect the audience's initial expectation and desire. The playful shift from attachment to detachment prevents Kurosawa's films from misusing and indulging kitsch.

(Zatoichi to Yojimbo, 1970)

2.3 Comedy to Iconicity: Mifune to Katsu

As mentioned earlier, the original Zatoichi became associated with the actor Katsu, who repeatedly appeared in the television series. The problem with Katsu's iconic status was his ubiquity. Katsu's Ichi corresponded with his eccentric star persona image (his involvement in a series of scandals being one factor). Katsu's body became a construction site for the personality that consists of separate parts moulded together by the camera. The close-up shots of Ichi's closed eyes and ears, for example, had enormous implications for the spectator's relationship to Katsu as a star. Misumi commercially foregrounded Katsu's personality. Misumi's cinematic image disassembles Katsu in order to reconstruct it for the spectator. Presenting Ichi in this way proved to be more enduring than Kurosawa's creation, Yojimbo, by evolving into a fetishised meta-icon.
In contrast, Kurosawa dealt with the actor in a different way. Needless to say, Toshiro Mifune is an actor who came to be a celebrated star in parallel with Kurosawa's rise to glory. Mifune's athleticism, rugged handsomeness, and intense screen persona made him a popular jidaigeki hero in dozens of jidaigeki made by various other directors. Kurosawa repetitively employed Mifune in his jidaigeki comedies. In those films, Mifune succeeded in a variety of different roles including comic (Yojimbo and Sanjuro), honourable (The Hidden Fortress) and wild and reckless (Seven Samurai). Kurosawa mentions in his autobiography, "Mifune's attraction is something his innate and powerful personal qualities pushed unwittingly to the fore," which "could turn into a terrible burden." (Kurosawa, 1982: 162) To negotiate an actor's subjectivity and the weight of his own art, Kurosawa deploys comedy as a creative equaliser. This is evident in Kurosawa's use of Mifune in his role of Kikuchiyo in Seven Samurai. Kurosawa cast Mifune for this comic role at the height of his stardom. Kikuchiyo is a character who poses as a samurai but actually comes from a poor farming village. Kikuchiyo's restless actions and monkey-like exaggerated giggles and laughter, serve as a contrast to the group-oriented samurai. His individuality is symbolised by the huge sword that he carries over his shoulder, in contrast to the other samurai who have swords that are fairly ordinary-looking. Individualism should never supersede the group, and when Mifune's character does, he is reprimanded.
In the original Zatoichi, such a powerful use of comedy is absent. Katsu's personal component was indulged in the original Zatoichi, while Mifune's is restrained in Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies. In comparison to Kurosawa's films, the original Zatoichi is ethically and aesthetically imbalanced between audience and actor. Kurosawa extracts his actor's blustering and bravado range for all its comic effect. Kurosawa takes liberties with Mifune's character, maximising his humour for the audience. Using the power of comedy, Kurosawa prevents the actor's personal component from pushing unwittingly to the fore.

(Zatoichi to Yojimbo, 1970)

3.1 Kitano's Zatoichi and Kurosawa's Jidaigeki Comedies

I wanted a sense of balance to the film. I didn't want to have just action scenes throughout the film. I wanted to add some humour to lighten up the film. (Kitano, 2003b)

The comical and balancing integrity of Kurosawa's film is revivified in Kitano's Zatoichi in a unique manner. Like Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies, Kitano's Zatoichi negotiates balance and maintains a constant level of comedy throughout the film. In his early years as a film director, Kitano drew a veil over a part of his career as a comedian (Gardner, 2000). His early films such as Violent Cop (1989) and Boiling Point (1990) disturbed audiences with their absurd violence and nihilistic humour, disconcertingly combined with asceticism and emotional inscrutability. Comedy and laughter, beyond nihilistic humour or cynicism, started to be interwoven with increasing emotionality in his later films, Hana-bi (1997) and Kikujiro (1999). An element of comedy was introduced with the melancholy displayed in Hana-bi (1997). Comedy is further developed with more joy and plenty of self-deprecation in Kikujiro (1999). In the new Zatoichi, Kitano's comedy is seen to full effect, along with comic symbols such as "tengu" (goblin) and tap dance, also evident in Kikujiro. Building on Kurosawa's comic traditions, Kitano deconstructs the jidaigeki code of genre further. In contrast to Kurosawa's realistic and authentic jidaigeki comedies, the constant reminder that we are indeed watching artifice punctuates Kitano's Zatoichi.
Comedy decentralises both the main characters and also the narrative effect. It is true that the new Zatoichi has some "serious" characters -- Oume, Hattori and Hattori's wife, Okinu -- who are located strictly beneath the primacy of the narrative. However, it also has destructive characters -- Ichi and Osei -- who travel back and forth between serious and comic, and the entirely comic character, Shinkichi. These destructive and comic characters decentre not only the serious characters but also themselves.
This is particularly evident in the scene following the escape from town by Ichi, Shinkichi, Okinu and Osei, during the storm to Oume's house. While talking about the painful past and the present it becomes apparent to Okinu that Ogi, one of the bandits, may well be one of the men responsible for their parents' murder. At the height of this serious revelation, Oume turns to Ichi for his thoughts on the matter. Her face suddenly breaks into a smile and she says, "Masseur, don't make those eyes at me." It is then that the camera switches to Kitano and the audience see that he has two fake eyes painted on his eyelids. This, of course, was done to allow Ichi to cover his identity when escaping from the villains of the town. Oume's amused reaction to Ichi's made-up eyes concludes the scene in a hilarious tone.
Kitano's destruction of fascination is also made manifest in the scene in which bandits decide to set fire to Oume's house to force out Ichi who, unknown to them, has already left. Shinkichi is forced to flee the house whilst still dressed as a geisha, complete with white face make-up and kimono. The local neighbours then arrive to see what is happening. After being drawn to the house fire, they slowly become aware of Shinkichi's appearance. Their bewildered looks at his feminine attire provide the audience with another destructive comic interlude to the narrative.
The comic rhythm deliberately destroys the audience identification with the film itself and the major characters such as Ichi, Hattori and Osei. In the conventional jidaigeki, identification with these characters would have been natural, and would have caused the audience to become absorbed in the diegesis. By using comedy in the new Zatoichi, Kitano evokes our sense of what is and is not real, and maximises "real" in contrast with "play". That is to say, Kitano's Zatoichi pushes the notion of comedy even further than Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies, probing the relationship between the recording of actual space and the spectators' perception of space as symbolic.
Our sense of what is and is not real is stimulated by two comic characters in the new Zatoichi: Ichi and Shinkichi. As both a director and a TV comic star, Kitano negotiates his own personal assets; before Zatoichi's release, Kitano bleached his hair for several months so that people would have a notion of what to expect. The Ichi played by Kitano is a comic character, in-between star and director, and insider and outsider. The characterisations of Kitano's Ichi, far from the cynical anti-hero with a victimised past in the original Zatoichi, is acutely evocative of two agrarian ritualistic figures, namely, "tengu" or a comic goblin and a scarecrow.

(Zatoichi, 2003)

Firstly, Kitano-as-an-actor's association with tengu is implied by Ichi's red cane, and the symbolic appearance of tengu in the form of a mask, which appears in the final ritual dance scene. In Japanese folklore, tengu has a red face, long nose and looks like a wandering Buddhist monk, wearing "geta" (wooden clogs). The tengu is the patron of martial arts, and is always portrayed as having a mischievous sense of humour. Tengu's mischief is only equal to its arrogance. "Tengu-ni-naru" is an expression still commonly used to ask for someone not to be as arrogant as a tengu.
Like the folkloric tengu, Ichi is a skilled swordsman, using the blade hidden in the cane to dispatch the villains in brutally satisfying ways. Like the tengu, Ichi is both arrogant and mischievous. Ichi's character lacks psychological complexity; he has neither background nor human motivations. The only flashback the audience sees of Ichi's past is his bloody swordfight in the rainstorm without context.
Secondly, Ichi's association with a scarecrow is suggested in several scenes. The first instance is the scene where villagers are bringing the scarecrow to place in a field to protect their crops. They pass Ichi, walking the other way, which implies that Ichi will play a similar role as a scarecrow in protecting them. The scarecrow has a sword, so does Ichi. Furthermore, the scarecrow exhibits an erected phallus as a humorous reminder of Japanese traditional fertility rituals which glorify human genitals. The second instance is just before the climactic final battle, when Ichi passes by a scarecrow left in the middle of the path, he picks it up and plants it back into the field. With his hair bleached a yellow-blonde, straw-like colour, Kitano further insinuates Kitano-as-an-actor's association with the scarecrow. In the film, although a scarecrow is at first provided with fertility offerings of food and flowers at its feet, it ends up being a victim of the village children's mischievous swordplay. Drawing a parallel with their ritualistic meanings, the symbol of the scarecrow represents the passiveness and vulnerability of Beat Takeshi as a star, and the symbol of tengu represent the aggressiveness, human hubris and arrogance of Kitano as a director. Ichi is shaped within the comic characterisations of a scarecrow and tengu.

(Zatoichi Goyo-Tabi, 1972)

The comic quality of Ichi is contrasted with that of Shinkichi, Ichi's luckless dice-gambler friend. Most of the humour in the film surrounds Shinkichi, played by the comedian Gadarukanaru Taka. Ichi's actions are repetitive not only in swordplay, but also in gambling. Ichi hardly talks, or shows any expression at all. Even during the gambling scenes, he does not engage in the trickery displayed by Katsu's Ichi in the original, but just sits quietly winning round after round while Shinkichi idiotically amuses himself beside him. Shinkichi is an essential foil for Ichi. Ichi and Shinkichi create a liaison with the audience and highlight the make-believe nature of the show. The interaction between the two is reminiscent of the Japanese stand-up duo comedy, "manzai," combining the fool ("boke") and the straight foil ("tsukkomi"). Ichi evades reality, while Shinkichi faces it. The frame of comedy duo allows Kitano to reflect his own two personas, the director Takeshi Kitano and the TV comic star "Beat" Takeshi, and dramatises a constant tension between the two.
In the new Zatoichi, Kitano discards the cynicism, fetishism and iconicity that prevail in the original Zatoichi. Kitano incorporates the fool as "audience within the film." Shinkichi plots to overcome all the other major characters, including Hattori who is deadly serious. Kitano directs the audience to participate and witness the action through Shinkichi's eyes and body. Shinkichi becomes infatuated by three major characters, Ichi, Hattori and Osei, and attempts to mimic each character in the following distinctive ways. Firstly, when Shinkichi sees Ichi's dice skills, he tries to emulate Ichi's dicing mannerism. Secondly, as Shinkichi peers at Hattori's flamboyant swordplay, he attempts to imitate Hattori and his masculinity but fails. Shinkichi tries to teach a group of neighbourhood boys how to stage a sword fight with strikes in the right sequence to match his blocks. However, after a short period of success, they break the routine which Shinkichi arranged, and start to attack him at random. Lastly, after he sees the beautiful dance of Osei, the female impersonator, he attempts to experiment with make-up to transform his gender identity like Osei.
Throughout these actions, we are aligned with Shinkichi, who assumes the audience's point-of-view in the most overt way. It is through Shinkichi's eyes that we witness and "try out" Ichi, Hattori and Osei. Kitano incorporates Shinkichi as the audience within his films. In this way, Shinkichi assists in the make-believe game and fools around with other characters, who evade reality or, rather, realise a dream. Leading his audience to another angle and another perspective, Kitano is interested in moments of disjunction where perception is momentarily put into question and boundaries are revealed, challenging the viewer to make connections between one context of meaning and another. An unseen dimension in something familiar surprises the audience. Kitano's comedy encourages them to see the relative nature of meaning with its explicit shifts in perspective between fiction and reality, film and audience.
Kitano, therefore, generates critical self-reflexivity through comedy, and upstages the great jidaigeki comedies of Kurosawa in his adaptation of the original Zatoichi. The next section explores a further achievement of Kitano in the new Zatoichi, specifically that critical self-reflexivity is generated through comedy without damaging kitsch, the sensational and affective part of the equation. Kitano's adaptation of Kurosawa's critical tradition does not necessarily mean that he discards kitsch or commercial essences from the original Zatoichi. While celebrating Kurosawa's artistry, Kitano pays equally high regard to the kitsch essences in the original Zatoichi.

(Yojimbo, 1961)

3.2 Kurosawa's Noh-oriented Aesthetics and Kitano's Kabuki-oriented Aesthetics

In Kitano's Zatoichi, kitsch essences, which carry an affective charge, are not condemned. As a director, actor, screenwriter, novelist, essay writer, film editor, poet, painter, musician, game show host, stand-up comedian, and even tap dancer, Kitano straddles Japanese popular culture with ease. In a closer and more embodied way, wholly different from Kurosawa's carefully detached way, Kitano understands Japanese culture innately, deeply, and across the boundaries of social classes. Kitano's vision is comic, and he is an observer of himself and the Japanese society while acting. Unlike Kurosawa with a family of samurai descent, Kitano was born to a drunken gambler father and an education-oriented mother in Tokyo's "shitamachi" (the old working class neighbourhood). Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies often encourage the emotional detachment inspired by high culture, while Kitano celebrates affect, sensation, and sentimentality inspired by popular culture.
In terms of aesthetic and kinetic orientation, Kitano differs from Kurosawa. Both directors affect the senses of the audience in a direct manner. Kurosawa, however, unlike Kitano, encourages emotional detachment inspired by "noh." Noh theatre is the art that most obviously feeds into Kurosawa's cinema, and it is this tradition that disrupts and contests the comfortable conventions of immature sentimentality. Kurosawa regards a good structure for a screenplay as "that of the symphony, with its three or four movements and different tempos." (Kurosawa, 1982: 193) Kurosawa has suggested as a rhythmical model "the noh play with its three part structure: 'jo' (introduction), 'ha' (destruction) and 'kyu' (haste)." By pacing the whole work in the living rhythm of noh, he builds a critical detachment as the vehicle by which a sensory charge is translated from filmmaker to audience, whole attention is deflected away from empathy and onto detached critical contemplation. Kurosawa's stylistic and semiotic borrowings of noh art forms reflect his concern about issues of aesthetic detachment. He states:
Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by "watching with a detached gaze. (Kurosawa, 1982: 195)
Kurosawa often expressed his dislike of modern kabuki elements celebrated in the conventional jidaigeki. In an interview in 1966, Kurosawa remarked:
Today's kabuki is no longer kabuki in a real sense. The kabuki in a real sense is more tolerant and magnanimous. Nowadays kabuki has become like a shingeki with psychological details. (Shibutani, 1993: 45-46)
Kurosawa regards the emotional detachment of noh as essential to the dramatic experience, while emotional exaltation seen in kabuki is either downplayed, or included as necessary to refer to stereotypes that can be exploited for parody.
Kurosawa's images and sound arouse "yugen" and "wabi-sabi," the aesthetics of noh, which value the practice of restraint in expression, to make the images and sound resonate with his audience in a detached manner. Yugen is the aesthetic sense of distance; "Yu" (invisible) and "gen" (profound). Kurosawa elaborated the "wabi" idea, seeking richness in an individual detached from society. As wabi was derived from "wabishi" (lonely), "sabi" came from another similar word meaning loneliness, elderliness and calmness. In its background, there stands the Buddhist worldview recognising the existential solitude of all human beings, trying to resign oneself to that solitude, and to discover its aesthetics.

(Yojimbo, 1961)

Yugen and wabi-sabi aesthetics are evident in Kurosawa's kinetic action scenes, such as those involving dance and violence, which are intrinsic to Kurosawa's classic. Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies are an artistic exploration of cinematic yugen and wabi-sabi. In most of Kurosawa's jidaigeki, dance scenes, such as the dance of noh, farmers' ritual and festival, are used to emphasise emotional detachment. In Hidden Fortress, for example, the fire festival scenes show the tension within this relief. In these scenes, the protagonists mistakenly get caught up in a fire festival deep in the woods; joining in this festival dance provides them an opportunity to hide from their enemies. Kurosawa frequently mediates fire in front of the participants and characters by way of executing detachment. Kurosawa makes tension visible in this spectacular fire-worshipping sequence, in which the participants dance wildly around a bonfire and sing: "This floating world's a dream, so burn in mad abandon":

The life of a man
Burn it with the fire
The life of an insect
Throw it in the fire
Ponder and you'll see
The world is dark
And this floating world
Is a dream.

This song returns later in the film to emphasise the emotional restraint of the yugen and wabi-sabi. Furthermore, wabi-sabi aesthetics signify liberation from materialistic and emotional anxieties. This ascetic attitude toward "the floating world" is apparent in the novel beauty of Kurosawa's classics.
"The floating world" has a derogatory meaning according to Kurosawa's "highbrow" aesthetics. From Kitano's perspective, "the floating world" is the aesthetic ideal of libertines, emphasising the transience of earthly existence. In sharp contrast to Kurosawa, Kitano draws his material from the Japanese theatrical tradition of kabuki in order to encourage emotional bond and embodiment. Influenced by his grandmother who was a "gidayu" (kabuki chanter) with whom he lived in his childhood, he was familiar with the traditional sentiment that is expressed in kabuki. Unlike Kurosawa, who incorporated the higher art and noh aesthetics for his jidaigeki, Kitano reimagines the traditional kabuki's aesthetics which Kurosawa judged to be missing in modern kabuki. Kitano reproduces kabuki's original, subversive roots, its common touch, its association with the masses with everyday vulgar low life, involving an intensive interplay between eroticism and comedy.
Kitano's Zatoichi could be regarded as a rediscovery of the emotional aesthetics lost in modern kabuki, namely, "iki" aesthetics. [3] In iki aesthetics, as in kitsch aesthetics, the embodiment of emotional and corporeal pleasure, fear and pain is a virtue. In the former, unlike in the latter, eroticism and laughter are related. [4] Kitano originally debuted as a comedian performing in the strip clubs and vaudeville theatres of Tokyo's Asakusa district in the 1960s, where he mastered the expertise of period dramas and sword fighting. Inspired by the Asakusa culture of entertainments, Kitano rediscovers melodramatically refined iki aesthetics, quarrying the low art distinct from the high art form of kabuki. A clear example of this can be seen in Kitano's use of Daigoro Tachibana in his role of Osei. Osei's character is a cross-dressing geisha who travels with his sister in search of their parents' murderers. He is portrayed as a sympathetic character who was molested as a child and eventually prostituted himself and acquired dancing skills in order to survive. Osei's urge to live is contrasted to Hattori's drive to death. Kitano uses the flashbacks to Hattori's past when he was a samurai with a master, being humiliated and maliciously beaten by a ronin. They suggest that his choice to become a paid killer results from a desire for revenge. Hattori ignores the pleas of his consumptive wife to stop killing. Hattori's mental state reflects upon the physical illness of his wife, emphasised by her scene in a white kimono signifying death. The flashbacks to Hattori's past not only explain the motives and intentions for his own brutal killings, but also reveal Hattori's victimisation, which differs from Osei's.

(Zatoichi, 2003)

To recreate iki aesthetics, Kitano takes his inspiration from an art-form that is considered as "lower" and as more popular than kabuki, namely the "taishu engeki" (traditional Japanese "boulevard theatre" or vaudeville). Kitano underscores the combination of eroticism and laughter in casting Tachibana, an Asakusa female impersonator or "onnagata" star who is a part of the taishu engeki. Kitano revitalises iki aesthetics through the melodrama combined with comedy. The melodramatic scenes are as intensive as the comedic scenes. The audience's corporeal reception is intended to generate a sensory awaking. Kitano reproduces a sense of shared space outside of immediate body-to-body encounters. Furthermore, Kitano accomplishes humour without turning the melodrama into mere parody. This is manifested in Osei's extensive dance sequence.
When Okinu and Osei practice their song and dance routine in harmony with the rain outside, Okinu sadly remembers how Osei prostituted himself and learned his dance moves as a child in order to make money. Kitano uses montage by inserting the same dance sequence during his past and present practice, culminating in the sister breaking down in tears. By crosscutting between Osei practising his dance routine as an adult to his dancing as a boy, Kitano evokes iki aesthetics consisting of three features, "bitai" (erotic allure) with "hari" (warrior-like pride) and "akirame" (resignation and also sophisticated indifference) (Kuki, 1979: 23). Kitano attributes iki to Osei's vitality manifested in her dance.
This is immediately followed by Shinkichi, moved to tears by the performance, who decides to go in to town and asks to borrow Oume's umbrella. The scene then shifts to the outside where it is raining heavily. Shinkichi emerges from the doorway and puts up the umbrella, which is so torn and full of holes it is virtually no use at all. The audience then see a comical dance sequence of farmers in a muddy paddy field. These humorous scenes detach the audience from the previous melodramatic scene. The audience have to adjust their bodies to accommodate the mood they should now adopt for themselves. Before the audience finish laughing, the scene ends just as abruptly as it started.
Laughter is also enhanced by the confusion of gender in Tachibana's role for Osei. On one hand, Osei assumes the melodramatic character in his relationship to his elderly sister, Okinu. Kitano allows the viewer to witness his sister's dominance over Osei. Osei's effeminate and erotic posture effectively dramatises the frustration and helplessness of those victimised. On the other hand, gender distinctions comically blur the characterisation of Osei in relation to Shinkichi. This is evident during the scene when Shinkichi is about to take a bath:

Shinkichi: I'll have a bath.
Osei: Me too.
Shinkichi: No! Men first.
Osei: I am a man!
Shinkichi: …

Then, Shinkichi and Osei take a bath in the same bucket. The conversation continues:

Shinkichi: I have to say it's incredible. You really look like a woman! Does make-up make men beautiful?
Osei: It doesn't work on everyone. It depends on the face.

Through the sexually ambiguous presence of Osei, and his interaction with Shinkichi, Kitano achieves high humour without turning it into mere pantomime. His best trick is to amalgamate eroticism and laughter, dream and reality without diluting the power of either.

(Zatoichi, 2003)

3.3 Comedy and Kitsch Firework: Kitano's Dance Scheme as Embodiment and Kurosawa's as Detachment

I enjoyed the process of presenting comedy, fighting and dancing in distinctive ways, and intersecting them. (Kitano, 2003a: 36)

"Kitano's Zatoichi might best be described as the first samurai musical," wrote the correspondent of The Guardian (2003). Limiting verbal language in Zatoichi, Kitano takes full advantage of the viscerality celebrated by the musical genre. Viscerality is based on deep feeling and emotional reactions rather than on reason or thought. He does so in such a way that the action restores kitsch to his practice. In Zatoichi, the dance is as central or dominant as comedy. Dance, along with comedy, decentres the characters and the narrative. Dance is almost destructive to the diegesis, not only as a jidaigeki, which usually glorifies masculine control and violence, but also as a musical in which the central character plays the dominant role in the dance scenes. The dominant roles in the dance scenes are taken by the supporting roles, Osei and the four nameless villagers. Kitano employs specialist dancers for each dance form: Tachibana for classical Japanese dance, and performance group, "The Stripes," for tap dance. The Stripes appear as farmers and carpenters dressed in traditional kimonos and wooden clogs and they perform a contemporary-style of tap dancing accompanied by Keiichi Suzuki's hip-hop rhythms.
Film musicals, as Jane Feuer asserts, promote "conservative" self-reflexivity, the myths of audience, and integration. According to Feuer, "successful performances are intimately bounded up with the integration of the individual into a community or a group, and even with the merger of high art with popular art." (Feuer, 1977: 319) The new Zatoichi conforms to Feuer's definition. Like the conventional film musical, Zatoichi celebrates kitsch, exploiting the wholesome myth of integration the genre has itself developed. Zatoichi borrows some "up-lift" elements from the musical genre as the myth of integration. It creates a mood of intimacy, and seeks its spectator's bodily, affective immersion. Kitano achieves an amalgamation of comedy with kitsch elements with an equal dynamism. Through the amalgamation of comedy with kitsch, Kitano eliminates a predominating tone of cynicism found in the original Zatoichi. The shift from the cynicism to the comic illuminates what differentiates the new Zatoichi from the original.
The greatest kitsch and the comedy fireworks are undoubtedly found in the final musical sequences when a group of carpenters, in classic Broadway style, make music from their tools as they work on rebuilding the farmhouse burned down by the villains. Later, two final dance sequences take place on the outdoor stage or shrine. The shrine stage is a meta-cinematic device of the frame-within-a-film that draws attention to the conventions of kitsch. Within this textual focus, it is the kitsch that becomes the critical area of interest. Kitano reminds the audience of the textuality of kitsch, and acknowledges its status as a construct. In this sense, Kitano's hermeneutical achievement in Zatoichi could be best described by the great Hans Georg Gadamer, as "a transformation of texts back into speech and meaning." (Gadamer, 1989: 354f)
The first dance performed by four dancers is reminiscent of "okagura," an agricultural festival which traditionally associated human fertility with the ripeness of the harvest. Two villagers wear demon masks of "yamabushi" tengu or "mountain priest" tengu, and "karasu" or "crow" tengu, the other two wear God masks signifying fortune, those of "otafuku" and "ebisu" (two of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune), which are crucial actors at Japanese traditional festivals. They perform the ritual under beating drums. The performers initially go around in a small circle, and gradually face toward the camera in line. Drums beat wildly and a ring of other villagers chants exultantly behind these performers. By using these villagers as audiences-within-the-film, Kitano initially provides a point of identification for audiences of the film. The second dance sequence accompanied by Keiichi Suzuki's hip-hop rhythms is a contemporised and cross-cultural version of "takatsuki," a kabuki tap form, where the dancers wear Japanese wood clogs. This dance, joined by all the villagers, provides a sense of participation for the film audience. The ending of Kitano's Zatoichi is openly orgiastic, particularly because the film concludes with a dance featuring most of the supporting cast.

(Zatoichi Kenka-daiko, 1968)

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is a compelling study in contrast. Kurosawa famously adapted western music to his jidaigeki, but did not adapt non-Japanese dance to jidaigeki. In Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies, the dance scene is part of the narrative, and is not meant to be spectacular. In Seven Samurai, dance in general exists for artistic exclusion and detachment. Dance in Kurosawa's works is not intended to impress the viewer. It is located strictly beneath the primacy of the narrative and the limit of realist film. Kurosawa closes his film with the farmers sowing, accompanied by music and dance, made possible by the village's victory over the attacking bandits. Kurosawa's camera technique distances the audience from the space of the enclosure. His filmic strategy of withdrawal is done via the long take and the long shot. Kurosawa's camera refuses the audience participation or identification with the enclosed space of the dance ritual. We are outside the ritual and remote from it. In this way, the dance ritual in Kurosawa's jidaigeki comedies discourages the audience from identifying with it. The sequence of the farmers planting while the samurai are watching from the bridge signifies their exclusion, conveying that there is no longer a place for the samurai in this village. The samurai mediate the ritual scene so that the reaction of the film audience does not mimic the sensations experienced by the villagers in the film. Through the lenses of samurai, Kurosawa excluded the observer from participation and directs him to remain detached.
In Zatoichi, Kitano's intention to elevate the dancers to heroic status is obvious in his reliance on their spectacular performance. The village's colourful and vivacious festival is interrupted by Ichi's dark fight scenes. Although Ichi's fight scenes occur as an isolated interlude to the dance sequences, they share the echo of the distant "taiko" drums of the village's festival. That is to say, villagers are shot on the higher level than Ichi. Juxtaposition of these contrasting scenes thus leads spectators to stand on the threshold between reality and fiction, life and death, comedy and irony, motion and stillness, vivacity and poise.
Furthermore, Kitano's kinaesthetic and affective designs combined with comedy prevent his audience from critical identification with Ichi. It contrasts with the final scene of Seven Samurai, in which Kambei, the head-samurai, states that it is the villagers who have won and not the swordsmen. In Kitano's Zatoichi, the victory of villagers is not expressed in words but signified in dance by their powerful percussion, which leads Ichi to stumble off on his lone way out of the village at the end. It is an interesting contrast to Ichi, who stumbles at the beginning of the original, Zatoichi Monogatari. The dance scenes in the new Zatoichi, along with the other shots in the last ten minutes of the film, are taken to endorse the playful statement that it is the villagers who won and not the swordsman. In the new Zatoichi, therefore, both dance and comedy are emphasised beyond the limit of the realist film, and they destroy the unity of the diegesis. Dance and comedy escape from the control of the narrative and become purely critical spectacle.

(Zatoichi Monogatari, 1962)

Conclusion

In his adaptation of Zatoichi, Kitano dramatised Japanese anxieties regarding weakening generational ties. Kitano translates both Kurosawa's classics and the myth of Zatoichi, so as to deal with the troubling generation incongruity with creative sensitivity. I have discussed the way Kitano deployed both the comedy inherited from Kurosawa, and the aesthetics of kitsch translated from the original Zatoichi. With Zatoichi, Kitano has developed the jidaigeki genre for contemporary audience in historically innovative ways, moving away from both the cynicism of the original, and Kurosawa's aesthetics of detachment. Kitano's cultural challenge is the reversal of Kurosawa's: Kurosawa's jidaigeki were made in a historical context in which authority strongly imposed ethics and morals upon an individual. Kurosawa aimed to reshape postwar Japanese society for ideals of individual autonomy and aesthetics of detachment. In contrast, Kitano's cultural challenge is the privatised lifestyle and mode of consumer culture, where society is losing not only the responsive bodies to absorb culture, but also the minds to think critically. In order to create an opposing energy against what Kitano calls "me-ism," the cult of cool, and the contemporary self-centred detachment, Kitano activates an embodied engagement and cultural absorption through kitsch, as much as evoking critical self-reflexivity through comedy. Creating a mood of intimacy, and seeking for the spectator's bodily, affective immersion, Kitano therefore uses kitsch elements for good cause. Using kitsch elements from musicals, Kitano provides a comic commentary on swordsman's lives while he affectionately mocks the jidaigeki genre convention.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
[1] Stuart Kaminsky observes that the samurai in jidaigeki often shares with the gunman in westerns a drive for revenge. See Stuart Kaminsky (1972) The Samurai Film and the Western, The Journal of Popular Film and Television 1 (4), p. 319.
[2] Kabuki is the popular traditional theatre as opposed to the more aristocratic noh theatre.
[3] "Iki" is the term born out of traditional kabuki's original subversive roots and erotic relationship refined in 'lowbrow' geisha culture in the Edo period (1603-1886). Geisha epitomised for the people of the epoch the ideal of iki, which was manifested in "ukiyoe" prints by artists (Kuki, 1979).
[4] The eroticism of Edo connected with laughter can be found in many ukiyoe prints. Particularly, ukiyoe prints of sexual intercourse in whatever combination (male-female, male-male -- the threesomes being the most common) were called "waraie" (laughing pictures). The term waraie denotes sensual pictures that provoke laughter.

References:
.Beat, Takeshi (1998) Dakara Watashi Wa Sekai De Kirawareru. Tokyo: Shinchosha.
.Bradshaw, Peter and Derek Malcolm (2003) Sex and the Samurai, The Guardian (5 September), http://film.guardian.co.uk/festivals/news/0,,1035574,00.html [Accessed 15 June 2004]
.Davis, Darrell William (1996) Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film. New York: Columbia University Press.
.Desser, David (1992) Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film, in Authur Nolletti and David Desser (eds.), Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 145-165.
.Feuer, Jane (1981) The Self-Reflective Musical and the Myth of Entertainment, in Rick Altman (ed.), Genre: The Musical. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 159-174.
.Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1989) Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.
.Gardner, Geoff (2000) Kikujiro, Senses of Cinema (October). http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/10/kikujiro.html [Accessed 12 June 2004]
.Goodwin, James (1994) Akira Kurosawa and Intertexual Cinema. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
.Greenberg, Clement (1965) Avant-Garde and Kitsch, in Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, pp.3-21.
.Hart, Hugh (2004) Zatoichi Sees All, San Francisco Chronicle (25 July) http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article. cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/25/PKGKD7LJPG1.DTL&hw=zatoichi&sn=002&sc=484 [Accessed 18 October, 2005]
.Kaminsky, Stuart (1972) The Samurai Film and the Western, The Journal of Popular Film and Television 1 (4), pp. 312-324.
.Kanazawa, Makoto (2003) Interview with Takeshi Kitano, Kinema Junpo 1389 (September), pp. 34-37.
.Kitano, Takeshi (2003a) 21 Seiki Dokudan, Shukan Post (11 July), p. 204.
.Kitano, Takeshi (2003b) Zatoichi DVD notes, Artificial Eye, http://www.artificial-eye.com/dvd/ART274dvd/more.html [Accessed 9 June 2004]
.Kuki, Shuzo (1979) Iki no Kozo. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
.Kundera, Milan (1988) The Art of the Novel. Translation by Linda Asher, London: Faber.
.Kundera, Milan (1980) Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translation by Michael Henry Heim, New York: Harper.
.Kurosawa, Akira (1982) Something Like an Autobiography. Translation by Audie E. Bock, New York: Knopf.
.McDonald, Keiko (1983) Cinema East: a Critical Study of Major Japanese Films.
.Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
.Prince, Stephen (1991) The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
.Richie, Donald (1965) The Japanese Movie. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
.Shibutani, Yoichi (1993) Kurosawa, Akira. Miyazaki Hayato, Kitano Takeshi: Nihon no Sannnin no Enshutsuka. Tokyo: Rokkingu On.
.Shibutani, Yoichi (2003) Takeshi Ga Takeshi o Korosu Riyu: Film Interview Collection. Tokyo: Rokkingu On.
.Sugimura, Masahiko (2003) Takeshi no Zatoichi to Sekai no Kurosawa no Setten, Yomiuri Weekly (21 September), p. 96.

Bringing It All Back Home: Tomu Uchida's Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria

2011-12-05T00:15:00.012Z

By Cragun Watts

(Great article taken from Bright Lights Film Journal, 2001)

Following the surrender of the Japanese in World War II, the colonial tables were turned. The Chinese took control of Manchuria and the Manchurian Film Cooperative (Manei) (1) and the Americans took control of Japan and its film industry. In a sense, the Japanese, who had fabricated and controlled Manchuria's film industry from 1937-1945, writing the lines to be spoken by Chinese actors in Manchurian productions, were now forced to appear as the puppet actors in an American production. The overlay of democracy in Japan seemed to have been effortlessly deployed. But in the postwar period, the ideology that drove Japan to reach new heights of modernism and atrocity on the Continent was not so effortlessly put to rest. As the Japanese cinema entered its post-war golden age, a "working out" of modernist and feudalist ideology on the level of mass culture took place in Japan's packed out movie theatres. Celebrated filmmakers such as Uchida Tomu brought their Manchurian experiences on the edge of Japanese ideological extremes back to Japan with them, infusing them into a generation of conflicted samurai films, such as Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji (1955).

Tomu's Early Career

Before establishing himself as a film director, Tomu lived as a romantic, in touch with and sympathetic to the common people, yet enamored with wealth, fashion, and the arts. Born in Okayama in 1898, at age 16 Tomu moved to Yokohama where he found work in a piano factory. After a brief stint in the military where he was assigned to a special unit for the emperor because of his good looks, Tomu returned to work as a piano tuner, a job which enabled him to socialize with those who could afford pianos -- Westerners and wealthy Japanese. Tomu scraped by financially, eating "sauce rice" and living with friends, who despite their poverty were interested in drinking, dressing fashionably, and speaking English. He took the Western name "Tom" which he later changed to the kanji Tomu which means "to spit out dreams." During these early years, Tomu spent a great deal of time at the house of Tanizaki Junichiro.
In 1920, Tanizaki helped Tomu find work as an actor with his Taisho Katsuei Film Company. When the company broke up in 1923, Tomu moved in with Inoue Kintaro, who would later become a well-known actor and screenwriter. (2) In the hard times following the Tokyo Earthquake, Tomu joined a travelling acting troupe or Toza of the lowest class. In his biography on Tomu, Suzuki Naoyuki describes the moment when Tomu, struggling with the troupe on the road, hears news that his friend Inoue is directing his second film in Kyoto. Inspired by Inoue's success, Tomu borrowed money from the local stationmaster to immediately return to Tokyo where he eventually found work with Nikkatsu in 1926. (3)
Transferred to Kyoto, Tomu quickly worked his way up to become one of Japan's premier pre-war film directors. He first achieved critical fame in 1929 with the film Ikeru Ningyo. In 1936 Tomu returned to Nikkatsu's Tokyo Tamagawa studio to make four classic films in four years, including two films Kagirinaki Zenshin (1937 )and Tsuchi (1939)chosen as top film of the year in Kinema Junpo's annual rankings. (4) Tsuchi was especially praised for its realistic depiction of the lives of poor Meiji tenant farmers. Tomu not only attempted to shoot the film in the town where it was actually written, but also searched for earth of just the right shade of brown, despite the fact that the film was shot using black and white film. Prophetically, the final triumphant scene of a farmer tilling his new field was made into a poster and co-opted by propagandists recruiting settlers to Manshu. (5)

(Tsuchi, 1939)

Manchurian Romance

By the early 1940s, Tomu's romanticism found a new object of affection -- military nationalism. Yamguchi Takeshi points out that Tomu, amidst the confusion resulting from increased government intervention and control over the film industry, found himself swept up in nationalism and enthusiasm for the military. (6) Tomu's autobiography, published in 1968, is noticeably silent concerning this period of his career. Suzuki suggests that in his later life, Tomu consciously avoided contact with film colleagues he worked with under fascism, particularly directors Ito Daisuke and Tasaka Nobutaka. (7)
By 1940 Manchuria had become an inviting place. Manchurian Li Xiang Ran, paired with leading Japanese actors and playing the role of a Chinese enchantress in romantic musicals set in Manchuria, was taking the Japanese film box office by storm. Manchuria drew Tomu's interest as well. Negishi Kanichi, his supportive producer at Nikkatsu, had become head of production at the Manchurian Film Company (Manei), backed by the talented producer Makino Mitsuo. Kiga Seigo, Tomu's close friend from their days at Taisho Katsuei, was there as well. In addition, Manei boasted a large, new studio located in Xinjing (now Changchun) and state-of-the art equipment. In 1943, with filmmaking becoming more and more restricted in Naichi, Tomu, along with director Shindo Kaneto, made an extended visit to Manshu to discuss the making of a film glorifying the Kantogun Tank Division. A scenario writer who made the trip with them remarked on Tomu's apparent sympathy for the militarists. At one point Tomu exclaimed how wonderful it would be to die for one's country. (8)
Tomu was drawn to Manchuria for practical reasons as well. The situation for Japanese filmmakers in the mid-1940s had deteriorated to unbearable levels. Film studios had been consolidated and were under complete government control. The number of films being made -- particularly entertainment films -- dropped drastically. By the time Tokyo was first bombed in March 1945, the war picture for Japan was looking grim. In Japan, survival itself was becoming an issue. Manei, on the other hand, remained untouched by the war and still had resources available for filmmakers. Practical considerations precipitated Tomu's decision -- already fueled by romanticism -- to go to Manei.

(Yoto Monogatari: Hana no Yoshiwara Hyaku-nin Giri, 1960)

In the Realm of Amakasu's Manei

Because of the worsening war situation, Tomu's glorious military tank film was never made. He notes in his biography that "the reality of 'the great war film' ended at the dream stage."(9) However Tomu used this a pretext to return to Manchuria in May 1945 -- ostensibly to apologize for never finishing the film. Critics and friends suggest that Tomu went to Manshu still intent on making the film.
The head of the Manchurian Film Company, militarist Amakasu Masahiko, was Japan's bushido (way of the samurai) exemplar par excellance. If it were not for his interest in cigars and classical music, Amakasu could have walked directly out of a samurai film himself. Working for the secret police in the confusion following the Tokyo Earthquake, Amakasu became notorious for his participation in the murders of anarchist Otsugi Sakai, his female companion Noe, and his 7-year old nephew. A protégé of Tojo Hideki, Amakasu was released from prison after only three years. After some time in Paris, Amakasu crossed over to Manchuria to work as a civilian with militarists and saboteurs to "create" Manchuria. Because of his past, Amakasu necessarily worked behind the scenes and in complete devotion to the Japanese emperor. Amakasu was appointed chairman of the Manchurian Film Company in 1937 and, due to his powerful charisma, quickly earned the respect of both the Chinese and Japanese staff. With the end of the war in sight, Amakasu not only stubbornly refused draft orders for his staff, but also arranged evacuation trains for the families and distributed 5 million yen to the employees. Hirai notes the fact that more than 3,000 people, Chinese and Japanese, attended Amakasu's funeral -- an indication of the devotion he instilled in those around him. (10)
Tomu's ambivalent respect for Amakasu's charismatic bushido militarism becomes apparent in the dramatic descriptions of their meetings found in Tomu's autobiography, which includes Amakasu's photograph. (11) In his autobiography, Tomu dramatically recounts one of his earliest meetings with Amakasu, where Tomu breaks the ice by asking Amakasu for a cigar. Tomu further describes how, as the war situation worsened, Amakasu initially resolved to turn the film company into a fortress and to go down fighting. Rumors circulated that Amakasu had planned a mass suicide in which all those associated with the Manchurian Film Company would go up in an explosion of flames fueled by the existing (highly flammable) stock of film. Tomu marvels in his autobiography at the extremism of Amakasu who provides poison in case of capture for all of the families as they are evacuated. Just before the Russian troops arrive to occupy the Manchurian capital Shinkyo, Tomu describes the early morning scene in which Amakasu dies in Tomu's arms after having taken a lethal dose of poison.(12) In his suicide note, Amakasu wrote that as a samurai, he would like to have died as a samurai by seppuku (hara-kiri), but that having failed the emperor, he was not worthy of such an honorable death.(13)
Amakasu's radical -- almost lunatic -- samurai presence underlies Tomu's entire experience with the Manchurian Film Company. A romantic nationalist and a realistic nation-builder, Amakasu embodied the honor and tragedy inherent in loyalty to the samurai ideal. In his autobiography, Tomu concludes an entire section devoted to Amakasu with two ambivalent lines written in Chinese that perhaps capture the meaning of the whole Manchurian experience for Japan: "Without Amakasu's militaristic ideology, there would have been no Manshu."(14)

(Kiga Kaikyo, 1965)

Staying On in Manchuria

Though offered the chance by Amakasu to lead a group of Japanese families back to Japan before the Russian occupation, Tomu refused. Tomu, along with many of the Japanese staff, decided to stay in Manchuria to work to make films and to build the new Chinese nation with the young Chinese filmmakers who had trained at the Manchurian Film Company. Yoshida Sadasugu, who returned earlier to Japan, speculates that Tomu's decision to remain in Manshu was based on his belief (which proved false) that he would have more of a chance to make films in Manshu than in Japan.(15) Though Tomu gave sporadic lectures on film, and a few quality Chinese films were eventually made, fighting between Nationalist and Communist forces took center stage and resulted in more hardship than serious filmmaking. The film company was repeatedly relocated and restructured. At one point, the Japanese were forced to draw lots among themselves, and Tomu found himself reassigned to work in a coal mine -- an incident never discussed by Tomu, who avoided any contact with those involved once back in Japan.(16)
The Japanese met weekly in a study group designed to rid themselves of individualism and to instill Maoist doctrine. Tomu found Mao's dialectic teaching concerning (mujun) contradiction and development to be particularly influential. Mao asserts that small contradictions or irrationalities build gradually upon one another to reveal larger contradictions, which in turn lead to an explosive climax or revolution in which contradictions are resolved. Likewise Tomu came to think of a film's plot in terms of a series of oppositions or conflicts. "Contradictions are part of human society," Tomu would remark. "When these build on one another they lead to a big climax." The climax comes at the moment when the largest contradiction explodes.(17) Seen with particular clarity in Blood Spear Mt. Fuji, this philosophy, as Suzuki points out, becomes the central pillar of Tomu's post-war dramatic film art.(18)
Sporting a long goatee and in ill health, Tomu returned to Japan in October 1953 with the last group of Japanese returnees, and was immediately hospitalized. Relations with his wife, resentful at his long absence, were difficult. Yet friends from the film world were soon knocking on Tomu's door. Tomu joined Daiei, a film company for the popular masses. As Suzuki explains, Daiei was a company that sought to make films that would be hits in Asakusa where the common people enjoyed films -- it was not aiming to please Ginza crowds. (19) In his first interview with Makino Mitsuo who was working for Daiei, the company formed by Negishi that took in Tomu and the majority of former Manei staff, Tomu said, understandably, that he wanted to make "a peaceful movie."(20) Co-producers for Blood Spear Mt. Fuji, included old filmmaking friends Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Ito Daisuke.

(Miyamoto Musashi: Nitoryu Kaigen, 1963)

The Samurai Film in Postwar Japan

The samurai film, although frequently compared with the American Western, is often difficult for Westerners to understand. At first I assumed the problem was linguistic. The characters in samurai films often use old, ritualized forms of speech and speak in terse, gruff bursts. But what makes comprehension difficult is neither the choice of vocabulary nor enunciation, but the cultural mindset of the samurai world. Action in period films, rather than being driven by a dialogue-generated plot, seems to flow according to rules built into the genre, according to an internal logic that makes samurai films very Japanese. Homesick for Japan in Manchuria, Tomu's first film upon his return falls into this most Japanese of genres. Although samurai films are not completely unknown in the West, they are proportionately less represented than modern dramas. In addition, many of the few samurai films known in the West were made by Kurosawa Akira, a director who takes a different slant than directors making samurai films for Japanese mass audiences. Tomu's relative obscurity in the West is due in part to the fact that none of his pre-war masterpieces survive intact, and in part to his penchant for making samurai films in the postwar period.
Though largely confined to NHK's Sunday night samurai drama and to re-runs on late night television, the samurai film still haunts Japan's ultra-modern everyday culture. Japan's most prolific film critic, Sato Tadao, estimates that until the end of the 1950s (with the exception of the period of the US Occupation), half of all Japanese films made belong to the samurai genre.(21)
In 1953 when Tomu returned to Japan in poor health, the Japanese film industry was in excellent condition. In the wake of the profitable Korean War, the industry found the resources to buy the latest filmmaking equipment, and faced a rapidly expanding market. Between 1951 and 1953 gross receipts doubled, growing from $20 to $40 million in two years. Between 1945 and 1957, the number of theaters grew from 845 to over 6,000. By the end of 1956, over 80% of theaters were regularly showing double features.(22) Attendance in 1956 reached 1.27 billion, an average per capita attendance of 12.(23) Demand for new films had never been higher as production companies churned out new features weekly. In the mid-1950s, the samurai film genre was just beginning to make its final comeback to its pre-war popularity and form.
Following the war, samurai films were nearly completely suppressed after having been specifically targeted as dangerous by SCAP, the censoring unit for the U.S. Occupation. Anderson and Richie note that in addition to burning more than 200 existing films thought dangerous, SCAP drew up a list of types of films to be made, and prohibited the following:
Militarism, revenge, nationalism or anti-foreignism; distortion of history, approval of religious or racial discrimination; favoring or approving feudal loyalty or treating human life lightly; direct or indirect approval of suicide; approval of the oppression or degradation of wives; admiration of cruelty or unjust violence; anti-democratic opinion; exploitation of children and opposition to the Potsdam Declaration or any SCAP order.(24)
Sato notes that the few samurai films made in the early post-war period were so regulated that they were almost unrecognizable as samurai films. While uncontrolled violence is the heart of the samurai film -- without it the film fails -- these early films were often tentative, democratic, anti-violent stories of the samurai choosing romantic love or farmwork over fighting. Although not made until 1955, Sato points to Kurosawa Akira's Seven Samurai in which samurai protect helpless villagers, as one successful example of mostly failed post-war attempts to adapt the genre to a changed world.(25)
Even after the end of the Occupation, however, samurai films did not return to their pre-war formulaic vigor until the second half of the 1950's when they came to dominate the popular market. The turning point in cinematic interest from romantic love to the samurai came in 1955 when yearly production topped 400 films. Samurai films attracted more viewers than modern dramas in 1955, 56, 58, and 59. Chiba Nobuo refers to this as the "Chushingura Boom."(26) Chiba goes on to speculate that the domination of films concerning romantic love during the first half of the decade reflects popular discontent with the lack of freedom to pursue romantic love in culture. Similarly, the rapid rise in popularity of the samurai film during the latter half of the 1950s reflects the rise of a low-level recalcitrant nationalism freed at long last from the U.S. Occupation and its censors. Chiba suggests that while films made in the early 1950s depict realistic humanism in modern post-war life, the return to full-fledged samurai films signals the end of Japan's post-war. The "Chushingura Boom," Chiba claims, provided a needed confirmation of national identity.(27)
Sato also views the samurai film as a revolt against modernization and Westernization, and sees its rise in popularity as an indication of Japan's tenuous modern identity. Samurai films glorify the past and assert traditional values.(28) The mibun shakai (the social world of the samurai) is a world in which position, identity, morality, and action are clearly defined, pre-determined, and in harmony with established codes extending down to even the finest details of everyday life. Despite the permanent, unchanging parameters, however, the samurai world is at heart a world of action. The utter chaos of uncontrolled violence that marks the center of the genre finds its most perfect stage within this most ordered of worlds.

(Chiyari Fuji, 1955)

Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji -- Tomu's Conflicted Comeback

Upon his return to Japan, Tomu's ten "blank" years in Manchuria come alive both ideologically and filmically in Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji, his 1955 comeback samurai film. Both progressive and nostalgic, humanistic and nationalistic, peaceful and violent, Blood Spear, like Manchuria, is an aggressive conglomeration of extremes.
In the opening shot of Tokaido, the film establishes itself as atypical for a samurai film.(29) Cinematographer Yoshida Sadasugu notes that while typical samurai films open with a conventional shot of the actual Tokaido surrounded by thick pines, Tomu chooses an open space lined here and there with straggled trees.(30) Rather than take actual shots of majestic Mt. Fuji (Japan's holy mountain), Tomu uses a poorly made -- almost laughable -- painted backdrop. Rather than booming seriousness, the opening music is light and playful.
Comic elements, present throughout the film, give the film a nostalgic touch. Before the war, Tomu was known for his comedies, and worked making silent films for over 10 years. Tomu uses elements of slapstick that are characteristic of the silent era in the Noten (outdoor tea) scene. In this scene, high-ranking shoguns decide to have tea in the middle of Tokaido to enjoy the view (again, rather than show the real Mt. Fuji, Tomu uses the cheap set prop) of Mt. Fuji. No one can pass along the road while the spontaneous tea party is on. Their servants scurry in both directions to assuage parties of dignitaries and the common crowds who are inconvenienced on either side. When a young orphan with loose bowels that render him unable to wait crouches at the roadside, the wind promptly carries the smell to the dignitaries enjoying tea -- a comical "who farted?" scene ensues. As the shoguns make detailed comments on the weather to show off their education, a heavy rainstorm ensues and exaggerated chaos results.
Nostalgia for the silent era is apparent not only in the moments of slapstick, but also in the film's vast silences. A particularly memorable long silent series consists of a set of long takes, first of a woman about to be sold in to prostitution looking out of the ryokan at the evening rain. Next the samurai protagonist Kojuro happens to open the window of his room located just across from hers. Their eyes meet only in passing and, despite the fact that no words are exchanged, real communication takes place. The series of understated shots moves beyond predictable romantic love formulas, pushing into a deeper humanistic compassion shared between individuals. Sato notes the general lack of camera movement throughout, and suggests that the film's brilliance lies in its steady capture of the rhythmic movement between silence and action, the leisurely pace of travel and the fury of battle.(31) In addition to its wide tonal range, another feature that marks Blood Spear as atypical for a samurai film is the degree to which a social cross-section of characters is introduced. Here, too, Tomu breaks with convention by having the samurai sleep in the same room with commoners we come to know over the course of the film. Suzuki reports that Tomu was "more interested in developing characters than in historical accuracy."(32)
While ostensibly the story of a samurai on his way to Edo to deliver a tea bowl, the film does not confine itself to the samurai's world. The samurai's story is just one of many small interlocking dramas through which the film eddies. Developed characters include servants, women, and children. Mini-dramas include that of orphan child who seeks to become a spearcarrier; an old man forced to sell his daughter into prostitution; a man who has saved money for five years in order to buy back his daughter from prostitution; and a thief impersonating a Shinto priest. Here, Tomu illustrates his lifelong alliance with common people, taken up in the vein of novelist Ishikawa Tatsuo, who contributed the preface to Tomu's autobiography.(33) The dramas, set consistently within the realm of realism, unfold without manipulative emotional loading.
Blood Spear is also a travel film. For Tomu, freedom is found on the road. In a 1936 dialogue with Ozu published in Kinema Junpo, Tomu remarks that he doesn't like to be confined by large groups. "Large groups are no good. If you go out on your own, you don't have to determine where you're headed. On a Sunday morning you can put on a backpack and head out with no specific goal in mind."(34) During the Edo Period, people of all classes had to travel along the same road (Tokaido) to reach Edo. In the film, travel becomes an opportunity for individual characters to expand their social worlds beyond the confines of their respective gender and social stations (mibun).
Before becoming a director, Tomu mixed freely with people from all social classes, and even worked as a travelling actor. The Japanese film world into which he entered, however, was in many ways an exclusive world, an old boys network, closed off from society at large. Those in the industry had to fit themselves into a rigid system of relations, particularly senpai-kohai/mentor-apprentice relations. During his ten year Manshu hiatus, however, Tomu again experienced travel and wide social interaction with a great variety of people living in a less rigidly defined society. Social classes were necessarily more jumbled in recently settled and multi-ethnic Manchuria. Mibun was less established, less trustworthy, less confining. Upon surrender, the mibun of the Japanese who remained again underwent major revision. The situation for the Japanese left in China continued on in flux as the battle between the Nationalists and the Communists raged on. The arbitrary and tenuous nature of social position would be more apparent to Tomu upon his return from Manshu and become a major theme in his films.
Among the "Shomin" (common people) with whom the young samurai Kojuro and his two servants Gonpachi played by Kataoka Chiezo and Genta travel, "mibun" (social station) is treated as a fluid, playful category. In an early scene, when Kojuro notices that Gonpachi, his spearcarrier, has developed a blister on his left foot, Kojuro offers his own ointment. Gonpachi is shocked at the samurai's generosity toward him as a servant, and hesitates to use ointment meant for a samurai. In the next scene, however, a young orphan boy travelling on his own tells Gonpachi that he dreams to one day become a spearcarrier. Gonpachi in turn breaks the rules of mibun decorum and suggests that they practice. Gonpachi then plays the role of the samurai walking ahead with exaggerated dignity while the boy follows behind carrying the long spear. When Gonpachi notices that the woman shamisen player is watching their antics, Gonpachi is embarrassed and promptly grabs the spear away from the boy and continues on. The scene, infused with a gentle comedy, suggests that "mibun" is arbitrary and performative, a game. This playful attitude toward feudal roles is further expressed in a scene where the young daughter of the shamisen player performs "the spearcarrier's dance" at a local festival. Gonpachi looks on briefly before leaving in embarrassment as the tiny girl, dressed in a kimono, acts out the various duties of the spearcarrier in her dance.
The contradiction between form and content in feudal society is further played up when Kojuro, upon hearing of the plight of the woman who will be sold into prostitution, decides to pawn his spear in order to save her. Kojuro discovers, however, that the spear, a gift to his father from the supreme shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu, is a worthless fake. Instead, when the common man who has saved for five years to buy back his daughter hears that his daughter died of illness two years before, he offers the money to save the woman about to be sold. Injustices and ironies slowly stack up: a thief who dresses as a Shinto priest, the fake spear, the common man being able to do more for the woman than the samurai. The plot follows the style Tomu encountered in Mao's teaching while in Manchuria with small contradictions and conflicts revealing larger irrationalities that build toward an explosive conclusion.
Romanticism in Blood Spear is reserved for the film's intense bloody conclusion. While Gonpachi is enjoying a pastoral scene on the riverbank with the shamisen player and the children -- the film's most peaceful moment -- Kojuro sits down to drink with his other servant Genta. A group of rambunctious samurai comes onto the scene, criticizing Kojuro for breach of decorum in allowing his servant to drink in a situation reserved only for samurai. Swords are drawn and first Genta then Kojuro are killed. The contradiction between the two scenes -- the utter stillness of the riverside and the brutal action at the site of the murder -- is apparent. Hearing of the events, Gonpachi takes up his spear and rushes onto the scene. In a spectacular seven-minute scene of mindless rage and feudal devotion, Gonpachi brutally kills the entire group of samurai one by one with his spear in the courtyard, now turned to mud by sake spewing from great barrels punctured by Gonpachi's spear. With the sake, pent up romantic intensity is explosively released. A silence ensues followed by a whimper made by the one surviving samurai, crawling in the mud. His rage unabated, Gonpachi lunges mercilessly to kill him. A longer, terrible silence follows as Gonpachi comes back to his senses, realizes the terror of what he has done, and falls at Kojuro's side, weeping uncontrollably.
Hearing news that a lowly spearcarrier has disposed of the entire group of samurai single-handedly, their master claims the samurai do not belong to him, a final ironic twist in the feudal code which allows Gonpachi to go free. The final scene shows Gonpachi leaving the town alone, an ambiguous hero, the ashes of his master strapped over his chest. Yoshida reports that the original script included a voiceover as Gonpachi walks alone along the road away from the town. Tomu changed this final cut, inserting instead the heavy melody of "Umi Yukaba," a song in which the lyrics, taken from the Japan's Manyoshu, glorify death for the emperor. "Umi Yukaba" is representative of the samurai ethos at the center of Japan's war era.
Yoshida recalls that Amakasu gathered the staff of the Manchurian Film Cooperative -- among whom he was highly respected -- together for Saturday meetings that Amakasu invariably ended by leading the entire group in singing "Umi Yukaba." Yoshida writes, "At the end, "Umi Yukaba" was Amakasu's philosophy of life. . . . Amakasu was a realist, but more than that he believed in the emperor system -- that is why he committed suicide."(35) Hirai notes that "Umi Yukaba" was performed at Amakasu's funeral.(36) Tomu's choice of the song harks back to his previous enthusiasm for militarism and his respect for Amakasu, a man of action who died in his arms upholding the samurai ethic.(37) Respect for men like Amakasu needed to be unpacked, not just by Tomu, but by all Japanese survivors in the postwar period.
The power and beauty of the battle scene convey the seductive romantic potential for instances of power and beauty within the samurai ethic. In seeking to avenge his master's death, Gonpachi acts in perfect accordance with the feudal code that binds him. His path is clear, the action not only sanctioned, but also required. While in action, Gonpachi moves beyond human codes into the realm known in Zen as "Mu" (nothingness, unconsciousness). However, once the intensity and beauty of the revenge scene are complete, the tragic results remain before our eyes like the mud in the courtyard. On thinking through the chain of events, we realize that, even though there were moments of individual unadulterated brilliance, it was the very code itself that set the tragic chain of events in motion to begin with. This realization should function to temper any admiration. Nevertheless, though the feudal frame may be flawed, the film seems to suggest that individual action and chugi (samurai loyalty) could still be objects worthy of respect if considered within the wider frame of sober criticism toward the entire feudal system.
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji, Tomu's first film after returning to Japan, functions as a realistic field on which to sort out the source of the romanticism that led him to Manchuria and to Amakasu, and that led Japan to Manchuria and into the Second World War.

----------------------
Endnotes:
1 Known in Japanese as Manshu Eiga Kyokai, the Manchurian Film Cooperative was established by the Japanese in the Manchurian capital of Xinkyo (present-day Changchun in northeast China's) in 1937. Controlled by the Japanese, the Cooperative hired Chinese staff to produce "acceptable" popular commercial films in the Chinese language.
2 Inoue Kintaro wrote the script for Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji.
3 Suzuki Naoyuki. Uchida Tomu Den, Watakushisetsu Iwanami Shoten: Tokyo, 1997. p.42
4 The other two films are Jinsei Gekijo-Seishunhen and Hadaka no Machi. It appears that none of these four films has survived to the present. Suzuki notes that The Film Center in Tokyo has a shortened and badly-preserved version of Tsuchi that was found 18 years later in East Germany, a print that may have been shown at the Venezia Film Festival. Nearly one hour has been cut from the original 2.5-hour version. When Tomu saw this fragment after the war, he was reportedly dissatisfied, saying the film was not the one he had made (87).
5 Suzuki, 89, 93.
6 Yamaguchi Takeshi. Manei:Maboroshi no Kinema. Heibonsha: Tokyo 1988. p. 232.
7 Uchida Tomu. EigaKantoku Gojunen. Sanichi Shoten: Tokyo 1968.
8 Suzuki. p 98.
9 Uchida. p.121 .
10 Hirai Yo, Manshu Eiga Kyokai no Kaiso. in Eigashi Kenkyu. No.19, 1984. p. 79. Hirai devotes an entire section of his report to the topic "Memories of Amakasu."
11 Uchida, p.131
12 Uchida, p.140, 155-6, 170.
13 Hirai p. 78-9.
14 Uchida., p. 171-2.
15 Yoshida {Sadasugu}. Interview "Manei kara Jinginaki Tatakai Made" in FB, No. 3, 1994, pp.59-149. Quoted from p. 89.
16 Suzuki, p.138.
17 Uchida, p. 187-8, and Yoshida Teiji "Manei kara Jinginaki Tatakau made" FB. 3: 1994. p.92.. According to Yoshida, Tomu repeatedly described his philosophy of filmmaking in this way.
18 Suzuki, p. 140.
19 Ibid. p. 169.
20 Ibid., p.155.
21 Sato Tadao. Nihon Eigashi vol.3. Iwanami Shoten: Tokyo, 1996. p. 59-60.
22 Anderson, Joseph and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film. Princeton UP, 1982. p. 241,245.
23 Suzuki, p. 272.
24 Ibid., p. 160.
25 Sato Tadao. Chanbara Eigashi. Hoga Shoten: Tokyo, 1972. p. 203.
26 Chiba Nobuo. "Film: History and Psychology" in Showa Bunka 1945-1989. Keiso Shoten: Tokyo, 1990. p. 252.
27 Ibid.pp. 240-1. 253.
28 Sato, Chanbara, p.210.
29 Tokaidois the name of the heavily-traveled road connecting Kyoto to Edo during the samurai era.
30 Yoshida p. 110.
31 Sato, Chanbara, p. 204.
32 Suzuki, p. 247.
33 Tomu greatly admired Ishikawa's work. Tomu's third film after his return from Manshu, Jibun no Ana no Naka de (1955) was based on Ishikawa's fiction. Also, Tomu includes a picture of Ishikawa in his autobiography.
34 Kinema Junpo, November 21, 1936, cited in Yamaguchi, p. 231.
35 Yoshida, p. 83-84.
36 Hirai, p. 79.
37 Suzuki mentions that Tomu used memories of Amakasu as the basis on which to construct characters in his later films. Tomu's 1964 masterpiece, Kigakaikyo is the story of a man who lives for years with guilt buried inside for an undiscovered murder. Amakasu paid similar penance for his murder of Otsugi. Amakasu reportedly slept with a gun at his side on a regular basis, and refused to accept visitors on the anniversary of his murder of Otsugi.

Interview with Masaki Kobayashi

2011-12-02T11:52:00.014Z

By Peter Grilli (1993)

Q: Often, film music is used to support the flow of the story. But sometimes, the music is actually intended to collide with the story. Is music used in this manner effective as well?
A: Generally, the way I use music... once the filming and the editing are finished, you finally show the images to the composer. Of course, he might visit the set during filming or watch dailies during production as well. But when the film is visually complete - we call this a rough cut - you finally show it to the composer. Then the confrontation with the composer, the battle between the director and the composer begin, you see. At this stage there is no music, only sounds; reality-based sounds are the only sounds - no dialogue as yet. As Takemitsu and I sit there watching these images, he really feels, responds to the images. This is the stage where Takemitsu begins to ponder the theme for work, where to place the music, what kinds of sound/ music will be most effective, or wether - if music is used - it will destroy an ineffable sense of reality inherent in the images; these are the elements that Takemitsu astutely grasps. He has this ability to deeply comprehend - enter into, really - the director's visual images. He is just an amazing person.

Q: In the case of Kwaidan, especially in the "Kurokami" section (i.e., "The Black Hair"), the use of music seems surreal, hyper-real. At least that was my experience. What were your intentions?
A: That's quite accurate. Yes, because the direction itself is aiming for that sort of effect. So, on screening the rough cut, Takemitsu immediately judged that this approach was preferable to relying on and echoing the "real" sounds. He explained to me that the sound required by that scene was the pachi sound, of wood being cut. They recorded that actual sound, electronically altering it for the final mix. For instance, in "Kurokami", when the homesick protagonist returns to the capitol and walks down that long, dilapidated hallway toward the room where his wife is, the floor gives way. The sound used at that moment is the real pipipih sound of a piece of wood being torn.
But Takemitsu doesn't place the sound simultaneous to the images. He leaves a beat, one mu (1), and then introduces the music. So instead of placing the music where the audience is expecting it, he shifts the timing just a little. The effect is terribly palpable. As the story unfolds he'll heighten the effect, or conversely, subtly insinuate the music; in any event, his placement of the music is based on very astute judgements.

Q: What is the effect of not placing sound simultaneous to the action?
A: I'm not exactly sure what the effect is, but by staggering the music, the audience is certainly caught off-guard. Takemitsu frequently does that sort of thing. In Tokyo Trials, for instance after the atomic bomb scene, when the armed forces of the various nations are marching in the plazas of the respective countries, he uses music as well, but the timing is always slightly shifted. He doesn't place the music in exact parallel to the images on-screen; rather, he plays a little with the visuals. He creates a certain mu and then engages the music.

Q: Doesn't this have the effect of stimulating the audience?
A: Yes. But instead of moving the audience in the way it expects to be, when he skips that beat, the effect is indirect, unanticipated; quite different from what might have been expected.

Q: This effect is particularly strong in your films, but don't you think that Takemitsu's music is generally very effective this way?
A: Yes. But in any event, Takemitsu is not a predictable straightforward person. He is someone who is always exploring, calculating how to increase the effect.

Q: In the hands of a lesser composer, it might seem gimmicky. But Takemitsu's resourcefulness is quite remarkable, don't you think?
A: Well, you have the director's vision, the stream of imagens. Takemitsu bases his judgments on his unique perception of these images.

(Kuroi Kawa, 1957)

Q: There's a story about how Takemitsu, on location during the filming of your movie Harakiri, noticed the actor Rentaro Mikuni unconsciously snapping his fan open and shut, and suggested that that distinct sound should be incorporated into the soundtrack.
A: Oh, that story. Well, Takemitsu utilises all kinds of reality-based sounds. He really values reality-based sounds including the snapping sounds of a fan. That's why, when I think of Takemitsu, the film composer, I don't think of him as a composer who writes music that is then added to a film. He is involved with the overall acoustics of the film; he listens every footstep, every snapp of the fan, making decisions about the quality of all the sounds in a film. For instance, when he worked on Samurai Rebellion, Mifune's lines were always difficult to hear because his voice tended to crack. This was often a problem in his pictures with Kurosawa. But Takemitsu went into Mifune's dialogue and removed all those impurities, without compromising the tone of his lines. His judgment of the various qualities of sounds - beautiful sounds, pretty sounds, good sounds, versus bad or distracting sounds - is extremely astute. So my understanding of Takemitsu's contribution to a film is as overall acoustic supervisor, including the reality-based sounds. He approaches a film with the attitude that this is his responsability. A truly unusual man. He stays on a film until the very end of the very last dubbing session.
In the case of Tokyo Trials, there were only nine minutes of music. The remaining four hours and some minutes were composed exclusively of reality-based sounds. And he took responsability for all of those sounds as well. It's really crushing work, you have to be utterly passionate.

Q: In other words, it must have taken several months of his time to do those nine munites of music, right?
A: Yes. Most documentaries are wall-to-wall music, music from beggining to end. To make a four and half hour film work without music is quite an accomplishment. Kodansha, the production company, had asked me to make a four and a half film that wouldn't put people to sleep, a real challenge, especially in the editing and in structuring the script. Creating such a lenghty documentary that can hold the audience's attention throughout is quite a feat. And this was my first attempt to make a documentary film. There are many filmmakers who specialise in documentaries. But this was my first time, as a narrative filmmaker, to make a documentary. So I had to make a documentary that was up to the standards of narrative filmmaking. This was the toughest challenge, working on Tokyo Trials. And Takemitsu was very clear about restricting the use of music; in general, only the parts that deal with the innocent victims of war - for instance, the rape of Nanking, or the devastation of Hiroshima. He composed a theme, a kind of requiem for those victims.

Q: What is the role that these very brief passages of music play in the film? Could you talk about this?
A: Well, it is the theme. So as you watch the film from the beginning, there are scenes depicting these victims of war interwoven throughout. These are the scenes where the music is powerfully introduced. The devastation of Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped, or the massacre at Nanking when the Chinese were ruthlessly supressed by the Japanese. These scenes recur throughout the film, and it is only during these scenes that the music is used. It is very effective. And quite a contrast to those documentaries that are entirely sodden with music, yes.

(Ningen no Joken, 1959)

Q: But what has been your theme, in terms of your ideas about history?
A: All of my pictures, from a certain point on, are concerned with resisting entrenched power. In a way, The Human Condition concerned itself with this larger theme. That's what Harakiri is about, of course, and Samurai Rebellion too. I suppose I've always challenged authority. This has been true of my own life, including my life in the military. In terms of my opposition to militarism, military organisations. In those days, everything was strictly controlled, certainly not something that we could openly discuss. Finally after the war, there came a time when we could directly adress these issues.

Q: How about before the war and during the war? For instance, could you have made a movie like Harakiri before the war?
A: It would not have been possible. Censorship was extremely strict. So someone like Keisuke Kinoshita, my mentor, made Army (Rikugun, 1944), which was an antiwar picture in its own way, a fine film. But after that, he stopped making movies altogether and retreated into the contryside somewhere.

Q: You yourself became a soldier. Were you in China?
A: Manchuria, somewhere in the outskirts of Harbin.

Q: And did you engage in actual combat?
A: I never participated in frontline combat, beacause there wasn't much fighting there. Manchuria was being policed because the Soviet Union was presumed as an enemy nation. The Kanto Army was really ferocious. The best and the brightest of the Japanese military were assembled into the infamous Kanto Army, preparing for a Soviet attack, assumed to be imminent. That's why our war games were so fierce and violent. I was positioned on the big machine guns, the big infantry machine guns, which made it all the worse.

Q: Did you have antimilitarist consciousness at that time?
A: Yes, even in my student days. My family would had always believed in personal freedom. They were very devoted to this belief, so even after the war broke out and I was drafted, I never liked the army or the military. The one subject I just couldn't seem to pass in order to graduate was military training (kyôren). I just hated it, never attending clas, always playing hooky. They weren't going to let me pass, but the class president appealed to the teacher on my behalf, and finally I was allowed to graduate; that's how much I hated kyôren. All my friends were very concerned about what would happen to someone like me when I entered the army.

(Harakiri, 1962)

Q: And what did happen?
A: Well, I found myself backed up against the kinds of circumstances that Kaji faced in The Human Condition. I realised that in order to survive, I would have to discipline my body, since otherwise I wouldn't get out alive. I worked very hard, very intensely. My body became robust, I consciously trained myself to become so strong that nothing could get the best of me.
What truly shocked me when I entered the army as an officer candidate - because anyone who had graduated from college or middle school qualified for candidacy - was that everyone else was relegated to enlisted status. The percentage was about one in a hundred; out of two or three thousand men, only one in a hundred had access to these privileges, you see. Only a few had been able to get beyond middle school. I was deeply disillusioned by the Japanese educational system. Among those soldiers condemned to spend the duration of their service as enlisted men, there were some very gifted individuals. Many of them could have distinguished themselves had they received a normal, decent education. I realised that in order to keep from being beaten by such men, I had to discipline my body myself - that otherwise I would never survive these circumstances. I changed direction dramatically.
I was in the Third Regiment of Azabu, the unit that had instigated the 26 February Incident in 1936 (2). Right after the incident, the main body of the regiment had been shipped out to Manchuria. We were sent to join this Third Azabu Regiment after only three months of basic training. When the scores from the three months' training period were announced, I had the top score, you see. And that was how I decamped near Harbin in Manchuria, three thousand men in tow. It was a stupendous transformation. The soldiers we were joining in Manchuria were the ones I mentioned before, who had completed basic training in 1936, at the time of the 26 February Incidnent, and were five and six years veterans at this point, so they were much older and more experienced. Apparently they had all heard a rumour that the ultraconservative leader of the next shipment was an assistant film director, and they were all curious to see what I would turn out to be like. That's where I was sent.

Q: So first you were sent to Manchuria. Is that where you were stationed to the very end?
A: Conditions in the south deteriorated part way through the war, and the best and brightest of the Kanto Army headed south. That was the nineteenth year of the Showa (1944), I believe. We were supposed to go to the Philippines, but by that time American submarines were everywhere, and we never made it. Consequently we headed toward Okinawa, but it was overrun by the Japanese forces and we couldn't land, so we ended up breaching at a place called Miyakojima, a little way from Okninawa. Had I landed in either Okinawa or the Philippines, or even on Leyte Island, I doubt whether I would have survived; by chance I ended up on the island of Miyakojima, and that is why I am alive today.

(Kwaidan, 1964)

Q: Turning to your films, I'd like to ask you first about Harakiri. What was your purpose in making this film?
A: Ritual suicide was the essential point of the drama. When he takes the bamboo blade and pierces his stomach, that is the key element that leads to the ultimate conclusion, which is why that scene is so intense. Actually, if you try cutting open your stomach with a bamboo blade, it's impossible. In the script, it just mentions that the character stabs his stomach with a bamboo blade. But attempting to portray this in real images was an entirely different matter. It was very difficult. So the day before filming the scene, I still hadn't come up with the storyboards and I went out drinking. You know, envisioning storyboards is all about concentration and focus, about pondering a question to which you have no solution and suddenly you have a flash of vision. It's probably a similar process in music as well. Anyway, in order to stab your own stomach with a bamboo blade, you'd have to fix the blade very firmly onto the tatami, practically forcing your body down onto it in order for the blade to puncture you; that was my insight. Once I saw that, the surrounding images came easily. Of course, I had been drinking, which is why I guess I headed off in such a brutal direction. The storyboards I made when I was drunk were quite different from the ones I did when I was sober. So I asked Yoshio Miyajima, the cameraman, which ones, he thought were better, and he said "they're better when you're drunk", and that's how I ended up with such a cruel scene.
The reason I went that far in that scene was that I felt that the scene should be as brutal as possible, but the music, Takemitsu's music for that scene was so wonderful. Of course, he used a biwa. The resonant strumming of the biwa becomes the very emblem of sadness, quietly insinuating itself into the scene. Which is why the scene doesn't come across as brutal. It's thanks to Takemitsu's music. I just love that music...

Q: In that scene, I found the sadism of the Iyi family, symbolised by the character played by Mikuni, deeply underscored.
A: Is that so? Well, yes. Mikuni's character appears as a kind of symbol for feudalism, and he managed to portray that kind of coldness, or shall we say, sadism, extremely well.

Q: The same can be said about the whole film, but particularly about that scene. What was the theme or the point about feudalism that you were making? What message did you most want to communicate?
A: Well, there must be many. I'm often asked this kind of question when a film is being released, the newspapers want to have a press conference; they always ask me what my theme is. But I don't make films that way. Rather than beginning with a particular theme, the theme asserts itself as I flesh out the story in the process of making the film. That is closer to my way of making moviesm so when they ask me at a press conference: "what is the theme of the film?" I've never responded to such questions by laying out the themes.

(Harakiri, 1962)

Q: Sociologists or historians could spin out all kinds of theories, but as the director who cowrote the script - with Shinobu Hashimoto - what were your intentions in this film?
A: Well, of course we wanted to express our opposition to feudalism. That was the main point. But there was also the question of the deception of history; that an incident of such significance had taken place while remaining unrecorded in official history, as though all were calm and nothing had ever happened; that is the deceit of history. Perhaps that was the larger theme.

Q: The hypocrisy, the deception of history?
A: Yes, the lies.

Q: The lies of history. It's the same, really, whether it's a modern story or a historical one, aren't the lies the same?
A: Yes, there is that...

Q: The movie Youth of Japan is, according to some people, a modern version of Harakiri, a kind of remake.
A: In my view, Youth of Japan and Harakiri don't have much in common. If anything, there's more of a relation to The Human Condition. That is to say, a postwar version of The Human Condition - which took place in wartime. Youth of Japan is a story about a very typical family, but in terms of content, I think the two are very similar, and it's a picture I'm rather fond of. It was the first film in which Takemitsu's music had a melody. To this day, I find myself humming that melody from time to time. Sometimes when I see him, that music seems to issue effortlessly from my lips and he'll start humming the theme along with me; that's how familiar that music is. Of course the movie deals with the whole question of the generation gap. But I just love the music. Especially because being familiar with the kind of music he writes, it was so unexpected.

Q: In musical terms, it's completly different from both Kwaidan and Harakiri, right?
A: The story contained very comical elements as well as satirical elements.

Q: But by no means is it a comedy?
A: True, it's no comedy; it has a strong antiwar sentiment and also deals with the question of the Self Defence Forces, which was quite an issue then.

Q: What ultimately happens to the main character? At the end of the movie, does he just go on living as he was?
A: What happens to him as the story unfolds is that he tries to overcome certain obstacles in his life.

Q: How does the character reflect on his own existence? Does he just give up hope, going on as before?
A: In light of that final conversation with his son, I believe that ultimately, after many incidents, the father has managed to cross a certain line - albeit within the bounds of the character.

Q: Specifically, what line has he crossed?
A: In other words, the main character had just shrivelled up, grown to hate his life, hate his family, as though he'd just up and disappeared. In those days, "disappearance" [responsible adults suddenly losing interest and simply disappearing] was quite a social phenomenon. It's as though he wants to evaporate, and in reality he does just that - he vanished. So you have this man who has problems with the choices that his son is making. For instance, his son wants to join the Self Defence Forces. And there's a problem with his son's girlfriend; in fact, the man discovers that her father was his own commanding officer from his army days.
So the story begins at this crisis point. On top of that, in the midst of his son's crisis, his own former lover -a woman he had broken off with then he was drafted from school into the military - suddenly reappears. Through these incidents, he discovers a new direction to move toward, away from his old life, which had grown monotonous. But what he simply cannot tolerate is the thought that his son might marry the daughter of his former superior and join the Self Defence Forces. He feels compelled to prevent these developments. So, while he is trying to solve these problems in his own way, his son and his family are also evolving. In the film, by undergoing all of these experiences, he was discovering a new way to live. I think that's how the film ends. So that's the line that he crosses over.

(Joi-uchi: Hairyo tsuma shimatsu, 1967)

Q: Having overcome them, he doesn't disappear. Instead, he reverts, or gives up, going back to his old life...
A: I don't think that he is giving up. Overcoming is not the same as giving up. He has solved the problems in his own way; he is no longer his old self. Even the question of the Self Defence Forces; in the last scene, as the son and his girlfriend walk along the riverbank, she says, "Whatever you do, don't take the Self Defence Forces exam".

Q: Is there a sense in which that character is Japan, that he represents or symbolises the Japanese people?
A: Well, I don't know that he's exactly a symbol of the postwar japanese people, but he is one expression of a common man who shoulders history, a heavy, dark history, so he is representative. So a man like that character, who lived through the prewar period in relation to this son, who was educated after the war, there's bound to be a deep gulf between them. There's the kind of father who wants to say, "When we were in the army, this is what we did". But the son couldn't care less. This is the juncture where communication between father and son breaks down, where the generation gap naturally emerges.

Q: This is a rather large subject, but in your opinion, has the postwar Japanese mentality changed significantly from the prewar Japanese mentality or spirit?
A: Well, yes, I believe that there were enormous changes after the war. But as for me, I don't think I've changed very much. I had a postwar mentality even before the war, you see. I was raised in a freedom-loving, shall we say, human family. If anything, I was extremely critical of everything in the period before the war, including the military. So in the postwar era, when I came home, one year after the end of the war, Japan had become extremely democratic (3). At the same time, the union movement was becoming terribly active. Everyone was moving in that direction. Everyone was racing off in the direction of a democratic kind of humanistic freedom and union activity. When I came home, it was not the sort of atmosphere conducive to make movies. Everyone was interested in democracy and unions. To me, the conformism seemed just the same as before the war, only then, everyone had jumped on the militarist band wagon, you see. And so I thought, the Japanese haven't changed one bit, because I had had an antiwar consciousness before the war. So for me, it wasn't as though my consciousness changed after the war. It just wasn't the right atmosphere for making movies. Kinoshita, who was obsessed only with filmmaking found unions extremely bothersome because they were forever obstructing his filmmaking. "Let's go to a film studio in Kyoto", he said. "There are fewer union problems there, so let's film in Kyoto for a while." That's how I worked on two or three movies in Kyoto with Kinoshita, following him as his assistant director. It felt as though we had been liberated from the unions.

Q: So as you were just saying, prior to the war, everyone raced off in a militaristic direction. Once the war was over, they headed off in the other democratic direction.
A: One hundred and eighty degrees. I don't mean that the change of consciousness was necessarily wrong, it's just in the way it happened.

Q: So the problem lies in everyone rushing off in the same direction?
A: That's precisely the problem. You have to observe your circumstances objectively; everyone was obsessed with unions then.

(Harakiri, 1962)

Q: Of course it's impossible to give a simple definition, but could you comment on the Japanese identity? What defines a Japanese person?
A: Well, I tend to be rather pessimistic. It seems to me that people are watching to see which way the wind will blow. Something happens and off they go in one direction, something else sets them off in other direction; this kind of shall we say, national persona, I observed as identical before and after the war.

Q: So are you worried about the road that lies ahead for Japan in the future?
A: That's really outside out focus, not for us to discuss because I would hate to say anything presumptuous. Looking back at the world that time of the creation of the atomic bomb, during that time my whole outlook on the world became extremely pessimistic; to think that these things have been accepted and perpetuated as the norm, as though nothing were amiss.

Q: Western scholars of Japan often emphasise how greatly Japan has been Westernized due to the war and postwar history. Americans tend to boast about how Americanised Japan has become. What is your opinion? Was Japan fundamentally changed by the war and postwar history?
A: Well, certainly things have changed. Walking down the street, most of the signs are in English. You almost never see signs in Japanese - at least most of the ones that catch your eye are American, or European. In that sense, it's become extremely Americanised; the language itself has been greatly influence by English. Even our everyday spoken Japanese. Observing this, it seems natural that certain people would want to treasure traditional Japan and its culture. I find it very unpleasant to see how Americanised Japan is becoming. We really need to exercise better judgment in incorporating American culture. You can't help but notice all the superficial ways that Japan has become Americanised. There's no attempt to really understand America and incorporate its genuinely good aspects.
There was a time when we all considered America to be a great country. That was during my student days. We were seeing all these fantastic American movies then. In our youth, the only access we had to the world was through the cinema; a kind of golden age of film. You had Frank Capra, John Ford, and many other brilliant filmmakers. I was deeply influenced by the movies those directors made. And their movies all portrayed the American common man - what was best about the middle class. We were deeply drawn to American movies, marvelling at the existence of such a bright world, free of restrictions. But movies the world over were great during those years. Yes, we were deeply stimulated by such movies in our youth.

Q: And at that time, when you watched the movies of Frank Capra or John Ford, did you think that the America you saw in the movies was the real America?
A: Yes, that's how I experienced it. Of course, in the case of John Ford, you have pictures like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), socially oriented pictures. There was real depth in the movies made then.

Q: What if, similarly, an American unfamiliar with Japanese things, were to watch Harakiri or Youth of Japan. Would you want them to accept those films as portraits of the real Japan?
A: Yes, I believe that both movies are totally appropriate to gain a historical perspective, or even to understand contemporary, postwar Japan. But watching those movies, you need to be very conscious of the director's intentions, otherwise there's the possibility of great misunderstanding. Viewers might walk away thinking "what a barbaric country." I maintain that that scene of ritual suicide is critical in conveying the breadth of the protagonist's humanism.
When we screened Harakiri at Cannes, everyone started whistling, booing during the bamboo blade scene, when he stabs his stomach with the bamboo sword. They quieted down eventually, as the film unfolds - the scenes of Mikuni and Nakadai confronting each other and then the flashbacks to the past - these elements come slowly into play, and one witnesses the blossoming of Nakadai's humanism, of his humanity. Simultaneously this very human atmosphere permeated the viewing audience and, instead, the audience burst into applause. So I believe that they understood the picture quite accurately.
At these international film festivals, there is always a press conferenc after the screening. The big issue, of course, was the scene of him stabbing his stomach with the bamboo sword - which the European reporters all considered excessively brutal. I explained to them just what I explained to you here, and then, the journalists started arguing with each other. They ultimately concluded that the director was right, but what I found so exciting was that the discussion itself was so direct and frank.

(Joi-uchi: Hairyo tsuma shimatsu, 1967)

Q: How did the audience at Cannes respond to the last scenes of Harakiri, to the scenes of swordplay?
A: We used real swords (homni) during all those swordplay scenes. We didn't let the actors use bamboo blades, they used real blades. You are familiar with homni, right?

Q: Yes.
A: When you sling a real sword from your hips, it's heavy, you see, so when you walk, inevitably, you walk with your hips rather than your legs. So, the distinctive style of the bushi (warrior) naturally emerges. Working with a real blade, the actor can also appreciate what a terrible business it is to fell another human being. What's more, it becomes immediately apparent that it's impossible to handle a real sword gracefully, the way they do in chanbara (choreographe swordplay films). There was always the risk of real danger during the filming. The swordplay choreographer we hired was not a film professional. Instead, we hired a Japanese kendo champion; he instructed the actors in the ways of kenjutsu (the use of long, heavy, cumbersome bamboo practice swords to instill the basics of swordplay). The resulting swordplay was not the beautiful, flowing kind of swordplay you see in movies. Instead, it was awkward and intensely realistic.

Q: The swordplay was really fantastic, but ultimately the hero is not felled by a sword. He's killed by a Western gun, a rifle, right? What is the significance of that?
A: He had to be summarily disposed of, in order to uphold the honour of the Iyi family, but there was also the clan's own animal terror in the face of this man's tremendous strenght. The most important element in that scene, however, is the suit of armor. The moment he grabs the armour and throws it at them, the guns go off and shoot him down. When that suit of armour collapses, it symbolises the last gasp of resistance against authority. At the very end of the film, the armour has been fully restored, back in place, no smoke or any other distractions. So the film ends with the armour restored and the clan's diary entry indicating that nothing of interest had taken place that day.

Q: The lies you mentioned earlier...
A: Yes, the deceptions of history...

Q: You know watching Harakiri today, in 1993, I still experience it as totally new... I think that it is still very relevant to the times that we live in, particularly in terms of the lies of history...
A: It depends on who's watching; some people may experience it that way. You know, I hate to sound self-aggrandising, but watching my films today, they don't feel dated. What this means is that I really spent time on the editing, but also spent a lot of time working on the whole sound of the film, including the music. So when I finished a film, it was really complete. Normally, others might spend about three days on the final edit. But I'd spend two weeks, even more in the case of Kwaidan. The fact that I was able to fully complete my films, with no regrets, is a significant factor in why, watching them today, they don't feel dated, they remain relevant. You know, I kind of like watching my own films.

Q: They always feel new.
A: I don't know that they're new, exactly, but they certainly never feel dated. Yes. Having considered the question - why my films don't feel dated - this is the conclusion I have settled on.

(Harakiri, 1962)

Q: Among the many reasons, is Takemitsu's music perhaps one of them?
A: Yes, of course, that is an important element as well. When I make a film, I treat my crew, the technicians, very, very seriously. Editors, sound recordists, composers, cameramen, all of them, including the actors. All of us work, together, to create a film. This has always been my operating system; when you can utilise the full strenghts of each technician in every department - and music is obviously one of those departments - this can culminate in a truly collective effort. In any event, this is the way that I have approached filmmaking.
Perhaps this is due in part to the fact that in my earlier years I was nurtured at the Shochiku Film Studio, which operated under the director system. Under this system the crew, the technicians were not accorded much respect. The Human Condition was the first film I made outside Shochiku. Among the many eople assembled to work on that film, most of them were leftists. The cameraman was Yoshio Miyajima, the best cameraman in Japan. I felt that as long as I was working outside the studio, I might as well work with the best cameraman in the country, so I invited Miyajima on board. This is how I came to understand that a film is created by the entire crew; my consciousness was transformed. Ever since then, my pictures have all been team efforts that everyone contributed to.

Q: When you say "everyone" do you mean it was always the same group?
A: Never changed.

Q: It never changed?
A: When I say everyone, I mean sound, music, editing, actors, lighting - we all worked together to make a film. At a certain stage of working on a film, you'd lock horns with the screenwriter; at another stage with the cameraman. On location, everyone is confronting the director. As you near the end of this process, the nearly completed film is finally mixed with music. I really spent a fair amount of time on the mix, so even watching the movies today, I experience nothing that is jarring; I'm really glad that I spent the time that I did.

--------------------------
Notes:
(1) In Japanese aesthetics, the idea of mu indicates a meaningful emptiness. In Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu, Donald Richie characterises mu as follows: "The idea of mu is very much like the idea of emptiness. You know the old Chinese adage that a sheet of paper is not empty until you have made the first mark? In other words, until you have something in the mu, the space, to define it, it's undefinable. It's not there. So emptiness is not there until its antithesis is there." The kanji for mu is the single character found on the tombstone at Yasujiro Ozu's grave.
(2) Kobayashi is referring to the military coup instigated by young army officers who sought imperial fiat for unrestrained military expansionism. The 1936 coup was suppressed after several days, during which rebel troops occupied downtown Tokyo and assassinated moderate government officials. Army predominance in prewar Japanese politics dates from this incident.
(3) "One year after the war" is an oblique reference to the year Kobayashi spent as a prisoner of war in Okinawa.

Whispering of the Gods #15

2011-11-27T23:47:00.004Z

"When I write a script, I have the entire film in my head, so when we start shooting, I just do it. I am more interested in the editing process, so I tend to shoot in a hurry. Maybe you don't always have enough footage, but how you play around with it, is what is interesting." - Takeshi Kitano

Farewell to the Ark [Saraba Hakobune]

2011-11-18T16:32:00.006Z

Download the Entire Issue
(All ATG Issues Here)

黒い太陽 OST - Toshiro Mayuzumi, Max Roach Group

2011-11-12T19:32:00.004Z

Black Sun [Kuroi Taiyo]
Directed by: Koreyoshi Kurahara
1964

Download

(This does not include The Warped Ones OST)

Kinema Jumpo's Annual Top (1926-2010)

2011-11-06T19:30:00.029Z

(Kurutta Ippeji, 1926)

1926
1. The Woman Who Touched the Legs (dir. Yutaka Abe)
2. Nichirin: Kohen (dir. Minoru Murata)
3. A Mermaid on Land (dir. Jack Abe)
4. A Page of Madness (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
5. The Collar Button (dir. Hotei Nomura)
6. Junanka (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
7. A Paper Doll's Whisper of Spring (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
8. Tenraku (1926) (dir. Kintaro Inoue)
9. Mito Komon (1926) (dir. Tomiyasu Ikeda)
10. Kumo (1926) (dir. 悪麗之助)

1927
1. Chuji Tabi Nikki: Shinshu Kessho Hen (dir. Daisuke Ito)
2. Kare Wo Meguru Gonin No Onna (dir. Yutaka Abe)
3. Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians (dir. Tomiyasu Ikeda)
4. Chuji Tabi Nikki: Koshu Tate Hen (dir. Daisuke Ito)
5. 海の勇者 (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
6. Karakuri Musume (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
7. The Cuckoo (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
8. 悪魔の星の下に (dir. 二川丈太郎)
9. Gero (dir. Daisuke Ito)
10. Dochuhiki (dir. Kintaro Inoue)

1928
1. Jobless Samurai (dir. Masahiro Makino)
2. Riku No Oja (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
3. Shinpan Ooka Seidan: Dai-Nihen (dir. Daisuke Ito)
4. Sozenji Baba (dir. Masahiro Makino)
5. Kare To Tokyo (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
6. The Villiage Bride (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
7. Fighting Cocks (dir. Masahiro Makino)
8. Duet of Marriage (dirs. Minoru Murata, Tomotaka Tasaka and Yutaka Abe)
9. Hiratemiki (dir. Seika Shiba)
10. Jujiro (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)

1929
1. Beheading Place (dir. Masahiro Makino)
2. Kaijin (dir. Minoru Murata)
3. Ronin-Gai - Dai-San-Wa: Tsukareta Hitobito (dir. Masahiro Makino)
4. A Living Puppet (dir. Tomu Uchida)
5. Matenrou Sotohen (dir. Minoru Murata)
6. The Sword of Enchantment (dir. Daisuke Ito)
7. パイプの三吉 (dir. Eisuke Takizawa)
8. 無理矢理三千石 (dir. Sadaji Matsuda)
9. The Life of Workers In the Big City (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
10. Metropolitan Symphony (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)

1930
1. What Made Her Do It? (dir. Shigeyoshi Suzuki, Yoneo Oba)
2. 若者よなぜ泣くか (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
3. The Humorous Samurai (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
4. Zoku Ooka Seidan (1930) (dir. Daisuke Ito)
5. 旋風時代 (1930) (dir. Kiyohiko Ushihara)
6. Suronin Chuya (1930) (dir. Daisuke Ito)

1931
1. The Neighbor's Wife and Mine (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
2. Kokoro No Jitsugetsu: Retsujitsu Hen - Gekko Hen (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
3. Tokyo Chorus (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
4. Ippon-Gatana Dohyo Iri (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
5. 舶来文明街 (dir. Taizo Fuyushima)
6. The Revenge Champion (dir. Tomu Uchida)
7. Nani Ga Kanojo O Koroshita Ka (dir. Shigeyoshi Suzuki)
8. Rougoku no Hanayome (dir. Hirofumi Oki)
9. Zoku Ooka Seidan Mazo Kaiketsuhen (dir. Daisuke Ito)
10. ABC Lifeline (dir. Yasujro Shimazu)

1932
1. I Was Born, But... (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. Trumpet and a Girl (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
3. Dai Chushingura (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
4. お誂次郎吉格子 (dir. Daisuke Ito)
5. Yataro Gasa (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
6. Kokushi Muso (dir. Mansaku Itami)
7. Moth-eaten Spring (dir. Mikio Naruse)
8. 白夜の饗宴 (dir. Masahiro Makino)
9. Haru To Musume (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
10. Iso No Genta: Dakine No Nagawakizashi (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
10. First Steps Ashore (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)

1933
1. Passing Fancy (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. The Water Magician (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. Every Night Dreams (dir. Mikio Naruse)
4. Two Stone Lanterns (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
5. After Our Separation (dir. Mikio Naruse)
6. Tange Sazen: Kengeki No Maki (dir. Daisuke Ito)
7. Bangaku No Issho (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
8. Satsuma-Bikyaku: Kenko Aiyoku-Hen (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
9. Dancing Girl of Izu (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
10. Hotta Hayato (dir. Daisuke Ito)
10. Gimpei From Koina (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)

1934
1. A Story of Floating Weeds (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. Our Neighbor, Miss Yae (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
3. Ikitoshi Ikerumono (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
4. Budo Taikan (dir. Mansaku Itami)
5. Ashigaru Shusse-Tan (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
6. 北進日本 (documentary)
7. Woman of That Night (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
8. A Sword and the Sumo Ring (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
9. Foghorn (dir. Minoru Murata)
10. 雁太郎街道 (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)

1935
1. Wife! Be Like a Rose! (dir. Mikio Naruse)
2. 外人部隊 (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
3. Okoto and Sasuke (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
4. Chuji Uridasu (dir. Mansaku Itami)
5. 男の敵 (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
6. Burden of Life (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
7. The Treasure That Is Children (dir. Torajiro Saito)
8. The Girl In the Rumour (dir. Mikio Naruse)
9. An Inn In Tokyo (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
10. Yukinojo's Disguise (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)

1936
1. Sisters of the Gion (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
2. Theater of Life: Youth Version (dir. Tomu Uchida)
3. Osaka Elegy (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
4. The Only Son (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
5. Capricious Young Man (dir. Mansaku Itami)
6. Dansei Tai Josei (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
7. Ani Imoto (dir. Sotoji Kimura)
8. 彦六大いに笑ふ (dir. Sotoji Kimura)
9. 情熱の詩人啄木（ふるさと篇） (dir. Hisatora Kumagai)
10. Hikyo Nekka (documentary)

1937
1. Kagirinaki Zenshin (dir. Tomu Uchida)
2. Sobo (dir. Hisatora Kumagai)
3. The Straits of Love and Hate (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
4. Children In the Wind (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
5. Hadaka No Machi (dir. Tomu Uchida)
6. Young People (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
7. Humanity and Paper Balloons (dir. Sadao Yamanaka)
8. What Did the Lady Forget? (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
9. The Summer Battle of Osaka (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
10. The Lights of Asakusa (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)

1938
1. Five Scouts (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
2. A Pebble By the Wayside (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
3. Haha To Ko (dir. Minoru Shibuya)
4. Shanghai (dir. Fumio Kamei)
5. Composition Class (dir. Kajiro Yamamoto)
6. Nightingale (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
7. Crybaby Apprentice (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
8. The Abe Clan (dir. Hisatora Kumagai)
9. Ah, My Home Town (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
10. Children of the Sun (dir. Yutaka Abe)

1939
1. Earth (dir. Tomu Uchida)
2. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. Mud and Soldiers (dir. Tomotaku Tasaka)
4. A Brother and His Younger Sister (dir. Yasujiro Shimazu)
5. Shanhai Rikusentai (dir. Hisatora Kumagai)
6. Four Seasons of Children (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
7. Warm Current (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
8. Bakuon (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
9. Hana Aru Zasso (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
10. Tsubanari Ronin (dir. Ryohei Arai)

(Banshun, 1949)

1940
1. Kojima No Haru (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
2. The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
3. Matasaburo On the Wind (dir. Koji Shima)
4. A Woman of Osaka (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
5. Yokudobanri (dir. Fumito Kurata)
6. Okumura Ioko (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
7. Rekishi: Dai Ichi-Bu - Doran Boshin (dir. Tomu Uchida)
8. Moyuru Ozora (dir. Yutaka Abe)
9. 夫婦二世 (dir. Akira Nobuchi)
10. Mokuseki (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)

1941
1. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. Horse (dir. Kajiro Yamamoto)
3. Introspection Tower (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
4. The Life of an Actor (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
5. The Last Days of Edo (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
6. Jiro's Story (dir. Koji Shima)
7. Ai No Ikka (dir. Masahisa Sunohara)
8. Umi Wo Wataru Reisai (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
9. 大村益次郎 (dir. Eiichi Koishi)
10. Shido Monogatari (dir. Hisatora Kumagai)

1942
1. The War At Sea From Hawaii To Malay (dir. Kajiro Yamamoto)
2. There Was a Father (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
3. Shogun To Sambo To Hei (dir. Tetsu Taguchi)
4. Hahakogusa (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
5. Bouquet In the Southern Seas (dir. Yutaka Abe)
6. Shinsetsu (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
7. The 47 Ronin (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
8. The Hawk of the North (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
9. Oomura Mashujiro (1942) (dir. Kazuo Mori)
10. The Day England Fell (dir. Shigeo Tanaka)

1943-1945
Top ten cancelled due to war.

1946
1. Morning For the Osone Family (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
2. No Regrets For Our Youth (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Lord For a Night (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
4. Machiboke No Onna (dir. Masahiro Makino)
5. The Girl I Love (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)

1947
1. The Ball At the Anjo House (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
2. War and Peace (dir. Tadashi Imai, Fumio Kamei)
3. Ima Hitotabi No (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
4. Record of a Tenement Gentleman (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
5. Actress (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
6. One Wonderful Sunday (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
7. Snow Trail (dir. Senkichi Taniguchi)
8. Four Love Stories (dir. Kajiro Yamamoto, Kenta Yamazaki)
9. 花咲く家族 (dir. Yasuki Chiba)
10. Invitation To Happiness (dir. Yasuki Chiba)

1948
1. Drunken Angel (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
2. Te O Tsunagu Kora (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
3. Women of the Night (dir Kenji Mizoguchi)
4. Children of the Beehive (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
5. The Bright Day of My Life (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
6. Apostasy (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
7. A Hen In the Wind (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
8. The King (dir. Daisuke Ito)
9. Ikiteiru Gazo (dir. Yasuki Chiba)
10. Daini No Jinsei (dir. Hideo Sekigawa)

1949
1. Late Spring (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. The Green Mountains (dir. Tadashi Imai)
3. Stray Dog (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
4. A Broken Drum (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
5. Forgotten Children (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
6. Here's To the Girls (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
7. Onna No Issho (dir. Fumio Kamei)
8. The Quiet Duel (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
9. Waltz At Noon (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
10. Ohara Shosuke-San (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)

(Rashomon, 1950)

1950
1. Till We Meet Again (dir. Tadashi Imai)
2. Kikyo (dir. Hideo Oba)
3. Morning Escape (dir. Senkichi Taniguchi)
4. Shikko Yuyo (dir. Shin Saburi)
5. Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
6. Scandal (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
7. The Munekata Sisters (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
8. Boryoku No Machi (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
9. Light Snowfall (dir. Yutaka Abe)
10. 七色の花 (dir. Masahisa Sunohara)

1951
1. Early Summer (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
2. Repast (dir. Mikio Naruse)
3. Itsuwareru Seiso (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
4. Carmen Comes Home (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
5. Dokkoi Ikiteru (dir. Tadashi Imai)
6. Fusetsu 20 Nen (dir. Shin Saburi)
7. The Tale of Genji (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
8. あゝ青春 (dir. Shin Saburi)
9. Inochi Uruwashi (dir. Hideo Oba)
10. Story of a Beloved Wife (dir. Kaneto Shindo)

1952
1. Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
2. Lightning (dir. Mikio Naruse)
3. Honjitsu Kyushin (dir. Minoru Shibuya)
4. Gendai-Jin (dir. Minoru Shibuya)
5. Carmen Falls In Love (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
6. Vacuum Zone (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
7. Mother (dir. Mikio Naruse)
8. 山びこ学校 (dir. Tadashi Imai)
9. Life of Oharu (dir. Mikio Naruse)
10. Doukoku (dir. Shin Saburi)

1953
1. An Inlet of Muddy Water (dir. Tadashi Imai)
2. Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
3. Ugetsu (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
4. The Four Chimneys (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
5. Older Brother, Younger Sister (dir. Mikio Naruse)
6. A Japanese Tragedy (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
7. Himeyuri Lily Tower (dir. Tadashi Imai)
8. The Mistress (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
9. Gion Bayashi (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
10. Shukuzu (dir. Kaneto Shindo)

1954
1. Twenty-Four Eyes (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
2. Woman's World (dir. Keisuke Kinsohita)
3. The Seven Samurai (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
4. Black Tide (dir. So Yamamura)
5. The Crucified Lovers (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
6. The Thunder of the Mountain (dir. Mikio Naruse)
7. Late Chrysanthemums (dir. Mikio Naruse)
8. Medals (dir. Minoru Shibuya)
9. Sansho the Bailiff (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
10. An Inn At Osaka (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)

1955
1. Floating Clouds (dir. Mikio Naruse)
2. Meoto Zenzai (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
3. She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
4. I Live In Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
5. Koko Ni Izumi Ari (dir. Tadashi Imai)
6. Policeman's Diary (dir. Seiji Hisamatsu)
7. The Maid's Kid (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
8. A Bloody Spear On Mount Fuji (dir. Tomu Uchida)
9. The Traveling Players (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
10. Ginza No Onna (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)

1956
1. Darkness At Noon (dir. Tadashi Imai)
2. River of the Night (dir. Kimisaburo Yoshimura)
3. Karakorumu (Documentary)
4. A Cat, Two Women, and One Man (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
5. The Burmese Harp (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
6. Early Spring (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
7. Typhoon (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
8. Flowing (dir. Mikio Naruse)
9. The Rose On His Arm (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
10. I'll Buy You (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)

1957
1. The Rice People (dir. Tadashi Imai)
2. The Story of Pure Love (dir. Tadashi Imai)
3. Times of Joy and Sorrow (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
4. The Sun Legend of the End of the Tokugawa Era (dir. Yuzo Kawashima)
4. Throne of Blood (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
6. The Unbalanced Wheel (dir. Minoru Shibuya)
7. Dotanba (dir. Tomu Uchida)
8. Bakuon To Daichi (dir. Hideo Sekigawa)
9. Stepbrothers (dir. Miyoji Ieki)
10. The Lower Depths (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

1958
1. Ballad of Narayama (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
2. The Hidden Fortress (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Equinox Flower (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
4. Conflagration (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
5. Naked Sun (dir. Miyoji Ieki)
6. Night Drum (dir. Tadashi Imai)
7. The Rickshaw Man (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)
8. The Chase (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
9. The Naked General (dir. Hiromichi Horikawa)
10. Giants and Toys (dir. Yasuzo Masumura)

1959
1. Kiku To Isamu (dir. Tadashi Imai)
2. Fires On the Plain (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
3. My Second Brother (dir. Shohei Imamura)
4. Niguruma No Uta (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
5. The Human Condition I (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
6. Ningen No Kabe (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
7. Chikamatsu's Love In Osaka (dir. Tomu Uchida)
8. Lucky Dragon No. 5 (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
9. Odd Obsession (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
10. The Human Condition II (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)

(Buta to Gunkan, 1961)

1960
1. Her Brother (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
2. Kuroi Gashu: Aru Sarariman No Shogen (dir. Horimichi Horikawa)
3. The Bad Sleep Well (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
4. The River Fuefuki (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
5. Late Autumn (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
6. The Naked Island (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
7. Pigs and Battleships (dir. Shohei Imamura)
8. The Last Gunfight (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)
9. Mystery of the Himalayas (dir. Suketaro Shimada)
10. Night and Fog In Japan (dir. Nagisa Oshima)

1961
1. Bad Boys (dir. Susumu Hani)
2. Yojimbo (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Immortal Love (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
4. The Human Condition III (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
5. Happiness of Us Alone (dir. Zenzo Mastuyama)
6. Conspirator (dir. Daisuke Hito)
7. Arega Minato No Hi Da (dir. Tadashi Imai)
8. Hadakakko (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
9. The Catch (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
10. Ten Dark Women (dir. Kon Ichikawa)

1962
1. Being Two Isn't Easy (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
2. Foundry Town (dir. Kiriro Urayama)
3. Harakiri (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
4. The Sin (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
5. Sanjuro (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
6. Ningen (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
7. The Pitfall (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
8. An Autumn Afternoon (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
9. Kigeki: Nippon No Oba-Chan (dir. Tadashi Imai)
10. Akitsu Springs (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)

1963
1. The Insect Woman (dir. Shohei Imamura)
2. High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Gobancho Yugiriro (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
4. Alone in the Pacific (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
5. Cruel Tales of Bushido (dir. Tadashi Imai)
6. The Graceful Brute (dir. Yuzo Kawashima)
7. She and He (dir. Susumu Hani)
8. Mother (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
9. Pressure of Guilt (dir. Hiromichi Horikawa)
10. Hiko Shojo (dir. Kiriro Urayama)

1964
1. Woman In the Dunes (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
2. Kwaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
3. The Scent of Incense (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
4. Intentions of Murder (dir. Shohei Imamura)
5. Straits of Hunger (dir. Tomu Uchida)
6. Echigo Tsutsuishi Oyashirazu (dir. Tadashi Imai)
7. Kizudarake No Sanga (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
8. Sweet Sweat (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
9. Vengeance (dir. Tadashi Imai)
10. Could I But Live (dir. Zenzo Matsuyama)

1965
1. Red Beard (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
2. Tokyo Olympiad (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
3. Nihon Retto (dir. Kei Kumai)
4. Nippon Dorobo Monogatari (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
5. Shonin No Isu (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
6. Hiya-Meshi To Osan To Chan (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
7. Woman of Osore Mansion (dir. Heinosuke Gosho)
8. The Song of Bwana Toshi (dir. Susumu Hani)
9. The Conquest (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
10. A Story Written With Water (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)

1966
1. The Great White Tower (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
2. The Pornographers (dir. Shohei Imamura)
3. The River Kino (dir. Noboru Nakamura)
4. Lake of Tears (dir. Tomotaka Tasaka)
5. The Face of Another (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
6. Bride of the Andes (dir. Susumu Hani)
7. Libido (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
8. Kokoro No Sanmyaku (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
9. Violence At High Noon (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
10. The Stranger Within a Woman (dir. Mikio Naruse)

1967
1. Samurai Rebellion (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
2. A Man Vanishes (dir. Shohei Imamura)
3. Japan's Longest Day (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)
4. Two In the Shadow (dir. Mikio Naruse)
5. The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (dir. Yasuzo Masumura)
6. Portrait of Chieko (dir. Noboru Nakamura)
7. The Thirst For Love (dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara)
8. Clouds At Sunset (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
9. Lovely Flute and a Drum (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
10. Tales of the Ninja (dir. Nagisa Oshima)

1968
1. Profound Desires of the Gods (dir. Shohei Imamura)
2. The Human Bullet (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)
3. Death By Hanging (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
4. Tunnel To the Sun (dir. Kei Kumai)
5. Kubi (dir. Shiro Moritani)
6. Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (dir. Susumu Hani)
7. Hymn To a Tired Man (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
8. The Ruined Map (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
9. Jinsei-Gekijo: Hishakaku To Kiratsune (dir. Tomu Uchida)
10. Fukeba Tobuyona Otokodaga (dir. Yoji Yamada)

1969
1. Double Suicide (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
2. The Girl I Abandoned (dir. Kiriro Urayama)
3. Boy (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
4. Heat Wave Island (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
5. River Without a Bridge (dir. Tadashi Imai)
6. Tora-San, Our Lovable Tramp (dir. Yoji Yamada)
7. Vietnam (dir. Takashi Koizumi, Kentaro Masuda)
8. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
9. Tora-San's Cherished Mother (dir. Yoji Yamada)
10. Under the Banner of Samurai (dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)

(Mo Hozue wa Tsukanai, 1979)

1970
1. Where Spring Comes Late (dir. Yoji Yamada)
2. Men and War (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
3. Dodes'ka-den (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
4. Eros Plus Massacre (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)
5. Apart From Life (dir. Kei Kumai)
6. This Transient Life (dir. Akio Jissoji)
7. The Shadow Within (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
8. Tora-San's Runaway (dir. Yoji Yamada)
9. Hashi No Nai Kawa 2 (dir. Tadashi Imai)
10. Live Today, Die Tomorrow! (dir. Kaneto Shindo)

1971
1. The Ceremony (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
2. Silence (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
3. En Toiu Onna (dir. Tadashi Imai)
4. Men and War, Part Two (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
5. Inn of Evil (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
6. Swords of Death (dir. Tomu Uchida)
7. Those Quiet Japanese (dir. Yoichi Higashi)
8. Tora-San's Love Call (dir. Yoji Yamada)
9. Throw Away Your Books, Rally In the Streets (dir. Shuji Terayama)
10. Wet Sand In August (dir. Toshiya Fujita)

1972
1. The Long Darkness (dir. Kei Kumai)
2. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
3. Home From the Sea (dir. Yoji Yamada)
4. Journey Into Solitude (dir. Koichi Saito)
5. The Rendezvous (dir. Koichi Saito)
6. Tora-San's Dear Old Home (dir. Yoji Yamada)
7. Kaigun Tokubetsu Nensho Hei (dir. Tadashi Imai)
8. Sayuri Ichijo: Following Desire (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
9. Summer Soldiers (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
10. Shiroi Yubi No Tawamure (dir. Toru Murakawa)

1973
1. Jongara (dir. Koichi Saito)
2. The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
3. Seigen-Ki (dir. Toichiro Narushima)
4. The Wanderers (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
5. Senile Person (dir. Shiro Toyoda)
6. World of Geisha (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
7. Coup D'Etat (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)
8. The Yakuza Papers: Proxy War (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
9. Tora-San's Forget Me Not (dir. Yoji Yamada)
10. Man and War, Part III (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)

1974
1. Sandakan 8 (dir. Kei Kumai)
2. The Castle of Sand (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
3. The Family (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
4. Seishun No Satetsu (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
5. The Assassination of Ryoma (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
6. My Way (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
7. The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 4: Police Tactics (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
8. The Tattered Banner (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura)
9. Aka Chochin (dir. Toshiya Fujita)
10. Imouto (dir. Toshiya Fujita)

1975
1. Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
2. Preparation For the Festival (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
3. Kinkanshoku (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
4. The Fossil (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
5. Tora-San, Love Under One Umbrella (dir. Yoji Yamada)
6. Pastoral: To Die In the Country (dir. Shuji Terayama)
7. Bullet Train (dir. Jun'ya Sato)
8. Jingi No Hakaba (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
9. The Village (dir. Yoji Yamada)
10. A Woman Called Sada Abe (dir. Noboru Tanaka)

1976
1. Young Murderer (dir. Kazuhiko Hasegawa)
2. Tora-San's Sunrise and Sunset (dir. Yoji Yamada)
3. Lullaby of the Earth (dir. Yasuzo Masumura)
4. Fumo Chitai (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
5. The Inugami Family (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
6. Older Sister, Younger Brother (dir. Tadashi Imai)
7. A!! Hana No Oendan (dir. Chusei Sone)
8. Yakuza Burial: Jasmine Flower (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
9. Farewell, O Summer's Light (dir. Shigeyuki Yamane)
10. The Watcher In the Attic (dir. Noboru Tanaka)

1977
1. The Yellow Handkerchief (dir. Yoji Yamada)
2. The Life of Chikuzan (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
3. Banished Orin (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
4. Mount Hakkoda (dir. Shiro Moritani)
5. The Gate of Youth Part 2 (dir. Kiriro Urayama)
6. The Devil's Ballad (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
7. Mother (Documentary)
8. The Boxer (dir. Shuji Terayama)
9. Totsuzen Arashi No Youni (dir. Shigeyuki Yamane)
10. The Far Road (dir. Sachiko Hidari)

1978
1. Third Base (dir. Yoichi Higashi)
2. Double Suicide of Sonezaki (dir. Yasuzo Masumura)
3. Empire of Passion (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
4. The Incident (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
5. Kaerazaru Hibi (dir. Toshiya Fujita)
6. The Demon (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
7. Dynamite Bang Bang (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)
8. Winter's Flower (dir. Yasuo Furuhata)
9. Rape and Death of a Housewife (dir. Noboru Tanaka)
10. Hakatakko Junjo (dir. Chusei Sone)

1979
1. Vengeance Is Mine (dir. Shohei Imamura)
2. The Man Who Stole the Sun (dir. Kazuhiko Hasegawa)
3. Keiko (dir. Claude Gagnon)
4. The Woman With Red Hair (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
5. My Son! My Son! (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
6. Gassan (dir. Tetsutaro Murano)
7. The Nineteen Year-Old's Map (dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
8. No More Easy Life (dir. Yoichi Higashi)
9. Oh! The Nomugi Pass (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto)
10. Sono Go No Jingi Naki Tatakai (dir. Eiichi Kudo)

(Zigeunerweisen, 1980)

1980
1. Zigeunerweisen (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
2. Kagemusha (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Disciples of Hippocrates (dir. Kazuki Ohmori)
4. Heaven Sent (dir. Yoichi Maeda)
5. A Distant Cry From Spring (dir. Yoji Yamada)
6. Chichi Yo Haha Yo! (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita)
7. Shiki Natsuko (dir. Yoichi Higashi)
8. Kaicho-On (dir. Hojin Hashiura)
9. Crazy Thunder Road (dir. Sogo Ishii)
10. Child of the Sun (dir. Kiriro Urayama)

1981
1. Muddy River (dir. Kohei Oguri)
2. Distant Thunder (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
3. Kagero-Za (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
4. Station (dir. Yasuo Furuhata)
5. A! Onnatachi: Waika (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
6. Lonely Heart (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
7. Empire of Kids (dir. Kazuyuki Izutsu)
8. Edo Porn (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
9. Why Not? (dir. Shohei Imamura)
10. At This Late Date, the Charleston (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)

1982
1. Fall Guy (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
2. Farewell To the Land (dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
3. I Are You, You Am Me (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
4. Suspicion (dir. Yoshitaro Nomura)
5. Nippon-Koku Furuyashiki-Mura (dir. Shinsuke Ogawa)
6. Tattoo (dir. Banmei Takahashi)
7. A Pool Without Water (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
8. The Legend of Sayo (dir. Tetsutaro Murano)
9. To Trap a Kidnapper (dir. Shunya Ito)
10. The Living Koheiji (dir. Nobuo Nakagawa)

1983
1. The Family Game (dir. Yoshimitsu Morita)
2. Makioka Sisters (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
3. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
4. Tokyo Trial (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
5. Ballad of Narayama (dir. Shohei Imamura)
6. Ryuji (dir. Toru Kawashima)
7. The Catch (dir. Shinji Somai)
8. Amagi Pass (dir. Haruhiko Mimura)
9. Mosquito On the Tenth Floor (dir. Yoichi Sai)
10. Hometown (dir. Seijiro Koyama)

1984
1. The Funeral (dir. Juzo Itami)
2. W's Tragedy (dir. Shin'ichiro Sawai)
3. MacArthur's Children (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
4. Mahjong Horoki (dir. Makoto Wada)
5. Farewell to the Ark (dir. Shuji Terayama)
6. Ohan (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
7. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
8. For Kayako (dir. Kohei Oguri)
9. Shinjuro (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
10. Chi-n-pi-ra (dir. Toru Kawashima)

1985
1. And Then (dir. Yoshimitsu Morita)
2. Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
3. Fire Festival (dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
4. Typhoon Club (dir. Shinji Somai)
5. Lonelyheart (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
6. Love Letter (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
7. Ikiteru Uchiga Hana Nanoyo Shin-Dara Sore Madeyo To Sengen (dir. Azuma Morisaki)
8. The Burmese Harp (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
9. Early Spring Story (dir. Shin'ichiro Sawai)
10. Gray Sunset (dir. Shunya Ito)

1986
1. The Sea and Poison (dir. Kei Kumai)
2. Comic Magazine (dir. Yojiro Takita)
3. Whooh! Exploration Unit (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
4. A Promise (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)
5. House On Fire (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
6. Gonza the Spearman (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
7. Young Girls In Love (dir. Kazuki Ohmori)
8. Laputa: Castle In the Sky (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
9. Final Take: The Golden Age of Movies (dir. Yoji Yamada)
10. Jazz Daimyo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)

1987
1. A Taxing Woman (dir. Juzo Itami)
2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches (dir. Kazuo Hara)
3. Magino Village: A Tale (dir. Shinsuke Ogawa)
4. Eien No 1/2 (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
5. Actress (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
6. Jiro Monogatari (dir. Tokihisa Morikawa)
7. Zegen (dir. Shohei Imamura)
8. Bu Su (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
9. Luminous Woman (dir. Shinji Somai)
10. Paper Lantern (dir. Shunichi Kajima)

1988
1. My Neighbor Totoro (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
2. Tomorrow (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
3. The Discarnates (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
4. Rock Yo Shizukani Nagareyo (dir. Shunichi Nagasaki)
5. Remembrance (dir. Takehiro Nakajima)
6. Grave of the Fireflies (dir. Isao Takahata)
7. Sakura-Tai Chiru (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
8. The Yen Family (dir. Yojiro Takita)
9. Revolver (dir. Toshiya Fujita)
10. Kaito Ruby (dir. Makoto Wada)

1989
1. Black Rain (dir. Shohei Imamura)
2. Knockout (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
3. Death of a Tea Master (dir. Kei Kumai)
4. Untamagiru (dir. Go Takamine)
5. Kiki's Delivery Service (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
6. Beijing Watermelon (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
7. Rikyu (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
8. Violent Cop (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
9. Company-Sponsored Funeral (dir. Toshio Masuda)
10. Buddies (dir. Yasuo Furuhata)

(Byoin de Shinu to iu Koto, 1993)

1990
1. The Cherry Orchard (dir. Shun Nakahara)
2. Childhood Days (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
3. The Sting of Death (dir. Kohei Oguri)
4. Dreams (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
5. Swimming Upstream (dir. Joji Matsuoka)
6. Ware Ni Utsu Yoi Ari (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
7. Boiling Point (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
8. Ronin-Gai (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
9. Tugumi (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
10. The Pale Hand (dir. Seijiro Koyama)

1991
1. My Sons (dir. Yoji Yamada)
2. Rainbow Kids (dir. Kihachi Okamoto)
3. Rhapsody In August (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
4. Nowhere Man (dir. Naoto Takenaka)
5. Us Two (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
6. A Scene At the Sea (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
7. Gentle 12 (dir. Shun Nakahara)
8. Checkmate (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
9. Only Yesterday (dir. Isao Takahata)
10. Shimanto River (dir. Hideo Onchi)

1992
1. Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (dir. Masayuki Suo)
2. The Rocking Horsemen (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
3. Living On the River Agano (dir. Makoto Sato)
4. Porco Rosso (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
5. Original Sin (dir. Takashi Ishii)
6. The River With No Bridge (dir. Yoichi Higashi)
7. Double Cross (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
8. Netorare Sosuke (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
9. The Strange Tale of Oyuki (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
10. Twinkle (dir. Joji Matsuoka)

1993
1. All Under the Moon (dir. Yoichi Sai)
2. Moving (dir. Shinji Somai)
3. Dying At a Hospital (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
4. Sonatine (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
5. Made In Japan (dir. Yojiro Takita)
6. A Class To Remember (dir. Yoji Yamada)
7. About Love, Tokyo (dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
8. Bloom In the Moonlight (dir. Shin'ichiro Sawai)
9. A Night In Nude (dir. Takashi Ishii)
10. Madadayo (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

1994
1. A Dedicated Life (dir. Kazuo Hara)
2. Crest of Betrayal (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
3. Ghost Pub (dir. Takayoshi Watanabe)
4. Like a Rolling Stone (dir. Tatsumi Kumashiro)
5. The Friends (dir. Shinji Somai)
6. 119 (dir. Naoto Takenaka)
7. 800 Two Lap Runners (dir. Ryuichi Hiroki)
8. Pom Poko (dir. Isao Takahata)
9. A New Love In Tokyo (dir. Banmei Takahashi)
10. It's a Summer Vacation Everyday (dir. Shusuke Kaneko)

1995
1. A Last Note (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
2. The Tokyo Siblings (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
3. Love Letter (dir. Shunji Iwai)
4. Maborosi (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
5. Sharaku (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
6. Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (dir. Shusuke Kaneko)
7. Deep River (dir. Kei Kumai)
8. Kamikaze Taxi (dir. Masato Harada)
9. Marks (dir. Yoichi Sai)
10. Tokyo Fist (dir. Shinya Tsukamoto)
10. Like Grains of Sand (dir. Ryosuke Hashigushi)

1996
1. Shall We Dance? (dir. Masayuki Suo)
2. Kids Return (dir. Takeski Kitano)
3. Sleeping Man (dir. Kohei Oguri)
4. (Haru) (dir. Yoshimitsu Morita)
5. Village of Dreams (Yoichi Higashi)
6. Boys Be Ambitious (dir. Kazuyuki Izutsu)
7. Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
8. Gakko II (dir. Yoji Yamada)
9. Biriken (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
10. Shabu Gokudo (dir. Tatsuoki Hosono)

1997
1. The Eel (dir. Shohei Imamura)
2. Princess Mononoke (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
3. Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald (dir. Koki Mitani)
4. Tokyo Lullaby (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
5. Onibi: The Fire Within (dir. Rokuro Mochizuki)
6. Bounce Ko Gals (dir. Masato Harada)
7. Abduction (dir. Takao Okawara)
8. Mi Mo Kokoro Mo (dir. Haruhiko Arai)
9. Tokyo Biyori (dir. Naoto Takenaka)
10. Moonlight Serenade (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
10. Moe No Suzaku (dir. Naomi Kawase)

1998
1. Hana-Bi (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
2. Begging For Love (dir. Hideyuki Hirayama)
3. Give It All (dir. Itsumichi Isomura)
4. Dr. Akagi (dir. Shohei Imamura)
5. Cure (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
6. Gakko III (dir. Yoji Yamada)
7. Dog Race (dir. Yoichi Sai)
8. Scarred Angels (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
9. Diary of Early Winter Shower (dir. Shin'ichiro Sawai)
10. The Bird People In China (dir. Takashi Miike)
10. Bonds (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)

1999
1. Wait and See (dir. Shinji Somai)
2. Spellbound (dir. Masato Harada)
3. Keiho (dir. Yoshimitsu Morita)
4. Poppoya (dir. Yasuo Furuhata)
5. M/Other (dir. Nobuhiro Suwa)
6. Amateur Singing Contest (dir. Kazuyuki Izutsu)
7. Kikujiro No Natsu (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
8. Osaka Story (dir. Jun Ichikawa)
9. Don't Look Back (dir. Akihiko Shiota)
10. Coquille (dir. Shun Nakahara)

(Riri Shushu no Subete, 2001)

2000
1. Face (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
2. Nabbie's Love (dir. Yuji Nakae)
3. Taboo (dir. Nagisa Oshima)
4. Fifteen (Yoji Yamada)
5. Battle Royale (dir. Kinji Fukasaku)
6. By Player (dir. Kaneto Shindo)
7. Pickpocket (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
8. Boy's Choir (dir. Akira Ogata)
9. After the Rain (dir. Takashi Koizumi)
10. First Love (dir. Tetsuo Shinohara)

2001
1. Go (dir. Isao Yukisada)
2. Hush! (dir. Ryosuke Hashigushi)
3. Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
4. Eureka (dir. Shinji Aoyama)
5. Kaza-Hana (dir. Shinji Somai)
6. Bad Company (dir. Tomoyuki Furumaya)
7. All About Lily Chou-Chou (dir. Shunji Iwai)
8. Waterboys (dir. Shinobu Yaguchi)
9. Rain of Light (dir. Banmei Takahashi)
10. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (dir. Shohei Imamura)

2002
1. Twilight Samurai (dir. Yoji Yamada)
2. Doing Time (dir. Yoichi Sai)
3. KT (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
4. Out (dir. Hideyuki Hirayama)
5. Aiki (dir. Daisuke Tengan)
6. The Laughing Frog (dir. Hideyuki Hirayama)
7. Letter From the Mountain (dir. Takashi Koizumi)
8. Sorry (dir. Shin Togashi)
9. Ping Pong (dir. Fumihiko Sori)
10. A Woman's Work (dir. Kentaro Ohtani)

2003
1. A Boy's Summer In 1945 (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
2. Akame 48 Waterfalls (dir. Genjiro Arato)
3. Vibrator (dir. Ryuichi Hiroki)
4. Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (dir. Isshin Inudo)
5. Like Asura (dir. Yoshimitsu Morita)
6. Women In the Mirror (dir. Yoshishige Yoshida)
7. Zatoichi (dir. Takeshi Kitano)
8. Warabi No Kou (dir. Hideo Onchi)
9. Doppelganger (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
10. My House (dir. Junji Sakamoto)

2004
1. Nobody Knows (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
2. Blood and Bones (dir. Yoichi Sai)
3. Kamikaze Girls (dir. Tetsuya Nakashima)
4. The Face of Jizo (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
5. The Hidden Blade (dir. Yoji Yamada)
6. The Reason (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi)
7. Swing Girls (dir. Shinobu Yaguchi)
8. Niwatori Wa Hadashi Da (dir. Azuma Morisaki)
9. Summer of Chirusoku (dir. Kiyoshi Sasebe)
10. Translucent Tree (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)

2005
1. Break Through! (dir. Kazuyuki Izutsu)
2. Always - Sunset On Third Street (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
3. The Milkwoman (dir. Akira Ogata)
4. La Maison De Himiko (dir. Isshin Inudo)
5. A Stranger of Mine (dir. Kenji Uchida)
6. Linda Linda Linda (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita)
7. Canary (dir. Akihiko Shiota)
8. Yamato (dir. Jun'ya Sato)
9. Hanging Garden (dir. Toshiaki Toyoda)
10. The Whispering of the Gods (dir. Tatsushi Omori)

2006
1. Hula Girls (dir. Lee Sang-Il)
2. Sway (dir. Miwa Nishikawa)
3. What the Snow Brings (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
4. The Youth of Kamiya Etsuko (dir. Kazuo Kuroki)
5. Love and Honor (dir. Yoji Yamada)
6. Memories of Matsuko (dir. Tetsuya Nakashima)
7. The Professor and His Beloved Equation (dir. Takashi Koizumi)
8. Memories of Tomorrow (dir. Yukihiko Tsutsumi)
9. Kamome Diner (dir. Naoko Ogigami)
10. Who's Camus, Anyway? (dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi)

2007
1. I Just Didn't Do It (dir. Masayuki Suo)
2. A Gentle Breeze In the Village (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita)
3. Talk, Talk, Talk (dir. Hideyuki Hirayama)
4. Sad Vacation (dir. Shinji Aoyama)
5. Summer Days With Coo (dir. Keiichi Hara)
6. Dog In a Sidecar (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
7. The Matsugane Potshot Affair (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita)
8. Tamamoe! (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
9. Yunagi City, Sakura Country (dir. Kiyoshi Sakebe)
10. Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers! (dir. Daihachi Yoshida)

2008
1. Okuribito (dir. Yojiro Takita)
2. All Around Us (dir. Ryosuke Hashigushi)
3. United Red Army (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
4. Tokyo Sonata (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5. Still Walking (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
6. Children of the Dark (dir. Junji Sakamoto)
7. Our Mother (dir. Yoji Yamada)
8. The Climbers High (dir. Masato Harada)
9. The Kiss (dir. Kunitoshi Manda)
10. After School (dir. Kenji Uchida)

2009
1. Dear Doctor (dir. Miwa Nishikawa)
2. Villon's Wife (dir. Kichitaro Negishi)
3. Mt. Tsurugidake (dir. Daisaku Kimura)
4. Love Exposure (dir. Sion Sono)
5. The Unbroken (dir. Setsuro Wakamatsu)
6. Air Doll (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
7. Ultra Miracle Love Story (dir. Satoko Yokohama)
8. Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda)
9. The Guardian (dir. Ryoichi Kimizuka)
10. Feel the Wind (dir. Sumio Ohmori)

2010
1. Villain (dir. Lee Sang-Il)
2. Confessions (dir. Tetsuya Nakashima)
3. Heaven's Story (dir. Takahisa Zeze)
4. 13 Assassins (dir. Takashi Miike)
5. Sawako Decides (dir. Yuya Ishii)
6. Caterpillar (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
7. Sword of Desperation (dir. Hideyuki Hirayama)
8. The Hero Show (dir. Kazuyuki Izutsu)
9. Sketches of Kaitan City (dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri)
10. A Night In Nude: Salvation (dir. Takashi Ishii)

Notes #16 - Photography

2011-10-31T01:09:00.004Z

(Onna no Mizumi, 1966)

With no intention to shock or oversimplify things, I could say that photography, because it stoles movement from reality, is sin or I could just say that it cristalizes vision in a way totally foreign to our senses. But there's something perverse in the way it does so. Our eyes, in reality can't catch a glimpse of movement - if we are to be objective, our eyes can't really see anything, by that matter - but they have nonetheless a vague impression of it. Movement, it has to be said, introduces in us the destruction of objects seen by our desperate eyes, because everything that we see is a mere slave of time, and time waits for no man, time never waits for things to come.
The way our senses work recalls a lover that knows that his love is perishable, yet he chains himself to the opposite idea, pretending that the irreality of is foolish behaviour can overturn the real order of things. Our eyes have a paradoxical nature: they are slaves of movement, of death, but at the same time, they try to make things eternal. Such is the sad logic of cinema. The eye can't stand movement by itself, so it has to be accompanied by an eternal, sacred order that doesn't let things perish one after the other like birds in an hunting competition. The eye alone detaches reality from movement, but it never dares - because our senses are already given and can't be changed by will - to stole the movement from reality like photography does.
Photography is the eye free from the paradoxical nature of the senses, and because it is free, it is also sacred, like the soul that finally can abandon the body after its death. There is no movement in photography, there is no time in the strict sense, only a world of eternal shadows of something else, moments that have lost their life. The invention of photography is a sin, because it is a lie that impregnates the eyes with an impression of sovereign beauty and that beauty is indeed sovereign because it is never put to the test of movement, the test of ugliness.

Notes #15 - Cinema (III)

2011-10-28T13:24:00.012+01:00

(Sansho Dayu, 1954)

Uncertain radioscopy
like us
but probably exact
in the dosage between shadow and calcium
of its architecture
millimetrically internal,
at last
the spectacle turns
into the viewer itself
and now it dwells
the fluidity of blood:
every outside image
stuck to the frame that has been,
from eyeball to eyeball is destroyed.

-Carlos de Oliveira

The Kihachi Okamoto Touch

2011-10-23T16:17:00.007+01:00

By Christoph Terhechte

Photographs of the director at work already spark curiosity about his films. Slender, casually dressed, with alert, intelligent eyes behind big glasses, his wild hair constrained by headgear of impressive variety, he has the nonconformist presence of a star. Maybe not a rebel, but certainly a free spirit and definitely incredibly cool.
Born in 1924, Okamoto Kihachi went to study in Tokyo at age 17. Convinced he would soon be drafted into the army, he spent every free minute at the movies. At the age of 19, he completed business school and took a job as director’s assistant with the production company Toho, where he initially worked for Naruse Mikio. When World War II brought film production to a standstill, he was assigned to work in an airplane factory. His draft notice did not come until the beginning of 1945, eight months before the end of the war. Okamoto later said, “You could say it’s a miracle I survived the war at all, since statistics show that the largest number of people killed were those born, like me, in 1924.”
After 1945, Toho hired him again as a director’s assistant under Naruse, but also with Taniguchi Senkichi, Makino Masahiro, Honda Ishiro, and Kurosawa Akira, before Okamoto had his first commission, in 1958, to make the comedy All About Marriage. One year later, he was able to film his own script, and the result made him famous: Desperado Outpost cast an irreverent gaze at the war in China; his protagonists were not heroes, but corrupt officers, bandits, adventurers, and crazy people.
With the “underworld” films produced by Toho, Okamoto turned to gangster movies. The second film in the series, The Last Gunfight, lent this genre the “Kihachi touch”: hired killers perform musical numbers, and Mifune Toshiro is an easygoing police detective who stands by a vengeful former gangster and engages in fistfights as if they were sword duels.
In Procurer of Hell , inspired by film noir, Okamoto again addressed the experiences of war. The corrupt factory owner whom small-time crook Tobe tries to blackmail with revealing photos turns out to have been his sadistic commanding officer on the front. And when the infernal blackmailer pair lies dying on the pavement at the end, it is no coincidence that Okamoto’s staging recalls a battlefield.
A popular genre of this time was the “salariman” comedies that reflected the new, Western lifestyle of the middle class. Okamoto left his stamp on these as well: in The Elegant Life of Mr.Everyman, not just with daring choreography and a montage that made original use of freeze frames. Once again, he used every opportunity to point to the wounds of the war. His son watching an American Western on television is already enough to rouse war memories in the hero. Okamoto used historical footage, satirical flashbacks, and even a sequence in the style of silent movies to point to war traumas.
Warring Clans and Samurai Assassin then fused elements from Westerns with the “chanbara” genre. Kurosawa had just shown how this could be done, and Kobayashi and Shinoda, too, turned upside down the lofty image of the edo era, which had been conserved in the “jidaigeki”. The honorable samurai were replaced by murderous, sinister characters who bring only suffering and death. Of course, the criticism was aimed not only at the Tokugawa period, which had vanished 100 years earlier, but more or less directly at every form of militarism. Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom, a frighteningly dark adaptation of the popular novel Daibosatsu toge by Nakazato Kaizan, is considered a masterpiece of this trend.
Although all earlier film versions of this material, always in the form of a trilogy, had been box office successes, Toho abandoned the plan of a sequel even before the film arrived at Japanese cinemas. This may indeed be the only work by Okamoto that was more successful in the West than in Japan.

(Kiru, 1968)

Okamoto returned to the “jidaigeki” again in 1968 with Kill, which is reminiscent of the Spaghetti Westerns of Leone and Corbucci. A year later, he cast Mifune Toshiro as Red Lion, who, with revolutionary ardor, champions the threatened farmers in the confused times when the Meiji empire replaced the shogunate. In 1970, in his signature role Yojinbo, Mifune then encountered Katsu Shintaro’s legendary Zatoichi. Zatoichi Meets Yojinbo was followed by more genre mixtures, for example the late, American-made work East Meets West, which follows a samurai through the Wild West.
A chronology of the events that ended World War II on August 15, 1945 appeared in Japan in 1965 under the title Japan’s Longest Day. The executives of Toho Productions decided to turn it into a representative docudrama for the company’s 35th birthday. With Okamoto directing, Mifune Toshiro in the role of War Minister Anami and Ryu Chishu as Prime Minister Suzuki head an illustrious troupe of Toho stars. Despite its length and the constraints of the prestige production, the film did more than illustrate the thesis that Japan’s worst enemy at the time was not America, but Japan itself. With The Emperor and the General, Okamoto also created an extremely suspenseful drama about a power struggle whose outcome was not clear until the end.
And yet the director was never happy with the result. The film presented the official history of the capitulation, not the perspective from which he himself experienced the end of the war. Just one year later, Okamoto tried to interest his production company in his own script, but Toho rejected it. And so Human Bullet (also known under its original title, Nikudan) became Okamoto’s first film for the independent Art Theatre Guild, shot with 16mm film material and a minimal budget. The hero of the satirical work is a 21-year-old soldier who bobs alone in the Pacific in a barrel with a torpedo attached, ready for his kamikaze mission. In fantasized flashbacks, we plunge into the world of his emotions and also encounter Ryu Chishu again, this time in the role of a bookseller left crippled by the war.
“Watching the two films together gives you a complete picture,” Okamoto said in an interview with an American film critic.
Okamoto Kihachi died on february 19, 2005. The forum is showing nine of Okamoto’s 39 films; that can hardly give a complete picture of his oeuvre, but it provides an inkling of what the “Kihachi touch” is: originality, elegance, a wealth of ideas, and a lack of respect for cinematic conventions – the work of a nonconformist.

(Dai-Bosatsu Toge, 1966)

Interview
(Peter B. High, “An Interview with Kihachi Okamoto”. WideAngle 1, no. 4, 1977)

Question: Though you’re also known as a director of samurai films, I’d like to concentrate on your war films. Why have you made so many?
Okamoto Kihachi: I certainly don’t make them out of any nostalgia. I spent three and a half terrible years as a soldier. Yet, even if modern gadgetry shortens future wars to a matter of days, the basic experience of men at war is universal. It will never change.

Question: The emotional tone of your answer suggests that you feel a sense of mission in making this kind of film. Is that true?
O.K.: No, nothing so pretentious as a “sense of mission”. My real drive comes from more private concerns.

Question: Your war films seem to fall into two categories: those large, epic productions you did for Toho like Gekido no showashi Okinawa kessen (The Battle of Okinawa, 1971) and the low-budget, personal ones financed by yourself, like Human Bullet and Tokkan (Battle Cry, 1975).
O.K.: Yes, the ones at Toho were expensive for the time, about uS$400,000. The budget for my personally financed films was one tenth of that. Of course, Japanese cinema simply can’t compete with the budgets of American films like The Longest Day. We’re forced to suggest entire battle scenes by showing small parts of the whole. Okinawa kessen is a good example, since the entire Japanese Army had to be represented by 15 actors and the American side by another 15 so even at Toho I was restricted to a rather puny scale. In Human Bullet I worked with only one character and in Tokkan, I had two. I was trying to convey the whole by portraying a mere part. So actually the budget in Japan doesn’t make very much difference after all.

Question: Did Toho lay down any rules or guidelines about how you should portray the war?
O.K.: No, there really weren’t any at all. They simply wanted to insure a financial success or rather, avoid losing money on a flop. That was their sole concern. The company made the big decisions about the kind of film to be made. Once in production, I had a fairly free hand. Of course, as time went on, their decisions became a real headache. Kiru (KILL, 1968), the samurai film with Mifune, was my last Toho film where I was free to choose the subject myself. After 1968, all my films were dictated totally by the company hierarchy. Both Human Bullet and Tokkan were written while I was still a director for Toho. I submitted both these scripts and negotiated with Toho about Human Bullet for three years. Needless to say, nothing happened and I ended up financing it myself. The same for Tokkan. financing films on my own was a nightmare, but emotionally liberating.

(Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi, 1967)

Question: So you were never instructed to avoid implying anyone’s war-guilt, or ordered to portray the war in a less than candid manner?
O.K.: No, not really. Well, I recall one restriction. When I made Nihon no ichiban nagai hi, I was told I couldn’t show the emperor on screen because the Keeper of the Privy Seal had sent instructions forbidding it. Of course, if I’d felt that it was aesthetically necessary to show him, I would have quit the project. Still, my purpose was to make a faithful depiction of the events during those 24 hours leading up to Japan’s decision to surrender: Having actors portray government officials was no problem because most are dead now and their faces are no longer familiar. But everyone knows the emperor’s face, right? using an actor for the emperor would have ruined the effect I was aiming for. My biggest problem was portraying the emperor through long shots, or by showing only his hands or his back. frankly, I’m still not sure I did the right thing.

Question: Was the problem simply that the emperor was still alive?
O.K.: Precisely. If it’d been emperor Meiji, it would have caused hardly a ripple. But the present emperor is a different matter entirely. right after the war, the emperor, who had long been considered a god, reverted to being a mortal human being, a citizen among citizens, and a familiar one at that. But now there’s a tendency to place a distance between him and the people again. So, strangely enough, if I’d made the film a bit earlier, I probably could have put him on screen.

Question: Was the company afraid of public outrage?
O.K.: To some extent, yes. It probably wouldn’t have amounted too much, but the company made the rule anyway.

Question: If you had made Japan’s Longest Day by yourself, would it have turned out differently?
O.K.: Actually, the issue goes deeper than that. If I’d been in complete control, my real problem would have been with the theme itself. I’d rather do a film about the opening days of the war than about the final days.

Question: But wouldn’t doing a film about the beginning of the war inevitably put you in the position of implicating someone with war-responsibility?
O.K.: I suppose so. But that’s not necessarily an ideological problem. for example, at the beginning of the war, the emperor couldn’t control the events which led us into conflict. But in the final phase, he did press for a decision to prevent the total extinction of Japan. Without his decisive action, I myself might not be alive today. So, you might say it’s the tale of how I personally survived the war. Still, this in no way explains how the war began. I believe the roots of the war can be uncovered only by looking all the way back to the period of a hundred years ago.

The Aesthetics of Japanese Cinema

2011-10-22T20:45:00.010+01:00

(Akira Kurosawa)

1. The Tradition of the Aesthetic Consciousness in Japan

In this paper, I will investigate the tradition of the aesthetic consciousness in Japan substituting the aesthetic consciousness or the thought and expression of beauty for the term of aesthetics. The reason is that Japanese traditional consciousness of beauty is included in the films, a product of modern society, in various ways.
The aesthetic consciousness in Japan may be expressed by the two ways as follows; one is shown through works of art and the other is revealed in ways of living and of thinking or living itself. Both have been changing with the tendency of the times, but it is needless to say that the old taste doesnﾕt disappear but mingles and permeates into new one to flow deeply in the consciousness of people. Also, it is obvious that the origin of the Japanese culture itself has been influenced by other nations in Asia, especially, China and Korea, because it has been blended and stored with a variety of different races and cultures. Then, let's examine some main concepts related to the aesthetic consciousness in Japan.
There was an excellent opinion on the theory of poetry and of Noh drama in Japanese medieval times (12C - 16C) which is called Yosei and Yugen. Yosei means an emotion or a mood created beyond words. Such a thought of poetry Is very interesting, in that a great value is put on something beyond words although poetry is a genre of arts to be expressed in words. Yugen has the same meaning. It designates misty profound and subtle sentiments, and elegant and mild motions or beauty. Yugen is a temn of philosophy, thought Buddhism which was introduced from China, but has changed to be concept of traditional Japanese beauty.
Beauty of Yosei and Yugen can be replaced with the term of Sabi, which means a timeworn mood or loneliness to be common in Arabi (a desolate look), Sabi (an antique look) and so on.
In modern times (17C-18C), there were the words of Wabi Karumi and Mono no Aware (an awareness of the transience of everything worldly) in the theory of Sado (the tea ceremony), Haiku and literature. Wabi was concerned with a tranquil and plain flavor. Karumi, meaning lightness, is the simplicity shown in the supreme stage, which is opposite to boastful gravity or complicate skills. Mono no Aware is a feeling caused from the change of seasons, an intensive interest evoked by music or love, or an eagerness for things in the work. Besides, there is a tradition that makes much of leaving some spaces in a drawing paper in the theory of painting.
Considering these facts, it can be said that a suppressed expression or non-expressed expression is regarded as the best that reaches to the nothingness in the aesthetic conscious of Japanese people. Indeed, it may be connected to the Zen. Meanwhile, there is an expression which takes on full decorative property (e.g : the gold foil of some temples, Buddhist sanctums, mansions, ' etc.).

(Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubo, 1968)

Now, Iet's examine the aesthetic consciousness concerned with the ways of living and of thinking or living itself. Japanese is the agricultural nation, but there were some groups of wandering and roaming people such as lots of artists who led a vagabond life for their whole life, peddlers, aesthetics, etc.. Here, the theme of a wayfaring way or Michiyuki (a trip to the death) often repeats in Japanese films. The idea of transience produces the view of life and death accepting death, as a routine. The aesthetic consciousness to death is represented as Shinju (a lave suicide) that is characterized in the tragedy of Kabuki or Joruri. Also, there were the view of life and death of Yakuza, who thought of keeping an obligation to the last as a morality, and of warriors (Bushido) who considered a loyalty and a submission to be one. All of these beautify the attitude of accepting death as trivial.
If it is the aesthetics of the positive and that of victory to keep a life, we can say that the aesthetics of Japanese is related to that of the negative or a ruin. It is not simply defeat but ruin based on some righteousness. Such an aesthetic consciousness was visually stylized in Yakuza films which was popular in the 1960's.
In the other side, there were the traditions of Kabuki and paintings which showed a ferocious fancy, a ghost story and even bizarreness, Rakugo, a story-telling skill of traditional laugh, and shameless laugh, humor and satire shown in popular literature or paintings, contrary to the aesthetic consciousness concerned with elegance, Yugen, transience death. These traditions have something to do with optimism and realism, which choose grotesqueness rather than elegance and persistence rather than transience. Therefore, it can be called an anti-aesthetic consciousness, in that I satirizes the above-mentioned traditional aesthetic consciousness and violently upsets it. Such a strong anti-aesthetic consciousness is well exhibited in a director Shohei Imamura's works.

(Nora Inu, 1949)

2. The Expression of the Aesthetic Consciousness in Japanese Films - Suppression and Excess

Japanese films had been rapidly mass-produced after 1923, and then finally reached to its summit in the 1950's. In the 1920's (the silent picture days), Japan had already achieved a big film country following America in terms of quantity. But it did not get internationality because of the shortage of ability in terms of quality.
In those days, the characteristic of Japanese films was that, first of all, various tastes of directors could be engaged in making a film because lots of directors were needed for the mass production of films. Second. Japanese cinema developed its own distinctive features in theme, genre, aesthetic consciousness and the method of expression because it did not have international markets. Besides, there was great influence from European films.
In other words, the traditional aesthetic consciousness of Japan was influenced as immensely by Europe as by many Asian countries including China and Korea. Generally speaking, if you could pick up two of the specific characters of Japanese films among others, they might be suppression and excess. While suppression means to press down expression, not ex-press (push outside) but in-press (pushed inside). That is to say, it is to control and make calm not to express some desires or feelings, and not to explode. Excess means to push fervently an expression toward outside, namely, to express some desires or feeling, and to go off. Yasujiro Ozu is regarded as the representative of suppression films.
There are a tension between inactivity and activity, a vivid contrast of light and shadow, and the dynamics of motion in Akira Kurosawa's works. In his films, there are some excess of expression and the emotion of energy like heavy rain, gale, the burning sun, etc. Such excess which intensely pushes ego toward the outside is explicit in visuals as well as actions, and it can make itself understood internationally. Thatﾕs why his films get a good reputation widely in the world. Also, his works have the excess of a view of morality of enforcing humanism as well as that of expression, and make spectators embarrassed or moved. The excess as the expression of the manhood may appeal to less female than male. Mr. Donald Riche, well known for his introduction of Japanese films to foreign countries, has praised for Red Sorghum, a Chinese film, on the ground that it reminds Rashomon. Ahang Yimou's Rod Sorghum has a heroin but depicts not so much the expression of the womanhood as that of a strong ego and self-assertion. And in his other works, the excess and vividness of color can be well observed, too.
Kurosawa's noticeable features can imply the following. He began as a painter and was interested in Japanese traditional artistic accomplishment like Noh drama, which greatly influenced the beauty of style of his works. Both Nohﾕs restrained expression and Kurosawa's excessive one do not contradict, but are related with each other in a dynamic tension within his films to complete his unique and consistent features under his aesthetic consciousness.

(Wandafuru Raifu, 1998)

Director Shohei Imamura is same in the light of 'excess', even though his works display the traits of more 'suppression' than 'excess' as shown in Woonagi (The Eel) and Black Rain. But his works can be distinguished from Akira Kurosawa's ones, if same in excess, in that the former works contain the spirit and consciousness of an intensive anti-aesthetic. He expresses the power of life, straightforward desired and trivial comedy of worldly human beings with some distance, rather than the beauty of an image or a composition. From this distance, there is created a laugh which is not ridicule but sympathy with common people. It seems that Imamura's true characteristic is an endless interest in a falling man and popularity going through his works with something secular. Meanwhile, the works of Takeshi Kitano, who directed Hana-bi, are the films of suppression in general. Except A Scent At The Sea(91), Kids Return(96), some unexpected violence are hidden in his works. Hana-bi has a man of few words and suppressed dialogues, but hidden violence take on a sudden and excessive property in it. This excess make spectators shocked. Be it ever so physical and bodily violence, this is something to be felt an airs of nihilism and pessimism which come out of the fissure of his existence, and to transcend beyond words, reason and logic.
Characters who are similar with the hero of Hana-bi distinguished in Japanese films to win a prize in international film festivals, for example, Kohei Oguri's Nemura Otoko(Sleeping Man), in which Ahn Sung-ki, a famous Korean actor, appears, Hirokazu Koreeda' Light of Fantasy, Naomi Kawase's Moeno Suzaku, Makoto Shinozaki's Okaeri and so on.
In fact, the expression of 'suppression' can be found in many films all over the world, too. A Taiwan film A City of Sadness and an Indian film Song of the Road are good examples. And in Korean films, director Im Kwon-taek's works Jokbo(The Family Tree Book), Sibaji(A Surrogate Woman), Sopyunje, etc. can be counted in. But strong pathos is fully contained in his works.
As a result, both 'excess' and 'supression' may be excessive elements of all nations only in terms of an abstract meaning. The points are whether such expressions are unusually much involved in Japanese films and whether they include the characteristics peculiar to Japan.

(Naoto Takenaka filming Muno no Hito, 1991)

3. The Expression of the Aesthetic Consciousness in Japanese Films - Death and Revival

Since the days of mass-production(from the 1920's through the 1960's), Japanese films have achieved to group various genres of films, regardless of good works by outstanding directors. Among the various genres, there is a genre, the period/costume film, which exhibit an aesthetic consciousness. The costume play can visualize the way of living of old Japanese before some influence from Europe as 'a kind of lost beauty today'. During this Asian Art Film Festival(from 6 Nov. to 20 Nov. 1998), three Jidai-geki(period/costume film) will be presented; Rashomon, Gate of Hell and Bushido-Samurai Saga(directd by Tadashi Imai). Muhomatsu no Issho(Life of Matsu the Untamed) can be added to them, it terms of 'beauty of lost life and feeling'.
Strictly speaking, it is true that these films deviate from the category of the Jidai-geki film. Rashomon and Gate of hell play with a medieval times older than Edo times, and Muhomatsu no Issho represents the times after the influence from Europe. Involved in the category of the Jidai-geki film Bushido-Samurai Saga tends to destroy what can be expected by spectators in films ﾐ explicit confrontation between good and evil, aesthetics of Tate(action in sword) and Tatharsis resulted from them.
Seen by foreigners, these films may have merits to posses both beauty of style as a costume play and some exoticisms referred to genre film, thinking that the populace's and aesthetics consciousness and the aesthetics of their living and feeling and reflected on a group of films which have grown to series of mass-production apart from Japonism. And in terms of them, I think genre film includes the hope, dream, purification passion and grudge of people.
However, genre film was forced to decline in Japanese film circles after the appearance of TV in the 1950's. The turned period was the middle of the 1960's, when Yakuza-film appeared. The background of Yakuza films as Meiji Restoration days(the end of the 19th century--the beginning of the 20th century) after Edo times passed away. This genre expressed something old and what is sinking as the good and beautiful, and something new and what is rising(above all westernization) as the evil=the ugly.

(Showa Zankyo-Den, 1965)

It is important that the last genre film expressing 'beauty of lost living and feeling' flourished in the high growth period of Japan in the 1960's. It means that Japanese traditional morality and aesthetic consciousness, especially those of the masses, have a transient prosperity within Yakuza film, a kind of genre film.
According to Takenobu Watanabe, a critic in those days, the appeals of Yakuza films are as follows; The first is the antagonism between things old and new, the second is the conflicts of interests(in life or economy), the third is the confrontation between things refined and rough, and the last is the opposition things harmonious and disharmonious. These four pairs of confrontations are visually expressed in Yakuza films.
Yakuza films don't stand for the male society in general, because there appears 'beauty of life and feelings in the male world' rather than 'beauty of lost life and feelings', and a number of Yakuzas come out there. Therefore, it seems proper to classify these films as a variant of the costume play as well. Except for current Yakuza films to screen a Japanese society after World War II, classical Yakuza films conserve the grudges of the old and the weak who are oppressed by the modern industrializing society and are disappearing from that society. Similarly, 'suppression' of patience and 'excess' of explosion of violence(or feeling) are true of Yakuza films, too.
Above all, it is most important in this genre that a man running behind others fulfills the ethics through death to get society, morality, justice, principle of 'revival through death' and 'the aesthetic of defeat'. As for Hana-bi again, only Hana-bi leaves a little bit airs of Yakuza film among the films which will be shown at the Asian Art Film Festival at Seoul. Of course, Hana-bi doesn't follow the pattern of Yakuza film as a genre. Its background is the present day and its here is not a Yakuza but an ex-policeman. So, Hana-bi resembles and American hard-boiled play, a film where a tough detective appears.
It is significant that the last scene of this film accords with some part out of the classical aesthetic consciousness. Also, it is obvious that grand prix winning works are the excellent accomplishments of directors of marked individuality. The aesthetic consciousness and anti-aesthetic consciousness of Japanese are flowing in those works. However, it is impossible to guess the variety of Japanese films only with grand prix winning works, whether it is an old film or a new one. What kind of the aesthetic consciousness is in the current Japanese films, from which the Jidai-geki film and Ninkyo(yakuza) film almost have disappeared?
What is the aesthetic consciousness of Japanese which is common in such my recent interested films as Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail, Naoto Takenaka's Tokyobiyori and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure.
It is apparent that the aesthetic consciousness of Japanese consists of many elements unexplainable any more only with the traditional aesthetic consciousness of Japan or the East, including the influences from Europe.
If more Japanese films can be screened in Korea, Koreans may get faster aware of these facts than Japanese. Seen out of the country by other people, the remarkable features of a matter will be well grasped unexpectedly.

-By Kenji Iwamoto
(Symposium for the Asian Art Film Festival, Seoul, 1998)

From Propaganda To Reflection: How Japanese Cinema Has Dealt With World War II

2011-10-16T21:29:00.012+01:00

(Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi, 1967)

By leakbrewergator
(History Forums)

Japan entered World War II as a nation that had not been conquered in its entire history. In fact, at the time of the Battle of Midway in 1942, Japan had gone nearly 3 and a half centuries without a single defeat. Not since the Japanese retreat from Korea in 1597 had Japan’s military been repelled. Japan had been at war since its occupation of Manchuria in 1928.For nearly 14 years, Japan’s military had enjoyed staggering success in its quest to create a Pacific Empire.
Of course Japan’s success would not last for very long. After the Battle of Midway, and with America’s “Island-hopping” campaign in the Pacific, Japan suffered defeat after defeat. The atomic bomb brought a sudden and dramatic end to Japan’s quest for Empire. Japan now had to deal with something that it had never had to deal with before: defeat.
Japanese cinema has not dealt with World War II in the voluminous manner that most Western nations have. Nevertheless, the film industry of Japan offers a great deal of variety when it comes to World War II cinema. The cinema during the war was, of course, entirely propaganda. The films were usually commissioned by political leaders and were used to hide the mounting losses of the war to the Japanese people. The post-war (Showa) period of Japan focused on separating the present from pre-1945 Japan. After the Showa period, Japanese World War II films can be divided into two distinct categories: that of anti-war films and films that show Japan as a heroic combatant that was unmercifully bombed into submission with a new and terrible weapon. This incredibly fascinating blog post will discuss the transition of Japanese cinema throughout these periods.
Japan during the war years was a very rigid hierarchical society. Highly restrictive institutions were established to keep a populace in check during a period that saw Japan’s entrance into the war as well as a tremendous depression. The sole purpose of schools during this period was to indoctrinate children to a militaristic society that was wholly devoted to the service of the Emperor. These teachings would gain even more significance after what is internationally known as the “Manchurian Incident.”
The Manchurian Incident involved the Japanese occupation of Manchuria after a mysterious bombing of a railway in the Chinese province in 1928. This incident along with the Japanese invasion of Indo-China set Japan on a collision course for war with America.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 officially made Japan and the United States combatants in the war. Pearl Harbor was an absolute success for the Japanese military machine. This success would be used in a purely propagandist film a year later in a movie entitled, Hawai Mare oki Kaisen (1942). The War at Sea From Hawaii to Malay, as is its English title, was directed by Kajiro Yamamoto. The film was made to commemorate the one year anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film showed the complete destruction of American ships by Japanese dive bombers and was the pinnacle of Japan’s propaganda films. Despite the film’s subject matter, Yamamoto put together an exquisite combination of real footage and battlefield reproductions using miniatures. Yamamoto’s film would be used in the later years of the war as a means of boosting public morale.

(Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi, 1967)

Taking into account Japan’s political climate during the war, it is not surprising that the first anime film to ever be created in 1945 was a propaganda film. Matsuyo Seo’s Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei or Momotarō’s Divine Sea Warriors was the first propaganda film geared towards children to be made during the war in any nation. The anime glorified Japan’s occupation of Asia. The movie went along with the official government’s statement that Japan was “liberating” its Asian neighbors from harsh colonial rule. Divine Sea Warriors followed a group of animals dressed as Japanese pilots as they traveled through their newly conquered lands. The entire film was set to an eerie chorus of children singing throughout the background.
Both The War at Sea and Divine Sea Warriors are exemplary films, albeit entirely propaganda. Both of the films would be shown repeatedly throughout Japan until the American occupation of Japan at the war’s conclusion. The American occupation itself ushered in a new period of Japanese film making and the way filmmakers dealt with World War II as a topic. This period is known as the Showa Period.
The Showa Period in Japan is marked by political uncertainty and tremendous social change in the archipelago. Despite the political and social upheaval, the Japanese film industry continued to produce films about the war. As was discussed earlier in this essay, the Japanese felt that the films of post-war Japan should distinguish themselves from those of pre-war Japan. This was due to the fact that the Japanese believed that there was a need to separate their current situation from the “polluted” past.
Contrary to the propaganda films of the war years, the post-war films showed the Japanese as victims of the war. They were victims of subtle Allied aggression, Chinese nationalists’ attacks, and most importantly, themselves. This latter victimization is known as “self-victimization.” The Japanese people felt that they had fallen victim to pre-1945 militarism and that their military had been dragged into the war by an elite few who would benefit from the war. This theory can be seen in many popular movies later in this period. Yamamoto Isoroku (1968) and Okinawa Kessen (1971) were among the most popular of these films.

(Gekido no Showashi: Okinawa Kessen, 1971)

Both of these films portrayed the Japanese as “good, sincere people who were forced to go to war.” These films also showed that the Japanese people suffered greatly as a result of the decision to go to war. Both of these films were also popular because they contained great visual effects for their time and they all focused on famous battles during the war. Yamamoto Isoroku was directed by Masuyama Seiji. The film starred Toshirō Mifune as Admiral Yamamoto. While the film was more of a biography of the much admired Yamamoto, the apex of the movie was a vivid account of Pearl Harbor. Okinawa Kessen is considered to be director Kihachi Okamoto’s greatest masterpiece. The first half of the film is dedicated to the planning and build up of the Battle of Okinawa. The second half of the film gruesomely portrays the actual battle itself. Perhaps no film of this era has ever captured the suffering of Japanese civilians as Okinawa Kessen. Many later anti-war directors would use Okamoto’s film as a template.
Many directors used World War II and Japan’s defeat as a means to scrutinize Japanese society as a whole. This can be seen in Kunio Watanabe’s Meiji tennō to nichiro senso (English Title: The Emperor Meiji and The Russo-Japanese War) (1958). This film drew a comparison to the Russo-Japanese War of the early 20th century and World War II. The Russo-Japanese War was portrayed as Japan’s “Good War.” On the other hand, Japan’s involvement in World War II was portrayed as disastrous and ill-conceived. Emperor Hirohito was even portrayed as a less than capable leader. This is something that would have been inconceivable just a few decades earlier.
Another film that scrutinizes Japanese society and its involvement in the war was Storm Over The Pacific (1960). Storm Over The Pacific follows Lt. Koji Kitami played by Yosuke Natsuki throughout most of the war. Kitami is a pilot aboard the aircraft carrier Hiryu. Kitami remains loyal to his belief in the leaders of Japan’s military throughout the rousing successes of the early Pacific War. However, after the Battle of Midway, Kitami’s faith becomes incredibly shaken. Director Shūe Matsubayashi does a tremendous job of portraying post-war Japanese sentiment about the war through Kitami’s thoughts and dialogue.
One theme that was established in Japanese World War II films during the Showa Period that would be repeated often in later films would be that of the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb became the most powerful symbol of Japan’s defeat during this period. Japan’s Longest Day (1967), directed by Kihachi Okamoto shows the internal struggle that took place among Japan’s leaders on the issue of surrender after the atomic bombs. The film shows that the only reason why the side favoring surrender won out was because of the advent of these new and devastating bombs. Horikawa Hiromichi’s Gunbatsu (1970) also relied on this theme. The film itself was a crude biography of General Tojo that would later be used as a template for modern Japanese “Heroic” World War II films. The film shows that General Tojo was forced to accept Japan’s decision to surrender only after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The atomic bomb would play a pivotal role in later Japanese films. Both anti-war films and Heroic Japan films would use the atomic bomb as a mechanism to further develop their stories.

(Hotaru no Haka, 1988)

As I have mentioned earlier, Japanese World War II cinema after the Showa Period can be divided into two distinct categories. There are movies that are entirely anti-war. These films argue that the cost of lives and human suffering do not outweigh the potential gains of the war. The fact that Japan lost the war adds more strength to these films' arguments. On the other side of the spectrum are the films that I have defined as “Heroic Japan” films. These films tend to focus on the brave individuals who fought in the war and not the war itself. The “Heroic Japan” films also tend to point out that Japan was only defeated by a devastatingly terrible weapon and not an invading army. The “Heroic Japan” films are usually met with strong public opinion and controversy. However, they tend to achieve greater critical acclaim than their anti-war counterparts.
Anti War films in post Showa Japan have one major common characteristic. They show the plight of all those affected by the war. Perhaps no film has captured this better than the Human Condition trilogies. This trilogy is entirely anti-war and used the experience of one Japanese soldier to point out the evils of war. Kaji is the main character of the trilogy. Director Masaki Kobayashi sets the tone in the trilogy’s first film, No Greater Love when Kaji refuses to follow orders and abuse helpless Chinese prisoners. Kaji continues to see the worst of human kind as he faces hopeless battles and eventual capture throughout the next two films of the trilogy: Road To Eternity and A Soldier’s Prayer.
Another major focal point of the anti war films is the atomic bomb. The devastation and mass suffering that the two atomic bombs caused is often used as a vehicle for anti war films to drive their points home. Two films in particular have captured this thought brilliantly. Grave of The Fireflies (1988) and Black Rain (1989) both captured the suffering caused by the atomic bombs in very vivid detail.
Grave of The Fireflies, Japanese name Hotaru no haka, is an animated film directed by Isao Takahata. This film focuses on the atomic bombs as well as the firebombing of Tokyo. The film focuses on two children that have lost their father in the military as well as their mother in the firebombing of Tokyo. Grave of The Fireflies is the epitome of an anti war film. Takahata refused to glamorize the war as a heroic struggle. Instead, he showed the war as a horrific experience for normal civilians that lived in Japan at the time.

(Kuroi Ame, 1989)

One year later, director Imamura Shohei released his masterpiece, Black Rain (1989). Black Rain is a black and white film about the bombing of Hiroshima. The film follows a group of survivors that lived on the periphery of the explosion. Instead of focusing on the bomb itself, Black Rain shows the devastating long term effects of the weapon. A group of survivors stumble their way through the rubble of a destroyed Hiroshima helping rescue workers look for other survivors. The film derives its name from the black tears that one of the survivors produces when she begins to cry. It is later learned that the tears turned black due to her exposure to the vast amounts of radiation in the city. Black Rain also shows the plight of the rescue workers who suffer from their exposure to the radiation. Shoei’s filmis still considered the greatest “horrors of war” film to have ever been made.
The second type of Japanese World War II cinema in recent years can be classified as “Heroic Japan” films. These films tend to focus on the individuals in World War II and even go as far as justifying the war in some instances. One such film that focuses on one very controversial figure is Pride (1998). This film depicts Japanese wartime Prime Minister, General Tōjō Hideki as a heroic leader that is vengefully hounded and executed by the conquering allies.
The interesting aspect about Pride is that the film reverts back to the propaganda films that dominated Japan during the war years. Pride was funded by right-wing ideological interest groups that sought to restore Japan’s past glory as a military power. The film argued the viewpoint that Japan should have been exonerated from its war with China at the onset of World War II because they were provoked into war by Chinese Communists. Pride was met with very stiff public protests in Japan as well as in China due to its controversial subject matter.
The “Heroic Japan” film has dominated the recent releases with the World War II genre in Japan. Two recent films that I have classified in this category are Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean (2005) and For Those We Love (2007). Both of these films did tremendously well at the Japanese box office despite being met with protests overseas.

(Ningen no Joken, 1959)

Lorelei: Witch of the Pacific Ocean was directed by Shinji Higuchi and released in 2005. The film features a fictional Japanese submarine that successfully thwarted a third atomic bomb attack by the United States. Lorelei was heavily criticized for its glorification of Japanese exploits during the war. The movie also rekindled an old Japanese notion that the Axis powers were in fact victimized by the war. The notion that the Allied powers were willing to drop an atomic bomb on Tokyo was another aspect of the film that invited heavy criticism. This was used to further illustrate the film’s point that the Japanese were indeed the victims. Despite the film’s controversies, Lorelei uses an impressive combination of special effects and story telling that made it a huge success in Japan.
Taku Shinjo’s For Those We Love was released in 2007 amid a tremendous amount of protests from Australia. The film was the first feature film to deal with the infamous kamikaze pilots of World War II. Shinjo did a masterful job of showing the kamikaze pilots in a very humanizing light throughout the film. For Those We Love often showed the pilot’s dilemma of dying in the service of their Emperor, whom they loved, and surviving the war to be with their families, who they obviously loved as well. The film’s controversy begins when the kamikaze pilot’s actions are often glamorized throughout the film. The pilot’s suicidal plunges into Allied warships are shown as being very courageous and honorable. On the other hand, the film portrays the Allied forces as brutal aggressors with no honor or sense of service.
With the recent success of these “Heroic Japan” films, there is no reason to doubt that they will continue to be produced even in the face of foreign criticisms. Often times these films have higher budgets and attract better directors and more well known actors. There are still dozens of World War II films that can be made for Japanese audiences. Perhaps there will be a new found appreciation for these films so that there will no longer be a dearth of material available for those who wish to study World War II films in Japan.
As one can see, Japanese cinema has portrayed World War II in many different fashions. First, Japanese World War II films were entirely propaganda. This was necessary due to the circumstances surrounding the war at the time. The films of Showa Period Japan attempted to separate Post-War Japan from its Pre-War society. More recently, Japanese cinema has been divided into two distinct categories. That of anti-war films, and those films that portray Japan as being heroic and honorable throughout the war. All of these films show a great deal of how Japanese society as a whole chooses to deal with World War II and the Japanese role in it.

Youth Killer [Seishun no Satsujin Sha]

2011-09-23T09:10:00.005+01:00

Download the Entire Issue

(All ATG Issues Here)

青春の殺人者 OST - Godiego

2011-09-17T12:28:00.005+01:00

The Youth Killer [Seishun no Satsujin Sha]

Directed by: Kazuhiko Hasegawa
1976

Download

(Thanks, H2O)
Private use only. Don't pass it away

哀しみのベラドンナ OST - Masahiko Sato

2011-09-02T19:36:00.006+01:00

Belladonna of Sadness [Kanashimi no Beradonna]

Directed by: Eiichi Yamamoto
1973

Download

(Thanks monstro)

Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'ATG

2011-08-07T12:44:00.017+01:00

(Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa, 1970)

By Inuhiko Yomota (Translated by Michael Raine)
(in Art Theatre Guild: Unabhängiges Japanisches Kino 1962-1984)

How to describe Shinjuku in the late 60's and early 70's? The scene was something like the noise and the bustle of the famous Boulevard du Crime in 19th Century Paris or London's Picadilly Circus. Tokyo was formed by the grouping together of a number of centers such as Ginza, Shibuya, and Ikebukuro. Of all those places, Shinjuku in this period was the center of the underground art and culture, filled with vulgarity and nihilistic energy. Shinjuku was divided into East and West by the train station. The West side is now a forest of skycrapers, an official space symbolized by the New City Hall, but in those days a water treatment plant extended to the horizon and the place was almost deserted. Action films would often shoot scenes in this out-of-the-way location.
On the other hand, the East side of the station was so crowded as it gets. Watching films like Nagisa Oshima's Shinjuku Dorobo no Nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, 1968) or Toshio Matsumoto's Bara no Soretsu (Funeral Parade of Roses, 1969), you'll see the kinds of impromptu street performances that filled Shinjuku in 1968. In the square in front of the station futenzoku (Japanese hippies) from all over Japan, homeless and hungry, sleep on the grass and sing songs. In the café Fugetsudo, self-declared artists with long hair and beards rub shoulders with leftist activists, while American soldiers who are against Vietnam war and who've gone AWOL from their bases huddle with anti-war groups, plotting escapes to northern Europe. Out in the main street, ten or so men and women form a strange procession. Apart from the gas masks on their heads they're completely naked. At the other end of the main street a gay bar district has grown up. A French semiotician, not yet famous in Japan, is a regular furtive regular.
In the hitherto sacred precints of a temple rises a scarlet tent where grotesque Theater of Cruelty is performed. Riot polices are brought in to prevent these scandalous performances. The sponsors of the theater group act as if they fully intend to hold the performance, engaging the riot police in extended and meaningless wrangling. Meanwhile, another red tent is stealthily erected elsewhere. At last a signal is given and the audience leaves the decoy tent as one body and ruses into the new tent. And so the play starts without incident. The police are frustrated: once the audience is in the new tent they can't interrupt the performance.
Artistic experiment and political contestation went hand in hand. A demonstration against the US-Japanese Security Treaty turned into a riot, the mob turning over cars and flooding onto the railroad tracks so the trains couldn't run. The riot police fired tear gas canisters to suppress the disturbances. On riot days you had to hide lemons in your bag to counteract the effect of the tear gas on your eyes. Young people felt a sense of liberation, that anything goes in Shinjuku. You felt that if you were chased by the cops you could turn into an alley and hide in a coffee shop. That's not the feeling you got from pre-war amusement districts like Asakusa, nor higher class bourgeois districts like the Ginza. Truly, Shinjuku in late-60's Tokyo was what Bakthin had called a carnival space.

(Tenshi no Kokotsu, 1972)

ATG's Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka was at the heart of the chaotic bustle of the East side of Shinjuku. It was surrounded by rows of cinemas with gaudy billboards advertising endless programs of anything from yakuza films to Holliwood movies. But the atmosphere of the ATG cinema, a 400 seat cinema that had been in use since before the war, was unique. The building was painted a uniform dark gray, the main door was a special black-tinted glass. The interior walls were gray blue and the doors to the auditorium were padded with black leather. It's no surprise that when the newly founded ATG refurbished the cinema in such muted colors someone dubbed it "the mausoleum". In any case, the decision to make everything monochrome created a sense of total separation from the surroundings.
I first saw a film at ATG four years later, in June 1966. I rushed to see Orson Welles' Citizen Kane on its first release in Japan. The "rosebud" of the film was as intoxicating as the word suggests. At the time, Tokyo was buzzing with the Beatles visit, but I thought Welles was much more important. His was the first director's name I remembered. I decided on the spot to become a member of ATG - simply bu becoming a member I could see films restricted to adults. I was still only 13 at the time. I saw many films at ATG after that: Fellini's Giulietta degli spiriti; Godard's Pierrot le fou; Losey's The Servant; Bresson's Procès de Jean d'Arc, Paradzhanov's Teni zabytykh predkov. If it hadn't been for the overwhelming influence of the films I saw between graduating Junior High and beginning High School, perhaps I would never have become an art critic and would be slogging away as a businessman at a Japanese company instead. It wasn't only me, you could probably say the same for the musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and the poet Gozo Yoshimasu as well. At the time ATG was a unique guide to the European art film, so different from the Hollywood entertainment film. It is impossible to overstate the influence of ATG programming on the Japanese literary and art scene, even up to the present day.
After a certain point ATG, in addition to distributing foreign auteur films, started to produce new films by radical Japanese directors. Nagisa Oshima's Ninja bugeicho (Manual of Ninja Martial Arts), released in 1967, packed in the students and became a huge hit. The film told the story of the head of a group of ninja who organized farmers' rebellions and fought againt powerfull samurai in the 16th century. It was based on an original 16-volume manga series by leftist manga artist Sanpei Shirato. In order to make the film, Oshima developed his own unique method of freely selecting from and enlarging the actual manga frames, dubbing voices over those images without using any animation or live footage. Oshima followed Welles in being firmly enshrined in my personal pantheon.
From 1968 to 1972 Oshima released Koshikei (Death by Hanging), Shinjuku dorobo nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief), Shonen (Boy), Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa (The Man Who Left his Will on film), Gishiki (The Cerimony), and Natsu no Imoto (Dear Summer Sister). He worked at a frenetic pace, putting into practice what he himself called "sleeping with" the times. In particular I felt that Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa was exactly my story. The budding 8mm-filmmakers who appeared in this film were the same age as me, albeit we went to different high schools. We all spoke the same coded way about the connection between film and politics, participated in the same anti-government demonstrations, were chased by the same riot police and wandered the same tear-gas canister littered streets of Shinjuku. But I, who was caught up in all the political excitment, couldn't understand why Oshima viewed things from a meta-level and was critical of their actions.
After Oshima, ATG produced films by Yoshishige Yoshida (who became also known as Kiju), Toshio Matsumoto, Shuji Terayama, Kazuo Kuroki and Akio Jissoji one after the other. Until then, I had thought of Japanese cinema as Japanified versions of American westerns and gang films, or as monster movies in which one or another enormous beast attacked, but at ATG for the first time I realized that Japanese films could also be "artistic". At the same time, I was deeply impressed by the music used in their films. Toru Takemitsu, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Hikaru Hayashi were the leaders of Japanese music. Apart from anything else, this period of ATG films stands as an archive of modern Japanese music.
At the ATG cinema they used the time after the last screening to put on new playwrights such as Albee, Wesker, Genet and LeRoi Jones. When Yukio Mishima, a major supporter of ATG, presented his sole directorial effort, Yukoku (Patriotism, 1966) at the Shinjuku Bunka, he also put on a modernized version of a No play after the screening. I was also there when the founder of Buto Dance, Tatsumi Hijikata, performed five of his works over 27 days in 1972. Following those performances, Hijikata went into a long seclusion before leaving this world wrapped in the cloack of legend.
The majority of the films that were shown and plays that were performed at ATG were by artists who were already known abroad and who in their own ways had built careers within Japan. As interest in the underground counter-culture developed in the 1960's, ATG opened a small theater in the basement. Mishima, who loved Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, dubbed the space Sasori-za (Theatre Scorpio). The first film shown in this new theater was Gingakei (Galaxy, 1967) by radical student filmmaker Masao Adachi. The Sasori-za, which had projectors for all film gauges, from 8mm to 35mm and so could show films on an equal footing, soon became the center of Shinjuku underground culture.
The year 1971/1972 was a major turning point for Japanese anti-system movements and the underground counter-culture. ATG teamed up with the master of pink eiga Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi to make Tenshi no Kokotsu (Ecstacy of the Angels), a film about the heroic isolation visited on a group of terrorist bombers after they attacked a US army base. During the shoot, a time-bomb hidden in a Christmas-tree exploded less than 100 meters from the ATG cinema, injuring many seriously. A false but believable rumor went around that just after the explosion some suspicious characters were seen running into the Sasori-za. All at once the media started a violent attack on ATG which was advised to stop the making of the film. However, at a press conference director Koji Wakamatsu said: "I want people to realize that behind this incident lies a much greater danger, of the violence that is war." The film was released at the Shinjuku Bunka in March 1972 to great acclaim.
However, that happy age in which political excitment and cinematic experiment seemed to be permanently linked was already ending by the early 1970's. The student movement turned into something cultish, indulging in meaningless tit-for-tat murders or wanton bombing campaigns. The big studios that ATG had opposed int he 1960's reached an economic impasse that resulted in bakrupcy or radical changes in direction. Akira Kurosawa attempted suicide, while Seijun Suzuki and Tai Kato were expelled from the studios and silenced for many years. In the end, ATG turned to a policy of making youth films, seeking to develop a new audience. Masao Adachi had disappeared from view, leaving Japan to engage in the struggle on behalf of Palestinian refugees.

(Sain, 1963)

Let's return on the 1960's to consider the state of Japanese Cinema when ATG started producing films. The Japanese cinema achieved its largest audience in 1958, and in 1960 produced 547 films. As the saying went, film was the king of mass entertainment. The six major companies produced two program pictures every week. Nikkatsu specialized in Japanese-style westerns and action films. Toho made period films and monster movies. At Shochiku it was melodramas of the lower middle class. Toei focused on period films, while Daiei featured their actresses in melodramas.
Finally, Shin-Toho specialized in ghost films and historical spectaculars. Each company had its own peculiar individuality but all of them were devoted to commercial entertainment film. There was little interest in leaving a legacy of film as an art. Of course, it's also true that the period films of Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi, filled with samurai and geisha, were lauded at Western film festivals. But those films were exceptional: the "local" films that formed the greater part of Japanese cinema were made in a studio system in which the star abd the script were already decided, and the director was simply an artisan who turned the script into images. Directors were low in the hierarchy, for example, at Shochiku, they could do nothing when films were cut for broadcasr or pulled for political reasons.
ATG's film production was born in reaction to that situation, out of a desire to bring a high artistic quality to Japanese cinema. A close historical analysis of ATG films, starting with Nagisa Oshima's Koshikei in 1968, would reveal any number of variations but in broad outline the films of this period can be characterized in the following way: ATG was opposed to commercial entertainment cinema, so it gave directors who fled the big studios a chance to make their own films. From the end of the 1950's, talented young directors debuted at the Shochiku studio. Nagisa Oshima with Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan, 1960), Yoshishige Yoshida with Rokudenashi (Good-for-nothing, 1960), and Masahiro Shinoda with Kawaita mizuumi (Dry Lake, 1960) each in their own way of absolutely rejected the established melodramatic mode of Shochiku films. They were called the Shochiku Nouvelle Vague but they hated the oppressive structure of the conservative studio and turned toward independent production. ATG played an extremely important role in that process.
If ATG had not existed, perhaps we would have remembered Yoshida only as a director of delicate melodramas, not as an auteur who experimented with ways of representing historical over-determination in Erosu Purasu Gyakusatsu (Eros Plus Massacre, 1969) and Kaigenrei (Coup D'État, 1973). Also, Oshima might have had to spend the rest of the 60's in unproductive silence. Between 1968 and 1972 Oshima made five important films, all of which were co-producted by ATG and his own company Sozosha. In Shinoda's varied filmography too, the films made with ATG - Shinju Ten no Amijima (Double Suicide, 1969) and Himiko (1974) - brim with avant-garde techniques and a critical perspective on received ideas about Japanese history and tradition. That would surprise people who know Shinoda only through the nostalgia and retro-stylings of his post-1980's films, in which he seemed to have turned into a mediocre "people's director".
It is significant to the history of Japanese cinema that all of the films mentioned here originated in passionate interchanges between the directors and ATG producer Kuzui Kinshiro. It was normal procedure for the director to bring the proposal to ATG, where it would be assessed rigorously in a single production meeting. After that single meeting, if the project was approved, ATG would make no further intervention. The completed film was the director's alone. At last, through this unrestricted system, films worth being called auteur cinema were produced in Japan.

(Sho o Suteyo Machi e Deyou, 1971)

ATG did not concern themselves with the pedigree of the directors they employed. Whether they came from documentary, 8mm or 16mm amateur film, or from television, not to mention avant-garde theater and comic books, ATG invited people with a talent for experiment and gave them a chance to direct their first feature film. There was a strong sense of breaking with the established form of studio films and testing the boundaries of the medium, creating genres that had not yet been categorized.
For example Toshio Matsumoto (Bara no Soretsu), Kazuo Kuroki (Nihon no Akuryo/ Evil Spirits of Japan, 1970) and Yoichi Higashi (Sado/ A Boy Called Third Base, 1978) had backgrounds in documentary film. Bara no Soretsu, which could be called Japan's first gay film, skillfully juxtaposes interviews in Shinjuku gay bars with dramatic sequences adapted from Sophoclean tragedy, and films everything with an Artaudian cruelty. In Nihon to Akuryo, yakuza get caught up in a serious story accusing the communist party of betrayal. The film becomes a humorous yet critical commentary on the then-prominent yakuza genre in Japanese cinema.
Akio Jissoji is one example of a director who came from television. In Jissoji's debut directorial effort Mujo (This Transient Life, 1970) a brother and a sister in a traditional Japanese house in the suburbs of Kyoto put on No masks and indulge in incest as a Bach partita plays on the soundtrack and the camera tracks with unbelievable fluidity. The allegory in this film is based on the Buddhism that is part of everyday folk custom but on the other hand the youth and the priest are influenced by Pascal and Dostoyevsky and their conversations seem real. Jossji vividly expresses what was suppressed in the television system through the free-thinking sense of liberation in these scenes. Although Mujo was not strictly speaking an ATG production, after it became a major hit Jissoji was able to make three ATG productions from 1971 to 1974: Mandara (Mandala, 1971), Uta (Poem, 1972) and Asaki Yumenishi (The Life of a Court Lady, 1974). He is remembered as the first director to fasten onto Buddhism as an intellectual subject in Japanese cinema. He later directed the Ultraman series on television and became known as a monster movie director but even those films were scripted by Mamoru Sasaki, who had worked with Nagisa Oshima on films such as Koshikei and Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa.
The most important names to emerge from the field of amateur filmmaking were Masao Adachi and Masato Hara. When ATG opened its underground theater Sasori-za in 1967, the first film it showed was Adachi's Gingakei. Before that his film Sain (1963) was shown at the Shinjuku Bunka. This 16mm short film created an intense political allegory out of the female's protagonist congenitally sealed vagina and made Adachi a legend in the early 1960's world of student filmmaking. The screening marked a turning point after which ATG, quite apart from already recognized auteurs such as Oshima and Shinoda, committed itself to the aggressive distribution with his contemporaries Oshima and Wakamatsu, but in the mid-seventies he left to support the Palestinian liberation struggle as a fighter in the Japanese Red Army.
Masato Hara was only 17 in 1968 when he won the Grand Prix in the first Japanese amateur film contest. He went on to write Oshima's Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa with Mamoru Sasaki. The starting point for that film was that the Battle of Tokyo frequently instigated by the New Left in 1969 was a complete fiction. The plot concerns an amateur film that becomes a kind of last testament when it is entrusted to one youth by another who then dies. However, as the film proceeds it becomes clear that the protagonist is himself as enigmatic fiction. If this film is the most peculiar among Oshima's body of work, it's due to the participation of this high school student who had been influenced by Jonas Mekas and Godard.
From these various sources ATG scouted talent that had exceeded in some way the structures of the mainstream system. The most turbulent of them all was Shuji Terayama. In some ways, Terayama might be called a Japanese Pasolini or Fassbinder. He was, simultaneously, a poet writting in a traditional form, a horse racing commentator, and a director of the most scandalous plays of the 1960's. He was a dangerous agitator who advocated incest and running away from home to young people. He also wrote a wholly unreliable autobiography. Terayama's many independent films take as their subject the most sybmolic actions, filmed with the most humorous sensibility. One film unspools in darkness as a hand searches for a light switch on a wall. At the moment the switch is thrown, the screen turns white and the film itself comes to an end. Another film consists of an extended take of a human figure in the background running towards the camera. At the moment the figure attains life size, we realize that the figure was projected on a screen within the screen we are watching, when that paper screen suddenly tears and from behind it a real person bursts forth who is dressed just like the runner.
ATG, which often produced Terayama's plays, also produced two of Terayama's films Sho o Suteyo Machi e Deyo (Throw Away your Books, Let's Go Into the Streets, 1971) and Den'en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country, 1974). The former film is a montage of fragments that thoroughly provokes the audience in the theater and shows the spontaneous imaginitive power of Terayama, who was called the charismatic leader of youth at the end of the 1960's. The latter film is based on his fascination with falsehood and his ambivalence about his mother.
It is important to remember that one reason ATG embarked on film production was that novelist Yukio Mishima's 16mm independent film Yukoku was a big hit when it was screened at the Shinjuku Bunka. ATG was often a hotbed of politically radical artists but we shouldn't forget that Yukoku was the model for the scale of films that ATG decided to produce. Although the budget for a typical commercial film was 40 to 50 million yen, ATG could only afford to put up 10 million. Sets tended to be abstract, closed-off rooms, and films were focused to focus on the conflict between a small number of characters over a short period of time. Films from Koshikei to Shura (Pandemonium, 1971) followed this format, modeled on Mishima's film, in which the only two characters commit ritual suicide after making love.

(Kaidan: Ikiteiru Koheiji, 1982)

Although you could see clouds on the horizon, the Japanese film industry was still at its peak, boasting of a healthy number of productions, when ATG started distributing and exhibiting films in 1962. By 1971, soon after ATG turned to film production, the production arms of the big film companies with their massive studios were all in serious trouble. Nikkatsu abandoned its staple action film genres and turned to sex comedies. Daiei went bankrupt and Toho only managed to survive by splitting off its production division.
The collapse of the five-company system gave a big boost to independent production. The most prestigious Daiei directors such as Yasuzo Masumura and Kon Ichikawa made films at ATG in the second half of the 1970's. Of the nine films screened at the Shinjuku Bunka theater in 1962, seven were famous foreign films and only two - one being Hiroshi Teshigahara's Otoshiana (The Pitfall, 1962) - were independent Japanese productions. However, if we look at the screening list for 1972, only three of the eleven films were foreign and the remaining eight were ATG or independent productions. In this way the founding principle of ATG - to create a series of artistic films - was superbly realized.
However, in the larger scheme of things even though ATG was improving the technique of Japanese Cinema it couldn't shore up the subsiding foundations of the Japanese film world as whole. By the end of 1972 ATG carried an accumulated debt of 20 million yen. Unlike the big studios, ATG had no assets so if the current film was not a hit it was not able to provide the capital for the next one. Also, with the rise in prices the policy of producing each film for the unbelievably low budget of ten million yen became increasingly difficult. Inside ATG, too, conservative voices were growing stronger, as did the sense that it was safer to entrust films to veteran directors rather than to unproven newcomers.
We can see many points of rupture in Japanese culture and society that occured around 1972. That year saw the Japanese Red Army beating members to death and shooting it out with the police at the Asama mountain lodge. The New Left movement in Japan lost sight of its objective and turned to murderous internecine battles or to terrorist bombings. The utopian ideal of linking art with politics in a vanguard movement was abandoned and the mores of the young people who gathered in Shinjuku changed completely. They lost the excitment of being part of a crowd, falling into cynicism and nihilism, and were swallowed up by the prevalling culture of mass consumption. High rise buildings rose over West Shinjuku. Soon it was no big deal to travel abroad. People's lives became so comfortable that it surprised even themselves. Nursing a single cup of coffee while debating philosophy or hard to understand films became old-fashioned. Almost overnight the arts tended to take on the character of commodities to be consumed. As if to symbolize that state of affairs, Nagisa Oshima disolved his Sozosha production company.
ATG's economic difficulties became more and more clear. One by one it was forced to dispose of its ten cinemas around the country. At the end of 1974, Shuji Terayama's Den'en ni shisu marked the last experimental work produced under ATG's long-standing policy of supporting experimental art. However, it was no longer possible to roadshow the film at ATG's Shinjuku Bunka for a long period. In order for the cinema to make a profit the film was limited to a short run and replaced with the ultra-popular French film Emmanuelle. The anecdote gives a symbolic indication of the breakdown of the ATG cinema's previous reserve. It also provoked ATG's regular producer since 1968, Kuzui Kinshiro, to leave in despair. He was preparing an adaptation by Yoshishige Yoshida of Kenzaburo Oe masterpiece Man'en Gannen no futtoboru (The Silent Cry), but the project never came to fruition. The president of ATG was less interested in Oe's difficult style than in adapting the mystery writers who were so popular at the time. The successful adaptation of Honjin Satsujin Jiken (Murder in Honjin Manor House, 1975) served as the nail in the coffin of ATG's avant-garde production policy.
Shosuke Taiga, who replaced Kuzui as the main producer at ATG, had been a scriptwritter at Shochiku. He got steady results by employing veterns such as Koichi Saito and Kazuo Kuroki but he also scouted the totally inexperienced Kazuo Hasegawa to direct Seishun no Satsujinsha (The Young Murderer, 1976), based on Kenji Nakagami's short story. With the exception of Nikkatsu, the studio system that had regularly produced new directors had come to an end by the 1970's. After being presented by ATG as a promising new director, much was expected of Hasegawa. Naturally, he disappeared from view after making only one more film.
Shiro Sasaki tried to change the reputation of the ATG production wing more boldly when he became president in 1979. He shunned all the established directors, actively searching for the completely unkown young filmmakers to entrust with a film project. He rapidly discovered talented filmmakers from the worlds of porn films, student films, and Nikkatsu program pictures. This is how Kazuki Omori's, Kazuyuki Izutsu, Banmei Takahashi, Kichitaro Negishi, and Sogo Ishii came to work with ATG. On the other hand, Sasaki also helped Nobuo Nakagawa, known as an overlooked master of B-movies, to make his final film. Only three characters appear in Kaidan - Ikiteiru Koheiji (Mysterious Story: The Living Koheiji, 1982), yet it is still a bloodcurdling horror masterpiece.
As a producer, Sasaki's style was the complete opposite of Kazui's. Kuzui liked to produce profound and difficult films that contained all the contradictions and distortions of post-war Japan. The privileged themes of that cinema were taboo crimes and violence, anarchism and eroticism. Sasaki endeavored to produce simple and vigorous films that escaped the gravitational field of Japanese history and aimed for the free and easy sensibility of a youth audience attuned to the outside world. That difference corresponds perfectly to the shift of the mood of Japanese society between the 1960's and the 1980's. During the same period the Japanese film industry became more and more impoverished, in contrast to the increasingly thorough penetration of Japanese society by high level capitalism.
1972 marks a point at which something important was lost, something that could not easily be replaced but that people soon forgot they had lost in the first place. The next dividing point for Japanese cinema came in 1989 with the death of Emperor Hirohito and the debut of Takeshi Kitano and Shinya Tsukamoto. But let us leave that discussion for another time.

Help the Art Theatre Guild Podcast at VCinema!

2011-08-05T12:33:00.005+01:00

ATG Fans, We need you!

More informations here.

Notes #14 - On the Japanese New Wave

2011-07-26T13:24:00.006+01:00

(Erosu purasu Gyakusatsu, 1969)

By Chaos Rampant

Yasuzo Masumura brought New Wave to Japan, having probably been exposed to what was going on at the Left Bank while studying in Italy, and Oshima nourished the seed. From there it grew unexpected roots. In Europe it was about a simple rejection of old values, the old Europe of thinking and theater, and thinking in terms of it (a grand stage, subject/object duality, high purpose revealed by conflict).
In Japan the youthful energy tapped deeper though, into ancient soul. The rejection of traditional appearances, the peeling of all manner of charged ritual and rigorous formalism, strangely, perhaps inadvertently brought them to the essence of that old tradition. Asymmetry, deliberately broken balance, abstraction hinted at by imperfect forms, all these were discovered anew, with newfound immediacy.

Eigagogo is back on track!

2011-06-17T03:55:00.005+01:00

Greetings to Martin and his crew: Eigagogo has been revamped! Click on the image to start surfing!

Eulogy [Sanka]

2011-06-15T12:27:00.006+01:00

Download the Entire Issue

(All ATG Issues Here)

Lovers Corner #5 - Tripmaster's Ninja Funk & Gangster Ballads

2011-05-30T22:38:00.004+01:00

Tripmaster (see his blog), a kind and dedicate reader of our blog said:

As a huge fan of your blog, i thought i'd share a little something i put together recently...it's a 45 minute mix of various japanese cinema funk from various genres: yakuza, pinku, nikkatsu, toku, eleki, lounge, and more. i think you and your blog readers would enjoy it! it just so happens that the very first song on the mix is from a kinji fukasaku film, so i thought i'd share it with you here. please feel free to share it as you please! your feedback would be appreciated, thanks!!

Podcast #41: Tripmastermonk - Zencast Vol. 2 - Ninja Funk & Gangster Ballads by knocksteady

My feedback? It's a great listening! Thank you

Whispering of the Gods #14

2011-05-24T18:46:00.003+01:00

"I've made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don't make any distinctions between them - they're all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, "This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way." Films are films. If you don't understand that, then you start filming lies." - Kon Ichikawa

Lovers Corner #4 - Heroic Purgatory

2011-05-22T00:35:00.002+01:00

(Rengoku Eroica, 1970)

By Chaos Rampant

(great writer on World-Cinema)

Yoshida's films are luminous, ethereal creations, languid love affairs blown into abstract shape by memory and time. In the period when he studied/essayed the great Antonioni, he gave us films of simple, perhaps ponderous beauty. But with Eros+Massacre he finally unraveled. This is a companion piece to that labyrinth.
I can't imagine what it must've been to see this back in 1970 with fresh eyes, what possibilities of cinema it may have opened. Thirty years later I can see that some of the things Yoshida foresaw panned out, others didn't. But this film is a maddening enigma that stands the test of that time passed, meaning it's not simply a cultural artifact of New Wave and the time when the revolutionary spirit was believed to be a force of change, but an entire evolutionary phase of cinema, New Wave before and after.
If the movie works then as more than bold experiment, it's because these particular ephemeral struggles are abstracted, the lifetime they in turn inspire and disappoint is fragmented, past and future spinning out of original frameworks. What we get from this rearrangement is a snapshot of human beings caught into disparate planes of existence, wishing to see or connect or recognize meaning in what they do.
In a brilliant scene that takes place in the 80's, one of many flash forwards into future or imaginary time, the cast of characters is assembled in an open space to hold court. Unable to properly remember a key event, they turn to a figure perched in a high chair holding a film camera to arbitrate. This surrogate filmmaker allows them back in time.
We see how the two lovers met, we see where that love brought them. We get here a beautiful realization, that the man's greatest aspiration, who is a famous scientist, is to be a good husband to his wife. The camera looks back at Mariko Okada, standing a little back from her husband being interviewed, and we see her gracefully, stoically looking out a window. Yoshida's gentle tribute to the love of his life, his wife in real life.
We see an entire life, shared by these two people, be trapped in moral dilemmas and modern anxieties, thought to be important at the time, lifechanging, with hindsight though nothing but trivial. We see them struggle to remember or forget. Yoshida gives us here a bitter last goodbye to the spirit of '68, showing us how the romance with the social struggle grew sour. These ideas having led nowhere, our only chance for happiness is with our other half that completes us. The one romance that matters.
The film is the final moments of consciousness, memory looking back upon itself.

さらば箱舟 OST - J. A. Seazer

2011-04-28T16:48:00.002+01:00

Farewell to the Ark [Saraba Hakobune]
Directed by: Shuji Terayama
1984

Download