Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema 1138685526, 9781138685529

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Routledge Handbook of

Japanese Cinema

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema provides a timely and expansive overview of Jap­ anese cinema today, through cutting-edge scholarship that reflects the hybridity of approaches defining the field. The volume’s twenty-one chapters represent work by authors with diverse backgrounds and expertise, recasting traditional questions of authorship, genre, and industry in broad conceptual frameworks such as gender, media theory, archive studies, and neoliberalism. The volume is divided into four parts, each representing an emergent area of inquiry: • • • •

“Decentering Classical Cinema” “Questions of Industry” “Intermedia as an Approach” “The Object Life of Film”

This is the first anthology of Japanese cinema scholarship to span the temporal framework of 200 years, from the vibrant magic lantern culture of the nineteenth century, through to the forma­ tion of the film industry in the twentieth century, and culminating in cinema’s migration to gaming, surveillance video, and other new media platforms of the twenty-first century. This handbook will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Japanese studies, film studies, and cultural studies more broadly. Joanne Bernardi is Professor of Japanese/Film and Media, University of Rochester. Her back­ ground includes East Asian Studies, film preservation, filmmaking, and photography. She directs the Re- Envisioning Japan DH Project; publications include Japanese and silent cinema, film historiography, screenwriting, material culture, tourism, popular culture, and digital humanities. Shota T. Ogawa is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Nagoya University, Japan. With a background in Visual and Cultural Studies, his research interests include postcolonial hybridity in Japanese cinema, tourism and travel films in imperial Japan, and trans-cultural migration of passing narratives.

Routledge Handbook of

Japanese Cinema

Edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bernardi, Joanne, editor. | Ogawa, Shota T., editor.

Title: Routledge handbook of Japanese cinema / edited by Joanne Bernardi and

Shota T. Ogawa.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020012808 | ISBN 9781138685529 (hardback) |

ISBN 9781315534367 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781315534350 (epub) |

ISBN 9781315534343 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Japan–History.

Classification: LCC PN1993.5.J3 R68 2021 | DDC 791.430952–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012808

ISBN: 978-1-138-68552-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-53437-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgments Editors’ note

viii x xi xiii

Introduction

1

Part I

Decentering classical cinema: modernity, translation, and mobilization

7

1 Suspense and border crossing: Ozu Yasujirō’s crime melodrama Ryoko Misono (translated by Kimberlee Diane Sanders and Shota T. Ogawa)

13

2 Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap: identity crisis in Taniguchi Senkichi’s Akasen kichi (The Red Light Military Base, 1953) Hideyuki Nakamura (translated by Shota T. Ogawa and Bianca Briciu)

31

3 Home movies of the revolution: proletarian filmmaking and counter- mobilization in interwar Japan Diane Wei Lewis

51

4 When Marnie Was There: female friendship film and the genealogy of queer girls’ culture Yuka Kanno

68

5 Making sense of Nakai Masakazu’s film theory, “Kino Satz” Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano v

81

Contents

6 Geysers of another nature: the optical unconscious of the Japanese science film Anne McKnight

93

Part II

Questions of industry: critical studies of regulatory frameworks, creative labor, and distributive networks

109

7 Kaiju films as exportable content: reassessing the function of the Japanese Film Export Promotion Association Takeshi Tanikawa (translated by Caitlin Casiello and Joanne Bernardi)

113

8 “Fugitives” from the studio system: Ikebe Ryō, Sada Keiji, and the transition from cinema to television in the early 1960s Takafusa Hatori

128

9 Solo animation in Japan: empathy for the drawn body Paul Roquet

141

10 Media models of “amateur” film and manga Alexander Zahlten

153

Part III

Intermedia as an approach: tracing genealogies across disciplines and media

171

11 Utsushi-e: Japanese magic lantern performance as pre- cinematic projection practice Machiko Kusahara

177

12 “Inter- mediating” global modernity: benshi film narrators, multisensory performance, and fan culture Kyoko Omori

198

13 Between silence and sound: the liminal space of the Japanese “sound version” Johan Nordström

213

14 Marionettes no longer: politics in the early puppet animation of Kawamoto 231 Kihachirō Noboru Tomonari

vi

Contents

15 Rhetorics of autonomy and mobility in Japanese “AAA” games: the Metal

Gear Solid and Resident Evil series within a global media context 247

Daniel Johnson

16 Pointing through the screen: archiving, surveillance, and atomization in the

wake of Japan’s 2011 triple disasters 263

Joel Neville Anderson Part IV

The object life of film: site-specific approaches to Japanese cinema studies

279

17 A historical survey of film archiving in Japan Kae Ishihara

285

18 Japanese film history and the challenges of IMAGICA WEST Corp. Kanta Shibata (translated by Thomas Kabara and Isabella Bilodeau)

301

19 A case study of Japanese film exhibition in North America: the Japan

Society, New York Kyoko Hirano

314

20 Regional film archive in transit: Yasui Yoshio and Kobe Planet Film

Archive Shota T. Ogawa

331

21 New paths toward preserving Japanese cinema: the Toy Film Museum

backstory Joanne Bernardi

346

Contributors Index

367

371

vii

figuRes

1.1 A vagrant roosting at a building in the business district. Stills from That Night’s Wife 2.1 “Branding on our beautiful country.” Frontispiece of Kichi Nihon 9.1 The nurse prepares to administer an injection while the patient looks away. Still from Airy Me 11.1 Furo with oil lamp and a set of tane-ita from the Meiji era in Machiko Kusahara’s collection 11.2 Four tane-ita from Kanjinchō showing twenty of the different possible poses for Benkei. The character could be animated non- stop by combining these poses with multiple modes of moving the image. Original slides from c.1900 now kept by Minwa- za 12.1 A screen shot of the working model for the home page of the “Benshi: Silent Film Narrators in Japan” digital archive 13.1 Production of sound versions, talkies, and silent films, 1930–1939. Data sourced from the “Nihon eiga seisaku tōkei” statistics published in Kinema junpō annually on April 1, 1931–1940 13.2 Production of Jidaigeki vs. Gendaigeki, 1931–1941. Data compiled by cross- referencing information from the Japanese Movie Database, the Nihon eiga jōhō shisutemu, and Kinema junpō bessatsu: Nihon eiga seisaku daikan. Titles that could not be confirmed because of conflicting information were omitted from the data (1935: 8, 1936: 6, 1938: 27, 1940: 4) 13.3 Production of sound version films with and without Benshi Narration, 1931–1941. Data compiled by cross- referencing information from the Japanese Movie Database, the Nihon eiga jōhō shisutemu, and the Kinema junpō bessatsu: Nihon eiga seisaku daikan. Titles that could not be confirmed because of conflicting information were omitted from the data (1935: 8, 1936: 6, 1938: 27, 1940: 4) 14.1 From left to right: the samurai, the servant, and the young monk in The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden

viii

17 45 149 190

191 207

217

221

222 241

Figures

15.1 A first- person view of the player character lying in bed in a Russian hospital. The symbol of a PlayStation controller is visible in the upper right corner, and acts as a cue for moments when the player can move the camera. The player can see the assassin killing a nurse behind the doctor, but is powerless to act, increasing the sensation of helplessness 15.2 The player character tries to crawl to safety, using a medical cart for leverage to stand. At this point in the game, the only input that will produce a response is pressing forward on the left analog stick, which will move the character forward along a fixed path 16.1 Photohoku snapshot from the second trip to Ishinomaki 16.2 The “finger- pointing worker” in the Tepco livestream 17.1 Imada Choichi at Ikueisha 19.1 Susan Sontag at the Japan Society, New York in 2003 20.1 Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma in Utsubo, West Ward, Osaka 21.1 A threaded King (Kingu) brand “Family [Moving] Picture Projector” (“Kingu katei shashinki”) and a stack of toy films from the Toy Film Museum Collection. King was one of the largest toy film companies 21.2 A sampling of the types of containers used to sell toy films on exhibit at the Toy Film Museum

ix

252

253 268 272 295 324 333

348 357

tables

7.1 Monster/SFX films shown in Japan (from April 1966 to December 1968) 7.2 Monster/SFX TV programs aired in Japan (from December 1965 to December 1968) 12.1 A chart comparing the narrative information provided by the original silent film of Dr. Caligari, the printed text by benshi Umemura Shisei (1921), and a transcription of benshi Fukuchi Gorō’s live setsumei from 1955

x

118 119

209

aCknowledgments

Previous publication Chapter 1 is an English translation of part of Ryoko Misono, “Sasupensu to ekkyō: Ozu Yasujirō no ‘hanzai merodorama’ eiga,” in Eiga to kokumin kokka: 1930 nendai Shōchiku merodorama eiga (Cinema and the Nation State: 1930s Shochiku Melodrama) (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2015), 39–69. Chapter 2 is an English translation of Hideyuki Nakamura, “Fujisan to Rēninbō o koete: Taniguchi Senkichi no ‘Akasen kichi’ (1953) ni okeru dōitsusei no kiki,” in Haisha no miburi: Posuto-senryōki no Nihon eiga (Gestures of the Vanquished: Post-Occupation Japanese Cinema) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014), 87–118. Chapter 7 is an English translation of an updated version of Takeshi Tanikawa, “Nihon eiga yushutsu shinkō kyōkai to yushutsu muke kon­ tentsu: Seifu shikin katsuyō ni yoru kaijū eiga seisaku to sono tenmatsu,” in Sengo eiga no sangyō kūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Industrial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition), edited by Takeshi Tanikawa (Tokyo: Shinwa- sha, 2016), 45–83. An earlier version of Chapter 8 was published in Japanese in Takafusa Hatori, “Eiga/terebi ikōki no eiga sutā ni miru datsu sutajio shisutemu- teki kyōtō,” Engeki kenkyū 37 (March 2014): 83–96.

Funding, illustrations, research assistance The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema’s cover image, which so clearly captures the sense of excitement and brisk business at a theater box office window in Tokyo’s Asakusa entertainment district circa 1930, appears here courtesy of George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. It is taken from Japan as Seen from a Rickshaw, a 16 mm amateur travel film in the museum’s col­ lection that was shot by an anonymous member of the Amateur Cinema League. The editors thank Peter Bagrov, Curator in charge of the museum’s Moving Image Department, and Sophia Lorent, Curatorial Assistant, for their generous help in reproducing the image. Joanne Bernardi would like to thank Jared Case and former Moving Image Department Senior Curators Paolo Cherchi Usai and Patrick Loughney for their kind assistance in accessing the collection, which made it possible for the film to come to light. The editors would also like to thank the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Rochester for funding that made it possible to provide trans­ lations of Chapters 1, 2, and 7, and the School of Humanities, Nagoya University for funding the translation of Chapter 18. Research and writing for Chapter 3 (Diane Wei Lewis) was made xi

Acknowledgments

possible by a Faculty Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis, and the author thanks workshop participants, especially Jonathan Fenderson and Lori Watt, for their generous feedback on an early draft; research for Chapter 5 (Mitsuyo Wada- Marciano) was first presented at the History of Japanese Philosophy Forum, Kyoto University and the author thanks Prof. Mayuko Uehara and Masaru Yoneyama for their generous com­ ments, and Phillip Kaffen for sharing his previous scholarship on Nakai Masakazu; the research on which Chapter 6 (Anne McKnight) is based was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18H00659, and the author is grateful for the generous assistance of Noriko Morisue, Okada Hidenori, Paul Roquet, and the National Film Archive of Japan librarians; the research on which Chapter 8 (Takafusa Hatori) is based was supported by a Joint Usage/Research Center (Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts) Grant from the Ministry of Educa­ tion, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, and the author is grateful for the generous assistance of the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University and Ms. Ikebe Yoshiko; the research on which Chapter 13 (Johan Nordström) is based was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17K13372; the illustration for Chapter 14 (Noboru Tomon­ ari) is reproduced courtesy of Kawamoto Productions; the illustration for Chapter 16 (Joel Neville Anderson) appears courtesy of Yuko Yoshikawa, Photohoku; the author of Chapter 17 (Kae Ishihara) thanks Amano Sonoko, Iain Lambert, Kuroda Yuka, Okajima Hisashi, Saiki Tomonori, and Ushihara Haruhiko for their kind assistance; the illustration for Chapter 19 (Kyoko Hirano) is reproduced courtesy of Rie Kusama and Japan Society, NY; part of the research informing Chapter 20 (Shota T. Ogawa) was supported by a Faculty Research Grant, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and part of the research on which Chapter 21 (Joanne Bernardi) is based was made possible by a University of Rochester Researcher Mobility Grant.

xii

editoRs’ note

Japanese names are given consistently in Japanese order (family name first) except for contrib­ utors to this volume, individuals who have predominantly published in English using Western name order, and any other specified exceptions. Macrons (diacritical marks) are used for Jap­ anese romanization except for the following exceptions that are typically rendered in English without them: Anglicized words (e.g., kaiju, kimono); principal cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, except when they appear as part of a longer Japanese language reference (as in citing the title of a book published in Japanese); names with long- established precedents for Anglicized variants or romanized renderings; and the names of major film studios (e.g., Shochiku, Toho, Shintoho, Toei), which are commonly rendered without macrons in English- language publica­ tions. We generally follow a variant of Hepburn- style romanization, the most common form in use today that follows English phonology and uses hyphens sparingly. We make exceptions for cited material, which we reproduce intact. Japanese words (e.g., specific terminology) used in English sentences are italicized the first time they appear in each chapter unless they have entered the English language, but not thereafter in order to keep the use of italics to a minimum. Titles of Japanese films are referred to by their original title the first time they are mentioned, and by their English title (or translated English title) thereafter. We prioritize generally accepted and commonly used English language titles for Japanese films rather than devise new trans­ lations. In rare cases, individual authors have not provided translations for titles of Japanese films that are believed to be lost.

xiii

IntroductIon

The study of Japanese cinema has long played a vital role in the academic discipline of film studies as a major non-Western tradition and a paradigmatic national cinema. Needless to say, from the outset, discursive attempts to define Japanese cinema have been shaped by the circulation of films as material objects. Widely circulated in 16 mm prints across campuses, film circles, and art houses around the world from the 1960s throughout the 1970s, post-war feature films by canonical directors like Ozu Yasujirō, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Kurosawa Akira contributed to the development and emerging profile of film studies in higher education. Even after the advent of VHS consumer formats in the 1980s, such titles dominated teaching and scholarship grounded in auteur criticism, national cinema, and world cinema. Over the past two decades, however, DVDs of previously inaccessible films, enhanced marketing of canonical films, streaming access, and innovative film festival programming have created new audiences for Japanese cinema, and new directions for teaching and research. At the same time, the broader field of cinema studies has experienced a sea change in response to an increase in venues for archival research, shifting geopolitics, the emergence of a multidisciplinary research community across several continents, and the proliferation of new media formats and means of access brought about by digital technology.1 Correspondingly, the discovery, preservation, and research of films produced and exhibited in colonial Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan—an outcome of increased contacts across East Asia in the post-Cold War era—have exposed the blind spot in discussing Japanese cinema within the strict confines of a national framework or along the East–West axis.2 The challenges of reframing Japanese cinema vis-à-vis the transnational dynamics of colonialism, trans-Pacific immigration, and globalization have, in turn, facilitated closer engagement by film researchers with the adjacent fields of modern history, cultural studies, media studies, and archive studies. The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema provides a timely and expansive overview of the dynamic field of Japanese cinema today through provocative, leading-edge scholarship that reflects the changing contours of the broader discipline. Capitalizing on the diversity of approaches that define cinema studies today allows us to provide a perspective of Japanese cinema scholarship that reflects the field’s contemporary breadth and depth. By expanding the body of scholarship that defines the field to, for example, considerations of the object life of film (e.g., the [non-]commercial circulation of film prints and their afterlife in the archives, the intermediality of complex media set-ups) and the longue durée history of moving images from precinema to post-cinema media, we aim to pry open handed-down frames of reference that have 1

Introduction

fueled the national cinema paradigm (canon, classics, auteur, genre). This facilitates further possibilities for growth. Whereas it once sufficed solely to think of films in the abstract as titles, we now negotiate complex issues of provenance, acknowledging film prints as organic, mutable objects traveling through time and across space, from hand to hand or collection to collection, from one cultural context to another, from analog to digital. It was once common practice in English language discourse on Japanese cinema to predictably begin with standard disclaimers: abysmal survival rates, a dearth of subtitled prints or translated sources, obstacles to accessing archival material, or references to the field’s marginalization (both in cinema studies and area studies).3 To some extent such problems persist, but in the transdisciplinary and transnational context of cinema studies today, and at a time when ever more thorough archival research is uncovering diverse, hitherto neglected film cultures, they are no longer unique to the study of Japanese cinema.4 They no longer warrant the attention (and constant reiteration) that they commanded in the past, even if some challenges (e.g., access, translation) are being addressed more effectively than others (the discipline’s institutional marginalization). With its expanded corpus, well-informed audiences, and an increased diversity in scholarship and critical attention, Japanese cinema is no longer a “niche” subject. As evidence of Japanese cinema’s maturation as a field, there is a steady accumulation of academic handbooks (single-volume anthologies) dedicated to the study of Japanese cinema, not to mention the much larger and denser body of research available as monographs, subject-specific anthologies, and journal articles. Reflecting on these existing handbooks allows us to trace the shifting forms in which, over time, editors have sought to define the parameters of a field that is inherently dynamic, transnational, and interdisciplinary. Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History (1992), by Arthur Nolletti and David Desser, was the earliest of the English language anthologies. For Nolletti and Desser, the anthology format’s ability to contain multiple perspectives was a critical factor that differentiated the book from Donald Richie and Joseph L. Anderson’s The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (1959) and Noël Burch’s To the Distant Observer (1979), two seminal monographs that offered coherent analytical frameworks—humanist auteurism and Marxist structuralism respectively—through which Japanese cinema could be studied (Nolletti and Desser 1992: xv).5 As in all subsequent anthologies, English translations were a key part of Nolletti and Desser’s pluralist approach; the translations of works by Iwamoto Kenji, Komatsu Hiroshi, and Max Tessier made accessible in their volume remain invaluable sources. After a hiatus of fifteen years, during which the range of Japanese films circulating outside Japan drastically increased and world cinema courses gained traction in film studies programs, Phillips and Stringer’s Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts (2007) updated the handbook genre to include chapters on anime as well as a host of post-studio era auteurs such as Itami Jūzō, Kitano Takeshi, and Kore-eda Hirokazu. Departing from a dichotomous understanding of Japanese cinema as a Western discourse on a non-Western culture, Phillips and Stringer reframed the field in the polycentric dynamics of world cinema (albeit without using this term), as is most evident in the one-film-per-chapter structure they adopted from handbooks of both French and Chinese cinema. Miyao Daisuke’s The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema (2014) more explicitly tests the limits of Japanese cinema, notably by tracing the genealogies of intermedia practices and expanding scholarship on benshi (narrator or lecturer of silent film) to the colonial territories. Maturation of the field is also evident from the gradual increase of field guides, encyclopedias, and reference books. Publications such as the Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies (Nornes and Gerow 2008), the Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors (Jacoby 2008), and the Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema (Sharp 2011) help make the field accessible not only to those in 2

Introduction

higher education, but also to critics, programmers, and librarians. These practical guidebooks seek to standardize the whole range of practices involved in studying Japanese cinema, from locating relevant materials in libraries and archives to citing proper nouns in the established format. Regardless of the format of all these publications, the genre of handbooks is always torn between the impulse to standardize disciplinary norms and the counter-impulse to facilitate future changes by inducing new members to the field.

The logic of the book Our edited volume continues the dual efforts of further expanding the parameters of Japanese cinema while clarifying its position within the broader disciplinary environment. This is a good place to briefly consider this contradictory set of objectives as an integral feature of “handbooks” as a genre of publication in modern academia. Using the publication of Springer’s 78-volume Handbuch der Physik (Handbook of Physics) as a case study, Historian of science Alrun Schmidtke reminds us of the dilemma that handbook editors typically encounter. Launched in 1955 and completed only in 1988, this monumental handbook series put the editors in a difficult position; they had to reconcile the gap between the almost classical aspiration of the series to be the standard book neatly organizing all the key fields of modern physics and the reality of a dynamic discipline that favored journal publication as the more adaptable platform (Schmidtke 2018). In other words, handbooks contain a built-in anxiety arising from the inevitability of obsolescence and the unattainability of a comprehensive survey. We have therefore edited this book keeping in mind the contradictions inherent in the genre of academic handbooks. Turning the anxieties of fast-paced changes in the field on its head, we designed our book as a survey of current research organized around four parts focused on different critical challenges. Part I, “Decentering Classical Cinema: Modernity, Translation, and Mobilization,” engages with the challenge of decentering the dominant discourse of modernity that has typically treated classical Hollywood cinema as the model idiom to be replicated elsewhere. Part II, “Questions of Industry: Critical Studies of Regulatory Frameworks, Creative Labor, and Distributive Networks,” showcases chapters that engage with two interrelated questions: starting in the 1950s, what kind of industrial formations emerged from the ruins of the studio system and how did media practices register, assimilate, and respond to the broader shifts in labor norms and economic conditions? Authors featured in Part III, “Intermedia as an Approach: Tracing Genealogies across Disciplines and Media,” share an investment in probing the dynamics, meaning, function, and generative potential of cinema’s interrelationships and interconnectivity with other media such as the magic lantern (and the related Japanese entertainment, utsushi-e and gentō), gaming, photography, puppet theater, and sound recording. Finally, Part IV, “The Object Life of Film: Site-Specific Approaches to Japanese Cinema Studies,” provides a fresh perspective on how Japanese cinema’s past (and the future of that past) is shaped by the attributes of analog film: its materiality as organic matter with a finite life cycle; its symbiotic relationship with technology (throughout the production, exhibition, and preservation continuum); and the collective experience of film projection in theatrical or domestic settings. The notion of a classical canon by definition assumes the everlasting relevance of works by celebrated auteurs but this is contingent upon their physical durability in the long term. Therefore, Part IV, “The Object Life of Film,” also returns us to the project of decentering the discourse of classical cinema central to Part I. Moreover, underscoring the volatility of cinema’s material basis also resonates with this handbook’s overall objective to present cutting-edge research on Japanese cinema while projecting possible future directions for a field that is perpetually in flux. 3

Introduction

Each of the four parts is prefaced by a brief introduction with chapter summaries that contextualize their relevance to the part’s objective. Rather than reiterate this information here, we chose to use this space to share our reflections on the process of editing this book. We made it a priority to identify and showcase emergent areas of inquiry and critical discourse because of our interest in looking ahead to possible futures for our discipline. We give equal voice to wellestablished as well as younger authors with diverse backgrounds, interests, and areas of professional expertise. Obviously, our field has been shaped by the labor of archivists, museum curators, festival programmers, and collectors as well as researchers. Recent anthologies, beginning with Miyao’s The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema (2014), have signaled a shift by expanding the parameters of scholarship beyond academics to include archivists and scholars with a background in film festival programming. In the planning stages, we also decided to spotlight the work of archivists and programmers. This is reflected in Part IV’s emphasis on film as material culture. For example, Kyoko Hirano’s account of her tenure as film curator at New York’s Japan Society (est. 1907) from 1986 to 2004 offers unique insight into understanding the organic ways in which film programming preconditions not only which films receive international exposure, but also how the concept of Japanese cinema becomes fixed in the collective consciousness of the intellectual milieu of a specific locality. This part also features the work of Kae Ishihara and Kanta Shibata, whose contributions are similarly informed by their experiences as film archivist and film laboratory technician respectively. It also bears mentioning that our long association with the city of Rochester—a location central to the origins of the physical material from which cinema emerged—was another critical factor in determining Part IV’s emphasis on materiality, archive work, and film preservation. As a current instructor and former student, respectively, at the University of Rochester, our proximity to George Eastman Museum, and most importantly, the opportunity to work alongside our colleagues in the Museum’s Moving Image Department, has been an important influence on our research and teaching. In essence, our book proposes to embrace the hybridity that we understand to be at the heart of Japanese cinema: disciplinary hybridity, media hybridity, and hybridity of language and culture. All the contributions to this handbook were written specifically for this volume with the key exceptions of the following chapters: Ryoko Misono’s revelatory study of 1930s Ozu (Chapter 1); Hideyuki Nakamura’s recuperative work on the study of post-Allied occupation cinema (Chapter 2); and Takeshi Tanikawa’s analysis of the important but previously overlooked campaign to subsidize the exportation of kaiju films (Chapter 7). We included English translations of the work of these important scholars based in Japan in order to reflect the complex web of different languages and cultures that inform our field. In this way, we are also able to introduce field-defining monographs in Japan albeit in abbreviated form. We envision our inclusion of these translated texts as a generative act. They will, of course, generate new readings of the corpus of films that they address. Beyond that, however, we encourage readers to think of them as an entry point to the interstitial sphere of translation that many of us working in Japanese cinema inhabit.

Notes 1 For increased venues for archival research, see Nornes and Gerow 2009, as well as Part IV of this volume. Digital technology’s impact is notably palpable in the increasing range of moving images that film archives have been making accessible online. Examples include the National Film Archive of Japan’s curated exhibitions of early Japanese animation (2017) and Meiji era films (2019); Korean Film Archive’s extensive YouTube channel with over 100 titles including some colonial-era Japan–Korea co-productions; and the Huntley Film Archives’ curated exhibitions. Joanne Bernardi’s open-ended

4

Introduction

2

3

4

5

multimedia digital humanities project, Re-Envisioning Japan (Bernardi 2017, First WordPress iteration from 2013 to 2016) features timelines that allow access to recuperated and digitized small-gauge 16 mm, Regular 8 mm and Super 8 mm films about or related to Japan, including amateur travel films, educational films, promotional tourism and Japanese government agency films, newsreel footage, television commercial out-takes, stock footage, home movies, and films commercially marketed for home entertainment. The project allows users to view such images in the context of other contemporaneous ephemeral objects (primarily tourism or educational material) in the Re-Envisioning Japan physical collection. From 2004 to 2006, archivists from the Korean Film Archive identified eight colonial-era Korean films at China Film Archive, which opened a new era for Korean film scholarship since they made colonialera films viewable for film scholars for the first time. These films are part of Korea’s film heritage, but the fact that many of the filmmakers trained in Japan is yet further proof of the arbitrary nature of the national cinema paradigm. Also, in the 2000s, ten colonial-era Korean and Taiwanese film titles were identified at the private Kobe Planet Film Archive in Japan, which were subsequently preserved and repatriated to the Taiwan Film Institute and the Korean Film Archive (for further reference, see Shota T. Ogawa’s Chapter 20 in this volume). For an example of the narrative of low-survival rates of Japanese film, see Russell 2011. For more on the narrative of Japanese cinema scholarship’s marginalization within film studies and area studies, see Nornes and Gerow 2009; Miyao 2014. For a nuanced summary of both the marginalization narrative and evidence that the situation is improving, see Raine 2019. It is worth noting that there have been ways to work around Japanese cinema’s low survival rate for the silent period, in particular. In English language scholarship, this is evidenced by the work of Joanne Bernardi (2001) and Aaron Gerow (2010), who focused on screenwriting and film theory respectively by combing through print materials (scripts, film magazines, journals, criticism, etc.). There are also well-known, systematic efforts to excavate film-historical print materials in Japan in the form of reprint series known as fukkokuban. Nolletti and Desser’s anthology was by no means the first to challenge Richie and Anderson’s artversus-industry schema and Burch’s rigid dialectic model in favor of a more nuanced and multifaceted approach. For example, Joan Mellen’s and Audie Bocks’ studies introduced considerations of gender to their auteurist analyses of important Japanese directors, who had at least some work in circulation in the form of English-language subtitled prints at the time these books were first published (Mellen 1975, 1976; Bock 1978); also see Phillips and Stringer 2007: 11.

Works cited Bernardi, J. 2001. Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Bernardi, J. 2017. Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Digital Scholarship Lab, River Campus Libraries. First WordPress iteration (2013–2016); current Omeka site established 2017. Online at https://rej.lib.rochester. edu/ [accessed December 12, 2019]. Bock, A. 1978. Japanese Film Directors. New York: Kodansha International. Burch, N. 1979. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Gerow, A. 2010. Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895–1925. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Huntley Film Archives. 2019. Curated Collections. Online at www.huntleyarchives.com/aboutus.asp [accessed December 12, 2019]. Jacoby, A. 2008. Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. Korean Film Archive. 2019. Korean Classic Films. Online at www.youtube.com/user/KoreanFilm/about [accessed December 12, 2019]. Mellen, J. 1975. Voices from the Japanese Cinema. New York: Limelight. Mellen, J. 1976. The Waves at Genji’s Door: Japan through Its Cinema. New York: Pantheon. Miyao, D. (ed.) 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. National Film Archive of Japan. 2017. Japanese Animated Film Classics. Online at https://animation.filmarchives.jp/en/index.html [accessed December 12, 2019].

5

Introduction National Film Archive of Japan. 2019. Meiji Period on Film. Online at https://meiji.filmarchives.jp/index. html [accessed December 12, 2019]. Nolletti, A. and Desser, D. (eds) 1992. Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nornes, A.M. and Gerow, A. 2009. Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Phillips, A. and Stringer, J. (eds) 2007. Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. London: Routledge. Raine, M. 2019. “Introduction to the Special Section on New Approaches to Japanese Cinema.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 11(2): 101–102. Richie, D. and Anderson, J.L. 1959. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. New York: Grove Press. Russell, C. 2011. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited. London: Continuum. Schmidtke, A. 2018. “The Handbook as Genre: Conflicting Concepts in 1950s Physics Publishing.” History of Knowledge: Research, Resources, and Perspectives. Online at https://historyofknowledge. net/2018/05/31/the-handbook-as-genre/ [accessed December 12, 2019]. Sharp, J. 2011. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

6

Part I

Decentering classical cinema

Modernity, translation, and mobilization

The six chapters included in this part demonstrate the productivity of revisiting the extensively studied period from the 1930s to the 1960s, particularly for decentering the discourse of mod­ ernity that has typically treated Hollywood as the model idiom to be replicated elsewhere. In the past few decades, an increasing number of scholars have sought to reframe cinema as an integral part of urban modernity, drawing inspiration from the seminal observations made by Weimar cultural critics such as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. These ideas that per­ ceive a homology between the birth of cinema and urban modernity, or between film spectators and the urban flâneur, have since been labeled the modernity thesis. As Ben Singer concedes, in what is arguably the most rigorous defense of the modernity thesis, the claim that cinema and urban modernity brought about a new mode of perception characterized by shock, distraction, and mobility is ultimately speculative, unfocused, and unproveable, and yet demonstrably pro­ ductive and illuminating (Singer 2001: 10; Guha 2015: 8). In the context of Japanese cinema scholarship, the modernity thesis has been particularly useful both in dislocating the view that modernity emanates outward from the West and in denaturalizing the treatment of classical Japanese cinema—one of the world’s largest film industries, defined by a studio system, star system, and robust critical sphere—as a subset of Japanese culture (Russell 2011: xii–xiii, 3). By positioning cinema as a facet of modernity, that is to say, a phenomenon that ought to be studied alongside various adjacent dynamics, including the expansion of a white-collar middle class, the flourishing of consumer culture, women’s education, migration of labor, and capital-intensive urban development such as the reconstruction of Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kantō Earth­ quake, scholarship on the classical period since the 1990s has opened up new avenues for exam­ ining how cinema mediated the everyday experiences of modernity in interwar Japan (e.g., Iwamoto 1991; Wada-Marciano 2008; Yamamoto 2015; Joo 2018). As the following chapters show, reconsiderations in the rubric of modernity of Japanese cin­ ema’s classical period pose more questions than answers, especially regarding how best to imagine a transnational history of cinema. Consider Miriam Hansen’s seminal concept of vernacular modernism, which helps to disrupt the association between classical Hollywood cinema’s inter­ national popularity and the supposed “universal narrative form” it developed. Instead of con­ ceptualizing an unmarked modernist form, Hansen treats Hollywood as a vernacularized “modernist idiom” that recognized how modernity meant “different things to different people and publics, both at home and abroad” (Hansen 1999: 68). In one sense, the concept of 7

Decentering classical cinema

vernacular modernism encourages scholars to shift their emphasis from examining the USA as a model case to studying culturally heterogeneous milieus outside the West, such as Shanghai and Tokyo. As a number of critics have pointed out, however, it remains questionable whether Hansen’s model liberates us from the center–periphery model of understanding world cinema in the classical period, or if it even departs from what Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto has described as the theory–history dichotomy in which Hollywood’s “modernist idiom” (Hollywood cinema as the dominant mode) registers as a theoretical concern while the contexts of vernacular reception register as historical concerns (Yoshimoto 1991: 252; Hori 2018: 268–269). Before introducing each of the chapters in this part in some detail, it is useful to briefly summarize how they address the questions raised by and in response to Hansen’s vernacular modernism, and how they contribute to the broader decentering of film history beyond national paradigms. In the first two chapters by Ryoko Misono (Chapter 1) and Hideyuki Nakamura (Chapter 2), for instance, American modernity is interrogated as both a historically particular construct and a highly contradictory phenomenon. Its presentation as anything but a universal model thus turns Yoshimoto’s theory–history dilemma on its head. Misono persuasively demon­ strates that a close reading of Ozu Yasujirō’s That Night’s Wife (Sono yo no tsuma, 1930) requires an understanding not only of the codes for the Hollywood genres of the melodrama and gang­ ster film, but also the modern US history of immigration, racism, and puritanical morality informing these genres. Nakamura similarly positions American journalists in early 1950s Japan as historically conditioned film spectators whose outrage at Taniguchi Senkichi’s Akasen kichi (The Red Light Military Base, 1953) attests to both cinema’s international idiom and the culturally specific factors of the Hays Code (the Motion Picture Production Code enforced between 1934–1968) and McCarthyism. Other chapters more explicitly decenter Hollywood’s dominant position in the transnational historiography of classical cinema by articulating other kinds of international idioms. These include the idioms of the Weimar- to Nazi-era German kulturfilm (Chapter 6 by Anne McKnight); Soviet constructivism and Bolshevization (“popularization” or “massification”) (Chapter 3 by Diane Wei Lewis and Chapter 5 by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano); and queer desire lodged in the transnational-transmedial-translational space straddling Anglophone literature, UFA, and Hollywood (Chapter 4 by Yuka Kanno). Finally, the productivity of translation is a common thread running through the chapters, affirming Naoki Sakai’s observation that trans­ lation ought to be considered constitutive of the phenomenon of modernity that entails the meeting of many peoples, industries, and polities (cited in Russell 2011: 3). Ryoko Misono’s chapter, “Suspense and Border Crossing: Ozu Yasujirō’s Crime Melo­ drama,” invites us to attentively reread That Night’s Wife (1930), without separating the form­ alist discussions regarding Ozu’s assimilation of Hollywood’s idiom from the historical discussions of the various facets of modernity. The logic that is key to Misono’s intervention is encapsulated in the opening passage, which analyzes Ozu’s diary entry that poignantly describes a dream he had on a damp barracks cot in rural Mie Prefecture, where he was detained for mandatory military training. In truncated prose peppered with cinematic images and Hollywood refer­ ences, Ozu describes a virtual flânerie through Ginza’s high street, where he longs to return. The passage affirms the association, espoused by advocates of the modernity thesis, between film spectatorship and the distracted perception of the urban flâneur. Yet the passage also invokes the repressed other of urban flânerie: the large-scale movement of soldiers, workers, and the dispos­ sessed brought about by the imperialist factors instigating (and coeval with) the rise of the impe­ rial metropoles where the flâneurs roamed (Singer 2001: 101–129; Guha 2015: 8–9; Lurey and Massey 1999: 231). Lest we fail to appreciate this ambivalence, Misono calls our attention to another diary entry in which Ozu likens himself—a conscript of the Japanese imperial army—to 8

Decentering classical cinema

Tom Brown, the foreign legion character played by Gary Cooper in Joseph von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930). Far from constituting a universal idiom, Hollywood cinema provided Ozu with a framework for articulating the contradictory predicament of being simultaneously a Japanese national, an imperial subject, and a city-dweller who dreams in Hollywood’s vernacular. The dialectic between geopolitical tension and the transnational flow of cinematic images also figures prominently in Hideyuki Nakamura’s chapter, “Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin Cap: Identity Crisis in Taniguchi Senkichi’s Akasen kichi (The Red Light Military Base, 1953),” albeit in the context of the post-Occupation period that followed the San Francisco Peace Treaty that took effect in 1952. The goal of the chapter is, as Nakamura succinctly puts it, to rescue Taniguchi’s unsung masterpiece from oblivion. This rescue mission does not entail extricating aesthetic debate from the messy controversy that caused the Toho production studio to abruptly pull the film when it was blamed for sensationalizing the volatile issue of the presence of US bases in post-Occupation Japan. What Nakamura seeks to rescue are the intricate lines of communication spanning the nocturnal realm of cinema and the diurnal realm of discourse. Indeed, the chapter deftly moves from the discursive domain of the controversy, cross-examining contemporary reviews of the film in Japanese and English, to the startling observation that the American journalists’ strong opposition to the film was fueled not just by preformulated ideological positions, but also by their own inadvertent and irrepressible emotional identification with the protagonist’s anger across the ethno-nationalist divide. The remaining chapters explore a more polycentric model of transnational film history that is not exclusively centered on Hollywood or USA–Japan relations. In “Home Movies of the Revolution: Proletarian Filmmaking and Counter-Mobilization in Interwar Japan,” Diane Wei Lewis proposes a transnational cinematic imaginary cohering around international communism. If Hollywood inevitably takes center stage in film-historical discussions of the theatrically released narrative fiction that constitutes the “classics,” Lewis’s study of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (or Prokino, 1929–1934) suggests that when we shift our attention to nontheatrical film practices, an equally influential factor might be the Soviet-led initiative of Bolshevization (“massification”) that sought to increase direct contact between farmers, workers, and activists. In a telling example, Lewis discusses Prokino’s mobile screenings as a countermeasure against state- and capitalist-led cultural programs that were designed to implement their own mode of Bolshevization. Lewis’s readings of Prokino’s own publications suggest Bolshevization might be better understood as a trans-ideological facet of modernity rather than a directive issued by Moscow. Critical interest in the reconfiguration of modernity’s social relations also informs Yuka Kanno’s chapter, titled “When Marnie Was There: Female Friendship Film and the Genealogy of Queer Girls’ Culture.” Kanno investigates “girls culture” (shōjo bunka) and the technique of queer reading that it encourages, as a facet of modernity made possible by the emergence of allwomen schools for higher education (1899–) and magazines such as Shōjo sekai (Girls’ World, 1906–1931), Shōjo no tomo (Girls’ Friend, 1908–1955), Shōjo gahō (Girls’ Graphics, 1912–1942), and others. These publications targeted both the new female readership and the translational space that encompassed literature, revue, and cinema. As a particularly interesting example, Kanno cites the work of Yoshiya Nobuko, Japan’s first professional female writer and the pioneer of the “girls’ fiction” genre who was also an avid reader of translated English girls’ stories and supervised the Japanese translation for the 1933 Hollywood adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women that made Katharine Hepburn into a queer icon. Kanno’s elliptical genealogy of “girls’ culture” stretches from the 1910s to the present, but her study confirms the productivity of revisiting the “classical period,” notably, the thriving translational space of the 1930s when iconic images of Dietrich, Garbo, and Hepburn in “drag” circulated alongside images of 9

Decentering classical cinema

all-female Shochiku and Takarazuka revues, spurring lively discussions in the male homosocial milieu of film criticism as well as the reading public of girls’ culture. Translation also figures prominently in Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano’s chapter, “Making Sense of Nakai Masakazu’s Film Theory, ‘Kino Satz’.” As with Misono’s treatment of Ozu, which resists dichotomizing stylistic and historical analysis, Wada-Marciano examines Nakai Masaka­ zu’s writings on montage as both historical and theoretical matter. Her positioning of Nakai’s theory in the intellectual milieu of Kyoto, where translation held a special place as a creative process, is crucial to this dualistic approach. For example, Wada-Marciano discusses Hugo Münsterberg’s The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916), not only as a precursor to Nakai’s theoretical work (mass spectatorship was a vital part of both writers’ interests) but also in relation to Kyoto’s vibrant translational culture, to which Nakai belonged, and where philosopher Tani­ gawa Tetsuzō’s Japanese translation of Münsterberg (1924) circulated together with Tanigawa’s translations of Kant and Simmel. On the one hand, this chapter aims to clarify distinctions between Nakai’s concept, Kino Satz (cinematic language) and other montage theories proposed by his contemporaries (not least Dziga Vertov’s Kino Glaz [Cinematic Eye], which directly inspired Nakai’s term) as well as 1970s formalist debates. On the other hand, the chapter seeks to liberate Nakai’s writings on film from the narrow context of film theory. Contextualized as an integral part of Nakai’s work as an aesthetic theorist, his film theoretical writings and his amateur filmmaking begin to resemble a parallel project of Kyoto School philosophy, namely, a bold attempt to open aesthetics to the contingent dynamics of interwar Japan. The part closes with Anne McKnight’s “Geysers of Another Nature: The Optical Uncon­ scious of the Japanese Science Film.” McKnight offers a critical survey of the theorization and production of kagaku eiga (science film) in Japan from the late 1920s through the early 1970s that is attentive to the inherent contradiction in the scientific wonder that the genre sought to convey. That is, the genre’s celebration of modern science was tinged with vestiges of a pre­ modern, subjective, and curiosity-driven quest to visualize the unseen world (also see Gaycken 2015). Departing from previous scholarship that centers on films produced in conjunction with university laboratories, McKnight traces an alternative genealogy rooted in the milieu of popular education outside the school system. Harada Mitsuo, a self-educated impresario of popular science whose product line included commercial science magazines (e.g., Kagaku chishiki and Kagaku gahō), sponsored science films, and science experiment kits, is a central figure in McK­ night’s alternative genealogy. Echoing Kanno and Wada-Marciano’s observations on the pro­ ductive space of translation that flourished in 1930s Japan, McKnight’s discussion of UFA’s kulturfilm centers on the playful commentary provided by the famous benshi lecturer (or narrator) Tokugawa Musei (see also Chapter 12 by Kyoko Omori), which vernacularized the wonder of scientific observation. McKnight’s attention to verbal commentary allows her to critically examine wartime bunka eiga (culture films) and post-war industrial PR films to make a connec­ tion between technologically enhanced perception and the ideology of national empowerment and developmentalism. Ultimately, McKnight’s critical rereading of science film’s history in Japan offers a timely rejoinder to recent scholarship in Japan that investigates cinema’s complex relationship to changing industrial norms, a topic that will be fleshed out in Part II.

Works cited Gaycken, O. 2015. Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guha, M. 2015. From Empire to the World: Migrant London and Paris in Cinema. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Hansen, M.B. 1999. “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism.” Modernism/Modernity 6(2): 59–77.

10

Decentering classical cinema Hori, H. 2018. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926–1945. New York: Columbia University Press. Iwamoto, K. (ed.) 1991. Nihon eiga to modanizumu 1920–1930 (Japanese Cinema and Modernism 1920–1930). Tokyo: Libro. Joo, W. 2018. The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lurey, K and Massey, D. 1999. “Making Connections.” Screen 40(3): 229–238. Russell, C. 2011. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited. London: Continuum. Singer, B. 2001. Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press. Wada-Marciano, M. 2008. Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and the 1930s. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Yamamoto, N. 2015. “Eye of the Machine: Itagaki Takao and Debates on New Realism in 1920s Japan.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 56(2): 368–387. Yoshimoto, M. 1991. “The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Post­ colonial World Order.” Boundary 2 18(3): 242–257.

11

1

SuSpenSe anD BorDer

CroSSing

ozu Yasujirō’s crime melodrama

Ryoko Misono (translated by Kimberlee Diane Sanders and

Shota T. Ogawa)

On a shabby barracks cot, Ozu Yasujirō is dreaming. Ozu’s dream slips out from the army parade grounds in Hisai, Mie Prefecture, where he lies asleep, and takes flight back to the famil­ iar streets of Ginza. Sept. 20 (Wed.): Last night, on a chilly straw mattress, I had a dream/in the dream I was drinking beer on a second floor of a building in Ginza where there is a view of the big Hattori Building clock, while that girl leisurely crossed her legs under her green afternoon [dress]. (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 50)1 It is unclear whether Ozu’s dream, which appears more like a scene from an American film than from one of his own, was based on his personal experience or born from the mass imaginary of Ginza. Did the pronoun “I” and the referent “that girl” have any correspondence in his real life, or were they interchangeable subjects taken from a highly abstracted image? Perhaps this was unclear even to Ozu himself. Consider how Ozu’s diary at the time not only attests to his life as a typical urban flâneur, but also reveals a certain self-consciousness of an actor performing on the stage of “modernity.” March 6 (Mon) ▲ Cloudy again: canceled/▲ took a look at Maruzen, worked on the design for a boxing club/▲ went to SHIBAZONO [theater] with [Nomura] Hiro­ masa/▲ GIRLS IN UNIFORM and half of SO BIG!/stopped by the Fuji Eis German Bakery on the way home. (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 36–37) Ozu’s everyday, thus described, appears fitting for a filmmaker that represented “Kamata Mod­ ernism.” Reconstructed in the form of diary entries, however, his everyday feeds into the broader imaginary of the “urban dweller.” We can say that Ozu, who had made it his lifestyle credo to behave like American film characters in 1930s Tokyo, managed to live within a dream community produced by Hollywood, albeit in the realm of his imagination. Even so, when we 13

Ryoko Misono

picture him in this way, are we not simply confirming the well-established image we have of Ozu in his youth as a fashionable modernist filmmaker? Instead, I would like to problematize here the actual place where Ozu’s dream of being an “urban dweller” manifested itself. It was in the fall of 1933 that Ozu was summoned to the army parade grounds at Hisai, where he had the dream. His diary entry during the two weeks of being drafted, which begins “Sept 16 (Sat) ▲ 9:00/lodging at STAR HOTEL, No. 33,” reads less like an account of events than a series of short, connected fragments that we might interpret as Ozu’s monologues, but they are thought-provoking in many ways (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 50). During this short practice conscription, Ozu’s consciousness was briefly detached from the busy everyday life of Tokyo, thus allowing the hitherto concealed web of political and cultural forces surrounding him and the fissures created by the multitude of contradictory forces to come pouring forth. Ozu had been sent to Hisai in Mie Prefecture in the first place because it was still his legal resid­ ence in the family register, even though his family home was in the Fukugawa area of Tokyo. The military logic of dispatching someone to a place with no connection to his daily life, simply based on what was recorded in the family register, had the effect of exposing the precariousness of Ozu’s identity in Tokyo as a modern cosmopolitan. This made it evidently clear that he was integrated into the family register system, positioned within the structure of the nation state, and was required to enlist as a national subject. There is a diary entry that reads, “Sept 18 (Mon) ▲ second anniver­ sary of the Manchurian Incident, all night exercise” (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 50). The premise of the exercise connects him to the expansionist war of aggression in China that had begun in earnest two years earlier. This exercise, which could be seen as a drill for the poison gas weapon, yperite (mustard gas), which was used four years later in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), foreshadowed Ozu’s own eventual participation in the large-scale poison gas campaign that occurred at the Xiushui River.2 Already at this moment in 1933, Ozu’s body was firmly enmeshed within Japan’s imperialistic desire to expand its borders. Ozu’s self-image as a cosmopolitan urban dreamer was fragmented and torn between his roles as a member of the nation state and an agent of the imperial project. In addition to these three mutually contradictory yet continuously over­ lapping political and cultural currents, the death of his aunt, with whom he had been close, and allusions to symbolic incidents of the time (including the “Go–Stop Incident,” which laid bare the opposition between the police and the military) and American films all appeared together in his diary. This diary marked the intersection between the multiple external and internal factors that had shaped Ozu’s subjectivity as someone living through the early 1930s in Japan. At first glance, the many conducting wires running through Ozu’s subjectivity seem to contradict one another—being slated as a member of the nation state within its borders, partici­ pating in the war of aggression as an imperialist subject, while also aligning oneself with the culture of border crossing generated by American films—but were they really mutually exclu­ sive factors? Conventionally, the palpable influence of American cinema on Ozu’s films from the 1920s and 1930s has been understood as oppositional or contradictory to Ozu’s position as an imperial subject who served twice in the Asia–Pacific War.3 Underpinning this interpretation is a mode of historiography that treats Japan’s interwar period as a transition from the universalist modernism of the 1920s to the nationalist fascism of the 1930s and 1940s. In such histori­ ography, however, it is difficult to ascertain the kind of political or cultural formation that Ozu was operating in when, for example, he likens his life in the barracks to an American film. Sept. 30 (Sat) even for virtuoso Jules Furthman, Tom Brown without Amy Jolly would be a tough subject to turn into a film/If Tom Brown in rubber boots was spreading bleaching powder in Yperite, it couldn’t even make a NON-SENSE film. (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 51) 14

Suspense and border crossing

As we often see in Ozu’s statements and diary entries, he seeks to make sense of his everyday experiences with the vocabulary of American film. The reference above is to Joseph von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930). As well as consolidating the popularity of Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in Hollywood, Morocco marked the dawn of the sound era in Japan as the first American film screened with subtitles, and it was received as a hallmark of Hollywood’s golden age in the 1930s.4 In a certain sense, it is completely correct to call this film an “American film” as long as we reconsider the adjoining of “America” and “film” as two inseparable terms in this era. In this film, centered on a love triangle involving Dietrich (an actress that the German immigrant Sternberg brought over from their home country), Gary Cooper (an American actor), and Adolphe Menjou (an American national who frequently played French characters), we see a typical example of the multi-nationalizing process in production and distribution that was underway in Hollywood in the 1930s.5 In other words, the word “American” in the phrase “American film” did not signify the unitary nature of the nation state but rather the hybridity engendered by cultural flows. The subject matter of this “American film,” thus redefined, was the Western powers fighting over hegemony in the Islamic world during World War I, and the exotic world of border-crossing Foreign Legion members who were stationed in a Moroccan town that serves as a kind of a demilitarized zone. That Ozu likened his own military life to what is depicted in Morocco has significance beyond simply showing him masquerading as a modern urbanite. First of all, Ozu perceived, consciously or subconsciously, that the military exercises in Hisai positioned him within the imperialist for­ mation of power in the first half of the twentieth century. Both Ozu and Tom Brown—the Foreign Legion soldier played by Gary Cooper—were swallowed up in the whirlpool of colo­ nialist desire, although the territories and the decades were different. More importantly, such colonialist desire coexisted with a contradictory cosmopolitan worldview, both in Ozu’s internal world and the imaginary world of Morocco. In the modern world that the two characters inhabit, these two worldviews were not necessarily mutually exclusive. On the contrary, in Morocco, colonialist desire actually mediates the cosmopolitan worldview, bringing it into existence. Ozu’s imagination, which linked military exercises in Hisai with the world of Morocco, throws into chaos the school of thought that tries to consider the Ozu who loved American films as separate from the Ozu who eventually served in the Second Sino-Japanese War and participated in poison gas campaigns. Perhaps not only for Ozu, but also for those living in the interwar period, “American film” was never seen simply as a neutral symbol of modernity. Rather, the kind of modernity and modernism embodied by American films contained within itself the resi­ dues of the political and cultural power relations from the late nineteenth century to the twen­ tieth century. Reconsidered from this standpoint, “American film” was as an embodiment of the dynamic processes through which cinema reconstituted itself from the apparent fragmen­ tation of the “universal visual language” brought about by the “talkies” as a medium that visual­ ized the contradictions and negotiations occurring on the borderlines of culture, people, and nation, during the interwar period in which a new geopolitics driven by powerful American capitalism repainted the nineteenth-century topographies of imperial powers. This chapter considers two works that are representative of early Ozu, Sono yo no tsuma (That Night’s Wife, 1930) and Hijōsen no onna (Dragnet Girl, 1933), which were also emblematic of “Shochiku Kamata Modernism,” a brand that defined Japanese cinema through the 1920s and 1930s.6 One immediately notices American cinema’s influence on these films both in terms of narrative and style. David Bordwell, who located the development of Ozu’s filmic style during the silent period within the modern life of early Showa Japan and the extensive influence that Hollywood films had on various filmmakers, points out that these two works stylistically emulate Hollywood crime melodramas by directors such as Sternberg, Howard Hawks, and Mervyn 15

Ryoko Misono

LeRoy (Bordwell 1988: 207). For example, the editing in the opening scene of That Night’s Wife with the policeman and the vagabond, the abrupt close-ups of the telephone receiver and pistol, and the use of cross-cutting (rarely seen in Ozu) are all expressions typically seen in crime films, and attest to Ozu’s rigorous efforts to research and assimilate the genre’s iconography into his films. Furthermore, Dragnet Girl, made in the wake of the Japanese release of major gangster films such as Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932), exemplifies the extent to which Ozu systematically absorbed the genre’s conventions while also reformulating them for the setting, which appears to be taken straight from Hollywood gangster films and grafted onto the cityscape of Yokohama. For example, the linearity of the male protagonist’s actions in gangster films is juxtaposed with the private, closed territory of the female protagon­ ists, thereby engendering a drama of conflict. The women depicted in That Night’s Wife and Dragnet Girl symbolize immobility associated with “motherhood” or “family,” and mark the site torn by the contradictory dynamism imposed on them from the outside. As such, they play a pivotal role in creating a melodramatic undercurrent in the film. These works fulfill what Thomas Elsaesser provides as the central characteristics of melodramatic tradition: “the structural changes from linear externalisation of action to a sublimation of dramatic values into more complex forms of symbolisation” (Elsaesser 1987: 57). As such, they demonstrate that Ozu had accurately inherited the characteristics of two major genres constituting American film. There appears to be nothing political about these works, which we might interpret as refined instances of the kind of cultural translation that took place during the interwar period. Beneath the surface, however, both films register the imprints of multiple sets of asymmetrical power relations. We cannot ignore the fact that the powerful ripple effects produced by the arrival of popular culture from North America occurred against the backdrop of an unequal relation between the rapid growth of the American economy in the wake of World War I and Asia’s rising powers. As a genre, however, gangster films register within themselves the impact of changing modern urban spaces, growing consumer culture, and the influx of working-class immigrants to North America. Furthermore, if the urban space of the 1930s that is depicted in both of Ozu’s films appears cosmopolitan, it contained in its fabric the regional and class dis­ parity made wider with each recession and accompanying flow of international migration of labor from the country to the city, as well as the colonialist expansionist policies that were pro­ moted in response to this disparity. In light of these conditions, we must acknowledge that it simply would not suffice to treat early Ozu’s strong inclination toward American films merely as a matter of style. Just as the modernist gestures of his everyday life concealed other aspects of his existence as a member of the nation state or a foot soldier of colonialism, his formalist experi­ mentation engaging with Hollywood norms contained within itself cultural and political fault lines that traversed and divided 1930s Japan. Perhaps such fault lines were smoothed over by the “universalist” and all-inclusive styles of classical Hollywood, which by then had consolidated its position as the global visual language. With these points in mind, in this chapter, I aim to offer an analysis of Ozu’s works that turns our attention to the contradictions latent in modern life that were brought about by American consumer culture, and to reveal the fault lines immanent within the modern city stylized by Holly­ wood cinema. At first glance, Ozu appears to be pursuing the pure experimentation of visual lan­ guage in these crime melodramas set against the backdrop of a 1930s urban space. By virtue of the genre conventions that are used to depict the conflicts surrounding various borderlines drawn in the city, however, did he not unwittingly give expression to the anxiety surrounding the volatile boundaries of Japan, a nation state negotiating its place amidst the imperial powers of the first half of the twentieth century? Notably, this expression takes place in the form of a politics of space that the two genres—gangster film and melodrama—engender. Ozu’s seemingly cosmopolitan 16

Suspense and border crossing

cityscape and the dramatic conflicts that he depicts allude to the ambivalence of the imagined community mediated by American films and their infusion of modernism into the everyday. Beneath the illusion of global universalism lurked a geopolitical cartography of the modern world that was divided up by the interests of nation states and capital.

Borders within the modern city: That Night’s Wife A solitary policeman slowly walks by the façade of an austere stone building. It is the dead of night and the city is deserted. Is he on patrol? He suddenly stops mid-stride, as if he has found something suspicious. Following a cut, a vagabond sleeping in the shadow of a pillar comes into view. He is shooed away by the policeman, who sees to it that the vagrant actually leaves the premises before continuing on patrol. Meanwhile, the vagrant takes refuge in the shadow of another building. He surveys his surroundings and then goes back to sleep with relief (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 A vagrant roosting at a building in the business district. Stills from That Night’s Wife. Source: Ozu Yasujirō, 1930.

17

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As Bordwell has pointed out, this opening sequence of Ozu’s 1930 film, That Night’s Wife, bewilders viewers with its roundaboutness and false expectations (Bordwell 1988: 207). Neither the policeman nor the vagabond appears again as the narrative unfolds; in fact, they have no direct bearing on the narrative. Although superfluous to the plot, this sequence imparts informa­ tion that is decisively important to the film. In a narrow sense, we can interpret the vagrant, who roosts at a building in the business district, as a historically specific sign of 1930, the year the film was made, and a reminder that the worldwide impact of the Great Depression that started the previous year had reached the Far East. The Wall Street Crash, which abruptly hit the nation’s major export partner while Japan’s economy had not fully recovered from the earlier domestic financial crisis (Shōwa kinyū kyōkō), landed a serious blow to Japan’s economy, driving masses of unemployed, with nowhere else to go, out onto the city streets. It was evident that Tokyo, or the “Unemployed City,” as the author Tokunaga Sunao rechristened it, was at a crossroad. There was a growing, stifling sense within the urban culture that had flourished in the era of “Taishō democracy” as the fascist era and militarism drew nigh. Domestically, in 1928, under the provisions of the Peace Preservation Act, leftists were arrested on a wide scale, and thought censorship by the state steadily grew increasingly severe. Overseas, with the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan’s imperialist ambition to advance into continental China is finally played out in reality, with North China as the point of departure. The vagabond in the opening scene gave a material form to the general anxiety internalized by the masses at the time, but the character’s significance extends further. It is equally important that the policeman shoos off the vagabond precisely because, as a vagrant—a figure without a permanent home—his pres­ ence as a negative symbol was considered “improper” in the Nihonbashi or Marunouchi busi­ ness districts, center stages for Japanese modernity. This scene visualizes the borderlines running right through the foundation of “Tokyo” as a modern city and the problems aroused by crossing them. The vagrant in this scene breaches class boundaries and corresponding borderlines mapped onto urban space. Furthermore, this act of “border crossing” makes the vagrant a double for the protagonist, the father who appears as the criminal in the hold-up scene that jump-starts the plot, thus offering an allegory for the entire narrative. Throughout That Night’s Wife, both the narrative and stylistic features give viewers the strong impression that cultural flows, mediated by urban space, structure the foundation of the epoch we call “modernity.” Based on Oscar Schisgall’s short story “Nine to Nine” (published in Japanese in the magazine Shinseinen), this film is notable for its commentary on modern cities that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s and Hollywood’s obvious influence. The influence of Hollywood’s two biggest genres, crime film and family melodrama, is particularly notable, playing out on both narrative and stylistic levels. While the rapid-fire sequencing of short shots that make up the hold-up and chase scene in the first half of the film reminds viewers of 1920s and 1930s American gangster films, the familial love centering on a sick child and a mother’s self-sacrificing love, themes central to melodrama, provide the main narrative thread. More­ over, the modern business districts that evoke New York and Berlin, the “borderless” (mukokuseki) mise en scène of the apartment room, and the casting of Yamamoto Tōgō, who had played villains and gangsters in 1920s Hollywood, helped create a fictional world devoid of signs (with the exception of Yagumo Emiko’s kimono) that readily identify the locality of Japan. Hollywood’s influence on Ozu and the representation of the modern city in his films attest to the “fluidity of culture” in the general sense of the term. I refer here to the movement of culture that came with the rise of US capitalist economy in the interwar period and the global influence of Hollywood film, its important export industry. The urban landscape that appears in That Night’s Wife proves that Japan was no exception to the world-contemporaneous phenomenon in which American urban culture held sway over local spaces. That the film reproduced 18

Suspense and border crossing

American film styles with such a high degree of perfection attests to the “universality” of the visual language we call classical Hollywood film, and to cinema as the appropriate medium for expressing and propagating the newly reborn urban spaces. Whether we use a cultural imperialist model to interpret Ozu’s crime melodrama or adopt a formalist determinist model with the view of generating normative visual grammar, these are both teleological models that assume a unilateral transmission of Euro-American styles of culture to non-Western locales. With such models, it is difficult to detect the friction generated in the process of receiving the propagated culture, or to recognize the complicated background of national and cultural power relations. The urban consumer culture embodied by Hollywood cinema might have brought about a homogenization of space, but the fluidity that transgressed multiple borders intensified opposition by different cultures, and heightened public awareness of the rifts and fissures that emerged within this same space. As cultures travel at an everaccelerating speed, the perceptual experience of modern citizens becomes fragmented, forcing them to live in hybrid spaces. This phenomenon finds expression, for example, in the technique of montage. Meanwhile, fluid cultural experiences laid bare the topography of uneven power relations that divided up the world in the twentieth century, stoking fear over the disorder brought about by border crossing, but also stirring up interest in the “other side” of the border. All these various kinds of borderlines are condensed in the small garret apartment that becomes the main stage for That Night’s Wife, on which the drama of border crossings and reversals are repeatedly staged.

The imperial metropolis: the fault lines of modern urban space Let us look at the opening scene once again. The vagrant crouching in the business district’s shadows appears as a seedy figure, that is, he is introduced as the city’s Other who has no place in the landscape. His abject presence leaves a strong impression on the viewers, for it makes visible the borderlines buried within the unconscious of the modern city. As Narita Ryūichi points out, the emergence of Tokyo as a modern city was synchronous with the process of the city’s discovery of its Other, its underclass. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, progres­ sion of industrialization and the development of distribution networks spread across the entirety of Japan and engendered a demographic flow headed from the country to the city. In order to regulate the confusion brought about by the increasing mobility of the population, early Meiji administrators partitioned the urban space according to boundaries between civilized/uncivil­ ized, order/chaos, and hygiene/impurity. By delimiting the areas and the population that signi­ fied negative valences, they were able to produce a foundational image of the modern city as its inverse, a space marked by positive valences (Narita 2003: 8–12). Weren’t these borderlines, the preconditions for the formation of such urban space, precisely what the vagabond trespassed in the opening scene? The stratification of space and people through the demarcation of borderlines can be placed within the shared context of urbanization as it occurred all over the world. In the modern world, experiences of urban space since the nineteenth century became meaningful and opened up a new cultural dimension that was entirely different from all precedents. As the growth of industrial society prompted the endless expansion of cities, the influx of immigrants from the outside and their heterogeneous cultures reorganized the existing urban space.7 Thus, the city of Tokyo, which had completed its developmental phase by the dawn of the twentieth century, continued to undergo accelerated transformations. People flowing into the city eventually formed family units, settled down, and constituted a new middle class, thereby making the urban spaces multilayered. The structural changes that were prompted by the rapid population 19

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growth in the great city of Tokyo manifested themselves, for instance, through the prevalence of violent attacks occurring in the burned out fields of Tokyo in the wake of the Great Kantō Earthquake: the massacre of Korean residents and the assassination of the entire household of the anarchists Ōsugi Sakae and Itō Noe. With the city destroyed to ground zero, the intricate boundaries embedded within it became visible, intensifying feuds between cultures, races, and classes that could no longer be contained by neat, binary schema. The capital of modern Japan, reduced to chaos by the earthquake, gradually regained order through government-led recon­ struction and entered a new phase in its history. While consumer culture blossomed and urban areas expanded, however, post-earthquake Tokyo’s urban space, fragmented by the labormanagement opposition intensified by the successive recessions and the emergence of new ideas about sexuality and class, contained within it conflicts that were more complicated than before. It is easy to see that without such a multilayered and dynamic city space, the vagabond in the opening sequence could have neither staged his border crossing nor got into trouble doing so. This act of border crossing would be repeated in the subsequent hold-up scene in the business district by the father, played by Okada Tokihiko. The hold-up sequence taking place in an office and the subsequent chase scene unfolding in a brick and concrete Western cityscape both inherit the style of the Hollywood crime film. Through cross-cutting, these two scenes are presented in contrast to the interior space of the apartment room where the mother and daughter await. What links the public space of the busi­ ness district and the private domestic space, two spaces that originally have no reason to be mixed together, is the motive for the father’s crime—“saving his sick daughter”—that provides the melodramatic impetus. Here, the classical melodramatic storyline, which involves defending a beleaguered virtue (in this case, the ideal of “family”), displays a space of dualism, another characteristic of melodrama. In the multilayered cityscape of post-earthquake Tokyo, however, it was no longer possible to grasp space in terms of positive–negative binaries, or to divide up the construction of space in That Night’s Wife into simple binaries of good versus evil, or the utopian rural community versus the crime-filled big city. Fueled by the melodramatic charge, the father transgresses the demarcation between public and private, which was overlaid with the various rifts and fissures that defined 1930s Japan. One of the rifts has to do with class difference, as it presents itself in the cross-cutting between the two spaces. In an effort to save his sick daughter, the father crosses over to the wrong side of the law, which in practical terms meant crossing over from his cheap apartment on the outskirts of the city to the Marunouchi business district: from a low-income neighbor­ hood to the capitalist city. The huge buildings that symbolize the city’s shining façade in day­ light turn into daunting walls that block the father’s intrusion in the dark of night. Just as with the vagrant from the first scene, the father is an intruder in this space and subject to removal. Meanwhile, in the apartment where his family awaits, we see paint cans, posters, and signboards that give away his occupation as a commercial painter. We might say that as a type of intellectual laborer, he shares many problems with the white-collar workers who made up the majority of the daytime population of the business district, the people that the critic Aono Suekichi called “the embodiment of commodified knowledge and skills, the salaryman” (Aono 1930: 32). Caught between the affluent and the proletariat and having to bear the “hardship” and “predicament” of both, the salaryman was at once the product and greatest victim of modern capitalism. The father’s profession as a commercial painter, which mediates the capitalist phantasmagoric process of “commodification,” caricaturizes the tragedy of the salaryman, a class that circulated in the market in commodity form. Faced with the reality of poverty, he seeks to escape from the shackles of class relations through the direct action of seizing capital. It is at this moment that he is expelled from the public space as a criminal. This was not that far from the reality inhabited 20

Suspense and border crossing

by the salaryman class, one that was defined by the worldwide recession and ensuing mass unemployment. Seen this way, the business district in daylight and the underworld in the dark­ ness of night appear as two sides of the same coin, as do the salaryman and the thieving father. Furthermore, the business district, with its appearance straight out of a Hollywood crime film, emerges as an allegorical space stamped by the particular historical context of 1930s Tokyo. It was not that long before this film was produced that the cityscape of the business district, where the father in That Night’s Wife stages a hold-up, was completed. It is all but certain that the group of modern buildings, which actually existed in 1930s Tokyo, appeared during the construction rush in the first few years after the earthquake (Matsuba 1988). With their rows of buildings incorporating contemporary Euro-American technology and style, business districts served as billboards advertising Tokyo as a truly modern city that ranked among the world’s great metropolises. Within this newly rebuilt urban space, Tokyo re-emerged as a stage for modern life just as it had appeared in Ozu’s dream. If these bevies of buildings appeared to prove the universality of the global experience of modernity, they were also symbols of the unevenness produced by the fluidity of international capital. Raymond Williams, who recognized the pol­ itics latent in the modernist notion of universalism, points out that the development of modern cities in Europe was intrinsically tied to imperialism. We cannot think of the sensory experience that the modern city reconfigured or the modernist aesthetics it produced without considering “the magnetic force that concentrated power and wealth in the imperial metropolis and the simultaneous wide-ranging access to marginalized cultures, that crossed national borders” (Wil­ liams 1989: 44). Similarly, in the case of the urban space of Tokyo, the capital of modern Japan, an increasingly visible imperial power of Asia, we cannot forget the context of colonialist power relations and the fluidity of culture and capital that they generated. If Tokyo’s business district, with a proud splendor matching that of Euro-American metropolises, symbolized the trans­ mission of culture from the West to Asia, it also attested to modern Japan’s full-fledged mobil­ ization of its imperial expansionist policies. In the shadow of the immense commercial and political power of the imperial capital, Harry Harootunian observed, there were a number of people who had been completely depleted in the process of modernizing the city. Against the backdrop of a clear contrast between urban and rural, center and periphery, there was the uneven progress experienced by the colonizers and the colonized (Harootunian 2000: 313). For example, in early works like Jidai to nōsei (The Times and Agricultural Policy), Yanagita Kunio had already pointed out that migration from rural to urban areas was creating an uneven distribution of capital and labor, and the capital accumulated in the center, Tokyo, bankrolled the nation’s colonial policy. He writes: Exhausting every means possible, they concentrate the savings made in rural areas to the center. Then, before the capital finds its way back to the countryside, they use it for managing Manchuria and Korea, or they use it wholesale to purchase foreign mines and railways; it is common to invest capital that’s not even in surplus, for the sake of the nation’s expansionist policy. (Yanagita 1998 [1910]: 269–270) Yanagita realized that the flow of human and material resources from rural areas to the urban center could be contextualized within the general law of global capitalism. The immense network of production, circulation, distribution, and consumption, on which the city’s dyna­ mism depends, holds within it the “process that sweeps immigrants from the countryside and turns them into urban migrants and exiles within their own country” (Harootunian 2000: 317). In particular, the recession that assailed Japan in 1930 rendered urban exiles visible as hoards of 21

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unemployed. It is fair to say that the border crossing and vagrancy that repeatedly appear in That Night’s Wife give tangible form to this process of deterritorialization brought about by urbaniza­ tion and the experience of being exiled from home. To resolve the crisis brought about by depleted domestic capital and markets, the project of urban development that was accomplished by exploiting rural areas expanded beyond national borders. In 1930s Japan, cultivating foreign markets and promoting emigration policy were considered an efficacious plan for solving domestic economic issues, particularly rural poverty.8 In 1931, the year after That Night’s Wife premièred, the Kwantung Army used the bombing of the South Manchuria Railway outside of Shenyang as pretext to invade northeast China. This event, known as the Manchurian Incident, marked the beginning of a new phase in Japan’s colonial policy. The division between urban and rural areas, marked by uneven development within Japan, and the borders that separated the empire’s interior from its exterior that were mapped onto the stratified urban boundaries depicted in That Night’s Wife, already registered public–private and capitalist–proletariat divisions. Once we see the city as an imperial metropolis, we gain a new perspective on its space, not merely as an expression of or a medium for a universal experience of modernity, but also as a contested space enmeshed with cultural, class, and ethnic divisions brought about by the fluidity of capital. This returns us to film techniques such as cross-cutting and montage, which served as effective methods to visualize the modern city. On the one hand, these techniques mediated the globalization of the modernism of consumer culture. On the other hand, they confirmed that modernism was at once determined and fragmented by the asymmetrical relation between the colonized and the colonizer. Edward Said emphasized the importance of “simultaneously recognizing both the history of the oppressed Other and the dominant discursive history that works against (or with) it” when we reread modern history (Said 1993: 53). He further points out that, within the imperialist topography that encompasses both colonizing and colonized nations, even the formal experiments of modernist writers, which on the surface appear unrelated to colonialist desire, cannot evade its influence. The formal characteristics of modernist culture, such as decentralization, transference, and irony, are clearly influenced by two of the primary anxiety-inducing factors that are the consequences of imperi­ alism, namely, “oppositional indigenous people” and “the existence of other empires” (Said 1993: 188–189). These characteristics, which tend to be regarded as being born from the intrin­ sic dynamics of Western culture and society, can also be read as stylistic responses summoned by the cultural fluidity of imperialism as it inevitably encountered the Other.

The internal other within the nation state When considering the cultural and political contexts surrounding the urban space depicted in Ozu’s crime melodramas, we should remember that Ozu was referencing the “gangster film” genre. Although this genre is categorized as one of the classical Hollywood genres, it was marked by the presence of “cultural others” from its inception, and developed as a means to visualize them. In Prohibition-era America (1920–1933), silent gangster films were enlisted in the middle-class morality campaign that simultaneously sought to redeem racial ghettos made up of immigrants while also stigmatizing them. Taking the reality of the ghetto and turning it into a Victorian middle-class fantasy of “seeing how the other side lives” was a method to diffuse the destabilizing movements of immigration, industrialization, urbanization, and consumerism. Jon­ athan Munby points out that, during the recession era of the early 1930s, representations of gangsters shifted from “cultural others” to objects for national self-identification that crossed class and racial lines, taking “the desires of ‘new’ Americans for a fairer share of the American pie” as the pivot point (Munby 1999: 4). It is worth noting that Ozu’s crime melodramas, which 22

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translated and adapted the gangster genre, inherited the preoccupation with racial and cultural Others that had formed the basis of this Hollywood archetype. Consciously or not, by emu­ lating Hollywood film grammar, Ozu gave his films a cosmopolitan appearance while bringing the various fissures that divided 1930s Japan into relief. Even when a cultural form transmitted from America to Asia is assimilated into the local film culture, we see the subject of “border crossing” being reiterated, albeit in the local context. A similar observation can be made of melodrama, the other film genre underpinning That Night’s Wife, as the narrative style that gave expression to the bourgeoisie’s confusion about and reaction against social change. According to concurrent observations made by Peter Brooks and Thomas Elsaesser, melodrama arose from the French Revolution and its aftermath, and re­ emerged in subsequent periods of upheaval, providing the means to understand social changes in personal contexts and a sentimental lexicon (Brooks 1995: 14–17; Elsaesser 1987: 45–50). As Elsaesser notes, melodrama, which still retained the support of the masses into the nineteenth century, became the means to materialize “Industrialisation, urbanisation and nascent entrepre­ neurial capitalism” in literature (Elsaesser 1987: 48). In the first place, the dualism of good versus evil, self versus other, and order versus confusion that formed the basis of the gangster film genre overlaps at many points with the moral dualism on which classical melodrama is formed (granted, with gangs becoming mythologized as an object of self-identification, the dichotomies became ambiguous). In a modern society over-determined by the fluid dynamism of capitalism, however, the difficulty of delineating territories and the plurality of borders become the subject matter for narrative. The principle of melodrama became fragmented, shaken by the flows of capital and culture across national borders in the twentieth century and no longer able to be contained by the dualism of good and evil.9 Moreover, by merging with the medium of film and further developing as the representative mode of American cinema, melodrama itself started to cross national borders and became a representational form mediating the increasingly pluralizing world. In the context of 1930s Japan, and for Ozu, who invoked melodramatic style in That Night’s Wife, melodrama registered as this border-transgressing mode that the immense power of Hollywood capital spread across East Asia. In That Night’s Wife, however, melodrama is presented to the audience as a mode that resists the kinds of border crossing symbolized by the modern city, thanks to the use of cross-cutting that juxtaposes melodrama against the urban mode of crime film. The urban space embellished with the speed and shock so prevalent in gangster films is juxtaposed with the closed territory of the melodramatic household. The contrast between the two genres is made even more conspicuous by the gendered difference between the linearity of the father’s actions and the immobility of the mother waiting for his return. In citing two of the major American genres—gangster film and melodrama—Ozu’s focuses less on the interracial and cross-cultural encounters and tensions that these genres give formal expression to, and more on the bourgeois moral dualism on which these genres are based, and to which he returns through his concern with assimilating and identifying with the visual language of Hollywood. The film sets in motion a dialectic between the gangster film and melodrama that is ultimately sublimated by the morality of civil society that the “house­ hold” embodies. The father who commits the crime gives up on escaping because of his love for his family, especially his child, and he chooses to surrender and atone for his sins so that some day he might live with his family again. Even if the story’s conclusion conforms to bourgeois family morals, the conflicting spaces portrayed in the process of arriving there do not necessarily conform to the dualist principles of genre films. As noted above, the urban space of 1930s Japan depicted in the film can hardly be contained by the spatial dualism that is taken for granted in classical melo­ drama: this urban space was over-determined by various borders running along the public–private, capitalist–laborer, urban–rural, and colonizing–colonized axes that divided up the modern world. 23

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Similarly, the “household” depicted in the film manifests itself as a space fragmented by consumer culture and penetrated by global capitalism, despite being positioned as a bulwark against the fluid­ ity of the modern city. When the dualist logic providing the basis for gangster film and melodrama breaks down as the modern world becomes further pluralized, American cinema, the object of Ozu’s identification, ceases to function as a transparent medium, exposing its inherent hybridity and border-crossing quality.

The fragmented room Let us move on to study the space of the apartment that the family inhabits. As in other early Ozu films, we see posters of Hollywood titles such as A Broadway Scandal (1918) and Gentlemen of the Press (1929) pinned to the wall. Typically understood as self-referential citations of the director’s affinity for American films, in this particular context, these images serve the function of ridding the room of Japanese indigeneity, transforming it into a space appropriate for Hol­ lywood’s visual language. Perhaps this is also why, for example, the walls are covered with other miscellaneous images.10 This space, with its confusing line-up of raw visual images in diverse genres such as signs, paintings, postcards, and textiles, reminds one of a contemporary Dadaist or constructivist collage rather than a film set. In front of a large world map on the wall rests a pile of canvases large and small, among which one finds a cubist oil painting, a Russian futurist poster, a sketch in the eastern European avant-garde style, and art deco signboards with the words “DANCE” and “JAZZ” written in large letters. As we have seen, this flood of visual symbols, resembling a scattered assortment of early twentieth-century artistic styles from around the world, is justified by the father’s profession as a commercial painter. In fact, although this assemblage of images might appear like a random assortment, it accurately reproduced the look of 1930s commercial art in Japan, which vigorously incorporated contemporary trends in Western art.11 Through these images of commercial culture, this cramped Tokyo attic apart­ ment opens up to the contemporaneous global world. Just as the Hollywood film posters incorporated in many of Ozu’s films served the role of ridding the space of Japanese indigeneity, the images scattered around the apartment in That Night’s Wife served to deterritorialize the cinematic space, and reorganize it in the logic of another collective, of consumer culture medi­ ated by border-crossing images. The irony of this scene is that despite its compositional rigor, the collage that forms the back­ drop reveals the winding road that twentieth-century aesthetic modernism had traveled. In other words, in this room where the commercial painter’s family lives, avant-garde art style represents the very bourgeois values it is meant to repudiate, having been fragmented and decontextualized as indexes of the commodity economy. Rather than signifying the modernist aesthetic concept of global universalism, the multinationality of this film’s household space ultimately reveals that in the real world, this universalism can only manifest as global capitalism mediated by commodity forms. At the same time, this is also an internal space that, fragmented by miscellaneous images, internal­ izes the modern city with a booming consumer culture as its self-image. Consumer culture, which rapidly permeated interwar Japan, gave form to people’s desires and fantasies, played out on city streets.12 As a commercial painter, the father in That Night’s Wife serves as the intermediary between the fantasy represented by commodities and the people on the streets. What is interesting here, however, is that despite the illusion of identification evoked by commodities, the apartment, as the commercial painter’s personal space, ends up being fragmented by the signboards and posters. Instead of existing as a stable and closed territory in counterpoint to the fluid urban space outside, the domestic space opens up to the city’s fluidity, manifesting itself as a site where the divided selfimage of the modern subject is visualized. 24

Suspense and border crossing

The ambivalence of the domestic space in the film is fleshed out by the family’s mother, Mayumi, played by Yagumo Emiko. As a mother who protects the home and loves her child, and the only character appearing in Japanese clothing, Mayumi is an icon symbolizing the space of melodrama. The way in which she keeps vigil over her sick child gives concrete form to the primordial image associated with “motherhood.” Even as she is shaken by the unrest outside the apartment and by the internal disquiet caused by her daughter’s illness, as a symbol of domestic stability, it is as if she provides resistance against the fluidity of urban space. In fact, when the father returns home after evading the police, a momentary form of equilibrium appears to be restored as the father–mother–daughter triad coheres as a “family.” Such fleeting stability gives way, however, when the pursuant, detective Kagawa, intrudes into the apartment. The border­ lines defining their roles begin to waver. Shaken by the arrival of an uninvited guest, Mayumi instructs her husband to hide behind a curtain before she opens the door. Kagawa barges into the room, ignoring her protest. Taking an unreserved look around the apartment, he picks up a felt hat from the table and places it on Mayumi’s head, indicating to her that he knows her husband is present in the room: “To tell the truth, I just escorted your husband here by car.” The suspenseful exchange between Kagawa, a detective that appears to have been carbon-copied from Hollywood gangster films, and Mayumi, who tries to repel him by insisting on her husband’s absence, constitutes the film’s climax, and the sequence that raises the most important questions. The felt hat that Kagawa places on Mayumi’s head belongs to her husband, and thus gives away his presence. Realizing this, she quickly takes it off, but the detective walks straight toward the husband standing behind the curtain and thrusts his gun at him. Meanwhile, Mayumi leaps to the child’s bed where her husband’s pistol is stashed, creeps up behind the detective, and presses the gun to his side: “Drop the pistol!” She collects Kagawa’s pistol from the table, and with a ready gun in each hand, she instructs her husband, still behind the curtain, to escape quickly. The discordant symbolism of the felt hat on Mayumi’s Japanese hairstyle, or the pistols she holds steady in front of her, captivates the viewers with their alluring “hybridity.” In this sequence, her body marks the site where numerous fault lines separating opposing territories intersect. First, she crosses the boundary demarcating genders. The hat on her head affects a transgendered masquerade; needless to say, the guns in her hands are symbols of masculinity. Second, because a felt hat worn at a deep tilt by a character functions as a sign of fraternal associ­ ation among gang members in Hollywood crime films, we can say that Mayumi trespasses the cultural borders between Asia and the West. Moreover, by disarming Kagawa using her hus­ band’s gun and arming herself with two guns—emulating a gesture common in gangster films— she succeeds in flipping the situation so that she is in the position of keeping Kagawa in check. This marks the turning point for the husband, who has been put into the position of being pro­ tected by his wife. He forgoes escaping the apartment in favor of staying to look after their sick daughter, thus transitioning toward a maternal role. As they wait for daybreak, the roles of the three characters remain reversed: the wife armed with guns, the helpless detective deprived of his gun, and the husband who is feminized as he performs a mother’s role. The fissures emerging on the body of the mother, an icon in melodrama that symbolized the private domestic sphere, call into question the natural or primordial connotations associated with the concept of “motherhood.” It was only in the Meiji era (1868–1912), when the “house­ hold” (ie) system was restructured with the establishment of the family register system, that a concept of “family” that was contingent on the icon of a loving mother emerged in Japanese public discourse. After emerging as a discursive concept, “family” permeated to the level of the masses through communication networks such as education and mass media. Meanwhile, it was mapped onto real world coordinates, as the rapid growth of the urban population after World 25

Ryoko Misono

War I brought about new family formations. As Koyama Shizuko has pointed out, the changes in lifestyle that occurred in the city enhanced interest in “new knowledge appropriate to new family formations,” and women turned to the media of magazines, books, and education as their sources for information (Koyama 1999: 41). Detached from place-based and blood-based rela­ tions, “modern families” in cities were gradually plugged into the new networks that urban space provided. In short, the moral norms surrounding the “household” or “motherhood,” which evoke primal images and the origin narratives of communities, actually only make sense within the context of modern urban life.13 That Mayumi’s corporeal image appears in a fragmented form attests to the ways in which the fluidity of the city extended both to the “household,” as the cornerstone of the nation state system, and the figure of the mother as its symbol. Furthermore, it reflects the contradiction inherent in the melodrama genre, which became a powerful medium for popularizing images of “maternity” in this mold among the masses. By taking up “maternity” and the “household” as central themes, melodrama film produces the kinds of primordial images needed as the basis for community and consolidates its boundaries. At the same time, motion pictures as a medium have the power to breach cultural and national boundaries and link various different territories, thus disrupting the order of community with its border-crossing qualities. That the contra­ dictory character of melodrama becomes tangible at the boundaries of a community raises important questions, especially when we consider the centrality of melodrama in American cinema14 and Hollywood’s powerful, border-crossing capital and images that had impacted local-level social practices. In That Night’s Wife, Mayumi’s self-sacrificing motherly love is meant to protect the family from Others that intrude from the outside, and to restore peace in the household. Paradoxically, her efforts to restore the family to its ideal form involve a break­ down of her image, revealing the character’s true form, a collage of fragmentary Hollywood images. Let us return once more to the interior space of the apartment. Behind the gun-toting mother, the heterogeneous assortment of images forms a mosaic on the wall, as if it were a pro­ jection of the multiple fissures running through the character. Notice the large map on the wall visible behind the canvases lined up across the room. It cannot be stressed enough that Mayu­ mi’s border-crossing image is presented to us against the backdrop of the map, depicting the Indian Ocean, and stacks of modernist paintings (even the small Chinese doll on top of the table would have been chosen intentionally). When we project the map of the Indian Ocean onto Mayumi and the interior space that surrounds her, the space starts to appear as a microcosm of the modern world, fragmented by imperial cartography. The apartment in the film, penetrated by the mobility of global capital, disrupts the dualist space of crime melodrama and exposes the asymmetrical cultural and national power relations that lay hidden in the background. In this apartment, where the various borderlines that surrounded 1930s Japan intersect, Mayumi’s body no longer functions as a fixed point around which the space of the “household” is organized. It is instead a link where such organization is disrupted and inverted. This is where the genre of crime melodrama resurfaces as a style representing a world pluralized by multiple cultural and national borderlines: a genre suited for mediating the power relations in modernity, having divested itself of the myth of Hollywood’s universal visual language.

Becoming a “world citizen” Can we not detect an echo of the earlier image of Ozu at the Hisai exercise grounds, dreaming about his urban lifestyle, in the way layers of opposing territorial fissures intersect on the surface of Mayumi’s body? As Ozu lay on his bunk bed in the barracks, his subjectivity was suspended 26

Suspense and border crossing

between three competing, territorializing forces: the nation state borders, imperial expansion­ ism, and the global capitalist economy. Even if these forces were not yet tangible at this stage, they were steadily encircling Japanese society and would ultimately send Ozu to the Chinese war front. When this happened, Ozu not only faced interethnic, international conflicts as an “actually existing” reality, but also became an agent involved in producing them. We should at this point note that while Ozu was in his barrack bunk, the person he likened himself to was the protagonist of Morocco, Tom Brown. As Ozu sought to escape being ensnared by the nation state through the aid of an imaginary bond with a Hollywood protagonist, how consciously did he choose to identify with Tom Brown, a member of the Foreign Legion, which symbolized the intricate criss-crossing of national borders and competing imperial forces in North Africa? In Morocco, being a “world citizen” (as Adolphe Menjou calls himself) also means assuming an enormous political burden, albeit in a form that comes sugar-coated with a sweet, romantic, melodramatic plot. Wars fought over national and cultural borders ironically became commodified as ideal subject matter for American films, to then be disseminated across national borders. In light of the history of Japanese reception of foreign films, the fact that Ozu recalls Morocco as an example of a border-crossing American film has additional significance. As the first talkie screened with Japanese subtitles, Morocco marked a breakthrough in resolving the largest problem—language differences—posed by foreign talkies. Robust debates about talkies by film critics explode in 1929, when talkies were first screened in Japan. Whether they were for or against this new media, all involved were keenly aware of one issue: talkies foregrounded the gaps between peoples and nations that had been latent in silent films. The aesthetic of silent film had been understood as a visual universal language, but the arrival of talkies—films that are associated with particular languages—appeared to deprive cinema of its “internationality.” This also meant that the birth and development of the talkie were to be treated as an issue related to a particular nation. For the majority of critics, talkies meant American films, and a metonym for the enormous American capitalist economy behind them.

In closing Ozu’s 1930s crime melodramas have been understood in the context of a cultural phenomenon marked by world-contemporaneous “modernity,” for their depiction of urban spaces and con­ sumer culture, and formal features evincing Ozu’s mastery over Hollywood film style. When we consider the representation of modernity as it is mediated by the mass culture of American film, we might see it as a sign of the homogenizing power of cultural imperialism, or treat it as an inflected form of universal modernism. Such approaches that assume the unidirectional impact of one culture on another make it difficult to recognize how the process of transmitting and translating a culture is unavoidably informed by the asymmetrical power relations between cul­ tures, or how the process produces slippages and contradictions. Beneath Ozu’s everyday behav­ ior as a city dweller, there were other dimensions of his existence as a member of the nation state, or as an agent of imperialism. In the same way, can we not see the various cultural and political fault lines fracturing 1930s Japan that were hidden in his highly stylized film language, which might at first appear devoid of politics? His early crime melodramas gave expression to these fractures through the films’ conflicting treatment of and negotiations with cultural Others. In these stories of inter-cultural conflict and border crossing, the dualist world of melodrama played out with slippages, thus reflecting Japan’s increasingly volatile sovereign borders, reconfigured against the backdrop of deepening inter-imperial rivalry and the escalating inter-ethnic and international conflicts along these borders. 27

Ryoko Misono

When Ozu awoke from his dream at the parade ground in Hisai, he would have found himself in the bleak environment of the barracks, listening to the sound of rain that had been falling for days. “Hearing the rain in this room in the Star Hotel, a far cry from the world in my dream, how I long to return to Tokyo” (Ozu and Tanaka 1993: 50). When Ozu refers to his unit, the 33rd Infantry Regiment, as the “No. 33 Star Hotel,” and confides his homesickness for Tokyo, it appears as if he fails to recognize that what he was experiencing, then and there, was also a facet of modernity, the underside of his dreamy city life. References in various regis­ ters—the image of American film, his poison gas training experiences, his aunt’s funeral, and the political events that defined early 1930s Japan—were embedded in Ozu’s diary as clear indica­ tions that he was tied up in the complicated cultural and political contexts that define the modern experience. These contexts that fragmented the process of subject formation in modern Japan played determining roles in Ozu’s works, inscribing them with the contradictions inher­ ent in the modern world of the early twentieth century. It is only when we succeed in grasping his Hollywood-inspired, border-crossing dramas within the complex and contradictory enmesh­ ment of modernity that we are finally ready to come face to face with Ozu as a modernist.

Notes

1 2 3

4

5 6 7 8

This chapter is an English translation of part of Ryoko Misono, “Sasupensu to ekkyō: Ozu Yasujirō no ‘hanzai merodorama’ eiga,” in Eiga to kokumin kokka: 1930 nendai Shōchiku merodorama eiga (Cinema and the Nation State: 1930s Shochiku Melodrama) (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2015), 39–69. Translators’ note: Ozu uses the English words “green” and “afternoon” (written in katakana phonetic script) in his diary. In the following pages, words that Ozu romanizes in the English alphabet are indi­ cated in upper-case letters. For more on Ozu’s war experience, see Tanaka 2003 (Chapter 9, for details on the poison gas cam­ paign) and Tanaka 2005. Although David Bordwell emphasizes the relationship between Ozu’s works and historical context in his voluminous work on Ozu, he erases the historicity and politics of the classical Hollywood film style that Ozu took as a model for his own variations. This creates a substantial contradiction in Bordwell’s discussion of Ozu’s early works in particular, in which he tries to prove the influence of American films on Ozu from a primarily historical standpoint (see Bordwell 1988). Furthermore, although Hasumi Shigehiko’s work on Ozu, influential for its thematic approach, differs greatly from Bordwell’s posi­ tion, the two share the assumption that the influence of American films is found in formal and stylistic characteristics that are abstracted from history (Hasumi 2003). They both point out that Ozu saw a number of confiscated American films when he was in Singapore in the closing years of the Asia– Pacific War as an episode that shows his ideological neutrality during the war. However, doesn’t this episode itself plainly show that imperial power relationships mediated Ozu’s relationship with Amer­ ican film? For more works that have similar points of view to that of Hasumi and Bordwell, see Satō 2000; Tanaka 2003; and Yoshida 1998. For information on Morocco’s Japanese subtitles, see Tanaka 1975. From the end of the 1920s through to the first half of the 1930s, Sternberg greatly influenced the Japanese film world; countless critiques cited Morocco, in particular, as a new classic of the sound era. It is possible that the high regard that Japanese critics had for Sternberg and for René Clair, who were often discussed together, had some­ thing to do with the hybridity and border-crossing nature of their oeuvre, which straddled Europe and America. This would be a topic for a separate investigation. For a comprehensive discussion of the 1930s Hollywood film industry, see Balio 1993. For more on the expansion of Hollywood film into overseas markets, see Jarvie 1992; Thompson 1985; and Vasey 1997. Editors’ note: the discussion of Dragnet Girl (1933) in the second half of this chapter has been redacted for this volume because of space limitations. For more on the change in the meaning of urban space that accompanied modern industrialization, see Williams 1973: Chapters 19 and 20. For research positioning Japan’s imperialist policy in Manchuria as a consequence of the project of modernity, see Young 1998; Chapter 6 is particularly detailed on agricultural immigration policy.

28

Suspense and border crossing 9 For work that discusses melodrama in the context of “modernity” as embodied by industrialization and urbanization, see Singer 2001. 10 In an interview with Kishi Matsuo, Ozu responded as follows regarding the challenges of shooting Japanese living spaces: When one looks at American films, both people and lifestyles all seem to be cinematically made but … yes, that’s definitely the case. The Japanese lifestyle is, on the whole, not very cinematic. For example, when you enter the house, you open the lattice door, sit down in the entryway, and untie your shoelaces. No matter what you do, this situation brings about stasis or stagnation. As such, Japanese films have to find a way to make this stagnation-prone lifestyle into something cinematic. The reality of Japanese life has to become more and more cinematic. (See Kishi 2004 [1935]: 251) 11 For more on 1920s and 1930s commercial art in Japan, see Ōtani 2005; and Weisenfeld 2000: 75–98. 12 Harootunian 2000: 18–19. For more on the transformation of “city streets” to the stage of modernity in interwar Japan, see Yoshimi 1987. 13 Other representative discussions on the “modern family” include Muta 1996; Nishikawa 2000; and Ueno 1994. 14 While Linda Williams points out the continuity between nineteenth-century popular fiction, popular theater, and film, she asserts that melodrama, which links together this lineage, was not a subordinate genre of American film but its main narrative form (Williams 1998: 58).

Works cited Aono, S. 1930. Sararīman kyōfu jidai (The Panic Era of the Salaryman). Tokyo: Senshinsha.

Balio, T. 1993. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. Berkeley, CA: Univer­

sity of California Press. Bordwell, D. 1988. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brooks, P. 1995. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Elsaesser, T. 1987. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama.” In C. Gledhill (ed.), Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Harootunian, H. 2000. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hasumi, S. 2003. Kantoku Ozu Yasujirō (Director Ozu Yasujirō). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Jarvie, I. 1992. Hollywood’s Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kishi, M. 2004 (1935). “Nihon eiga ron” (“Theory of Japanese Film”). In Dainiki eiga no modanizumu ki 14 (Second Phase: Japanese Cinema and Modernism 14). Reprint, Tokyo: Yumani Shobō. Koyama, S. 1999. Katei no seisei to josei no kokuminka (Production of Home and the Nationalization of Women). Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. Matsuba, K. 1988. Teito fukkō seri! (Completion of Capital Reconstruction!). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Munby, J. 1999. Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Muta, K. 1996. Senryaku toshite no kazoku: Kindai Nihon no kokumin kokka keisei to josei (The Family as Strategy: Women and the Formation of the National State in Modern Japan). Tokyo: Shinyōsha. Narita, R. 2003. Kindai toshi kūkan no bunka keiken (The Cultural Experience of Modern Urban Space). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nishikawa, Y. 2000. Kindai kokka to kazoku moderu (The Modern State and the Family Model). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Ōtani, S. 2005. “Modan toshi no kōkoku to shōgyo bijutsu.” In Korekushon modan toshi bunka (Collection Modern Urban Culture). Tokyo: Yumani Shobō. Ozu, Y. and Tanaka, M. 1993. Zen-nikki Ozu Yasujirō (Complete Diaries of Ozu Yasujirō). Tokyo: FilmartSha. Said, E. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Satō, T. 2000. Kanpon Ozu Yasujirō no geijutsu (The Art of Ozu Yasujiro, the Complete Edition). Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha.

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Ryoko Misono Singer, B. 2001. Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press. Tanaka, J. 1975. Nihon eiga hattatsushi II musei kara tōki e (Evolutionary History of Japanese Cinema II: From Silent to Talkies). Tokyo: Chūo Kōron Sha. Tanaka, M. 2003. Ozu Yasujirō shūyū (Ozu Yasujirō Excursions). Tokyo: Bungeishunjū. Tanaka, M. 2005. Ozu Yasujirō to sensō (Ozu Yasujirō and War). Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō. Thompson, K. 1985. Exporting Entertainment: American in the World Film Market, 1907–1934. London: British Film Institute. Ueno, C. 1994. Kindai kazoku no seiritsu to shūen (The Emergence and Demise of the Modern Family). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Vasey, R. 1997. The World According to Hollywood, 1919–1938. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Weisenfeld, G. 2000. “Japanese Modernism and Consumerism: Forging the New Artistic Field of ‘Shōgyō Bijutsu’ (Commercial Art).” In E.K. Tipton and John Clark (eds), Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s, 75–98. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Williams, L. 1998. “Melodrama Revised.” In Nick Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Williams, R. 1973. The Country and the City. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, R. 1989. Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London: Verso. Yanagita, K. 1998 (1910). “Jidai to nōsei” (“The Times and Agricultural Policy”). In Yanagita Kunio zenshū dainikan (Yanagita Kunio Anthology Vol. 2). Reprint, Tokyo: Chikuma Shoten. Yoshida, Y. 1998. Ozu Yasujirō no han eiga (Ozu Yasujirō’s Anti-Cinema). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yoshimi, S. 1987. Toshi no doramatsurugī: Tōkyō sakariba no shakaishi (The Dramaturgy of the City: The Social History of Tokyo’s “sakariba”). Tokyo: Kōbundō. Young, L. 1998. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

30

2

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the

Lenin Cap

identity crisis in taniguchi Senkichi’s Akasen kichi

(The Red Light Military Base, 1953) Hideyuki Nakamura (translated by Shota T. Ogawa and Bianca Briciu)

The forgotten “base film” From September 26–27, 1953, an advertisement for a new film titled Akasen kichi (The Red Light Military Base, 1953) appeared in newspapers. “Even a military-base woman loves and dreams— an ambitious problem film appeals with passion and compassion,” announced the blurb in the Asahi shimbun (1953: 4), while the Osaka tabloid Shin Ōsaka struck a different tone with “she longs for pure love, yet tonight she goes off to sell her reckless, pale body—a military-base woman” (1953a: 3).1 In both cases, “military-base woman” emerged as a keyword. A Toho studio production, The Red Light Military Base follows the protagonist, a returnee from China, as he arrives in his native village, at the foot of Mt. Fuji, only to find it transformed into a US military base occupying the land. “Military-based woman” refers to the heroine, a prostitute serving American soldiers, in other words, a pan-pan. Although the San Francisco Peace Treaty had been in effect for over a year at this point, the number of US military bases in Japan was still on the rise (Yoshimi 2007: 118). Formal military occupation of Japan had ended, but the condition that historian Fujimura Michio has called the “semi-occupation” had already set in (1981: 39–55). With the bases attracting increasingly fierce criticism and resistance, independent film productions churned out projects that took up the military-base issue. In contrast, The Red Light Military Base was an exception as the only militarybase film produced by one of the major studios. This point was underscored in the promotional materials, which described the film as an “unorthodox, ambitious work” or an “unorthodox drama.”2 Of course, as commercial, narrative fiction, this was not a film that sought to intervene in the public debate with any specific perspective on military-base issues. With journalistic interest in military bases and prostitution running high, these issues were likely seen as commercially promising subject matter. As suggested by the title, which combines “red light district” (akasen) and “military base” (kichi)—in other words, sex and the military—this was a project that aimed at exploiting “political sensationalism” and was promoted as such in titillating language. The première of The Red Light Military Base that was scheduled for September 30, 1953 was, however, abruptly canceled. When American journalists in Japan excoriated the film, labeling it 31

Hideyuki Nakamura

an “anti-American film,” the studio responded by suspending its release. The Japanese media (newspapers and magazines) avidly took up the issue, calling it the “Akasen kichi controversy.”3 Both the “controversy” and the film itself, however, were soon forgotten, as if echoing the process by which the presence of military bases in “mainland Japan” turned into a “background matter” after the late 1950s (Yoshimi 2007: 150).4 This chapter rescues The Red Light Military Base from oblivion, bringing the political debates surrounding it and their context to the surface by turning to contemporary news sources. Above all, it calls attention to the unique quality of this unsung cinematic masterpiece. As a sophistic­ ated sensory assemblage, cinema itself does not function as a constitutive part of public debates. Yet it never ceases to stimulate a multitude of lines of communication. It is as if the nocturnal quality of cinema affects the diurnal quality of discourse. Even debates engendered by films ordinarily develop in the discursive sphere. If one were to study these debates as though they could be cut off from the film text, then there would be no particular reason why cinema would need to be the object of inquiry. When examining a film like this, we need to try boldly posi­ tioning ourselves in the schism—which could be ultimately unbridgeable—between the uniquely cinematic world and the discursive domain of communication. It is for this reason that I take up this film in this chapter. The Red Light Military Base has been forgotten, with no theatrical screenings except on special occasions, and virtually no television rebroadcasts or home releases on VHS or DVD, presum­ ably because of its subject matter.5 Let us start then with the narrative outline. I will cite two versions of the synopsis that were published at the time of the film’s production, because they will be useful as primary texts for further discussion. The citations are lengthy, but I will draw attention to the differences between them. First, this is the “brief synopsis” that appeared in the section on new releases in Kinema junpō: Returning from Communist China after a ten-year absence, Kawanabe Koichi is shocked at the dramatically changed appearance of his hometown, Gotenba at the foot of Mt. Fuji. In the family home, he finds his grandfather, mother, and siblings alive and well; he learns that Sugio, the elder of his two younger brothers, is married and works at the town hall, but his father has passed away. With their land confiscated and occu­ pied by an artillery training ground, the family is reduced to making ends meet by renting the annex to Yukiko, a prostitute catering to GIs. He demands to know the whereabouts of his lover Harue, whom he had kept close to his heart for ten years, but he only receives vague replies. Koichi’s younger sister, Shizue, had been engaged to his childhood friend, Uenishi, who now works as a schoolteacher, but the engagement is called off because a pan-pan (Yukiko) boards at her family’s house. Although Koichi demands that Yukiko leave, she snaps back that what she does is not by choice. At that point, Harue happens to call on Yukiko, accompanied by a black child and Kenkichi, Koichi’s other younger brother, who is now Harue’s lover. Koichi is crushed, as Yukiko looks on with pity. As Uenishi swears he will marry Shizuko (sic) despite his family’s opposition, Koichi resolves to start anew in Tokyo. When Yukiko promises to reform herself and begs him to take her with him, he flatly turns her down. The following morning, as Koichi boards the bus after exchanging farewells with his family, he finds Yukiko onboard, now dressed in noticeably somber clothes. As he tries to speak to her, the roar of artillery intervenes. As the artillery noise relentlessly rages on, enveloping the scenic view of Mt. Fuji, the bus leaves for the station with Koichi and Yukiko onboard, sitting in silence. (Kinema Junpōsha 1953c: 64) 32

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

Let us turn next to an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in the Tokyo Evening News on September 28, 1953. It is crucial to our discussion of the controversies surrounding The Red Light Military Base to point out that this is an English-language newspaper. Below I cite the para­ graphs that introduce the film’s story. A Japanese soldier, repatriated from Red China, returns to his home in the foothills of Mt. Fuji. He finds the farms transformed into a U.S. Security Base. Outside the fencedin reservation, there is bedlam. Lecherous American soldiers consort with diseaseridden prostitutes (one of whom is shown in the final stages of dope addiction). The prostitutes are the slaves of pimps and dope peddlers who bribe corrupt officials. School children are shown in their classrooms either (1) unable to study because of the roar of cannons or (2) looking at American soldiers hugging Japanese prostitutes. When the repatriate calls at the village office to locate his family, he finds his brother working there, a corrupt clerk who receives bribes from dope peddlers. At home he discovers a prostitute occupying the room that was his and entertaining her American solider friend as his 10-year-old brother and two teen-age sisters look on. A sister, engaged to a youth in a neighboring village, is rejected by the parents of the bridegroom-to-be because “a prostitute lives in the house, and besides it is public gossip that there is not a single virgin remaining in the girl’s village.” When the girl hears the bad news, she breaks down and decides, “What’s the use of living the straight and narrow.” She flees in tears to the room of the prostitute boarder with whom she drowns her sorrows in American whiskey. The repatriate next learns that his sweetheart—who was purity and loveliness itself when he left to fight for the country—has mothered a Negro soldier’s child and become a prostitute. In anger the repatriate determines to fight to wipe out the village’s shame, but he finds even his mother aligned against him. She needs the ¥10,000 rent which the pros­ titute pays her. What can the repatriate do but depart from the village in disgust, which he does […] (Tokyo Evening News 1953a: 1) When comparing the two quotes, one first notices that Kinema junpō addresses the characters by their names, but the Tokyo Evening News consistently avoids proper nouns. It is possible that Kinema junpō transcribed the press release. Using a descriptive tone, Kinema junpō’s synopsis devotes half of its length to the scenes following the protagonist Koichi’s climactic encounter with his former lover, thus skewing the balance in the actual plot to an interesting effect. It is likely that the Tokyo Evening News synopsis was written by an American journalist after actually attending a screening. On the one hand, it provides oddly concrete details about the rent and the whiskey. On the other hand, it mixes up the order of the school and the village office scenes, perhaps owing to misremembering. It is also inaccurate to say that “the repatriate determines to fight to wipe out the village’s shame.” This review’s reference to the issue of drugs, which Kinema junpō completely elides, reveals the author’s primary interest. It is true that the narrative hints at the connection between the protagonist’s brother and the drug dealers. 33

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Summarizing the film’s narrative was not the purpose of the Tokyo Evening News’s editorial. It goes on to note: What can the repatriate do but depart from the village in disgust, which he does, leaving this unmistakable message to the audience: American soldiers are polluting Japan with their lechery and are turning the country into a cesspool. The shame of Japan can be wiped out only by ridding the country of these Americans. Unless this is done, Japan will sink into moral degradation. (Tokyo Evening News 1953a: 1) The editorial took up the subject of The Red Light Military Base in order to decry this kind of “message” as “anti-Americanism at its worst.” Nevertheless, it is not as if there is a “message” conveyed by the protagonist’s speech, or by the title cards and voice-over narration. Rather, this “message” was a verbal articulation of the author’s experience as a viewer: it was his interpreta­ tion. This was more a case of misinterpretation, or even misconstrued, informed by a certain political background that I will discuss later. It is also one of the unique effects that cinema pro­ duces. Can we not say that instead of conveying a particular “message,” the film contains within itself a lacuna that spectators are invited to fill with the type of “message” that derives from their respective standpoints? Ultimately, it is the darkness that lies deep within The Red Light Military Base that this chapter seeks to approach.

What was “the Akasen kichi controversy”? Toho producer Tanaka Tomoyuki proposed a film dealing with the military-base issue to the studio in September 1952. After being put on temporary hold, the project was officially approved in January 1953, and work on the screenplay was under way by February (Miya 1953: 14). According to the film’s director, Taniguchi Senkichi, the screenplay was written between May and July, with four rounds of revision and three on-site research trips in the foothills of Mt. Fuji (Taniguchi 1953: 4). As I later discuss with concrete examples, the results of the research trips were used at each step in the film’s production. The final screenplay was submitted to Eirin (Commission for the Administration of the Motion Picture Code of Ethics) on July 13.6 Eirin’s Code of Ethics Committee approved the film on July 15 with a note about film direction and two suggested corrections to the screenplay. Regarding the note on direction, the committee expressed their request for sensitive direction throughout the film, since there is a worrying possibility of an undesirable effect in the area of international feelings, depending on the way the film is directed, even though there is no major concern with the screenplay itself. (Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku 1953a: a-3, b-2, emphasis mine) Needless to say, “international feeling” referred to the American reaction. With the screenplay approved, location shooting at the foot of Mt. Fuji started on July 22 (Taniguchi 1953: 4). In August, with production well under way, multiple media outlets reported on the “military base” fad in the movies (Sankei Tokyo Honsha 1953: 2; Kinema Junpōsha 1953b: 106). An article in the August 3 evening edition of the Sankei shimbun, titled “Will It Arrive, the Era of Military Base Films?” (“Shutsugen suru ka kichimono eiga jidai”), reasoned that, with the Uchinada affair7 heightening public interest in military base issues, it was only natural for filmmakers—who are professionally sensitive to current events—to drift toward 34

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

military base films (Sankei Tokyo Honsha 1953: 2). The article, which listed the titles of a few films that were being planned for production alongside comments made by their producers, also featured a roundtable discussion titled “What We Expect in Military Base Films” (“Kichi eiga ni nozomu”) that featured intellectuals such as Shimizu Ikutarō, Kanzaki Kiyoshi, and Kimura Kihachirō. Half of the article, however, was devoted to behind-the-scenes stories related to the production of The Red Light Military Base. In the late August issue of Kinema junpō, the column, “Jumpō Revolving Door” (“Junpō kaiten tobira”), reported that “military base films” will follow “war films” and “sex manual films” as the latest trend (Kinema Junpōsha 1953b: 106). An article in the Sankei shimbun pointed out, however, that all the films that constituted this trend were independent productions with the exception of The Red Light Military Base. The article lists titles such as Nihon no teisō (Japanese Chastity, produced by Shin-ei), Kichi no ko (Children of the Base, Hachi-puro), Kichi Kujūkuri (Kujūkuri Military Base, Dokuritsu-eikyo), Kichi Nihon (Japan Military Base, Shunju-puro), Kichi no hanayome (Bride of the Base, Shinriken), and Irago zaki (Cape Irago, Shinsei-puro). Among these titles, Japanese Chastity, Children of the Base, Kujūkuri Military Base, and Japan Military Base were all based on eponymous books published in 1953.8 In contrast to these independent produc­ tions, The Red Light Military Base was the product of a major studio, and this factor was decisive in eliciting fierce debates. As one American journalist reportedly explained: We are not shocked by whatever Red or anti-American films come out of inde­ pendent production companies. There is no cause for concern since we can count on the Japanese public to see them as films made by individuals with specific political agendas. (Taniguchi 1953: 6) Shooting finished on September 14 and an internal screening was held on September 20 (Tan­ iguchi 1953: 4). Eirin only took issue with a scene with a naked boy and approved the film on the condition that the scene be deleted (Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku 1953b: c.4–c.12). The film was set to première on September 30 and advertisements were placed in newspapers. Just before the public release, however, Toho ran into a cumbersome problem. On September 28, Yomiuri shimbun’s morning issue published an article with the headline “Japanese film again causes a problem, The Red Light Military Base is anti-American” (Yomiuri Shimbun 1953b: 7). The film Hiroshima (1953), produced by the Japan Teachers’ Union, had previously attracted international attention thanks to criticism in British newspapers, but this time, Toho’s The Red Light Military Base was labeled an “anti-American film” by Americans in Japan, and the American actors who appeared in the film bore the brunt of the criticism. The article reported that Toho and the actors were scheduled to meet on September 28 to discuss the best course of action. These were the points summarized in the opening lines of the article. What is interesting about this article, however, is that the remainder reprinted a news dispatch from the Chicago Tribune that was written by a journalist named Walter Simmons. According to his account, Robert Booth and other American actors had demanded that their scenes be edited out of the film because it exuded anti-American sentiment. Other Americans present at the screening shared the impres­ sion that the film was anti-American, with some going so far as claiming that this was the most effective anti-American film seen to date. Simmons himself cautioned that this was the first antiAmerican film made by a major studio, and it was expected to create an international uproar if it were released (Yomiuri Shimbun 1953b: 7). The English-language evening paper, Tokyo Evening News, excoriated The Red Light Military Base in an editorial titled “Anti-Americanism at Its Worst,” not only demanding Toho stop the release, but also urging the deportation of the 35

Hideyuki Nakamura

Americans who acted in the film (Tokyo Evening News 1953a: 1). Criticism of the film was written by American journalists who had attended the private screening, but the film had not been made with foreign viewers in mind. We will return to the circumstances that led to the special screening held for American journalists. On the evening of September 28, the studio executive Mabuchi Takeo met with the pro­ ducer, Tanaka Tomoyuki and others, and concluded that The Red Light Military Base was not an “anti-American film.” They issued a statement confirming the film’s release on September 30 as planned. Taking the position of the American actors into consideration, however, they also decided to allow the special measure of deleting some of their scenes (Yomiuri Shimbun 1953d: 7). At a board meeting on the morning of September 29, the studio president Kobayashi Ichizō proposed canceling the film’s scheduled release. In an about-face from the decision announced on the previous day, a different film was slated in place of The Red Light Military Base (Yomiuri Shimbun 1953c: 3; Tokyo Evening News 1953b: 1; Nippon Times 1953: 4; Nittō Shimbun 1953a: 4). There was much speculation following this sudden change of course. In response to this development, Eirin convened an urgent meeting that resulted in a statement clarifying that there was nothing anti-American in the film, since the committee had reviewed the film accord­ ing to the guidelines it issued in July for evaluating military-base films (Kinema Junpō 1953d: 99). The guidelines that the statement referred to comprised the following four items proposed by Eirin’s Commission for Administration (kanri iinkai) that met on July 24 to “carefully discuss the evaluation principles for films in production that deal with the military base problem” (Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku 1953a: a–1). 1 2 3 4

It is desirable that treatment of the military base problem as a special kind of political problem be avoided. Films should pay special attention to the social impact that any depictions of the environ­ ment and the customs of the base and its surrounding areas would have. Films should take national sentiment regarding this problem into consideration. It is desirable that the narrative criticizes prejudice and discrimination against mixed-race children. (Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku 1953a: a–1)

Just as Eirin had feared, despite these principles, The Red Light Military Base ended up eliciting “an undesirable outcome in the area of international feelings.” Within Toho, producers met with the head of production to confirm their commitment to releasing the film at the nearest opportunity, and the National Movie and Theater Workers’ Union (Zen’eien, or Zenkoku Eiga Engeki Rōdō Kumiai) requested that the studio swiftly release the film and be more cau­ tious regarding upcoming productions (Nittō Shimbun 1953b: 4). The situation was contained, if only temporarily. Completion of The Red Light Military Base coincided with a tense period of negotiations between Japan and the United States surrounding the proposed Mutual Security Act (MSA), which demanded an increase in Japan’s defense spending. There were even rumors that the prime minister at the time, Yoshida Shigeru, called Toho’s president, Kobayashi Ichizō, to stop the film from being released. A column in the Sunday Mainichi introduced this story as “one of the most exquisite bits of gossip to have come out of The Red Light Military Base’s cancelation,” before adding that “this might indeed be true” (Miya 1953: 14). Behind all this was the perception that the Japanese government was deeply concerned with the United States’ intent regarding the MSA issue. It is true that the “Ikeda– Robertson Talks” had started on October 2, 1953 and continued until October 30. The Amer­ ican military would promptly start withdrawing and the military-base issues would gradually 36

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

recede into the background of public consciousness once Japan established the Self-Defense Force in response to the passage of two defense laws (The Mutual Defense Assistance Agree­ ment and the Defense Laws), which in turn were prompted by the Ikeda–Robertson Talks. Setting the political background aside, it is notable that The Red Light Military Base drew media attention while the public was unable to see the film. Some film critics commented on the “problem” raised by the film without waiting for the film’s public release (Uriu 1953: 77–80). English literature scholar Nakano Yoshio, who had attended a press screening, offered a well-balanced commentary that broke down the problem while acknowledging that the public had not yet seen the film (Nakano 1953: 54–61). Noting that the film appeared to have been well made to a layman—which seems like a fair assessment—he went on to list two points he found problematic in its treatment of the base problem. First, what made the base problem per­ nicious was the structure of economic dependence. It was therefore necessary that the film get to the bottom of this social structure, but this perspective was lacking in The Red Light Military Base. Second, the crux of the military-base problem lay in American international policies: that is, the problem of sex is not deducible to an individual’s personal issues. From this perspective, even the American soldiers were, in a sense, victims. It is The Red Light Military Base’s treatment of sex as a matter of personal responsibility that is problematic. Nakano’s two points are further developed in feminist historian Hirai Kazuko’s (1997) study of the region surrounding the East Fuji Maneuver Area, the location that provided the setting for The Red Light Military Base.9 The issue of economic dependency was contingent on Japan’s response to the “off limits” policy—barring American military personnel from entering recrea­ tional areas—but also the broader issue of the presence of the prostitution industry and its rela­ tionship to the US Army and local government. The second issue hinged on the US Army’s policies aimed at regulating sexually transmitted diseases. These issues are not taken up in The Red Light Military Base. Needless to say, however, a narrative film is not a critical essay. It is not diurnal logic that dictates the choice of subject matter and the structures making up a film. In what way, then, was the cinematic world of The Red Light Military Base unique? I will return to this question in the final section. On December 8, Toho abruptly released The Red Light Military Base, only two months after the studio’s executive decision to call off its scheduled première. An advertisement in the evening edition of the Yomiuri shimbun (Tokyo edition) on December 5 exclaimed, “Suddenly! Out on December 8,” with the defiant declaration: “Who says I can’t fall in love like everybody else!” (Yomiuri Shimbun 1953e). The film that was thus finally made available to the public, however, was neither criticized nor praised. Once again, the Tokyo Evening News was an exception. Under­ scoring the date of the film’s release, the ironic headline read “Japan’s Leftists’ Cry, Remember Pearl Harbor” (Tokyo Evening News 1953c: 1, 4). According to Kinema junpō, thirteen members of the Diet attended the screening at Nihon Gekijō on December 9, ostensibly to survey public response to the film (Kinema Junpōsha 1954: 83). Their verdict that this was not an anti-American film might have been detrimental to the box office return. Nakano Yoshio had missed the mark in his observation that, with free publicity given by Americans in Japan, The Red Light Military Base was bound to be a hit (Nakano 1953: 61). The summary in Eiga nenkan (Japan Film Yearbook) in the following year explained that the film underperformed owing to its delayed release. The stu­ dio’s calculation to play up the political sensation surrounding the film ended in a misfire.

The Red Light Military Base as an “anti-American film”: the American response The American journalists based in Japan who attended the press screening organized by Toho were the ones that criticized The Red Light Military Base as an “anti-American film.” By that 37

Hideyuki Nakamura

time, the anti-American label had already been used repeatedly by Americans to criticize the trend in film production in Japan following the San Francisco Peace Treaty.10 Looking back in 1958, Iwasaki Akira listed the following as examples (Iwasaki 1958: 203–204). On June 26, 1953, U.S. News and World Report reported an “anti-American movement” in the publishing and film industries. Reporting from Japan, the journalist wrote that Konketsuji (Children of Mixed Blood, Hachi-puro, April 1953) was a film deliberately made to stir up anti-American feelings by juxtaposing images of an American soldier holding hands with a pan-pan with footage of a US base around Mt. Fuji, and misinforming the US servicemen that this was a documentary film about US military bases in order to have them appear as extras. Similarly, for the same journalist, Himeyuri no tō (The Tower of Lilies, Toei, January 1953), Onna hitori daichi wo iku (A Woman Walks the Earth Alone, The Union of Mine Workers, Hokkaidō Branch, Kinuta Production, February 1953), Higeki no shōgun, Yamashita Tomoyuki (The Tragic Commander, Yamashita Tomoyuki, April 1953), were all deemed to be promoting anti-American, anti-rearmament agendas. Another article in The Hollywood Reporter (date unknown) warned that since 99 percent of filmmakers were Red or Communist sympathizers, an investigation would be necessary before entering business negotiations. Of the Japanese films that premièred in early June 1953, there was just one title that the reporter found to be anti-communist.11 Also, in the English lan­ guage newspapers published in Japan, there were letters to the editor sent by American expats, some of which had the phrase “anti-US movies” in the headlines. If we read the Soviet maga­ zines, it was claimed, one would understand why anti-American films thrived in Japan; these magazines praised films such as Nihon senbotsu gakusei no tegami kike wadatsumi no koe (Listen to the Voices of the Sea, Toyoko Film, June 1950) and Genbaku no ko (Children of the Atomic Bomb, Modern Film Association, August 1952) and openly recognized, as the argument went, the significant contributions communists made in producing these films.12 These texts, which themselves constituted propaganda and at times paranoid demagogy, were written at a volatile time before the Korean War concluded in armistice. As it is well known, this was the time of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare” back in the United States. Just as the label “un-American” was instrumental in the US anti-communist campaign, it was obvious that in the Japanese context, “anti-American” effectively meant “Red,” or “proCommunist.” Two points of note are, first, that the anti-American label was employed when the Americans criticized the Japanese; and second, Japanese films labeled “anti-American” covered a range of subject matter that was not limited to the atomic bomb.13 More than a few Americans appeared to dislike post-Peace Treaty Japanese films that were now free from the Occupation authorities’ control, without carefully considering whether they were actually “anti-American” or “pro-Communist.” Regarding The Red Light Military Base, one Japanese newspaper reported “an American journalist who saw the film went so far as to argue that the failure to place Eirin under American control was the root cause of the issue (Shin Ōsaka 1953b: 3). On September 2, nearly a month before the controversial cancelation of The Red Light Military Base’s release, an article in a Japan-based English-language newspaper already associated the film, still in production, with the buzzword “anti-American.” This in itself was not a criti­ cism of The Red Light Military Base as an anti-American film. It was, however, responsible for establishing among the expatriate Americans in Japan a certain angle from which to see the film, and for paving the way for criticism launched against the Americans who appeared in it. Accord­ ing to the article, the film that Toho was shooting at the foot of Mt. Fuji (referred to here as Red Line Military Base), and which took up the “social problem” caused by the American base’s pres­ ence, was experiencing resistance from both the American military and local residents. On the one hand, the American military was reluctant to cooperate, given their experience of providing 38

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

full assistance to the production of Children of Mixed Blood, a film that was deemed anti-American upon its release and consequently caused inconvenience for the US personnel involved. Unable to find cast members from Americans affiliated with the military, Toho recruited civilian Americans residing in Japan, notably Bob Booth, an experienced actor who had also appeared in the contro­ versial film, The Tragic Commander, Yamashita Tomoyuki. There are rumors that Booth, together with The Red Light Military Base’s director Taniguchi Senkichi, sent the screenplay to the Amer­ ican embassy to disprove the notion that this was an anti-American film, but the embassy has been unable to verify this story. On the other hand, local residents were reportedly concerned that the film would jeopardize income generated by the military base. Toho even had to temporarily use the nom de guerre Utsukushiki sanga (Beautiful Rivers and Mountains).14 In short, The Red Light Military Base had attracted the epithet “anti-American” even before its completion, and there was a struc­ ture in place for the American cast to be accused of “un-American” activities. Let us take a look at what Taniguchi Senkichi has written about this episode. On September 24, three American residents of Japan who played the role of American soldiers in the film spoke with Toho, asking the company to take action regarding the criticism they had received from other Americans, which included the threat of deportation. Toho responded by organizing a special private screening for American journalists in the hope of promoting a better under­ standing of the film. Even though a similar screening held on September 25 was successful in extracting the verdict from Japanese journalists that there was nothing anti-American about the film, the screening arranged on the following day for over twenty American journalists ended in a fiasco, with some storming out halfway through the screening, kicking their chairs back in anger. Only five or six journalists stayed for the roundtable discussion following the screening, and all of them fervently criticized the film, making it clear that Toho’s plan had backfired.15 As one of the organizers of the private screening who had stayed on to witness the round­ table, Taniguchi could see that they had made the regrettable mistake of not inviting foreign correspondents from other countries as well: “Since we showed the film only to American journalists, once they were incensed, we only made the situation worse by trying to calm them down” (Taniguchi 1954: 15). This is evidently an important factor. It is highly probable that members of a homogenous audience would end up amplifying each individual member’s reac­ tions, channeling them in the same direction. The audience in this case consisted of intellectuals intimately familiar with Hollywood films, and their criticism focused on specific details. From the criticism printed in newspapers and magazines, we can deduce two particular points that were considered especially anti-American. First, American soldiers are reductively depicted as oversexed and vulgar men. Second, throughout the film, the protagonist is seen wearing a Lenin cap. In other words, the common understanding was that this was a soldier repatriating from Communist China, who then criticizes the American base from a “communist” standpoint. The film’s producers and the Japanese media countered these points by pointing out that the film also depicted “upright Americans,” and they objected to reading the character as a “communist” simply because he wears a “Lenin cap,” only one detail in the broader design of a character who returns home after a ten-year absence. The American journalists were seen as unduly sensitive and narrow-minded for citizens of a world superpower. Nevertheless, was there not a legitimate reason why the American journalists responded the way they did? I will further explain the issues con­ cerning the Lenin cap later in this chapter. In what follows, I will focus on analyzing the interpre­ tation of how American soldiers were portrayed in the film. Let us put the year 1953 in a film-historical context. For twenty years, Americans had been watching Hollywood films, which were strictly self-censored in accordance with the Motion Picture Production Code. This meant that visual and verbal references to matters of ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality, violence, and crime—especially drugs and prostitution—were effectively 39

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banned. It is true that the application of the Code had become less strict since the war years, but it was still some time before Hollywood would be liberated from the Code altogether; Americans were being disciplined as ideal film viewers, so to speak, by the Code. It would not be surprising if the American journalists in this case had applied the same standard to Japanese films. Consider the fact that the editorial in Tokyo Evening News that I cited earlier summarized The Red Light Military Base with the following words: “the disease-ridden prostitutes (one of whom is shown in the final stages of dope addiction)” (emphasis mine). We can detect the shock and anger felt by the author of the editorial in the way this is written. When we actually view the scene, there is indeed a ghastly image a woman lying exhausted in a hand-pulled cart, under a parasol tied onto it. Hollywood’s Production Code Administration used “analysis charts” to meticulously monitor whether the main characters of a completed work were depicted in a “sympathetic” light, and how religious events, religious figures, and foreigners, as well as scenes of drinking, criminality, and violence were represented. This “sympathetic/unsympathetic” distinction hinged on whether the characters possessed virtuous qualities such as sincerity, kindness, and dignity. Moreover, in Hollywood screenwriting, it was crucial that these “sympathetic” characters be positioned appropriately within the narrative. Not only were “sympathetic” American soldiers missing in The Red Light Military Base, the film featured positively “unsympathetic” characters. In one scene, for example, a drunk American soldier in high spirits confounds the proprietor of a souvenir shop by telling him that the American military will be withdrawing from Japan. Although this was a satirical commentary on the Japanese dependency on the American military base, it is possible that American journalists were appalled by the depiction of a soldier lying while intoxicated, which doubly violated puritanical morality, and compelled them to conclude that this was an unfair film. We should not overlook the fact that there were journalists who were deeply moved by the film. One is said to have told Taniguchi that “this film appeals to the viewers’ emotion, and if I were not American, I too would cry with the protagonist—it touches my heart” (Taniguchi 1954: 16). Jim Becker at The Associated Press also bemoaned, “The Red Light Military Base is truly a remarkable film—which adds to the problem” (Bekkā 1953: 13). Ted Conant’s words, “this was the most effective anti-American film that I have ever seen,” cited in Chicago Tribune, was not mere slander but rather, praise, frankly acknowledging the strength of the film. Let us suppose that such positive responses were contingent on the viewers’ identification with the Japanese protagonist, Koichi, as represented by the comment: “if I were not American, I too would cry with the protagonist.” Moreover, suppose that despite identifying with the protagonist, such viewers couldn’t help finding the Lenin cap and the American soldiers as seen from his perspective jarring. The criticism of “anti-Americanism” might have been a reaction to a complex viewing experience that put them in a sort of double bind. There are no doubt limitations to interpreting the reaction to the film by American journalists solely based on scarce textual evidence. We must instead turn to the film The Red Light Military Base itself and the particularities of the world it represented.16

Negotiation over identification: heart of darkness in The Red Light

Military Base

The Red Light Military Base opens with two title cards that appear after the Toho logo: This film is meant as neither criticism nor protest against anyone. This is a record of our own self-reflection motivated by our wish to end the miser­ ies generated around the base. 40

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

Since this disclaimer does not appear in the screenplay, it was presumably added to the final “self-revised” version of the film.17 Who does “us” refer to, and what is there to “self-reflect” upon? These expressions are examples of the ambiguous rhetoric that marked post-defeat Japan. The subsequent title sequence opens with Hokusai’s Red Fuji and closes with his Black Fuji, with its bolt of lightening cutting through the dark hills. What appears on the screen next is a radiant view of Mt. Fuji seen through the window of a moving vehicle. In the following shot, when we see a man on a bus turning away from the window, we can infer that the previous view of Mt. Fuji was from his perspective. The gazes of the other passengers, however, presum­ ably local residents, are glued to this man. One of them stares curiously at the black cap worn by the passenger sitting next to him. This stranger in the black cap is Kawanabe Koichi (played by Mikuni Rentarō), who was drafted to fight in China ten years earlier, and has finally returned home. In this way, The Red Light Military Base prepares the viewers for a film in which the protagonist’s gaze upon his unfamiliar hometown, drastically changed by the base, passes by the gazes of the locals that in turn, gaze back at him. I say “passes by” since the protagonist’s “return” only lasts for a day and a night, before he re-boards the bus the following morning and leaves the town behind. Kawanabe’s hometown is the East Fuji Maneuver Grounds, an area that was later renamed Gotenba. The Red Light Military Base’s narrative world was woven with historical materials gath­ ered in an actual, existing location. The Maneuver Grounds at the base of Mt. Fuji was estab­ lished long before the Allied Occupation of Japan. Its origin was a live-ammunition exercise ground for the Japanese army that was established in 1906, in the aftermath of the RussoJapanese War. Local farmers resisted its creation in vain with appeals, petitions, and protests that culminated in many of them losing ancestral lands in 1911. With Japan’s defeat in the Asia– Pacific War, the farmers temporarily regained possession of their land, only to be ordered to evacuate from the premises formerly occupied by the Japanese Army in January 1946, this time for American maneuver grounds. In February 1948, the farmers were told there would be no rent payments or damage compensation for land that was occupied for military purposes. Sixtythree percent of the seized land was privately owned, or publicly owned by towns and villages. This had a negative impact on 1,692 families working in agriculture, with 808 of them losing more than 40 percent of the arable land. Members of these families were forced to look for alternative jobs, either at the military base or elsewhere, as daily laborers and migrant laborers (Kichi Mondai Chōsa Iinkai 1954: 98–101). American troops stayed on as “stationed forces” (chūryūgun) beyond the signing of the Peace Treaty in April 1952, only leaving in 1958, when they handed the maneuver grounds to the Self-Defense Force. The Red Light Military Base selectively uses elements that constituted the actual military base controversy. Among the most obvious examples are land confiscation, drugs, pan-pan, renting to pan-pan, issues arising from the proximity of schools to the base and the recreation district, and “mixed blood children.” For example, renting to pan-pan offered a much-needed source of income for farmers who were dispossessed of their land. In The Red Light Military Base, the protagonist’s family is seen living in a house that has been moved from their confiscated land, from which they were forcefully removed. The family rents out the room of the eldest son, who has been missing since he was drafted during the war, to a pan-pan. The younger brother Sugio (Kaneko Nobuo) refers to the rent as “1000 yen per tatami,” which was based on the actual standard rate. According to Hirai Kazuko, “the rent paid by pan-pan at the time in areas around military bases was five to six thousand yen a month per 100 ft2 [rokujō].” This was far more expensive than 776 yen, the amount that prostitutes in Tokyo paid for a room at an inn; thus, “it reveals the structure in which farmers, who had been adversely affected by the confiscation 41

Hideyuki Nakamura

of land, compensated for their losses through the bodies of the pan-pan, in the form of expen­ sive rent” (Hirai 1997: 128). The issue of the proximity of schools to the base and recreational districts finds its way into the film in the scene in which the protagonist seeks to find his exlover Harue (played by Nakakita Chieko) in the school where she formerly worked. Although Harue no longer works at the school, he reunites with his childhood friend Uenishi (played by Kobayashi Keiju), who is also his younger sister’s lover. In restaurants lined up outside the school, we see American soldiers and Japanese women necking. “Nice view, isn’t it?” jokes Uenishi dejectedly, before angrily adding, “Japanese politicians were stupid for letting this happen.” The spatial configuration of this scene is remarkably similar to the sketch of Fujioka Junior High School included in the book Kichi Nihon (Military Base Japan), which had just been published. The schoolyard of the Fujioka Junior High School was confiscated to make way for the South Camp of the East Fuji Maneuver Grounds, and was consequently surrounded by camp facilities and businesses catering to the soldiers. The book reports the problem of having women from these businesses enter the school to use the well on the premises (Inomata, Kimura, and Shimizu 1953: 128–129). This is also integrated into the film. In contrast to these details, economic dependency on the base only manifests in the form of ironic asides. Similarly, the prostitution industry is only alluded to in the film. Moreover, no refer­ ence is made to the issue of sexually transmitted disease. Historically speaking, the US military took the issue of venereal disease in the army seriously, and with local governments and the sex industry, jointly implemented a weekly compulsory check-up for sex workers (Hirai 1997: 135–141). It would have been possible, as Nakano Yoshio suggested, to make a film that dealt with the structural issues of the military base, but the narrative of The Red Light Military Base was grounded in the protagonist Koichi’s gaze, cast on his dramatically changing hometown during his short stay. One reviewer complained that the film lacked drama, since the hero and heroines were only there as “guides to and commentators on military base culture” (Noborigawa 1954: 64). According to Gilles Deleuze, a plot in which the protagonist is reduced to the role of a helpless onlooker is characteristic of post-World War II cinema. What Deleuze observed was a superseding of one mode of cinema, in which characters actively respond to their given situations, with another mode of cinema, exemplified by Italian neorealism, in which characters merely witness unbearable situ­ ations (Deleuze 1985). In these films, the protagonists only see and hear without taking any action to change the situation. This is also the case in The Red Light Military Base. The Red Light Military Base destabilizes the conventions of classical narrative cinema from within; it challenges the fundamental convention of identification, in which the viewer identi­ fies with a protagonist that has a coherent identity. This neither means a rejection of identifica­ tion nor the effect of distanciation. On the contrary, the narrative encourages the audience to identify with the protagonist, even as it challenges the certainty of that protagonist’s identity, and choreographing an exchange of gazes that boycotts audience identification in the dramatic climax, at a moment when one expects to be drawn into the narrative. The Red Light Military Base thus carves out a unique cinematic image from the issue of the military base. Consider Izawa Jun’s observation that “Taniguchi’s direction develops the plot around the protagonist’s [Koichi’s] feeling of discomfort.” Regarding the lovemaking scene with the heroine, Yukiko (Negishi Akemi) and the American soldier (Bob Booth), he comments: “it is from the protagonist’s perspective that the film depicts the American soldier circling around the well, skirt-chasing with exaggerated servility” (Izawa 1953: 59). It is unclear whether Izawa saw the film before or after the voluntary revision, but there is an analogous scene in the surviving print. As Koichi, upon finally returning to his family home, savors the water freshly drawn from the well, a male voice speaking in English distracts his attention. He turns his gaze toward the distant voice to find a man and a woman—the heroine Yukiko, who rents the room from his 42

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

family, and her American client—flirting in a half-naked state. What Izawa means by “the protagonist’s perspective” refers to the technique of framing the wanton behavior of the two with the actor Mikuni Rentarō’s gaze. It was this scene that received the harshest condemnation by the American journalists. As for Izawa, he implicitly blames the journalists’ inadequate cinematic literacy, quipping, “without paying attention to these techniques, one is apparently liable to think that the film is making a fool of the American soldier.” In other words, Izawa stressed the importance of recognizing that the film was not objectively “making a fool of the American soldier.” What if the displeasure of the American journalists had less to do with a misperception that the film was “making fun of the American soldier” than their successful identification with the protagonist’s disgust at what he sees as the “idiotic American?” We can make similar speculations about other scenes. There is a scene in which an American on a scooter, with a girl in school uniform sitting behind him, passes by the protagonist Koichi and his younger sister and brother. The girl is screaming and hitting the man in an effort to be freed, but the man is unaffected. The girl is Koichi’s other younger sister. This scene was criticized by the American journalists, who interpreted it as suggestive of kidnapping for the purpose of rape (Shūkan Asahi 1953: 11). The sister walking by the protagonist, however, quickly explains that the man is a kind officer and a friend. If the journalists had to use the term “suggestive,” it was because of this twist. In other words, it was not a matter of misreading the scene, but rather an objection to the technique the film used to elicit viewer identification with the Koichi’s fear that the small girl was being violently abducted. It would not be surprising, after all, if the American viewers had identified with the Japanese protagonist. One only needs to reverse the roles to recognize how common this is. In reality, however, identification is no simple matter. Audience identification occurs across different social boundaries such as gender, race, and class. Film Studies has generated a rich discourse over the years on this subject. For example, a fundamental issue for early feminist film theory was the process by which female spectators derived pleasure from Hollywood films, when these films embodied patriarchal ideology. Drawing on Linda Williams’ discussion of the maternal melodrama Stella Dallas (1937), we can say that identification “multiply” occurs (Williams 1987: 316). In the darkness of cinema, spectators are liberated from the self-sameness of identity. Regardless of the particular ways in which identification occurs in The Red Light Military Base, the crux of the problem is the protagonist Koichi’s identity, which functions as the object of identification for the film’s audience. As I noted above, the protagonist Koichi is a passive presence. For example, at one point, enraged at the sight of the pan-pan fooling around with the American soldier in his own house, he postures as if he is about to throw the American out, only to feebly withdraw when the mother restrains him. What immediately follows is simply an extreme long shot that shows the backlit outlines of Koichi standing by his primary-school aged brother, dejectedly gazing at Mt. Fuji at dusk. This is a film in which we get a vivid projection of the protagonist’s emotions caused by what he hears and sees, but rarely any action triggered by these emotions. The only exception is Koichi’s departure toward the end. As I noted above, it was this action that the author of Tokyo Evening News’s editorial perceived as an “unmistakable message.” In reality, the editorial’s author could not bear the lacuna left by the absent action, and attempted to fill it with speculative authorial intent: “The shame of Japan can be wiped out only by ridding the country of these Americans.” A different journalist apparently told Taniguchi that the biggest problem with the film was its lack of closure (Taniguchi 1954: 16). Presumably, the protagonist’s inability to act on the given situation was also problematic. Wouldn’t interpreting the Lenin cap as a symbol of Communist China be the most effective way to fill such a vacuum with meaning? To such a charge, Taniguchi’s camp counter-argued 43

Hideyuki Nakamura

that they envisioned the protagonist as someone who could remain completely unprejudiced in the face of Japan’s present situation (owing to his long absence from Japan), and this led to their decision that in the context of 1953, a returnee from China was the most natural choice for the protagonist, Koichi.18 We should note that the American journalists’ interpretation of the Lenin cap might not be so off the mark as we are led to believe by the filmmakers and the Japanese media. Although the opening scene, with the passenger’s inquisitive glance at the cap, directs our attention to it, it is not mentioned beyond this in the film. It continues to appear onscreen as the Other that is visible but not explained. Moreover, Mikuni Rentarō’s absent-minded, stupefied state contributes to the audience’s unease about his identity. Using Deleuze’s expression, we might call his character, Koichi, a “purely optical and sound” existence, but at any rate, Koichi’s lack of action under­ scores the uncertainty of his identity, and the hollowness of subjectivity. In this context, the Lenin cap offered the journalists a convenient signifier that operated in the diurnal realm of rationality, and which explained away the unsettling lacuna created by the ambiguous identity of a mysterious man returning from Communist China. The audience might attach meanings or stable identities to the film, but what if the crisis of identity as such is the central theme that it explores? Let me repeat: The Red Light Military Base is a film about the protagonist seeing his hometown changed. The change is not experienced as a transition from one form of identity to another, but rather, as the dissolution of identity itself. Consider the transformation of the national terrain. The fact that the camp and the US Army maneuver grounds occupied the foothills of Mt. Fuji meant that this symbol of national identity had been damaged. Such an idea was visually displayed in the book Kichi Nihon (Military Base Japan) published in the same year as the film. The frontispiece of this book compiling reports from the Teachers’ Union Association is a double-spread of Mt. Fuji, with a circular inset on each page labeled “Osaka Itami Airport” and “Kanagawa Atsugi Air Base” respectively (Figure 2.1). The caption reads, “branding on our beautiful country.” As I noted earlier, there were military grounds around Mt. Fuji since before the war; the American military arrived on land that had been expanded as army maneuver grounds despite local resistance in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. The protagonist’s grandfather (Kōdō Kuninori), who works the small piece of land left in his possession, alludes to the Security Force (predecessor to the Self-Defense Force), bemoaning: “[first the Imperial Japanese, then the Americans]—whose military will be next?” Consider the family system (ie). The institution of the traditional family, passed down through generations, is on the brink of dissolution. The third son, Kenkichi (Hieno Akira), who is involved in drug trafficking, is the type of youngster who has no scruples over stepping on the Buddhist altar in order to reach the stash of Philopon (amphetamine) hidden in the ceiling. As some members of his gang break into the house in search of the drug, the other brother, Sugio, with his own connections to the traffickers, turns a blind eye. The protagonist, Koichi, who is the oldest son, cries out in agony, “this is not how a family ought to be!” but his decision is to migrate to Tokyo, leaving the ancestral home in the care of Sugio and his wife. Family, home­ town, and nation—each ceases to function as a foundation for a stable identity. For Koichi, it is the loss of Harue, his first love whom he never ceased loving even after his conscription, that has the gravest impact, nearly destroying his sense of self. Harue (played by Nakakita Chieko), has become a prostitute, given birth to a black child, and now keeps the protagonist’s brother, Kenkichi, as her gigolo. In the climactic scene of Koichi and Harue’s reunion, we see the most noteworthy use of a chiasmic crossing of the gazes. The younger sister, Shizue, is left heartbroken when her marriage is called off because a panpan lives in their family home. Just as Koichi, unable to hold back any longer, pleads with 44

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

Figure 2.1 “Branding on our beautiful country.” Frontispiece of Kichi Nihon. Source: Inomata, Kimura, and Shimizu 1952.

Yukiko to leave the family home, Kenkichi shows up, telling Koichi that Harue is with him. A moment before Harue enters the scene, we see Koichi tightly close his eyes, and for the remain­ der of the scene, the camera refrains from showing the eyes of the actor, Mikuni Rentarō. Harue and Kenkichi, with a scornful expression, urge Koichi to join their business. Their gazes are split in two directions, toward the off-screen spaces where Mikuni Rentarō and Negishi Akemi (as Koichi and Yuriko) are ostensibly situated. Since their gazes are cast diagonally to both sides, this is clearly not a point of view shot from Koichi’s perspective. Except for the cutaway shot to the syringe that falls out of Harue’s handbag, the camera stays on the faces of Nakakita Chieko (Harue) and Hieno Akira (Kenkichi) for almost 2 minutes. As Harue, who has been shamelessly flirting with Kenkichi, turns toward Yukiko to remark with a laugh, “did we interrupt you?” the scene cuts to Yukiko. Mikuni (Koichi) walks past Negishi (Yukiko), who appears as though she is about to cry, and tries to leave the room. Koichi’s back is turned to the camera, and his face remains unseen. He stops as he hears a small boy’s voice calling, “Mother!” We still cannot distinguish his expression since he stands in the dark. The small boy is Harue’s son, accompanied by another pan-pan. The screenplay submitted to the Motion Picture Ethics Committee describes the subsequent scene in the following way: When Koichi, who cannot bear to look at the child, averts his gaze, it inadvertently meets Yukiko’s gaze, which had been fixated on him. With no energy left in him to challenge Yukiko, he leaves the room dejected, with unsteady steps. 45

Hideyuki Nakamura

In the production screenplay (with the nom de guerre Beautiful Rivers and Mountains), the passage on Koichi and Yukiko’s gaze is struck out, and replaced with the following: Koichi, who has been standing lethargically, leaves the room with unsteady steps. “Koichi, who has been standing lethargically” does not appear in the completed film: the camera captures Mikuni as he runs out of the room in a long shot. This is an unusual directorial decision—to show nothing of the protagonist Koichi’s chang­ ing expression or his gaze, even as the camera captures the cruel reality laid bare before him— especially in such a melodramatic climax, marked by emotional excesses. The scene that delivers a heavy blow to Koichi is visible on the screen, and the viewers are forced to watch it with bated breath, but perhaps the protagonist himself might be refusing to see what is happening, choosing to listen instead. The direction invites such a reading. The event that is supposed to be of utmost importance ends without showing Koichi’s face or his gaze. In other words, even though the spectators might understand the profound shock that Koichi experiences, the film refuses to provide a concrete representation of Koichi’s emotional response, even when he is meant to serve as the object of the audience’s emotional identification. Is it possible that the director thought that shifting the object of identification to Harue, played by Nakakita Chieko, would make Koichi’s experience resonate not only on a personal level, but also on the collective level of the Japanese nation? At the same time, if we stick to the narrative logic, it is clear that at this moment a memory or fantasy of innocence that had defined the protagonist’s identity dissem­ bles, thus threatening to dissolve his self-sameness. This leads him to decide to abandon his hometown. Yukiko, played by Negishi Akemi, offers a contrasting model, for she possesses a solid sense of self-identity. As she reveals in her lines of dialogue, she was formerly an office clerk, but she chose and embraced the identity of a pan-pan.19 Even so, after witnessing the drama surround­ ing the reunion between Koichi and Harue, Yukiko apologizes to Kochi for her past. This scene does not exist in the first draft of the screenplay. After Koichi’s hopeless reunion with Harue, he returns home and looks toward the annex, where “the light is still on, throwing Yukiko’s pensive shadow onto the glass window.” This is where the scene ends. What was the reason for revising the script to add a cathartic ending? Besides, on whose behalf is Yukiko meant to be apologizing? She breaks up with the American soldier, decides to leave the village, and begs Koichi to take her with him, all to no avail. Does this signify a desire to be reinstated into the Japanese patriarchal order of the sexes? Yukiko is depicted as an individual who chooses a clearly defined self-identity for herself at every turn in her life. By contrast, was it not the dissolution of what sociologist Michiba Chikanobu has called (in reference to the “rape” metaphor used in military base discourse) “the patriarchal value system hinging on the ethnic notion of ‘purity’ ” that Koichi experienced, along with the dissolution of his self-identity (Michiba 2005: 329)? The following morning, Mikuni Rentarō (Koichi) and Negishi Akemi (Yukiko) become passengers on the same bus, just as they were in the opening scene. When Koichi spots Yukiko, the woman he had turned down, aboard the bus, we see her in Koichi’s point-of-view shot, which frames her by herself, possibly for the first time in the film. Could this be a subtle allusion to a possible rehabilitation of Koichi’s broken identity? As Mikuni attempts to talk to Negishi, however, his voice is drowned out by the deafening canon roars. Although such a technique might be reminiscent of a Hollywood screwball comedy, it suggests the grave difficulty of restoring or resuscitating Koichi’s self-identity. Or, possibly, in the manner of screwball comedy, it might be gesturing toward a future in which Koichi is liberated from such concerns as selfidentity. The shot that packs their profiles into the same frame also contains an image of Mt. Fuji 46

Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap

in the background, which is obviously the work of a process shot. The film ends by placing Koichi and Yukiko in a hybrid space in which there is no such thing as pure identity, just as their destination, “Tokyo.”

From political sensationalism to allegorical monsters The last scene that shows the voice of the protagonist being drowned out by canon roars seems to anticipate the fate of The Red Light Military Base. Ultimately, this was a film that was barely ever seen as a film, drowned out by the canon roars of the political debates over whether the film was anti-American or not. Because of the political nature of political sensationalism, even though it was employed as a marketing ploy, the film ended up inviting political debate. This was not the first time that the producer Tanaka Tomoyuki and the director Taniguchi Senkichi wrestled with a volatile political subject with characteristic straightforwardness. During the Allied Occupation, the two had produced Akatsuki no dassō (Escape at Dawn, 1950) based on Tamura Taijirō’s novel, Shunpuden (The Story of a Prostitute).20 The novel portrayed the tragic romance of a Korean “comfort woman” (ianfu) and a Japanese soldier on the Chinese front. Through a series of negotiations with the US censors at the CIE (Civil Information and Educa­ tion Section) that might be called collaboration, the film’s heroine became a Japanese singer and the film became a somewhat awkward “anti-war film.” Escape at Dawn nevertheless received critical acclaim, taking third place in Kinema junpō’s annual ranking. After the misfire of The Red Light Military Base, which was a far superior film compared to Escape at Dawn, Tanaka and Taniguchi planned Eikō no kage ni (In the Shade of Glory), an inter­ national coproduction dealing with the subject of the Indonesian War of Independence. With the unresolved reparation issue eroding relations between Japan and Indonesia, in addition to US intervention, the project had to be discontinued (Takeuchi 1983: 144–157). After these failures with projects that directly dealt with political subjects, Tanaka produced a highly allegorical film that elicited multiple paths of interpretation only to leave them hanging without reaching any resolution. This was Gojira (Godzilla, 1954), which premièred in November 1954, roughly a year after The Red Light Military Base controversy. This film has been much debated. The fact that the question, “What Is Godzilla?” has been repeatedly asked and answered attests to the desire that spectators have to attach some kind of an identity to “Godzilla,” because of its unidentifiable nature.21 Koichi’s function as the protagonist of The Red Light Military Base was to lose such an identity. Suppose Godzilla was a condensed version of Koichi’s charac­ teristics, distilled to their essence. What if we imagine Koichi, as he departs the foothills of Mt. Fuji on the bus in the morning, overcoming the logical associations prompted by the symbols of Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap and re-emerging from the darkness of cinema, transformed into a monster that destroys the post-war Japanese landscape …

Notes This chapter is an English translation of Hideyuki Nakamura, “Fujisan to Rēninbō o koete: Taniguchi Senkichi no ‘Akasen kichi’ (1953) ni okeru dōitsusei no kiki,” in Haisha no miburi: Posuto-senryōki no Nihon eiga (Gestures of the Vanquished: Post-Occupation Japanese Cinema) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014), 87–118. 1 Translators’ note: Unless otherwise stated, translations of all direct quotes originally in Japanese, includ­ ing English citations recorded in Japanese sources, are by the translators. 2 The expression, “unorthodox, ambitious work” (ishoku yashin saku) appears in Asahi shimbun, 1953: 4; “unorthodox drama” (ishokuhen) appears in Yomiuri shimbun 1953a: 4. 3 Eiga nenkan (Japan Film Yearbook) also devoted five pages to covering “Akasen kichi anti-Americanism problematized,” as part of “industry trends” (Gyōkai shuyō dōkō); see Jiji Tsūshinsha 1954: 62–66.

47

Hideyuki Nakamura 4 I am indebted to Saitō Ayako for my encounter with The Red Light Military Base. Although her framing differs from mine, there are references to the film in, for instance, Saitō 2008: 125. For an excellent historical overview of Japanese cinema that includes a rare reference to The Red Light Military Base and the issues it caused, see Kinema Junpōsha 1976: 182 and 202. 5 The Red Light Military Base is occasionally shown on cable and satellite television. Recently, it aired a few times on the Nihon Eiga Broadcasting channel (Nihon Eiga Senmon Channeru) in September and October, 2013. 6 Translators’ note: This is the predecessor to the current Eirin (Film Classification and Rating Organ­ ization, or Eiga Rinri Kikō) that was launched in 1956. The older Eirin (Commission for the Admin­ istration of the Motion Picture Code of Ethics), or Eiga Rinri Kitei Kanri Iinkai (Commission for the Administration of the Motion Picture Code of Ethics) was founded in 1949 as an independent censor­ ship and regulatory body modeled after the MPAA Code Administration Office in the United States. 7 Translators’ note: The US military had seized the beach of Uchinada, a small fishing village on the Sea of Japan, to construct a firing range for testing made-in-Japan artillery shells that were used in the Korean War. The Uchinada Affair refers to the protest movement that intensified in 1953 against the Japanese government’s permission granting the US military to stay in the long term. 8 For a detailed discussion of Nihon no teisō, see Molasky 2006: 226–240. For more on Shimizu Ikutarō, the editor of Kichi no ko and Kichi Nihon, specifically in the context of base issues, see Yoshimi 2007: 216–219. 9 Hirai 1997: 120–147. Hirai has updated this work in a book-length study since this essay was first published in Japanese; see Hirai 2014. The reference here is to the original publication. 10 See, for example, Jiji Tsūshinsha 1954: 139. 11 In order to double-check the accuracy, I have located the sources referred to by U.S. News & World Report and Hollywood Reporter, which Iwasaki summarized in “Beishi ‘Nihon eiga wa sekka shite iru’ to hinan,” in Eiga nenkan, 1955 nen hen 1954: 63–65. 12 Deverall 1953: 8. I have referred to the English original and confirmed the accuracy of the references made in Iwasaki 1958. 13 Presumably, with this kind of criticism in mind, major trade journals in Japan took a disapproving stance toward “anti-American” films, with articles intended as a warning for Japanese filmmakers; see Kinema Junpōsha 1953a: 79–83. 14 Murata 1953: 4. The production crew’s use of “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains” during the location shoot is mentioned in many of the subsequent reports on The Red Light Military Base that appeared in the Japanese media. 15 Taniguchi 1953: 4–7; see also, Taniguchi 1954: 14–15. However, Yomiuri shimbun, Tokyo morning edition, September 28, and Sunday mainichi October 18, has September 25 for the date of the private screening held for American journalists. Since the dispatch from Chicago Tribune that Yomiuri shimbun printed also had September 25 as the date, it is possible that the mix up of the date owes to the time difference between Japan and the United States. 16 I will summarize the information on extant prints of Akasen kichi. The print for the film as completed in September 1953 was 8,096 feet long, after the scene of a naked child (six feet) had been edited out; see “Shinsa eiga ichiran,” Eiga rinri kitei shinsa kiroku no. 51: c-4. The “self-revised version” was 8,883 feet long, according Eirin when they re-examined the film. See “Eiga rinri kitei shinsa kiroku” no. 53: c-7. Since the “revision” was supposed to remove the scene featuring Bob Booth, it is absurd that the revised version is not just longer, but that it was longer 787 feet, or over 8 minutes screen time. If we turn to Eiga nenkan 1955, the reading is 2,460 meters (346), which roughly translates to 8,071 feet (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1954). The National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo lists its projection print as 8,061.01 feet long. This would be 35 feet (or 20 seconds) shorter than the original version [Translators note: The National Film Center is now known as the National Film Archive of Japan]. 17 To my knowledge, there are five different copies of the screenplay for The Red Light Military Base. Three are housed in the National Film Center [Translator’s note: now the National Film Archive], and two are housed in the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University. The former group consists of: (a) a copy submitted to Eirin; (b) a copy titled Beautiful Rivers and Mountains; and (c) a copy formerly owned by an actor. The latter group consists of: (d) “the first draft,” and (e) a copy with the title Akasen kichi in large red letters. In terms of content, copies (a), (c), and (e) are identical. From the title and the content, we can assume that copy (b) was the final screenplay used in production. None contain the explanatory title cards found in the projection print. I am grateful to Kamiya Makiko for the information on the copies at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum.

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Beyond Mt. Fuji and the Lenin cap 18 From the words of Tanaka (1953: 4). Taniguchi also explains that “we needed ‘a man who has been away from his hometown for 10 years,’ ” in (Taniguchi 1953: 6). 19 Although this chapter does not delve into it, we cannot overlook the importance of Akiko’s character in considering the transformation in how the “pan-pan” was represented in post-war Japan. For more details on the representation of “pan-pan,” see Kamiya 2009: 151–186. 20 Regarding the censorship of Escape at Dawn, see Hirano 1994: 87–95. 21 Regarding the trope of identity in dissolution, we must note the importance of scriptwriter Kimura Takeshi (aka Mabuchi Kaoru), who debuted with The Red Light Military Base as Taniguchi’s co-writer. The films he later wrote include titles such as Radon (Rodan, 1956), Bijo to ekitai ningen (The H-Man, theatrically released in Japan in 1958), Matango (1963), Furankenshutain no kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira (The War of the Gargantuas, theatrically released in Japan in 1966), namely, well-written narratives that dealt with the loss of identity, the breakdown of humanity, and the miserable fate of the “grotesque.”

Works cited Asahi Shimbun. 1953. “Akasen kichi Advertisement.” Asahi shimbun (Tokyo evening edn), September 26: 4. Bekkā, J. [Jim Becker] 1953. “Fundari keraretari no amekō isasaka muri jaa gozansenka” (“Ain’t It a Little Farfetched? A Yank in Distress”). Nihon shūho 264, October 25: 13. Deleuze, G. 1985. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Deverall, R.L.G. 1953. “Anti-U.S. Movies.” Nippon Times, July 2: 8. Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku. 1953a. Eiga rinri kitei shinsa kiroku (Motion Picture Code Inspection Records) 49 (July 1–31). Eirin Kanribu Jimukyoku. 1953b. Eiga rinri kitei shinsa kiroku (Motion Picture Code Inspection Records) 51 (September 1–30). Fujimura, M. 1981. “Futatsu no senryō to Shōwashi: gunbu dokusai taisei to Amerika ni yoru senryō” (“Two Occupation Eras and the Showa Period: Military Dictatorship and American Occupation”). Sekai 8: 39–55. Hirai, K. 1997. “Beigunkichi to ‘baishunfu’—Gotemba no baai” (“U.S. Military Bases and ‘Prostitutes’: The Case of Gotenba”). Joseigaku 5: 120–147. Hirai, K. 2014. Nihon senryō to jendā: Beigun, baishunfu to Nihon joseitachi (Occupation of Japan and Gender). Tokyo: Yushisha. Hirano, K. 1994. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation, 1945–1952. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press. Inomata, K., Kimura, K. and Shimizu, I. (eds) 1953. Kichi Nihon: ushinawareteiku sokoku no sugata (Military Base Japan: Disappearing Homeland), 128–129. Tokyo: Wakōsha. Iwasaki, A. 1958. “Gendai Nihon no eiga sono shisō to fūkei” (“Contemporary Japanese Cinema: Philo­ sophies and Landscapes”). Chūōkōron: 203–204. Izawa, J. 1953. “Akasen kichi.” Eiga hyōron (December): 59. Jiji Tsūshinsha. 1954. Eiga nenkan 1955 (Japan Film Yearbook 1955). Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshinsha. Kamiya, M. 2009. “Senryōki ‘pan-pan eiga’ no poritikkusu—1948-nen no deusu ekusu makina” (“Politics of ‘Pan Pan’ in the Occupation Era: Deus Ex Machina of 1948”). In K. Iwamoto (ed.), Senryōka no eiga: kaihō to ken’etsu (Cinema Under Occupation: Liberation and Censorship), 151–186. Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Kichi Mondai Chōsa Iinkai (ed.) 1954. Gunji kichi no jittai to bunseki (An Analysis of the Actual Conditions of Military Bases), 98–101. Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō. Kinema Junpōsha. 1953a. “Hansenka hanbeika? Senki eiga no tadotteiru michi” (“Anti-war or AntiAmerica?: The Trajectory of War Movies”). Kinema junpō 69 (Early August): 79–83. Kinema Junpōsha. 1953b. “Junpō kaiten tobira” (“Junpō Revolving Door”). Kinema junpō, 70 (Late August): 106. Kinema Junpōsha. 1953c. “Nihon eiga shōkai” (“Japanese Film Preview”). Kinema junpō, 70 (Late August): 64. Kinema Junpōsha. 1953d. “Jōei chūshi de Akasen kichi mondai ka” (“Screening Canceled, Akasen kichi Controversy”). Kinema junpō, 76 (Late October). Kinema Junpōsha. 1954. “Hanbei shisō wa mitomerarenai Akasen kichi kokkai giin ga kanran” (“AntiAmericanism Not Detected in Diet Members’ Viewing of Akasen kichi”) Kinema junpō 82 (Late January): 83.

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Hideyuki Nakamura Kinema Junpōsha (ed.) 1976. Nihon eigashi, jissha kara seichō-konmei no jidai made (Japanese Film History: From Actualities to the Era of Growth-Confusion). Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. Michiba, C. 2005. Senryō to heiwa—“Sengo” to iu keiken (Occupation and Peace), 329. Tokyo: Seidōsha. Miya, Y. 1953. “Akasen kichi no gota gota, kojireta hatsu no ‘kichimono’ eiga” (“Trouble with Akasen Kichi, a Rough Start for the First ‘Military Base Film’ ”). Sunday Mainichi. October. 18: 14. Molasky, M. 2006. Senryō no kioku-kioku no senryō, sengo Nihon, Okinawa to America (The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa). Trans. N. Suzuki. London: Routledge. Murata, K. 1953. “Toho Meeting Resistance in Making Film at Fuji.” Nippon Times September 2: 4. Nakano, Y. 1953. “Hanbei eiga to iwareru Akasen kichi no mondaiten” (“Issues with So-Called AntiAmerican Akasen kichi”). Fujin kōron 440 (December): 54–61. Nippon Times. 1953. “Toho Stops 1st Showing.” Nippon Times, September 30: 4. Nittō Shimbun. 1953a. “Akasen kichi ni tsuini kōkai chushi” (“Screenings Called Off for Akasen Kichi”). Nittō shimbun, October 1: 4. Nittō Shimbun. 1953b. “Hi no me miru ka Akasen kichi” (“Will Akasen kichi See the Light of Day”). Nittō shimbun, October 3: 4. Noborigawa, N. 1954. “Akasen kichi.” Kinema junpō, 82 (Late January): 64. Saitō, A. 2008. “Karumen wa doko ni iku—Sengo Nihon eiga no ‘nikutai’ no gensetsu to hyōshō” (“Whither Carmen? Discourse and Representation of the Flesh in Post-War Japanese Cinema”). In A. Nakayama (ed.), Bijuaru kuritishizumu—Hyōshō to eiga, kikai no rinkaiten (Visual Criticism: Representation and Cinema, the Machine and the Critical Point). Tokyo: Tamagawa University. Sankei Tokyo Honsha. 1953. “Shutsugen suru ka kichimono eiga jidai” (“Soon to Arrive? Military Base Film”). Sankei. August 3: 2. Shin Ōsaka. 1953a. “Akasen kichi,” advertisement. Shin Ōsaka, September 27: 3. Shin Ōsaka. 1953b. “Kanemōke dakega shōbaidenai—Akasen kichi kōkai chūshi ni Kobayashi-san ga ‘dan’ ” (“Money-Making Is Not the Only Business: Mr. Kobayashi’s Speech on Akasen kichi’s Screening Can­ celation”). Shin Ōsaka, October 12: 3. Shūkan Asahi. 1953. ‘Ganzentaru genjitsu o chokushiseyo—Eiga Akasen kichi to “hanbei kanjō” ’ (“Recog­ nize the Reality at Hand: Akasen kichi and ‘Anti-American Sentiments’ ”). Shūkan asahi, November 11. Takeuchi, H. 1983. “Gojira no tanjō” (“The Birth of Godzilla”). In S. Yamamoto (ed.), Tsuburaya Eiji no eizō sekai (The Imaginary of Tsuburaya Eiji), 144–157. Tokyo: Jitsugyō no Nihonsha. Tanaka, T. 1953. “Statement.” Tokyo Evening News, September 30: 4. Taniguchi, S. 1953. “Sakka ga shinjitsu o katarenakattara … watashi wa nani o sureba yoi no ka” (“If as an Author I Cannot Tell the Truth … What Then Can I Do?”). Nihon shūhō, 264 October 25: 4–6. Taniguchi, S. 1954. “Eiga Akasen kichi ni tsuite.” Heiwa (January): 14–15. Tokyo Evening News. 1953a. “Editorial: Anti-Americanism at Its Worst.” Tokyo Evening News. September 28: 1. Tokyo Evening News. 1953b. “U.S. Base Film Release Stalled.” Tokyo Evening News, September 29: 1. Tokyo Evening News. 1953c. “Japan’s Leftists’ Cry, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’ ” Tokyo Evening News, December 8: 1,4. Uriu, T. 1953. “Hiroshima to Akasen kichi—sono hanbeiteki keikō to iu koto nitsuite” (“Hiroshima and Akasen kichi: On the Supposed Anti-Americanism”). Shakai kyōiku (November): 77–80. Yoshimi, S. 2007. Shinbei to hanbei: Sengo Nihon no seijiteki muishiki (Pro-America, Anti-America: Political Unconsciousness in Post-War Japan). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1953a. “Akasen kichi,” advertisement. Yomiuri shimbun (evening edn), September 27: 4. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1953b. “Nihon eiga mata mondaika Akasen kichi wa hanbei” (“Japanese Film Raises Controversy Again, Akasen kichi’s Anti-Americanism”). Yomiuri shimbun (Tokyo morning edn), September 28: 7. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1953c. “Akasen kichi no fūkiri chushi Kobayashi Ichizō shachō ga gyōmu meirei” (“Akasen kichi Canceled Screenings, President Kobayashi Ichizo’s Executive Order”). Yomiuri shimbun (Tokyo evening edn), September 29: 3. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1953d. “Ichibu katto de keri eiga Akasen kichi mondai” (“Settled with Partial Cut: Akasen kichi Controversy”). Yomiuri shimbun (Tokyo edn), September 29: 7. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1953e. “Totsujo! 8ka kōkai” (“Suddenly! Out on December 8”), advertisement. Yomiuri shimbun (evening edn), September 5. Williams, L. 1987. “Something Else Besides a Mother: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama.” In C. Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is. London: British Film Institute.

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3

Home movies of tHe

Revolution

Proletarian filmmaking and counter-mobilization

in interwar Japan Diane Wei Lewis

The 1920s is a key decade for thinking about mass media, modernity, and modernism in Japan. In the 1910s and 1920s, Japan made leaps toward becoming a modern industrialized society. Although Japan did not fight in World War I, it manufactured munitions for the Allies, which helped develop heavy industry and spur rapid urbanization. This growth led to the formation of a large urban working class and a “new middle class” of urban knowledge workers (including teachers, journalists, office workers, civil servants, managers, etc.) as well as offering more opportunities for working women. The contributions of ordinary people to Japan’s modernization gave rise to movements that called for sweeping social and political reforms. These movements, such as the women’s movement and universal suffrage movement, demanded that average citizens have more opportunities to participate in government and public life. At the same time, through the exponential growth of movie theaters, magazines, and newspapers, a burgeoning popular culture introduced new ways of thinking about gender, nationality, citizenship, race, and class. In the midst of these changes emerged the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Dōmei, commonly referred to as Prokino, 1929–1934), an organization dedicated to the politicization of workers and farmers and the creation of a proletarian film culture. Prokino was part of a broader proletarian movement that reflected the proliferation of new political parties, unions, women’s leagues, suffrage groups, and other political organizations in Japan. Prokino’s film activities also paralleled the rise of new currents in Japanese filmmaking, such as the development of educational, documentary, and amateur film, and the new prominence of politically engaged film theory. An understanding of the broader proletarian movement’s institutional history is necessary for understanding Prokino’s organization, operations, and goals, since this history provides crucial political and theoretical context for Prokino’s conceptualization of cinema as a vehicle for social change. The proletarian movement began with the literary journal Tanemakuhito (The Sower, 1921–1923), which folded after the September 1, 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake but was quickly succeeded by a new literary magazine called Bungei sensen (Literary Front, 1924–1932).1 Literary Front became the flagship of the first proletarian writers’ organization, the Japan Proletarian 51

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Literary Arts League (Nihon Puroretaria Bungei Renmei, also known as Puroren or JPLAL), which existed in 1925–1926. At around this time, a variety of leftist organizations were formed by writers, artists, and intellectuals, while many established cultural organizations splintered and gave rise to new groups that formed around their more politicized members. In the second half of the 1920s, coordination increased among these various political cultural organizations. In 1928, they coalesced into the umbrella organization NAPF (from its Esperanto name, Nippona Artista Proleta Feracio), also known as the Zen Nihon Musansha Geijutsu Renmei or All-Japan Proletarian Arts Federation. NAPF quickly became more focused on direct political organizing, especially the recruiting and politicizing of factory workers and tenant farmers. It also came increasingly under the control of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which was considered seditious and therefore illegal, and was itself largely funded and guided by policies set by the Communist International, or Comintern. In order to better incorporate political activities, NAPF reorganized in 1931 as KOPF (in Esperanto, Federacio de Proletaj Kultur Organizoj Japanaj), also known as the Nihon Puroretaria Bunka Renmei or Japan Proletarian Culture Federation. Compared to NAPF, KOPF was far more centralized and overtly political. This arguably made KOPF more vulnerable to government persecution (Karlsson 2011; Karlsson 2015: 104–105). The arrests and torture of many members eventually led to the dissolution of KOPF and the end of the proletarian movement in 1934. Prokino’s history reflects the growing emphasis on activism and direct political action within the broader proletarian movement. Prokino superseded the Proletarian Film Federation of Japan (Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Renmei, 1928), which was created by critics at the film journals Eiga no eiga (Film of Films, 1927–1928), Eiga kōjō (Film Factory, 1927–1928), Eiga kaihō (Film Emanci­ pation, 1928), and Puroretaria eiga (Proletarian Film, 1928). In contrast to its predecessor’s roots in political criticism, Prokino was established in 1929 as a separate wing of NAPF after the beginnings of political filmmaking within NAPF’s Leftwing Theater (Sayoku Gekijō, 1928–1934). From its inception, Prokino focused on filmmaking and political action, although its members produced a wealth of criticism and other writings as well. Prokino’s origins in the Leftwing Theater left a profound mark on the group. Leftwing Theater member and central Prokino figure Sasa Genjū advocated a radically new approach to cinema, pushing Prokino to adopt a hands-on approach. As a member of several proletarian theater groups, Sasa documented political actions using small-gauge film equipment intended for amateur use. Sasa completed his first film, Mē dē (May Day), in 1927 on 9.5 mm film when he was still a member of the Trunk Theater (Toranku Gekijō) in the Japan Proletarian Literary Arts League (Puroren, 1925–1926). Puroren later reorganized as the Proletarian Art Federation of Japan (Nihon Puroretaria Geijutsu Renmei or Progei, 1926–1928) and combined with the Vanguard Artists League (Zen’ei Geijutsuka Dōmei) in 1928 to create NAPF, at which point Progei’s Proletarian Theater (Puroretaria Gekijō) and the Vanguard Theater (Zen’ei Geijutsuka Dōmei’s Zen’ei Gekijō) merged to form the Leftwing Theater. As a filmmaker, Sasa adopted tactics used by activist theater groups. Puroren’s Trunk Theater specialized in touring factories and performing for workers during their breaks. In 1928, as part of the Trunk Theater, Sasa made short films documenting workers’ activities: Teidai nyūsu (Tokyo University News), Sutoraiki (Strike), and Gaitō (On the Street) on 16 mm, and Noda sōgi (Noda Strike) on 9.5 mm film (Makino 2001: 5–6). These films were then screened for workers in their communities. Although none of Sasa’s 1927–1928 films survive today, there are descriptions of the films from various sources that tell us how the films were shot and where they were projected, indicating that farmers and workers were the intended audience for these films. During the five years of its existence from 1929 to 1934, Prokino made a total of forty-eight films in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Okayama, Kanazawa, and Sapporo. According to police records, 52

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at the height of Prokino’s activities in 1931, the movement held anywhere between two to seven events per month in different parts of the country, drawing approximately 21 to 2,400 audience members per event (Nornes 2003: 37). Most of Prokino’s films were shot on reversal film, which yields a unique positive print from the camera original, so that there is only one print and no negative. These unique prints were circulated until they were too scratched and battered to project, which is why only fragments of a handful of films survive today. Sasa’s model and material constraints dictated that films were made and exhibited using small-gauge equipment developed for the amateur market, such as the Pathé Baby (9.5 mm) and the CineKodak BB (16 mm) systems. Mobile film units took Prokino films to farming villages and factories, where farmers and workers could watch themselves (or people like them) on the screen in films of funerals, celebrations, rallies, strikes, and everyday work scenes. In a sense, Prokino’s films were the home movies of the proletariat. Prokino wanted politicized workers and farmers to recognize themselves as both the subject of, and audience for, their films. In the process, Prokino hoped to contribute to the overthrow of Japan’s capitalist imperialism by awakening the proletariat’s revolutionary consciousness. Its goal was to have workers and farmers develop a critical understanding of themselves as participants in the movement and the filmmaking process. Thus, Prokino aspired to more than simply introducing representations of workers and farmers into movies as objects of cinematic representation. Prokino’s history sheds light on a variety of vital aesthetic, technological, and socio-political issues in late 1920s and early 1930s Japanese film culture. At the same time, perhaps the most useful contexts for understanding Prokino are also among the least appreciated and understudied areas of film history: the global histories of educational film, amateur film, industrial film, and sponsored film. Film scholars have attempted to raise the visibility of these diverse but related forms of filmmaking by analyzing a variety of non-commercial and sponsored filmmaking practices under the rubrics “nontheatrical film and media” and “useful film.”2 Careful study of Prokino’s activities and its social network illuminates the overlapping histories of these often overlooked cinematic forms while also providing crucial insights into Japan’s interwar sociopolitical transformations and the geopolitics of the Japanese empire. In this chapter, I will focus on the emphasis on direct action and political organizing within Prokino as well as within the broader proletarian movement. Accordingly, I will primarily discuss Prokino’s filmmaking efforts in light of their theories and strategies of grassroots organizing and counter-mobilization, which were developed to combat the state’s own mobilization efforts during the same period. Prokino members’ emphasis on grassroots organizing and their internal debates on strategy and theory were informed by the umbrella movement’s policies, policies that by the early 1930s were largely shaped by Comintern. These connections between Prokino and the greater movement, and the greater movement and Comintern, only become visible with close attention to Prokino’s institutional history and the politics of the so-called “Bolshevization period” of roughly 1931–1934. The main goal of this chapter is to introduce Bolshevization (also known as taishūka, “popularization” or “massification”) as an essential context for understanding Prokino’s strategy of using filmmaking, film circles, and film screenings to foster connections among artists, activists, workers, and farmers and thereby create a “mobilization network” (dōinmō) for political actions.

The Bolshevization period In the 1931 essay, “Puroretaria geijutsu undō no soshiki mondai” (“The Question of the Organization of the Proletarian Arts Movement”), writer Kurahara Korehito, the leading theorist of the proletarian movement, argued that NAPF should prioritize its “organizational influence” 53

Diane Wei Lewis

over its “ideological influence” (Nornes 2003: 43). Kurahara was responding to Comintern’s “Theses on Japan” (1927), which reprimanded Japanese activists for becoming overly absorbed in factional debates over Marxist theory (Nornes 2003: 43). As a corrective, during the so-called “Bolshevization period,” the Japanese movement shifted attention to spreading proletarian consciousness among the masses by increasing direct contact between farmers, workers, and activists, and encouraging them to organize themselves. In this period, Prokino leveraged many different aspects of filmmaking and film culture in the hope of establishing a broad-based, participatory political network for revolutionary struggle. Prokino’s strategies included film education, factory and farm village screenings, film publications, embedded cameramen, and the creation of factory and farm village film organizations. From 1931 to 1934, Prokino both increased its film output as well as paying more attention to the problem of grassroots organizing. Among Prokino’s members, Namiki Shinsaku was especially vocal about the need for mobile film units and ad hoc screenings to encourage the formation of self-organized worker and farmer groups that could partner with Prokino. Namiki argued that having allies within communities would enable Prokino to better plan activities, delegate resources, and respond quickly and effectively to challenges as they arose. In keeping with the movement’s turn toward Bolshevization, he conceived these on-the-ground activities as a “grassroots insurgency” or nichijōteki mochikomi, literally “everyday interventions” or a “smuggling [of politics] into the everyday.” Although Namiki has not achieved the fame of some of his peers in Prokino, such as Iwasaki Akira and Sasa Genjū, he deserves to be recognized as one of the principle architects of Prokino’s Bolshevization strategies. Comintern’s “Theses on Japan” were instrumental to this shift within the Japanese proletarian movement, however, the new emphasis on nichijōteki mochikomi and taishūka was not simply imposed by Comintern. Rather, Prokino’s writings suggest that many of the strategies that nichijōteki mochikomi involved were conceived in response to the Japanese state’s own campaigns of “education mobilization” (kyōka sōdōin) and “thought rectification” (shisō zendō). In these campaigns, the Home Ministry and the Education Ministry marshaled locally based community organizations such as youth groups (seinendan), block associations (chōnaikai), and neighborhood associations (tonarigumi), in an attempt to win hearts and minds, and to delegate civic and moral education, as well as anti-leftist surveillance, to citizens in the community. In the years that Prokino operated, highly educated specialist bureaucrats in the Home Ministry and the Special Higher Police paid increasing attention to social management. These “reform bureaucrats” (kakushin kanryō) not only believed in social progress but also in the perfectibility of society through social and cultural intervention (High 2003: 86–87). Their bureaucratic interventions into the everyday lives of ordinary citizens mobilized existing community groups or encouraged the formation of new local organizations to carry out state-initiated campaigns of moral education and “daily life improvement” (seikatsu kaizen). For the state, the primary economic and political benefits of these initiatives were that they reduced the government’s own expenditures on social welfare and poor relief, effectively addressed forms of social dislocation created by capitalism and urbanization, and helped contain the spread of “dangerous thoughts” (kiken shisō) (Akazawa 1985: 18; Garon 1998: 38). As Sandra Wilson notes, while the state in the early 1930s was undeniably an increasingly repressive one, it was not exclusively concerned with repression, but in addition expended much energy on providing channels for political and social activity that would further its own aims and at the same time weaken the appeal of radical ideologies. (Wilson 1997: 102) 54

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Although moral education pre-dates the 1920s (for instance, it was encouraged by Meiji era [1868–1912] modernizers), the number and variety of community groups aimed at moral suasion proliferated rapidly from the decade beginning in World War I until the mid-1920s (Akazawa 1985: 23), laying a foundation for wartime mobilization in the 1930s. Two important examples of government-led moral suasion campaigns are the Home Ministry’s Campaign for the Cultivation of National Strength (Minryoku Kanyō Undō, launched in March 1919) and the Education Ministry’s Lifestyle Improvement Campaign (Seikatsu Kaizen Undō, launched in 1920). The Campaign for the Cultivation of National Strength encouraged thrift, even though real wages and household budget expenditures were actually increasing. The campaign attempted to inculcate national values and ideals by encouraging the observation of national holidays and homogenizing religious practices across Japan. It also endorsed compulsory savings (kyōsei chokin) and the rice consumption reduction campaign (setsumai undō), which were believed to ease the social tensions caused by rice shortages, thus reducing the frequency of rice riots and discouraging left-wing political organizing. The Campaign for the Cultivation of National Strength was a reactionary response to the social transformations taking place after World War I. As Akazawa Shirō points out, this campaign was unique in placing special emphasis on horizontal relations between countrymen, as opposed to the vertical relationships that are typically emphasized in Japanese society. In addition, Akazawa observes, the operative term in the campaign was not “the strength of the nation” (kokuryoku) but rather “the strength of the people” (minryoku), and the concept that received the most emphasis in the campaign was jichi or “self-governance” (Akazawa 1985: 18). This suggests that the Campaign for the Cultivation of National Strength appropriated the very notions of self-determination and greater political participation that were championed by the universal suffrage movement, which was at its height at the time. “Self-governance” placed emphasis on the individual’s civic duty and was used to cultivate the individual’s responsibility to the state, regardless of that individual’s position within the hierarchies of their local community. The Home Ministry’s campaigns relied on intermediaries—youth groups, military reservists’ associations, and notably, reformers from the emerging middle class—to carry out its programs (Garon 1998: 25–59). One of the central principles of the Federation of Moral Suasion Groups was that each organization had autonomy to determine the methods used to carry out the Imperial Rescripts (Akazawa 1985: 23). When compared to the implementation of the 1890 Imperial Rescript Regarding Education (Kyōiku ni kansuru chokugo), which was read daily to children in schools, it is clear that these efforts greatly expanded the reach of moral education beyond the classroom. Not unlike the emergence of left-wing political organizations and new religions, the state’s grassroots efforts were in part a response to the spread of capitalism and the strains of rapid modernization (Akazawa 1985: 16). At the same time, state bureaucrats and industrialists were also influenced by modern scientific management principles, such as Taylorism. As William Tsutsui writes, “Taylorism lay at the intellectual core of a spreading technocratic humor, an emergent bureaucratic authoritarianism which culminated in the wartime ‘New Order’ of statist economic management” (Tsutsui 1998: 11). Nevertheless, bureaucrats and factory owners found that their attempts to create more rational, efficient, and hierarchical forms of social organization often backfired. Scientific management principles exacerbated tensions between workers and foremen, while the state’s efforts to create a more educated and civic-minded populace created workers who were more likely to challenge hierarchies within the workplace. Tsutsui argues that these contradictions contributed to the growth of the labor movement and led to the introduction of paternalistic or familistic industrial management practices in Japanese workplaces as a palliative measure. Paternalistic or familistic practices might seem antithetical to Taylorism but, 55

Diane Wei Lewis

in fact, they complemented it (Tsutsui 1998, and 1997). Indeed, Prokino publications make frequent references to paternalistic labor management practices as a major impediment to the political organization of workers. For instance, when Namiki argues for public film events as well as ad hoc factory screenings, he uses the example of a large mill where it may be impossible to reach the female workers, even with the assistance of the labor union, due to the domineering paternalism of the factory owner (Namiki 1931: 150). As Prokino’s efforts often targeted state-directed grassroots mobilization efforts, they may be envisioned as strategies of counter-mobilization. Beyond aesthetic or political-philosophical reasons for developing alternative film practices (including directives from Comintern), key local factors (such as moral suasion campaigns and factory paternalism) influenced Prokino’s grassroots approach to filmmaking and exhibition. Because of state mobilization campaigns, Prokino members not only faced direct censorship and government suppression resulting from Communist persecution and other anti-leftist tactics, but they also faced resistance from communities, workers, and farmers. As Prokino member Uemura Shūkichi wrote in July 1930, the capitalist landlords are mobilizing every conceivable measure in an attempt to XX us, going to the lengths of XX from above and enlightenment mobilization (kyōka sōdōin) from below in order to crush the struggle of the workers and farmers. (Uemura 1930: 165)3 In “Puroretaria eiga no jōei keitai” (“The Form of Proletarian Film Exhibition”), Namiki Shinsaku wrote, Cinema that is used deliberately [by the state] as an instrument for enlightenment is not aimed at the crowds that go to movie theaters as its primary target audience. Cunning bourgeois educators understand this very well. We remember the huge fuss made over so-called “thought rectification” (shisō zendō) last fall, for which there was an enlightenment mobilization (kyōka sōdōin). We also remember very well how one of the reactionary films mobilized for this purpose was generally shown to school youth groups rather than at commercial movie theaters. What precisely is the significance of this? It goes without saying. Schools and youth groups served as “fortresses” for bourgeois education. … We have to take proletarian films to the places where workers (or farmers) have group consciousness and group feelings (shūdan to shite no ishiki, kanjō). (Namiki 1930b: 162–163) In order to compete directly with the Home Ministry and Education Ministry’s mobilization campaigns, Prokino developed specific tactics—mobile film units and ad hoc screenings—to combat the state’s ideological and organizational strategies.

Organization structure and equipment Prokino relied on small teams (and sometimes individuals working alone) to travel into communities with film equipment to spread information about the movement, collect information about local labor conditions, and conduct film activities. These teams were called the “mobile 56

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film units” (idō eigatai). Their irregular and extemporary activities allowed Prokino to pursue different aims than those best served by planned events in public venues. According to Namiki, mobile film units carried out the “most Bolshevik activity in the arts movement” by increasing contact between Prokino and workers and farmers, whereas public screenings were more suitable for bringing proletarian culture to the general public as well as assisting with public relations and fund-raising (Namiki 1931: 150). As a vehicle for Bolshevization—bringing intellectuals closer to the masses and delegating more political responsibility to workers and farmers—the mobile film units were used to grow the organization. Namiki argued, “Ultimately, this stage is one that we must inevitably pass through in order to make our movement the proletariat’s” (Namiki 1931: 162). A 1930 diagram of Prokino’s infrastructure outlines the organizational structure of the Tokyo and Kyoto branches, the only branches for which film production was feasible at that time (Matsuzaki 1930: 157). The diagram shows exhibition divided into separate departments for “mobile” and “public” screenings. The filming bureau is divided into fiction film (engi eiga) and culture film units, with the latter consisting of a culture film squad and a news squad. These distinctions indicate how divisions between regular and contingent film activities were built into Prokino’s very organizational structure, with contingent film activities (mobile film unit screenings, news film production, etc.) more closely related to political actions or political organizing. Unfortunately, limited access to equipment made it a challenge for Prokino to carry out any routine film production and exhibition activities. Whether or not a cameraman could be dispatched on short notice often depended on the availability of a camera. Prokino only owned a few pieces of equipment, and it was not always possible to locate a camera straightaway (Namiki 1930a: 30). According to Markus Nornes, “In addition to Sasa’s Pathé Baby, Iwasaki [Akira] purchased a CineKodak BB with his writing fees and, together with Kanda Kazuo (who borrowed cash from his family), also bought a Palbo L 35 mm camera” (Nornes 2003: 35). In a 1994 interview, former Prokino member Noto Setsuo says that although 16 mm cameras and projectors could be borrowed from a rental store, these were such important “weapons” that Prokino ultimately collected donations to buy their own equipment (Komori and Noto 1994). Prokino solicited funds for its activities through the Friends of Prokino Association (Prokino Tomo no Kai). Besides members of Prokino and the proletarian arts movement (such as Sasaki Takamaru, Murayama Tomoyoshi, Nakano Shigeharu, Kobayashi Takiji, Kurahara Korehito, and Akita Ujaku), Prokino’s donors included famous writers, critics, and artists with a range of political affiliations (Kataoka Teppei, Ōya Sōichi, Nagata Mikihiko, Kitagawa Fuyuhiko, and Hijikata Yoshi), as well as actors and directors from major commercial film studios (Itō Daisuke, Okada Tokihiko, Mizoguchi Kenji, Suzuki Denmei, Ushihara Kiyohiko, and Suzuki Shigeyoshi) (Takada 1930: 83). Proletarian Film (September 1930) carried a plea for equipment donations that claimed that Prokino did not own any of its own equipment, although articles in the same issue that mention Sasa’s 9.5 mm camera contradict this assertion. Here, too, as in other essays and statements issued by Prokino, the need for ad hoc film activities and the importance of Bolshevization are given special emphasis. Soliciting!! Film projectors, film cameras, and still photography cameras. All militant amateurs, cinemasts, and photographers, from all over the country! Since the 1930 Annual Meeting, Prokino, Japan’s sole XXteki [revolutionary] film organization, has taken a sharp turn and is embarking on the path to Bolshevization. 57

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The newsreel unit, the mobile projection unit, and the still photography unit are making themselves busy in the factory regions, day and night. However, we do not yet possess a single film camera, projector, or camera. Accordingly, our daily struggle has severe limitations. We cannot express how frustrated we are with our daily actions. However, there is nothing we can do about this frustration until we get our hands on equipment. All militant amateurs, cinemasts, and photographers, from all over the country! Prokino sincerely awaits your support. Your donation of equipment to Prokino will advance the Japanese film movement forward from one step to two steps—no, ten steps forward. We ask you reluctantly part with equipment that is no longer of any use to you, or equipment that you are using, and donate it for the sake of the Japanese proletarian film movement. Proletarian Film League of Japan Located in the Senki Co. 1–6 Uchisaiwaichō, Kōjimachi Ward [present-day Chiyoda Ward], Tokyo. (Puroretaria eiga 1930: 17) Prokino also conserved finances by living communally and utilizing other social and material resources (Nornes 2003: 34–35). Thanks to fundraising efforts, the Tokyo branch seems to have had adequate access to film stock and even established its own developing lab. By 1932, the group was becoming increasingly ambitious. In a fundraising campaign, in February 1932, Prokino sent out mimeographed letters announcing a 3,000-yen pledge drive for 35 mm equipment. The letter explains Prokino’s plans to move on from making 16 mm films. Two scenarios were to be filmed in 35 mm: Nobiyuku joseisen (The Advancing Women’s Front), about female bus drivers’ labor disputes, and an animated film titled Sankichi no kūchū ryokō (Sankichi’s Aerial Voyage). During the five years that Prokino was engaged in film production, its total output amounted to eleven newsreels, nineteen films of incident reportage, twelve documentaries, two fiction films, two agitprop films, an animation film, and a film that incorporated both animation and live action. These films were made by the Tokyo branch (thirty-six films), the Kyoto branch (five films), and the Okuyama branch (two films), while the Osaka, Kanagawa, Kanezawa, and Sapporo branches produced one film each, and the Osaka and Tokyo branches collaborated on one co-production (Nornes 2003: 37).

Internal debates on Bolshevization and the mobile film unit For the first two years of Prokino’s existence, mobile film projection activities were limited to the Tokyo main branch and one or two other regions (Namiki 1931: 162). Mobile filmmaking activities were similarly circumscribed, with no branch coming close to the Tokyo branch’s capacity to engage in film production on a regular basis. Despite the Tokyo and Kyoto branches’ clear organizational structure, which included distinct departments for mobile film projection and newsreel production (discussed above), Prokino members remained divided in their understanding of the groups’ tactics, as well as on the significance of mobile film units in comparison to other filmmaking and exhibition practices, two years into the organization’s existence. Iwasaki Akira alluded to these internal struggles in the summer of 1930, when, writing about the challenges facing Prokino in the essay “Puroretaria eiga no taishūka to sono genjitsusei” (“The Massification of Proletarian Film in Theory and Practice”), he made reference to the massification (Bolshevization) debates (Iwasaki 1930).4 Iwasaki is perhaps the most famous 58

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member of Prokino due to his prolific career as a film critic and work as a producer in the postwar period. He figures prominently in histories of Prokino, with good reason, but it is important to emphasize that his views did not necessarily represent the general tendencies of the group. Iwasaki courted controversy because of his skepticism as to whether it was possible for Prokino to reach a wide audience while eschewing commercial filmmaking practices, retreating from theatrical exhibition, and organizing small, ad hoc screenings. He also expressed reservations toward Prokino’s reliance on small-gauge film equipment and underscored the difficulties in totally rejecting mainstream entertainment film formulas. In addition, Iwasaki welcomed experimentation and lyricism, which he explored in his own film Asufaruto no michi (Asphalt Road, 1930), a city symphony. Still, Iwasaki was keenly aware of policy debates being conducted in other areas of the proletarian movement and sensitive to questions of political expediency and effectiveness. In “The Massification of Proletarian Film in Theory and Practice,” he references the lively theoretical debates surrounding the massification of literature. These debates revolved around whether proletarian writers should prioritize political utility, without regard to aesthetics and without hesitating to mobilize bourgeois forms, or whether writers should strive for the creation of a uniquely proletarian aesthetic (Shea 1964; Karlsson 2008). Similarly, Iwasaki writes, the question facing Prokino is whether the film movement should focus on accessible works for the education and recruitment of workers and farmers or rather works of artistic significance that emphasize formal innovation and intellectual sophistication. Iwasaki’s statements drew harsh criticism from several other members of Prokino. In “The Development of the Proletarian Film Movement in Japan,” Matsuzaki Keiji attacked Iwasaki for using a “truly mysterious” approach that was “extremely unscientific” in everything from its methodology to its argumentation. He savaged Iwasaki’s predilection for aesthetic forms that the movement had already labeled as reactionary and decadent. Marshaling key NAPF spokesperson Kurahara Korehito’s theories to his side, Matsuzaki described Kurahara and Iwasaki’s approaches to massification as “totally opposed and irreconcilable.” He wrote scathingly, … dangerous tendencies have begun to infiltrate our very organization, such as petit bourgeois proletarian film critics’ experiments, which obstruct the Bolshevization of the proletarian film movement or distort its form. The further our movement continues along the path to Bolshevization, the more important it will be to fight these dangerous enemies who attempt to infiltrate our ranks by disguising themselves as allies. (Matsuzaki 1930: 160) Matsuzaki’s essay was reprinted in the Prokino anthology Puroretaria eiga undō no tenbō (Prospects for the Proletarian Film Movement) in July 1930, which collected what Prokino viewed to be key theoretical writings by its members. Many essays in the anthology addressed and defended the decision to prioritize mobile film screenings over theatrical screenings. Notably, the volume also includes several essays by Iwasaki. The inclusion of his articles suggests that the issue of mobile units and ad hoc activities was far from resolved. Among the articles selected for anthologization, Namiki Shinsaku’s essay “Eisha katsudō ni tsuite” (“Regarding Screening Activities”) strikes a conciliatory tone. While not as famous as Iwasaki, Namiki was singled out in compilations such as Prospects for the Proletarian Film Movement as the main proponent of the Prokino’s mobile film units and ad hoc screening activities. Namiki is also known as a post-war historian of Prokino, and his book Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Dōmei (Purokino) zenshi (A Complete History of the Proletarian Film League of Japan [Prokino], 1986) remains one of the most important accounts of the organization. Namiki’s close association with the 59

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conceptualization of Prokino’s contingent filmmaking and film exhibition activities urges us to pay more attention to his theoretical contributions to the movement. In “Regarding Screening Activities,” Namiki placed emphasis on the mobile film units as more directly connected with the proletariat and essential for political organization. Still, he noted, public screenings were useful as publicity for the movement: these screenings for general audiences drew attention to the differences between proletarian culture and bourgeois culture. Such events could easily be compared and contrasted with commercial screenings, as they took a very similar form (Namiki 1931: 150). Mobile film unit activities and public screenings could also take the place of, or complement, one another. Screenings in public halls were a necessary recourse when Prokino members could not gain entry to factories or otherwise access their target constituencies: When we make a certain factory our goal [but cannot gain direct access], we must put on frequent film screenings in the neighborhood of the factory. Publicity must focus on that target factory, and devising every other means, we must try to mobilize the striking workers into participating in the screening. (Namiki 1931: 150, emphasis in original) To prepare for such contingencies, Namiki argued that it was necessary to have a more nuanced understanding of the difference between public screenings and mobile projection, as well as a better sense of the mutual relationship between the two (Namiki 1931: 152). He pointed out that, with the exception of the writer’s association, each arts organization within NAPF used a dual approach, drawing on both public venues as well as more direct means of contact with workers and farmers. For instance, rather than using the same Tokyo theater troupe for its public performances and trunk theater performances, PROT (Purotto), the Japanese Proletarian Theater League (Nihon Puroretaria Gekijō Dōmei, 1928–1931), deployed two theater troupes with distinct specializations in stage productions and mobile performances (Namiki 1931: 153). Namiki wanted Prokino to minimize the differences between public and mobile activities by creating local organizations in factories and farming villages. He called these the “cinema leagues” (shinema rīgu). He hoped these politicized worker–farmer cinema leagues would mobilize the proletariat to attend public film screenings and, in doing so, create new opportunities for political organizing. Ideally, these groups would organize around specific worksites, but participants could also create leagues beyond the workplace. Community-based leagues would make it possible to carry out screenings and other activities outside worksites when assembly there was impossible (Namiki 1931: 157). Most importantly, the leagues would facilitate contact between workers and the movement both before and after screenings, ensuring that audience members were conscious of the political character of their film spectatorship (Namiki 1931: 156). Finally, because mobile film units were typically called on to assist with special campaigns, Namiki noted, their activities could be unpredictable. Namiki hoped that the organization of cinema leagues would give the units’ activities more regularity by introducing the oversight of workers and farmers (Namiki 1931: 159). Despite Namiki’s conciliatory tone and his arguments for the deployment of both public screenings as well as more direct forms of political organizing, he concluded that mobile film activities would be far more useful than fixed film events, since the audience for public events was too heterogeneous. Public events attracted shopkeepers, white-collar workers, students, neighbors, and other random spectators, as well as workers and farmers: this was an audience “with the consistency of mixed stew.” Consequently, public events often felt “like a neighborhood affair” (gaitō 60

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teki), which was not conducive to producing the kind of single-minded collective consciousness that Prokino desired. If the audience could not be addressed as a single group, it would not react to the films as a single group, and so it was far less likely that workers and farmers would be correctly interpellated by the films. Namiki did not want to abandon public screenings, but he called for events whose “target audience is workers and farmers who have gathered with a purpose” (Namiki 1931: 160–161, emphasis in original). He underscored the importance of audiences “made up of workers and farmers in factories and farming villages, which are treated as units, and which are joined by their everyday economic interests” (Namiki 1931: 161).

A day with the mobile film unit A 1930 report on the Tokyo-area deployment of a mobile filmmaking unit gives us a better idea of how filmmaking could provide a vehicle for creating and maintaining relationships among filmmakers, workers, farmers, and activists. Namiki contributed this report, “Kyōdō kōsaku o toru” (“Filming the Co-Operative Farm”), to the September 1930 issue of Proletar­ ian Film (Namiki 1930a). The excursion resulted in a documentary film titled Kyōdō kōsaku (Co-Operative Farm, 1930). Namiki’s article shows how filmmaking was integrated into Prokino’s political organizing activities, often in coordination with other left-wing groups. As the outing demonstrates, filming was not just a passive activity. It provided an opportunity for activists to go into communities, learn about their histories, and participate in their daily lives. Although Prokino’s films may not have been that impressive (as Prokino members conceded in essays and memoirs), filmmaking accomplished the goal of aligning artists, activists, workers, and farmers, creating a “mobilization network” (dōinmō) for more direct actions (Namiki 1931: 160). As Namiki argued in “Regarding Screening Activities,” Prokino’s mobilization network could generate further opportunities for film production and screening events, while film activities that were intimately connected with the everyday lives of ordinary people, and organized around the sites of their labor, could be used to politicize workers and precipitate their self-organization (Namiki 1931). For the film Co-Operative Farm, Namiki’s arguments were put into practice. The article is presented as a report of a typical mobile film unit outing (Namiki 1930a). A branch of the Saitama prefecture agricultural federation had recently been established in the village of Shiodome in South Saitama County. On June 8, 1930, Prokino’s Tokyo branch was informed of the farmers’ first cooperative rice planting, which was to take place the next day. Despite short notice, Prokino member Morita Kōichi was able to locate a camera. He and Namiki traveled together to Shiodome to film. First, at Keisei Kanamachi Station, they met three students from the Tokyo Imperial University Settlement (Teidai Settlement). From there, the five walked along the Nakagawa riverbank for a half-hour to the Tokyo Prefectural Association Proletarian Legal Aid Center. The Teidai Settlement was an important interwar organization for tenant farmers’ and workers’ aid and education. It was created as part of the “university extension movement” (daigaku kakuchō undō) in Japan. The university extension movement originated in Great Britain, where programs in adult education beyond the university were first explored at Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the 1870s. In Japan, the movement began at Tokyo Imperial University with the encouragement of faculty members, such as law professor Suehiro Izutarō. Its activities can be traced to students’ volunteer relief efforts after the September 1, 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Following the earthquake, the organization was formally proposed in October and became fully operational in the fall of 1924, when it moved into a brand new designated facility. Its organizational structure included departments for workers’ education, civic education, 61

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research, children, and legal advice (Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku Setsurumento nenpō 1926: 1). Members of the university’s Shinjinkai (New Man Society) helped create the workers’ curriculum. In 1925, Teidai Settlement courses for workers’ education and civics included general topics such as world geography and sociology, as well as more specialized courses about workers’ issues, such as labor legislation, labor union theory, and Japanese labor history. Special lectures examined topics such as “Universal Suffrage and the Worker” and “Dialectical Materialism.” Workers who enrolled as students formed study groups that examined issues such as “Reactionary Groups and Labor Unions” and “Will Farmers and Urban Workers Unite Behind Their Common Interests?” (Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku Setsurumento nenpō 1926: 13 and 9). At first, the Settlement received support from the Imperial Household Ministry and the Tokyo City Social Bureau, but by the late 1930s, the Education Ministry and the Special Higher Police denounced the Settlement as a breeding ground for leftists (Choi 2014: 249). Returning to Namiki’s account, at the Tokyo Prefectural Association Proletarian Legal Aid Center, Namiki, Morita, and students from the Teidai Settlement met the Tokyo prefectural agricultural federation worker “M,” who served as their guide for the day. M briefed them on the situation in Shiodome and provided background on the establishment of the Shiodome branch of the agricultural federation. Namiki and Morita filmed the legal center, and from there they traveled by car to Shiodome in a vehicle provided by neighboring farmers. Namiki comments in the article, “The car is the only means of transportation in the rural countryside. As members of the mobile film unit who travel to farming villages to project films already know, it is an absolute minimum requirement” (Namiki 1930a: 31). On the road, they passed several people who appeared to be tenant farmers. The farmers greeted M, giving Namiki the impression that “The entire neighborhood was pervaded by the strong influence of the agricultural federation” (Namiki 1930a: 31). The group reached Shiodome at noon, disembarked on a ridge between two rice fields, and Namiki and Morita immediately began filming. Lens FI.9, aperture F4, focus infinity. We first shot the entire scene of the rice planting. Every field was brimming with the lively singing of energetic union members, but with not a single X [red] flag in sight, it felt a little lonely. After we finished filming the entire scene, we shot the foreground and close-ups. An incredibly energetic old man; a young woman who, from the looks of it, was brimming, nearly bursting with fighting spirit; and an old woman wearing a bandana [tenugui] covered with all the slogans of the agricultural federation helped carry the seedlings. Every face was burnt deep brown by the sun, strong and reliable faces. Nimbly working hands. Determined faces. Before our eyes they planted the seedlings with astounding speed. (Namiki 1930a: 32) Morita donned tall rubber boots and waded into the field to shoot close-ups, while Namiki took notes as he listened to M’s history of the Shiodome farmers’ struggle. According to M, the Shiodome tenant farmers had organized the union to combat a corrupt landlord, a man named Satō, who had committed numerous offenses. Satō was siphoning off funds meant for local elections and using the money to support a mistress. He removed the topsoil from fields and sold it off to a brick manufacturing company. Without topsoil, some of the fields caved in and filled with water. Even before the union formed, the farmers were frequently embroiled in disputes with the landlord as conditions steadily grew worse. After evicting farmers who were unable to pay their rent, Satō redrew the boundaries of the farmers’ plots, taking advantage of the fact that the dimensions were never clearly marked. The tenant farmers 62

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fought back by erecting markers to re-establish the boundaries of their fields, and the formation of a union followed. After filming the rice planting, Namiki and Morita filmed Satō’s home, a large mansion encircled by fields from which the topsoil had been stripped and sold. The drowned, sunken fields gave the mansion the appearance of a fortress surrounded by a moat (Namiki 1930a: 32–33). Namiki’s report provides valuable information about how the mobile film unit was conceived, as well as how it actually functioned. As this instance makes clear, mobile film units did not act alone. Prokino depended on other left-wing organizations as well as local informants to share important knowledge and resources. Although the full extent of this collaboration has yet to be examined by scholars, Namiki’s account provides some idea of who was part of Prokino’s “mobilization network,” as well as how these groups operated in the field. The article also provides helpful information on what was filmed, how, and by whom. Namiki includes details about shot scale and camera angle: for instance, we know that Namiki and Morita filmed closeups of farmers’ sunburnt faces and diligent hands, long shots and bird’s-eye-view shots of the landlord’s imposing mansion, and close-ups of the mansion gate and its ostentatious nameplate. In addition, the expressive description of the planting quoted above suggests how these shots might have been edited together in the completed film. A scenario printed in the previous issue of Proletarian Film (August 1930) shows that Namiki imagined a far more ambitious film, which was ultimately abandoned. The scenario “Chronicle of the Shiodome Village Tenant Farmers’ Struggle” includes additional dramatized scenes, such as a scene of the landlord Satō losing an election and his mistress’s distress (Namiki 1930c). Most importantly, Namiki’s report gives us a better idea of how filmmaking could provide a vehicle for establishing and strengthening relationships among filmmakers, workers, farmers, and activists. Mobile film units were helpful for the work of Bolshevization since they provided a pretext (filming) for such interactions to occur. Modeling the principles of Bolshevization, Namiki is careful to emphasize the two-sided nature of the exchange that is taking place. His article firmly locates political agency with the farmers while recognizing the important influence of the Tokyo Prefectural agricultural federation, the Prefectural Association Proletarian Legal Aid Center, the Teidai Settlement, and Prokino. Namiki characterizes the tenant farmers’ invitation as the impetus for the excursion, and repeatedly presents himself as a listener and observer, rather than a filmmaker and critic. The report amply demonstrates Namiki and Morita’s concern with questions of cinematic representation, narration, and style, but it also suggests the value of filmmaking as an open-ended and participatory activity that could be used for establishing communication, imparting knowledge, and encouraging cooperation among various groups. And yet, in his post-war history of Prokino, A Complete History of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), Namiki deemed Co-Operative Farm a failure. He describes Co-Operative Farm as an outlier among films made during Prokino’s “second period,” all of which (except for the film in question) began with a script and planning after thorough discussion at the Prokino branch level, and many of which were “documentary or semi-documentary” films (Namiki 1986: 270). Namiki does not go into details, but he states that “power relations at that time” prevented the filmmakers from supplementing the rice planting footage with the additional scenes found in the scenario (Namiki 1986: 102). In addition, the film received a tepid response from Prokino members. Screenwriter Hisaita Eijirō criticized the “seemingly happy” farmers for appearing too “carefree.” He felt it was a problem that the film did not include an antagonist or any scenes of organizational work, and that, accordingly, the filmmakers had not “filmed from the perspective of struggle” (quoted by Namiki 1986: 102). Farmers applauded Co-Operative Farm when it was shown at mobile projection unit screenings, but writer Tokunaga Sunao pointed out that farmers may have simply been pleased to 63

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see a film in which they saw themselves (Namiki 1986: 103). The dissatisfaction with the finished film and distrust of the farmers’ reactions is not only a criticism of Co-Operative Farm; it also suggests some Prokino members’ reluctance to fully embrace Bolshevization. Much like the controversy surrounding Iwasaki Akira’s predilections for commercial and avantgarde film, the reactions to Co-Operative Farm remind us that the debates over political aesthetics, as well as political expediency versus artistic achievement, were extremely contentious—not only within Prokino, but in the broader movement. Still, to dismiss Co-Operative Farm without examining the policies and social relationships that made the production possible would be to disregard the important role that Bolshevization played in Prokino activities and strategies, such as the mobile film unit.

Future directions Adopting a framework that emphasizes Prokino’s grassroots political activities fundamentally changes how we understand the organization. Prokino is sometimes described as a group of leftwing filmmakers and critics who attempted to revolutionize the Japanese film industry by promoting oppositional film practices—including alternatives to commercial production, distribution, and exhibition—and who endorsed a radically different aesthetic from that of the mainstream commercial film. However, to view Prokino only from the perspective of film history and film theory, and not within the context of the broader movement’s political goals, would be to risk overlooking what was most radical about Prokino’s work. Although Prokino criticized bourgeois film institutions such as commercial film studios and movie theaters, the group had close relationships with filmmakers and critics in the commercial film world. It received financial support from many professional film actors and directors. Even though Prokino was deeply critical of, if not downright hostile toward, film capitalism, Prokino’s main struggle was not against the commercial film industry. Compared to Prokino’s resistance to the Japanese state and imperialist capitalism, Prokino’s quibbles with the mainstream film industry were a trivial concern. Because most, if not all, of the scholarship on Prokino has been written from a film-historical perspective, the group’s activities have been framed in ways that have left important aspects unexplored. Discussion of Prokino’s activities is rarely included in the extensive, and growing, body of literature on the interwar proletarian movement. Most of this research focuses on proletarian literature and fine arts. Much work on Prokino focuses on the organization’s film theory and important film theoretical debates among its members. Prokino’s wide-ranging publications included film criticism, histories of cinema, instructional guides, scenarios, reportage, political manifestos, and studies of film technology. Prokino documented its own history from very early on, publishing anthologies of major essays that were reprinted from serial publications that reported monthly on the group’s activities. There is such a rich archive of written materials compared to other extant documentation of the group’s activities that it is tempting to emphasize Prokino’s writings. In addition, given the important reforms and innovations being introduced into Japanese cinema in this period, it would be easy to mischaracterize Prokino as yet another reform movement that was focused on reorganizing and improving the Japanese film world. Certainly, Prokino’s critique of cinema as an industrial medium provides illuminating commentary on this crucial transitional period. These writers not only raised economic and political concerns, but also wrote lucidly about film aesthetics, emotion and identification, ideology, and narration. Still, in light of Prokino’s ambitious and indeed perilous political goals, a narrow focus on Prokino’s contributions to film history yields a limited understanding of the full substance and context of Prokino’s activities. Prokino’s history not only provides an important case for 64

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comparison with other amateur filmmaking leagues, but also other political filmmaking groups and cultural organizations around the world—whose policies were similarly shaped by unique local challenges as well as international communism.

Notes 1 The history of these broad-based cultural movements overlaps with, but is typically treated separately from, the history of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and underground leftist political activities in Japan. For the sake of simplicity, I will generally refrain from discussing JCP and Comintern in this chapter. Interested readers should refer to Hoston (1986 and 1994) and Wilson (1998) for an excellent introduction to these groups’ activities during the period that I discuss. As Wilson notes, “the gap between the tiny scale of the formal JCP and the spread of Marxist ideas is one of the most striking features of pre-war Japanese Marxism” (1998: 296), and the relationship between cultural Marxism and Communist activity in pre-war Japan deserves more careful study. 2 See, for instance, Tepperman’s (2015) exploration of a wide diversity of amateur film practices in North America; special issues of Film History on small-gauge and amateur film (Stone and Streible 2003), nontheatrical film (Streible, Roepke, and Mebold 2007), and amateur cinema and its institutions (Salazkina and Fibla-Gutierrez 2018); and Acland’s and Wasson’s (2011) argument for “useful cinema.” As Salazkina and Fibla-Gutierrez observe, new attention to the social, political, and cultural relevance of the medium beyond commercial cinema with theatrical exhibition … allows us to focus on issues of civic engagement, education, everyday media practices, or political dissent and state control without abandoning questions of aesthetic experience or authorship; instead, we bring these questions into the broader spheres of cultural and social life. (Salazkina and Fibla-Gutierrez 2018: vi–vii) 3 The Xs in this passage are known as fuseiji, a form of self-censorship that effaces any language that might draw the ire of state censors, which would prevent or disrupt publication. The meaning of the missing words can often be inferred from context. 4 Scholars of the proletarian literature and arts movement and its major policy debates usually translate taishūka as “massification.” However, for this essay, I have chosen to translate taishūka as “Bolshevization.” “Bolshevization” underscores the prioritization of grassroots political organizing and its basis in Comintern directives. This translation also avoids the ambiguity of the term “popularization,” another phenomenon one finds in late 1920s Japan, in the representation of the proletarian movement in mass culture.

Works cited Acland, C. and Wasson, H. (eds) 2011. Useful Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Akazawa, S. 1985. Kindai Nihon no shisō dōin to shūkyō tōsei (Thought Mobilization and Religious Controls in Modern Japan). Tokyo: Azekura Shobō. Choi, J. 2014. Cultivating Class: Tokyo Imperial University and the Rise of a Middle-Class Society in Modern Japan. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Garon, S. 1998. Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. High, P. 2003. Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years War, 1931–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoston, G. 1986. Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hoston, G. 1994. The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Iwasaki, A. 1930. “Puroretaria eiga no taishūsei to sono genjitsusei” [“The Massification of Proletarian Film in Theory and Practice’]. In Eiga to shihonshugi [Film and Capitalism], 264–276. Tokyo: Sekaisha. Karlsson, M. 2008. “Kurahara Korehito’s Road to Proletarian Realism.” Japan Review 20: 231–273. Karlsson, M. 2011. “United Front from Below: The Proletarian Cultural Movement’s Last Stand, 1931–34.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 37(1): 29–59.

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Diane Wei Lewis Karlsson, M. 2015. “Hirabayashi Eiko and the Projection of a Viable Proletarian Vision.” In K. IwataWeickgenannt and R. Rosenbaum (eds), Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature, 102–116. London: Routledge. Komori, S. and Noto, S. 1994. YIDFF Documentary Box 5. Reprint, Los Angeles: IDA. Online at www. documentary.org/feature/talking-heads-prokinos-kmori-shizuo-and-noto-setsuo-part-1 [accessed March 24, 2017]. Makino, M. 2001. “Rethinking the Emergence of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino).” Trans. M. Nornes. In A. Gerow and M. Nornes (eds), In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru, 15–45. Victoria, BC: Kinema Kurabu. Matsuzaki, K. 1930. “Nihon ni okeru puroretaria eiga undō no hatten” (“The Development of the Proletarian Film Movement in Japan”). In K. Matsuzaki (ed.) Puroretaria eiga undō no tenbō (Prospects for the Proletarian Film Movement), 145–161. Tokyo: Daihōkaku Shobō. Namiki, S. 1930a. “Kyōdō kōsaku o toru” (“Filming the Co-Operative Farm”). Puroretaria eiga (Proletarian Film) (September): 30–34. Namiki, S. 1930b. “Puroretaria eiga no jōei keitai” (“The Form of Proletarian Film Exhibition”). In K. Matsuzaki (ed.), Puroretaria eiga undō no tenbō (Prospects for the Proletarian Film Movement), 161–164. Tokyo: Daihōkaku Shobō. Namiki, S. 1930c. “Shiodome-mura kosakunin tōsōki” (“Chronicle of the Shiodome Village Tenant Farmers’ Struggle”). Puroretaria eiga (Proletarian Film) (August): 95–101. Namiki, S. 1931. “Eisha katsudō ni tsuite” (“Regarding Screening Activities”). In Prokino (ed.), Puroretaria eiga no tame ni (For the Sake of Proletarian Film), 149–163. Kyoto: Kyōto Kyōseikaku. Namiki, S. 1986. Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Dōmei (Purokino) zenshi (A Complete History of the Proletarian Film League of Japan [Prokino]). Tokyo: Gōdō Shuppan. Nornes, M. 2003. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Puroretaria eiga. 1930. Puroretaria eiga (Proletarian Film), advertisement. September 17. Salazkina, M. and Fibla-Gutierrez, E. 2018. “Introduction: Toward a Global History of Amateur Film Practices and Institutions.” In M. Salazkina and E. Fibla-Gutierrez (eds), “Toward a Global History of Amateur Film Practices and Institutions.” Film History 30(1): v–xxiii. Shea, G.T. 1964. Leftwing Literature in Japan: A Brief History of the Proletarian Literary Movement. Tokyo: Hōsei University Press. Stone, M. and Streible, D. (eds) 2003. “Small-Gauge and Amateur Film.” Film History 15(2). Streible, D., Roepke, M., and Mebold, A. (eds) 2007. “Nontheatrical Film.” Film History 19(4). Takada, T. 1930. “Purokino Tomo no Kai ni tsuite” (“On the Friends of Prokino Association”). Puroretaria eiga (Proletarian Film) (August): 82–83. Tepperman, C. 2015. Amateur Cinema: The Rise of North American Moviemaking, 1923–1960. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku Setsurumento. 1926. Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku Setsurumento nenpō (Tokyo Imperial University Settlement Annual Bulletin) 2. Tsutsui, W.M. 1997. “Rethinking the Paternalist Paradigm in Japanese Industrial Management.” Business and Economic History 26(2) (Winter): 561–572. Tsutsui, W.M. 1998. Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Uemura, S. 1930. “Purokino nyūsurīru han no katsudō” (“The Activities of the Prokino Newsreel Group”). In K. Matsuzaki (ed.), Puroretaria eiga undō no tenbō (Prospects for the Proletarian Film Movement), 164–170. Tokyo: Daihōkaku Shobō. Wilson, S. 1997. “Angry Young Men and the Japanese State.” In E.K Tipton (ed.), Society and the State in Interwar Japan, 100–125. New York: Routledge. Wilson, S. 1998. “The Comintern and the Japanese Communist Party.” In T. Rees and A. Thorpe (eds), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–1943, 285–307. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Further reading Bowen-Struyk, H. and Field, N. 2015. For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletar­ ian Literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Makino, M. 2001. “Rethinking the Emergence of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino).” Trans.

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Home movies of the revolution M. Nornes. In A. Gerow and M. Nornes (eds), In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru, 15–45. Victoria, BC: Kinema Kurabu. Namiki, S. 1986. Nihon Puroretaria Eiga Dōmei (Purokino) zenshi (A Complete History of the Proletarian Film League of Japan [Prokino]). Tokyo: Gōdō Shuppan. Nornes, M. 2003. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Shea, G.T. 1964. Leftwing Literature in Japan: A Brief History of the Proletarian Literary Movement. Tokyo: Hōsei University Press.

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4

When Marnie Was There

Female friendship film and the genealogy of queer girls’ culture Yuka Kanno

Introduction Hitchcock’s 1964 film Marnie is a story about a woman, a compulsive thief and liar who ends up, unwillingly, marrying a rich company owner from whom she steals money. The film depicts Marnie as deviant not only in terms of her uncontrollable thievery, but also in her absolute rejection of sexual relationships with men. Rather, she painfully seeks affection from her cold and distant mother, repeatedly stealing money from wealthy men and giving the old woman the spoils. This perplexed mother–daughter bond invites film scholars to read moments in the film as opening up the possibility of lesbian spectatorship (Knapp 2009). In the same year that Hitchcock’s film was released, Joan G. Robinson was also about to publish a novel with the same title. Set in Norfolk, a seaside town surrounded by marshlands, Robinson’s novel tells the story of two girls, Anna and Marnie, who meet and develop a strong and affectionate bond. Anna is a lonely, introverted twelve-year-old living with foster parents in London. Her apathy toward life causes her foster mother to worry, but Anna doesn’t mind spend­ ing her time alone, and prefers it to inclusion in the cliques of other children her age. Anna does not feel uncomfortable in her solitude; she simply doesn’t care, the novel tells us, about things like parties and friends. One day, while she is down by the water’s edge, staring out across the marsh, Anna experiences an odd feeling of “being watched” (Robinson 2014: 25). This eerie scene is how the story describes the first encounter between Anna and Marnie, with the latter character, Marnie, not yet visible. Anna senses the other girl’s presence before she sees her. On hearing about Hitchcock’s new film, Robinson made a last-minute change to her novel’s title, from Marnie to When Marnie Was There (Sheppard 2014: 283). This coincidence can almost be read as a missed encounter between the two Marnies: one, in the film, looking for the love of a mother; the other, in the novel, looking for the love of another girl, who later turns out to be her grandmother. Just as Hitchcock’s Marnie would be revived later as a queer text, Robin­ son’s Marnie was also resurrected as a queer text in an animated Japanese film, Omoide no Mānī (lit., Marnie of My Memories, released as When Marnie Was There), directed by Yonebayashi Hiromasa in 2014. Taking the animated film When Marnie Was There as a symptomatic text, this chapter traces the genealogy of queer girls’ culture back through transnational film culture to the 1930s. In considering “queerness” within the Japanese context, girls’ culture offers a forceful instance of the dynamic movements traversing different genres, media, time, and space. 68

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“Girl” (shōjo) is a concept that congealed out of the institutionalization of modern school education and the proliferation of magazine culture targeted at young female adolescents around the end of nineteenth century to the early twentieth century in Japan. As a historical category and socially constructed discourse, girls did not exist merely as objects. As cultural producers themselves, they produced and created their very own girls’ culture (shōjo bunka). Full of queer forces from the outset, girls’ culture has persistently formed an undercurrent of a wide range of cultural texts, while moving between genres and media. Drawing on the work of queer and lesbian film and narrative theories on spectral temporality and non-heteronormative reading practice, I aim to trace the ghosted genealogy of girls’ culture in modern Japan, which resurfaces through contemporary films such as When Marnie Was There. Like other cultural practices, this cultural genealogy cannot be confined to the national, as it emerged out of translated children’s literature, particularly girls’ novels of the nineteenth century from England and North America. It is also indebted to such Hollywood queer icons as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn. The animation, When Marnie Was There, stands at a nodal point, a conver­ gence of transnational and transmediated film and queer girls’ cultures.

Ghostly lesbianism Based on Robinson’s novel of the same title, Yonebayashi Hiromasa’s When Marnie Was There tells a story about the encounter between two girls, Anna and Marnie, their growing friendship, and the final disappearance of Marnie at the end of the film. Their intimacy appears so fragile throughout the film because of the visual as well as narrative uncertainty that surrounds Marnie. Although the film presents Marnie as a mysterious character at both visual and narrative levels, her spectral visibility and narrative position poses the question of who feels and sees her as real and not real. We, in the audience, might speculate about her uncanny appearances and disap­ pearances, but for Anna, Marnie is there, in plain view, as real. The film encourages us to take Anna’s point of view and identify with her, both to see Marnie and feel her presence. Yet, Yonebayashi’s film is more than an adaptation of Robinson’s novel: it excavates and recuperates lesbian desire through a historical circuit of girls’ culture. The connection between queer intimacy and spectrality in this film is nothing unusual, however, because the ghostly and the lesbian have a long-standing relationship in modern culture. Often displaced and transfigured, lesbian desire, identity, and relationships have long been the ghost effects in the field of cinematic vision and narrative. They are conjured up as if only to be exorcized, and the work of ghosting lesbianism operates both literally and figuratively most of the time. In the most literal sense, lesbians frequently take the form of ghosts (and vam­ pires). In Patricia White’s analysis of lesbian representability in classical Hollywood cinema, she claims that “the best of Hollywood lesbian movies are always in some sense ‘ghost’ movies,” including The Curse of the Cat People (Gunter Von Fritsch and Robert Wise, 1944), The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944), The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961), and The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963) (White 1999: 61). Yet, Hollywood is not the only place where the work of ghosting lesbian desire—the operation of containment and displacement of such desire, which produces the very condition of queer leading—thrives. Ghostly lesbianism also haunts Japanese and Korean screens, as in Yurisai (Lily Festival, dir. Hamano Sachi, 2001) and Memento Mori (aka Yeogogoedam dubeonjjae iyagi, dir. Tae-yong Kim and Kyu-dong Min, 1999). In her book ana­ lyzing lesbianism as a ghost effect in literature and film, Terry Castle observes, “when it comes to lesbians, many people have trouble seeing what’s in front of them” (Castle 1993: 2). Elusive, ephemeral, invisible, and passing, lesbianism undergoes cultural erasure at many different levels, historically, theoretically, and discursively. 69

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When Marnie Was There invokes such spectral lesbianism so as to be expelled at the end of the film. As a literal ghost, Marnie is brought back into view, while Anna does not doubt her exist­ ence at all. As such, the figure of Marnie represents the ghostly modality that wavers between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, materiality and ephemerality, imaginary and real, present and past. The ways in which the film tries to confine the queer desire and relation­ ship of the two girls within the narrative closure testifies to the ghosting of lesbianism that Castle and White suggest. However, such an attempt to erase the queerness of the film can be cur­ tailed, as I will show below, by the practice of “reading the middle”: shifting our focus to the middle of the narrative rather than its ending. Although produced by Studio Ghibli, When Marnie Was There became the first (and suppos­ edly last) film made without the involvement of either Miyazaki Hayao or Takahata Isao.1 Made without Miyazaki’s direct control, Yonebayashi’s film deviated from Ghibli tradition and con­ ventions; I speculate that this might have contributed to the queer tone of the film. Unlike its predecessors, When Marnie Was There does not feature a similarly aged male character as a foil for or aid to its female protagonists. In addition, the visual introduction of the eponymous char­ acter, Marnie, follows a familiar pattern of gendered differentiation. Consider, for instance, the visuality of the two girl protagonists in the process. Yonebayashi, who used to be an animator for Studio Ghibli, created image boards of the film, and a handwritten memo accompanying Marnie’s picture indicates that she should make her first appearance mysteriously in the moon­ light. In the image that Yonebayashi created, she is wearing a white nightdress with her blond hair blowing in the wind. The film remains faithful to this image, with Marnie presented from the point of view of Anna, who gazes up at her. This unearthly apparition of the graceful Marnie stands in sharp contrast to the introduction of Anna as a grim-faced, anxious, and odd girl. Most noteworthy, however, is Anna’s boyishness. In Robinson’s original, Anna sends a letter to her foster mother, asking permission to wear shorts every day except for special occasions, and the film visually constructs Anna as a tomboy in shorts, a blue T-shirt, and short dark hair.2 The film, in this way, distinguishes the two young female protagonists through their gender expressions: feminine Marnie and tomboyish Anna. This gendering suggests the visual strategy of expressing romantic intimacy between the two girls, less threatening and deviant than the butch–femme style, but a conventional differentiating device in visual culture. As a masculine style, the tomboy is less threatening because it is assumed that such gender-bending behaviors and styles among adolescent girls are simply a passing phase. Although tomboyism does not necessarily resist gender norms, and often works in the service of building the nation state, it can still become “an avatar of protolesbian girlhood” (Quimby 2003: 1).3 In addition to gender, race also differentiates these two girls. Anna’s darker skin and hair contrasts with Marnie’s paleness and soft, long, blond hair. Whereas Marnie’s whiteness is more visibly marked, Anna’s racialization operates more subtly on both visual and narrative levels. During their first encounter, for instance, Marnie asks Anna if she is a beggar, for she has “no shoes … and black hair like a gypsy” (Robinson 2014: 79). As an explicit racial Other in the modern cultural imagination, the figure of the gypsy resurfaces again in both the novel and the film, when Anna disguises herself as a little flower girl during the party scene. This racialization as a means of differentiation recalls the well-known practice of suggesting lesbianism in the history of art and cinema. In art, for instance, Linda Nochlin has pointed out that the coexistence of dark and light female bodies has traditionally indicated lesbianism (Nochlin 1989: 49). One can easily see a similar situation in cinema. Based on the analysis of women in prison films, Judith Mayne argues that racial difference promotes the recognition of the lesbian relationship (Mayne 2000: 138). In the visual field, lesbianism often can be readable under certain conditions, and gendering and racialization constitute such frames of reference of 70

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visibility. Otherwise, a woman’s desire for another woman, and the longing for an intimate rela­ tionship between the two women are readily interpreted as a wish for identification, (purely pla­ tonic) friendship, or the merging with the mother. In other words, sexuality and erotic possibility have to be eliminated from affectionate female–female relationships, which—even in their most intense form—can only culminate in friendship and kinship. It is the mutual imbrication of gen­ dered and racialized differentiation that mobilizes the erotics of When Marnie Was There.4 Despite the ghosting of lesbianism at the end of When Marnie Was There, those involved in the creation of the film seem to be fully aware of the homoerotic charge of Anna and Marnie’s relationship. The film implies the excessive intimacy and erotic dynamics of the two as it frames the condition of vision without explicitly naming it as such. Consider the scene in which Anna, her cheeks flushed, raises her eyes toward Marnie, or the moment when Marnie tightly leans up against Anna’s body and whispers, “you are my precious secret.” These moments come to the surface, as if they are unable to contain the erotic undercurrents in the realm of connotation. In explaining the scene in which Marnie slips her arm around Anna’s waist and pulls her against herself, Yonebayashi indeed describes Anna’s pulsated feelings as “sensual” (Yonebayashi 2014b: 48). He also remarks on the distinction between himself and Miyazaki, or the erotic nature of a “life-size” character that he creates in contrast to the “maternal woman” or “idealized little girl,” emblematic of Miyazaki, hence of Studio Ghibli. Suzuki Toshio, who produced the film, indicates that Yonebayashi’s depiction of Marnie is unprecedentedly sensual for Studio Ghibli, therefore posing a threat to Miyazaki (Suzuki 2014: 78). The actress Takatsuki Sara, who pro­ vides Anna’s voice, also realizes the “unordinary” relationship between the two protagonists, claiming that their friendship is “something very different” and too deep for words (Takatsuki and Arimura 2014: 38). By cinematic conventions, Anna and Marnie’s unexpected encounter and their slowly growing affection for each other through sensual interactions would be a perfectly typical first love story. When it is happening between two girls, however, the romance narrative suddenly turns into a story of friendship, which rarely happens in similarly framed heterosexual plots. The general reception of the film in Japan seems to suggest the impossibility of such a love story for Anna and Marnie, with the film ultimately reducing their romantic and sensual closeness to a kinship narrative. It is as if the film is consciously circumventing the chance of reading sexual intimacy in their relationship: ultimately, that is, if we judge the film by the way its ends. But what if we read the film differently? For speaking about the film through the act of summarizing the plot—which usually weighs on the ending—is the reading practice in accordance with “straight” time, strongly supported by linear, teleological logic. The shift of focus from the end to the intermediate space of the film narrative allows us to open up much more complex reading possibilities full of unexpected queer encounters.

Queer narrative as anti-climax A number of writings on narrative theory have insisted on the heteronormativity of narrative itself, pointing out the ways in which narrative and sexuality share a similar logic and penchant for “climax” (Warhol and Lancer 2015; Roof 1996; Miller 1992; Brooks 1992; Heath 1982). Sexuality and narrative are, according to Judith Roof, “interwoven with one another as an interdependent, mutually reflexive, reciprocal organization” (Roof 1996: xxvii). Narrative’s sexuality is as much in the literal heterosexual content of a story as it is in the very form and the structuring operation of progress toward the ending: “Our very idea of an end is dependent upon a concept of chronological, linear, unidirectional time that positions the end as the cumu­ lative locus of completed knowledge” (Roof 1996: 7). In emphasizing the centrality of desire in 71

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narrative, Peter Brooks also points out that the reading of plot is a form of desire “that carries us forward, onward, through the text” (Brooks 1992: 37). Like Roof, Brooks sees sexual and erotic elements in narrative, yet what he refers to as narrative desire heavily relies on the conception of narrative as a progressive and unifying force. Such future-oriented and teleological drive cannot escape from heteronormative imperatives of reproductive futurism. Thus, a focus on the middle of the narrative and the narrative process itself rather than the climax or the ending encourages a less straightforward reading practice that allows for different kinds of knowledge production. The idea of a “queer middle” as proposed by Kimberly Quimby is useful here (Quimby 2003). The queer middle signifies a reading strategy by which we shift our attention from the narrative end to the middle through the figure of the tomboy. Anna, like Jo March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868–1869), can be seen as an agent that enables such a reading practice that “traces the movement and trajectory of the tomboy or queer girl’s plot” (Quimby 2003: 4). For instance, fearless and unruly Jo-in-the-middle marries at the end, but this disap­ pointing ending does not surpass the much more enticing narrative middle in which Jo fasci­ nates us with her disobedience to gendered middle-class womanhood.5 Likewise, if we attach more importance to the narrative arrest and detour in the middle of When Marnie Was There rather than to its closure, we might be able to see unconventional erotic openness and possibility in tomboyish Anna. While the ending exorcises the queer suggestion in Anna’s affectionate feelings for Marnie by reducing their intimacy to kinship, our focus on the uncertain and non­ linear narrative in the middle also brings another pleasure: the queer romance between Anna and Marnie enables the former to survive and learn to negotiate her constant feelings of inferior­ ity and self-denial.

Translated girls’ fiction in Japan When Marnie Was There is based on translated girls’ fiction; this leads us to the genealogy of girls’ culture, at the heart of which lies shōjo shōsetsu, or girls’ fiction, loosely yet concisely defined by Kan Satoko as “works written for girls as readers” (Kan 2008: 6). It should be noted, once again, that specific historical configurations such as the reform of the modern school education system and the rise of magazine culture made it possible for girls to emerge as readers and consumers. The 1899 Higher Girls’ School Act institutionalized women’s higher education, causing a nationwide proliferation of higher girls’ schools. These newly born consumers became the very target of emergent girls’ magazines, including Shōjo sekai (Girls’ World, 1906–1931), Shōjo no tomo (Girls’ Friend, 1908–1955), Shōjo (Girls, 1909–1912), Shōjo gahō (Girls’ Graphics, 1912–1942), Shin shōjo (New Girls, 1915–1919), Shōjo no hana (Girls’ Flower, 1922–1925), Reijōkai (Ladies’ World, 1922–1950), and Shōjo kurabu (Girls’ Club, 1923–1962). The most popular girls’ fiction that these magazines produced, shaping the contours of shōjo culture, was Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana monogatari (Flower Tales). The first tale, Suzuran (Lily of the Valley), was published in Shōjo gahō (Girls’ Graphics) in 1916. Although this work was dismissed as a “story for women and children” by the influential contemporary male critic, Kobayashi Hideo, Yoshiya consistently wrote stories about love, friendship, and intimacy between women and girls in a decorative and lyrical style. Yoshiya was one of the first woman writers to build a career as a professional writer. Constantly loved and cherished by girl readers, Yoshiya had a career that endured for over five decades. Even after her death in 1973, her presence can be felt in a number of cultural texts, including the light novels by Himuro Saeko in the late 1970s through the 1980s and the work of Konno Oyuki today. The male-centered literary world would not acknowledge the significance of Yoshiya and her works, but her commercial success 72

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and her persistent influence on many women writers and readers recall Louisa May Alcott, whom she profoundly admired. Despite differences in style and aesthetics, Yoshiya, like Alcott, embodied a model for the woman writer that offered an alternative to the Romantic model of male genius, a worldly model “based on training, experimentation, professionalism, and selffulfillment” (Showalter 1991: 59). I would argue that instead of modeling a talented and solitary literary master in a constant financial crisis, Yoshiya offered a vision of an independent woman artist and a life shared with another woman. Female–female love, friendship, and intimacy were not merely thematic concerns of her work, but her way of life. Consistently promoting female bonding and intimacy in both her writing and living, Yoshiya’s feminist and lesbian authorship convinced readers that they too could make a good and joyful living without relying on male authorities. Girls’ fiction thrived until the wartime regime began. It survived the war, then resurged anew in the post-war era. In spite of conceptual and discursive diversification, we can trace the genealogy of girls’ fiction in film, manga, and light novels among many other forms of media today. According to literary critic Saitō Minako, however, there is another thread of girls’ fiction that does not derive from Yoshiya but rather from translated girls’ novels.6 Saitō argues that although “domestically produced girls’ fiction” in the manner of Yoshiya’s work perished, “translated girls’ fiction” didn’t fade away, but was passed on from generation to generation (Saitō 2001: 261).7 What she refers to as “seaborne girls’ fiction” includes Lucy M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), Alcott’s Little Women, Frances H. Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911), Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (originally published in 1881 in two parts as Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning, and Heidi: How She Used What She Learned), and Jean Webster’s DaddyLong-Legs (1912). These, too, have diversified into different media. Nevertheless, I would argue that the distinction Saitō makes between domestic and translated works seems unconvincing when we consider When Marnie Was There. It provides a good example of how the boundaries between both groups are blurred by illustrating the hybrid nature of girls’ fiction: the narrative includes both the theme of female friendship (typical of the domestic lineage) and the tomboy character (typical of the translated lineage). Yoshiya too, the queen of domestic girls’ fiction, grew up reading translated literature, and later incorporated motifs and characters inspired by English language girls’ stories. It would be more accurate to say that domestic girls’ fiction inherited numerous elements from earlier works of translation, as in Yoshiya’s above-mentioned Lily of the Valley, the first story in her Flower Tales. The ways in which Yoshiya describes the protagonist, a blond-haired Italian girl, appearing against the back­ drop of a moonlit night, demonstrates a striking visual correspondence with Marnie’s alluring onscreen introduction in Yonebayashi’s film. With an orphan-like, abandoned Italian girl as a main character, Yoshiya’s supposedly “domestic” story has the imaginary West at its core, dis­ tancing it from the Japanese social reality of the time. This illustrates the lack of clear boundaries between the domestic and the translated when it comes to girls’ fiction, and why Saito’s argu­ ment on the two different lineages of girls’ fiction thus seems inaccurate.

Global queer girls’ culture The genre of girls’ fiction developed in close relationship to visual images. Readers of Yoshiya’s fiction, for instance, were as attracted to the illustrations as much as they appreciated her stories. These accompanying illustrations were called jojōga (lyrical paintings), and they articulated the ethos of girls’ culture by depicting girls, their friends, and their favorite gadgets as the primary motifs (Kanno 2011: 24–25). The visuality of jojōga by artists Fukiya Kōji, Takabatake Kashō, and Katō Masao strongly supported and enhanced the homoerotic dimensions of the novels. 73

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Girls’ magazines, and particularly the images that Nakahara Jun’ichi produced, played a central role in the post-war resurgence of girls’ culture. That queer artists Yoshiya Nobuko and Nakahara Jun’ichi contributed to the rise and development of girls’ culture underscores its queer undercurrents. The words and images affectively worked together to convey romantic or erotic feelings in stories about female–female love and friendship. Jojōga began decreasing in popular­ ity in the late 1940s, and the genre reached its final stage around the mid-1960s. Nevertheless, the genre has never completely disappeared. Just like girls’ fiction, it diffused its essential ele­ ments—thematic concerns of love and friendship along with stylistic experimentation—into other discursive and visual arenas, including manga, anime, and junior and light novels. The girl (shōjo) was not only a literary reader, but also a cinematic spectator in modern con­ sumer culture. At the intersection of girls’ culture and film culture lies Little Women. The novel written by Louisa May Alcott in 1868 was literally translated as Shōfujin in Japanese by Kitada Shūho in 1906.8 While the enduring impact the novel had (and continues to have) on girl readers has been a privileged object of analysis among numerous critics and scholars, the 1933 Hollywood film adaptation directed by George Cukor was also influential. For the Japanese 1934 release, titled Wakakusa monogatari (or “Stories of the Young Grass,” if translated back into English), Yoshiya Nobuko supervised the Japanese language subtitles. Apparently, the first translation of Little Women by Kitada omitted quite a few scenes from the original novel, including Jo’s unrestrained anger and the publisher’s promise to pay for her next story (Tsuchiya Dollase 2010: 259). Such an omission bespeaks the gender norms of the time, when women could write stories only for private pleasure but not for work. This is ironic considering Yoshiya’s dedicated involvement in the film adaption, as she was someone, fully professional, who “wrote for work.” While translation plays a critical role in reception, both the readers and the members of the film audience went beyond the inten­ tions of the translators and admired the deviation and resistance materialized in the figure of Jo. In addition to the symbolic importance that Yoshiya’s subtitling involvement had for young women, Katharine Hepburn’s appearance was also significant. Both the film and Hepburn’s por­ trayal of Jo generated an enormous sensation in the male-dominated world of cultural criticism, and in the female-dominated world of girls’ culture; curiously, both worlds frequently mentioned the actress’s “strangeness.” Film critics and cultural authorities talked about the “strange appeal” of Hepburn and the “particular strangeness of Jo, unlike the other three sisters” (Koide et al. 1934: 263), while others commented on the “masculinity” (Shimizu et al. 1934: 150) and “androgyny” (chūseisei, literally, “neutrality”) of Hepburn’s embodiment of Jo. Their criticism of what they perceived to be Hepburn’s lack of elegance reflects their expectations of women and their fear of the “contamination” that Jo might bring to Japanese girls (Shimizu et al. 1934: 150). In a sense, male critics accurately grasped Hepburn’s indifference and insubordination to conventional gender roles, which made them feel uncomfortable and perhaps threatened. Although both women and men used similar terms to refer to Hepburn’s “strangeness” as Jo, the response by women differed in being more hesitant and affective, unlike the hostile tone of male commentators. One schoolgirl referred to Hepburn’s Jo as “virile,” while another claimed that Hepburn had a “strange face, but I like it.” Takada Seiko, a famous former dancer, con­ fessed that despite her concerns about the loss of “the feminine” in society, her feelings toward Hepburn brought her to the brink of tears (Takada et al. 1934). There’s something opposite of the feminine, and behind that, there’s something very passionate … There is something familiar in that. She may not be so beautiful, but I find her attractive … perhaps my current situation makes me feel that way, still, I really like her. (Takada et al. 1934: 226) 74

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These gendered reactions to Hepburn/Jo are telling in how they were situated differently in relation to gender norms and expectations. Women affectively responded to the non-feminine and not-so-beautiful Hepburn, who did not conform to the expected gender roles and expres­ sions. They were attracted to the passionate, virile, and strange-faced Hepburn, who enabled them to imagine different ways of being a woman. Male critics unintentionally revealed their lack of comprehension and hostility toward women who deviate from these norms. The oftquoted word, “strangeness,” that was used by both women and men thus signified differently according to gender. For women, it signified non-conformity and the possibility of change, but also something repressed. For men, it was a euphemism for something unruly, deviant, and annoying. Although gender ambivalence had been a prevailing social problem since the 1910s, Hepburn’s embodiment of Jo, and later her cross-dressing in Sylvia Scarlety (George Cukor, 1935) brought something radically different and new to the idea of femininity. Hepburn was not the only Hollywood star that disrupted gender norms in Japan. When Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933) opened in Japan in 1934, one month after the release of Little Women, the advertisements heavily focused on the image of the cross-dressing Greta Garbo. In his review, film critic Ueno Ichirō points to “the masculinization of women” in Japanese society, but he also seems to realize that gender ambivalence is not merely a matter of fashion or aesthetics: he claims that Garbo’s cross-dressing cannot be limited to style, because “it is deeply rooted in the nature of Queen Christina” (Ueno 1934: 71). He is right. It is not just a transgression of gender expression. The Queen’s kissing Eva constitutes a critical moment in the history of lesbian cinema, despite the moment’s ephemerality, easily and quickly dispelled by the heterosexual narrative. Lesbianism in this film is merely apparitional because “the lesbian remains a kind of ‘ghost effect’ in the cinema world of modern life” (Castle 1993: 2). In Japanese film culture too, the lesbianism suggested by female stars such as Hepburn, Garbo, and Dietrich underwent the work of ghosting in many different forms. When Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) was released in Japan in 1931, the film was heavily advertised with the image of Dietrich in male attire, but little was mentioned about cross-dressing or of her kissing another woman.9 She embodied quite a different type of femininity, an assertive and autonomous one, which male audiences and critics didn’t expect from Hollywood female stars of the 1930s. The star personae of Garbo, Hepburn, and Dietrich in drag circulated extensively within film culture as well as girls’ culture in Japan around the mid-1930s, but this should not be regarded as simply an anomalous case of Hollywood importation. Gender ambivalence in Hollywood female stars and their films coincided with the social problem of the masculinization of women in Japan. The image of active and athletic girls in Western clothes, trousers, and shorter hair gradually increased from the 1920s through the 1930s, but this also resonated with the national promotion of girls’ education for fostering physically healthy and strong women. Their necessity for strength­ ening the nation was keenly recognized after World War I. Then, the national policy on girls’ education paradoxically encouraged the formation of a new type of femininity and its circulation, which also helped to complicate the existing ideas about sexuality, and inspire new types of sexual relationality and identity. Although masculinized women appeared as early as the 1920s, their problematization occurred later, as women’s cross-dressing came into vogue as part of the moga (modern girl) phenomenon, followed by the all-female Shōchiku and Takarazuka revues.10 A female character in the film Tōkyō no josei (Women of Tokyo, dir. Fushimizu Shū, 1939) offers a cinematic vision of such masculinized, cross-dressing moga, a symbol of gender ambiva­ lence and a symptom of deeper social disorder. Setsuko (played by Hara Setsuko) is a successful business woman who acts like a man in her choice of fashion and behavior (sitting, talking, and drinking). In addition to the stylization of her body and dress, her job as a car salesperson also masculinizes her character. In depicting her life and work, the film suggests the paradox of the 75

Yuka Kanno

working moga whose professional achievements are at odds with fulfillment in love and intimacy with others. She breaks up with a boyfriend who decides to marry her sister, a manipulator with less confidence and independence. As Ginoza Naomi exquisitely states, however, Setsuko “choses to sit in the driver’s seat, not in that of the passenger” (Ginoza: 2013: 179). Despite all the social sanctions she faces, Setsuko refuses to follow conventions and live up to the expecta­ tions of others. In that sense, this “masculinization” signifies the rejection of dependence and subordination to men, an act of transgressing gender roles. More than ten years later, in Bakushū (Early Summer, dir. Ozu Yasujirō, 1951), Hara Setsuko plays a spinster who used to collect copious photographs of Katharine Hepburn as the star’s devoted fan. This, coupled with her indifference to men and marriage, causes her boss to jokingly call her “perversity” into ques­ tion.11 This reference underscores the lesbian implications of Hepburn’s enthusiastic fan follow­ ing among young schoolgirls in Japan. Gender ambivalence and sexual uncertainty marked the cultural environment of the 1930s, but such phenomena elicited an uneven response. Although women in drag might have been a fad, the masculinized women induced polarized responses, which were praised and criticized at the same time. The media treated such women as darlings in the entertainment world, where they had a huge following of female fans. When a woman was not cross-dressing for the pur­ poses of professional performance, however, she would be condemned as corrupt and deviant: visible evidence of the invisible female same-sex desire. Such individuals included Sakuma Hideka, who took part in an attempted double suicide with a feminine partner in 1934, and Masuda Tomiko, a rich butch entangled in another aborted double suicide attempt with the female revue star, Saijō Eriko (Robertson 1999). The final instance of the transnational circulation of queer girls’ culture can be seen in the popularity of Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, dir. Leontine Sagan, 1931) released in Japan in 1933. As Richard Dyer, Ruby Rich, and Andrea Weiss belabor, although this film’s combi­ nation of stylistic and technical achievement and political significance had been widely recog­ nized in Germany and beyond, it was only since the 1970s, when the film made the rounds of the women’s film festivals, that it was re-discovered as a lesbian film (Rich 1998; Weiss 1992).12 Ruby Rich criticizes earlier critical discourses that only read the relationship between women as a metaphor for the struggle against fascism. She argues that the significance of the film also lies in its anti-patriarchal politics and its critique of “sexual repression in the name of social harmony,” which makes this film “the truly radical lesbian film” (Rich 1998: 181). Mädchen in Uniform was a great sensation, receiving both critical and commercial success, and young women fervently welcomed its arrival. Such an eager reception took place in the context of proliferating girls’ culture and same-sex love and intimacy. So-called “S” relationships con­ stituted a crucial part of this culture. The “S,” derived from the English term, “sister,” referred to intensely intimate and homoerotic relationships among schoolgirls, especially between older students and their juniors, but also students of the same age, and teachers and students. The “sisters” were recognized by their peers as being in exclusive relationships (Pflugfelder 1999; Akaeda 2011; Kanno 2011). The female–female intimacy and love so delicately depicted in this film deeply resonated with the then “S” relationship in Japan. Furthermore, Mädchen in Uniform and Japanese girls’ culture shared the overlapping of lesbianism and femininity, contrary to the implication of masculinized womanhood in lesbianism. While tolerant and positive views of S relationships had been prevalent in earlier years, the drastic increase of double suicides among female adolescents led society to see its negative and destructive side instead. Masculine women in such relationships were blamed for coercing their feminine partners to take part in such deviant behaviors as suicide and physical relationships beyond the supposedly spiritual and romantic S relationship. As a result, although Japanese reception of Mädchen in Uniform largely 76

When Marnie Was There

focused on the aesthetic quality of the film, some critics recognized the potential danger posed by the relationship between the female teacher and her student by making an association between this portrayal and what was going on in many Japanese girls’ schools at that time (Kanno 2010b).13 For only about three years, between 1933 and 1936, Mädchen in Uniform, Little Women, and Queen Christina hit the silver screen in Japan, and cross-dressing Hollywood actresses excited adolescent girls with their gender ambivalence and sexual fluidity. The queerness of the future icons, Garbo, Dietrich, and Hepburn, already existed in the past, in a place far away from Holly­ wood. This was a point in time when girls and women could speak about their queer feelings while watching such films onscreen. Just as these stars made a tremendous contribution to the formation of lesbian subculture, identity, and community in the USA and elsewhere, I feel an urge to imagine how they inspired those distant observers in Japan. The transnational nature of Japanese film culture in the 1930s allows us to speculate about the possibility of a more global girls’ spectatorship and queer girls’ culture generated by the circulation of queer star personae and their film texts. I suggest that despite the long-standing debate on the peculiarly Japanese practices of girls’ culture—the S relationships (real or fictional), double suicides (and attempted double suicides), and the cross-dressing performance of the all-female revues are just a few examples—such uniqueness was part of, or at least confluent with, a wider and translational network of the queer female culture. The cinematic image of Hollywood stars and films like Mädchen in Uniform were important vehicles for this transnational network, and girls’ culture in Japan was already, and still remains, a transnational practice.

Conclusion Girls’ fiction has always been at the core of girls’ culture. Yet the role it played in the formation of a wider queer cultural history in Japan needs to be more fully and carefully investigated. When Marnie Was There is a text that illustrates a transnational network and genealogy of queer girls’ culture. Girls’ stories have grown beyond their original format, across the borders of various media. The very fact that Miyazaki Hayao thought to make a film based on his beloved Rob­ inson’s book testifies to the force of girls’ culture, with its tremendous flexibility and malleability that go beyond time, place, genre, and even gender. With girls and their close friendship as a central narrative concern and visual attraction, and a coming-of-age tomboy figure, When Marnie Was There inherits so many elements from the girls’ culture tradition. Through Anna’s encounter with another girl and their intimate friend­ ship, she undergoes an enormous change. Anna’s desire to be with Marnie makes her realize a range of emotional and affective sensations from sensual and erotic palpitations to sadness and jealousy. This is not always positive, but Anna’s love for Marnie enables her to learn how to relate to others and not hate herself so much. Although the film tries to annihilate the queer possibility of the girls’ friendship through narrative closure, the narrative itself resists this ending by urging us to stay in the middle space for a while. Narrative arrests and detours in this film bring much more productive and pleasurable reading choices and possibilities. Made for girls and about girls, When Marnie Was There is a film with two protagonists that come to life as they go back and forth between the past and the present, literature and film. Born from the transnational network of queer girls’ culture and the circulation of lesbian icons, Anna and Marnie live in the visual and narrative space of queer girls’ culture. If we live in the space of the narrative middle—filled with unruly, uncertain, formless desire and relationships—with­ out fixing these protagonists in the ending, we can cohabit the same space in the genealogy of queer girls’ culture. 77

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Notes 1 In 2014, Studio Ghibli officially announced the dissolution of the production department and staff cutbacks. The company stated that they would focus on the operational management of the Ghibli Museum, merchandising of Ghibli films, and copyright management. Miyazaki played a role in the process of making the film: Robinson’s When Marnie Was There was one of his favorite books and he recommended the film adaptation. He withdrew from the production, however, when Yonebayashi rejected his idea of setting the story near the Seto Inland Sea, where Miyazaki’s 2008 film Ponyo took place (Yonebayashi 2014a: 57). 2 In Robinson’s original, Anna sends a letter to her foster mother, asking permission to wear shorts every day except for special occasions. 3 In the United States, for instance, tomboyism was a powerful and pervasive cultural concept and a lit­ erary convention in the 1860s, when the Civil War required women to be physically strong and emo­ tionally steadfast, qualities typically associated with masculinity (Abate 2008). In Japan too, women’s education from the 1920s through the 1930s promoted healthy and physically strong girlhood—an influence of World War I. 4 Ruby Rich also notes that “racial difference operates for lesbians in the same way as, let’s say, butch– femme, or s&m roles do, that is, as a form of differentiation between two people of the same gender” (Rich 1991: 274–275). Further elaborating on this point, Biddy Martin points out: making lesbian desire visible as desire, rather than identification, requires an added measure of difference, figured racially. Disidentification from assigned gender is accomplished through darkness, as if whiteness and femmeness could not be differentiated and as if blackness were pure difference. Blackness or color in women is associated with phallic traces and femininity with whiteness once again. (Martin 1996: 86–87)

5

6 7

8 9

10

11 12

Although Rich argues that racial difference operates in the same way as butch–femme roles, Martin further elaborates on this point by saying that race does not work just like butch–femme roles but also secures them. (Martin 1996: 86). This ending provides no consensual interpretations for feminist critics. In Jo’s final decision to marry an older German intellectual, some read Alcott’s compromise and surrender to the middle-class value of commercial success; others offer more subversive feminist (and queer) readings in her identification with male characters or the choice to marry someone outside the American ideal of masculinity. See, for instance, Saxton (1977), Fetterley (1979), Showalter (1991), and Kent (2003). Hitomi Tsuchiya Dollase also states that “Little Women contributed to the creation of a literary genre called shōjo shōsetsu [girls’ novels].” (Tsuchiya Dollase 2010: 248). Elsewhere, Saitō divides the history of the reception of girls’ fiction into three phases. The first phase is the burgeoning period of domestic girls’ fiction represented by Yoshiya Nobuko in the early Shōwa era (1925–1989). The second phase is marked by the burgeoning of translated girls’ fiction represented by Lucy M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, translated by Muraoka Hanako in 1952. The third and final phase is marked by the publication of paperback editions targeted for girl audiences that was initiated by Kobaruto bunko (the Cobalt Series published by Shūeisha in the 1970s), which reached peak popularity in the 1980s (Saitō 2008: 67). The identity of Kitada Shūho (except for the fact that Kitada identified herself as a woman) remained unknown at that time, but it was recently revealed that “Kitada Shūho” was the pseudonym used by four women who worked together to translate the novel. In gravure pictures in a 1933 film magazine, for instance, Dietrich appeared highly masculinized, wearing men’s suits, with one foot lifted on the car, and her hands in her pockets—a sharp contrast with the publicity shots of other female stars such as Dorothy Jordan, Lilian Bond, and Constance Cummings on the same page. The otokoyaku stars (female performers of male roles) such as Tākī of Shochiku and Ashihara Kuniko and Sayo Fukuko of Takarazuka were referred to as “dansō no reijin” (a beautiful person in drag), and iconic figures of “good” masculinized women. The popularity of Tākī was especially phenomenal. After bobbing her hair in 1931, she was constantly followed by passionate female fans. For an analysis of the queer meanings evoked in the joke scene of this film, see Kanno 2011. Regarding the film’s revival in the USA during the 1970s, Andrea Weiss writes: “it was once again, as it had been in the early 1930s, embraced by lesbian viewers who were thrilled to see such a strong proclamation of erotic desire between women” (Weiss 1992).

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When Marnie Was There 13 One of the prominent women’s magazines ran a transcript of a roundtable discussion by educational, medical, and cultural authorities on the problem of same-sex love among girls. At the very beginning, one discussant brought up the popularity of Mädchen in Uniform among schoolgirls and asked whether similar situations existed in Japanese girls’ schools. To this question, a professor at a women’s college confirmed: it is a very common phenomenon in any girls’ school. A teacher of a girls’ school told me that there are at least two deeply involved same-sex couples in every class. I think there are more if you take the meaning of same-sex love in a less serious way. (Chiba et al. 1934)

Works cited Abate, M. 2008. Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Akaeda, K. 2011. Kindai Nihon ni okeru onnadōshi no shinmitsu na kankei (Intimate Relationships between Women in Modern Japan). Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai. Brooks, P. 1992. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Castle, T. 1993. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Chiba, K. et al. 1934. “Joshi no dōseiai o katarau zadankai: Musume o motsu okāsamagata e no keikoku” (“A Roundtable Discussion on Same-Sex Love among Girls: A Warning for Mothers who have Daugh­ ters”). Shufu no tomo (September): 104–115. Fetterley, J. 1979. “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War.” Feminist Studies 5(2): 369–383.

Ginoza, N. 2013. Modan raifu to sensō: Sukurīn no naka no josei tachi (Modern Life and War: Women Onscreen).

Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Heath, S. 1982. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Kan, S. 2008. “Shōjo shōsetsu” wandā rando (“Shōjo Shosetsu” Wonderland). Tokyo: Meiji Shoin. Kanno, Y. 2010a. “Implicational Spectatorship.” Mechademia 6: 287–303. Kanno, Y. 2010b. “The ‘Eternal Virgin’ Reconsidered: Hara Setsuko in Context.” ICONICS 10: 97–118. Kanno, Y. 2011. “Love and Friendship: The Queer Imagination of Japan’s Early Girls’ Culture.” In M.C. Kearney (ed.), Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls’ Media Culture, 17–34. New York: Peter Lang. Kent, K. 2003. Making Girls into Women: American Women’s Writing and the Rise of Lesbian Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Knapp, L. 2009. “The Queer Voice in Marnie.” In M. Deutelbaum and L. Poague (eds), A Hitchcock Reader, 2nd edn, 295–311. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Koide, T. et al. 1934. “Wakakusa monogatari zadan-kai” (“Rountable Discussion on Little Women”). Eiga hyōron 16(10): 263–269. Martin, B. 1996. Femininity Played Straight: The Significance of Being Lesbian. New York: Routledge. Mayne, J. 2000. Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Miller, D.A. 1992. Bringing Out Roland Barthes. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nochlin, L. 1989. The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. New York: Harper and Low. Pflugfelder, G. 1999. Cartographies of Desire: Male–Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse 1600–1950. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Quimby, K. 2003. “The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10(1): 1–22. Rich, R. 1991. “Discussion.” In Bad Object-Choices (ed.), How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video, 264–276. Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Rich, R. 1998. Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Robertson, J. 1999. “Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide in Imperial Japan.” Signs 25(1): 1–35. Robinson, J. 2014. When Marnie Was There. London: HarperCollins Publishers. Roof, J. 1996. Come as You Are: Sexuality and Narrative. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Yuka Kanno Saitō, M. 2001. “ ‘Shōjo shōsetsu’ no shiyōhō” (“The Use of Girls’ Fiction”). Bungakukai (55)6: 246–274. Saitō, M. 2008. “Gendai bungaku ni miru ‘shōjo shōsetsu’ no mīmu” (“Memes of Girls’ Fiction in Con­ temporary Literature”). In S. Kan (ed.), “Shōjo shōsetsu” wandā rando (Wonderland of “Girls’ Novel”), 66–74. Tokyo: Meijishoin. Saxton, M. 1977. Luisa May. New York: Avon. Sheppard, D. 2014. “Postscript.” In When Marnie Was There. London: HarperCollins. Publishers. Shimizu, C. et al. 1934. “Wakakusa monogatari gappyō” (“Joint Review of Little Women”). Kinema junpō 156: 150–152. Showalter, E. 1991. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Changes in American Women’s Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Suzuki, T. 2014. “Nimani no postā” (“Two Posters”). Omoide no Mānī bijuaru-gaido (When Marnie Was There Visual Guide). Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Takada, S. et al. 1934. “Wakakusa monogatari zadan-kai” (“Roundtable Discussion on Little Women”). Eiga hyōron 16(10): 263–269. Takatsuki, S. and Arimura, K. 2014. Omoide no Mānī bijuaru-gaido (When Marnie Was There Visual Guide). Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Tsuchiya Dollase, H. 2010. “Shōfujin (Little Women): Recreating Jo for the Girls of Meiji Japan.” Japanese Studies 30(2): 247–262. Ueno, I. 1934. “Kurisuchina Joō” (“Queen Christina”). Eiga hyōron 16(11): 70–72. Warhol, R. and Lancer, S. 2015. Narrative Theory Unbound: Queer and Feminist Interventions. Athens, GA: Ohio University Press. Weiss, A. 1992. Violets and Vampires: Lesbians in Film. New York: Penguin. White, P. 1999. Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Yonebayashi, H. 2014a. Omoide no Mānī bijuaru-gaido (When Marnie was There Visual Guide). Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Yonebayashi, H. 2014b. “Kyojin no moto kara funade shita Ghibli” (“Ghibli: Setting Sail from the Giants: Interview with Yonebayashi Hiromasa”). Kinema junpō 1669: 46–48.

Further reading Anan, N. 2015. Contemporary Japanese Women’s Theatre and Visual Arts: Performing Girls’ Aesthetics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kanno, Y. 2010a. “Implicational Spectatorship.” Mechademia 6: 287–303. Yokokawa, S. 1991. Shochō to iu kirifuda: “Shōjo” hihyō josetsu (Menstruation as Final Strategy: Introduction to “Girls” Criticism). Tokyo: JICC Shuppankyoku.

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5

Making SenSe of nakai

MaSakazu’S filM Theory,

“kino SaTz”

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

Today, concepts of “interdisciplinarity” and “trans-disciplinarity” are common, but in the 1930s, long before this sort of terminology had begun to appear even in academic discourse, such individuals as the Kyoto School aesthetician Nakai Masakazu and the jurist and lawyer Nose Katsuo were already engaging in trans-disciplinary activities through the medium of film analysis. These figures used three magazines as the principal sites for their publications: Bi: hihyō (Beauty: Criticism), Sekai bunka (World Culture), and Doyōbi (Saturday). This chapter investigates the early history of film and media studies in Japan, in the first half of the twentieth century, highlighting key figures and their philosophical debates. My focus will be primarily on the work of CINÉ FRONT KIOTO, an avant-garde film production group to which both Nakai and Nose contributed, not least in their efforts to establish a space from which a “media of daily life” might emerge. Central to this discussion will be an examination of Nakai Masakazu’s film theory and the films he analyzed. Who was Nakai Masakuza, a man about whom the sociologist Kitada Akihiro has claimed that “Just like the work of Walter Benjamin, [his] texts have repeatedly called society back to itself whenever it begins to stray in the dynamics of today’s media environment” (Kitada 2004: 68–69)? In fact, in his lifetime, Nakai published widely on diverse subjects, including sports and libraries, but he is known mainly as an aesthetic theorist whose oeuvre revolved around film. Yet, as an aesthetician, Nakai did not limit himself only to theorizing; he also worked as a film­ maker. In other words, he created opportunities to put his ideas into practice. And while it is his film analysis that perhaps best expresses his aesthetic theory, I would argue that a better sense of those texts, and of Nakai’s broader world view, emerges only when the two aspects of his work are considered together, as complementary practices that informed one another. What, then, are the essential elements of Nakai Masakazu’s film theory? In this chapter, I consider the question from a comparative analytical perspective, seeking to place Nakai’s ideas within the overall history of film theory. My goal is to restore to prominence Nakai’s statements about film within this context, and by doing so, to verify the meanings and/or values that emerge from comparative theory. To this end, I first examine Nakai’s own filmmaking and then compare and contrast Nakai’s film theory with the history of film theory before Nakai began his theoretical work. I then compare Nakai’s film theory with other film theories of the same time period (the 1920s through the 1930s), and follow by investigating the relationship between 81

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Nakai’s film theory and others that subsequently emerged. Nakai died of stomach cancer in 1952; how influential was his film theory on the development of new theories in Japan after the 1950s, when it became situated within the history of film theory?

Nakai the filmmaker Even among film scholars, it is a little-known fact that Nakai produced two short 35 mm experimental color films in 1931: Juppunkan no shisaku (Ten-Minute Meditation, dir. Nakai Masakazu, cinematography by Andō Shunzō) and Umi no uta (Poem of the Sea, dir. Tsujibe Seitarō, cinematography by Andō Shunzō, color and sound by Naitō Kōjirō, and music by Kishi Kōichi). Together, Nakai and his colleagues worked for almost a year to complete these two films, screened in Osaka and Kyoto (at the Hinode Kaikan) on October 9, 1932 (Nakai 1981: 232–328). Unfortunately, neither film is extant, yet both deserve a prominent place in film history. To understand just how cutting-edge the color film process developed by Nakai’s group was, we need only recall, for example, that it was also in 1932 that Disney produced the Silly Symphonies cartoon episode “Flowers and Trees” using the new and improved trichromatic “threestrip” Technicolor process; the world’s first ever feature-length fiction film to be shot entirely in full-spectrum, trichromatic Technicolor, Becky Sharp (directed by Rouben Mamoulian), was not released until 1935.1 Here, as a substitute for the two non-extant experimental color films that Nakai’s group made, I will introduce a 7-minute film called Tondeiru shojo (The Flying Maiden, 1935) produced by CINÉ FRONT KIOTO with the joint participation of both Nakai and Nose Katsuo. Among the representative works by CINÉ FRONT KIOTO, the 15-minute Sosui (Canal, 1934) is generally more widely known, but I believe The Flying Maiden more clearly demonstrates the influence of Nakai’s film theory. Only 7 minutes long, The Flying Maiden manages to depict not only traffic congestion on the roads of downtown Kyoto and the hot rays of the summer sun, but also the youthful appearance of the “bus girl” (female bus conductor), at that time considered a very modern profession for women. From the montage sequence combining shots in profile of her vivacious face with closeups of a white carnation, we can read between the lines to get a sense of the filmmaker’s stream of consciousness and the main values driving the cinematography and editing. Film scholar Amemiya Kōmei’s synopsis of this short film draws attention to the sense of buoyancy it induces: This work shows scenery from the newly modern city of Kyoto, depicting its throngs of busy-looking people and cars, the neon lights of the station and the red-light district, and its chic buildings. And yet at the same time, in its inserted intertitles, the film expresses its basic theme by imitating the archaic language of seven- and five-syllable nagauta poetic lines.2 The juxtaposition of imagery of modern urban spaces with oldfashioned poetic words causes the viewer to recall a certain type of sensation: one of floating or weightlessness (fuyūkan). (Amemiya 2012: 10) Probably because of The Flying Maiden’s constant, almost frenetic camera movement, the “floating” sensation of the city’s urban spaces serves as a vivid reminder of director Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, 1927). This film by Nakai and his colleagues shows not only a “translational” use of Weimar culture’s avant-garde film montage techniques, but also reveals, in its depictions of the intricate layout of downtown Kyoto, the sort 82

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of “mixing” that is such an indispensable element in the process of modernization. It shows this by “diversifying” our outlook via the dynamic point of view of the city as seen from inside the bus. The “narrativity,” and/or the discovery of meaning that is born from this approach is entirely that of the spectator; when each viewer reads this filmic text, he or she perceives things as part of a “collectivity,” one among many other passengers on the bus. This is what enables viewers to discover in it many of Nakai’s key terms and concepts, which I will introduce in the following sections.

The relationship between Nakai’s film theory and the theories that pre-dated him In Japan, film theory emerged at an early point in film history. The film historian Makino Mamoru has already comprehensively covered the dawn of film theory in Japan, so I will limit myself here to only a brief outline (Makino 1999). Jitchi ōyō kinsei shin kijutsu (Practical Applications of the New Magic of the Modern Age), a volume edited and compiled by Toyosu Sanshi, was published in 1887. This book introduced how various sleights-of-hand contrived to be seen as the convenience of civilization, and the idiosyn­ crasies of the spectacles civilization presents. Six years later, in 1903, another book with the simple title Katsudō shashin jutsu jizai (Universal Techniques of Moving Pictures) was written by a group called the Dōshikaichiin. It was this book, introducing moving pictures, which was the first (in Japan) to specialize in film. In the differing approaches to popular visual media that these two books take, one can see how the notion of “cinema” as a specific new form of entertain­ ment had apparently risen, been disseminated, and popularized in Japanese society by 1903. These early publications played a significant role in that process. In 1911, a film-related book whose theme is closer to aesthetics was released by Nakagawa Jūrei; the book’s title was Keiji shin’in shokuhai bigaku (Form Resembling Godlike Artistry, Touching the Core of Aesthetics). Born in 1850, Nakagawa Jūrei was an aesthetician more widely known as the haiku poet (Nakagawa) Shimei (Shinogi 2005: 69). Nakagawa, who began his schooling at the Sankei Academy run by Yasui Sokken in Edo (later Tokyo), subsequently studied German at a Junior High School in Kyoto. When the Kyoto Private German Academy was founded, Nakagawa became its first headmaster. Thereafter, he headed to Tokyo Imperial University as a provisional licensed instructor, and through his subsequent work for the magazine Nippon, he became friendly with the poet Masaoka Shiki. In light of these circumstances, it is no surprise that Nakagawa, a professor of the German language, was also friends with Fukada Yasukazu (1878–1928). As professor of German at Kyoto Imperial University, Fukuda later became Nakai’s own teacher. Nakagawa Jūrei’s pioneering Form Resembling Godlike Artistry, Touching the Core of Aesthetics made him the first in Japan to approach the subject of film from the perspective of philosophical aesthetics. This book is in many ways indebted to a 1901 book by the German philosopher and art historian Konrad von Lange (1855–1921), Das Wesen der Kunst: Grundzüge einer realistischen Kunstlehre (The Essence of Art: Principles of a Realistic Theory of Art), but Nakagawa also drew on the Zen philosophical kōan (paradoxical concept) of “neither close nor far” (the notion that the relationship between two things is neither too deep nor too remote, but instead at just the right level of distance). He used this “Goldilocks” principle to shape his thinking on the essence of beauty (Kanbayashi 2006: 12–17). In 1920, Lange published a book on the cinema itself, titled Das Kino in Gegenwart und Zukunft (The Cinema in the Present and the Future), in which he analyzes film as a medium consist­ ing of two main elements, photographs and the reproduction of motion. He argues that in 83

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contrast with paintings, photographs, which are merely the mechanical reproduction of nature, do not provide any leeway for the human observer to use his or her mind in contemplation. Therefore, films, as merely the mechanical reproduction of motion, cannot succeed in giving the viewer a convincing illusion of motion. As a result, he concludes that films “have no aes­ thetic quality.” In other words, Lange argues that films and film techniques should not be compared to the techniques of genuine fine arts such as painting, but instead should be compared to various sorts of mere spectacles. Nakagawa agreed with Lange on the subject of the mechanical and collective nature of the techniques used in moving pictures, concluding that these qualities disqualified film from being considered an expressive medium. In 1924, however, the Japanese translation of Hugo Münsterberg’s (1886–1916) work The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (which had been published in English in 1916), dramatically changed the notion of cinema as non-art. The Japanese language translation was by Kuse Kōtarō (perhaps better known as Tanigawa Tetsuzō) and published as Geki eiga: sono shinri to bigaku (Fiction Films: Their Psychology and Aesthetics). This book was circulated along with other Tani­ gawa translations of Kant and Simmel (1922) and Goethe (1927), especially in Kyoto, where Tanigawa had just graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University in 1922. Nakai was, no doubt, a part of the translation culture. This book actually has little to say about the expressive or aesthetic sense of film, but it advanced the idea of film’s unique nature as a medium by analyzing film from a psychological perspective. The translator Tanigawa Tetsuzō would later follow Münsterberg’s ideological wake and publish Geijutsu shōronshū (Collected Essays on the Arts) in 1943. What makes Münster­ berg’s work important in this intellectual genealogy is the crucial break he makes from the cinema-as-“art/non-art” paradigm, and his move toward considering the relationship between cinema and mass psychology; that is, his work paved the way for the unique aesthetic arguments that would later take place between Tanigawa and Nakai. For four years, from 1925–1928, a film magazine called Eiga zuihitsu (Miscellaneous Writings on Film) was published by Shimizu Kō and other like-minded individuals affiliated with the Aes­ thetics Department at Kyoto Imperial University. In its pages, the latest film theories as well as the trends of the various avant-garde film movements overseas were introduced in translation, one after another. For instance, the group publishing Eiga zuihitsu introduced and described the experimental films of László Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian deeply involved in the (German) Bauhaus Film movement. They also published a special issue devoted to Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Jūjiro (Crossroads, 1928). It can also be said that this magazine had considerable influence on sub­ sequent literary circles and trends in Japan. For example, many of the contributors to the special 1932 “Eiga geijutsu no shomondai” (“The Various Problems of Film Art”) issue of the maga­ zine Shisō were former members of Eiga zuihitsu. Amid the brief timeline of film theory described above, one detail is missing: the emergence, in the 1930s, of three new film fan magazines with which Nakai was intimately involved. These magazines were called Bi: hihyō (Beauty: Criticism, published 1930–1932, and republished under the same name until 1935), Sekai bunka (World Culture, published 1935–1936), and Doyōbi (Sat­ urday, 1936–1937). For my purposes in this chapter, the most important aspect to note about these film magazines is that they served as the platform for Nakai to take the exact opposite position from Lange, who had argued, essentially, that given their mechanical and collective nature, moving picture techniques do not deserve to be ranked among the expressive mediums of the arts. Nakai, in other words, claimed that it was precisely because filmic expression was mechanically based (kikai ni motozuku hyōgen), and film production was necessarily collective in nature, that film deserved to be conceived as a new art form, one with a new aesthetic sense. 84

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Nakai, setting up a contrast between “the theatrical” and “the cinematic,” had the following to say: If it is possible to separate the theatrical from the cinematic, we will find that, in brief, the former is a complex art form, mimicking the characteristic of a subject, and for the theatrical this act of mimicry is the ultimate objective; for the latter, however, possessing the characteristic of subjecthood has already become an essential element, such that it is the natural starting point for artistic techniques of composite composition. If we can call this structure “montage,” it is precisely that. … We know now it is no longer the case that the visual arts consist only of compositions of the colors and lines used until now, and out of this has emerged a new sensuous composition that is neither linguistic nor aural in nature. (Nakai 1964a [1931], my italics) We need to exercise renewed caution when attempting to situate this theory within Nakai’s overall discourse. It is true that at that time Nakai was a cutting-edge modernist, but it is not the case that Nakai was able, from the very beginning, to present his fresh new perspective, the complete opposite of those aestheticians of an earlier generation such as Lange. Nakai clearly was influenced by the ideas of his teacher Fukada Yasukazu, whose published work amounted to a call for new art forms to transcend the modern arts, seeking after individual geniuses and an original new beauty by drawing close to age-old concepts such as technology, imitation, and truth (Fukada 1929; Tsuji 1973). In other words, Fukada had already recognized the power of imitation (mohō no chikara), the power of the technology (gijutsu no chikara) that allows such imitation, and of the potential power of groups of ordinary people, given the fact that modern art is produced not by “genius individual artists” but by just such groups (this was an idea which certainly resonates with the often-quoted 1936 Walter Benjamin essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”). Nakai’s contribution was to apply this perspective on the modern arts to the unique medium of film, and then develop the perspective further.

The connection between Nakai and other contemporary film theories (1920s–1930s) Nakai’s film theory includes a large number of keywords. For instance, he often uses words like “continuity,” “montage,” “Kino Satz” (the language of film), and “copula.” The last term, “copula,” has drawn the most attention in previous research on his work. According to Nakai, films lack the copula which binds together the theoretical subject and predicate, yet films place the burden of making sense of what is seen entirely on the viewer; in the logic of the copula, this makes the viewer a de facto subject. In other words, spectators do not simply passively receive the message encoded in each film by its creators, but instead find and decode continu­ ities never dreamed of by the film’s creators. Nakai declared that not only is it impossible to regulate the production of meaning in the film medium, but indeed, this lack of control is pre­ cisely where the cinema, this new art form, shows its true worth. Nakai explained in numerous works what he meant by the term “copula,” but here I will quote the definition he gave in his essay “Gendai bigaku no kiki to eiga riron” (“Film Theory and the Crisis of Contemporary Aesthetics”), originally published in 1950: In literature, there is a copula, of the form “is” or “is not,” which binds together two symbols. But the continuity of the cinema lacks this copula. In the cinema, filmmakers try to create continuity after a specific cut in order to reveal their own opinions, but 85

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the emotions of the crowd watching the film are actually what bind symbols together. The force that splices together two shots, after a particular cut, into a continuous whole is the sighs or indignation of the crowd. … I believe, in the second half of the twentieth century, that we will witness new experiments and endeavors in the world of cinema. The films of England and Italy, in their capacity as semi-documentaries, continue to break new ground, and might well be the harbinger of an enormous revival still to come. When I think thus, and recall that the first half of the twentieth century saw the culture of individualism in retreat and the culture of collectivism on the rise, it is clear that aesthetics itself faced a serious crisis at that time. (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 193) As for the cinematic traits terms like Nakai’s “copula,” or alternatively, “language of film” are meant to elucidate, we may say that most likely it is through the technique of montage that films discharge the functions of language. Nevertheless, the question of whether that “language” actually reaches the viewer is always left open-ended. Finally, the meaning of the “words” being expressed by the film is determined by the viewer, and can be further sorted by whether it is determined individually by each member of the group or en masse. What is truly fascinating, however, is that Nakai’s definition of the technique of montage, which is the foundation of his idea of the language of film, actually differed from the standard definition of montage used by those who employed it in films of that time period, and from the way it appears in film theory of the day. It is possible to divide the technique of montage, as it appears in the film history of the 1920s and 1930s, into two broad types. The first is Soviet montage, as practiced by Dziga Vertov (1896–1954) and Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948). The second type is Hollywood-style montage, perhaps best represented by and in the work of D.W. Griffith (1875–1948). Soviet montage was influenced by the structuralism of the linguist Ferdi­ nand de Saussure, and is a technique by which word-based elements in a story, as elucidated in the script, are replaced by visual images that are then edited together; it is a methodology that identifies the smallest grammatical unit of the filmic language, which appears visually as the indi­ vidual shot. Eisenstein was a pioneer of this technique even among other practitioners of Soviet montage, as we can see in perhaps the most representative use of Soviet montage in all of film history, the famous “Odessa steps” sequence in his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. Indeed, the sequence still “speaks” to us today. Most examples of Soviet montage attempt to apply Engels’ Three Laws of Dialectics: by juxtaposing thesis and antithesis in the same montage sequence, the unexpected linkage between the two generates synthesis, and in the end, the two theses are said to be sublated (Aufheben), individually abolished yet absorbed into each other. Hollywood-style montage, however, is based upon continuity editing. It highly values realistic acting portrayals, and as a result, scenes of actors and their surroundings are photographed with smooth transitions from shot to shot; without altering the total screen time and dislocating a sense of space, various shots from different perspectives are then faithfully edited together. The most oft-quoted examples of this technique tend to be drawn from D.W. Griffith’s works, such as Way Down East (1920), in which the film keeps audiences oriented in time and space with relatively smooth transitions among shots, while each cut motivates dramatic emphasis. The concept of montage embedded in this type of Hollywood continuity editing shapes the audiences’ experience by using it to control what they look at, and when and how they look at it. Although the acting in Griffith’s film may seem theatrical from our current point of view, the film foregrounds a detailed cinematic storytelling that allows us to sense subtlety and sophistication. Now then, to which type of montage was Nakai’s theory of montage referring? He gave his most detailed account of montage in his 1931 essay “Haru no continuity” (“The Continuity of 86

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In Spring”). At that time, he argued with a certain exultation, while developing his critical response to Soviet cinema, that “It is only today that we can think something cinematic has for the first time begun to emerge” (Nakai 1964a [1931]: 144). He made this statement upon ana­ lyzing the following works: The General Line (aka Old and New, dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1929), Turksib (Victor Turin, 1927), The End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1929), and In Spring (Mikhail Kaufman, 1929). In this essay, Nakai explains his stance vis-à-vis Soviet cinema, as well as his film viewing position. He compares various 1920s-era Soviet films, stating the following: These two (Eisenstein and Pudovkin) have not yet torn away the vestiges of theatrical­ ity from their films. It is, rather, thanks to Vertov that we have obtained an awakening of the power of the true cinema, and through the work of Esfir Shub and Turin that this awakening continues to be stimulated. Kaufman, of In Spring fame, is another who is supporting the awakening. (Nakai 1964a [1931]: 144) The montage-based method of narrative expression used by Eisenstein and Pudovkin was inter­ preted by Nakai not as a cinematic but as a theatrical mode of expression, and thus as quite remote from the cinematic language he valued. It is, instead, a random bricolage composed of stringing together little glimpses of daily life, the mode of expression favored by Kaufman and Dziga Vertov, about which Nakai remarks “it boldly destroys the formal conventions heretofore in place for the cinema” (1964a [1931]: 148–149). In particular, he praises In Spring for “achiev­ ing a rapid-fire tempo with its average shot length of 1.79 seconds,” which “has helped film already to strip away, and go extremely far beyond, its pictorial elements, and is enabling film to continue converting itself into a collection of musical or linguistic elements” (1964a [1931]: 149). Moreover, he declares that in the event that “each component, as a visual silhouette, pos­ sesses very, very little significance,” only then and there can film begin “to emerge, not merely as a visual composition of the same colors and lines that have heretofore been available, nor only as a linguistic or an aural composition, but rather as a new sensuous composition” (Nakai 1964a [1931]: 149). What strikes me as particularly interesting about Nakai’s perspective is that, within the context of then-current montage films, Nakai attached great importance to the works of Kaufman and Dziga Vertov. Nakai not only endorsed the term “Kino Glaz” (“Cinematic Eye”) proposed by Vertov, he also took concrete steps to develop the idea by proposing his own similar terms like “Kino Satz” (“Cinematic Language”) and “Kino Tone” (“Cinematic Tone”), and then developing these concepts. Vertov stressed in his “WE: Variant of a Manifesto” that since the camera’s “eye” could make visible the reality beneath the outer surface of things, filmmakers should strive to create a new style of vision unique to the cinema, and also emphasized that the “Cinematic Eye” was the camera lens, not the human eye, and that it was the filmmakers’ duty to use cinematic tech­ niques like montage to cultivate the potentiality of the film medium (1984: 5–9). Vertov’s per­ spective bore fruit in the form of Man with a Movie Camera (aka Living Russia, 1929), whose status as a historically ground-breaking documentary and experimental film continues to ensure it a pre-eminent place in film history. The director of In Spring, Mikhail Kaufman, was in fact Vertov’s biological younger brother despite their names, and actually participated in Man with a Movie Camera as the cinematographer. Not only is it clear that Nakai followed Vertov’s theoretical position, it is also clear that he was deeply interested in the series of films that Vertov himself made with his close friends. One 87

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more important detail deserves mention here, however, the existence of a major discrepancy between Vertov and Nakai. Vertov attempted to display the power of film, and of what he called the Cinematic Eye, by means of a great number of devices and stratagems to generate cinematic effects; for instance, he often split the screen and inserted multiple images simultan­ eously, and would also vary the projection playback speed of the film. Unlike Nakai, then, Vertov did not wish to entrust the composition of his films’ stories mainly to his viewers, instead attempting to draw forth the power of the cinematic essence, and the power to determine the progression of the story, from the medium of film itself, a narrative power unlike any that had previously existed. Must we then conclude that Nakai disavowed the narrative present within films? I think not. Nakai recognized that films contained “sentences” that organized the films’ meaning, the very embodiment of his Kino Satz term. Here, I should probably point out that, in fact, the literal translation of Kino Satz, the term he invented in German, is not “Cinematic Language” but “Cinematic Sentence.” In other words, Nakai believed that films expressed statements (sen­ tences which conveyed meaning), but that the ones to complete these sentences were not the filmmakers but rather the viewers, and indeed, the viewers considered en masse. What should be stressed here is the openness of the sentence structure of Kino Satz, and the importance of the role of the viewers, who complete these open-ended sentences, or put differently, the importance of the participatory nature of this construction of meaning.

The relationship between Nakai and subsequent film theories In this next section, I wish to uncover the continuities or discontinuities that emerge when we compare Nakai’s own film theory to film theories of later eras. For instance, in the formative conceptual linguistics work of Christian Metz (1931–1993), Essais sur la signification au cinema (originally published in French from 1968–1973, and later translated into English as Film Lan­ guage: A Semiotics of the Cinema), Metz argues that watching a film is a discursive process in which the discourse of a hypothetical narrator/speaker has an effect on the listener (i.e., the viewer). He stresses that this discursive process (watching a film) will inevitably leave traces behind (Metz 1974). In other words, Metz believed that a film is a narrative for which it is necessary to posit the existence of a theoretical narrator/speaker who is addressing the spectator. David Bordwell (1947–), whose work invokes the concepts of Russian Formalism, has sifted through the theories of the process of film narration to redefine the relationship of the film and its spectators. Bordwell has shifted away from thinking of interactions between “narrator/ speaker” and “spectator” and instead terms the process of film narration as an interaction between the film and the spectator. In essence, Bordwell is arguing that the spectator is the conscious subject of the narrative and attempts to make sense of the film by engaging in percep­ tual activities, assembling the film’s story from the sensory information that the film bestows. The spectator is thus an active participant in the act of constructing the film’s narrative (Bord­ well 1985). According to Bordwell, even at the stage of film production, filmmakers attempt to guide the spectator’s conscious activities and their efforts to perceive the film’s narrative. Bordwell’s narratological theory freely employs terms from Russian Formalism such as syuzhet and fabula, and attempts to explain concepts like active (meaning) production/poetics. The syuzhet is that which links together the content and events which appear within the plot of a film and is what gives the spectator instructions on how to assemble the higher-level narrative of the film, namely, the fabula. By contrast, the fabula is the total system of all events occurring in the film’s story, both explicit and implicit, the higher-level narrative identified and constructed 88

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by the spectator through a process of making inferences about elements not actually made mani­ fest in the diegetic space of the film itself. In other words, it is the cinematic story that includes phenomena beyond those which are actually shown on screen. Bordwell defines the relationship between the two concepts (fabula and syuzhet) as follows: The imaginary construct we create, progressively and retrospectively, was termed by Formalists the fabula (sometimes translated as “story”). … The syuzhet (usually trans­ lated as “plot”) is the actual arrangement and presentation of the fabula in the film. It is not the text in toto. It is a more abstract construct, the patterning of the story as a blow-by-blow recounting of the film could render it. … “Syuzhet” names the archi­ tectonics of the film’s presentation of the fabula … (Bordwell 1985: 49–50) Comparing Nakai and Bordwell, we should note that both emphasize the active role of the spectator as consciously and actively making sense of the film; that is, both take the position that the ultimate interpretation of any film is wholly dependent on the participation of the viewer. However, there is a major difference between them. Bordwell assumes that it is through the proactive production of meaning (poetics), or in other words through the relationship of the syuzhet and the fabula, or alternatively through the medium-specific element of film style, that a regular “narration” emerges (that is, the narration out of which spectators are able to construct the film’s story). But in examining Nakai’s work, isn’t the ideal film precisely one that is free of such structural approaches to meaning-making? In contrast to the narratological theories advanced by Bordwell and others, Nakai viewed film as an open text; he claimed this quality is what gave rise to the “physical materiality and material ocularity” (busshitsuteki sozai to busshis­ tuteki shikaku) of film, which is what is special about the film medium. “Film aesthetics” can be seen through the physical materiality of film, and this physical materiality is what allows film to be made and presented. It is not painted with a brush, but drawn onto a strip of film by a lens via its act of observation. And thus, in films, there is no longer any subject to do the drawing. The disintegration of the subject means the standpoint of aesthetic theory has also been lost. (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 189) For precisely this reason, Nakai argues, the art of film became the lever to overturn aesthetic theory. Nakai further pursued this concept by connecting film’s distinctive characteristic of “physical materiality and material ocularity” with history (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 189–190). Nevertheless, Nakai never straightforwardly equated the viewing of a scene that organizes images to the way in which people see the world. In his view, the physical materiality and material ocularity—the visual image that is perceptible via the lens and the strip of film—had the capability to “reproduce the historic ‘sacred singularity,’ ” and he regarded this ability as the unique power of film (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 191). From his own statements, we can conclude that this sort of value system was heavily shaped by the interwar era through which Nakai lived. Back when the teachers and newspapers kept spewing lies, there came a moment in which the people experienced the sensation of being cut off from history itself. … I understand why human beings, being buried under an avalanche of lies, were inclined to cling to the candor and directness of the lens and film. Even more so for those who 89

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sought historical accuracy. … As for film’s ability to reproduce the “sacred unique­ ness” of history, by exactly doubling this particular moment from out of history, it caused an outburst in people’s historical awareness. (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 191) In addition to believing that films had the power to reproduce the “sacred singularity” of history, Nakai also argued that films possessed the power to suggest they embodied “the popu­ larity of history” (rekishi no motsu taishūsei) by taking the exact appearance of history itself (Nakai 1964b [1950]: 191–192).

Conclusion: making sense of Nakai’s film theory In this chapter, I have considered the film theory of Nakai Masakazu from a comparative ana­ lytical perspective, seeking to place his ideas within the overall history of film theory. We have seen that, by expressing a view of film deriving from its mechanical nature, and by emphasizing the collective nature of film production, Nakai successfully validated film as a new art form dependent on its own unique aesthetic system. Moreover, by stressing concepts such as Kino Satz (Cinematic Language/Sentence) and the absence of the copula, he demonstrated that spec­ tators, far from passively accepting the meaning encoded by the filmmakers, instead find con­ tinuities that the filmmakers themselves could never have anticipated. These insights derived from literary theory, which recognized the independence of the reader, and/or from commu­ nication theory, which advanced the view of the “death of the author,” stressing the modern era recognition that creators of a work no longer have any control over it, but rather must leave interpretation of the work entirely in the hands of the reader. From the above account examining the idiosyncrasies of his film theory, I think it is evident that, far from being obliterated by the vicissitudes of later eras and subsequent theorists, Nakai’s aesthetic thought has in fact exerted continuous waves of influence on the humanities in Japan. In research in the field of communications in the 1960s, in the media theories of the 1980s, and in the renewed attention paid to theories of subjectivity that later emerged out of these earlier developments, we repeatedly discover Nakai Masakazu’s remarks and discourse. One reason Nakai’s texts have become such bedrock sounding boards might be that the aca­ demic community in Japan has a tradition of continuously seeking theories of Japan-specific uniqueness. Similar to the standpoint of the Kyoto School in the discipline of philosophy, even if such theories are accompanied by arbitrary choices or obvious errors during the process of “trans­ lation,” they also provide insights into the outside world and fundamental knowledge. What is more, it remains vitally important to find a theory that can offer a “Japanese” position. In that sense, we might say that Nakai’s film theory is, in a way, on the same level as Nishida Kitarō’s Zen no kenkyū (An Inquiry into the Good, 1911) and so forth in being “made in Japan”-branded ideas. To find a second reason why Nakai enjoys such pre-eminence today, we need look no further than the state of the discipline of aesthetics and Nakai’s place within it during his own era. Reflecting in the 1970s about the state of the academic field of aesthetics back in the 1930s and its relationship to Nakai’s theory, art critic Hariu Ichirō had the following to say: Modern aesthetics had come to an impasse, and depending on the areas of special­ ization of the professors at universities, the teaching of the academic foundations of aesthetics was left in the hands of philosophers, its methodological concepts haphazardly borrowed from other disciplines, meaning that scholars’ self-alienation was laid bare. … Nakai Masakazu rescued aesthetics from the closed-off territory in which it was mired, and pushed it 90

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back into the midst of the difficult inquiries at its heart. To accomplish this, he always pushed for unified progress, stripping the established academic theories of aesthetics all the way down to their anthropological base, verifying them, and working both to make it through them and to rank those theories from the broad outlook of their place in the history of civilization. (Hariu 1973: 284, my italics) What we should note here is the striking resemblance between Hariu’s depiction of the state of the field of aesthetics in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s and the description Dona B. Polan and other American film historians later gave of the state of their own academic discipline of film studies, a late-emerging field of academic study (Polan 2007). In other words, we can conclude that from the perspective of the commonality between the methodologies of the Japanese field of aesthetics in Nakai’s day and the later field of film studies, or in a word, the proactive inter­ disciplinarity of each, Nakai’s film theory, or rather the various issues and problems his theory identified, is highly similar to that of subsequent film studies. Finally, and this point seems to me to be perhaps the most important of all, I wish to argue that the attention Nakai gave to the special characteristic of films, namely their mechanical nature, is one reason for the longevity of his film theory. When considering film history or the history of film theory, it is clear that theories of the mechanical and technological nature of film have always been treated as important elements of any larger theory. With the appearance of the new technology of television from the late 1950s in Japan, communication studies—dedicated to examining the social rivalry between the new medium and film—proliferated. Similarly, with its own transition encompassing digital technology, the boundary between the academic field of film studies and media studies is currently compelled to stretch and become porous. Yet this transformation or expansion of the academic field of media technologies notwithstanding, I believe Nakai’s proposed theory of film as mechanical and collectivist in nature, because these are such essential issues, has become a milestone to which we can and should always return.

Notes 1 Surprisingly, making color shorts was not as rare as producing color features at that time in Japan. Color cinematography thrived in the amateur market first, before it became viable in the theatrical one. Trichromatic Kodacolor was already available in 16 mm filmmaking in 1928. CINÉ FRONT KIOTO’s technological capability could be examined in relation to Japan’s robust amateur filmmaking as well (I thank Shota Ogawa for telling me this detail of color film history in Japan). 2 Nagauta, literally translated as “long song,” is one kind of traditional Japanese music that originally accompanied the kabuki theater. The music was developed in the mid-eighteenth century and had two schools, one in Edo (the former name of Tokyo) and the other in Kamigata (the former cities of Kyoto and Osaka). It includes musical instruments such as a shamisen and various kinds of drums.

Works cited Amemiya, K. 2012. “ ‘Synopsis,’ Eizō shiryō DVD Fashizumu to bunka shimbun ‘Doyōbi’ no jidai” (Visual Resource DVD: Fascism and the Era of Culture Newspaper Doyōbi). DVD Booklet. Tokyo: Rikka Shuppan. Bordwell, D. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Fukada, Y. 1929. “Mohō to shite no geijutsu (1921).” In Fukada Yasukazu zenshū 2 (Collected Works of Fukuda Yasukazu vol. 2). Iwanami Shoten. Hariu, I. 1973. “Nakai Masakazu no komyunikēshon ron” (“Nakai Masakazu’s Communication Theory”). In F. Etō, S. Tsurumi, and A. Yamamoto (eds), Kōza/komyunikēshon 1, komyunikēshon shisōshi (Lecture/ Communication 1: Contemporary Thoughts on Communication Theory). Tokyo: Kenkyūsha Shuppan.

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Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano Kanbayashi, T. (ed.) 2006. Kyō no bigakushatachi (The Aestheticians in Kyoto). Kyoto: Kōyō-Shobō.

Kitada, A. 2004. “Imi” e no aragai (The Fight Against “Meaning”). Tokyo: Serika Shobō.

Makino, M. 1999. Dainikai eiga ni okeru Kyōto gakuha no seiritsu (Second Emergence of the Kyoto School through

Cinema) [Lecture at Art Research Center]. Ritsumeikan University Suekawa Memorial Lecture Hall, May 19. Online at www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/oldarc/kiyou/01/makino.pdf [accessed June 15, 2015]. Metz, C. 1974. Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press. Nakai, M. 1964a (1931). “Haru no continuity” (“The Continuity of In Spring”). In O. Kuno (ed.), Nakai Masakazu zenshū 3: Gendai geijutsu no kūkan (Complete Collection of Nakai Masakazu: Sphere of Con­ temporary Art), Reprint. Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Nakai, M. 1964b (1950). “Gendai bigaku no kiki to eiga riron” (“Film Theory and the Crisis of Con­ temporary Aesthetics”). In O. Kuno (ed.), Nakai Masakazu zenshū 3, Gendai geijutsu no kūkan (Complete Collection of Nakai Masakazu: Sphere of Contemporary Art), Reprint. Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Nakai, M. 1981. Nakai Masakazu zenshū Vol. 1–4, Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Polan, D.B. 2007. Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shinogi, R. 2005. “Nakagawa Jūrei no bigaku: 1900 nendai no ‘Nihon no bigaku’ ni tsuite no hito kōsatsu” (“Nakagawa Jūrei’s Aesthetics: Analysis of ‘Japanese Aesthetics’ of the 1900s”). Bigaku 56(3). Tsuji, S. 1973. “Nakai Masakazu no komyunikēshon ron” (“Nakai Masakazu’s Communication Theory”). In F. Etō, S. Tsurumi, and A. Yamamoto (eds), Kōza/komyunikēshon 1, komyunikēshon shisōshi (Lecture/ Communication 1: Contemporary Thoughts on Communication Theory). Tokyo: Kenkyūsha Shuppan. Vertov, D. 1984. “WE: Variant of a Manifesto.” In Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, 5–9. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Further reading Kaffen, P. 2018. “Nakai Masakazu and the Cinematic Imperative.” Positions: Asia Critique 26(3): 485–515. Kitada, A. and Zahlten, A. 2010. “An Assault on ‘Meaning:’ On Nakai Masakazu’s Concept of ‘Medi­ ation’.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 22: 88–103. Nakai, M. 1981. Nakai Masakazu zenshū Vol. 1–4, Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Nakai, M. 1995. Nakai Masakazu hyōronshū. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nakai, M. 2010. “Film Theory and the Crisis in Contemporary Aesthetics.” Trans. P. Kaffen. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 22: 80–87. Satō, T. 2010. “Does Film Theory Exist in Japan?” Trans. J. Bernardi. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 22: 14–23.

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6

Geysers of Another nAture

The optical unconscious of the Japanese

science film Anne McKnight

The optical unconscious: accessing and reporting on science to the masses Kagaku eiga (science film) refers to a popular cinematic genre that features scientific topics and methods. Film historian Tanikawa Yoshio attributes its origin to a 1930 short by Midorikawa Michio (1903–1998) called Kekkaku (Tuberculosis, 1930), made at the request of the Kyoto Imperial University’s medical school and screened in Berlin (Tanikawa 1978: 26). This chapter, however, takes a broader view and introduces some major films and discourses designed for mass audiences that followed on the boom of popular science writings in the 1920s. In this era, science coexisted alongside pseudo-science, occultism, and spiritualism, and the scientific social­ ism advocated by Marxists. Commercial magazines launched entrepreneurial editors who sold mechanical do-it-yourself kits and partnered with esteemed academics, while teachers, traveling salesmen, nature appreciators and, eventually, cities, ministries, and corporations all worked to make, distribute, and articulate a set of aims for films about science. Yoshihara Junpei, a short-film historian and former member of the influential documentary house Iwanami Productions, contextualizes kagaku eiga in a broad history of science media that sprang from Taishō-era magazines and benefited from an overall print culture boom (Yoshihara 2011: 16). According to Yoshihara, a notion of “science” that integrated the various disciplines emerged in the 1910s in publications like the astronomer Ichinohei Naozō’s (1878–1920) Gendai no kagaku (Today’s Science, 1913–1922) and the more popular Kagaku gahō (Pictorial Science, 1923–1950) and Kagaku chishiki (Science Knowledge, 1921–1950). These latter two maga­ zines were both edited by Harada Mitsuo (1890–1977), a key antagonist for critics who sought to situate kagaku eiga in a serious discourse outside the impresario-driven commercial world in which he thrived. Magazines like Pictorial Science formatted information about systems and their relations in accessible, lively graphic design. What Tom Gunning calls early cinema’s “harnessing of visibil­ ity” operated here too. It did not serve as mere attraction or anti-narrative spectacle, but as an alternative to the pragmatic Ministry of Education programs that emphasized how things worked (Gunning 1990: 64). Science journalism, as we will see, was intimately connected to the bundan (literary establishment) as well as to academic science, but also formed part of a tsūzoku (informal) education that took place outside the classroom and was promoted in the Meiji era as a contri­ bution to nation building (Gakusei Hyakunenshi Iinkai 1972). Tsūzoku education came with its 93

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own apparatus of lectures, lecture circuits, and publications, creating contexts for scientific experiments, knowledge, and processes that counter-balanced official demands for practicality. They situated knowledge in an array of potential narratives by emphasizing the framing mech­ anism, over and above the apparatus itself. Filmmakers before and during the war focused on bringing to the screen invisible worlds— what the eye cannot see (me ni mienai mono), as many filmmakers and critics wrote. Post-war films flipped the question of “seeing” away from visibility to engagement: once the invisible world is represented onscreen, how should it affirm or transform existing social reality? This chapter surveys cinematic ideas and practices that were shaped by the access to science as well as protocols of reporting and editing, exhibiting and captioning. I use the latter term to refer to paratexts and acts of linguistic interpretation that define boundaries and points of reference when presenting images to mass audiences. Exploring how kagaku eiga filmmakers and critics traversed this circuit from the 1920s to the 1970s reveals a tension between two critical poles: those from the research world who thought that the image alone could broadcast “unseen worlds,” and autodidacts and commercial impresarios who thought that captioning was key in order for viewers to get the message. Both of these tendencies intersected with an allegorical pull in which the captioning of science could be put in service to narratives of nation building, exploration, or economic growth. Early filmmakers and exhibitors did not always present kagaku eiga in a meta-language that called itself theory or criticism, much less education for the sake of nation building. They did, though, think about how new kinds of access to reality could affect the practice of filmmaking. Kagaku eiga advocated process-oriented knowledge and affirmed a connection between daily life and the scientific process. In this essay, I pay special attention to the way different films employ an “optical unconscious,” one that emerges through an encounter with the filmic apparatus and is interpreted with captioning functions that make the object of science intelligible. The term, “optical unconscious,” was coined by media philosopher Walter Benjamin in a 1928 essay “News About Flowers,” a review of a book of photos by Karl Blossfeldt. Benjamin explained how Blossfeldt captured plant forms not as portraits but as types with stylistic analogs in both the built and the natural worlds, thereby creating a sense of nature as constantly meta­ morphosing resemblance that could dissolve boundaries between nature and culture, while generating an awareness of new forms. Benjamin describes the visual effects that emerge unex­ pectedly from this optical unconscious: Whether we accelerate the growth of a plant through time-lapse photography or show its form in forty-fold enlargement, in either case a geyser of new image-worlds hisses up at points in our existence where we would least have thought them possible. (Benjamin 1999a: 156) The optical unconscious refers to how Blossfeldt’s plant types allow us to see that “photography could access unseen worlds and report on the invisible to masses of people” (Zervigón 2017: 37). I also take three important terms from Andrés Mario Zervigón’s summary and use them to frame kagaku eiga: 1 2

access, which I define as the way pro-filmic science was arranged to capture the “invisible worlds”; reporting, by which I mean the journalistic or informational function enabled by form and editing; and 94

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3

masses, by which I mean the exhibiting to general rather than audiences specialized or professional.

Kagaku eiga engaged all three of these elements, but often contained a further dimension of reflexivity, showing how knowledge was produced, perceived, represented, interpreted, or integrated into daily life. In other words, kagaku eiga aimed not merely to capture invisible worlds, but to activate their potential. The optical unconscious was conveyed in each film with a different proportion of captioning, allegorizing, and imaging—set against the pure power of the image itself. Benjamin conveyed the excitement of a new relationality that the camera lens brought to viewing representations of the natural world in an age of mass culture. New technologies brought sudden attention to a previously unseen world lurking beneath the surface of the famil­ iar. Benjamin’s later essay, “Little History of Photography” (1931), evoked the famous stopaction films of Eadweard Muybridge as examples of how photography can display to the eye things that it cannot see without mediation. Recording the movement of limbs amplifies our understanding over time and reveals how little we actually know about the movement of our own bodies: “For it is another nature which speaks to the camera rather than to the eye: ‘other’ above all in the sense that a space informed by human consciousness gives way to a space informed by the unconscious” (Benjamin 1999b: 510–512). This journey into legibility is “unconscious” because we literally have no idea of how great swathes of our own existence occur unless they are externally presented to us; the contact of the photo-technology both delineates and generates. Its “geysers” and “secrets” offer a release from the confines of ordinary consciousness, by showing things we have not seen before in the experience we have already had (Friedlander 2017: 118). Because the “glimpse” in a film continues past the single photograph image in a series, kagaku eiga brought two further properties to the optical unconscious: pro-filmic reality that often required elaborate preparation of experiments starring non-human forces even when actors were present, and thereby suggested that nature as well as technology had a generative force; and moving images’ property of duration that could emphasize shifts in state, form, or other qualities of the scientific object. Film, in contrast to photos, could articulate this “another nature” while emphasizing self-reflexivity and connecting the invisible to social worlds. Kagaku eiga images represent natural phenomena that, like the snowflake inventories, or flies’ fretting mandibles, cannot be seen with the naked eye, but nonetheless have a presence in everyday life. “Potential” is the kagaku eiga’s way of making scientific objects available to be engaged in prac­ tical applications such as ridding urban areas of disease-bearing pests, or supplying pure know­ ledge of the world of precipitation. Kagaku eiga caused people to think as much about reality and realism as they did about “science.” Nature is out there beyond lenses and eyes, but its representation in film requires an apparatus that operates through pro-filmic science, journalistic reportage, and appeal to mass audiences through wonder or advocacy. New optical techniques—in particular microcine­ matography and time-lapse photography—also allowed access into inner worlds of organisms invisible to the human eye. The discourses produced around these newly visible objects shaped thinking not only about science and its relation to daily life but about film and reality as well. Consider Harada Mitsuo’s Densō shashin (Electric Photos, 1928), which was made as a PR film. It dramatized how the Osaka-based newspaper Mainichi shimbun used wireless transmission to scoop the competition during the Shōwa emperor’s enthronement ceremony that took place in Kyoto. In Yuki no kesshō (Snow Crystals, 1939), physicist and glaciologist Nakaya Ukichirō used sub-zero microcinematography to show how snowflakes changed their form in response to 95

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atmospheric conditions. He demonstrated that the familiar six-pronged shape was actually ren­ dered in a vast variety of crystal formations. The optical unconscious revealed in Nakaya’s film confirms Hannah Landecker’s assertion that the temporal dimension of film, especially microcinematography, allowed new forms of recording and analysis in a wide array of disciplines (Landecker 2006: 123). Snow Crystals received governmental support as a bunka eiga (culture film) and was shown to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, where it was rewarded for aesthetics over scientific value. In the postWorld War II era, re-organized by SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) and its New Deal-inspired social reforms, public health films like Hae no inai machi (A Town without Flies, dir. Yoshino Keiji and Mura Haruo, 1950), in which children learn how to manage the pests that infest their town and inspire others to do the same, showcased democratic process and problem-solving based on knowing the life cycle and habits of the fly. When captioned, the optical unconscious here led to grassroots democracy and precocious use of technology by young citizens to solve problems. I mention these examples to show how consistently the optical unconscious shaped the ways that kagaku eiga accessed and reported scientific facts and narratives to mass audiences. For filmmakers, these fields offered materials for engaging in a new relationship between science, knowledge, and social life beyond mere questions of access or resolution provided by new lenses and technologies.

The pre-war roots of kagaku eiga: captioning, imaging, and allegorizing Let me now turn to some key interpretive frameworks that filmmakers and critics pursued beginning in the 1920s, when practices of captioning were developed in three venues: com­ mercial children’s science magazines that framed film as performance; the genre of statesupported wartime documentary known as the culture film (bunka eiga); and the enthusiasm for pure film that led some critics to be so enamored of the image that they failed to question the narrative in which it was embedded. If scientific media emerged only after a general conception of “science” itself emerged, the intersection with mass culture and editorial experiments allowed for competing voices regarding the role of mediation—the kinds of captions that explicated scientific process and knowledge. On one end of the captioning spectrum, we have Harada Mitsuo, the aforementioned editor of commercial magazines like Kodomo no kagaku (Children’s Science). Harada worked with a number of people who influenced the bundan literary establishment as well as with famous scientists early in their careers. He was consulted by publishing tour de force Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948), and himself took advice from Nakayama Yasumasa (1884–1958), who invented the concept of the taikei (a networked series of books or films elucidating the genealogy of concepts and themes important in defining a field), and consulted with Kōjirō Tanesuke (1883–1935), the editor who raised to an art the process of standardization involved in proofreading. As an autodidact interested in how objects became a part of systems with standards and protocols, Harada learned how to make crystal radio receivers from Hamaji Tsuneyasu (1898–1932), who ran a radio research institute in Tokyo and published the first magazine on wireless radio. Harada linked wonder to commercialism and “discerningly chose” a number of items to sell. He first promoted magic lantern picture postcards and telescopes, whose sales “flew” as would those of later books on radio and receivers that demystified electronics for curious non-academic readers (Harada 1966: 391). Harada’s use of captioning—always including directions, how-tos, and explanations with any scientific object—drew on the conventions of the tsūzoku science culture whose tools of the trade were museums and lecture circuits. Harada conducted many tours where he introduced his ideas and screened films. As Japan became more involved in war, 96

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Harada’s lectures put forth a cautionary message about Japan’s technological readiness, based on his immense international reading, and furnished a key commercial backdrop to the era’s fiction writers such as Unno Jūza (1897–1949). Though he himself worked outside of formal education, Harada built his own kind of science bundan and regularly commissioned elite scientists, often from Hokkaido or Tokyo University, to write articles and further extend the network. These included famous ichthyologists; special­ ists in zoo-taxonomies; researchers on ophthalmology, optics, and lenses; and eminent botanists and scholars of Linnaean classification and honzōgaku, the discipline of natural history involving the study of medicinal herbs systematized in the Tokugawa era. The popular science bundan of this period worked fluidly to adapt old to new media, traversing both worlds of text and image. Harada’s strength was in connecting object to process through captioning, involving the vieweruser, and creating potential narratives for the viewer-user to connect object and process to his (or perhaps her) own world. Harada sold many kits for modeling scientific principles, aiming at involving children through fun. His polymath sensibility coincided with the appearance of early 1930s amateur film maga­ zines such as Amateur Cinema and Nihon Pathé Ciné. These magazines published columns that not only highlighted the image-making capacities of 16 mm films and microcinematography such as Harada made, but also offered how-to instructions that could be adapted by other medical or scientific cineastes. Harada pioneered the early use of animation and miniatures in films like Wareware ga sumu daichi (The Earth We Live On, 1928), which modeled the effect of earthquakes (Harada 1966: 330). Inevitably, representation of the earthquake was shaped and abstracted in the process of making models, but Harada placed as much emphasis on participa­ tion and on speculation as on pure documentation. His ability to traverse specialties and fields of commerce would later make him an object of derision on the part of academic writers on kagaku eiga such as eminent physicist and earthquake scientist Terada Torahiko (1878–1935). In 1933, Terada lambasted “models of volcanoes exploding that fool only children, and highly suspect cross sections of the lithosphere” in Japanese educational films for being visually access­ ible how-it-works illustrations, rather than teaching the structural principles that build invisible worlds (Terada 1997: 217). While kagaku eiga in the pre-war era were often distributed by organizations that worked with schools, filmmakers were adamant about being “different than the textbooks.”1 Harada’s link of captioning to visual culture took children out into the fields on plant trips, trips he captured on film, under the leadership of botanist Makino Tomitarō (1862–1957), who Harada commissioned to select flowers of the month to be illustrated by an artist of his choosing (Harada 1966: 310). Harada regularly saw films, including what he called “UFA kagaku eiga” such as Uchū no kyōi/Wunder der Schopfung (Wonders of the Universe, 1925) with benshi commen­ tary by celebrated performer Tokugawa Musei (1894–1971). Harada first came into contact with Musei through his benshi commentary on the dinosaur epic The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt, 1925; for more on the benshi in general and Tokugawa Musei in particular, see Kae Ishihara’s Chapter 17 in this volume). After finding a book on Musei’s shelf by an earthquake scientist friend from Tokyo University, Harada was surprised at Musei’s seriousness and study. Harada’s way of being an intellectual with flair showed little of the concern for didacticism and social filtering seen in Terada or Harada’s other friend and film magazine co-editor Tachibana Takahiro, who would later become a censor. Harada starts going to film study groups and men­ tions a popular fad for films about wild beasts in 1926. He references a film about hunting hip­ popotamuses for which Musei did benshi commentary, with the hippo swimming, getting shot with a harpoon gun, turning upside down in the water (Harada 1966: 312–313). This perform­ ance and Harada’s sheer glee in the captioning captures how he prized resourcefulness and 97

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creative manipulation of the object far more than pure scientific study. His version of the optical unconscious was decidedly biased toward participation and engagement. In Musei’s rendition of the hippo movie, according to Harada, wordplay overshadows didac­ tic value. Musei describes the kaba (hippo) turning upside down as baka (stupid), making his syllables similarly inverted, but coming out on top of the image’s meaning through his resource­ ful and virtuoso translation of the hippo’s action into his own upended construction, where the reversal of words suggests a possible reversal of viewing positions. Musei further describes the hippo meat eaten “voraciously” by the hunter’s attendants as “kabayaki.” He keeps the syllables of “kaba,” meaning hippo, but transposes them into a fish dish, kabayaki, easily prepared in a Japanese kitchen, processing the meat further by localizing it in both language and kitchen. A sense of absurdity comes through because the diminutive size of a kabayaki grilled fish is com­ pared to the crowd of people allegedly eating the large mass of hippo meat. At the same time, the Japanese viewers are treated to a giddy exoticism when it is suggested that the local Gambi­ ans are enjoying the same delicacy. This complicated game of upside downs could suggest either exoticism through ethnic irony or reflexivity about the relativism of cultural rules. The example shows how Harada’s understanding of the optical unconscious drew on the quality of science’s potential exploited by captioning rather than the allegorical fixing of narrative favored by the bunka eiga or the belief in a pure image. The technique of creating potential believable situ­ ations through framing “scientific” objects was Harada’s hallmark, though it was rarely so overtly ethnographic. Harada’s performance-oriented treatment of kagaku eiga such as the hippopotamus movie represented a dramatically different model than the vision put forth by more cinematically ori­ ented critics at the other end—those whose understanding of the optical unconscious promoted images over explication, and narrative above all. Pre-war writings on kagaku eiga saw them as a subset of the larger category of culture film—bunka eiga—and that legacy has largely prevailed. Bunka eiga is a direct translation of the German term Kulturfilm that referred to a genre of quasidocumentary educational film produced by the German UFA studios. Kulturfilms were first imported in 1935 and screened in Japan as bunka eiga by Tōwa to “eradicate the somewhat formal” image of education films (Fujii 2012: 52). Most UFA films were treated as natural science films and included Midori no hōrōsha/Grüne Vagabunden (The Green Wanderers, 1933) and Moe izuru chikara/Kraftleistungen der Pflanzen (The Power of Plants, 1934) by medical doctor and studio head Nicholas Kaufmann (Tanikawa 1978: 26–33). Tanikawa Yoshio values these films for their presentation of an optical unconscious based in the image itself. He describes how a bean seed is captured breaking through a glass bin: The Power of Plants shows us the things that we never really notice: the strong life force of plants, the subtle movements, the stem’s force in channeling in water, the expansion force when buds sprout, things that are newly perceived, even if [viewers] are habitu­ ated to seeing it. (Tanikawa 1978: 27) Tōwa produced a magazine, Bunka eiga, that documents this film being screened in a traveling circuit around the country by Iwabori Kikuo, who would later join Iwanami Productions (Iwabori 1941: 22). Somewhat confusingly, Bunka eiga was also the title into which Paul Rotha’s book Documentary Film was translated into Japanese in 1938. Film historian Fujii Jinshi writes that interest in bunka eiga surged after 1937, when the war with China started in earnest and the appetite for news films was stoked: “the show business value of non-fiction film had been discovered” and new companies jumped into the business 98

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(Fujii 2012: 52). The 1939 Film Law created further demands, as movie theaters were required to show bunka eiga and newsreels before screening fiction films. The 1940 version of the law defined the term more concretely: “the scope and criteria for approval as a bunka eiga” are that films that “are not fiction films and contribute to the cultivation of the national spirit or foster­ ing of the national intelligence in categories like politics, national defense, education, the arts, industry, and hygiene” (Yoshihara 2011: 35). In a separate treatment of bunka eiga and ethnographies of everyday life, Fujii points out that bunka eiga consistently aimed to find, retrieve, and document overlooked aspects of daily life, especially in the Tōhoku countryside (Fujii 2003: 270). Although these films did not have the same fascination with technology as the kagaku eiga, they encouraged the same kind of scanning of daily life for invisible worlds. Within the bunka eiga tradition, some films followed the Hux­ leyian model of nature film, though they delivered a stronger narrative about collective life.2 Filmmakers like former birdwatcher Shimomura Kenji (1902–1993) went into the hinterlands to record the folkways of people and animals dwelling in biodiverse ecosystems, bringing the salvage ethnography tendency of the bunka eiga into the field of the nature documentary (Gruber 1970). Shimomura’s landmark Aru hi no higata (A Day at the Tidelands, 1940) showed the contact zone between people and nature in the bird-watching district of Gyōtoku in Chiba prefecture and by the Ariake Sea in northern Kyūshū (Tanaka 1979: 116). To show the human encounter with nature, shots of the crew are intercut with women wading through the tide collecting seaweed, creating an impression of an integrated world. The film crew hide in a thatched hut and shoot through a telephoto lens, which brings a world to the viewer through the optical unconscious without disturbing the various creatures. The nar­ rator steers the viewer’s attention to the overlooked or unseen world of crabs with antenna like “periscopes,” shells, crustaceans, and unusual fish that blink. He asks viewers “have you ever seen one like it?” prompting them to scan their own memories and take this operation into daily life. This apostrophic narrator breaks the fourth wall with an extremely strong form of caption­ ing that will remain a feature in post-war documentaries and can still be seen in twenty-first­ century animal shows on public television. Shimomura’s first shot features a nursing mother reclining on a hill, and while no overt national ideology is articulated, the theme of human kinship mingling interchangeably with natural kinship is conveyed until the abrupt ending, when a hawk kills one unsuspecting and sacrificial bird. The compositional rhymes of creatures and humans encourage the viewer to let the distinction between nature and culture dissolve, as humans follow in the footsteps of animals walking, and take their turn on the beach as animals nap. Human lifestyle is portrayed as a sort of bio-mimicry; humans follow on animals, harvesting where animals harvest, walking where they walk—in effect, learning in real-time in the wet­ lands. Technology that enables the distant audience to better understand how such learning might happen. By showing the attack on the animals, the film reinforces how a single aerial predator can threaten the safety of the community. The lesson is that part of the group is sacri­ ficed in a living situation that “should be peaceful” (heiwa de arubeki). If later wartime films suggest that animals are stand-ins for colonial humans who seek nurture from Japanese residents, this film suggests that humans walk in animals’ footsteps, but can learn how the invisible world of animal life works with the help of technology. Early film theorist Imamura Taihei (1911–1986) was the first to write critically about kagaku eiga. In tune with the message of bunka eiga’s allegories, he insisted in a series of essays pub­ lished between 1934 and 1940 that its mission was to be “socialized” (shakaika).3 Unlike Koba­ yashi Hideo’s more celebrated 1935 essay on the “socialized self,” “socialized” as Imamura describes it in “Kagaku eiga no hōkō” (“Current Directions in Kagaku Eiga,” 1940), does not 99

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mean self-reflexive and aware of the “self” through representation. For Imamura, “socialized” means writing science as a plot element in a story whose aim is to inspire rather than merely report or, in short, “to express science poetically” (Imamura 1991: 174). This stance is implicitly critical of the popularizers of science who teach youths how to understand science by engaging with it, exploiting its multiple potentials both practical and fanciful. For Imamura, pure empirical reality is not effective enough, and he cites biopics of Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur as vehicles for inspiration. Science is necessary for the cultivation of the human qualities needed to bring art and science together. Imamura advocates using the lures of art in ways that exceed the “dried-out prose of the academies,” since the blue light of radium could, in his words, never be conveyed in prose (even if the cinematic image were black and white). Imamura further illustrates the value of poetics for the sake of art with a controversial kagaku eiga called Kaeru no hanashi (The Story of Frogs, 1939) made by the Committee for 16 Millimeter Educational Film as part of a series sold to primary schools and taken on road shows organized by the Mainichi shimbun.4 The Story of Frogs tracks tadpoles’ movement through water, jumping, eating, and climbing and contains short set pieces of exposition on intertitles that document the days of a frog’s life from egg through tadpole to full-fledged frog in extreme close-ups using microcinematography and time-lapse photography. The cinematographer of The Story of Frogs was Kobayashi Yonesaku (1905–2005), who would shoot many classics of post-war kagaku eiga including medical films such as Kekkaku no seitai (The Nature of Tuberculosis, 1952) and Mikuro no sekai (The Micro World, 1958), films about daily life including Ikiteiru pan (Living Bread, 1958), and the gorgeous panoramic film Marin sunō: sekiyu no kigen (Marine Snow: The Origin of Oil, 1960) produced by Tokyo Cinema and funded by Maruzen Petrochemical. According to Kumegawa Masayoshi, a collaborator of Kobayashi’s as well as a researcher on the biology of bones, Kobayashi was an aficionado of pure film; his ideal movie was monochrome, played without interruption in a silent hall, with no narration or music (Kumegawa 2010: 152). His works in the 1970s would be scored with the experimental music of Ichiyanagi Toshi, whose musique concrète, based on manipulation of recorded tape, had many of the same properties of amplification, splicing, and montaging as more experimental kagaku eiga. The Story of Frogs employs aspects of the optical unconscious that enable us to see at scales and into phenomena that are inaccessible to our naked eyes, at the same time as the camera brings us close to creatures that we would normally scare away. Microcinematography and time-lapse photography in The Story of Frogs allow the viewer to understand the speed and the dynamism of the change from egg to tadpole to adult. The Story of Frogs was entered in the Venice Film Festival but met with controversy because some of the frog eggs were actually newt eggs that had been substituted when frogs were out of season. Rather than lament such fictionality, Imamura claims that kagaku eiga must have this kind of “lie.” There are things you cannot see, like wind or the actions of a propeller. So you create a ground to make the figure of nature emerge: “by means of smoke, we were able to see the movements of the air that our naked eyes can’t” (Imamura 1991: 173). Imamura’s patience with fictional narrative in the service of art leads him to sometimes confuse the technology-based observation of ethnographic backdrops with actual science. He advocates for the 1935 film Baboona: An Aerial Epic Over Africa by the explorers Martin and Osa Johnson, which was basically a travelogue that documented “wildlife and peoples in the regions they knew best” (Imperato and Imperato 1992: 171). For Imamura, the film successfully carried “documentary over the threshold of poetry” (Imamura 1991: 170). He argues that many UFA films “integrate” poetry and science, such that the clarity of science is transmitted exactly in proportion to its “poetic” quality (Imamura 1991: 171) and that accuracy may be sacrificed in order to present the fusion of science and art, which he calls “a major issue of the twentieth century” (Imamura 1991: 175). 100

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Educational film series such as the one that housed The Story of Frogs became a major pro­ duction pipeline for kagaku eiga. Okada Hidenori writes that the Ministry of Education began to distribute films in schools after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Films such as Densenbyō no byōgentai (Pathogens of Infectious Diseases, 1925) laid the groundwork for schools as bulwarks of public health education (Okada 2012: 203–204). The idea of teaching about nature through stories had been linked to children’s media beginning with the 1926 kinder­ garten decree (Yōchienrei) that mandated observation (kansatsu) as part of the curriculum. Japanese publication of the ethnographic children’s genre of kinderbooks started in 1927 (Hoiku ehon kindābukku ni kansuru kenkyū 2018). But apart from Imamura’s line of inquiry, most films put human characters and their stories to the side to show nature with the aid of camera mediation. In May 1941, glaciologist Nakaya Ukichirō defined the kagaku eiga broadly as “films that fall in the category of culture film (bunka eiga) and treat the natural sciences as their specific theme” (Nakaya 1988: 364). Nakaya’s concern with the visual representation of science dates back to his interest in the cloud chamber, even before snow crystals movie, and he was key in connect­ ing the laboratory to kagaku eiga (Nakaya 1988: 283), which he divides into two categories. The first, less privileged category is hakubutsumono, which refers to the natural history of plants, animals, and minerals, and recalls the media in which those worlds are represented on paper and in collections. With its classical origins and overtones, the term hakubutsu (natural history) situ­ ates the films in a genealogy of pre-modern sketched studies, typically studies of plant materials that were compiled in the Tokugawa era. “Hakubutsumono” implies a style of stillness and sug­ gests an anachronistic empirical rather than one based on abstract, rational principles; here, it is used to confer that same epistemological status on film, despite its novel techniques. The second category is rikamono (scientific subjects), which applies to films dealing with principles from fields such as astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, and physics that Nakaya valorizes but finds frustratingly difficult to represent. While these principles are not in themselves allegorical, they exist at a meta-level higher than the pure revealing, describing, and classifying impulses of hakubutsumono. Despite their use of modern technology, Nakaya calls hakubutsumono childish (yōchi na mono), and the first movie he singles out is The Story of Frogs.5 Nakaya acknowledges popular interest in technical effects and images that bring natural objects closer, but the films he wants to support—and of which finds very few—all reject direct observation in favor of finding ways to bring the optical unconscious of abstract but ordered systems (music, X-rays) to viewers. Such films require expertise in captioning and use “a lot of explanation” to articulate the process of experimentation; they do not depend merely on encounters with scientific objects to generate a new mode of viewing. The tension between popular interest and expert knowledge is similarly registered in the writings of renowned physicist Terada Torahiko, who comes down hard against performance. Yoshihara Junpei sees Terada as an inheritor of the Kulturfilm/bunka eiga tradition, in tune with Continental thought, as opposed to Harada’s parlaying of the educational films (kyōiku eiga or kyōzai eiga) made by American companies like Bray into classroom materials in Japan.6 Terada was on the board of the integrated science magazine Kagaku (Science) and helped shape its edit­ orial policy. In addition to introducing information from overseas, including writings on film by Sergei Eisenstein and Béla Balázs, he advocated using film to publicize how people and animals interact with their environment. In a 1932 essay, he explored how the human limits of time and attention span are best served by film, which, in an educational context, could serve as a “guide” (annaisha) for viewers (Terada 1997: 214). He gives the example of how a hypothetical film could give a better view of a hippopotamus than actual observation. 101

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In the case of film, because the person making the film can spend a lot of time and footage to get a vast amount of material, shave off what is irrelevant, select out only what is the most important, and skillfully edit it together, the viewer can see the purest form and important features of this animal in an extremely compact amount of time … So even if you have a zoo nearby, you can see how a movie of the zoo has its own merits. And shooting the footage in the hippo’s natural dwelling of the African conti­ nent is even better. (Terada 1997: 214–215) Rather than observing the hippopotamus in real time, film can capture and edit its main move­ ments as it cycles through all possible variations in its environment. What is remarkable about these different critical stances is their interest in durational process and observational power as much as in the production of scientific facts. Although their investments in captioning, allego­ rizing, and imaging might differ, all of them find the encounter with the image through the filmic apparatus to be transformative for viewers.

Post-war film: humanism and reflexive participation Post-war films by and large lost the culturalist framings and allegorizing tendencies that had characterized many pre-war films about animals.7 Animals mostly disappear as lyrical wonders and appear more frequently as test subjects, pests, or material to be shaped by human builders of democracy. There is less pure fascination with the image and more pressure to create a story. After the war, the initial reform impulse of the Occupation meant that short films about policy were distributed through schools for educational purposes, and humans were restored to center stage. For kagaku eiga filmmakers running small businesses under the Occupation structure, the production process from filmmaking to distribution was underwritten by a desire to shape post­ war democracy, demystify science, and foster a reflexive relation to the scientific process.8 According to historian Yoshihara Junpei, European science began with specialized fields and emerged as a general concept through debates among “intellectual citizens” (shimin) (Yoshihara 2011: 16). In this account, experiment is valued for its place in the liberal creation of citizens. For Yoshihara, the making of such citizens after 1945 necessitated taking science out of the realm of specialized expertise. He pushed to contextualize science within a mass media that synthesized and then redistributed information in the broad category of “science” rather than in separate, siloed fields. Yoshihara’s emphasis on popular media reflects the way that post-war kagaku eiga diffused through structures of popular observation, evidence, debate, and decisionmaking. Contextualization and participation through exhibition as well as production were important parts of the media system. Films about cities, infrastructure, and development feature a discourse about science that touts its public benefits. They shift away from building a methodology for democracy to emphasizing instrumentality and the transformation of the built and natural environment. They featured ways of applying science to landmark projects on the path of modernization and economic growth such as dams, power plants, and other development initiatives.9 These slightly later PR films were often sponsored by corporations or state agencies, allowing for a higher budget, if less creative control. Filmmakers who came out of bunka eiga backgrounds recall the pre-war filmmakers like Harada, who advocated practical science for the masses and created the culture of science journalism. Their films retained much of the documentary impulse of the bunka eiga, while being pushed in new directions not only by Occupation authorities keen on weaving post-war reform into daily life, but also by corporations eager to highlight their products and industries. 102

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Nakamura Hideyuki writes that countrywide distribution of short educational films began in 1948, under the auspices of Japan’s Ministry of Education and CIE (the Civil Information and Education section of the Allied command). Films were initially imported, but staff then shifted to Japanese filmmakers under regulation. Shorts like Nōson no seikatsu kaizen (Improvement of Village Life) often had scripted scenes, such as those typically found in fiction films, designed to dramatize their messages (Nakamura 2012: 252–253). Dramas of the optical unconscious were produced beginning with Totsu renzu (Convex Lens, 1950), the first kagaku eiga made at Iwanami Productions following its restructuring from Nakaya Labs. Nakaya’s snow films had defamiliarized seemingly remote and all-encompassing aspects of daily life—climate—by showing the individuality and variety of snowflakes as infinite invisible worlds that required a laboratory and expert captioning to be apprehended and under­ stood. Nakaya’s emphasis on the everyday continued when he moved his studio and changed its name after affiliating with the Iwanami Shoten publishing company, albeit with additional post­ war aims of showing democracy in action. Geared to junior high school students, Convex Lens seeks to defamiliarize common objects of everyday life, such as windows and tumblers, introducing the mediating properties of glass and the idea of refraction. Its formal juxtaposition of scales of viewing recalls surrealist filmmaking, while the street setting might be mistaken for a shot from Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929). By comparing ashtrays, windows, and the surface of a lake, along with funhouse­ type images, the place of refraction and the convex lens in daily life becomes clear in the mode of Benjamin’s optical unconscious connecting through morphology. The task of the film, as Iwanami producer Maki Chū (1929–) explains, was to figure out “how to make things you can’t see into things you can” (Maki 2012: 169). The avant-garde capacities of the optical unconscious emerged even more strongly in the work of Tokyo Cinema, whose founder, the polymath Okada Sōzō (1903–1983), began his career as a celebrated actor at Shochiku and later worked as an editor and publisher. Okada had traveled in the Soviet Union and met Sergei Eisenstein; he had also edited the montage-oriented photojournalist magazine FRONT, befriended Shibusawa Eiichi on a cruise ship, and edited the papers of renegade cultural anthropologist Minakata Kumagusa, all before starting his own pro­ duction company in 1953 (Kawasaki and Harada 2002). Tokyo Cinema picked up the abstract and avant-garde tendencies of pre-war film, particularly in medical films and sponsored films. Later films would be consistent with the drive to modernity that traversed Soviet, Japanese, and European contexts by focusing on personal infrastructures (bodies) as well as physical infrastruc­ tures (nuclear power, electronics, astronomy). A brief tour of two hygiene films from the mid-1950s will show how post-war kagaku eiga emphasized democratic self-making. The public health impulse behind the movies about disease-spreading insects was motivated by the fact that insect-borne diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were still very much a part of daily life in barely post-war Tokyo. Hae (Flies, 1954) is an 8-minute film directed by Nakamura Rinko (1916–2009), who had already worked at Nichiei Kagaku, the studio founded in 1951 that would go on to make many prize-winning films on subjects including the life cycle of rice (Ine no isshō/The Life of a Rice Plant, 1950), tuberculosis (Kekkaku no seitai/The Nature of Tuberculosis, 1952), and the avant­ garde poetics of quality control in the making of motorcycles (This is HONDA, 1962). Naka­ mura wore a lab coat in the office, establishing her professionalism, and had entered the workplace after winning a scenario contest for a work that showcased the process of laundry as a domestic science. This entrée into the company by way of “newcomer” prizes was a common culture industry pipeline for introducing new talent and offered a way for other female outliers including Haneda Sumiko (1926–) and Okano Kaoruko (1929–) to enter the field. 103

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Flies was the first film to capture the life cycle of this insect on camera. It exemplifies how filmmakers could use the capacities of lenses and film form to open up viewers’ worlds and change their feelings about a scientific subject. Nakamura worked with a producer, a film crew, and a team of experts from the National Research Center for the Prevention of Infectious Dis­ eases (Kokuritsu Yobō Eisei Kenkyūsho) headed by entomologist Asahina Shōjirō (1913–2010) to track the life cycle of houseflies that they “found.” Nakamura’s biography recounts the dif­ ficulty she had in crafting the climate and lighting necessary to get the flies to cling, move, and fly in the right direction, while keeping the wriggling maggots from burying themselves in the food. At times, she carried a glass box of flies with her on the bus and cultivated them at home (Nakamura 2008: 156–163). In its 8 minutes, the film articulates how flies are dangerous for scientific reasons of disease, rather than the gut feeling of disgust or revulsion they provoke. The film is shot in extreme close-ups and montage to show the seemingly spontaneous mul­ tiplication of hungry maggots in everyday leftover food, while musical shifts, time lapses, and a voice-over stitch together shots of close-up movement and growth as flies crawl dynamically over an otherwise delicious-looking meal. The overwhelming impression of the film is ubi­ quity. Flies zoom in from all directions, multiplying at a “frightening” rate, and becoming the “enemy of humans” as carriers of pathogens. Shots of “staged” growth in soil dramatize a fly larva “struggling with all its might” (isshokenmei) to become a full-fledged (ichininmae) adult, so it can interact with food and skin by spitting, chewing, excreting, and regurgitating over all the surfaces of the house. The film depicts a series of fly environments at increasing scales as the camera zooms out from surface to dish to household structure, and then back in on the microscopic pathogens such as typhus and Shigella (closely related to E. coli) contained in the saliva and excrement of the flies. This arc of scientific shots connects the optical unconscious to daily life through the camera’s framing of insect life, human habitation, and possible human exposure to the ongoing life processes of the flies. The sense of narrative is stronger than in pre-war films, but retains the quality of openness: home surfaces are potentially dangerous on various scales but the outcome is subject to human intervention and not yet clear. Flies focused on domestic interiors as potential sources of disease in environments shared by humans and insects, but it presented no solutions nor did it frame modernity as a problem to be solved by specific agents of democracy. Later films would insert recursive elements of problemsolving and would shift the narrative emphasis to humans acting within a technologically built environment. A 1950 film about fly-borne illness in Jōsō city in Ibaraki prefecture and a film about smog made in 1960, for instance, show the shifting fortunes of the human–environment relation in cinematic terms. If pre-war films focused on the optical unconscious presenting inaccessible places and invisible worlds, the 1960s era of high-speed economic growth dealt with problems that were all too visible, such as industrial pollution, as well as problems whose etiologies would remain hard to read for decades, such as mercury pollution and Minamata disease.10 A Town Without Flies was filmed in industrial areas of Jōsō city as part of a series of shorts made for primary school social studies classes. The film featured a child’s voice-over narrating a story about measures taken to combat a fly infestation during the summer. Satō Tadao writes that “it also allows a good look at the elementary school classroom of the 1950s” before the era of high-speed economic growth (Satō 2010: 272). If today’s viewer looks at the film as an index of barely post-war Japan, the viewer of the time was addressed as a potential member of a par­ ticipatory democracy who could connect personal life to public policy and work with his and her peers to advocate for bottom–up social change. As in the 1954 film, the flies are everywhere, but the children here smash them: 10,000 of them, one by one, in the classroom and around garbage areas. The children go back to study, 104

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only to find that they are again infested a day later. Using the voice-over narrator’s apos­ trophic address to the viewers that was common in earlier scenes of natural wonder, the chil­ dren here ask, “where are they all coming from?” They observe the flies in the fields and report the results to their classmates in committee form. The group debates and decides to cover garbage areas and then talk to adults in charge of the city hygiene bureau, who spray massive amounts of pesticides on potential fly breeding areas, ridding them of the “scary” kinds of “bacteria.” However, it turns out that foodstuff trucked in from “outside” comes freighted with flies. The message is both eternal vigilance—seen in the poignant shot of a young boy with a broom looking distraught—and working with people from “outside” to get rid of all the flies in their village or town, nationwide. Child development, community devel­ opment, and off-screen producers of scientific solutions go hand in hand in the resolution of the fly problem. At the same time some, kagaku eiga turn their attention away from discussing matters that should be reported to the masses, and turn to more instrumental uses of science, including the progress shown in PR or sponsored films. The optical unconscious here is put aside in order to stress the everyday human control of the environment. Kuroi kiri: Sumoggu ni idomu (Black Fog: The Challenge Against Smog, 1960) is a film sponsored by Sumitomo Heavy Industries. The film appeared ten years before Tsuchimoto Noriaki’s Minamata sequence of seventeen films that began in 1971 (Tsuchimoto had worked briefly at Iwanami and in his freelance work delivered a far less celebratory vision of economic growth). The idea of an optical unconscious shifted to include the presentation of images that were not just materially hard to see, but also socially hard to see, framing issues like pollution and other modes of slow violence, sometimes in the surpris­ ing context of corporate-sponsored films.11 Black Fog is one such film. It opens with an assertion that underneath the “miracle” that is post-war growth—illustrated by speeding cars, speeding trains, and music that shifts from cheerful zippy rhythm to clamor—many environmental prob­ lems are surfacing and the rivers and air are full of toxins. A number of accusatory close-ups home in on industrial smokestacks, and the voice-over supplies an etiology of the smog in factory emissions. Like earlier kagaku eiga, Black Fog uses time-lapse photography to show the relative intensity of smog over the day. Unlike kagaku eiga, though, the sponsored films tend to use voice-over to highlight the importance of experts and expertise rather than articulating the process of the experiment or the demand for social change. Scientists in lab coats play with dials; a filter is dirtied to show the effects of smog on human lungs; stain-riddled lungs are graphically depicted; particle filters are panned past; microscopes show magnified particles; and cancer is found in mice. On the one hand, a corporate budget for making a film to demonstrate responsibility for public health seems unimaginably progressive from a twenty-first-century point of view; on the other hand, the reflexivity of the science film shifts from curiosity and engagement to detached observation and trust in corporate benevolence to solve problems. There is no external point of aggravation or even reference in Black Fog. Trucks full of waste collected every day under a blue sky are eerily prescient of the massive storage problems of nuclear waste. The sponsored films’ use of science legitimates rather than queries. A small but intriguing group of films continued to treat the role of science in the field of home economics in the era of high-speed economic growth, offering social insights into “skill­ ful and economic” ways of using technology outside of the laboratory for the engineer of the gendered sphere of the home. One series aiming to join such arenas of informal education was NTV’s Tanoshii kagaku (Enjoyable Science, 1959–1962), which consisted of 239 episodes. Distinct from other distribution circuits that deliberately worked through schools, Enjoyable Science, according to writer and producer Maki Chū, aimed to liberate science from the schoolroom, 105

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and “through the medium of the television plunked in the o-cha no ma,” the domestic space allocated to the newly popular television (Maki 2012: 165).

The optical unconscious as manifesto: a conclusion For fifty years, kagaku eiga were defined by a tension between official and informal education but shared a common goal of accessing and reporting science to mass viewers. Each film wanted to provide an encounter with something new, and had its own algorithm of captioning, narra­ tivizing, and imaging. The tsūzoku (informal) education that Harada Mitsuo embraced and commercialized brought empirical and highly visual worlds of science into the hands of many bricoleurs, especially young ones. The bunka eiga brought invisible worlds of science and culture to the screen and linked it to nation-building allegories. And aficionados of pure film like Terada Torahiko saw that the observation and playback capacities of film could supersede the limits of actual experience. Further research is required to understand how avant-garde techniques of montage and abstraction contributed to building the image of high-speed eco­ nomic growth. Post-war science films had a particular emphasis on pragmatic representations—knowledge that the ordinary person could use in the context of everyday life (Bronson 2016). Ultimately, many kagaku eiga filmmakers split off from the companies to become freelance or form their own companies. These included Hani Susumu, Haneda Sumiko, and Tsuchimoto Noriaki. With ways of lacing patterns across different scientific objects, kagaku eiga captured natural scenes and framed nature in ways that pre-dated ambient music and the environmental installa­ tions of the 1970 Osaka Expo. Kagaku eiga filmmakers share with later political modernist film­ makers the aim of media literacy and a demystified relation to “nature.” But they contradicted the discourses of alienation that emerged in the 1960s from cinema theory on landscape and attacks on nature as false consciousness. Whereas Ōshima Nagisa sought to banish the color green in 1960—as a signifier of the naturalized ideologies of wartime brought into the domestic realm through the architecture and ritual that he sought to critique—kagaku eiga filmmakers saw science and daily life as connected and proximate, available for demystification. The prag­ matism of the post-war kagaku eiga asserted that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy.

Notes 1 For a fuller history of educational film and the complex regulations that covered children, schools, and the film industry, see Tanaka (1979). Note that Tanaka’s delineation of education films often includes many documentary films that educate or inform in loose terms, though they are not part of a formal educational apparatus. 2 Julian Huxley would later become head of UNESCO, but in the 1930s he was a naturalist bent on advocating for evolution. His 1934 film The Private Life of the Gannets followed a “family” of sea birds on an island off the coast between Wales and Ireland. 3 The first to map out the genre historically was the critic Iijima Takashi in his 1944 Kagaku eiga no shomondai (Issues in Science Films). His discourse bears further research, but I don’t address him here because Iijima claims to not be an expert—in fact, he claims never to have seen a real kagaku eiga (1994: 142). Nonetheless, he accepts the editorial challenge to write a book, challenging key figures such as Nakaya Ukichirō, Terada Torahiko, and Tsuji Jirō, a mechanical engineer, inventor of the first gas detector and editor of children’s books about technology. He particularly resents Terada’s failure to understand things that would be classed as art, narrative, and filmic conventions of film itself, as opposed to just “scenes,” in Terada’s haste to see films as set pieces of concepts. 4 The Story of Frogs is available online with many other examples of kagaku eiga at the Kagaku Eizōkan (www.kagakueizo.org).

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Geysers of another nature 5 The Institute for Physical and Chemical Sciences (Riken Kagaku Kenkyūsho), was founded in 1917 and covered basic research on physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, and medicine. For a thorough discussion of the term hakubutsugaku as a modern term, see Fukuoka 2012: 218–219. 6 Bray Education films were imported by Okamoto Yoshiyuki and introduced by Harada, in keeping with his populist bent. For a detailed history, see Crafton 1993. 7 For a discussion of animals in anime as allegories for human hierarchies, see LaMarre 2008. 8 For a treatment of modes of self-reflexivity in Iwanami Production documentaries, see Tsunoda 2015. Self-reflexivity here is different than the recursivity of Terada, which is less interested in the subjectivity of the viewer and his/her sociality. 9 This faith in planning and infrastructure is consistent with other developmentalist projects, both in Japan and elsewhere. On PR and industrial films, see especially Yoshihara 1989, and Niwa and Yoshimi 2012. 10 The form of Tsuchimoto’s series tries to bring the optical unconscious of pollution into a place where it can be seen and debated by using many of the resources of the science film. These include statistics, intertitle narratives, footage from medical films showing the effects of mercury on cats, and many other forms of captioning. 11 Slow violence is Rob Nixon’s term. It is treated at length vis-à-vis Japanese ecocriticism in Marran 2017. Science films and industrial films offer a pre-history to the Minamata films and other critiques of modernity’s costs; as Marran notes, Tsuchimoto was a veteran filmmaker of PR and industrial films himself, well versed in its formal lexicons and infusions of dramatic storytelling.

Works cited Benjamin, W. 1999a. “News About Flowers.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2. Trans. R. Livingston, 155–157. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Benjamin, W. 1999b. “Little History of Photography.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2. Trans. R. Livingston, 507–530. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Bronson, A. 2016. One Hundred Million Philosophers Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Crafton, D. 1993. Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Friedlander, E. 2017. “Walter Benjamin on Photography and Fantasy.” Critical Horizons 18(4): 295–306. Fujii, J. 2003. “Yanagita Kunio to bunka eiga: Shōwa jūnendai ni okeru nichijō seikatsu no hakken to kokumin no sōzō/sōzō” (“Yanagita Kunio and Culture Film: Discovery of the Everyday in Showa 10s and the Imaginary of the Nation”). In Eiga no seiji gaku. Tokyo: Seidōsha. Fujii, J. 2012. “Films That Do Culture: A Discursive Analysis of Bunka Eiga, 1935–1945.” ICONICS 6: 51–68. Fukuoka, M. 2012. The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gakusei Hyakunenshi Iinkai. 1972. Gakusei hyakunenshi 3, tsūzoku kyōiku no shinkō (100 Years of School System: Promotion of Informal Education). Monbukagakushō. Gruber, J. 1970. “Ethnographic Salvage and the Shaping of Anthropology.” American Anthropologist 72(6): 1289–1299. Gunning, T. 1990. “Cinema of Attraction: Early Film. Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8(3): 63–70. Harada, M. 1966. Omoide no shichijūnen (70 Years Memoire). Tokyo: Seibundo-Shinkosha Publishing Co. Iijima, T. 1994. Kagaku eiga no shomondai (Issues in Science Films). Tokyo: Hakusuisha. Imamura, T. 1991. Eiga to bunka (Film and Culture). Tokyo: Yumani Shobō. Imperato, P.J. and Imperato, E.M. 1992. They Married Adventure: The Wandering Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Iwabori, K. 1941. “Bisokudo satsuei no jikansei” (“Temporality of Time Lapse Cinematography”). Bunka eiga 1(6): 20–24. Kawasaki, K. and Harada, K. 2002. Okada Sōzō: eizō no seiki—gurafizumu, puropaganda, kagaku eiga (Okada Sōzō, Century of Images: Graphism, Propaganda, Science Film). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Kumegawa, M. 2010. “Kobayashi Yonesaku-shi no kagaku eiga kara hone no kenkyū e” (“From Koba­ yashi Yonesaku’s Science Film to Research of Boens”). In T. Satō (ed.), Shirīzu Nihon dokyumentarī: sangyō kagaku hen, 144–153. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

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Anne McKnight LaMarre, T. 2008. “Speciesism, Part I: Translating Races into Animals in Wartime Animation.” Mechademia 3(1): 75–95. Landecker, H. 2006. “Microcinematography and the History of Science and Film.” Isis 97(1): 121–132. Maki, C. 2012. “Iwanami no kagaku kyōiku eiga: Sono dentō to shisō.” In Y. Niwa and S. Yoshimi (eds), Iwanami eiga no ichioku furēmu/Images of Postwar Japan: The Documentary Films of Iwanami Productions, 165–182. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Marran, C.L. 2017. Ecology without Culture: Aesthetics for a Toxic World. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Nakamura, H. 2012. “Haisha ni yoru haisha no tame no eizō” (“Images for the Defeated, by the Defeated”). In Y. Tsuchiya and S. Yoshimi (eds), Senryō suru me, senryō suru koe: CIE/USIS eiga to VOA rajio (Occupying Eyes, Occupying Voices). Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Nakamura, R. 2008. Kagaku eiga to watashi: Joryū eiga kantoku no kaisō (Science Film and I: Memoire of Woman Film Director). Tokyo: Bungeisha. Nakaya, U. 1988. “Hikaku kagaku-ron.” In Nakaya Ukichirō zuihitsu-shū, 276–292. Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko. Niwa, Y. and Yoshimi, S. 2012. Iwanami eiga no ichioku furēmu (Images of Post-War Japan: The Documentary Films of Iwanami Productions). Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Okada, H. 2012. “Eigashi no naka no Iwanami Kagaku Eiga” (“Iwanami Science Film in Film History”). In Y. Niwa and S. Yoshimi (eds), Iwanami eiga no ichioku furēmu (Images of Post-War Japan: The Documentary Films of Iwanami Productions). Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Satō, T. 2010. “Sangyō/kagaku-hen—shūroku sakuhin kaisetsu” (“Industrial/Science Film: Commentar­ ies”). In Shirīzu nihon dokyumentarī: Sangyō/kagaku-hen (Series, Japanese Documentary: Industrial/Science Films), 272–277. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tanaka, J. 1979. Nihon kyōiku eiga hattatsu shi (Evolutionary History of Educationals). Tokyo: Kagyūsha. Tanikawa, Y. 1978. Nihon no kagaku eiga shi (History of Japanese Science Film). Tokyo: Yuni Tsūshin Sha. Terada, T. 1997. “Kyōiku eiga ni tsuite” (“About Educationals”). In Terada Torahiko zenshū (Complete Collection of Terada Torahiko), 212–219. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tsunoda, T. 2015. The Dawn of Cinematic Modernism: Iwanami Productions and Postwar Japanese Cinema. PhD dissertation. Yale University. Yoshihara, J. 1989. Nihon no sangyō gijutsu eiga (Science Technological Film in Japan). Tokyo: Dai-ichi Hōki Shuppan. Yoshihara, J. 2011. Nihon tanpen eizōshi: bunka eiga, kyōiku eiga, sangyō eiga (History of Shorts in Japan: Culture Film, Educationals, and Industrials). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Zervigón, A.M. 2017. “Photography’s Weimar-Era Proliferation and Walter Benjamin’s Optical Uncon­ scious.” In S.M. Smith and S. Sliwinski (eds), Photography and the Optical Unconscious, 32–47. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Further reading Hori, H. 2018. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan 1926–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kawasaki, K. and Ishida, K. 2002. Okada Sōzō: eizō no seiki—gurafizumu, puropaganda, kagaku eiga (Okada Sōzō, Century of Images: Graphism, Propaganda, Science Film). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Niwa, Y. and Yoshimi, S. 2012. Iwanami eiga no ichioku furēmu (Images of Post-War Japan: The Documentary Films of Iwanami Productions). Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Tanikawa, Y. 1978. Nihon no kagaku eiga shi (History of Japanese Science Film). Tokyo: Yuni Tsūshin Sha. Yoshihara, J. 2011. Nihon tanpen eiga-sha: Bunka eiga, kyōiku eiga, sangyō eiga (History of Shorts in Japan: Culture Film, Educationals, and Industrials). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

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Part II

Questions of industry

Critical studies of regulatory frameworks, creative labor, and distributive networks

This part explores different approaches to addressing questions of “industry” as they pertain to the study of Japanese cinema. There is a deliberate ambiguity in the way this part uses the word “industry” without making a clear distinction between “film industry” and “media industry,” or between the industrial operations that produce moving image media and the industrial culture to which they belong. As Paul McDonald summarizes in his introduction to a 2013 Cinema Journal special issue dedicated to the topic of film and media industries, for scholars “growing up in a period which saw the multiplication and integration of media forms,” academic interest in industry studies naturally comes from television studies rather than from film studies’ traditional concerns with the studios’ oligopolistic control over production, distribution, and exhibition (McDonald 2013: 148; Gomery 1986). Some of the important monographs and anthologies coming out of Japanese film and media studies have similarly sought to reposition film studios within the expansive media ecology that encompasses video rental, manga and anime, and tele­ vision (Zahlten 2017; Tanikawa et al. 2012; Steinberg 2012; Kitaura 2018). We should note the additional local factor that has bolstered the relevance of television studies in industry studies today. In the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the meltdown at the Fuku­ shima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the unprecedented disruption of regular programming with constant news updates and a blackout of commercial advertisements gave new meaning to post-war cultural criticism that rhetorically linked television broadcast networks and nuclearpowered energy grids together in a techno-utopian dream of constant, dependable, omnipres­ ent—and, hence, invisible—industrial infrastructures that interconnect otherwise “atomized” consumer-citizens (Karlin 2016; Fujiki 2019: 280–282; Wada-Marciano 2016). While social scientific studies of film and media industries still play an important role in industry studies today, investigating the post-studio period increasingly involves broader analyses of the cultural logics underlying post-Fordism, postmodernism, and/or neoliberalism (e.g., Steinberg 2012; Azuma 2009; Condry 2013). This part might be broadly divided into two sections. The first two chapters by Takeshi Tanikawa (Chapter 7) and Takafusa Hatori (Chapter 8) analyze transformations to the con­ ditions of production, distribution, exhibition, and creative labor during the pivotal decades of the 1950s through the early 1970s. The last two chapters by Paul Roquet (Chapter 9) and Alex­ ander Zahlten (Chapter 10) examine alternative media practices that exist outside, although not necessarily in opposition to, the studio system. Through analyses of solo animation (small-scale, 109

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low-budget, independent work made by a single animator over months or even years) and the politics of distributive activities in amateur film and manga movements respectively, Roquet and Zahlten demonstrate how these alternative media practices paradoxically register changing industrial norms in mainstream media spheres as well as the broader economy even while exploring non-commercial modes of distributive networks and social relations. Takeshi Tanikawa’s opening chapter, “Kaiju Films as Exportable Content: Reassessing the Function of the Japanese Film Export Promotion Association,” relates a hitherto overlooked history of Japan’s first state-backed financing system for film production, in place from 1966 until 1972. Marshaling a vast array of data from the press and trade journals, Tanikawa evaluates the unexpected outcome of the Film Export Promotion Financing System, which ostensibly sought to alleviate the studios’ financial distress by aiding film exports to Europe, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Much to the chagrin of the lawmakers responsible for the plan, what emerged was a serialized, state-backed production of kaiju films as the “export-appropriate” genre. Tanikawa’s study adopts the time-tested “structure-agency” approach within industry studies that considers the “relationships between media infrastructures and state and market institutions” (Govil 2013: 172). Yet his emphasis is less on determining a normative state– market relationship than on understanding the volatile, contingent, and short-lived interactions that contribute to our understanding of the rich and complex history of the post-studio system era. That the studio executives placed their bet on kaiju films based on the success of Ultra Q (1966) and Ultraman (1966–1967) on the Japanese airwaves and the popularity of Daiei’s Gamera series on the American airwaves speaks volumes about the changing power balance between television and the film studios. Tanikawa’s unique professional background working for Nihon Herald, a major film importer and distributor, prior to starting his academic career, informs his key contributions to promoting critical studies of film and media industries in Japan as the leader of collaborative research projects that collect oral histories of film professionals, and as the editor of East Asia as Contents: Popular Culture, Media, Identity (2012), Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Industrial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition (2016), and Cultural Politics around East Asian Cinema 1939–2018 (2019). Tanikawa has described industry studies as a social scientific endeavor that offers a cor­ rective to the tendency of humanist film scholars to privilege critical analyses of film texts (Tan­ ikawa 2016: 7). At first glance, his approach appears to contravene filmmaker and media theorist John Caldwell’s ideal model of industry studies that supplements the critical tradition of humanities-based film studies. Caldwell cautions his readers against investing in the positivist fantasy that sees “the industry—typically researched through lenses of political economics and corporate organization—as a clean, self-evident sphere or as a bounded site for research that does not simultaneously involve the vagaries of human subjects and culture’s thick complexi­ ties” (2013: 157). Interestingly, it is precisely the abstraction of political economies that Tan­ ikawa keeps in check with his emphasis on social scientific data collecting. As the chapter included here demonstrates, Tanikawa approaches the film industry as a social institution inhab­ ited by humans replete with cultural biases. The history of the Film Export Promotion Financ­ ing System that he reconstructs thus contains an absurdist element: a series of rational decisions made by lawmakers, bureaucrats, and studio executives amounts to the unexpected elevation of kaiju films as state-sponsored cultural exports. Interest in recuperating hitherto overlooked, individualized perspectives to reframe macroscale industrial shifts also informs Takafusa Hatori’s subsequent chapter, “ ‘Fugitives’ from the Studio System: Ikebe Ryō, Sada Keiji, and the Transition from Cinema to Television in the Early 1960s.” Hatori revisits the well-studied subject of television’s impact on the studio system in the mid-1950s to the 1960s with a well-chosen strategic focus on film stars and their active 110

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resistance against the studio system. To be more precise, Hatori zeroes in on two of the topbilled stars—Toho’s Ikebe Ryō and Shochiku’s Sada Keiji—who explored different ways to overcome the so-called Five Company Agreement (implemented in 1953) that severely limited the ability of actors to manage their careers. Through an innovative use of special collections donated by Ikebe and Sada’s estates, Hatori tells a hitherto overlooked narrative of the two stars’ active efforts to organize across studio lines that included their leadership in founding an actors’ union in 1963. The chapter offers a compelling alternative reading of Fun’en (Smoke, 1964), a posthumous adaptation of Ozu Yasujirō’s screenplay for a television drama in which an impres­ sive line-up of leading actors affiliated across different studios made appearances. Instead of regarding this all-star appearance in Smoke as a touching display of the film studios’ nonpartisan respect for the late auteur Ozu, or the television industry’s audacious subversion of the Five Company Agreement, Hatori proposes we see it as a milestone in the actors’ efforts to renegoti­ ate their position in the changing media landscape. Paul Roquet’s chapter titled “Solo Animation in Japan: Empathy for the Drawn Body” picks up Hatori’s discussion of creative labor, but in the context of the animation industry, which comes with a unique body of scholarship that associates industrialized norms and creative labor that harkens back to cultural critics’ recognition of Disney’s Taylorized production line. Although solo animation—small-scale, self-produced, and festival-bound work—might appear to exist outside the cultural logic dictating commercial studio-produced animation, Roquet approaches solo animators as paradigmatic figures of a contemporary time when Japanese anima­ tion, whether studio-produced or independently produced, is increasingly dependent on free­ lance and casualized labor. On the one hand, Roquet inherits and further builds on a tradition of animation scholarship that has been attentive to macro-scale shifts in industrial norms, as in Marc Steinberg’s influential study of character-based “media mix” as a response to the global crisis of 1970s capitalism and the resulting paradigm shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist polit­ ical economy (Steinberg 2012: 197). On the other hand, Roquet’s study is unique as a crosspollination of a Steinberg-style analysis of post-Fordism cultural logic and an art-historical analysis of technique, drawing on Doi Nobuaki’s interpretation in particular, as the index of intense, embodied engagement with the work of drawing. Through case studies of the work of Wada Atsushi, Mizushiri Yoriko, and Kuno Yōko, Roquet identifies a unique aesthetic concern found across the works of leading contemporary solo animators, namely, the disciplinary manip­ ulations of bodies. Since one of Roquet’s goals is to provide a non-dichotomous framework for discussing solo animation as something other than an oppositional practice, his readings stop short of claiming them to be a critique of capitalist (or post-Fordist) labor conditions. In the ever-shifting contours of fragile animated bodies, Roquet finds instead heterogeneous imagina­ tive possibilities that include forming empathetic and sentient relations with nonhumans and inanimate things. The final chapter in Part II, Alexander Zahlten’s chapter, “Media Models of ‘Amateur’ Film and Manga,” offers an elliptical history of the theories and practices of amateur media practices that encompasses interwar amateur film culture, the 8 mm jishu eiga (autonomous film) move­ ment in the 1960s and the 1970s, and the dōjin (peer-produced) manga movement from the 1950s onwards. By opening the chapter with leftist theorist, film critic, and activist Matsuda Masao’s about-face from being a skeptic to an enthusiastic supporter of what he initially saw as a depoliticized 8 mm film movement, Zahlten invites us to rethink what we habitually mean by “media politics”; that is, he asks us to consider the politics of a self-organizing mobilization of distributive networking that tends to be eclipsed by concern with the presence or absence of a political message. It might at first be surprising that Zahlten adopts the notion of “industrial genre” to discuss the jishu movement of amateur filmmakers: “industrial genre” is a concept that 111

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he developed in his previous work to refer to commercial genres that meaningfully configure “industrial structures and practices, media texts, and spectators” (Zahlten 2017: 5). Like Roquet’s positioning of solo animation as a reflective space rather than a critical alternative to mainstream commercial media spheres, Zahlten approaches jishu distributive activities as a common concern that cuts across a broad political spectrum. This is made evident thanks to his comparative and transhistorical approach which allows us to recognize variable modes of distributive networks that appear in different contexts: a far-reaching international network of elites in interwar amateur film; heterogeneous groups making up a nationwide network in post-war jishu eiga; and the smaller and more flexible operations of the dōjin manga network. As with Roquet’s objection to the dichotomous debate that positions the independent against the mainstream, Zahlten distances himself from the digital age discourse of amateur media that not only tends to focus on “democratizing” the means of production at the cost of distributive self-organizing, but also perpetuates the dichotomy of industry and fandom.

Works cited Azuma, H. 2009. Japan’s Database Animals. Trans. J.E. Abel and S. Kono. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Caldwell, J.T. 2013. “Para-Industry: Researching Hollywood’s Blackwaters.” Cinema Studies 52(3) (Spring): 157–165. Condry, I. 2013. The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fujiki, H. 2019. Eiga kankyaku to wa nanimono ka: media to shakai shutai no kingendaishi (What Is Meant by Film Spectators?: Modern History of Media and Social Subject). Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press. Gomery, D. 1986. The Hollywood Studio System. New York: St. Martin’s. Govil, N. 2013. “Recognizing ‘Industry.’ ” Cinema Journal 52(3) (Spring): 172–176. Karlin, J.G. 2016. “Precarious Consumption After 3.11: Television Advertising in Risk Society.” In P. Galbraith and J.G. Karlin (eds), Media Convergence in Japan, 30–59. Ann Arbor, MI: Kinema Club. Kitaura, H. 2018. Terebi seichōki no Nihon eiga: media-kan kōshō no naka no dorama (Japanese Cinema in the Midst of Television’s Growth Period: Drama of Inter-Media Negotiation). Nagoya: Nagoya University Press. McDonald, P. 2013. “Introduction.” Cinema Studies 52(3) (Spring): 145–149. Steinberg, M. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis, MN: Univer­ sity of Minnesota Press. Tanikawa, T. 2016. Sengo eiga no sangyō kūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Industrial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Tanikawa, T. et al. 2012. Kontentsuka suru higashi-ajia: Taishūbunka/media/aidentiti (East Asia as Contents: Popular Culture, Media, Identity). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Tanikawa, T. and Sudo, M. 2019. Cultural Politics Around East Asian Cinema 1939–2018. Balwyn North, VIC: Kyoto University Press. Wada-Marciano, M. 2016. In T. Tanikawa (ed.) Sengo eiga no sangyō kūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Industrial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Zahlten, A. 2017. The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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7

Kaiju Films as ExportablE

ContEnt reassessing the function of the japanese Film Export promotion association Takeshi Tanikawa (translated by Caitlin Casiello and Joanne Bernardi)

The history of the Japanese Film Export Promotion Association (Nihon Eiga Yushutsu Shinkō Kyōkai) is not widely known today. This was an organization that the government created in response to the Japanese film industry’s request for financing at a critical time during the indus­ try’s downturn. When the Film Export Promotion Financing System (Yushutsu Eiga Shinkō Kinyū Sochi) was put in place in 1966, the Film Export Promotion Association (hereafter referred to as the Export Promotion Association) was founded as a corporation under the control of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), with the mandate to administer the loans made available through this system. The membership of the Export Promotion Associ­ ation consisted of the five major film studios, which paid 5 million yen in membership fees; the Association approved financing for films that were judged to be “export-appropriate films” (yūshutsu tekikaku eiga).1 Initially, the government was expected to finance a total of 6 billion yen over a three-year period through this system, In the end, this amount ballooned to 9 billion yen, thanks to a twoyear extension. In practice, only three studios made “export-appropriate films” using this system: Daiei, Nikkatsu, and Shochiku.2 The Export Promotion Association ended its role on March 31, 1972, after managing the balance carried over from the previous fiscal year. The history of the Export Promotion Association coincided with a decline in the fortunes of the film industry, symbolized by a series of major incidents such as Nikkatsu’s decision to recenter its business around roman poruno, or “romance pornography” (November 1971) and Daiei’s bankruptcy (December 1971). Both of these events sent shockwaves throughout the industry. Newspaper reports soon followed that Shochiku would withdraw from film produc­ tion (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1971: 1). In light of this background, the establishment and admin­ istration of the Export Promotion Association came under frequent criticism because the Association was seen as a relief package handed by the government to financially troubled film studios. There were already efforts to expand film export in the late 1960s, as the film industry faced a critical downturn. Studios could no longer hope to increase profits in the domestic market, so they looked toward foreign markets in Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, with 113

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television programs such as Urutora Q (Ultra Q, 1966) and Urutoraman (Ultraman, 1966–1967) receiving high viewership in this period, Daiei, Shochiku, and Nikkatsu came to view kaiju films as “content suitable for export.”3 With the financing obtained through the Export Promotion Association, each studio started producing its own brand of kaiju films.

Background: demands from within the film industry and speculations on overseas markets The establishment of this financing system with the Export Promotion Association as its conduit, was the result of the film industry approaching the government over the course of many years. The key figure was Daiei president Nagata Masaichi, who also served as the chairman of the Film Industry Promotion Committee (Eiga Sangyo Shinkō Shingikai) and of the Film Division of MITI’s Chemical Export Committee (Kagakuhin Yushutsu Kaigi). Nagata’s efforts were sup­ ported by Kawakita Nagamasa, president of Towa Shoji Corporation. Kawakita had promoted film exports since before World War II as a way to introduce Japanese culture overseas, and he was well connected with film industries abroad. On March 19, 1964, the Film Division of MITI’s Chemical Export Committee deliberated on the topic of “Establishing a Long-Term Low Interest Rate Public Financing System,” as the fourth item on the agenda regarding “Requests for Achieving Export Goals.” This agenda item read: In order to further extend the efforts to promote Japanese film exports, it is necessary to bolster the basis for production. Because large expenses are associated with produc­ tion, we request consideration of a long-term low-interest-rate public financing system. (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1971: 1) The proposal was approved as part of the broader agenda to achieve export goals for the 1964 fiscal year, and it was presented to the government through MITI. In March 1965, the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan followed up on this pro­ posal by submitting “Letter of Request for Setting Up a Film Industry Financing Measure Funded by Part of the Admissions Tax” (“Nyūjōzei no Ichibu o Genshi to Suru Eigasangyō Kinyūkikan Setchihō ni Kansuru Yōbōsho”) to the government. The gist of the letter was a request that the government consider establishing an organization, tentatively called the “Public Finance Corporation for Japanese Film” (Nihon Eiga Kinyūkōko), that would provide lowinterest loans to finance the production of films suitable for export. On August 16, 1965, the government convened the Supreme Export Council (First Period) (Saikō Yushutsu Kaigi), attended by Prime Minister Satō Eisaku, relevant ministers, representa­ tives from export associations, and government officials overseeing exports. The agenda included a discussion on “strategies based on requests.” and is likely to have referred to the film industry’s request for a low-interest-rate system to finance the production of export-oriented films. The outcome differed from the kind of “public finance corporation” that the film industry had in mind. The government instead came up with the implementation of the Film Export Promo­ tion Financing System for a period of three years, which made available bonds of 2 billion yen per year, underwritten by the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan (LTCB) and the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ). On January 13, 1966, 2 billion yen was thus added to the government’s fiscal investment and loan plan as the underwriting limit for LTCB/IBJ. The government was to provide “funding for the production of export-appropriate films,” with the same amount 114

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planned for fiscal years 1967 and 1968. (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1967: 84). Curiously, the council did not provide a clear rationale for setting the amount at two billion yen per year (a total of 6 billion yen over three years). The film industry appears to have interpreted this as an amount that would allow each of the five major studios to produce two films for export per year at a budget of 200 million yen per film (Toyama 1968: 282). The function of the Export Promotion Association is explained in the “Outline for the Film Export Promotion Financing System” (“Yushutsu Eiga Shinkō Kinyu Sochi Yōkō”) compiled by the policy research committee (Seichōkai) of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The docu­ ment explained that the Export Promotion Association would be responsible for distributing the funds to the studios, and that the studios were expected to make a maximum effort to export the subsidized films. The films receiving financing through the system were also included in the “Special Exhibition System for Japanese Film” (“Nihon Eiga Tokubetsu Jōei Seido”), a quasiquota system implemented in Japanese movie theaters (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1967: 84–85). The Board of Directors of the Export Promotion Association, formally established on April 15, 1966, consisted of fifteen individuals, including Nagata and the other presidents of the five major studios. The chairman was Takahashi Seīchiro, director of the Japan Art Academy, who also chaired Eirin (Commission for the Administration of the Motion Picture Code of Ethics) and the film division of MITI’s Industrial Structures Council (Kōzōshingikai). The actual evalu­ ation of whether the films were export-appropriate or not would be carried out by the Selection Committee of Export-Appropriate Films (Yūshutsu Tekikaku Eiga Sentei Iinkai), which was answerable to the Export Promotion Association’s board of directors. This selection committee was headed by Arimitsu Jirō, who was also on the Export Promotion Association’s board of directors and had formerly served as Vice-Minister of Education; he was also the founding presi­ dent of Musashino Art University. Other members of the nine-person committee included Hosokawa Takamoto (critic), Ōsawa Yoshio (President, Ōsawa Company), and Sōga Masashi (President, Tokyo Daiichi Film) (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1967: 85–86). On June 24, 1966, the Selection Committee of Export-Appropriate Films held its first selec­ tion meeting. The committee discussed and granted financing for Daiei’s Chiisai tōbōsha (Malenkiy Beglets, 1966). This was followed by Nikkatsu’s Asia himitsu keisatsu (Asiapol Secret Service, 1966), approved in the second and third meetings on August 10 and August 22. Financing was pro­ vided for 80 percent of the total production costs, with 55 percent of these costs coming from the Industrial Bank of Japan and 45 percent coming from the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan. This marked the first time that the Japanese film industry received financing from the Japanese government for film production (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1967: 86). Daiei had played a central role in establishing the government-run Film Export Promotion Financing System, with the Export Promotion Association as its conduit. Now that its film, Malenkiy Beglets, was approved by the Export-Appropriate Film Selection Committee, Daiei dispatched Vice-President Nagata Hidemasa to the Venice International Film Festival in late August, 1966, in order to both inspect the location shooting of the film in Russia and to hold preliminary discussions with film industry representatives from different countries in the hope of exporting the film widely across Europe. Returning from the two-week journey on September 9, 1966, Nagata Hidemasa assumed his work as a producer of Daikaijū kūchūsen: Gamera tai Gyaosu (Return of the Giant Monsters, 1967), the third in the blockbuster Gamera series. The film was scheduled for a March 1967 release, and work on special effects was penciled in to begin December 1966, followed by film shooting with actors starting in January 1967. On November 17, 1966, Daiei applied to the Export Promotion Association for financing for this film. In an article in Gōdō tsūshin, Nagata explained: 115

Takeshi Tanikawa

These days, every company is planning kaiju films because they are extremely popular overseas, taking in large amounts of foreign currency. Daiei’s first, Gamera, had a big response on American television, so we are continuing to produce them. Beginning with the second film, they are being sold on a commission basis. In order to actively develop foreign markets, we formed America Daiei KK (with $100,000 in capital funds). In addition to promoting export, America Daiei will also facilitate co­ production. (Tsūshingōdōsha 1966c) It was natural that Daiei would apply for loans from the Export Promotion Association for its monster movies—Return of the Giant Monsters, along with Daimajin gyakushū (Daimajin Strikes Again, 1966), the third in the Daimajin (Majin the Monster of Terror, 1966) series, was already in production, shot on an open set in Kutsukake, Kyoto, as of March. After all, Daiei was the Export Promotion Association’s primary supporter, and Gamera’s previous success had already demonstrated the potential of kaiju films. As the Export Promotion Association launched opera­ tions, other studios sought to determine what kinds of work were “export-appropriate.” They concluded that kaiju films and international spy action films were best suited for this purpose. Shochiku’s managing director Shirai Masao departed on an overseas inspection tour on September 28, 1966. Upon his return, in an interview on October 16, he stressed the import­ ance of East Asia as a powerful export market for Japanese films, further adding that: there is interest in kaiju films, so we want to be sure to produce about two of these every half-year cycle, and draw up a broader production plan for roughly ten films a year, including international co-productions, slated for export. (Tsūshingōdōsha 1966b) On September 13, just before Shirai’s trip to Europe, Shochiku had announced the line-up for the rest of the year, which notably included the studio’s first special effects film, Uchū daikaijū Girara (The X from Outer Space, 1967). This had a March 1967 release date (to coincide with spring break) (Tsūshingōdōsha 1966a). The announcement actually used the temporary title Giant Space Monster (Uchū daikaijū) because the monster’s name, “Girara” (ultimately used in the Japanese title Giant Space Monster Girara), had not yet been chosen. A major campaign to name the monster was later launched on a television program, produced by Shochiku with the support of the Watanabe Confectionary Company, during which they solicited submissions for the monster’s name from the general public.4 Meanwhile, at Nikkatsu, Daikyojū Gappa (Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, aka Gappa the Triphibian Monster, 1967) was scheduled for production and release over the March 1967 spring break. The studio’s request for funding from the Export Promotion Association was approved at the fourth and fifth meetings of the selection committee, held on September 2 and September 12, 1966 (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1967: 86). Filming began in December 1966. To avoid competing with Daiei’s Return of the Giant Monsters (released March 15) and Shochiku’s The X from Outer Space (March 25), its release was pushed back to April 22 for the pre-Golden Week holidays in early May (Tsūshingōdōsha 1966d). Thirty years later, Yamazaki Gen, scriptwriter for Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, offered a candid account in a 1996 interview with film historian Stuart Galbraith IV: Nikkatsu was one of the major studios, but had never done a kaijū eiga. Godzilla had become a very successful series, and so Nikkatsu became interested. If the film could 116

Kaiju films as exportable content

be successful overseas in the international market and thus get hard currency, Nikkatsu could get financing from the Japanese government as part of its promotion program. And so the film was financed in this manner. It was funny that we were asked to write a big budget monster movie to get government financing! The budget was ￥500,000,000 (about $1.4 million)—ten times the average cost of a Nikkatsu film. The government paid for all of it! Of course, we had to pay it back, but the studio owned real estate—hotels, golf course, and so on. Nikkatsu was in the red at the time, and they used all the money to pay back its debts instead of on the film! Suddenly, we had to make due with much less money, and this really pissed me off! [laughs]. (Galbraith 1998: 109–110) The details may lack accuracy, but this comment serves as an important testimony of how the studios actually used the financing that was received from the Export Promotion Association for “export-appropriate” films. This issue was soon raised in the Diet, putting the continued gov­ ernment funding of the Film Export Promotion Financing System into question. I would like to emphasize, however, that the film studios that used this system and received funding were actually committed to producing export-appropriate films, instructing their contracted screen­ writers to write scripts that could be turned into films aimed at overseas export.

Characteristics of “export-appropriate films” In Table 7.1, I have compiled a list of the kaiju and special effects films that opened in Japan between spring 1966 and the end of 1968, the period in which the film industry was reinvigor­ ated by the Film Export Promotion Financing System. In this list, there are six films marked with an asterisk that received financing as “Export-Appropriate Films”: Daimajin Strikes Again, Return of the Giant Monsters, The X from Outer Space, Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, Gamera tai uchū kaijū Bairasu (Destroy All Planets, aka Gamera vs. Viras, 1968), and Konchū daisensō (Genocide, 1968; literally, War of the Insects). Double features were still common at the time, but I have only noted cases when both films shown were kaiju or special effects films. I have omitted other types of double features. I have also added, for reference, foreign monster and special effects films that opened during this time. This data is from a period when each studio released double features every week and the number of films opening each year was much higher than it is today. The numbers include tele­ vision series that were re-edited into theatrical feature film versions, but the sheer fact that so many monster and special effects films (thirty-five in total) were released in this three-year window shows how unique this period was, with production efforts focused on these genres. As an addi­ tional factor, the first special effects television show by Tsuburaya Production, Ultra Q, debuted on the TBS network on January 2, 1966, an indication that kaiju films, which previously could have been seen in theaters only during spring break, Golden Week, or summer vacation, were now also being shown on television every week. Kaiju and special effects television shows were lighting up the cathode ray tubes throughout this three-year period, from Ultra Q to Tatakae! Maichi Jakku (Fight! Mighty Jack, broadcast through 1968). Table 7.2 shows kaiju and special effects television shows that were broadcast on television between the end of 1965 and the end of 1968. When we consider the state of theatrical films in Table 7.1 together with the television broadcasts in Table 7.2, we can understand why this period is referred to today as “The First Kaiju Boom” (Take Shobō 1995: 57). Let us return once again to theatrical films in order to analyze their characteristics. Excluding the television series re-edits, revivals, and the nine foreign films listed above, we are left with 117

Takeshi Tanikawa Table 7.1 Monster/SFX films shown in Japan (from April 1966 to December 1968) Studio

Title

Opening date

Remarks column

MGM Daiei Daiei Toei Toei

The Wild, Wild Planet War of the Monsters Majin the Monster of Terror Kaitei daisensō (Water Cyborg) Daininjutsu eiga Watari (Watari Ninja Boy) War of the Gargantuas Return of Daimajin Fantastic Voyage Daimajin Strikes Again Gojira, Ebira, Mosura Nankai no daikettō (Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster) Kairyū daikessen (The Magic Serpent) One Million Years B.C. Return of the Giant Monsters Maguma Taishi (Space Avenger) The X from Outer Space Monster from a Prehistoric Planet You Only Live Twice Thunderbirds Are Go Captain Ultra Kingu Kongu no gyakushū (King Kong Escapes) Ultraman Uchūjin Tōkyō ni arawaru (Warning from Space) Doctor Dolittle Kaijūtō no kessen: Gojira no musuko (Son of Godzilla) Kaijū Ōji (Monster Prince) Destroy All Planets Yōkai hyaku monogatari (The Hundred Monsters) 2001: A Space Odyssey Urutora sebun (Ultra Seven) Kaijū sōshingeki (Destroy All Monsters) Thunderbird 6 Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell Barbarella Genocide Ganmā daisangō: uchū daisakusen (The Green Slime)

April 13, 1966 April 17, 1966

Double Feature

Toho Daiei FOX Daiei Toho Toei FOX Daiei Toei Shochiku Nikkatsu UA UA Toei Toho Toho Daiei FOX Toho Toei Daiei Daiei MGM Toei Toho UA Shochiku PAR Shochiku Toei

Source: Table compiled by Tanikawa.

118

July 7, 1966 July 21, 1966 July 31, 1966 August 13, 1966 September 23, 1966 December 10, 1966 ※ December 17, 1966 December 21, 1966 February 25, 1967 March 15,1967 March 19, 1967 March 25, 1967 April 22, 1967 June 17, 1967 July 15, 1967 July 21, 1967 July 22, 1967

August 26, 1967

※ TV Series Re-edit ※ ※

TV Series Re-edit Double Feature TV Series Reedit Revival

December 15, 1967 December 16, 1967 March 19, 1968 March 20, 1968

April 11, 1968 July 21, 1968 August 1, 1968 August 6, 1968 August 14, 1968 October 26, 1968 November 9, 1968 December 19, 1968

TV Series Re-edit ※ Double Feature

TV Series Re-edit

※

Kaiju films as exportable content Table 7.2 Monster/SFX TV programs aired in Japan (from December 1965 to December 1968) Production Co.

Title

Network Period on air

Number of episodes

Tsuburaya Prod. Tsuburaya Prod. P Production Tsuburaya Prod. Tsuburaya Prod. Toei Toei Tsuburaya Prod. Tsuburaya Prod. Nihon Tokusatsu Toei Tsuburaya Prod. Tsuburaya Prod.

Ultra Q wa Kaiji no Sekai Ultra Q Maguma Taishi Ultraman Zenyasai Ultraman Akuma kun Kamen no Ninja Akakage Captain Ultra Ultra Seven Kaiju Ōji Giant Robo Mighty Jack Fight! Mighty Jack

TBS TBS CX TBS TBS NET CX TBS TBS CX CX CX CX

1 28 64 1 39 26 52 24 49 26 26 13 26

December 25, 1965 January 2, 1966–July 3, 1966 July 4, 1966–September 25, 1967 July 10, 1966 July 17, 1966–April 9, 1967 October 6, 1966–March 20, 1967 April 5, 1067–March 27, 1968 April 16, 1967–September 24, 1967 October 1, 1967–September 8, 1968 October 2, 1967–March 25, 1968 October 11, 1967–April 1, 1968 April 6/1968–June 29, 1968 July 6, 1968–December 28, 1968

Source: Table compiled by Tanikawa.

twenty-one new kaiju and special effects films released between 1966 and 1968. Among these, fourteen included a character that was a foreigner (including cases in which he or she was played by a Japanese actor). In fact, the films that do not include a foreign character are all special effects jidaigeki period films. In other words, all kaiju or special effects films that take place in the present or near future include a foreign character. We can thus call this presence of foreign characters a key characteristic of these films. This certainly applied to the six films that received funding as “export-appropriate films” from the Export Promotion Association. In fact, it was not only kaiju/special effects films that demonstrate this characteristic: a foreign character (including those played by a Japanese actor) appeared in at least sixteen of the sixty films in total that received financing from the Export Promotion Association.5 Anecdotal evidence helps to contextualize the reasoning behind such curious casting deci­ sions. According to Yuasa Noriaki, director of the Gamera series at Daiei, after the series received government funding as targeted for export, the inclusion of a foreign character became a standard convention beginning with Destroy All Planets: Foreign buyers couldn’t tell the characters apart. Whether it was Hongō Kōjirō or Honō Sanshirō, it was all the same to them (Laughs). Ultimately, they told us to keep the soldier looking like the soldier the whole time. That was a problem, so we figured that we might make the film more accessible to them by including a family of foreign­ ers as neighbors. (Yuasa 2001: 44) Under these circumstances, foreign characters were seen as a necessity for a film’s success both in Japan and overseas. The aforementioned Shochiku executive Shirai Masao made a similar observation: When exporting a Japanese film, having a Caucasian star in the line-up increases the film’s chance of being shown in first-run theaters. We will likely reorient the production 119

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objectives according to the needs of the world market. Projects that do well overseas are kaiju films and action comedy. Since every studio in Japan is invested in kaiju movies, we cannot make that many at Shochiku. (Tsūshingōdōsha 1966b) Paradoxically, it was Toho, which had a large lead on the other studios in producing exportappropriate kaiju films and was an expanding business independent of the Film Export Promo­ tion Financing System, that featured high-profile Hollywood stars in its films: Nick Adams (Furankenshutain tai chitei kaijū Baragon, 1965 [Japan]/Frankenstein Conquers the World, 1966 [USA]), Russ Tamblyn (Furankenshutain no kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira, 1966/War of the Gargantuas, 1970), and Joseph Cotton and Cesar Romero (Ido zero daisakusen/Latitude Zero, 1969). In con­ trast, foreign actors who appeared in Daiei and Shochiku films, and the two films co-produced by Toei (without the assistance of the financing system) were not exactly foreign “stars.” Consider Daiei’s Teppō denraiki (The Saga of Tanegashima, 1968), a film about the arrival of muskets in Japan by way of the Portuguese. The Portuguese embassy proposed this film through Kawakita Nagamasa (the president of Towa), and it received funding from the Export Promo­ tion Association (Suzuki 1990: 252). Nagata Hidemasa flew to the United States to find a lead actor for the film. When he arrived back at Haneda Airport, he conceded: “We were in negoti­ ations for actors for Teppō monogatari [sic] but famous stars had their schedules booked out, and the ones we requested weren’t available, so we need to reconsider our casting” (Tsūshingōdōsha 1967c). This failure was likely the result of clumsy business skills and their lack of understanding about the American film world.

Criticism of the export promotion association and the end of the financing system Of the sixty films that received financing from the Export Promotion Association, a total of eleven films belonged to the broader special effects/horror genre: nine kaiju or special effects films, plus an additional two horror/ghost films (there was also Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro [Goke the Body Snatcher, aka Goke the Vampire] which applied for but did not receive financing). We need to be careful not to treat kaiju or special effects films as representative of “export-appropriate films” as a whole, even though films in these genres accounted for roughly 15–18 percent of all financed films. It is worth noting, however, the impact these genres had in the first year of the system’s implementation, when the ratio was even higher. There were four kaiju films and two spy action films within the eleven titles that received funding, including Nikkatsu’s Honryū o yuku otoko, which received funding that was ultimately returned when production was canceled. Both within and outside the industry, these genres were perceived as a clear trend. Consider, for instance, the following account of the Export Promotion Association in the 1968 Eiga nenkan (1968 Japan Film Yearbook): It has been a year and a half since the association was founded. What has emerged as a problem is […] the concentration of applications in the genres of kaiju films and spy action films. It is true that this problem has led to criticism from outside the association that this might be going against the intent of government financing, but it is also a fact that these genres are most suitable for export to America or East/South Asia. The association requested that the members actively apply for films in other genres as well. (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1969: 83) 120

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Similarly, the following account appeared in the “Final Report on the First Fiscal Year of the Japanese Film Export Promotion Association,” an article for Kinema junpō evaluating the Export Promotion Association’s first year: Except for the first financed project Malenkiy Beglets, the works completed up to April (1967) have been four special effects films about kaiju and two action movies, demon­ strating a clear trend. Of course, special effects films sell well overseas, but how does this look from the perspective of quality? It is difficult to speak of the approved films as high-quality, let alone artistic, entertainment. This raises doubts whether these films were ever really appropriate for export in the first place. Some critical voices say these films are actually dragging down exports. (Kinema Junpōsha 1967a: 41) The Yomiuri shimbun published a feature titled “Film Studios’ Calculation: Looking for Prefer­ ential Financing with ‘Kaiju’ and Action” in the entertainment section of the October 25, 1966 evening edition. This article featured a defense by Nagata Masaichi that “Special effects techno­ logy is one of Japan’s strengths. Each studio has unique technical strengths, so can’t we treat these films as showcases at a trade fair?” (Yomiuri Shimbun 1966). The feedback within the film industry was less critical. For instance, Isoyama Hiroshi’s article in Kinema junpō conceded that “the two billion yen in financing” was “probably because of the political activities of the studio heads.” He also suggested, however, that “the idea that films are ‘on the decline’ and ‘fading’ has gradually penetrated the public consciousness,” and that “there wouldn’t have been this loan without the public’s sympathy and the support of film fans” (Kinema Junpōsha 1966a: 37). In short: There were voiceless voices wishing to see the studios regain strength, make good movies, and send them abroad. The kaiju and special effects movies are the first round of efforts. We hope they will be big hits that meet the expectations of the citizens. (Kinema Junpōsha 1966a: 37) Also in Kinema junpō, subtitle translator Takase Shizuo reflected on the news “that one billion yen of the taxpayers’ money will be loaned out to support Japanese film exports” and that “most of the films that have applied for the loan have been special effect films.” Takase summed up the positive side: “It’s not such a bad thing because kaiju films appeal to all” (Kinema Junpōsha 1966b: 103). In the second year, ten works received financing. Of these, the number of kaiju films decreased to one title, but two belonged to the ghost film (kaidan) genre, in addition to three spy action films. If we can group these genres under the category of popular entertainment genres, they accounted for roughly 57 percent of the productions financed over the course of two years, or twelve out of twenty-one titles.

The end of the kaiju film boom and dissolution of Nikkatsu and Daiei Long before the kaiju/special effects boom instigated by the Export Promotion Association, Toho had reigned as the trendsetter in these genres. It is therefore interesting that already in March 1967, at a meeting of the Film Division of MITI’s Chemical Export Committee, Yone­ moto Tadashi, who was substituting for vice-president Mori Iwao, struck a cautious tone that perceived the industry’s changing tide: 121

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Kaiju films have taken the lead in export films, but … because similar works are being produced in America, I think we need to take a leap forward beyond just kaiju films, so we are researching potential approaches. (MITI 1964) In fact, Toho had taken a wait-and-see approach to the Export Promotion Association. As executive director Fujimoto Sanezumi commented, the interest rate set by the Export Promo­ tion Association was higher than 7.5 percent, which was the rate for Toho’s corporate bonds: “Of course, we borrow funds as cheaply as possible. To put it simply, right now, we can borrow cheap, so we borrow cheap” (Kinema Junpōsha 1967b: 33). There was no obvious benefit for Toho to turn to the Export Promotion Association. A cautious comment also came from Shochiku. On July 11, 1967, Shochiku president Kido Shirō returned to Japan from the Berlin International Film Festival. Speaking at the airport, he reported, “Kaiju are no good now and neither are thrillers; there seems to be a general sense of uncertainty regarding the direction the production trend is headed” (Tsūshingōdōsha 1967d). Okuyama Tōru, the head of Shochiku’s international division (and future president of Shochiku), who had also been at Berlin, corroborated Kido’s point: We are optimistic about exporting Shochiku films because the promotional screenings were a success. For co-productions, we made plans on our side and exchanged opin­ ions with the other party. The feeling was that in Europe, monster movies are on the decline, and romance is up-and-coming. We might accordingly change our plans. (Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967e) The X from Outer Space ended up being Shochiku’s only kaiju film. The studio made two more special effects films with the support of the Export Promotion Association: Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) and Genocide. After these films, they changed their tactic, and soon struck gold with the Otoko wa tsurai yo! (literally, “It’s tough being a man”), aka the Tora-san series, beginning in 1969, for which they had also received financing from the Export Promotion Association. The major problem was the case of Nikkatsu and Daiei, two studios that would cease opera­ tions few years later. On January 23, 1971, an article titled “Shochiku Withdraws from Film Production, Daiei Halts Distribution, Focuses on Production,” was published in Nihon keizai shimbun. Shochiku will be withdrawing completely from film production in order to focus on distribution and exhibition […] on the other hand, Daiei will focus on production by pulling back from Dainichi Distribution (based in Tokyo, headed by Matsuyama Hideo, with the capital of ¥30 million), which has just been formed jointly with Nikkatsu in response to the extreme downturn. The news was announced by Kido and Nagata respectively at the summit meeting of the presidents of the five major studios. It is expected that both Shochiku and Daiei will be conducting substantial lay­ offs. Nikkatsu also intends to dissolve their cooperation with Daiei, and the film indus­ try—including Toei and Toho—is inevitably headed toward reorganization and consolidation. (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1971: 1) In response, Shochiku held an emergency press conference on the same day and denied the content of the article as “having no basis in truth” (Tsūshingōdōsha 1971a). 122

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As the article stated, Nikkatsu and Daiei had consolidated their distribution arms by founding the Dainichi Film Distribution Company in April 1970, in order to streamline their business in the face of severe financial strain. Notwithstanding the studio’s rejection of the article as “having no basis in truth,” which echoed Shochiku’s stance (Tsūshingōdōsha 1971b), Nikkatsu ulti­ mately did withdraw from Dainichi Distribution at the end of September, 1971. After signi­ ficant employee terminations and structural reductions, Nikkatsu made a drastic reorientation toward “romance pornography” (roman poruno) in November of that year (Tsūshingōdōsha 1971c and 1971d). As Yamazaki Gen, screenwriter for Monster from a Prehistoric Planet revealed, Nikkatsu’s worsening economic state was such that they had been using the funding obtained from the Export Promotion Association for debt repayment, operating on a hand-to-mouth basis. In contrast, Daiei continued both production and distribution after Nikkatsu’s withdrawal from Dainichi Distribution. Daiei continued producing kaiju films up until Gamera tai shinkai kaijū Jigura (Gamera vs. Zigra, 1971), which was the seventh installment in the Gamera series. Starting with the third installment, Return of the Giant Monsters, all of the films belonging to the series had received loans from the Export Promotion Association. It is instructive, however, to quote Gamera director Yuasa Noriaki’s description of budgeting for the series: The first [Gamera] was a B-movie, but that turned out to be a big hit, so the second one [War of the Monsters] was promoted to an A-budget. I think Daiei thought I wouldn’t be able to handle such an A-movie. It was the most expensive one, it cost ￥80,000,000 (about $225,000). Return of the Giant Monsters was about ￥60,000,000 ($167,000), the black and white Gamera was about ￥40,000,000 ($111,000). Destroy All Planets and Attack of the Monsters were about ￥24,000,000 ($67,000), and Monster X and Zigra about ￥35,000,000 ($97,000). … I was shocked to hear that from the fourth film, Destroy All Planets, we had to make do with the budget of an ordinary film. I think that might have been a sign that Daiei was going bankrupt. (Galbraith IV 1998: 74–75) Daiei, having fallen into these conditions, would end up re-using film shot for previous works and somehow make it fit in new situations. Since these figures are coming from one individual’s personal recollection, there is no guarantee that they are accurate, but we can estimate the budgets based on the Export Promotion Association’s financing records. The amount Daiei received from the Export Promotion Association was 80 percent of the total budget for each project, so we can estimate that Return of the Giant Monsters was budgeted at ¥191,250,000, Destroy All Planets and Gamera vs. Monster X were ¥158,750,000, Attack of the Monsters was ¥147,500,000, and even the cheapest, Gamera vs. Zigra, was ¥73,750,000 (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1971: 86, and 1974: 39). Note the gap between these figures, based on the Export Promotion Associa­ tion’s estimates, and those recounted by Yuasa. We might try to rationalize such evidence of sloppy accounting as a reflection of the industry norm at the time. Because large amounts of tax money were used for these works, however, it is difficult to defend the studio against public criticism. The public learned about the studios’ hand-to-mouth operation of requesting loans from the Export Promotion Association in amounts that grossly exceeded the actual production budget, only to use the excessive amount to repay debts. Yomiuri shimbun spearheaded the criticism in a February 24, 1970 article titled “ ‘Ninja-Trick’ in Film Exports/Big Financing yet Small Spend­ ing/Government-Bankrolled Export Promotion Association Supports Three Studios.’ ” This article merits quoting in length. 123

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The Association had a sloppy screening process, giving the O.K. to anything that had paperwork in order. The financing was limited to a maximum of 80% of the film’s pro­ duction budget, with a fixed 7.5% interest rate for three years, but the production budget was calculated in an entirely arbitrary manner. For instance, take studio A’s film which received financing last October. The studio is said to have paid just around sixty million yen to the production team, but it received no less than 130 million yen from the Export Promotion Association. Examples of this sort of budget padding are common, and the majority of projects receive over a hundred million yen in financing. (Yomiuri Shimbun 1970) The article concludes with a quote from a studio A executive who reveals the reality behind the Export Promotion Association: “Its outer face is export promotion, but the truth is that it’s a political consideration to provide ‘life support’ financing for the studios that are no longer eli­ gible to borrow from banks” (Yomiuri Shimbun 1970). On April 3, 1970, about a month after the Yomiuri article, Ōide Shun, a representative from the Socialist Party, dropped a bomb of a question on MITI about the Export Promotion Associ­ ation at a Cabinet Committee meeting in the House of Representatives. As the morning edition of Mainichi shimbun reported on the following day, Representative Ōide raised the following concerns: a) of the 6.7 billion yen distributed in financing, 2.1 billion had not been repaid; b) notwithstanding the original explanation that this was a “special measure limited to three years,” the program has been extended without discussion both in fiscal years 1969 and 1970; and c) MITI implemented a sloppy screening process, providing over a hundred million yen to a film which only cost 60 million yen to produce, or providing financing to a film that was never produced (Mainichi Shimbun 1970). Examples cited in point (c) included Nikkatsu’s Honryū o yuku otoko, which was canceled after filming in Taiwan fell through, and Senketsu no kiroku, also by Nikkatsu, which was delayed because of the director’s illness. Point (b) referred to the fact that although the financing system had initially been set at 2 billion yen per year for three years, the Film Division of MITI’s Chemical Exports Committee requested an extension of the financing system past the fiscal year of 1969 (Kinema Junpōsha 1968: 90). The previous year’s financing was carried over for 1969 with an additional 1 billion yen.6 For the fiscal year of 1970, an additional 2 billion yen financing limit was decided upon, and the Film Export Promotion Financing System ultimately swelled to a total of five years and 9 billion yen (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1974: 39). Ōide emphasized that there was no demonstrable sign that this system had improved the exportability of films receiving its assistance. Moreover, despite being formed under Article 8 of the National Government Organization Act, the Export-Appropriate Film Selection Com­ mittee had bypassed the provision necessitating that the formation of such committees be based on a particular law. Thus ended Japan’s first ever program to use government funds to finance film production. The Film Export Promotion Financing System and its administrative branch, the Export Pro­ motion Association, had secured a total of 9 billion yen during the fiscal years 1966 to 1970. It finally completed its duties at the end of the 1971 fiscal year on March 31, 1972, after adminis­ tering the budget carried over from the previous year. The system provided financing for sixtyone films, totaling 7,333,400,000 yen (including the canceled and repaid Honryū o yuku otoko). All in all, it left 1,666,600,000 yen worth of capital unused. During that time, in order to address the criticism that the system was being monopolized by the five major studios (in fact, only three of them), the Association expanded membership to the Ishihara Production company, which received financing for Yomigaeru Daichi (Blazing Continent, 1971) (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1974: 40). 124

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Led by Nagata Masaichi, who had been the driving force behind the system’s creation, Daiei used the system right up until its end, producing Gamera vs. Zigra, the only film financed in 1971, in the Export Promotion Association’s final year, while the studio struggled to survive. Daiei declared bankruptcy on December 23, 1971, just months before the Export Promotion Association closed its doors for good at the end of March 1972. The loan amounts waiting to be repaid for their Export Promotion Association financing came to 184,800,000 yen; these were filed as debt for the bankruptcy proceedings (Jiji Tsūshinsha 1974: 39).

How do we judge the production of kaiju films through the Export

Promotion association?

In January 1970, as the extended financing period was about to end, the Motion Picture Pro­ ducers Association of Japan and the Film Industry Promotion Special Measures Committee (chaired by Kido Shirō and vice-chair Mori Iwao) compiled the “Request Regarding Govern­ ment Assistance on the Promotion of the Japanese Film Industry.” Thanks to aggressive lobbying efforts through government connections, a new corporation, the “Japanese Film Industry Pro­ motion Association” (Shadanhōjin Nihon Eiga Sangyō Shinkō Kyōkai), was formed in 1973 in order to systematize comprehensive financial support for the film industry by the Japanese gov­ ernment, as if to replace the Film Export Promotion Financing System. The driving force behind the lobbying is said to have been Mori Iwao, vice-president of Toho, which had con­ tinued to succeed in the film world. Mori took up the place previously held by Nagata Masaichi, who had been the leader in pressuring the government to support the film industry until Daiei’s bankruptcy (Kinema Junpōsha 1972: 132). The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ budget request was debated at the 63rd Diet Committee for Culture, Education, and Science session on October 23, 1970, and the new program to use government funds to assist the film industry met with opposition (Kinema Junpōsha 1972: 132). Councilor Yasunaga Hideo of the Socialist Party objected to a swift transition to another financ­ ing program by asking pointed questions about the conditions in which the Export Promotion Association had handled financing: Consider the films that have received financing up to now: Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, Daimajin Strikes Again, Return of the Giant Monsters, The X from Outer Space, Profound Desire of the Gods [Kamigami no fukaki yokubō], Yukionna, The Bride from Hades [aka Peony Lantern/Botan dōrō], The Girl I Abandoned [Watashi ga suteta onna], They Made Love/One Day at Summer’s End [Nureta futari] and many more—they’ve only been foolish films. The government loans have enabled the studios to produce these films even as their businesses made losses […] In my opinion, virtually no “quality” film was made that satisfied the ostensible ‘objective’ of ‘introducing the state and the culture of our nation to overseas viewers.” Well, maybe if you think Japan’s culture today is essentially an ero-guro (erotic and grotesque) culture, or that the so-called kaiju film is Japanese culture, then I have no complaint. But I for one believe these works do not represent Japanese culture. Speaking for MITI, can you say that the Export Promotion Association and its financing achieved its goals? (House of Councilors Session 1970) In response, Nagahashi Hisashi, MITI Commerce Bureau Vice-Minister, was forced to give a painful answer: “I regret that I cannot say we have achieved sufficient results.” Next, Kon Hidemi, director of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, answered Representative Yasunaga’s 125

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question requesting an explanation for the new Japanese Film Industry Promotion Association. He emphasized that the Association was not being created to save the five major studios as cor­ porations per se, but that it was, fundamentally, a measure to prevent the decline of cinema itself (House of Councilors Session 1970). If we are to evaluate the work of the Export Promotion Association, Yasunaga’s above ques­ tion and the answer Nagahashi provided serve to summarize it well. Ultimately, there was no growth in the value generated by exporting films: $4.51 million in 1966 (target: $5.45 million), $4.56 million in 1967 (target: $6 million), $4.12 million in 1968 (target: $6.2 million), $4.53 million in 1969 (target: $5.1 million), and $4.03 million in 1970 (target: $5.2 million). Nevertheless, we should not completely dismiss the Film Export Promotion Financing System and the activities of the Export Promotion Association simply as failures. The Film Export Promotion Financing System, which continued for five years despite criti­ cism, left a significant impact on film history. This system opened the door to a system of national support for Japanese film. It became the foundation for the structures currently in place to promote the Japanese film industry through the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Arts Council. It is well worth re-evaluating, as part of Japanese film history, the fact that the first era of Japanese films financed by the Japanese government consisted of kaiju films and special effects movies funded through the Export Promotion Association.

Notes

1 2 3

4

5 6

This chapter is an English translation of an updated version of Takeshi Tanikawa, “Nihon eiga yushutsu shinkō kyōkai to yushutsu muke kontentsu: Seifu shikin katsuyō ni yoru kaijū eiga seisaku to sono tenmatsu,” in Sengo eiga no sangyō kūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Indus­ trial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition), edited by Takeshi Tanikawa (Tokyo: Shinwa-sha, 2016), 45–83. The five major film studios at the time were Daiei, Nikkatsu, Shochiku, Toei, and Toho. Ishihara Production was later admitted to the system and produced Yomigaeru daichi (Blazing Continent, 1971). Translators’ note: Kaiju film (kaijū eiga) denotes the Japanese giant monster film genre that gained ascendancy after the popularity of Gojira (Godzilla, 1954) and its subsequent reworking and importa­ tion as Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956). The genre has a hybrid socio-political and cultural genea­ logy with cinematic antecedents that include The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). In total, 210,564 submissions were received by the deadline of January 20, 1967. A panel of judges including Shirai (Chairman), Takei (Watanabe Confectionary executive), rakugo performer Hayashiya Sanpei, and director Nihonmatsu Kazui decided on the name “Girara” and held a naming ceremony on January 28 in Ōfuna Hall at Shochiku’s Ōfuna Studios (Tsūshingōdōsha 1967a). In actuality, there were sixty-one films, but that includes Nikkatsu’s Honryū o yuku otoko, which was canceled after receiving funding. Since only Daiei, Nikkatsu, and Shochiku, the three companies that were in financial distress, used the system, while the economically secure Toho and Toei did not, there were funds left over. These amounts were carried over to the next year as a matter of course.

Works cited Galbraith IV, S. 1998. Monsters are Attacking Tokyo! Venice, CA: Feral House. House of Councilors Session, 63rd Diet. 1970. Meeting Transcript vol. 4 (Oct 23), Education Committee Meeting. Online at http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/sangiin/063/1170/06310231170004c.html [accessed September 15, 2015]. Jiji Tsūshinsha. 1967. Eiga nenkan 1967 (Film Almanac 1967). Jiji Tsūshinsha. 1969. Eiga nenkan 1968 (Film Almanac 1968). Jiji Tsūshinsha. 1971. Eiga nenkan 1970 (Film Almanac 1970).

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Kaiju films as exportable content Jiji Tsūshinsha. 1974. Eiga nenkan 1973 (Film Almanac 1973). Kinema Junpōsha. 1966a. Kinema junpō 415 (Late May). Kinema Junpōsha. 1966b. Kinema junpō 428 (Early December). Kinema Junpōsha. 1967a. Kinema junpō 439 (Late August). Kinema Junpōsha. 1967b. Kinema junpō 449 (Late September). Kinema Junpōsha. 1968. Kinema junpō 465 (Late April). Kinema Junpōsha. 1972. Kinema junpō 570. New Year’s Special Issue (Late January). Mainichi Shimbun. 1970. “Thoughtless Financing of the Government for Production of ExportAppropriate Films, Questioning at House of Representatives: 2.1 Billion Yen had not been Repaid.” Mainichi shimbun (morning edn), April 4. MITI. 1964. Meeting transcript (March 19). Chemical Exports Committee, Film Division. Nihon Keizai Shimbun. 1971. “Shochiku Would Withdraw from Film Production, Daiei Would Stop Distribution and Concentrate Only on Production.” Nihon keizai shimbun (morning edn) January 23: 1. Suzuki, A. 1990. Rappa to yobareta otoko: eiga purodyūsā (The Man who was Called “Trumpet”: Film Producer). Tokyo: Kinema Junposha. Toyama, S. 1968. Eigakai 365nichi (Film World, 365 Days) (1966–1967 edn). Tokyo: Tokyo Tsūshinsha. Take Shobō. 1995. Chōjin gahō: kokusan kakū hīrō 40-nen no ayumi (Illustrated Superheroes: Forty Years of Made-in-Japan Fantasy Heroes). Tokyo: Take Shobō. Tsūshingōdōsha. 1966a. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 9963 (November 18). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1966b. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 9987 (October 28). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1966c. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10004 (September 16). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1966d. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10034 (December 24). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967a. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10057 (January 30). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967b. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10067 (February 2). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967c. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10176 (June 23). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967d. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10191 (July 13). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1967e. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 10205 (July 27). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1971a. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 1329 (January 31). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1971b. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 1331 (February 14). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1971c. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 1352 (July 11). Tsūshingōdōsha. 1971d. Gōdō tsūshin, no. 1375 (December 19). Yomiuri Shimbun. 1966. “Film Studios’ Calculation: Looking for Preferential Financing with ‘Kaiju’ and Action.” Entertainment section. Yomiuri shimbun (evening edn), October 25. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1970. “ ‘Ninja-Trick’ in Film Exports/Big Financing yet Small Spending/GovernmentBankrolled Export Promotion Association Supports Three Studios.’ ” Yomiuri shimbun (morning edn), February 24. Yuasa, N. 2001. “Director’s interview.” Gamera THE BOX 1965–1980. DVD Set Pamphlet. Tokuma Japan Communications.

Further reading Iwamoto, K. 2015. Nihon eiga no kaigai shinshutsu: bunka senryaku no rekishi. Tokyo: Shinwa-sha.

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8

“Fugitives” From the

studio system

ikebe ryō, sada Keiji, and the transition from

cinema to television in the early 1960s Takafusa Hatori

Introduction Ikebe Ryō (1918–2010) and Sada Keiji (1926–1964) were two of the most fascinating male film stars from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, when Japanese cinema was enjoying a golden era as an audio-visual media industry. They were the faces of modern drama, starring in heterosexual romances rather than heroic action adventures. Their screen images have usually been described in contrasting terms. Film director Shinoda Masahiro recounts his decision not to cast Sada for the leading role of Kawaita hana (Pale Flower, 1964): “Sada might be suitable for a love-sick man, but he could not help signify a good-natured person.” For the particular role, he needed an actor who signified “apathy and lethargy.” He thus turned to Ikebe, who “was about the only actor who could convey a sense of ennui by his sheer presence” (Shinoda 2010: 136–137).1 In a similar vein, film journalist Ueno Koshi emphasizes that Sada’s screen image was inseparable from “simple earnestness” (sono mi ni sonawatta jitchokuna imeji), which disqualified him for the role that went to Ikebe in Ozu Yasujirō’s Sōshun (Early Spring, 1956): a white-collar worker who succumbs to the temptation of an extramarital affair. It was necessary, Ueno argues, that Ozu cast Ikebe rather than Sada, since Ikebe’s screen image conveyed “a toxic kind of seduc­ tiveness, and a sense of volatility imbued with the threat of self-destruction” that was lacking in Sada’s (Ueno 2010: 135). While Shinoda and Ueno help us to clarify the different screen images associated with the two representative stars of Japanese cinema’s golden era, their approach reduces the stars’ signifi­ cance to dichotomous notions such as “ennui” and “seductiveness” versus “good-naturedness” and “earnestness.” We need a more dynamic approach that would position stardom within filmhistorical contexts. A viable model is suggested by Ishida Minori’s monograph on Sada that analyzes his screen image as an integral aspect of the post-war development of Shochiku’s modern drama, notably the so-called “woman’s movies” (Ishida 2010: 245–270). In this chapter, however, I would like to cast light on an aspect that is often eclipsed by the charismatic onscreen presence of Ikebe and Sada. Based on archival research conducted at The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University (hereafter Enpaku), which holds the Ikebe Ryō Collec­ tion and the Sada Keiji Collection that were both donated by their families, this chapter excavates 128

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the forgotten history of the collaboration between the two stars. Their collaboration, aimed at co-creating film and television contents, was at the pivotal juncture when television was poised to usurp cinema’s position as the hegemonic audio-visual media. Scholarship on Japanese cinema has traditionally placed an emphasis on film texts over indus­ trial contexts, thus making it difficult to recognize stars such as Ikebe and Sada as historical agents. Consider Tanaka Jun’ichirō’s influential historiography, developed in Nihon eiga hattat­ sushi (A History of the Development of Japanese Cinema), which, although in the limited context, addresses the agency that independent film production companies had while navigating the turbulent 1960s when the cultural hegemony of cinema was ultimately usurped by television (Tanaka 1976a: 425–434, and 1976b: 66–86, 222–235). A broader study of how film industry insiders negotiated their positions behind the scenes has been left for later generations of scholars to explore. As demonstrated in Sengo eiga no sangyō kūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Industrial Space of Post-War Cinema: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition), scholars are becoming increasingly inter­ ested in investigating Japanese cinema as an industry (Tanikawa 2016). Since the archives of major studios in Japan are virtually inaccessible to the public, however, it remains difficult to conduct historical research on the primary sources. Given this limitation, so-called “non-film” collections donated to, or purchased by, museums, archives, libraries, or universities present unique windows into the activities of film industry insiders such as producers, directors, screen­ writers, and actors, as well as the broader dynamics within and across media industries. To put it another way, the collections offer privileged access points to primary sources that are not subjected to the same kind of control exerted by major studios. Making the most of the Ikebe Ryō and the Sada Keiji Collections as two such points of access, this chapter presents a case study of the film stars’ negotiation of their agency in the transitional years between 1961 and 1964. I organize my discussion into three sections. The first section focuses on the convention of exclusive affiliation in the film industry in which a film star was seen as owned by one of the major studios. By examining the years between 1947 and 1964, when Ikebe and Sada consoli­ dated their positions as representative stars of their respective studios without ever appearing in the same film, I will emphasize the historical significance of their repeated attempts at collabo­ rating across different studios. The next section analyzes a particular artifact, the screenplay of an unrealized film titled Makao no otoko (The Man in Macao, c.1961), which attests to Ikebe’s attempt to cast Sada as the leading role in what was meant to be his directorial debut. This section in particular demonstrates the methodological potential of cross-referencing the Ikebe Ryō and the Sada Keiji Collections. The third and final section examines another instance of their col­ laboration surrounding Fun’en (Smoke, 1964), a posthumous television adaptation based on an idea left by the director Ozu Yasujirō (1903–1963), who had passed away in the previous year. This section highlights the agency of Ikebe and Sada, whether intentional or not, in opposing the constraint of the major studios by exploring an alternative collaborative space.

The studio system and film stars That the career trajectories of Ikebe and Sada intersected in the early 1960s attests to the chang­ ing nature of stars’ agency in the film industry during this pivotal era. As it is widely known, by the 1920s at the latest, the major studios in Japan had standardized an industry convention in which film stars belonged to particular studios on an exclusive basis; even when stars formed inde­ pendent production companies, it was common to end up relying on the major studios for distribution. Formal and informal pressures were applied to prevent stars from moving to rival studios. That the logic of exclusive affiliation was not reducible to clauses in particular star-studio 129

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contracts became clear in the notorious case involving Hayashi Chōjirō (1908–1984, later known as Hasegawa Kazuo), the face of Shochiku’s period drama, who was physically assaulted by thugs in the wake of his move to Shochiku’s rival, Toho, in 1937 (Takizawa 1979: 451). Exclusive contracts were among the key features of the Hollywood studio system, in which stars were employed on long-term contracts—though stars, in particular, could be loaned out to other studios—and generally assigned to projects by studio bosses, although directors and others would often be assigned to projects considered appro­ priate to their talents. (Blandford, Grant, and Hillier 2001: 229) In the studio system in Japan, the culture of exclusive contracts that tormented Hayashi in the 1930s lived on well into the post-war era and affected the career trajectories of both Ikebe and Sada. From his debut in Kinoshita Keisuke’s Fushichō (Phoenix, 1947) up until the turning point in the star–studio relationship in 1953, all of the fifty-one films that Sada appeared in were Shochiku films. The public recognized Sada as Shochiku’s Sada Keiji just as they saw Ikebe as Toho’s Ikebe Ryō. Ikebe debuted in Shimazu Yasujirō’s Toho film, Tōgyo (Fighting Fish, 1941), and returned to Toho to mark his post-war comeback with Toyoda Shiro’s Yottsu no koi no monogatari: Daiichiwa, hatsukoi (Four Love Stories: First Love, 1947), after being deployed as a soldier during the Pacific War. In Ikebe’s case, presumably because prolonged labor disputes at Toho during the Allied Occupation (1945–1952) had weakened the studio’s production capacity, roughly one-third of the fifty-six films that featured him during the same six-year era from 1947 to 1953 were not Toho films. The affiliation between Ikebe and Toho did not loosen, however, as evidenced by the fact that his appearance in rival studio Daiei’s Zettai aishite (Love Me Absolutely, 1948) was a fund-raising effort to support Toho’s labor union or that Toho applied pressure to prevent him from defiantly starring in Shibuya Minoru’s Shochiku film, Gendaijin (The Moderns, 1952) (Shimura and Yumiketa 2007: 37–39 and 90–92). What makes the year 1953 important is the so-called Five Company Agreement (Gosha kyōtei) issued in September 1953, which marked a turning point in the star–studio relationship. The Agreement reached by five major studios, namely, Shochiku, Toho, Daiei, Shintoho, and Toei, restricted the mobility of the film industry insiders such as directors, screenwriters, and actors to work across different studios (Satō 1995: 317). Focusing on the Agreement’s influence over film stars, a newspaper report dubbed the Agreement “anti-star headhunting agreement” (sutā hikinuki bōshi kyōtei) (Asahi Shimbun 1953b: 3). The Agreement had the effect of spelling out the principle of exclusive affiliation under the logic of the studio system. Although it was amended in order to include Nikkatsu in 1957 (renamed the Six Company Agreement [Rokusha kyōtei]) and then to respond to Shintoho’s bankruptcy in 1961, it reverted to the Five Company Agreement, the Agreement continued to exert power over film industry insiders until around 1971, when Daiei folded (Asahi Shimbun 1957: 3; Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142; Satō 1995: 318). The Five Company Agreement directly impacted the career trajectories of Ikebe and Sada. Sada was designated a star whom Shochiku “could not afford to lend out” (zettai kasenu) as it was issued (Asahi Shimbun 1953a: 3). Among the ninety-seven films he appeared in from 1954 until his death in 1964, only three films in the last couple of years were neither produced nor distributed by Shochiku, namely, Dobuike (Dobuike, dir. Hisamatsu Seiji, 1963), Aku no monshō (Brand of Evil, dir. Horikawa Hiromichi, 1964), and Amai ase (Sweet Sweat, dir. Toyoda Shirō, 1964). In Ikebe’s case, he appeared in fifty-nine films during the same years from 1954 to 1964, 130

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the year he formally left Toho (Tokyo Shimbun 1964: 4). Toho was involved in all but four of these films: Early Spring (1956), Kao (The Beloved Image, 1960, dir. Shima Kōji), Kagami no naka no razō (Naked Image in the Mirror, dir. Nakamura Noboru, 1963), and Pale Flower (1964). In 1954, Toho stars, including Ikebe, submitted a petition to their studio that called for “permis­ sion to appear in films of other companies, or films that satisfy our demands,” attesting to the impact the Agreement had already had on curbing cross-studio collaboration (Asahi Shimbun 1954: 2). In light of the film-historical context outlined above, it is only natural that we cannot find a single film co-starring Ikebe and Sada during the years from 1947 to 1964. Even before the Five Company Agreement virtually killed off what little chance there was for cross-studio collabora­ tion between them, major studios had already constructed the studio system principles that included the star–studio exclusive affiliation. In spite of all these facts, we find traces of their attempts to collaborate in the early 1960s when we cross-analyze the Ikebe Ryō and the Sada Keiji Collections. These attempts to work across rival studios indicate the presence of a circum­ scribed space afforded to them, in which, at least to some extent, they could be liberated from the constraint of the studio system. As will be argued below, television was what provided an alternative to the studio system. It is easy to imagine that the power of the studio system declined as television usurped cinema’s hegemonic position. Douglas Gomery’s study on Hollywood makes a distinction between the “modern” studio system that makes the most of the “horizontal integration to capture synergies with other media businesses” and the “classic” studio system that was dominant prior to the rise of television (Gomery 2005: 6 and 198). In the case of Japanese cinema, the Five Company Agreement had a decisive impact on curbing the mobility of stars so long as they had to work within the film industry, but the rules of the game became subject to change if the rising tele­ vision industry could offer them television dramas as new opportunities to act. My study offers archaeological corroboration for this hypothesis, centering on Toho’s Ikebe Ryō and Shochiku’s Sada Keiji in the early 1960s.

Ikebe Ryō’s The Man in Macao and Shintoho’s bankruptcy The Sada Keiji Collection contains a copy of a screenplay that bears a working title, The Man in Macao. When we inspect the pages of this undated screenplay, we find the names of Ikebe and Sada inscribed in Ikebe’s own handwriting.2 The handwritten notes identify “Ikebe Ryō” as the director and the author of the original story and “Mr. Sada Keiji” as the one to whom Ikebe presented the copy. Actually, the name printed on the screenplay as the author of the original story was Fujishima Taisuke, but his name is crossed out (Ikebe Ryō Collec­ tion c.1961a). Fujishima was a novelist who had co-authored a television drama Bonge (Bonge, aired September 26 and October 3, 1958) with Ikebe (Yomiuri Shimbun 1958a: 6, and 1958b: 6). It is possible that Fujishima had inspired Ikebe to write The Man in Macao. Only the name of Ikebe as the author of the screenplay appears in typed letters (Ikebe Ryō Col­ lection c.1961a). In any case, how might we interpret the names of Ikebe and Sada appearing in the same screenplay, when mainstream Japanese film history has no indication of their co-starring in any film? The Man in Macao is set in the criminal underworld of colonial Macao, then under Portu­ guese rule. We can perceive a classical melodramatic plot centering on a love triangle involving a heterosexual romance between Yuzuki Jun’ichi, a thirty-four-year-old former Japanese cadet, and Chun Fang, a twenty-one-year-old refugee from continental China, as well as a third wheel, a niece of a Japanese businessperson. Their romance plays out against the backdrop of a 131

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criminal gang’s conspiracy to smuggle drugs into Japan (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961a). The leading role, Yuzuki’s, self-description of his background is intriguing if we take a biographical approach “which regards a work mainly as a reflection of the author’s life” (Hirono 2005: 119). Well, thirteen years ago, I swam across the strait from the continent. […] When the war ended, I was in Southern China as an Army cadet. I was soon arrested and detained as a suspected war criminal. After three years in prison, I could not take it anymore. So I escaped. […] I ran away, and headed to Macao. […] I could see the island of Macao at last. I intended to go back to Japan one way or another after hiding in the island for a while. So I swam across the strait. (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961a: d2–d3) The confession calls to mind Ikebe’s description of his own experience as a soldier in the Jap­ anese Army, notably of throwing himself into the sea when the vessel he was on was attacked during the Pacific War (Ikebe 1997b: 32). At the same time, Yuzuki’s life story serves the nar­ rative function of foreshadowing the denouement in which he jumps off a ship as it leaves the port of Macao, thus jettisoning his repatriation to Japan in favor of a future with Chun Fang (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961a: f8–f13). While we could continue with the plot analysis, it would be imprudent to evaluate Ikebe’s potential as a screenwriter simply based on the first draft, especially since he had aspired to become a film director and studied scriptwriting in his youth (Ikebe 1997a: 32). Returning to the note that reads, “Mr. Sada Keiji,” which is handwritten on the cover, it is natural to assume that Ikebe sent the copy of the screenplay to Sada, with the expectation that Sada would play the role of Yuzuki, especially when we consider the fact that the copy was found in the Sada Keiji Collection and that a red circle highlights the character name, “Yuzuki Jun’ichi” (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961a: 5). Other handwritten notes on the cover read, “Crank-in, around October 10–15” (Kuranku-in, 10-gatsu 10-ka goro), “Location shooting in Macao (Hong Kong), about three weeks” (Makao [Honkon] roke, yaku 3 shūkan), and “Stage, Shintoho” (Suteji, Shintōhō) (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961a). Although the meaning of the lines is easy to understand, questions remain as to the year when the shooting was meant to start. To estimate the slated production year, we can cross-reference the Ikebe Ryō Collection, where we find a newspaper clipping in a scrapbook. The article contains headings that read: “Ikebe Ryō’s First Attempt at Film Direction,” and “The Man in Macao, Self-produced. [Ikebe] Doubles as Producer. Location Shooting in Southeast Asia, Next Month.” The article reports on the projected production schedule, “from mid-October, location shooting in Portuguese Macao in Southern China for about three weeks,” which matches the information found on the screen­ play (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 17). The article also includes a familiar plot summary. A former Japanese military officer runs away from a POW war criminal camp in China. Having lost his Japanese nationality, he wastes away in Macao, living with a refugee woman from China. One day, a Japanese passenger ship enters the port. Although he is provided with a chance to repatriate to Japan by a drug smuggler, he returns to the woman in the end. (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 17) The perfect correspondence in both the shooting schedule and the plot testifies that what the article describes is the project of the screenplay, The Man in Macao, found in the Sada Keiji 132

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Collection. The clipping does not include any information on the publication date or the news­ paper title. However, it is still possible to speculate on the month and the year based on the dates of the articles flanking it in the scrapbook. The clippings found on the previous page introduce the fifth and tenth episodes of a serialized television drama Romanchikku sakusen (Operation Romantic, aired August 16 and September 20, 1961) (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 16; Asahi Shimbun 1961a: 8, and 1961c: 8). The clipping found on the following page is the review of Suzuki Hideo’s Toho film Kuroi gashū: Dainiwa, kanryū (The Black Book of Paintings: Cold Current, released on November 21, 1961) (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 18). Even though the dates are also missing in these clippings, television previews are customarily published on the day the programs are scheduled to air, and film reviews around the day of the release. We can thus estimate that the article on The Man in Macao was published in the four-month window from August to November 1961. Since the article refers to October as “Next Month,” its publication date is likely to have been in September 1961. Once we have identified September 1961 as the key month, we can collect other clues by combing through relevant print media. In Kinema junpō’s early October issue, for instance, we can find The Man in Macao listed among the six films scheduled to be distributed by Taihō, an offshoot of Shintoho, by the end of 1961 (Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142). The following picture emerges. Ikebe, who had initially started working on The Man in Macao as a television drama in January 1961 (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 17), approached Sada for the leading role and Taihō for distribu­ tion by around September 1961. With this new timeline, the lines written on the screenplay, “Crank-in, around October 10–15,” “Location shooting in Macao (Hong Kong), about three weeks,” and “Stage, Shintoho,” obtain film-historical significance at least in two ways. The first involves a transnational juncture of East Asian cinema. Shintoho’s cinematographer Nishimoto Tadashi left Japanese cinema in 1960 to restart his career in Hong Kong under the Chinese name, Ho Lan Shan (Nishimoto, Yamada, and Yamane 2004: 105–114). There is a possibility that Ikebe expected Nishimoto/Ho to act as a coordinator of the Hong Kong location shooting. The second, and more pertinent in significance to this chapter, involves a turning point in Japanese film history. It was exactly in September 1961 when, in the wake of the bankruptcy of Shintoho, which had been one of the major studios making up the original Five Company Agreement, on August 31, Taihō was established as one of three Shintoho split-offs (Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142). It is instructive to summarize how Shintoho’s demise unfolded by surveying the articles in Kinema junpō. In November 1960, the magazine reported on Shintoho’s increasing isolation in the film industry because of mismanagement, repeated failures to secure cooperation with rival studios such as Shochiku, Toho, and Daiei, and an aborted attempt to merge with Daini Toei, a short-lived subsidiary of Toei (Shimaji 1960: 48–50). The section titled “Film Industry Trends” (“Eigakai no ugoki”) in subsequent issues contained articles bearing headings such as “Delayed Salary Payment at Shintoho, President Okura Declares Financial Difficulty” (Kinema Junpōsha 1961j: 108), “Shintoho’s President Okura Resigns, Managing Director Yamanashi Directs Reconstruction” (Kinema Junpōsha 1961a: 154), “Injection of Capital Imperative, Surviving on Television Film Business” (Kinema Junpōsha 1961b: 107), and “Shintoho Finally Stops Pro­ duction, Studio Closure Imminent” (Kinema Junpōsha 1961e: 140). At last, the early October 1961 issue reported Shintoho’s splintering into three corporate entities: the liquidation company, Shintoho Inc.; the production company, San’e Inc., founded on November 15, 1961, under the new name, NAC (Nippon Art Film Company) Inc. (Kinema Junpōsha 1961i: 112, and 1961j: 109); and the distribution company, Taiho Inc., which was established on September 9, 1961 (Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142). As we can see from these events, Ikebe approached Sada with the screenplay for The Man in Macao in the critical year when the collapse of Shintoho marked the beginning of the end of Japanese cinema’s golden era. 133

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The destabilization of the film industry was tightly intertwined with the rise of television as the new audio-visual media. It is telling that the industry projections offered by the presi­ dents of the major studios responsible for the original Five Company Agreement, which were published in the New Year’s edition of Kinema junpō in 1961, unanimously revealed their wariness toward television (Ōtani et al. 1961: 48–50). In fact, paralleling the reports on Shintoho’s demise summarized above, Kinema junpō’s “Film Industry Trends” busily fol­ lowed the ongoing struggle for cultural hegemony between the film industry and the tele­ vision industry, particularly around the question of movies shown on television (Kinema Junpōsha 1960: 109, 1961c: 145, 1961d: 106, 1961f: 110, and 1961g: 113). Significantly, Shintoho, on the verge of bankruptcy, approached the television industry as a potential life­ line, and as a result, opened up a new frontier at the interstices of the two media. On December 21, 1960, following the resignation of President Okura Mitsugi, Managing Dir­ ector Yamanashi Minoru announced a new set of objectives with an emphasis on “television film business newly under research” (Kinema Junpōsha 1961b: 107). Following the break-up of Shintoho, one of its offshoots, San’e Inc. (aka NAC Inc.), inherited the studio’s focus on television film business (Kinema Junpōsha 1961g: 113, and 1961j: 109). In addition, Shin­ toho sold the rights to its existing films in bulk to television stations. On August 24, 1961, Nippon Television broadcasted Kanpai! jogakusei (Here’s to the Student Girls, dir. Inoue Umetsugu, 1954), one of the films from Shintoho’s inventory (Asahi Shimbun 1961b: 5). The event was clearly incongruous with the attitude of the major studios that had demanded “suspension of providing television with narrative films […] as the film industry’s unified resistance against television” (Kinema Junpōsha 1960: 109). Watching the film on television screens, the audience witnessed Shintoho drifting away from cinema and crossing the thresh­ old to enter television. The collaboration of Toho’s Ikebe Ryō and Shochiku’s Sada Keiji ought to be understood within the particular historical circumstances outlined above. Ikebe had turned to Shintoho, and its post-bankruptcy proxies, for the production and distribution of The Man in Macao (Ikebe Ryō Collection c.1961b: 17), precisely at the moment when the studio was drifting away from cinema toward television. In this context, it is not difficult to imagine that the power of the studio system, with the principle of exclusive affiliation, was diminished in the ambiguous media space around Shintoho. In fact, the list of films that Taihō was scheduled to distribute by the end of 1961 included Shiiku (The Catch, released on November 22, 1961), an independent produc­ tion directed by Ōshima Nagisa as he struggled with the Five Company Agreement following his acrimonious parting with his home studio, Shochiku (Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142). The following article attests to the tension surrounding the production and distribution of The Catch under the studio system. Ōshima Nagisa, known for his high-profile feud with Shochiku over his wish to annul his contract, will direct The Catch, with Palace Film Production (President Mr. Tajima Saburo). The production company will […] seek distribution outside the circuits con­ trolled by the five majors in Japan in addition to exploring overseas markets. […] Since Shochiku has not accepted Mr. Ōshima’s wish to annul his contract, it would infringe on the anti-headhunting clause in the Five Company Agreement (renamed from the Six Company Agreement following Shintoho’s withdrawal in July) for him to direct a film produced or distributed by any of the five majors. However, Shochiku has no means to stop him from directing an independently produced film unrelated to the five majors and is expected to look on from the sideline. (Kinema Junpōsha 1961h: 142) 134

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Ikebe must have conceived the idea of actualizing The Man in Macao through the collaboration with Sada on the basis of these circumstances in 1961, which appeared to open up a new crea­ tive space outside the clutches of the studio system. Ikebe ultimately failed to realize the crossstudio collaboration in the interstices of cinema and television, and The Man in Macao fell through the cracks of Japanese film history in subsequent decades.

Serialized television drama Smoke and the Japan Screen Actors Association We cannot exactly identify the reason The Man in Macao never materialized as a film. In hind­ sight, it seems only natural that producing and distributing a new commercial film with a failing studio would encounter difficulties, even if the studio’s last gasp overtures toward television might have appeared to provide a potential impetus for Ikebe’s ambition. It is interesting to note, however, that a couple of years after the failed project, we find at least two high-profile projects that brought Ikebe and Sada together as the driving forces. One is the attempt of the Japan Screen Actors Association (Nihon Eiga Haiyū Kyōkai) to found an actors’ union. The other is Smoke, Fuji Television’s serialized drama that ran from October to December, 1964, for which Ikebe played the leading role for the first time since his departure from Toho at the end of July the same year (Asahi Shimbun 1964a: 5). A few well-known events make 1963 and 1964 pivotal years in Japanese television history. In 1963, NHK, the national broadcasting station, launched the so-called Taiga dorama (literally “great river drama”), the popular epic series that continues to the present day, with a successful nine-month run of Hana no shōgai (aired April–December, 1963), co-starring Kabuki actor Onoe Shōroku II, Shochiku’s Sada Keiji, and former Takarazuka Revue star Awashima Chikage. In 1964, NHK followed it up with a one-year run of Akō rōshi (Warriors of Ako, aired January– December, 1964) that was produced on an unprecedented scale. The star-studded drama fea­ tured Hasegawa Kazuo (the former Hayashi Chōjirō), who worked for Daiei from the 1950s to 1963 and was appointed as the studio’s executive in 1957 (Takizawa 1979: 452), alongside a diverse cast of film actors, theater actors from different theater genres such as shingeki, shinkokugeki, shinpa, and kabuki, and popular singers. The attempts of Sada and Hasegawa to appear in tele­ vision dramas was part of a broader current that helped legitimatize them as a potential platform for established film stars looking for new acting opportunities. It also dawned on the public that television operated according to a different order than that of the studio system. A telling example is the forty-ninth episode of Warriors of Ako that brought together three film stars, Hasegawa Kazuo, Arashi Kanjūrō, who had been Shintoho’s top-billing star up until its bank­ ruptcy, and Ōtomo Ryūtarō, Toei’s big earner who appeared in eight Toei films in 1963 and six in 1964, in the same scene (Nimura 1996: 36). It was television’s new power that enabled film stars who had been associated with different studios, Daiei’s Hasegawa Kazuo, Shintoho’s Arashi Kanjūrō, and Toei’s Ōtomo Ryūtarō, to appear side by side. The emergence of television dramas featuring film stars also left an impact on the logic of the studio system. In the pivotal years of 1963 and 1964, Toho’s Ikebe Ryō starred in two Shochiku films: Naked Image in the Mirror and Pale Flower. Conversely, Shochiku’s Sada Keiji appeared in three Toho-distributed films: Dobuike, Brand of Evil, and Sweet Sweat. Sweet Sweat co-starred Sada alongside Kyō Machiko, a star who had appeared exclusively in Daiei films for about fifteen years. Moreover, Sweet Sweat was adapted from Aburaderi (Sweaty Sunshine, broadcast July 1, 1964), the first television drama for Kyō (Satō 1980: 249). At the same time, it would be hasty to conclude that these instances of cross-studio casting marked the end of the studio system. Consider the case of Yamamoto Fujiko, a Daiei star, whose scheduled appearance in a Toho theater play shortly after her departure from her home studio failed to materialize. Toho’s 135

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managing director, Kikuta Kazuo, insinuated interference from Daiei’s president Nagata Masai­ chi, attributing the failure to “an atmosphere similar to the Five Company Agreement” (Asahi Shimbun 1963: 5). Smoke was thus realized at a historical juncture in which film stars, major studio executives, and television industry leaders were testing the limits of the studio system. Smoke was a serialized television drama based on an idea left by Ozu Yasujirō, who passed away in 1963. A newspaper preview summarizes the complex story behind the production. This is based on an idea that Ozu had kept close to his chest as a project that would further expand his artistic range (geiiki). He had asked Inomata Katsuhito to write the scenario, and there was a plan to turn it into a film with Yamamoto Takeshi as the producer. However, because Ozu fell ill, this remained an unrealized dream until recently. Inomata revived the project by adapting it for television in the form of a serialized drama. Production started a few days ago, with Tamura Koji, Ozu’s disciple, as the director, and featuring guest appearances of a number of actors who had received tute­ lage from Ozu; Sada Keiji and Tsukioka Yumeji will appear in the first and second episodes. (Asahi Shimbun 1964a: 5) According to the proposal for Smoke found in the Sada Keiji Collection, the drama centers on the Amamiyas, an old family whose estate in Kumamoto commands the smoky views of Mt. Aso. One day in the 1950s, the patriarch Seisaku is driven to commit suicide by a nefarious political fixer, who disgraces Amamiya’s name in an incident related to a prefectural assembly election, leaving behind his wife Shizu and three young children: Takashi, Kojirō, and Nobuko. The setting moves to Tokyo in the 1960s. The oldest son, Takashi, now works as a rank-and­ file office employee. He betrays his lover Sakie in order to marry up with Okazaki Masako, the daughter of his company’s executive. Through the connection he makes with political heavy­ weight, Sugawara, he returns to Kumamoto to run as a candidate in the national election. Takashi’s obsessive pursuit of power, driven by the urge to recover from the indignity he suf­ fered with his father’s suicide, ends in vain as he leaves his hometown for the second time after losing the election. With Takashi’s rise and fall providing the narrative backbone, the drama also interweaves various stories of the other characters: the second son, Kojirō, who remains in Kumamoto to take care of his aging mother, Shizu, who in turn lovingly looks after Kojirō’s son, Kiyoshi; the youngest daughter, Nobuko, who makes a living in Tokyo’s red-light district; and Sakie and Masako, the two women surrounding Takashi (Shinario Bungei Kyōkai c.1964: 1–18). Although the proposal describes Smoke as a series consisting of “twenty-six one-hour episodes,” radio and television listings suggest that it only ran for thirteen episodes (Shinario Bungei Kyōkai c.1964; Asahi Shimbun 1964c: 10). It is therefore likely that the story summa­ rized above would have undergone a substantial revision. The role Ikebe played was Takashi. Takashi’s nihilistic character reminds us of the corrupt government official Odagiri Tōru whom Ikebe played in The Moderns, which was also written by Inomata. When Ozu chose Inomata as his co-creator in order to develop Smoke, it is likely that the two had Ikebe in mind for the leading role, and that Ozu’s wish to “further expand his artistic range” involved making his own version of The Moderns. More important for this chapter, however, is the “guest appear­ ances” reportedly made by “a number of actors who had received tutelage from Ozu.” The introductory lines of the proposal for Smoke tellingly note that “one of the strong draws will be the cameo appearances that accomplished actors familiar to fans through Mr. Ozu’s films […] will make throughout the series in honor of their memories of Ozu, adding color to each 136

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episode.” What follows is an impressive list of thirty-one actors: Ashikawa Izumi, Awashima Chikage, Iida Chōko, Ikebe Ryō, Iwashita Shima, Uehara Ken, Osaka Shirō, Kagawa Kyōko, Kyō Machiko, Kuga Yoshiko, Kurishima Sumiko, Kogure Michiyo, Sakamoto Takeshi, Sada Keiji, Sano Shūji, Saburi Shin, Sugimura Haruko, Tsukioka Yumeji, Tsushima Keiko, Tsub­ ouchi Mieko, Tsuruta Kōji, Nakamura Ganjirō, Nakamura Nobuo, Baishō Chieko, Hara Setsuko, Higashiyama Chieko, Mikami Shin’ichirō, Mitsui Kōji, Yamamoto Fujiko, Yoshikawa Mitsuko, and Ryū Chishū (Shinario Bungei Kyōkai c.1964). Since it was a commemorative project dedicated to Ozu, the master director of Shochiku’s modern drama, the majority in the list are the actors who, like Shochiku’s Sada Keiji, had colored the genre. There are notable exceptions, however, such as Toho’s Ikebe Ryō, Daiei’s Kyō Machiko, Daiei’s Yamamoto Fujiko, whose struggle with the principle of exclusive affiliation we discussed above, and Toei’s big earner Tsuruta Kōji, who appeared in ten Toei films in 1963 and eight in 1964. Since it is difficult to access historical television programs even in cases where the films survive, we cannot ascertain whether all of the stars listed in the proposal actually made guest appearances in Smoke. We cannot rule out their cross-studio appearances as an empty fantasy, however, simply based on the practices of the studio system. We need to remind ourselves that actors joining the Japan Screen Actors Association had started to work across different studios in order to organize themselves into a union. A photograph in Tokyo shimbun accompanying the news of a press conference held by the Association on January 27, 1963, symbolically shows Toho’s Ikebe Ryō and Shochiku’s Sada Keiji sitting in the front row, with notable film stars repre­ senting other studios such as Toei’s Takakura Ken, who appeared in twelve Toei films in 1963 and eight in 1964, and Nikkatsu’s Nitani Hideaki, who appeared in ten Nikkatsu films in 1963 and eight in 1964, visible behind them (Tokyo Shimbun 1963: 7). The central motive for forming a union was actors’ discontent with the oppressive measures, both formally and inform­ ally imposed, including the regulations limiting their cross-studio movement (Kinema Junpōsha 1963: 47–48). In other words, it is not impossible that some of the stars that participated in the joint struggle led by Ikebe and Sada, in order to form the actors’ union, would have also showed solidarity with the duo by making cameo appearances in Smoke, a project that the duo also spearheaded. When Smoke was broadcast in 1964 with Ikebe in the leading role and Sada as the guest star for the opening episodes, not long after their declaration of forming the actors’ union, the drama must have been received as a strong call for increased cross-studio collaboration. Smoke should be regarded as a political project because of the ways in which it marked a perfect concurrence, whether intentional or not, between two distinct movements: bringing together actors who had worked under the direction of Ozu to commemorate the late master director, and building solidarity among actors across different studios. From the vantage point of Ikebe and Sada, Smoke offered an opportunity to explore television as an alternative media space that would liberate them from the regulations of the studio system. From the vantage point of the television industry, Smoke offered an opportunity to usurp the cultural hegemony of the film industry, using cross-studio casting as a demonstration of the new platform’s possibility to provide what the film industry could not afford to do. What unfolded in the changing media environment was a political drama involving the renegotiation between the film stars and the major studios, which was masked by the name of Ozu.

Conclusion Based on the materials found in Enpaku, notably in the Ikebe Ryō and Sada Keiji Collections, this chapter retraced the criss-crossing trajectories of two film stars representing rival studios, 137

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Toho’s Ikebe Ryō and Shochiku’s Sada Keiji, throughout the transitional era of the early 1960s, when the hegemonic mode of audio-visual media shifted from cinema to television. In the first section, I emphasized the historical significance of the archival evidence of cross-studio collabo­ ration between Ikebe and Sada, which directly contradicted the convention of exclusive affili­ ation that tied film stars to their respective studios. In the second section, I focused on a particular case study that revealed the importance of Shintoho, the financially beleaguered studio that had turned to the growing power of television, as the necessary platform for Ikebe’s attempted crossstudio collaboration with Sada in the unrealized film, The Man in Macao. The third section further demonstrated television’s vital roles in undermining the studio system through a case study of Smoke, a serialized television drama that attempted to bring together stars associated with different studios under the name of Ozu Yasujirō. The collaboration between Ikebe and Sada was cut short by Sada’s death in a car accident on August 17, 1964, just one and a half months before the first episode of Smoke, in which Sada appeared (Asahi Shimbun 1964b: 7), reached the audience. Sada’s appearance made the drama more than an Ozu memorial: it was also an elegy for Sada, and for the possibilities for his further collaboration with Ikebe to reorganize both film and television industries. Rather than dwelling on the “what ifs,” however, I would like to emphasize that their collaborative attempts in the early 1960s offer a reference point for further extending research into the late 1960s, or into the 1950s, to trace the dismantling of the principle of exclusive affiliation between film stars and their home studios. Let me conclude by pointing to another Enpaku collection, the Awashima Chikage Collec­ tion, which will help us further extend our research into the context of the 1950s, the era that paved the way for the collaboration of Ikebe and Sada in the early 1960s. The collection con­ tains a newspaper clipping compiled in a scrapbook that informs us of a recurrent private meeting of the Tokyo Actors Club (Tokyo Haiyū Kurabu) that was proposed by stars from different studios: Ikebe Ryō and Mifune Toshirō from Toho; Sada Keiji from Shochiku; and Sugawara Kenji from Daiei. The list of attendees at the first general meeting, which was held in Ikebe’s house on April 13, 1959, reads like a Who’s Who list for each studio. In attendance from Toho were Ikebe Ryō, Uehara Ken, Katō Daisuke, Kubo Akira, Kobayashi Keiju, Shirakawa Yumi, Takarada Akira, Dan Reiko, Tsukasa Yōko, Tsuruta Kōji, Hirata Akihiko, Mihashi Tatsuya, Mifune Toshirō, and Morishige Hisaya. From Shochiku, there were Arima Ineko, Ishihama Akira, Ōki Minoru, Kosaka Kazuya, Sada Keiji, Taura Masami, and Tamura Takahiro. From Daiei, there were Kawakami Yasuko and Yashio Yūko. From Nikkatsu, there were Abe Tōru, Todoroki Yukiko, and Nagato Hiroyuki. Finally, from Toei, there were Takakura Ken, Hidaka Sumiko, and Hori Yūji. In addition, there were stars that had turned independent: Awashima Chikage, Kuga Yoshiko, and Kogure Michiyo (Naigai Taimusu 1959: 3). Another clipping reports on the seventh general meeting that was to be held in May 1960, which informs us that by then the Club had gained some traction (Tokyo Shimbun 1960: 3). Although the details of the Club remain hazy, it is certain that it helped facilitate the kinds of collaboration between Ikebe and Sada that this chapter illustrates. Here is yet another example of how scholars might turn to the collections of stars, as privileged windows onto the dynamics within the film industry that constitute an important aspect of Japanese cinema.

Notes An earlier version of this chapter was published in Japanese in Takafusa Hatori, “Eiga/terebi ikōki no eiga sutā ni miru datsu sutajio shisutemu-teki kyōtō,” Engeki kenkyū 37 (March 2014): 83–96. 1 Translation is by the author unless otherwise stated.

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“Fugitives” from the studio system 2 It is well known that Ikebe was a prolific and sophisticated essayist, and the manuscripts of his writings can be found in the Ikebe Ryō Collection. That the handwriting of his name on the screenplay of The Man in Macao appears identical to that on other manuscripts attests to the fact that all the handwritten notes inscribed in the screenplay with the same fountain pen were Ikebe’s own.

Works cited Asahi Shimbun. 1953a. “Gosha kyōtei ni yureru eigakai.” Asahi shimbun (morning edn), September 5: 3.

Asahi Shimbun. 1953b. “Shinjin wa kanrii-i ni tōroku.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), September 10: 3.

Asahi Shimbun. 1954. “Motto yoi kikaku o.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), June 25: 2.

Asahi Shimbun. 1957. “Rokusha kyōtei ni chōin.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), July 18: 3.

Asahi Shimbun. 1961a. “Radio & TV Listings.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), August 16: 8.

Asahi Shimbun. 1961b. “Terebi ni Shintōhō eiga.” Asahi shimbun (morning edn), August 24: 5.

Asahi Shimbun. 1961c. “Radio & TV Listings.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), September 20: 8.

Asahi Shimbun. 1963. “Yamamoto Fujiko butai shutsuen mata onagare.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn),

December 16: 5. Asahi Shimbun. 1964a. “Kojin no kōsō o terebi eiga ni.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), August 13: 5. Asahi Shimbun. 1964b. “Shin renzoku bangumi Fun’en.” Asahi shimbun (morning edn), October 1: 7. Asahi Shimbun. 1964c. “Radio & TV Listings.” Asahi shimbun (evening edn), December 24: 10. Blandford, S., Grant, B.K., and Hillier, J. 2001. The Film Studies Dictionary. London: Arnold. Gomery, D. 2005. The Hollywood Studio System: A History. London: British Film Institute. Hirono, Y. 2005. Hihyō riron nyūmon: Furankenshutain kaibō kōgi (Introduction to Critical Theory). Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha. Ikebe Ryō Collection. c.1961a. Makao no otoko: Kadai, Yo05–19333. The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University, Tokyo. Ikebe Ryō Collection. c.1961b. Scrapbook 8. The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University, Tokyo. Ikebe, R. 1997a. “Watashi no rirekisho (14).” Nihon keizai shimbun (morning edn), August 15: 32. Ikebe, R. 1997b. “Watashi no rirekisho (19).” Nihon keizai shimbun (morning edn), August 20: 32. Ishida, M. 2010. “Yokogao no kimi Sada Keiji.” In K. Kurosawa et al. (eds), Kantoku to haiyū no bigaku, 245–270. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kinema Junpōsha. 1960. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 274 (Late December): 108–110. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961a. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 275 (Early January): 154–155. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961b. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 276 (Late January): 106–107. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961c. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 282 (Early April): 144–145. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961d. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 283 (Late April): 106–107. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961e. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 289 (Early July): 140–141. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961f. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 293 (Early September): 110–111. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961g. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 294 (Late September): 112–113. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961h. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 295 (Early October): 142–143. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961i. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 296 (Late October): 112–113. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961j. “Eigakai no ugoki.” Kinema junpō 301 (Late December): 108–109. Kinema Junpōsha. 1963. “ ‘Haiyūyunion’no sono ato o ou.” Kinema junpō 336 (Early April): 47–48. Naigai Taimusu. 1959. “ ‘Yakusha no hi’ zukuri ni hyakugojūnin no jōnetsu.” Naigai taimusu. November 18: 3. Nimura, H. 1996. Arashi Kanjūrō to hyakunin no sutā: danyū-hen. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Nishimoto, T., Yamada, K., and Yamane, S. 2004. Honkon e no michi: Nakagawa Nobuo kara Burusu Ri e. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Ōtani, H. et al. 1961. “Nihon eiga no atarashī toshi o kōsō suru.” Kinema junpō 275 (Early January): 48–50. Satō, T. 1980. “Kyō Machiko.” In Nihon eiga haiyū zenshū: joyū-hen, 245–250. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. Satō, T. 1995. Nihon eigashi (2). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Shimaji, T. 1960. “Shintōhō no jūsan nen.” Kinema junpō 271 (Late November): 48–50. Shimura, M. and Yumiketa, A. 2007. Eiga haiyū Ikebe Ryō. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Shinario Bungei Kyōkai. c.1964. Fun’en: Renzoku terebi eiga kikakusho. Ta06–3647. The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University. Shinoda, M. 2010. “Ikebe Ryō to iu kannōteki ongaku.” Kinema junpō 1570 (Early December): 136–137.

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Takafusa Hatori Takizawa, O. 1979. “Hasegawa Kazuo.” In Nihon eiga haiyū zenshū: danyū-hen, 449–453. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. Tanaka, J. 1976a. Nihon eiga hattatsushi IV shijō saikō no eiga jidai (Evolutionary History of Japanese Cinema IV: The Apex of the Age of Cinema). Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha. Tanaka, J. 1976b. Nihon eiga hattatsushi V eizō jidai no torai (Evolutionary History of Japanese Cinema V: The Arrival of the Age of Visual Image). Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha. Tanikawa, T. (ed.) 2016. Sengo eiga no sangyōkūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Indus­ trial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Tokyo Shimbun. 1960. “Tōkyō haiyū kurabu o zenshin sasu.” Tōkyō shimbun (evening edn), March 13: 3. Tokyo Shimbun. 1963. “Eiga haiyū no yoake.” Tōkyō shimbun (morning edn), January 28: 7. Tokyo Shimbun. 1964. “Ikebe Ryō Tōhō o tobidasu.” Tōkyō shimbun (evening edn), July 31: 4. Ueno, K. 2010. “Kyomukan to musubi-tsuita ayausa to doku.” Kinema junpō 1570 (Early December): 134–135. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1958a. “Radio & TV Listings.” Yomiuri shimbun (morning edn), September 26: 6. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1958b. “Radio & TV Listings.” Yomiuri shimbun (morning edn), October 3: 6.

Further reading Kitaura, H. 2018. Terebi seichōki no Nihon eiga: media-kan kōshō no naka no dorama (Japanese Cinema in the Midst of Television’s Growth Period: Drama of Inter-Media Negotiation). Nagoya: Nagoya University Press. Shimura, M. and Yumigeta, A. (eds) 2007. Eiga haiyū Ikebe Ryō. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Tanikawa, T. (ed.) 2016. Sengo eiga no sangyōkūkan: Shihon, goraku, kōgyō (Post-War Japanese Cinema’s Indus­ trial Sphere: Capital, Entertainment, Exhibition). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Wada-Marciano, M. (ed.) 2012. “Sengo” Nihon eiga ron. Tokyo: Seikyūsha.

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9

Solo AnimAtion in JApAn

Empathy for the drawn body

Paul Roquet

This chapter examines small-scale and independently produced Japanese animation as a site of intensified engagement with the work of making drawn bodies move. I examine the afterlife of “independent” animation as an oppositional practice in a time when Japanese animation pro­ duction as a whole is increasingly dependent on freelance and casualized labor (Mōri 2011: 34–36). Solo animation is now but one component of the increasingly hybrid trajectory of ani­ mation work in Japan today, where terms like “art” or “independent” are more likely to distin­ guish one part of an animator’s work from their other projects rather than designate an overall authorial stance or aesthetic style. I use the term solo animation here to designate works where the animation onscreen is produced by a single person, though collaborators like musicians may (and often are) involved as well, and digital imaging software also plays an essential role. Solo animations are usually small-scale, self-produced projects made for little money, and with little to no expectation of financial gain. A solo animation can be screened at festivals or online, win awards, generate new styles, and operate as a calling card for later commissioned work.1 But solo productions also serve as a unique space for animators to reflect on their own animating labors: how the individual animator becomes subject to social forces and demands, including the demands of the animation industry itself. Rather than attempt to define an aesthetics of solo animation in opposition to commercial anime, I follow animation scholar Doi Nobuaki in understanding animation genres as ultimately defined by technique rather than onscreen styles or industrial norms (Doi 2016: 59). In contrast to Doi’s focus on the personal vision of the ani­ mator, however, this chapter explores how solo animations come to expressively mediate the flexible and precarious labors shaping their own production. The first part of the chapter details my argument that what now distinguishes Japanese ani­ mations produced outside the bounds of the anime studios is no longer their independence vis-à-vis commercial products, but rather the way these individually authored works often compel animators to directly confront the position of the individual within larger social and industrial systems. The remaining two parts of the essay focus on how this confrontation is per­ ceptible in a set of key solo animation works. The second section, focusing on works by Wada Atsushi and Mizushiri Yoriko, examines bodily manipulation on a mechanical level. Here ani­ mation is imagined as one more mechanism for fitting bodies into the movement patterns of industrial and automated labor. The final section focuses on a hand-drawn music video by Kuno Yōko, tracing the disciplinary shaping of bodies at biological, affective, and even molecular 141

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levels. Through these reflections on how the solo animator’s labor becomes transposed into animated form, I locate in this seemingly minor realm of Japanese animation a vital space for reimagining the laboring body (in the animation industry and beyond). What I find there is ultimately a space of empathy for those most vulnerable within these larger industrial systems. Solo animation creates a space for individual bodies struggling to achieve freedom of move­ ment, even for a moment, amid the weighty pressures and struggles of animation production itself.

Solo animation in the twenty-first century As Doi has recently noted, while animation production has historically been organized around dichotomies (commercial versus art, alternative, or independent animation; mainstream versus experimental/avant-garde), upon closer inspection, these terms rarely hold any precise meaning. Seeking to move away from these vague polarities, Doi describes small-scale, often self-produced animated works screened largely for international animation festival audiences as a more “per­ sonal” or “private” (kojinteki) form of animation, capable of more directly revealing the individual vision of the artist (Doi 2016: 26–29). This approach has strong echoes of P. Adams Sitney’s work on what he dubbed the “visionary” tradition of American avant-garde filmmakers like Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage (Sitney 2009) as well as jishu (autonomous) film practices in Japan (see Zahlten, Chapter 10 in this volume). Unfortunately this focus on a private vision means the dicho­ tomy of art or independent versus commercial continues to structure the discourse, whatever term is actually used. Most contemporary English language writing on Japanese “art” or “independent” animation, such as Catherine Munroe Hotes’ long-running Nishikata Film Review blog, adopts a similar auteur-centered focus. While both Doi and Hotes’ contributions to the field are immensely valuable, these auteurist approaches limit the critical context to a relatively isolated circuit of indi­ vidual artists and independent animation festivals, betraying the increasing integration of solo animation with other forms of media practice and material culture more broadly. Vague or not, there was a time when these dichotomies were warranted, as animators in Japan self-consciously set themselves against a commercial studio production model. Japanese independent animation as a conscious field of practice emerged in 1960 with the formation of the “Animēshon 3-nin no Kai” (Animation Association of 3), composed of Kuri Yōji, Yanagi­ hara Ryōhei, and Manabe Hiroshi. Influenced by the experimental film and animation then being screened in Japan for the first time, such as the work of Canadian animator Norman McLaren, the Animation Association of 3 sought to stake out a space for a different kind of animated work. Whereas the existing commercial styles primarily targeted children, the Asso­ ciation’s work engaged with mature themes for an adult audience. The Association broke with commercial styles to reimagine animation as a medium for more experimental and avant-garde work, circulated through the small-scale, boutique distribution channels of the festival circuit rather than in commercial cinemas or on broadcast television. Internationally, this independent animation community had only just begun to take shape. The Cannes film festival began to include a subsection dedicated to animation starting in 1956, and in 1960 this part of the festival broke off to start the world’s first dedicated animation festival in Annecy, France. Inspired by McLaren and the warm reception of Kuri Yōji’s films at the early Annecy festivals, Kuri and others began referring to their work with the English loanword animēshon, rather than the trun­ cated anime or older Japanese terms like manga eiga (manga film). According to Kuri, this was still an unfamiliar word in Japanese at the time (Akiyama 1977: 129, cited in Doi 2016: 342 n. 19). If anime had by this time come to accrue particular commercial connotations, animēshon could still be reserved for “art” (geijutsu) (Doi 2016: 68–70). 142

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By the turn of the century, however, these divides were no longer so clear. Beginning in the late 1990s, the turn to digital workflows through programs like Adobe Photoshop and After Effects allowed freelance animators to cross over into a wide range of other related fields, including graphic design, motion graphics, special effects, advertising, and music videos. This period saw the rise to pre-eminence of the eizō sakka or “moving image creator,” a catch-all term originally used in the 1980s to refer to filmmakers like Matsumoto Toshio and Kawanaka Nobuhiro, who crossed over into video. In the new century, aided by the new digital tools, this kind of transmedia practice became not the exception but the rule, especially for freelance moving image creators hoping to stitch together a viable career. Wada Atsushi, for example, divides his website into “independent” and “client” works, with the latter including graphic design, mascot design, animated segments for live-action films, and animated sequences for broadcast television. More recently, following the success of David OReilly’s Everything (2017), solo animators have come to recognize video games as another alternate (and potentially more lucrative) outlet for their skills and creativity (Doi and Hirano 2017).2 While not usually adopt­ ing the eizō sakka title, even the most “independent” of animators are now likely to recognize themselves as part of this expanded field of practice, and participate in both commercial and non-commercial work. Compared to earlier generations, they are also much more likely to have emerged from a formal animation studies program, such as the two-year Masters in Animation established at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2010. Meanwhile, well-established names in studio anime production are increasingly experimenting with small-scale productions and free online distribution in projects like Studio Khara and Dwango’s Japan Anima(tor)’s Exhibition (2014–2016). This blurring of categories between art, independent, and commercial is clearly materialized at the annual Japan Media Arts Festival (1997–present), a government-sponsored promotion of Japanese contents industries where “media arts” came to be unusually (and somewhat contro­ versially) expanded to include all fields “making use of digital technology,” including video games, manga, motion graphics, music videos, and animation alongside the computational gallery and museum-oriented works more commonly understood as “media art” (Schlachetzki 2012: 49). The main animators discussed below (Wada, Mizushiri, and Kuno) have all won major animation awards at this festival, where their solo work was exhibited alongside larger studio-based animation productions like Yojōhan shinwa taikei (The Tatami Galaxy, dir. Yuasa Masaaki, 2010) and Sakasama no Patema (Patema Inverted, dir. Yoshiura Yasuhiro, 2013).3 In this context, rather than continue to anachronistically position “independent” or “art” animation in stark opposition to more commercially oriented work, I suggest it is rather the material conditions of its production that leads solo animation to a distinct set of aesthetic, them­ atic, and social concerns. In other words, I propose that what solo animation embodies is not the private vision of an autonomous creator, but rather a heightened sensitivity to the labor of animation production: a sensitivity that often turns the animations themselves into reflections on the social forces at work on the laboring body. Solo animation often demands an intimate struggle with the tools of the animation trade: the physical instruments, techniques, environments, and above all the work necessary to make drawn bodies move. Even with the advent of digital imaging software, which has greatly simplified the image capture and editing process, animation remains an extremely labor-intensive exercise. What distinguishes solo animation is how this labor is always very close to the perceptible surface. The work of the hand is rendered visible in roughly drawn lines; the work of the voice is audible in the rough intimacy of the recorded soundtrack; the work of time spent is traced out in the sheer amount of detail present in every frame. Alongside these traces of the animator’s body, the immediate materials of the animator’s environment often reveal themselves too: the 143

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furnishings of their working space, the texture and color of their drawing paper, the layered architecture of their software. All this is often transfigured into the forms taken by the animation itself, including its character design and narrative space. This sometimes happens in larger studio-based animations too. But there, this fundamental grappling with the materiality of animated drawings tends to be glossed over in favor of a different kind of movement: the circulation of the commodity form. In larger studios, the pro­ duction workflow integrates a wide spectrum of specialized labor, from character designers, colorists, and voice actors to producers and advertisers. Subcontracted animation teams, often based outside of Japan in countries with cheaper labor pools, are sometimes called in to work as “in-betweeners,” filling in the cels between the “key frames” produced by the home studio. Whether “full” or “limited,” on a prestige or a shoestring budget, studio animation is articu­ lated within the bounds of what enables this distributed workflow. Foreground and background layers, computer graphics, and so on might aesthetically cohere, but the workflow is designed so that different branches of the production team can work on these elements simultaneously. Forced to aim for efficiencies in production and much larger audience shares, studio animation rarely has time to linger on the intricate labor required to make drawings move. While animation studios might measure their output in episodes and series, solo animators often work for months or even years on a single short-form work. It is this labor differential, above all else, that allows a different perspective on animation to emerge. Solo animators push up against the very limits of what animation can do as a technique for redrawing the world. What distinguishes solo animation practice is this production context, rather than any kind of absolute break in genre or artistic intent. Animation is often quick to register changes in production methods and tools. As the important Japanese film theorist Imamura Taihei explored in his pioneering work on Disney in the 1940s, studio animation can be seen to absorb the factory logic of industrial society more generally.4 The rise of television anime in post-war Japan pushed these factory models even further into the aesthetics of the animations themselves, particularly when it comes to character design. Going back to the early 1960s, commercial anime characters are often designed from the beginning to be imbued with what Marc Steinberg has called “dynamic immobility” (2012: 44). This is the capacity for a fixed and easily recognizable character to move beyond the material constraints of the screen and be reproduced across a larger circulation of toys, stickers, manga, and other merchandise. On an aesthetic level, industrial production methods put a premium on character designs that are relatively graphic and simple to draw, easily recognizable, and above all merchandisable. Steinberg focuses here on Osamu Tezuka’s design for Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy, literally “Mighty Atom”), perhaps still the archetypal anime figure.5 We can also consider, however, how a character like Astro Boy not only models a body well suited to media circulation, but also in many ways embodies an ideal form of physicality for an age of industrialized labor. He is made of durable metal. He is atomic-powered, can fly, can swap out parts of his body as needed, and has a far greater capacity for work and resistance to fatigue compared to his human companions. In the first episode of the series, we learn that Astro Boy was designed to replace his inventor’s own son, a nine-year-old boy who was killed in a car accident. Astro serves as a physical upgrade, replacing the frail human body with one of industrial strength. As we see with Astro Boy, studio anime responds to the demands of industrial society by becoming industrialized itself—both in its production and in its approach to embodiment. In this social context, figures like Astro Boy not only survive but thrive by leaving the fragility of the human body far behind. More recently, critics like Azuma Hiroki have pointed out the further transformation of these industrial efficiencies into the “database” structures of digital media, where vast ensembles of 144

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swappable body parts and costume elements allow characters to proliferate for every taste, purpose, and utility (Azuma 2009). If Astro Boy models a way to survive the age of industrial production (by becoming industrial yourself), the character database upgrades these animated fortifications for a post-industrial age, rendering them flexible, customizable, and on-demand. In contrast to these trajectories of physical transcendence, solo animations often push in the opposite direction, staying focused on the struggles of a fragile human body subject to the pres­ sures of these same intensifying industrial and post-industrial demands. In other words, solo animations can be understood to explore what might happen if Astro’s creator, instead of trying to transcend mortality by shifting his affections to a robust nuclear robot, stayed with the human body in all its limits, vulnerability, and inevitable change. Solo animation often sides with fleshy, weak, entropic bodies struggling to survive under regimes of mechanization, automation, and other forms of physical management and control. Unlike the strong, seamless bodies of much studio anime, solo animators often present charac­ ters that can barely hold themselves together, but nonetheless strive to survive in contexts where the impersonal machinations of the environment seem to be conspiring against them. The char­ acters’ struggles echo the animators’ own fate as solo producers attempting to carve out a space of survival within the pressures of the larger media industries. In what follows, I turn to explore a small number of award-winning works that directly engage with this dynamic.

Empathy for the ritualized routine Wada Atsushi’s animations often feature mechanisms positioning individuals within assemblyline structures, where characters regulate each other’s movements and manipulate each other’s bodies. In Hana no hi/Day of Nose (2005), similarly attired male office workers shift from chair to chair in assembly-line formation, until they reach an older bespectacled man at the front of the line. He uses one hand to pinch the nose of each worker, as if checking it for quality control. The protagonist submits to this physical inspection, but subsequently attempts to escape to a freer, more flexible form of embodiment. He follows the path of his predecessors to an adjacent wall, where he finds a small hole at about eye level. Squeezing himself though the hole leads him to a momentary break from gravity and the monotony of the assembly line: he floats and swims inside a seemingly liquid bubble expanding out of the hole on the other side of the wall. Before long, however, the bubble enclosing him bursts. He falls rapidly to the ground far below, only to immediately find himself locked into a circular routine, this time holding hands with a mixed group of creatures acting out some kind of ritual around a black rock. There are sequences like this in many of Wada’s works. A whole vocabulary of physical movement emerges as triggers to these escapes: slipping, turning away, tumbling, swimming, floating, and falling. The escapes lead to brief moments of buoyancy, weightlessness, and relative freedom of movement. The usually rudimentary animation suddenly becomes supple—a testa­ ment to the increased level of attention and labor animators devote to these frames—but it rarely lasts for long. Studio animation often revels in similar scenes of bodily transcendence through flight and speed. But when drawn by a single individual, these flights of fantasy cannot sustain themselves for extended periods, limited as they are by the solo animator’s own laboring capacity. For the solo animator, such freedom of movement on the page exacts a high price in time and energy spent. I have written elsewhere of solo charcoal animator Tsuji Naoyuki; his Yami wo mitsumeru hane/A Feather Stare at the Dark (1995–2003) maps this trajectory onto the myth of Icarus (Roquet 2014). A similar dream of escape and bodily transcendence flies Tsuji’s protagonist right up close to the sun, but the sheer exhaustion of the animator’s hand that draws him appears 145

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to bring the character soon crashing back down to earth. Solo animation can stage a flight away from the industrial demands placed on the human body, but in its labor-intensive production, the animator is always faced with the desk, the screen, and stacks of drawings which do not move by themselves on their own. Wada’s animations introduce an interesting twist into this tension between factory-line mecha­ nisms and the free flight of bodies. This is the obvious pleasure his animations take in a fetishistic focus on soft, subtle, ticklish sensations, whether in the fur of animals on the cheek, the hushed, whispered ASMR quality of the soundtrack, or the delicate and thin lines of his drawings.6 These fixations become one strategy for deriving affective pleasure from the incessant repetition of these assembly-line situations (a repetition also inherent to the work of drawing frame after frame after frame). Consider a later scene from Day of Nose. The protagonist comes across a long line of grand­ father figures, closely resembling one another, lying on their backs shoulder to shoulder down the slope of a hill. He immediately lies his head down on the first grandfather’s stomach to have his head patted. Then he rolls to the left onto the next grandfather’s stomach to receive another pat. Then the next, and the next, and the next, and so on. A flashback reveals what appears to be the original intergenerational moment from his childhood: his grandfather patting him on the head. The whole sequence works to transform the isolated pleasure of this physical intimacy into a repetitive, almost ritual gesture taken to absurdly mechanistic lengths. Wada’s sympathy for bodies subject to such social protocols often extends across trans-species lines, particularly to types of domesticated animals like pigs, rabbits, and sheep. Whereas earlier independent animators like Kuri Yōji parodied human domestication in works like the 1962 Clap Vocalism/Ningen dōbutsuen (Human Zoo), Wada, in contrast, demonstrates not just pleasure in the furry coats of these animals, but also admiration for the individual lives of the animals themselves, how they are able to maintain their dignity while subject to repetitive human demands and desires that both limit and sustain them (for example, consider the giant pig and dog in his 2010 graduation work Wakaranai buta/In a Pig’s Eye). Animality plays out very differently in much studio anime. Thomas Lamarre has identified a long-running representational logic in Japanese animation working through what he calls a “biopolitics of species,” mapping human concerns (like racial difference) onto different species of animated animal in order to articulate a human politics disguised or displaced onto the non­ human realm of drawn creatures (Lamarre 2010: 85). Here animals simply become shorthand for depicting various classes of humans. Wada turns this logic on its head. Rather than deploying animality as a way to categorize humans, he instead shows his human characters learning from domesticated animals how to gracefully dwell within bounds. Wada’s approach to animals comes out in even sharper contrast when compared with Alex­ andre Kòjeve’s concept of “animalization,” a term Azuma Hiroki famously took up in his early work on the anime otaku. Azuma writes, According to Kòjeve, humans have desire, as opposed to animals, which have only needs. The word need indicates a simple craving or thirst that is satisfied through its relationship with a specific object. For example, animals sensing hunger will be com­ pletely satisfied by eating food. The circuit between lack and satisfaction is the defining characteristic of need. (Azuma 2009: 86) For Kòjeve, humans who have set aside more complex forms of desire to focus instead on these simpler circuits of satisfaction undergo a process of animalization, a tendency Azuma finds among heavy viewers of anime. 146

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A major problem with this approach is that it fails to take animals seriously as sentient beings, effectively equating them with simple machines that can either be hungry or not. Animality here means to be locked unthinkingly inside the circuits of a larger system (and by extension, Azuma positions otaku as likewise de-individualized, mere components of larger industry mechanisms). Wada, in contrast, approaches domestic animals not as mere metaphors nor as needy machines, but as fellow creatures similarly struggling to get by while subject to these larger systems. While Wada’s animations often find pleasure in these repetitive circuits of need and satisfaction, they also depict animals as individuals, building out a space of empathy and cooperation between the repetitive mechanisms of both human and non-human animal worlds. The round-the-rock ritual which the protagonist of Day of Nose joins after his free fall includes a bird and a horned mammal alongside the humans. Wada’s first DVD of collected works (2010) goes so far as to ground this empathy through reference to animals actually living in captivity: a bonus slideshow included with the disc features pictures of him posing with different animals at the local zoo. Mizushiri Yoriko’s contemporaneous work shares with Wada a use of thin lines and a focus on trans-species encounters. Alongside furry animals, she highlights sensual points of contact and the exchange of weight between human skin, food, and manufactured furnishings. Unlike Wada, Mizushiri leans toward materials more often tagged as explicitly “Japanese,” exploring, for example, the sticky viscosity of soy sauce, the slide of sweaty gelatinous blocks of raw fish, the wrapping and unfolding of Japanese-style clothes and bedding, and the pungent humidity of the hot spring in works like Futon (2012), Kamakura/Snow Hut (2013), and Maku/Veil (2014). Beyond animals, the tactile action potentials of objects fascinate these animators. This too appears to tightly reflect the material context surrounding these works’ construction. In the making-of videos that often accompany Japanese solo animations released on DVD, we see the animators laboring in tandem with one of two desktops: drawing on a paper or tablet placed upon a hard, horizontal surface, or seated in front of a computer screen, manipulating frames and layers using digital imaging software like Photoshop or After Effects. In both cases, the materiality of the tools and working space are readily perceptible in the textures of the anima­ tions themselves. For example, the flat, minimal color fields serving as the background for much of Wada and Mizushiri’s works directly reflect the smooth horizontal plane of the desk on which the drawings first appeared. The software too makes it presence felt. Wada demonstrates in one video how he selects the color palette for his animations by using the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to zoom in on his scanned drawings and select pigments out of the fibers of his Japanese-style drawing paper.7 In doing so he leverages the software to amplify, rather than obscure, the analogue materials under­ lying his drawings. The work is created in tandem with these tools by leveraging their creative limitations, rather than obscuring their trace in the name of a more “full” or immersive ani­ mated style. The shimmer of every hand-drawn line as it shifts slightly from frame to frame marks not just the hand of the animator but the presence of the animator’s tools as well—both hardware and software desktops. In other words, the fleshiness of these drawn bodies become intimately grafted onto, and even dependent on, the materiality of the animation tools, whether pencil and paper or Adobe.

Empathy for the biological test subject Animations like Wada’s and Mizushiri’s explore how bodies are conditioned and coordinated with and through larger disciplinary mechanisms, tools, and material objects, even as their char­ acters find ways to momentarily escape, play, or find pleasure in the movement potentials these 147

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things offer. This final section shifts to consider solo animations engaging with embodiment at a more biological level. Here the plane of social control over bodies is less on the level of mus­ culoskeletal manipulation and more on a molecular level of cellular transformation and rupture (Rose 2007: 4). This is most obvious in the more abstract wing of independent Japanese animation, such as the work of Mirai Mizue and Hiraoka Masanobu. Mirai eliminates the human element entirely, content to watch the kaleidoscopic transformations of cell matter under his microscope in works like Jam (2009). In contrast, Hiraoka, like Mizushiri, blends human and non-human animals, food, and plant matter to the point where it becomes impossible to fully distinguish between them. In Hiraoka animations like Land (2013),8 there is an obsession with the rending, melting, and puncturing of the drawn body: the very capacity of the drawn figure to tear, split apart, involute, and transform. And yet amid these waves of dissolution and abstraction, the rapidly shifting lines occasionally coalesce into recognizably human and animal forms. A kind of empathy transpires in these brief moments of recognition, glimpses of a persistent subject that rides the waves of this ongoing transformation. Mirai and Hiraoka’s animations, along with less abstract works from other solo animators like Ōyama Kei and Hashimoto Shin, often more directly unsettle any assumption of corporeal integrity. They incessantly focus on the porousness, perforation, dismemberment, and liquefac­ tion of all physical form, placing the human body on a continuum with various kinds of pro­ cessed meat and plant matter. The repeated rupture of formal integrity registers the permeability of the body to outside intervention as, simultaneously, a sublime release and nauseating entropy. Each allows viewers only the briefest pause to register the passage from one form to the next, and in that valley between upheavals, they trace out fragile threads of intersubjective empathy. I find these pauses are among the most powerful moments in solo animation work: a vision of individual life sustaining itself despite being pulled this way and that by external forces. The intimacy of these works allows them to recognize where moments of emotional exchange and recognition might lead to other kinds of interspecies and inter-material collaboration, alliances between fragile bodies constantly under the threat of dissolution. By refusing to adhere to clean distinctions between different normative categories of life, and by carving out moments of indi­ viduality amid these invasive and impersonal social forces, solo animators draw out new lines of empathy. I conclude by turning to one final work illustrating this space of biological rupture and intersubjective intimacy in solo Japanese animation. Airy Me (2013) is an animated music video for the eponymous song from Red Rocket Telepathy, the 2009 debut album of the electronic musi­ cian and vocalist Cuushe (real name Hitotsuyanagi Mayuko).9 Animator Kuno Yōko emailed Hitotsuyanagi to propose creating the video as her graduation project for the graphic design program at Tama Art University. The final work animates approximately 3,000 hand-drawn illustrations and extrapolates an entire narrative from the song’s lyrics, which ruminate on wanting to melt into the night air, dissolving the self completely into the atmosphere.10 Kuno’s Airy Me is set in a hospital where a doctor is carrying out biological experiments on young human test subjects (Japan Media Arts Festival Archive 2013). The video focuses prim­ arily on the hospital room of one young patient, who, in a repeated sequence set to the song’s opening verses, is visited by a nurse and receives an intravenous injection of an experimental drug (Figure 9.1). The camera perspective sways and tilts from overhead to around the charac­ ters and back, visually tracing the path of the air itself as it is blown around by the spinning ceiling fan seen at the start and end of the video. The first time through, the imagery cuts to a backstory showing experimental butterfly subjects as well as test tubes filled with experimental liquids ready to be injected. These are labeled (in English) with affective states and actions like 148

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Figure 9.1 The nurse prepares to administer an injection while the patient looks away. Still from Airy Me. Source: Kuno Yōko, 2013.

“surprise,” “chagrin,” and “lie.” The poison suffusing the entire hospital environment con­ denses into an apple, which the nurse feeds to the patient just before she makes her exit. During the second injection sequence, however, a dramatic trajectory is set in motion by the nurse’s post-injection gesture—an affectionate tap on the nose. This nurse’s tap triggers a process of rapid mutation and transformation in which the patient becomes a chimera—part plant, part insect—and instinctively begins pursuing the nurse, who flees into an underground bunker bathed in a toxic yellow.11 Already, however, this transformative escape away from the weight and frailty of the human body is starting to break down as the sequence cross-cuts to a more muted first-person perspective of the child, back in her original position and staring at her own hands and feet, wobbling unsteadily out of bed and toward the door. These two parallel traject­ ories come to a head as the chimera, now reduced to a flying butterfly head, finally makes contact with the nurse in a surprisingly tender kiss—only to have the nurse’s brains explode out of the back of her head. Back in the sketchier tones of the monochrome sequence, however, the patient finally reaches the nurse for an urgent hug. The animation ends on an ambiguous note with the nurse lying alone on the floor in the center of an empty yellow room. The door to the room closes on its own accord, plunging the animation into darkness. The theme of biological manipulation here is difficult to miss. A handful of the video’s nearly 600,000 viewers on YouTube, writing in English in the comment section, see in the video a reference to the Japanese Imperial Army’s infamous Unit 731 during World War II. This divi­ sion tested experimental biological and chemical weapons on live humans in a remote Chinese facility strikingly similar in appearance to the building seen at the start of Kuno’s animation. In a more contemporary context, we could also point to recent experiments aimed at producing real-world chimera by mixing cells from different animals together, so that, for example, human organs can be grown inside pigs for later use in organ transplants (Wu et al. 2017). In our current age of biomedical advances and the complex questions of bioethics they raise (Rose 2007), empathy for the viscerally mutable and manipulated bodies of these experimental subjects is 149

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more vital than ever. Solo animation, itself implicated in the intimate manipulation of bodies on the page, is powerfully positioned to explore the emotional and ethical ramifications of biologi­ cal plasticity. Importantly, Airy Me does not simply present an animated spectacle of biological mutation. Instead, it is the emerging affective bond between patient and nurse that introduces an unex­ pected feedback loop into the hospital’s experimental routines. The nurse’s somber expression in every scene gives the first hint that her role in administering both emotional care and experi­ mental drugs to her patient is a conflicted one (and we see a male research scientist looming over her elsewhere in the video). It is this combination of affect and bioengineering that triggers the child’s unsteady mutation, but it is also what pulls her back into her body and out of bed, rather than allowing her to dissolve entirely into the toxic yellow of her hallucinatory stupor. Airy Me presents an encounter where two beleaguered humans are able to share something like affection and care despite the destabilizing biological experimentation going on around, between, and inside them. Like much of the work I have referenced above, Kuno here implic­ itly questions how to care for a body alone and reeling from its subjection to larger systems of social control. In trying to find a way out, these animators each turn to a gestural vocabulary of turning and tumbling: bodies twisting toward moments of pleasure, grace, and belonging, at the same time as these movements bring them closer to the edge of collapse. This chapter has set out a framework for understanding solo Japanese animation as a site of heightened empathy for individual bodies laboring under external pressures. Rather than the gleaming perfection of so many anime character designs, these animators draw on and through their own work as animators to envision forms of physicality more vulnerable, fragile, and finite. The mutability of drawn bodies here operates not as a path to physical transcendence, but as a way to register the physical and emotional strain of lives made subject to powerful external forces. Amid these pressures, the animations open up lines of ethical and affective recognition between human and non-human animals, plants, and other materials. In this way the bodies onscreen also reflect back on the position of the solo animator, trying to find a way to wriggle free, even for a moment, from the larger machinations of contemporary animation production. In these moments, the animator becomes a figure like Kuno’s nurse: at once enabling the strange deformations of those under her control, and simultaneously extending gestures of empathy, care, and possibly even love to these same figures.

Notes 1 Shinkai Makoto’s early self-produced works (1999–2000) are the most famous examples here. 2 OReilly originally focused on solo animation works, but transitioned into semi-interactive games with Mountain (2014) and the widely lauded Everything (2017). Citing OReilly and other animators-turned­ game makers like Michael Frei (Plug & Play, 2015), Doi has recently turned to focus on animationinspired video games in his critical (Doi 2018) and curatorial activities, including producing Wada Atushi’s first interactive work, My Exercise (2017–2019). 3 Wada’s Wakaranai buta/In a Pig’s Eye won an Excellence Prize in 2010; Mizushiri’s Futon and Kuno’s Airy Me won the New Face award for emerging animators in 2012 and 2013, respectively. 4 For more on Imamura’s complex take on the production of bodies in commercial animation, see Lamarre 2014. 5 [Editors note] The character was originally introduced in the manga first published in 1951; the ani­ mated television series debuted in Japan on January 1, 1963. 6 ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response,” or what Nitin Ahuja has defined as a “reli­ able low-grade euphoria in response to specific interpersonal triggers, accompanied by a distinct sensa­ tion of ‘tingling’ in the head and spine” (Gallagher 2016). Wada has spoken of his interest in producing and enjoying similar low-grade ticklish sensations using the language of fetish. See the interview at www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZL6X5mK844 (accessed November 28, 2017).

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See “The Making of Wada Atsushi” DVD extra in Wada 2010.

Hiraoka has posted the work at https://vimeo.com/74114715 (accessed November 28, 2017).

The video is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ5QvrGxTnQ (accessed November 28, 2017).

Cuushe describes her soft vocal style on the album as partly emerging from the need to sing quietly while recording in her urban Japanese apartment late at night (Hadfield 2015). Here too, the material limitations of solo production seep into the aesthetic form of the work itself. 11 The metamorphosis animation is strongly reminiscent of the famous uncontrollable mutation scene in the unfinished Olympic Stadium in AKIRA (Ōtomo Katsuhiro, 1988), another narrative centered on children subject to molecular experimentation.

Works cited Akiyama, K. 1977. “Nihon eiga ongakushi o katachizukuru hitobito: Animēshon eiga no keifu 19—Sōgetsu animēshon no jikken 3” (“The People who Shaped the History of Japanese Film Music: Animation Genealogy 19—Sōgetsu Animation Experiments 3”). Kinema junpō 721 (Late November): 124–129. Azuma, H. 2009. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Trans. E. Abel and S. Kono. Minneapolis, MN: Univer­ sity of Minnesota Press. Doi, N. 2016. Kojinteki na hāmonī: Norushutein to gendai animēshon-ron (Personal Harmony: Yuri Norstein and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Animation). Tokyo: Filmart-Sha. Doi, N. 2018. “Patān to taishōsei: animēshon eiga kara indi gēmu o nagamete” (“Pattern and Symmetry: Indie Games from the Perspective of Animation Films”). Genron 9: 93–109. Doi, N. and Hirano, R. 2017. “World animation atlas dai yonkai: Gēmu to iu na no, orutanachibu na animēshon: Deibiddo Orairī & indi gēmu” (“World Animation Atlas: Alternative Animation in the Name of Games: David OReilly and Indie Games”). Wired (May 9). Online at https://wired.jp/series/ world-animation-atlas/04_david-oreilly-indie-game/ [accessed May 10, 2017]. Gallagher, R. 2016. “Eliciting Euphoria Online: The Aesthetics of ‘ASMR’ Video Culture.” Film Criticism 40(2). Hadfield, J. 2015. “Cuushe Dreams of Perfect Pop on ‘Night Lines.’ ” The Japan Times, April 12. Japan Media Arts Festival Archive. 2013. “New Face Award—Airy Me.” Japan Media Arts Festival Archive. Online at http://archive.j-mediaarts.jp/en/festival/2013/animation/works/17an_airy_me/ [accessed March 23, 2017]. Lamarre, T. 2010. “The Biopolitics of Companion Species: Wartime Animation and Multi-Ethnic Nation­ alism.” In R.F. Calichman and J.N. Kim (eds), The Politics of Culture: Around the Work of Naoki Sakai, 72–90. London: Routledge. Lamarre, T. 2014. “Cartoon Film Theory: Imamura Taihei on Animation, Documentary, and Photog­ raphy.” In K. Beckman (ed.), Animating Film Theory, 221–251. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mōri, Y. 2011. “The Pitfall Facing the Cool Japan Project: The Transnational Development of the Anime Industry under the Condition of Post-Fordism.” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 20(1): 30–42. Roquet, P. 2014. “Carbon as Creation: On Tsuji Naoyuki’s Charcoal Anime.” Mechademia 9: 63–75. Rose, N. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schlachetzki, S.M. 2012. Fusing Lab and Gallery: Device Art in Japan and International Nano Art. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Sidney, P.A. 2009. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943–2000, 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steinberg, M. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis, MN: Univer­ sity of Minnesota Press. Wada, A. 2010. Atsushi Wada Works 2002–2010. DVD. Tokyo: Calf. Wu, J. et al. 2017. “Interspecies Chimerism with Mammalian Pluripotent Stem Cells.” Cell 168(3): 473–486.

Further reading Animations: Creators & Critics. www.animations-cc.net/. Doi, N. 2016. Kojinteki na hāmonī: Norushutein to gendai animēshon-ron (Personal Harmony: Yuri Norstein and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Animation). Tokyo: Filmart-Sha.

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10

Media Models of “aMateur”

filM and Manga

Alexander Zahlten

In 1976, leftist theorist, film critic, and activist Matsuda Masao (1933–) emerged from a deep sense of crisis. “When you turn the camera on the outside world, for better or for worse, that is where the romanticism that existed within the [political] movement has obviously ended” (Matsuda 1976: 46). Such a sentence could pass as a cantankerous statement on the age of social media, but Matsuda is discussing 1970s Japan. Yet, the explosion in—so the standard critique went—depoliticized young people picking up film cameras and organizing vast screening net­ works is not the reason for Matsuda’s despair. It is in fact part of what he begins to see as a space of regeneration and renewed possibility. This essay will roughly map the history of jishu eiga, or literally “autonomous/independent film,” in Japan from the 1920s onward. It will focus on decisive shifts in the 1960s and 1970s, when the term “jishu eiga” (hereafter referred to as jishu film) and a specific understanding of it started to emerge that begins to depart from the connotations of its possible English translation, “amateur film.” To better understand those shifts, it will relate jishu film to similar develop­ ments in dōjin (peer-produced) manga. This history will help map deeply consequential shifts in media models at the time, including Matsuda’s position. Generally speaking, this history entails a shift from emphasizing the transmission of a message to the value of distributive networks themselves. This essay will define jishu film in a broad sense: as production and production-of-distribution activity by individuals and groups outside of a primarily commercial context. Such a tentative and broad naming will allow for tracking decisive shifts. The problems involved in defining what jishu film “is” will not be discussed here in detail, nor will the problems of relying on a negative definition that understands jishu film as “primarily non-commercial.” Instead, this essay will attempt to trace the shifting discourse around what was understood as a coherent set of films and practices, though going through distinct periods in terms of that understanding from when it was called amachua eiga (amateur film) in the 1920s to jishu film in the 1970s. Such a history therefore offers shifting versions of what jishu film represented and promised at different points in time. This survey of the discourse on and situation of jishu film continues up until the 1980s, when jishu film narrowly defined—as it emerged in the early 1970s—arguably ended its formational period. The understanding of jishu film that emerges thus points to larger changes in the under­ standing of media. Almost every participant in the media society took part in the monumental 153

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changes in the practice and understanding of media in the 1970s: the state, the film and media industry, and those trying to operate outside or against them. To help further delineate these transformations, what follows will relate jishu film’s trajectory to a similar, yet subtly different course in manga dōjinshi (peer, or literally “like-minded people” production and distribution of manga and publications about manga). Arguably, the turn to jishu/dōjin activities also includes literature, journalism, music, and eventually figurines, video games, fashion, and other media channels and forms. At its center lies the entry into mainstream culture of what has often been discussed in English, since the 2000s, as the “prosumer,” “fan labor,” “peer production,” or “amateur media production.” In this version, this shift has been frequently associated with inter­ net culture, and discussed primarily through the lenses of economy or fandom. At the same time, there have been—for manga—attempts to fuse these perspectives through what Lawrence Lessig (for media generally) and Nele Noppe (for manga) have called a hybrid economy, between gift and market economies (Lessig 2004; Noppe 2014). However, such a perspective and naming elides central aspects of these developments. The rich and long-standing culture of media production by individuals and groups outside of more strictly commercial contexts in Japan is not always best understood through the lens of fandom or piracy, as it has established itself in the English-language academic context. A general focus on production (with partial exceptions, as in Green, Ford, and Jenkins 2013; or Lobato 2012) also elides the centrality of distributive activities. Perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on “the digital” as a decisive rupture forces a specific time-frame and a reductive focus on very specific practices. Shining a light on the surge of jishu and dōjin production and distribution cultures in the context of Japan from the 1960s onward, with an eye to their pre-histories, will provide important insights for life in and through media today. Jishu film is a genre of media production that proliferated wildly exactly when complaints about the perceived end of the “season of politics” became a common trope. Matsuda’s essay “Wakai sedai no eiga shisō” (“The Film-Thought of the Young Generation”) uses jishu film as a starting point for a more affirmative analysis of emerging possibility. It must have seemed astonishing at the time that this positive evaluation of a largely apolitical body of films is voiced by one of the most influential critics/activists of the New Left. One would expect Matsuda to forcefully reject what he acknowledges as a draining of explicit message politics from youth culture, but in fact he goes on to justify this emerging type of film and media model. Part of the reason for Matsuda’s endorsement may be that he understands jishu film in keeping with what I have called an “industrial genre” model. Industrial genres are constellations of production, distribution, and reception practices that match the texts of the films they produce and circulate with the kind of meaning they produce (Zahlten 2017). Put differently, for indus­ trial genres, the production and distribution infrastructures and practices themselves are legible and generate a social/political meaning that matches up with the filmic texts they produce. Yet jishu film has not been a hermetic formation. In fact, in terms of commercial cinema, the influence of jishu film has been enormous. Just as pink film became one of the few entry points into the film industry, and a training ground for young talent after the collapse of the studio system, jishu film offered space for fertile experimentation from which many entered the main­ stream commercial film industry from the 1980s onward. Producers, scriptwriters, and directors that began in jishu film are legion, including names such as Sono Shion, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Ishii Gakuryū (formerly, Ishii Sōgo), Tsukamoto Shinya, Anno Hideaki, Obayashi Nobuhiko, Yaguchi Shinobu, Hashiguchi Ryōsuke, Kawase Naomi, Zeze Takahisa, Ichise Takashige, and many, many more. Jishu film left deep marks on mainstream commercial cinema aesthetically as well. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples is the horror film aesthetic introduced by the Ringu (aka 154

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The Ring) series. When scriptwriter Takahashi Hiroshi and director Nakata Hideo were tasked with developing the bestselling novel Ringu into a film, they drew on Tsuruta Norio’s 1980s horror-themed 8 mm jishu films like Toneriko (1985), which in turn influenced Tsurata’s own straight-to-video Hontō ni atta kowai hanashi (Truly Scary Stories, 1991). Darkly atmospheric and based on building tension rather than the splatter effects so popular in the 1980s, this style was developed in 8 mm film. By way of Ringu, it spread across horror cinema in East and Southeast Asia and, in diluted form, into various Hollywood remakes of horror films from Japan. It is no surprise that Ichise Takashige, the producer behind horror film series such as Ringu or Ju-on (JuOn: The Grudge) and many other horror-themed films was also an avid 8 mm filmmaker in the 1980s. Producers with a jishu film past generally played a large role in supporting directors from that genre. Sentō Takenori, a key figure responsible for re-introducing Japanese film to inter­ national film festivals in the 1990s, provided a work space for former jishu directors such as Ishii Sōgo, Suwa Nobuhiro, Aoyama Shinji, Rijū Gō, and many others during his time at the satellite television channel Wowow. As I briefly summarized earlier, what is called amateur or fan media production in English scholarship has drawn much attention since the 2000s, for a variety of reasons (see, e.g., Jenkins 2008; Hunter et al. 2013; Boyd, Ito, and Jenkins 2015; Delwiches and Henderson 2013; Lunning 2010 and 2011; Hemmann 2015). It has also been discussed through the lens of a shift in media culture brought about by “the digital,” and especially the Internet. Such work centering on the digital deploys terms of democratization and empowerment, such as Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture, or terms of exploitation and control, as in Tiziana Terranova’s concept of free labor, or Maurizio Lazzarato’s immaterial labor (Jenkins et al. 2009; Terranova 2004; Lazzarato 1996). Historically, however, such media practices precede the widespread introduction of digital technology and do not always map easily onto a narrow definition of fandom; Japan provides an excellent example. This should raise questions about an easy claim to causality. It is difficult to deny an important and specific role of the spread of digital technologies in the intensification and partial transformation of such activities and modes of self-organization. But the larger historical trajectory of jishu and dōjin media also raises interesting questions about the activities around production/distribution, and around the role and even the definition of reception. Additionally, such work overwhelmingly directs its atten­ tion to the North American and Western European contexts, with occasional allowances for Brazil. Discussions through the lens of fandom often elide such narratives of capture, yet they have opened up a wealth of possibilities for the discussion of contexts outside of Euro-America, and on issues in gender (Ishida and Okabe 2012), sexuality (Lavin, Yang, and Zhao 2017; Bil­ tereyst, Dhaenens, and Van Bauwel 2008) and race (Nakamura 2009). Most basically, this work raises such questions as what role media and the attached technolo­ gies and practices should play, economically, socially, and politically. Are we to strive for a transmission-model, as in classical mass media theory? In such cases, however, the framework of “amateur” and “fan” more often poses questions about the economic models we find sustain­ able, exploitative, or ethical, while accepting a contrast with professionalism, or a specific rela­ tion to commercial media. It asks whether we think of “prosumers” as capital-controlled free labor, as a breeding ground for trolls, as potentially resistant copyright pirates, or as agents of democratization. How do we understand ownership or the role of the state in controlling media through legal frameworks, and how do we ultimately understand citizenship as defined in media capitalism? The questions that Matsuda is addressing in his surprising shift in the mid-1970s are similar, but also slightly different, as we will see. In English-language work the interest in amateur film or home movies specifically—the two major ways such (film-related) activities have been framed—surfaced in tandem with an increased 155

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conceptual interest in the archive in the late 1990s (see, e.g., Zimmermann 1995; Ishizuka and Zimmermann 2008; Craven 2009; Monahan, Rascaroli, and Young 2014). The differences in nomenclature between languages, even just between Japanese and English, are subtle but important. While in English-language scholarship the most common terms are “amateur film” and “home movies” (often problematically used interchangeably), the term “jishu” (auto­ nomous/independent) has different implications; it does not necessarily posit itself as an opposite to the “professional,” nor relegate itself to the private sphere. Similarly, the term dōjinshi (liter­ ally “likeminded people print publication”) does not directly refer to fandom, as does the English-language equivalent of fanzine (though it is fairly close to zine). The term “dōjinshi” originated in self-published magazines around literature, and “dōjin” is applied today to a wide variety of media channels, such as games and music. Recent English language scholarship on “amateur” film has tended to focus on early (i.e., 1920s/1930s) or early post-war films and organizations (Zimmermann 1995; Tepperman 2014; McNamara and Sheldon 2017). In terms of films, the dichotomy between the public/commer­ cial sphere as opposed to the private/non-commercial realm of activity has long structured the discourse. Patricia Zimmermann has meticulously traced how this dichotomy played a singular role in the marketing of small-gauge film technologies (in the English-language context) and their usage by the people that engaged with them (Zimmermann 1995). In Japan, the influence of the Euro-American discourse can be felt especially in the 1920s and 1930s, when such pro­ duction/distribution was often termed amachua firumu (amateur film). But the nomenclature in Japan also commonly departs from that strict binary with terms such as kojin eiga (individuals’ film), kogata eiga (small-gauge film), jishu eiga (autonomous film) or, for a variety of media, the term dōjin media (media produced/disseminated by peers/equals/like-minded people). As we will see, jishu film by the 1970s meant something very different than terms such as amateur film or home movies imply. The context of Japan is an exceptionally interesting space for exploring this history, in part because it arguably has the richest and most extensive history of such production/distribution anywhere in the world. While only a fraction of the enormous body of films produced over its nearly ninety-year history is available for viewing today, a long and public history of discourse on autonomous film is readily accessible. The attention afforded to it by a major figure such as Matsuda hints at its significance for broad and fundamental concerns, so here we turn to his perspective on jishu film.

Rethinking media politics Matsuda Masao’s conversion into an active supporter of jishu film emerged from a personal and political sense of despair. Following his deportation from France to Japan in fall of 1974 for suspected involvement in the activities of Japan’s United Red Army, he found himself pro­ foundly doubting his previous main callings as an activist and film theorist/critic. In his 1976 article, Matsuda outlines his realization that his previous critique of jishu film had primarily served as a projection of conflicted feelings regarding his own work throughout the late 1960s. In the previous year, he had already renounced his post-1967 writings, and after his return to Japan, he felt deeply alone and without allies (Matsuda 1976).1 Matsuda was disillusioned with the leftist movement in which he had been a central figure, and was even involved in the pro­ duction and distribution of political project films such as Ryakushō: renzoku shasatsu-ma (aka Serial Killer, dir. Adachi Masao, 1969), and Sekigun-P.F.L.P: sekai sensō sengen (PFLP Declaration of World War, dir. Wakamatsu Kōji and Adachi Masao, 1971). Not only did the time of interfactional violence (uchigeba) lack any sense of romantic appeal that could still attract young 156

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people, as he put it, the entire media model of the left had failed. Previously, Matsuda had already criticized a reliance on transmitting the “right” message through mass media in favor of a more direct, unmediated “common feeling” or empathy. Now he saw the need for a different model again, one less focused on communal immediacy and more on self-organizing mobiliza­ tion through embodied media (and mediated) practice (Matsuda 1973). Then, on March 14, 1975, Matsuda made a fateful encounter with the 16 mm jishu film Seishun sanka: okenai hibi (Song of the Scattering of Youth: Days I Can’t Leave Behind) by director Hashiura Hōjin, a member of the jishu film collective Concorde Giants that included Ōmori Kazuki and Ban Bokuto. This story of a young film fan documenting the uneventful and unsat­ isfying everyday life of an assistant director for PR films was closely modeled on Hashiura himself, who had been an assistant director at Iwanami Films. Matsuda did not see it as a docu­ ment of resignation but one of willingness to engage with the issues of quotidian life through what he calls ikinaoshi, a term that we can translate as “living (again) in a re-directing way” or “repairing through revised living.”2 “Ikinaoshi” becomes the central term through which Matsuda understands the possibilities and the purpose of jishu film. What he deems significant is the will for reparative or re-directing living through film: a form of film that is not the spectacle of consumption of commercially produced cinema but a more quotidian media practice. Matsuda sees a specific fusion as the target and method of ikinaoshi: that of life and film. Life through film and life as film—both the filmic text and the process of making, screening, and engaging with it—mean that jishu film tasks itself with both repairing the “specific time of life” of the 1960s as well as its oppressive mainstream media model, in which “the universal time of a film set before your eyes … must be replayed (saisei) to the letter.” Jishu film becomes a means for ongoing engagement with the project of changing life through three entangled threads: redi­ rected living, the merging of life and media, and an escape from a normative media temporality. Matsuda then re-evaluates the jishu films he had previously seen but discounted as symptoms of the introverted generation (naikō sedai).3 What had been a sign of the decline of political engagement and independent film now becomes part of the transition to a different model of media, politics, and sociality. As Matsuda points out, in this context, the year 1973 takes on special significance. It is the year Ōshima Nagisa’s production company Sōzōsha ended opera­ tions and Wakamatsu Productions retreated from its more politically provocative work. Ogawa Productions relocated from Sanrizuka, where it had covered the intense protests against the building of Narita airport, to a village in Yamagata prefecture to film rice farmers, another move seen as a turn away from politics and activism during this year. Matsuda remarks, however, that he now also understands 1973 as the year when Hara Masato released Hatsukuni shirasumera mikoto (The First Emperor, 1973), a film that inspired hundreds across the country to pick up a camera and become filmmakers themselves. We will return later to Hara, a trailblazer of jishu film whom Matsuda calls the “first jishu film director” (Matsuda 1976: 47). At the age of seven­ teen, Hara had so impressed Ōshima Nagisa after winning the 1968 Film Art Festival Tokyo at the Sogetsu Arts Center with his Okashisa ni irodorareta kanashimi no barādo (A Ballad Colored in Ridiculousness) that Ōshima made him a collaborator on Tōkyō sensō sengo hiwa (The Man Who Left his Will on Film, 1970). Hara is credited as the screenwriter together with Sasaki Mamoru. Hara fanned a flame that had been burning quietly for several years but was now ready to erupt. One important pre-condition of that flame was the 1965 release of the new Eastman Kodak Super 8 film format and Fujifilm’s competing Single-8 format. These new film formats and cameras made access to film considerably more affordable, especially in a Japan that was experiencing extraordinary economic growth.4 By the late 1960s, many of the cameras were already available for even lower prices in second-hand electronics stores. 157

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Several factors then came together to support an explosion in filmmaking and screening among high school and university students. In addition to newly accessible film technology, this generation had grown up in a quickly complexifying media situation that was especially influ­ enced by television’s widespread colonization of the living room throughout the 1960s, making moving images an intimate presence in everyday life. The jishu films that began proliferating in the early to mid-1970s were markedly cinephile works, fascinated with formal experimentation and fantasy rather than expressed activism. This development did not go unnoticed in the film industry. Like Ōshima’s 1970 The Man Who Left His Will On Film, Hani Susumu’s 1972 ATGproduced film, Gozenchū no jikan wari (The Morning Schedule), picks up on the spreading smallgauge film activities and incorporates them into the film’s plot. Whereas Ōshima’s film still discussed the dissolution of film as a tool for political activism and the shift to a mediatized inte­ riority, Hani’s film sees two male protagonists searching for the reasons for a young woman’s suicide through the 8 mm films she left behind, when she herself had used film as a mode of life therapy. In The Man Who Left His Will On Film, small-gauge film becomes a space of hallucina­ tory blending of political disillusionment, past, memory, and fiction. But filming and the act of living have already merged in The Morning Schedule, which is largely made up of footage shot by Hani’s non-professional actors. By the time of Matsuda’s conversion to understanding jishu film as a new way of engaging the failed project of intertwining life and politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s rather than a symptom of depoliticization and a turn toward interiority, he had seen quite a few jishu films through his collaboration with the Cinema Expressway screening group. Consisting of Hara Masato, Okubo Kenichi, Gotō Kazuo, and Kobayashi Tatsuo, the group obtained permission to use the Asia Cultural Center (ACC) in the Kanda area of Tokyo (a space that Matsuda effect­ ively managed for the screening of activist and political independent films) to organize weekly jishu screenings from November 1975 until June 1976. Here, Matsuda gained his first close look at a type of film practice that was spreading like wildfire across the country. Kicking off with a mix of directors at the forefront of the jishu film boom such as Hara Masato, Gotō Kazuo, Ban Bokuto, and Takamine Gō in November 1975, they followed up with a special program of Obayashi Nobuhiko’s films in late December 1975–January 1976, implicitly acknowledging Obayashi as a forerunner and inspiration of (though ultimately distinct from) what Hara was calling “new cinema.” The group simultaneously began publishing their own influential, if short-lived, jishu film dōjinshi New Cinema Express, providing information about jishu film from all over the country. The screenings included films by already prominent groups and collectives from Nagoya (e.g., TFO, “The Other Film Organization”), from Hokkaido, and from the Kansai area (e.g., Ōmori Kazuki’s Concorde Giants group). Screening groups (jishu jōei), film­ making groups, and jishu film dōjinshi were emerging all over the country and quickly develop­ ing communication channels (Harada 1994).5

1923: the baby arrives The long history of explicit interest in the political valence and potential of films produced by individuals and collectives reaches back to the first widespread diffusion of a small-gauge film camera in Japan in the 1920s. The 9.5 mm Pathé-Baby was first exhibited in a branch of the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo in 1923, although the disastrous Great Kantō Earth­ quake in September of that year prevented it from becoming widely available in Tokyo until June 1924, and 1926 in the Kansai area (Nihon Kogata Eiga Renmei 1976: 32). The PathéBaby camera quickly established a material base for allowing filmmaking practice to spread beyond the already extensive commercial filmmaking industry.6 Small, handy, and robust, it was 158

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produced for the consumer market with non-flammable 9.5 mm film by the Pathé Frères company (non-flammability being an important condition for use in the home). Despite the cost of the camera, which largely restricted the group of possible users to the relatively wealthy with some degree of leisure time, things began to snowball. From 1926, Bēbi shinema (Baby Cinema) magazine was published first in Kansai and then by a Tokyo branch. In 1928, activist Sasa Genjū shot scenes of the 8th Tokyo Mayday, initiating politically motivated, non-commercial film production that eventually led to the founding of the immensely conse­ quential Proletarian Film League, also known as Prokino (for details on the league’s activities, see Diane Wei Lewis’ Chapter 3 in this volume). Sasa penned an influential article titled “Gangu/ buki-satsueiki” (“Camera-Toy/Weapon”) in 1928 that became something of a founding docu­ ment.7 From August 1928, the magazine Amachua mūbīsu (Amateur Movies) launched as a monthly publication, followed by Kogata eiga (Small-Gauge Film) in October 1929, and Amachua eiga (Amateur Film) in 1931.8 This meant that three, thick, widely distributed monthly magazines (and multiple smaller, dōjin publications) serviced those interested in shooting their own films.9 Despite Prokino’s relatively brief five years of existence from 1929 to 1934, it was one of the most influential formations for the negotiation of film as a tool for political activism.10 Much work on Prokino at that time focuses on its total of forty-eight films—mostly documentaries, but including several animated films as well—and the screenings. Diane Wei Lewis’s Chapter 3 in this volume illustrates how the question of building self-organizing networks, within a discus­ sion on Bolshevization, became a central concern for some Prokino members. Prokino became the site of sophisticated and polemic debate on the potential of the moving image camera (liter­ ally) in the hands of the public, which Sasa tried to frame as the entry of film activism “into daily lives” (Makino 2001: 38). Matsuda’s realization, then, in many ways corresponds to a prior historical moment that also saw the spread of small-gauge cameras. Makino Mamoru has carefully traced the overlap between Prokino and early amachua eiga journalists, groups, and discussions, and he emphasizes that Prokino itself cannot be understood without taking into account its “intimate relationship to the new generation forming the amateur film world” (Makino 2001: 19). For example, Amachua mūbīsu was officially edited by the Amateur Cinema League of Japan, a branch of the New York-based Amateur Cinema League (ACL) founded in 1926. It was heavily staffed with members from the leftist film criti­ cism dōjinshi Eichō (which included Sasa Genjū), however, and the magazine often featured articles on and scenarios by Prokino. Members from the Kyoto Baby Cinema Society actively participated in the production of films and animation for Prokino. That Amachua mūbīsu was backed by the Fukada Trading Company, which ran the Tokyo Home Movies Library for film rental and was involved with importing camera equipment, reveals how “amateur” film activity, political activism, and business intersected heavily even at this point.11 In 1934, Prokino was forced to give up its activities because of considerable police pressure in the form of censorship, surveillance, and arrests (Nornes 2003: 37). Filmmaking by indi­ viduals was still tolerated, however, and in some areas even encouraged, to the point that Prince Yamashina sponsored an international amateur film competition in Tokyo in 1937 (Tepperman 2014: 73). Eventually, a special censorship provision was introduced for these films as well. From their start in the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, all of the larger magazines retained common areas of interest: technical mastery, together with a fetishization of the material tech­ nology itself; a focus on competitions as a forum for connecting filmmakers; and the inter­ national profile of amateur film. This last point in particular became an established paradigm from the publication of Amachua mūbīsu onward, with its ties to the New York Amateur Cinema League (ACL). The US-based ACL presented itself as an international organization and its 159

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co-founder and first president Hiram Percy Maxim (son of the famous inventor Hiram Maxim) saw amateur film as a communication medium and a universal language (Tepperman 2014: 25). The ACL invested much energy in creating international networks and including international films in their competitions, and its journal Movie Makers constantly featured reports on the activ­ ities of filmmakers abroad. Inheriting these impulses, amachua eiga was considerably more internationally networked than the commercial film industry in Japan. The most prominent and prolific filmmakers parti­ cipated enthusiastically in national and international competitions, regularly winning prizes abroad. Tsukamoto Kōji was well known for mountain and skiing films, shooting and circulat­ ing around 350 in total. In 1936 alone, his films won prizes at international competitions in Barcelona, London, Germany, and the United States. Okamoto Tatsui’s landscape films also won multiple international prizes in Europe and the USA, and were even screened along with commercial releases in some theaters. Ogino Shigeji’s often experimental live action and ani­ mated films, approximately 400 in total, were highly regarded, and ranged from formalist color experiments to science fiction stories. Hyakunengo no aru hi (A Day After a Hundred Years, 1933), for example, is about a man resurrected 100 years after his death in combat to see the future and look back on the moment of his own death. At the 1935 international amateur film contest in Budapest, Ogino won first and second prize for two of his films, with a third one placing first in the festival’s color film section. Osaka-based Okinaka Yōmei also won prizes at amateur film festivals in Paris, Portugal, and, after the war, in Cannes and elsewhere (Nihon Kogata Eiga Renmei 1976: 47 and 252). Many additional examples show the degree of enthusiasm that amachua filmmakers had for circulating their work internationally in the 1930s.12 The colonial empire served as another channel for linking film activity beyond the Japanese islands. In Taiwan, the Pathé-Baby was popular enough to merit the founding of the Don Club in 1928 for screening and viewing members’ films. Other cine-clubs followed, and advertise­ ments for film camera equipment were common sights in newspapers. In 1930, a tank parade was held in Taipei expressedly for amateur filmmakers to shoot footage, and Taiwanese amateur filmmaker Deng Nanguang’s films were frequently shown at competitions in Tokyo (Lee 2012: 11). These networks survived to a limited degree in the post-war period, with reports on the situation in Japan again increasing in the US-based Movie Makers magazine after 1952 (for the first report following World War II, see Uno 1952). However, they never reclaimed the same intensity of exchange. The gradual rebuilding of amachua film activities networks from the 1950s focused largely on connecting contexts within Japan through competitions, and its prac­ titioners were, with few exceptions, middle-aged, upper-middle class, and male (with the exception of limited international exchange re-emerging in the more narrowly defined area of high art experimental film in the 1960s). Their films retained a focus on technical accomplish­ ment, and although magazine records point to a fair amount of unorthodox works, the image of gatherings showing fairly conventional travelogues and home movies served as an important contrastive touchstone for the considerably younger generation that picked up the camera in large numbers from the early 1970s.13

Manga dōjinshi’s networks For the broader issue of media production by individuals and collectives, it is important to observe the barely interacting but near-parallel rise of jishu film and manga dōjinshi as youth culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dōjinshi—publications by individuals and groups generated outside of the primarily commercial publishing industry—initially became a central 160

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part of media culture from the Meiji period onward. At first focused on literature, dōjinshi later became central to early film culture and also to the development of the amachua filmmaking culture, including its specifically political extensions such as Prokino. The intense degree of interaction between dōjinshi, journalism and criticism, and jishu filmmaking in the late 1920s would not come close to being matched again until the 1970s, though to some degree the rela­ tionship remained in place. In the case of manga dōjinshi—which entailed manga, dōjinshi about manga, and mixes of the two—this development picked up speed from the 1950s. Possibly the first article to system­ atically survey the then-recent history of manga dōjinshi appeared in COM (COM stands for “Comics, Communication, Companion,” also billed as “Magazine for a Manga Elite”) pub­ lished by Tezuka Osamu’s Mushi Pro in 1968 (COM 1968: 172–192). Written with the aware­ ness of being in the midst of a manga dōjinshi boom, this report focused on the period after 1945 and divides manga dōjinshi history into three basic periods. The first period is defined by the influence of the important Manga shōnen magazine (published from 1947–1955) and its submis­ sions column. “Shōnen” can be translated as “boy,” and in the post-war period, the distinction between “shōnen” and “shōjo” (girl) target readership becomes an important paradigm for the manga industry (for more on “shōjo” readership, see Yuka Kanno’s Chapter 4 in this volume). Most of the manga dōjinshi named here by COM began publication between 1950 and 1955 and were commonly the result of networks created by readers that sent in letters or submitted their own manga to Manga shōnen, using the readers’ submission column as a platform to make first contact. These dōjinshi, like many of the following generations, were a mix of self-created manga, manga criticism, and manga-historical research. Bokujū itteki, a dōjinshi that developed out of the Higashi Nihon Manga Kenkyūkai (Eastern Japan Manga Research Group), was co­ founded by the manga giant Ishimori (later Ishinomori) Shōtarō, then a middle-school student. The dōjinshi Shin tenchi was a coordinated effort by numerous regional manga kenkyūkai (research groups) all over Japan, and ran for twenty-eight issues between 1952 and 1955. The second manga dōjinshi boom occurred after commercial manga publications shifted from monthly to weekly magazines in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This, combined with the 1955 demise of Manga shōnen, restricted the available commercial outlets for “amateur” submis­ sions. The new popularity of gekiga-style manga intervened, emerging from the late 1950s and initially represented by the Osaka-based Kansai Mangaka Dōjin (Kansai Manga Artist Group) group that, among others, included Saitō Takao, Satō Masaaki, and Tatsumi Yoshihiro. Gekiga magazines such as Kage or Machi held competitions used as forums to showcase submissions. This led to an immense influence of gekiga on manga dōjinshi culture, and many of the emerg­ ing dōjinshi of this time feature the term “gekiga” in the title.14 The third manga dōjinshi boom occurred in the mid-1960s and was divided by COM into two different branches. On the one hand were dōjinshi created by fans and on the other those founded or co-founded by already working artists. The latter was a phenomenon still very visible in venues such as Comiket (Comic Market) today. Tezuka’s Mushi Pro, Fujiko Fujio’s Fujiko Productions, Yokoyama Masamichi’s Yokomichi Productions, Saitō Takao’s Saitō Pro­ ductions, and others published such dōjinshi magazines. According to COM, these magazines supported fan culture but also helped scout assistants for manga artists in a time of immense growth for the manga industry. Several factors contributed to this jump in activity during this phase: the publication of COM from 1966 and its renewed emphasis on reader submissions and competitions in its Gura Kon (Grand Companion) corner; the appearance and boom in anime after Astro Boy began airing in January 1963; and the 1965 publication of Ishimori (later Ishi­ nomori) Shōtarō’s Mangaka nyūmon (Introduction to Becoming a Manga Artist), an introduction to drawing manga that discussed Ishimori’s beginnings in dōjinshi activities. Additional factors 161

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included developments in printing technology, making higher print quality for dōjinshi afford­ able, and the increased participation of university students in dōjinshi production. By late 1971, COM suspended its run and manga dōjinshi culture, which was then in full swing and highly networked, began an intensified search for additional platforms for connectiv­ ity. In the meantime, manga conventions proliferated as well, although they were still largely focused on commercially produced manga and only featured dōjinshi as a side attraction. Ten­ sions about dōjinshi’s status within conventions persisted, famously leading to a falling out over the rejection of a female participant who was critical of a previous iteration of the Nihon Manga Taikai (Japan Manga Convention) in 1975. This led the dōjin circle Meikyū to advocate for the excluded participant, and Meikyū eventually decided to found its own dōjinshi-focused event. Thus, the very first Comiket convention was held on December 21, 1975 with thirty-two par­ ticipating circles and 700 participants. Comiket’s own historical chronicle lists over 90 percent of the dōjinshi at that meeting as referencing shōjo manga, nominally targeting female reader­ ship; to the present-day Comiket generally retained a majority of female participants, a stark contrast to jishu film, at least in the 1970s (Comikku Māketto Junbikai 2015).15 Comiket, as is well known, became the largest event for non-corporate produced media in the world, and by the mid-2010s was held twice a year with nearly 600,000 visitors and 50,000 booths.

Connectivity and its politics It is informative to compare the parallel breakthrough of jishu film and manga dōjinshi to main­ stream youth culture in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Although both dōjin manga and jishu film eventually centered heavily on the activity of university students, they approach this development from opposite directions. First, jishu film considerably lowered the average age of its participants, from middle-aged men to university and high school students, but in the case of manga dōjinshi, the age of participants begins with middle schoolers and rises to include high school and university students. Second, there is relatively sparse interaction between the two formations, which may confirm Kitada Akihiro’s thesis that this is exactly the period in which media specificity starts to become a dominant paradigm on both levels of critical dis­ course and media practice. Third, in their early phases, manga dōjinshi and jishu film show stark differences in terms of gender. In the 1970s, female participants represented a clear majority at Comiket. In contrast, jishu film retained a stark division of labor, with predominantly male dir­ ectors and staff, with women most commonly participating as actresses. This would change considerably by the 1990s with the rise of film schools and multiplying avenues of access to filmmaking for women. Fourth, much of the non-commercial activity involving these media entails intense efforts around connection and distribution. The immense amount of activity around the creation of complex networks has not achieved the amount of attention it arguably merits. Recent media-theoretical work often associates the network with the digital. When sociolo­ gist and media theorist Kitada Akihiro discusses his concept of tsunagari no shakaisei (connective sociality), he locates its emergence in digital culture and (digital) social media. Specifically, Kitada analyzed the 2-Channel messaging board to discuss the de-emphasizing of content, which slips into oscillating between sincerity and irony. Rather than transmitting information, Kitada sees the desire for connection itself as the driving force. According to Kitada, provocative rightwing posturing and often hateful statements are simply ways to provoke reactions and function as opportunities for connectivity (Kitada 2005: 192). It is useful to remember that leftist theorist Tsumura Takashi already saw state and corporate power shifting to network models in the early 1970s as a deliberate attempt to devalue “content,” which the left relied on for its emancipatory 162

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politics (Tsumura 1973). However, it is not just the state that is shifting toward an emphasis on structure and circulation over message. Although a fairly stable allegiance to specific value systems of media aesthetics (i.e., “contents,” or rather, kinds of media texts) characterizes dōjin manga and jishu film, the intense desire for connectivity—and complex connectivity, no less—is striking.16 What is also striking, however, is the way that connective complexity is nationally framed for the jishu and dōjin cultures from the late 1960s onward. We therefore encounter two counter-movements between jishu film and manga dōjinshi. The period from the mid-1960s onward leads to ever-more intense connections between media and the establishment of a media mix system, but the “amateur/autonomous” production ref­ erencing it enforces fairly robust media channel divisions. Jishu film of the 1920s and 1930s is enthusiastically international in the connections it seeks. In contrast, at the time of Japan’s full re-entry into international politics and trade in the 1960s, jishu film and dōjin manga draw extensively on “foreign” media objects while retaining a strictly national connectivity (although this changes in the 2000s). This primacy of the nationally bounded media space of connectivity within the jishu and dōjin communities may correlate with the perceived failure of one vehicle of international con­ nectivity, leftist politics, that youth culture had employed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Matsuda’s deportation from France (and the shock it engendered for him) is in that sense sym­ bolic. More concretely, the one event that is often seen as sealing the fate of radical leftist politics in Japan, the televised hostage crisis and storming of the Asama Sansō mountain lodge with members of the United Red Army barricaded inside, was an eminently national media event. It was also deeply entwined with the highly national orientation of television broadcasting (see, e.g., Yoshimi, 2003). NHK’s live broadcast of the storming of the lodge on February 28, 1972 drew a viewership of almost 90 percent, the highest in Japanese television history. The year 1972 also recorded the peak sales of Single-8 film in its history, contributing to the now much less international phase of jishu film.17 The retreat from explicit leftist politics—represented by a transmission model of media—and the national turn inward, the (momentary) triumph of tele­ vision as a national medium, and the expansion of nationally framed “amateur” connectivity all converged and were interdependent at this historical juncture. It is not surprising, then, that Hara Masato’s The First Emperor was the definitive 8 mm film that helped launch the jishu film boom of the 1970s.18 In this film, Hara embarks on an epic journey across Japan, tracing its mythical history by way of the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, c.711–712), the oldest existing “chronicle” of Japanese history. Hara makes the process of filming his exploration both of the landscapes and of film itself into the topic, in the end becoming emperor within the mytho­ mediated space of an 8 mm Japan. The process of filmmaking, and the exploration of the inner space of the self and the fictionalized nation through and in film become the centerpiece of this foundational jishu film. Explicit political activism is then not the main motivator or even particularly representative of jishu film as a whole, in its broadest or its more narrow definition. As one important excep­ tion, Prokino was fundamentally conflicted (again, see Diane Wei Lewis, Chapter 3 in this volume). It relied heavily on a transmission theory of media—that is, on “content”—but was also deeply invested in creating self-organizing networks. Prokino members were not immune to the fascination with technical mastery (itself a focus on form rather than signification) that the amateur film and small-gauge film discourses put forth, but they had less use for it than many others active at around the same time. While emphasizing how Sasa’s first films were visibly lacking in technical prowess, contemporary reports nevertheless were fascinated that they suc­ ceeded in whipping up expressive outbursts of affect (Nornes 2003; Makino 2001). By 1973, Matsuda realized that a transmission model was problematic because of its reliance on an “us” 163

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versus “them” binary. In the wake of reflecting on a spectacular two-day symposium held on the occasion of Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s visit to Tokyo, Matsuda came to the conclusion that there needed to be a redirection toward thinking about media not as an exteriority but rather as part of our interiority (Matsuda 1973).19 The age of “media electronics” (Matsuda 1973) was part of a trajectory of such interiorization and an increased connection to the uncon­ scious. It was through the body itself as a medium that collectivity needed to be approached, as a way of mobilizing the “me” toward a (self-organizing) “we” (Sas 2017: 158). The increased overlap of body and media, the extension of media into human interiority, and the concomitant biologization of the concept of media all show a clear trajectory, on the side of commodity culture, the state, and leftist activism, toward matching (techno-) media and (national) life.20 Tellingly, the first day of the symposium that provoked Matsuda’s 1973 essay was themed “Access to the Media Ecology,” an early use of the term “ecology” in connection with media. By 1976, Matsuda had found one possible site of this match in ikinaosu, which can be translated as “making a fresh start,” in this case understood as revising life through the lived media practice of jishu film. Despite his important support for the New Cinema Express group, Matsuda’s influence on jishu film would not be the decisive or even principal one. Indeed, his specific hopes for a polit­ ical practice through networks were presumably disappointed. It was another critic, Hasumi Shigehiko, that came to embody the new sensibility, though not by direct involvement or through theoretical invectives. Hasumi rarely addressed jishu film, and although jishu film was never theoretically oriented and was too decentralized to follow single conceptual lines, Hasu­ mi’s playfully formalist approach to film—and that of the exploding jishu film world—had a much more visceral connection. Hasumi began teaching film as an adjunct at Rikkyo University in the 1970s, and he had the most immediately traceable impact on students there. They included late 1970s jishu directors and an impressive array of later “professional” directors such as Kuro­ sawa Kiyoshi, Manda Kunitoshi, Shinozaki Makoto, Shiota Akihiko, Aoyama Shinji, Suo Masa­ yuki, and Mori Tatsuya.21 Hasumi’s post-structuralist emphasis on play and on enjoyment of the film form beyond didactic politics struck a deep chord with a generation intent on distancing itself from the perceived mess and severity of the failed student movement.22

Conclusions: institutionalization The late 1970s saw increasing institutionalization of jishu film (and manga dōjinshi), as the entry of former jishu film directors into the commercial film industry seemed to become an option. By the late 1970s, arthouse theaters such as Namiki-za or Bungei-za in Ikebukuro were provid­ ing jishu film directors with sizeable production budgets in exchange for the rights to screen their films.23 In 1978, jishu film wunderkind Ōmori Kazuki shot Orenji rōdo kyūkō (Orange Road Express) for the major studio Shochiku after his script for the film won the prestigious Kido Shirō prize. In the same year, another major studio, Nikkatsu, decided to tap into the immense force of jishu film by offering Ishii Sōgo the chance to co-direct a 35 mm studio film based on his wildly popular 17-minute 8 mm short, Kōkō dai panikku (Panic in High School, 1976). That a major studio would provide a twenty-one-year old with the chance to film a studio production based on the strength of an 8 mm film shot two years earlier attests to the extensive audience networks that jishu film had assembled by this time. It also demonstrates the major studios’ des­ peration to appeal to the youth audience, and their breathless attempts to tap into the selfmobilizing energy of jishu film. The symbolic opening salvo for tapping into the ranks of jishu directors had been fired in 1977 with the release of Obayashi Nobuhiko’s Hausu (House, 1977), one year before Orange Road Express and Panic in High School. Obayashi, by now a prominent 164

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director in the advertising industry, had laid much of the groundwork for jishu film’s emergence with his experimental shorts of the 1960s. Matsuda, who was writing about House even before its official release, saw the film as a symbolic event. The story of young women devoured by a house that is intent on rejuvenating itself was for him a metaphor for jishu film’s potential inges­ tion by the commercial film industry (Matsuda 1976: 49). The decreasing distance between jishu film and the commercial film industry was an omen for the situation of film in Japan from the 2000s, when, as Kiyoshi Kurosawa has put it, “everything has become jishu film.”24 In the meantime, jishu film became increasingly centered less on self-organized screenings than on specialized film festivals—an immensely significant shift for jishu film’s role as a creator of networks, which jishu jōei (self-organized screenings) were an enormous part of.25 The Pia Film Festival (PFF) was the most important festival in this respect, and came to represent the thinning membrane between jishu film and the commercial industry. It first took form as the Pia Cinema Boutique in 1976, a one-off screening organized by the city magazine Pia, featuring jishu directors such as Ōmori, Hara, and Izuchi Kazuyuki. In the next year, it took place as the Pia Film Exhibition, and in 1979, it became a full-fledged annual festival, then still named the Pia Off Theater Film Festival. In PFF’s early years, it was a high-profile event with jurors such as Ōshima Nagisa and François Truffaut. The competition often reads like a Who’s Who list of directors later prom­ inent in commercial cinema, a development that the PFF deliberately supported through (intro­ ducing) the PFF Scholarship, which to this day provides the respective year’s winner with the funds and the industry contacts to shoot a medium- to low-budget feature film for commercial release. With an early offshoot in the Kansai area, PFF quickly established a national network of festival screenings and built channels to film festivals abroad such as the Berlin International Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the Nippon Connection Film Festival. It thereby became a central institution for fostering new talent in the post-studio era, but it also inadvertently suppressed the self-organizing tendency of jishu film. Another important institution for the formational and later phase of jishu film was Image Forum (and the associated Image Forum Film Festival, Image Forum journal, film school, and video media and books). Image Forum channeled jishu film in a different direction than the more mainstream-minded PFF. Although Image Forum had screened jishu film broadly in its extensive pre-history and earlier incarnations, it eventually focused on promoting the strain of jikken eiga (experimental film) that, in the 1970s, still would have been called jishu film. One of the founders of Image Forum, Kawanaka Nobuhiro, was an important filmmaker and critic himself, and an early promoter of the potential of video (and of the Jonas Mekas approach to film-as-life) since co-founding the Video Hiroba group in 1972. While submissions to the PFF would also primarily shift to video in the 1990s, video as a medium in the 1970s was more closely associated with media art (and to a limited degree, with community media) than with the cinephile filmmaking practice of jishu film. This was the direction Image Forum eventually pursued.26 Manga dōjinshi experienced a similar kind of institutionalization at around the same time as jishu film, with Comiket and later regular conventions such as COMITIA (from 1984). From the late 1980s, this continued with an infrastructure of specialty stores, which in Tokyo were mainly concentrated in the Akihabara and Ikebukuro areas, as well as in the Nakano Broadway complex. Especially beginning in the 2000s, conventions became just one part of a broad network that also included stores, internet sites, and specialized printing shops. Here too, the porous nature of the boundary between dōjin and commercial activities only increased, with some of the most successful works of the 2000s emerging from dōjin activities: groups such as the manga collective CLAMP or works such as the Tōhō (Touhou) Project music and video 165

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games, and the Higurashi no naku koro ni (Higurashi When They Cry) media mix franchise, based a sound novel series originally offered at Comiket on CD ROM. Dōjin manga was arguably able to preserve a stronger culture of coherent self-organization and distribution, even despite the diversification of dōjin within venues such as Comiket in the 1980s. The event came to include music, games, novels, or figurines (which also had their own special­ ized conventions such as the Wonder Festival). This might be partially related to the sheer quantity of dōjinshi participants, which still dwarfs what, by the 2010s, might still be considered (in the narrow sense) jishu film, as well as the comparative ease of working as an individual or in small groups in manga dōjinshi as opposed to the more extensively team-based work in jishu film.27 Paradoxically, then, the pressure for complex and coordinated group work in the production process of jishu film seems to have worked against its larger systemic self-organization as a media genre; at the same time, the more individualized nature of manga dōjin production seems to encourage self-organizing distributive activities within manga dōjinshi and across other dōjin media. Rather than claiming the relative decline in distributive self-organization as a weakness of jishu film, it is crucial to consider the potential meaning of an emphasis on smaller-scale selforganization on the level of production as opposed to the de-emphasis of self-organization on the level of distribution, and how it might point to a specific response to the contemporary situation.

Notes 1 Matsuda quotes his own renunciatory words from his volume Fukanōsei no media (Media of NonPossibility) in Matsuda 1976: 46. 2 The term might also be translated as “reparative re-living,” as it carries strong connotations of re-doing something to repair it. 3 Among these, Matsuda names Gotō Kazuo’s Hādoboirudo hanimūn (Hardboiled Honeymoon, 1974) or Boku wa ude o otta (I Broke My Arm, Production Group KIM, 1975), both 16 mm jishu films. 4 The choice between the two formats often became an important identity marker for jishu filmmakers. While Super 8 was generally seen to have a superior color spectrum, Single-8 cameras allowed for considerably more use flexibility, most importantly in terms of recording speed and the possibility to rewind, adding the possibility of in-camera special effects. 5 Regional jishu film dōjinshi are numerous, and many of them, like Zanzo (the full name is Jishu Eiga Hihyō-shi Zanzo [Cinema Critic of New Independent Cinema Zanzo]), made by an Okayama Prefecture-based group, were distributed widely across Japan. 6 The Pathé-Baby was not, however, the first camera made for the home market, nor the first released in Japan, even if it was the breakthrough success of such technology. In Japan, there were, for example, previous experiments in marketing a 17.5 mm camera called Kineo; the films produced with this camera could be played on the Edison Home Kinetoscope. The first example of camera and projection equip­ ment made for the home market is Oskar Messter’s system of the Home Thaumograph and the Kine­ tograph, from 1897; see Zimmermann 1995: 23. 7 For an excellent analysis of Sasa’s article and its arguments, see Nornes 2003: 22. Sasa shot several films entirely on his own before the formation of Prokino (and its previous incarnations) created a larger structure for collective filming, editing, and distribution. Other early films by Sasa include Teidai nyūsu (Tokyo University News), Sutoraiku (Strike), Gaitō (Street), and Noda sōgi (The Noda Strike), some in 9.5 mm, some in 16 mm (see Makino 2001: 20). 8 Amachua mūbīsu was created with the founding of the Nihon Amachua Shinema Rīgu (Japan Amateur Cinema League), which deliberately named itself as the counter-piece to the US-based Amateur Cinema League, founded in 1926. 9 Sasa shot several films entirely on his own before the formation of Prokino (and its previous incarna­ tions) created a larger structure for collective filming, editing, and distribution. 10 For a detailed investigation of these after-effects, see Nornes 2003. 11 Makino also mentions that the representatives of three of the seven magazines that formed the Moshon Pikuchā Jānarisuto Kurabu (Motion Picture Journalist Club) in 1930 were Prokino members (Makino 2001: 40).

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Media models of “amateur” film and manga 12 While many of the most well-known “amateur filmmakers” were based in Tokyo or the Kansai area, the degree of production and circulation that took place in various regional centers should not be underestimated. The Niigata Regional Image Archive has collected hundreds of hours of footage from several decades, showing a wide range of travel documentaries, propaganda films, fake documentaries, experimental films, and so on produced in the area at the time. 13 In numerous interviews with jishu film directors active in the 1970s, the amachua film model offered by the older generation was consistently mentioned as a contrast to their own understanding of jishu film. My interviews with Hara Masato, Okubo Kenichi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Nishimura Takashi. 14 Gekiga designated a new style of manga that initially developed in the Kansai region and quickly became massively successful. Focusing on action and a dynamic and relatively speaking more realist style, gekiga manga aimed at a somewhat older readership and incorporated more violence than manga previously had. 15 Attendees at Comiket have, however, especially since the 1990s, skewed male. 16 In his Mangaka nyūmon (Introduction to Becoming a Manga Artist), Ishinomori Shōtarō interestingly recounts how he assembled a group of pen pals interested in manga under the pretense of forming an organization and publishing a dōjinshi. It was only when his new friends paid their membership dues that he realized he now needed to actually start publishing a dōjinshi (Ishinomori 1998). 17 For statistics, see Fujifilm’s website on Single-8 film history at: www.fujifilm.co.jp/corporate/aboutus/ history/ayumi/dai4-07.html (accessed July 2017). 18 Like Ōshima’s 1970 The Man Who Left His Will On Film, Hani Susumu’s 1972 ATG-produced film Gozenchū no jikan wari (The Morning Schedule) already picks up on the spreading 8 mm film activities and makes it part of the film’s plot. However, where Ōshima’s film still discussed the breaking up of film as a tool for political activism and the shift to a mediatized interiority, Hani’s film sees two male prot­ agonists searching for the reasons for a young woman’s suicide through the 8 mm films she left behind, when she herself had used film as a kind of life therapy. While small-gauge film becomes a space of hallucinatory blending of past, memory, and fiction, in Man, filming and the act of living have already merged in Morning—which becomes obvious in the respective films’ use of small-gauge film aesthetics. 19 For an excellent and thorough analysis of Matsuda’s argument, see Sas 2017. 20 Leftist media theorist Tsumura Takashi, a contemporary and frequent reference of Matsuda’s, eventu­ ally took this matching of life, body and media seriously and turned to occult practices of detecting energy lines, literally becoming a medium. He forged a second career as an author of books on Chinese medicine. 21 Many of the directors coming out of the “Rikkyo Group” were part of what was probably the most prominent university-located jishu film group, Parodius Unity. Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Manda Kuni­ toshi were two central founding members. 22 For more on Hasumi and his role in 1970s film criticism and as a precursor of new academism, see Cook 2010 and Zahlten 2017. 23 Interview with Okubo Kenichi, October 2014. 24 Interview with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, June 2005. 25 The Kobe- and Osaka-based Planet Film Archives (Puranetto Eizō Ākaibu), founded by Yasui Yoshio in the 1970s, is one example of a jishu jōei/autonomous screening-based formation that by the 2010s was still immensely influential for the course of jishu film in Japan (see Shota T. Ogawa’s Chapter 20 in this volume). From the 1990s onward, it increasingly functioned as a fixed screening space (Planet Studyo+1) and archive, becoming an important space for directors such as Yokohama Satoko, Yamas­ hita Nobuhiro, and Shibata Gō. 26 The pre-history of Image Forum is quite complex, beginning in 1979 with the founding of the Japan Underground Center by Satō Jūshin, and with involvement by Kawanaka. This was re-formed as the Underground Center in 1971, and in 1972, it commenced screenings under the name of Underground Cinematheque in a space borrowed from Terayama Shūji’s Tenjō Sajiki theater troupe. It changed screening venues and renamed itself Image Forum in 1977. 27 What was once called jishu film is now more often called indīzu (indies) by their participants. However, it takes place in a somewhat different space than in the 1970s. Due to the splitting of production into big-budget spectacles and very low-budget productions, jishu film/indīzu have now an increasingly fluid overlap with commercially produced film, both in terms of staff and screening venues.

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Works cited Biltereyst, D., Dhaenens, F., and Van Bauwel, S. 2008. “Slashing the Fiction of Queer Theory: Slash Fiction, Queer Reading, and Transgressing the Boundaries of Screen Studies, Representations, and Audiences.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 32(4): 335–347. Boyd, D., Ito, M., and Jenkins, H. 2015. Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. COM. 1968. “Dōjinshi Shōkai” (“Introducing Dōjinshi”) in COM 4 (April): 172–192. Comikku Māketto Junbikai. 2015. Comic Market Chronicle: 40th/Comikku Māketto 40 shūnenshi. Tokyo: Comiket. Cook, R. 2010. “An Impaired Eye. Hasumi Shigehiko on Cinema and Stupidity.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 22: 144–160. Craven, I. (ed.) 2009. Movies on Home Ground: Explorations in Amateur Cinema. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Delwiche, A. and Henderson, J.J. (eds) 2013. The Participatory Cultures Handbook. London: Routledge. Green, J., Ford, S., and Jenkins, H. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Harada, K. 1994. Kore, wa eiga da! (This, is film!). Tokyo: self-published. Hemmann, K. 2015. “Queering the Media Mix: The Female Gaze in Japanese Fan Comics.” Trans­ formative Works and Cultures 20. Hunter, D., Lobato, R., Richardson, M., and Thomas, J. 2013. Amateur Media: Social, Cultural, and Legal Perspectives. London: Routledge. Ishida, K. and Okabe, D. 2012. “Making Fujish Identity Visible and Invisible.” ’ In M. Ito, D. Okabe, and I. Tsuji (eds), Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, 207–223. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ishinomori, S. 1998. Mangaka nyūmon (Introduction to Becoming a Manga Artist). Tokyo: Akita Shoten. Ishizuka, K., Zimmermann, P. (eds) 2008. Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jenkins, H. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, H., with Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A., and Weigel, M. 2009. Confronting the Chal­ lenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kinema Junpōsha. 1963. “‘Haiyū yunion’ no sono ato o ou.” Kinema junpō 336 (Early April): 47–48. Kitada, A. 2005. Warau Nihon no nashonarizumu (A Sneering Japan’s Nationalism). Tokyo: NHK Books. Lavin, M., Yang, L., and Zhao, J.J. (eds) 2017. Boys’ Love Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cul­ tures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lazzarato, M. 1996. “Immaterial Labor.” In P. Virno and M. Hardt (eds), Radical Thought in Italy: A Poten­ tial Politics, 142–157. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lee, D. 2012. The Historical Dictionary of Taiwan Cinema. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Lessig, L. 2004. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: The Penguin Press. Lobato, R. 2012. Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. London: Palgrave Mac­ millan. Lunning, F. (ed.) 2010. Fanthropologies (Mechademia 5). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lunning, F. (ed.) 2011. User Enhanced (Mechademia 6). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. McNamara, M. and Sheldon, K. (eds) 2017. Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Makino, M. 2001. “Rethinking the Emergence of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino).” Trans. M. Nornes. In A. Gerow and M. Nornes (eds), In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru, 15–45. Victoria, BC: Kinema Kurabu. Matsuda, M. 1973. “Media kakumei no tame no akushisu” (“The Axis of Media Revolution”). Bijutsu techō (May): 51–60. Matsuda, M. 1976. “Wakai sedai no eiga shisō” (“The Film-Thought of the Young Generation”). Shinario 12 (December): 44–49. Monahan, B., Rascaroli, L., and Young, G. (eds) 2014. Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Media models of “amateur” film and manga Nakamura, L. 2009. “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft.” ’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 26: 128–144. Nihon Kogata Eiga Renmei. 1976. Amachua eiga nenkan (Amateur Film Yearbook). Tokyo: Self published. Noppe, N. 2014. The Cultural Economy of Fanwork in Japan: Dōjinshi Exchange as a Hybrid Economy of Open Source Cultural Goods. MA Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Arts, University of Leuven. Nornes, M. 2003. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima. Minneapolis, MN: Min­ nesota University Press. Sas, M. 2017. “The Culture Industries and Media Theory in Japan.” In M. Steinberg and A. Zahlten (eds), Media Theory in Japan, 151–172. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tepperman, C. 2014. Amateur Cinema: The Rise of North American Movie Making, 1923–1960. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Terranova, T. 2004. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto Press. Tsumura, T. 1973. “Media-ron kara jōhō kankyōgaku e” (“From Media Theory to InformationalEnvironment Studies”), reprinted in Tsumura Takashi (1974). Media no seiji (The Politics of Media), 288–300. Tokyo: Shōbunsha. Uno, M. 1952. “Japan Reporting!” Amateur Cinema League 27: 180. Yoshimi, S. 2003. “Television and Nationalism: Historical Change in the National Domestic TV Forma­ tion of Postwar Japan.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6(4): 459–487. Zahlten, A. 2017. The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zimmermann, P. 1995. Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer­ sity Press.

Further reading Kakeo, Y. 2011. “Pia” no jidai (The Age of “Pia”). Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha.

McNamara, M. and Sheldon, K. (eds) 2017. Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England

Film, 1915–1960. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nihon Kogata Eiga Renmei. 1976. Amachua eiga nenkan (Amateur Film Yearbook). Tokyo: Self-published. Ōmori, K. 1978. Making of Orange Road Express. Tokyo: Pia Books.

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Part III

Intermedia as an approach Tracing genealogies across disciplines and media

In bringing Part II to a close, Alexander Zahlten’s lucid comparative approach to mining connections between interwar and post-war amateur media networks provides an apt segue into the six chapters that comprise our Part III. Taken together, these chapters cut across a broad swathe of territory in terms of topic and chronological time-frame. What they share in common at the most basic level is an investment in probing the dynamics, meaning, function, and generative potential of cinema’s interrelationships and interconnectivity with other media. In contrast to focusing on cinema’s medium specificity, or discussing it as a “stand alone medium” (Zahlten 2017: 21), these six authors represent an alternative holistic perspective. They seek out relevant media lineages, temporal transformations (from one form of media to another), synchronous intermedial relations within specific texts or a specific medium (e.g., cinema’s own inherent hybridity), and shifts in intermedial relationships. The first four chapters investigate pre-cinema “animated” projection practices (Kusahara, Chapter 11); the intersections between benshi film narrators (also referred to as lecturers), print culture and an emergent modern soundscape (Omori, Chapter 12); the underrated “sound version” films prominent during the 1930s (Nordström, Chapter 13); and the politics and transmedia practices influencing Kawamoto Kihachirō’s (1925–2010) puppet stop-motion animation (Tomonari, Chapter 14). These authors rely on primary sources to explore media relationships from the late eighteenth century to the 1960s and their extended cultural, socio-political, and economic contexts. The last two chapters, on the rhetoric of mobility and autonomy in “AAA” video games and cinema (Johnson, Chapter 15) and transmedia responses to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (Anderson, Chapter 16), evince the new millennium’s densely mediatized world where we live—as Zahlten puts it—with an entanglement of media forms that has become “increasingly obvious and consequential” (Zahlten 2017: 2). “Intermedia” as a general rubric allows for an organizational framework that is expansive, fluid, and flexible in order to accommodate the diversity of comparative contexts, conceptual shifts, and discourse that such interdisciplinary scholarship engenders. Working in the context of film and media studies, Ágnes Pethő has noted that “the study of intermediality has reached a state of dissemination across disciplines and research topics that may seem productive, yet in fact, often results in a mere inflation of its terminology” (Pethő 2010: 40–41). She cites the increasing number of theorists who question the plausibility of a single coherent, unified theory of intermediality and advocate instead a pragmatic and flexible consideration of the term as a 171

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“research axis” or “research concept” that can be deployed in media-specific approaches that “cut across” disciplines (Pethő 2010: 40–41). The organizational logic informing this part of our handbook is similarly open and inclusive. It draws on Fluxus artist David Higgins’ original understanding of the term in the 1960s as a productive approach to gaining insight into the hybrid nature of media forms (any expressive or communicative forms defined by their materi­ ality, their means of production or creation, and their circulation and reception) and their interconnectedness across different social communities and chronological timeframes. Communications scholar Klaus Bruhn Jensen (2016) begins his discipline-specific definition of intermediality by referencing Higgins’ initial use of the term “intermedia” in 1965 to describe certain contemporary avant-garde art activities; this established the term’s usage “to stress the innovative and transgressive potential of artworks that articulate their message in the interstices between two or more media forms” (Jensen 2016: 972–973). According to Higgins, at the time, his objective was “to offer a means of ingress into works” that already existed but might “turn off” potential audiences because of the unfamiliarity of their forms (Higgins and Higgins 2001: 52). Citing Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1812 precedent, in which Coleridge used the term “to define [then contemporary] works which fall conceptually between media that are already known” (Higgins and Higgins 2001: 52), Higgins applied it to contemporary art practices occur­ ring “in between” recognized media and genres, as well as to art practices crossing or fusing boundaries between recognized media and media whose use in art production was unpreced­ ented. Significantly, Higgins understood intermedia terminology as descriptive rather than pre­ scriptive. He also considered the term to be untethered to a singular historical moment. Intermediality “was merely a part of how a work was and is” so that the terminology made it easier to “understand the work and its significances” (Higgins and Higgins 2001: 53). Noting the tendency of intermedia forms to become normalized (as “media”) with repeated use and familiarity, Higgins also regarded the term as useful in identifying and parsing historical traject­ ories and continuities among different forms of media (Higgins and Higgins 2001: 53). From a subject for exploration to a critical category or a framework for analysis, intermedial­ ity and intermedial relationships among multiple modern media technologies has productively informed a growing body of exemplary interdisciplinary scholarship on Japanese film and media practices.1 In particular, this approach has gained traction in animation studies and analyses of film production since the 1960s. In this part, we widen the lens to include pre-cinema projec­ tion practice and silent and early sound cinema in Japan. Rather than reflect a teleological trajec­ tory, the roughly chronological order in which the six chapters appear is meant to facilitate fine-tuned comparisons between and interchange among past and present forms and media configurations, as in the “parallax” approach to historiography that Catherine Russell proposes (2002). For example, the historiographical privileging of images over sound—despite the primacy of the human voice and the significance of oral storytelling traditions in pre-cinema practices, early and silent cinema in Japan—is an intriguing through-line that emerges in the part’s first three chapters. In the opening chapter, “Utsushi-e: Japanese Magic Lantern Performance as Pre-Cinematic Projection Practice,” Machiko Kusahara illustrates the dynamic interplay between newly imported technology, domestic cultural forms, and social transformation, while drawing con­ nections between past and present media (nineteenth-century utsushi-e magic lantern shows and modern anime). As Paolo Cherchi Usai points out, there was a direct correlation between magic lantern shows and cinema’s “specificity” during its first three decades: both were performance-based entertainment involving optics, projection technology, technicians in attendance, artists or lecturers near a screen, and “an architectural space where ‘animated views’ were presented to audiences” (Cherchi Usai 2019: 3). These same basic elements characterized 172

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magic lantern entertainment after its arrival in Japan, but a synergy between the new technology and local practices generated notable divergences from European practices. Kusahara elucidates the complex cultural melding that yielded the vibrant art of Edo utsushi-e, an amalgam of Western optical science, a reparatory borrowed from Japan’s popular theater and oral story­ telling traditions, and the country’s dominant material culture of wood and paper. Her detailed description of utsushi-e performances, informed by her intimate knowledge of extant (or recre­ ated) slides and other artifacts provides a more nuanced perspective of utsushi-e’s influence on cinema’s emergence in Japan. She argues against assumed correlations between Western magic lantern shows, utsushi-e, and their respective influence on other media by demonstrating utsushi-e’s unique relationship with Japan’s contemporary theater and modern anime. The next two chapters recuperate lost soundscapes from Japan’s past, helping us better posi­ tion cinema during the first half of the twentieth century as a component of an emerging, richly variegated, audio-visual and multimedia environment. In “ ‘Inter-Mediating’ Global Modernity: Benshi Film Narrators, Multisensory Performance, and Fan Culture,” Kyoko Omori foregrounds lesser-known facets of benshi performance during the silent period, such as the benshi’s role in generating a proliferation of sound and print media (e.g., radio broadcasts, records, and maga­ zines) that popularized their art and created a broad fan base extending to colonial territories and émigré communities in Europe and the Americas. Omori’s detailed analysis of intersections between Tokugawa Musei’s (1894–1971) benshi performance style and his literary output shows how this popular transmedia star epitomized the benshi’s role in both mediating modernity for Japanese audiences and disseminating film as a global medium. Omori concludes by introducing her digital archive-in-progress, a resource providing access to rare recordings that demonstrate the benshi’s stylistic range, synchronized transcriptions and film clips, print ephemera, and a virtual (and navigable) recreation of a silent era movie theater. As an unprecedented effort to recreate the experience of going to the movies in Japan during the silent period, this resource promises to have a transformative impact on future silent cinema research. The benshi’s voice remained an integral part of the cinema experience in Japan even as the film industry transitioned to all-talkies during the 1930s, as Johan Nordström demonstrates in the fol­ lowing chapter, “Between Silence and Sound: The Liminal Space of the Japanese ‘Sound Version.’ ” Nordström’s contribution investigates the industrial, technological, and economic contexts con­ tributing to the development, between 1931–1941, of a uniquely hybrid form generically known as the saundo ban or “sound version” film: silent films with mechanically synchronized soundtracks (Nordström focuses on domestic productions with soundtracks also made in Japan) featuring music, songs, special effects and, occasionally, unsynchronized dialogue and/or narration. As Nor­ dström points out, conventional film histories, intent on emphasizing cinema’s specificity as an art form, tended to disdain hybridity and marginalized sound version productions. At best, these films were treated as a transitional form or a passing fad. On the contrary, Nordström’s research reveals how the sound version’s versatility—its adaptability to the changing needs of the industry—made it a pivotal form in a transition to sound that was gradual, complex, and “non-linear.” He high­ lights the sound version’s long-neglected value as an expressive and stylistically malleable form that evinced cinema’s multisensory dimension while remaining economically viable. As a consequence, this chapter sheds new light on the intermedial nature of Japan’s sound culture in the first half of the 1930s, and the persistent popularity of the benshi’s voice (even if disembodied) as film produc­ tion and exhibition became increasingly mechanized. In Chapter 14, “Marionettes No Longer: Politics in the Early Puppet Animation of Kawamoto Kihachirō,” Noboru Tomonari focuses on the work of Kawamoto Kihachirō to trace intersec­ tions between twentieth-century political activism, contemporary puppet plays, and Kawamo­ to’s early puppet stop-motion animated films. Tomonari’s critical historiography begins with 173

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the left-wing puppet theater companies that emerged in the 1920s, such as Kawajiri Tōji’s Puppet Theater PUK (La Pupa Klubo). It culminates in an analysis of Kawamato’s directorial debut, the puppet stop-motion animated film Hanaori (The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, 1968), as a political statement on contemporary USA–Japan relations. Kawamoto’s custom of working with puppets across a range of media—puppet plays, television, the “Living Story” picture books for children (with photographs of dolls or puppets staged in dioramas), and ani­ mated films—provides a window into the transmedia dimension of puppetry artistry and story­ telling that peaked worldwide in the 1960s.2 Tomonari’s research invites further exploration of Japanese puppet animation as a popular media form that has long enjoyed widespread dissemina­ tion beyond Japan’s borders, although its origins remain obscured (as Tomonari notes in the case of Tad Mochinaga’s 1964 television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Recent media scholarship (e.g., Zahlten 2017; Steinberg 2012) has effectively made the case that the 1960s marked the start of a definitive transformation in response to systemic changes in the production, circulation, and consumption of film and rapidly proliferating forms of associ­ ated media. The decline of the major film studios coincided with the emergence of an expansive media ecosystem generated by new configurations of increasingly interconnected media, a pro­ liferation of associated media content, and consumer commodities. Amid this exponential explosion of media channels, cinema’s position shifted so that it became only one component of this complex “media mix” (Zahlten 2017). Our last two chapters in this part navigate the expan­ sive media environments of recent decades in order to explore this new multiplicity of relations between cinema and kindred media. In “Rhetorics of Autonomy and Mobility in Japanese ‘AAA’ Games: The Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil Series within a Global Media Context,” Daniel Johnson analyzes the represen­ tations (and sensory evocations) of mobility and movement that link Hollywood blockbuster cinema and two of Japan’s most popular video games under the umbrella of “global age” enter­ tainment. First released in the late 1990s, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil are among Japan’s most enduring and widely marketed media franchises. In the gaming industry, the classification “AAA” (like the film industry’s term “blockbuster”) designates scale; it is generally applied to signature franchises that benefit from generous development and production budgets and aggres­ sive marketing through their association with major studios and developers. This chapter inves­ tigates how such “blockbuster media” franchises draw on and amplify generic, aesthetic, and narrative conventions of cinema by re-contextualizing cinematic space, conjuring the sensations of unbridled personal mobility and expanded agency that drive their immersive appeal. Johnson argues that in appealing to players on three levels—cinematic, ludic, and ideological—Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil evoke sensations of “unfettered” agency and world building through the convergence of novel visual spectacle, fantasies of personal autonomy and mobility, and the political-economic global market logic of post-1980s neoliberalism. He demonstrates that the global dimension of these games goes beyond their “blockbuster aesthetics” and “commercial slickness” to incorporate a “borderless” (mukokuseki) aesthetic that also informs other Japanese popular media, and has antecedents in Japanese genre cinema. The final chapter in this part, Joel Neville Anderson’s “Pointing through the Screen: Archiv­ ing, Surveillance, and Atomization in the Wake of Japan’s 2011 Triple Disasters,” takes a transme­ dia approach to investigating the documentation of social crisis in the midst of environmental catastrophe. What is left when the landscape that defines a community and provides it with a social and cultural identity is destroyed? How do people regain subjectivity, agency, and a sense of nor­ malcy in the aftermath of such catastrophic destruction and loss of life? Work by writers Robert Jacobs (2010), Spencer Weart (2012), the artist Isao Hashimoto (2003), and many others makes it clear that three-quarters of a century after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, art 174

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and popular culture still wrestle with how to respond to the representational challenges of the nuclear age. In contrast to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are copious amounts of professional and amateur still and moving images that document the tragic events caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor meltdowns in Fukushima on March 11, 2011; as Ander­ son points out, this phenomenon generated a renewed interest in the documentary form. The poet and playwright John Canaday persuasively argues that nuclear discourse relies heavily on nonlinear narrative devices (e.g., abstraction, metaphor), because of their capacity to “keep a wide variety of meanings at play at once” and “create webs of meaning” (2010: 17). Anderson’s transmedia approach is similarly effective, addressing a range of projects in photography, film and video, per­ formance, archiving, and creative media: as Anderson notes, the scale of the Fukushima triple disasters far exceeds the capacity of a single medium to accommodate. Anderson includes extensive analyses of the restorative photography project by the community conscious group known as Photohoku and the widely circulated surveillance video footage/conceptual art piece known as “Finger-Pointing Man” to consider how disaster management models the mediation of self and environment in contemporary documentary practice.

Notes 1 For recent examples in English, see Lamarre 2018; Zahlten 2017; Steinberg and Zahlten 2017; Furu­ hata 2013; Steinberg 2012; and Kusahara 2011. 2 Topo Gigio, the Italian puppet phenomenon that memorably became an Ed Sullivan Show recurring guest star between 1962–1971, is perhaps the paragon example of 1960s international puppet stardom.

Works cited Canaday, J. 2010. “Fetch-Lights and Grocery Lists: Metaphors and Nuclear Weapons.” In R. Jacobs (ed.), Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb, 9–28. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Cherchi Usai, P. 2019. Silent Cinema: A Guide to Study, Research and Curatorship, 3rd edn. London: Bloomsbury on behalf of the British Film Institute. Furuhata, Y. 2013. Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hashimoto, I. 2003. 1945–1998 (multimedia work). Online at www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by­ isao-hashimoto/ [accessed November 3, 2019]. Higgins, D. and Higgins, H. 2001. “Intermediality.” Leonardo 34(1) (February): 49–54. Jacobs, R. 2010. “Introduction.” In R. Jacobs (ed.), Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb, 1–7. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Jensen, K.B. 2016. “Intermediality.” In K.B. Jensen et al. (eds), The International Encyclopedia of Communica­ tions Theory and Philosophy. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. DOI: 10.1002/9781118766804. wbiect170. Kusahara, M. 2011. “The ‘Baby Talkie,’ Domestic Media, and the Japanese Modern.” In E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka (eds), Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 123–147. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lamarre, T. 2018. The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pethő, Á. 2010. “Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies.” Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies 2: 39–72. Russell, C. 2002. “Parallax Historiography: The Flâneuse as Cyberfeminist.” In J.M. Bean and D. Negra (eds), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, 552–570. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Steinberg, M. and Zahlten, A. 2017. Media Theory in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weart, S.R. 2012. The Rise of Nuclear Fear. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zahlten, A. 2017. The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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11

UtsUshI-e

Japanese magic lantern performance as pre-cinematic projection practice Machiko Kusahara

Introduction Projection technology has a long history. The early cinema projectors were modified versions of the magic lantern. The history of the magic lantern goes back as far as the mid-seventeenth century and continues until the mid-twentieth century. In fact, the magic lantern was the nine­ teenth century’s most widely used projection medium for entertainment, education, public lectures, religious gatherings, advertisement, and many other purposes. Powerful optical systems and bright light sources such as limelight were developed to meet the demand for shows in large halls and for outdoor projection, preparing a basis for the cinematograph. Even after the magic lantern’s role as pre-eminent entertainment was taken over by film, it was still used in cinema theaters for announcements, advertisements, and notice of upcoming titles. The lamp houses of early cinema projectors often had two optical systems, one for film and one for glass slides. Magic lantern use continued after the end of World War II. The 35 mm slide projector was a modernized electric version of the magic lantern that mostly showed photographic or graphic still images for education and presentations, until the more recent advent of the data projector. Perhaps for this reason, people tend to think that magic lanterns only projected still images. Actually, sophisticated mechanisms were developed in Europe centuries ago for both the lan­ terns and the glass slides in order to animate images and produce special effects such as fades, double-exposures, dissolves, and a wide variety of other techniques. In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, a spectacle known as “phantasmagoria” attracted a tremendous fol­ lowing in Paris and London, using magic lanterns to project images onto a darkened stage complete with accompanying sound effects. The performances featured apparitions of demonic spirits and the victims of the Revolution such as Jean-Paul Marat, resembling the horror shows at theme parks today. The magic lantern phenomenon continued to spread during the nineteenth century, with colorful slides produced in large numbers for both entertainment and education. In theaters, professional showmen told elaborate stories with piano accompaniment amid spectacular images produced by large-scale magic lanterns and powerful light sources such as limelight. The magic lantern was put to diverse uses, disseminating news, for advertisements, and for live projection of magnified microscopic organisms in glass containers. In 1883, just before the advent of cinema, French writer and caricaturist Albert Robida wrote a futuristic description of the 177

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twentieth century, predicting a world in which the likes of television, Skype, and projection mapping would all be realized using magic lanterns (Robida 1882). What was the situation in Japan? Was the magic lantern widely known before the arrival of cinema? If so, how was it used? Did it influence the emergence of Japanese film culture? In this chapter, I offer possible answers to such questions by introducing utsushi-e (literally, “projected pictures”), the Japanese version of magic lantern shows that started in the early nineteenth century in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo) and remained extremely popular throughout the century. I will trace how the Western technology, which arrived in Japan in the second half of the eighteenth century, merged with Japanese storytelling traditions to develop into a unique screen practice. Utsushi-e was, in short, a mode of storytelling that consisted of colorful moving images, narration, sound effects, and traditional Japanese music. Many utsushi-e stories were adapted from the two most popular forms of Japanese theater during the Edo period, kabuki and bunraku (also known as ningyō jōruri), the puppet theater popular in Osaka. Comical stories were taken from rakugo, humorous storytelling by a single storyteller that started around 1700 and became popular in the early nineteenth century. People were fascinated to see their favorite stories from these repertories told through vividly animated images. I maintain that utsushi-e’s combination of storytelling, animated images, and two-dimensional aesthetics situates it within the cultural lineage leading to Japanese animated film. Our knowledge about the once forgotten screen practice associated with the magic lantern owes much to amateur photographer and 8 mm documentary filmmaker Kobayashi Genjirō, who published the definitive and exhaustive study Utsushi-e in collaboration with his daughter Kobayashi (Shiba) Ayako.1 This book laid the foundation for the study of magic lantern practice in Japan and it remains the most valuable resource for researching the topic. Kobayashi saw performances by Yūki Magosaburō IX (Ryōkawatei Sen’yū II) and Tamagawa Bunraku in 1927, when these famous showmen occasionally still performed at cultural events. He firmly believed in the importance of recording this disappearing cultural heritage. After decades of searching, he discovered that although utsushi-e materials were lost in urban Tokyo, both due to the Great Kantō Earthquake (1923) and World War II, they were preserved in the sericulture regions of western Tokyo and Saitama prefecture. By visiting and interviewing former showmen and their families, he not only acquired knowledge on utsushi-e but also mastered its technique. Kobayashi also collaborated with Yamamoto Keiichi, who researched shadow play (kage-e) and magic lantern practice in the western part of Japan as part of his research on the history of magic (Yamamoto 1998). More recent publications referring to utsushi-e include film scholar Iwamoto Kenji’s Gentō no seiki (Centuries of Magic Lanterns in Japan, 2002) and Ōkubo Ryō’s Eizō no arukeorojī (Archeology of Screens in Early Modern Japan, 2015). The Magic Lantern—A Short History of Light and Shadow (2018) is a bilingual publication edited by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum that includes essays by Endō Miyuki, Erkki Huhtamo, and myself along with descrip­ tions of exhibited items. Today, utsushi-e is staged by a few groups of performers. The most active is the shadow theater company Minwa-za, led by Yamagata Fumio, and which is also active as the Edo Utsu­ shi-e Theater Company (Edo Utsushi-e Shachū). Minwa-za has revived utsushi-e as a theatrical performance and has been performing internationally for a few decades. Their repertoire includes nearly twenty classic titles they recovered from existing slide sets owned by the descendants of the last utsushi-e showmen that Kobayashi had discovered. Yamagata and the art director Tanaka Yūko have established a method to recreate the utsushi-e slides (tane-ita) with the help of com­ puter software, and they are active in giving related workshops. Another important group is Youkiza, which is a classical puppet theater company with a long history but has also been known for its experimental performances since the 1960s.2 Its leader, Yūki Magosaburō XII, is 178

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the descendent of the aforementioned Ryōkawatei Sen’yū II (Yūki Magosaburō IX), the son of a utsushi-e showman from around 1900 known for his popular performances on a boat on Tokyo’s Sumida River. Unfortunately, all the utsushi-e equipment they treasured was reduced to ashes during the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 and World War II (Yūki 1981: 175). They have commissioned contemporary painters to create new slides for original titles combining utsushi-e, puppets, and often actors as well; they have also revived the legendary boat performances. In Osaka, the late great rakugo master, Katsura Beichō, had a keen interest in preserving the art and acquired the equipment previously used by the last Osaka showman performing nishiki kage-e (literally, “colorful shadow play”), utsushi-e in Osaka and Kyoto. Another Osaka-based group is Nishiki Kage-e Ikeda-gumi, led by Ikeda Mitsue. They have performed original titles domestically and abroad, using slides that Ikeda has created with her students at Osaka Univer­ sity of Arts. A word on terminology is needed. Utsushi-e literally means “projected pictures”: the noun “e” means “picture,” and the verb “utsusu” refers to the act of moving something onto another space or surface by transferring, copying, projecting, or taking pictures. Although utsushi-e was called nishiki kage-e in Osaka and Kyoto, further west in the Matsue region, it was called kage­ ninge (shadow puppets). For this reason, the term Edo utsushi-e is also used when referring to the practice in Edo/Tokyo and its suburbs. According to recent research, soon after the invention of utsushi-e in 1803, it spread to the western part of Japan, taking over the earlier forms of magic lantern shows that had been associated with shadow play. For this reason, I will use the term “utsushi-e” here to cover magic lantern practices with certain features that are commonly found both in the Tokyo and western regions since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Utsushi-e performance in the nineteenth century Before introducing the history of utsushi-e, let us travel back in time to witness a typical nineteenth-century utsushi-e performance in the city of Edo. According to a contemporaneous account by the scholar Kitamura Nobuyo published in Kiyū shōran (1830), an encyclopedia of the popular culture of his time, we know that by then utsushi-e technique had already become extremely sophisticated (Iwamoto 2002: 94–96). The following narrative of an utsushi-e per­ formance is based on my translation of a description by the scholar Terakado Seiken (1796–1868) in his book Edo hanjōki (Popular Things in Edo) in 1833, exactly thirty years after the first public showing of utsushi-e.3 I have added contextual information for my translation in brackets: [We are at a yose, a small vaudeville house, in Edo on a summer evening. An utsushi-e performance has just started. A few dozen people, including children, are watching the screen, some of them still eating or chatting, as people often do in theaters. The nar­ rator’s solemn opening announcement and the music tantalize the audience.] There is a paper screen, plain grey without any image. At the sound of a flute and hand drum, pine trees suddenly appear. [Multiple painted pine trees typically adorn the wall behind the kabuki theater stage.] A man wearing a robe and a cap appears, holding hand bells in his right hand and a fan in his left hand. The projected image is quite clear and highly recognizable. [Thanks to the distinct pattern on his kimono and cap, the audi­ ence immediately recognizes him as the performer of sanbasō, the ceremonial divine dance with at least six hundred years of history. It originated as a harvest prayer and is performed at the opening of a new kabuki season or theater; it has become a regular part of utsushi-e performances.] He faces left, turns right, and moves his eyeballs and 179

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eyebrows. He lifts the bells to the sound of the flute and opens the fan to the sound of the hand drum [these instruments are played off-screen], dancing and turning as if his image has a spirit. As the dance ends, the images suddenly disappear. Flowers and plants are projected next, one after another. Plum, chrysanthemums, peonies, cottonroses. … Blue flowers bloom and whither. Green maple leaves slowly change color to yellow, orange, and finally red. How surprising, how magical! The audience cheers and people ask each other how this can be possible. Momentarily, lively music starts, then a shrine gate and pavilion appear on the dark screen. It is a festival scene with big and small lanterns, red and white banners, and the sound of drums. People gather, worship, throw coins [as offerings], and eventually disappear. The drumbeats die out and everyone is gone. It is midnight. From afar a voice is heard proclaiming the arrival of an important figure. A procession of foxes appears. Some hold torches while others carry a straw mat, a bough, and a rod. It is the legendary so-called “fox wedding” [in Ōji in the northern part of Edo]. As the foxes pass under the shrine gate they all turn into human beings. The mat turns into a traveling chest, the torches into lanterns, the rod into a lance, the bough into a palan­ quin. The transfiguration is truly magical and astonishing. The light disappears and the foxes are gone. Then the well-known ghost story of Kasane from the village of Hanyū is projected. [The late seventeenth-century legend became a basis for various kabuki and rakugo titles as well as silent and talkie films that included “Kasane-ga-fuchi” in their titles.] On the screen an altar appears under dim light, a wisp of smoke rising from some incense. Lit by a large paper lantern meant for the obon ceremony [spirits of deceased ancestors are believed to return home during the obon period in summer] the man Yoemon prays in front of the altar while ringing a bell. But look! A spirit appears from the paper lantern—the hazy figure sways, becomes clearer and then dimmer, bigger and smaller, uttering words about a grudge. It almost disappears but then reappears as an agglomeration of dim light within a shell, like a hazy moon or an egg almost break­ ing. Its uncertain movements continue for a while; then the light concentrates, forming something like a face until finally a huge demon’s head appears! Bloody, with eyes that glare. The high-ranking priest Yūten [the most famous exorcist in the Edo era, active from the seventeenth to eighteenth century] appears. He joins his hands and recites the sutra. Suddenly, he swings his prayer beads, shouting at the evil spirit, and the demon disappears. Purple clouds, and a dazzling golden image of Buddha appears with a lotus flower to carry the spirit now resting in peace, flying away among heavenly flowers sprinkled in the sky. (Terakado Seiken’s Edo hanjōki, in Kobayashi 1987: 28 and Iwamoto 2002: 95–96) This is what people saw in 1833, more than 170 years ago, more than sixty years before cinema. The yose was the major venue for such a performance, but utsushi-e was also performed at private parties, parlors, and later even on boats on Tokyo’s Sumida River. Images were pro­ jected from behind a semi-transparent screen made of Japanese paper, keeping the operation secret. A typical performance consisted of three types of acts. A welcome remark and ceremonial dance came first, followed by the transformation of flowers and scenes. The main part was a story, or two or three, depending on the program’s duration. The second part—a series of “magical” transformations and two-frame or loop animation—seems to have been inherited 180

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from the earlier magic lantern show known as “Dutch colorful shadow play,” or by similar names, in the Kansai region (this practice is described in Part IV). In the above example, the procession of foxes at the shrine was a further developed form, with a kind of storyline that integrated magical effects and a specific time and place in a more sophisticated manner. Slide sets that can produce a long sequence of magical effects exist today, such as those representing fire­ works on the Sumida River, or the snowfall on the magnificent pine tree in Karasaki (known as one of the eight marvelous landscapes in Ōmi Province). There was a rich repertoire of longer stories that made up the program’s third part, the main attraction. They were usually adapted from existing theatrical and storytelling traditions such as kabuki, bunraku, and rakugo. Major showmen had signature styles. Before the ceremonial sanbasō dance, they might start with a welcome address by Fukusuke, a character with a large head and earlobes and dressed like a samurai that became a popular lucky charm like the maneki neko (beckoning cat figurine). The choice and duration of the program varied according to the venue as well as the showman’s skill and the slide sets he had. Those who were particularly good at painting made extra copies of slides and sold them to others.

Early magic lantern practice in Japan Magic lantern technology was brought by the Dutch, most likely in the second half of the eight­ eenth century, to feudal Japan where the long-lasting absence of warfare had helped grow a rich audio-visual culture. Japan’s isolation policy that continued until the mid-nineteenth century allowed only Dutch and Chinese boats to arrive in Nagasaki. New technologies brought by the Dutch were often taken as curiosities and were further developed to be assimilated into Japanese culture (Screech 1996). A notable parallel to magic lantern technology is karakuri, a variety of mechanical automata for entertainment, which stemmed from imported clock mechanisms. Japanese craftsmen soon modified Western clock mechanisms for the seasonal time system used in Japan, thus creating the basis for further applications. There is no way to tell exactly how many and what kind of magic lanterns and slides were brought to Japan. Official trade was controlled by the Shogunate, but an unofficial exchange of gifts often took place between the Dutch visitors and Japanese officials. Also, the Nagasaki magistrate who controlled trade was privileged to secure a certain amount of “samples” for himself every year. Timon Screech has suggested that the Dutch officers brought magic lanterns to be used for onboard entertainment during the long journey, and after arriving these objects became most suitable gifts.4 There were people called ranpeki (“Hollandophiles”), who were devotees of Western studies. These included feudal loads famous for their interest in collecting scientific or artistic items from abroad that presumably included magic lanterns and slides. Judging from the European illustrations and existing magic lanterns from the era, the lanterns that arrived in Japan were made of either metal or wood, or a combination of the two. The light source could be candles or oil lamps. The sets must have included mechanical slides that would transform or move images, such as flowers blooming or devils grinning, because these were already commercially available in Europe from professional makers. “Moving images” were an important attraction of magic lantern practice from its earliest era (Mannoni 1995 and 2000; Mannoni and Pesenti Campagnoni 2009). In fact, the renowned Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), considered to be the “inventor” of the magic lantern by most scholars today, left drawings of a “dance of the death” motif, that were unmistakably meant for magic lantern slides (Mannoni 2000: 39).5 The Dance Macabre (Dance of Death) was a popular theme that appeared in various forms of art and entertainment in Europe. It has been speculated that the image of the huge skeleton appearing and scaring people in Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s famous 181

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woodblock print Sōma no furudairi (Ruined Palace at Sōma, 1840s) was inspired by a magic lantern image the artist saw somewhere. According to Tengu-tsū, the book on magic tricks published in Osaka in 1779, magic lantern entertainment was already a popular sideshow by then and the lantern device, called kage-e megane (meaning an “optical device for shadow play”), was commercially available from opti­ cians (Screech 1996: 106–109; Yokoyama 2012: 43–44).6 An illustration in the book portrays an oni (a devil or demon in Japanese folklore) jumping out of a wooden magic lantern, although the device looks more like a peepshow box (nozoki megane or nozoki karakuri). It is possible that the author or the illustrator was confused about the device’s actual appearance, but the illustra­ tion suggests it was made in Japan using traditional materials. A caption explains that the images were projected on a white wall, with the device visible to viewers. Publications from the 1790s introduce the magic lantern by various names. In a book that introduces Western technology written by Ōtsuki Gentaku (1757–1827), a renowned rangaku (literally, “Dutch learning,” or Western studies) doctor and scholar, there is an entry for “scenic lanterns” that mentions kage-e dōrō (a shadow play lantern) “that had arrived recently from Holland” (although the book was published in 1799, the text seems to be from 1788, Iwamoto 2002: 88; Screech 1996: 106–108). This book uses a question and answer format. The ques­ tioner asks about the mysterious device that “shows various colorful images on a white sheet hung in front of us when lit in a darkened room, with images that are life size and look alive in the case of human figures” (Ōtsuki 1972 [1799], cited in Iwamoto 2002: 99). Ōtsuki uses the phonetic transliteration of “tover lantaarn,” which he explains as meaning “magic lantern” in Dutch, and “yōtō” in Japanese.7 He further adds “it is originally a toy for women and children,” an expression that implicitly meant, “not for serious adults,” an interesting evaluation because scientists also used magic lanterns in Europe, and a possible indication that the kinds of magic lantern slides that arrived in Japan were limited to those used for entertainment. In other texts, the device is referred to in Japanese terms meaning “shadow-scope,” “spirit inviting lantern,” and other names. Whatever it was called, the magic lantern became known in major cities by the end of the eighteenth century as an optical device that produced colorful “shadows” with tricks to create the illusion of transformation. We should note, however, that the Japanese word kage has a broader meaning than “shadow.” It denotes the image or vestige of someone or some­ thing, such as the trace or mental image of what is not here-and-now (note that the same char­ acter for “shadow” is used for “television” and “cinema” in Chinese). Therefore, the word “shadow” might have implied an understanding of the new medium as an alternative mode of representation, while suggesting its connection to the traditional shadow play. After the huge success of a 1790 Osaka sideshow titled Saishiki kage-e Oranda-zaiku (DutchMade Colorful Shadow-Play), similar sideshows appeared in the Kansai region under titles such as Oranda kage-e (Dutch Shadow-Play) or Nagasaki kage-e (Maeda 1966: 166–167). In the context of the Edo period, “Dutch” indicated the Western world and “the new,” and the port city of Nagasaki was the gateway to Holland. In an interesting example of how the magic lantern was assimilated into the lexicon of cultural discourse, a text from 1796 describes a kabuki actor per­ forming like “an elegant girl in the full color Nagasaki kage-e,” in reference to a dance from the kabuki title Kyōganoko musume Dōjōji (The Maiden at Dōjōji Temple) (Maeda 1966: 166–167). The text suggests the popularity of the “Dutch shadow play.” The association probably came not only from the colorfulness but also from the magical transformation, because the kabuki title includes a long solo dance during which the actor changes from one gorgeous kimono to another, until the character transforms into a serpent. Although the magic lantern as an optical device is referred to in several books written by intellectuals of the time, there is not much detailed evidence of what these shows entailed. In 182

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order to get a sense of the individual shows, we need to turn to the surviving artifacts. In par­ ticular, I want to focus on the motifs that are commonly found across different collections owned by Matsumoto Natsuki, Erkki Huhtamo, Hyōgo Prefectural History Museum (the Irie Collection), Matsue City (a set from the Ōgaki district), and myself.8 According to Matsumoto, the slides representing the overlapping motifs were produced in Kansai, with some used in zashiki kage-e (parlor shadow pictures), private or exclusive performances (Matsumoto 2012: 107). This is corroborated by the inclusion of pornographic slides in the Matsumoto and Huhtamo collections. Either produced before or after the birth of utsushi-e in Edo, these slides seem to represent the style of “colorful shadows” before it developed into nishiki kage-e after the arrival of utsushi-e from Edo. These slides are characterized by the use of extremely thin (typically 0.4 mm) glass to produce sharp images, distinct from much thicker glass plates used in Europe and for later utsushi-e slides from the late nineteenth century. Two different types of slides make up the surviving slide sets in question: “slipping slides” and “long slides” (naga-ita, literally, “long plate”). A naga-ita measures approximately 24.5 cm × 6 cm; the glass measures about 21 cm × 4 cm. Most of the naga-ita are panoramic, depicting famous landscapes, festivals, events, and processions. The Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima, the Tenjin Matsuri in Osaka (one of Japan’s three most important annual festivals), and a procession of oiran (the highest ranking courtesans) are popular themes found across different collections. There are other panoramic slides representing scenes from theatrical per­ formances such as the noh play Ama (The Woman Diver).9 A showman would slowly pull a single slide horizontally while telling the story, in a manner very similar to what his equivalents in Europe did with a panoramic slide. We can imagine viewers appreciating the image unfolding bit by bit, like the picture scrolls (emaki) that are common in Japanese tradition (in the Chinese tradition, in contrast, a scroll would be fully spread for appreciation). A notable exception is the long vertical slide depicting a scene from Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) that is found in multiple collections. Kinkakuji is technically the fourth act of the kabuki play Gion sairei shinkōki (Gion Festival Chronicle of Faith) and the third act of the bunraku version of the same play, which is seldom performed in full, given its length and complexity. The scene in question consists of a three-storied pavilion and its garden with a cherry tree in full blossom and a waterfall. The major events take place first in the garden, where a beautiful woman painter is caught and threatened by the “bad guy,” then higher up in the pavilion, and finally, on its top balcony. When the scene was first performed as bunraku puppet theater in 1757 in Osaka, the spectacular ascent and descent of its setting—the pavilion—attracted much attention. In the next year, 1758, it was adapted for kabuki in Kyoto. The pavilion was built on a large stage elev­ ator and sank as the hero climbed the cherry tree to the upper floors, keeping the highlight scenes before viewers at eye level. The piece is considered to have made a great contribution to the development of kabuki stage architecture with this unprecedented trick. This explains why the slide was designed to move vertically. It recreated the famous scene to surprise viewers, who might have heard about actual performances but probably never had the chance to see one. Slipping slides help to visualize scenes of transformation, such as appearances of ghosts or a mirage, acts of conjuring, flowers blooming, or a peacock opening its tail feathers. With two layers of painted glass plates in a single wooden casing, a slipping slide makes it possible to instantly modify the image by pulling or pushing the secondary layer (called hiki-ita, literally, “pulling plate”) horizontally. Most slides have one “window” on the main plate, and a single piece of small glass attached to the pulling plate. For example, the main plate of the peacock slide has a glass window with the bird painted with its tail feathers fully spread. The small glass plate attached to the pulling plate has a mask that hides most of the tail feathers. At first, the two glass pieces are positioned flush against each other, showing the peacock without its tail feathers 183

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spread. As the showman quickly pulls the pulling plate, the tail feathers all appear, making the tail fully spread. In other cases, the glass piece on the pulling plate has both a mask and part of the image meant to appear. The aforementioned sanbasō dance would have been presented using a slipping slide with two windows with glass plates on each layer, enabling four different poses of the character to be shown. To represent the performance of the rhythmical sanbasō steps, a showman would have repeated pushing and pulling both layers of the slide to animate the character. While most slides move horizontally, an exception is a slipping slide of a young woman bouncing a ball. The pulling plate is vertically moved up and down to create an animated loop. All slides in the same set are numbered in the order that the owner planned to show them. Other than the ceremonial slides that were always used in the beginning of a performance, this order might appear arbitrary. It was the showman’s art of narration that turned these discrete images into a smooth flow. Although each of the slides is hand painted, the fact that practically identical slides can be found across different collections suggests they were professionally made and widely sold. Nevertheless, the technique for achieving the sensation of transformation and animation with slipping slides remained rather simple.

rise of Utsushi-e As is usually the case with new forms of entertainment, the magic lantern was brought to Edo where it was developed into the unique art of utsushi-e. According to multiple sources written between 1860 and 1900 (when utsushi-e was extremely popular), there is an anecdote about a magic lantern show titled “Ekiman-kyo” performed in 1801 in Ueno (in downtown Edo) that caught the eye of a man named Kameya Kumakichi.10 In addition to being a professional uwae­ shi (designer-painter for high-end hand-painted kimono), Kameya Kumakichi was also an amateur rakugo storyteller and conjuror. He came up with the idea of turning the magic lantern sideshow into a new spectacle using his painting and storytelling skills. Through the private performances he gave in his cultural circles, he obtained advice on improving his equipment and format, notably from a rangaku medical doctor whose profession granted him the special privi­ lege of gaining knowledge about the Western science. Two years after Kameya Kumakichi saw the magic lantern sideshow in Ueno, he assumed the stage name Toraku and started to perform publicly. This new show was named “utsushi-e,” perhaps a playful pun and mitate (the art of association and metaphor) on Shinobu-gusa koi no utsushi-e (Portrayal of a Secret Love), a kabuki title popular from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Utsushi-e became an immediate success in Edo, where residents were known for their appetite for novelty. Performers with a professional background in painting also sold their slides to other showmen. Showmen traveled with their utsushi-e sets, soon spreading utsushi-e to other cities. What was the difference between the former “Dutch” (or Nagasaki) shadow-play sideshows and utsushi-e brought from Edo? One author writes in 1850 that he missed the “classical and elegant colorful shadow [play]” that disappeared after the arrival of “utsushi-e, vulgar with music and sound effects,” and featuring popular “ghost stories such as Yotsuya kaidan” (Yotsuya Ghost Story), one of Japan’s most famous ghost stories (Ippō, N. [1850] Miyako-no Hirune (Nap in the Capital City), cited in Kobayashi 1987: 29–30; Maeda 1966: 467; and Matsumoto 2012: 109–110). As a technological marvel showing famous landscapes and scenes from tales, and funny or magical changes of images, the “Dutch” magic lantern shows attracted audiences. But was this attraction enough to warrant repeated visits? Novelty alone could not have generated and sustained an established entertainment that lasted a century. 184

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It has been argued that Toraku did not invent utsushi-e because a Japanese-style magic lantern practice pre-dated him (Matsumoto 2012: 110–111). I take the position that Toraku was the “inventor” of utsushi-e in the sense that he originated utsushi-e as a performance format. Achieving more sophisticated magical effects was only part of Toraku’s contribution to nineteenth-century magic lantern practice. His “invention” was in “content” and “format.” It is documented that Toraku was a person of taste who loved the culture of play. Perhaps being up to date with emerging entertainment and popular theatrical performances was a natural life­ style for a kimono designer. Kabuki actors were fashion leaders and ukiyo-e woodblock prints depicting them functioned like fashion magazines today. Toraku must have had a keen sense of what was trendy and had friends of similar taste who were curious enough to help him develop and disseminate new ideas. He carefully stitched together new optical technology and existing forms of popular mass entertainment (his performance took two years to prepare), to create a new mode of audio-visual storytelling. Two-frame transformations using slipping slides were still an attraction and were used in opening a show, but the technique was more effectively used to tell longer stories. In other words, the available effects created by using mechanical slides were integrated with other techniques to “animate” stories. A well-known story that involved conversation, confrontation, and interaction between major characters was typically chosen as the program’s main attraction. Showmen were not playwrights; original stories were rare. People probably went to see utsushi-e in order to “see” stories they already enjoyed hearing. Thanks to the highly developed media of woodblock prints, kabuki play texts (written in ballad form) were available for amateur ballad singers. While kabuki was the most popular entertainment in Edo, seeing an actual performance required money and time. This may also explain why utsushi-e often took subjects from popular kabuki titles. Judging from surviving utsushi-e slides, a rich variety of content existed, mostly taken from kabuki and bunraku, as well as rakugo. The utsushi-e repertoire included stories of loyalty, as in Kanjinchō (The Subscription List), of self-sacrifice, as in Sakura Sōgorō (The Tale of Sakura Sōgo), or of impossible love, as in the legend of Anchin Kiyohime (Anchin and Kiyohime). There were humorous stories taken from rakugo, such as Takao (or Hangonkō) or Botan-dōrō (The Peony Lantern), based on a Chinese ghost story. In kabuki, rakugo, and other forms of popular storytelling, ghost stories were staple summer evening entertainment. Special effects that made ghosts and spirits appear, disappear, or trans­ form into something else were developed in kabuki, but a similar development of optical tricks occurred in utsushi-e. Here, the magic lantern’s “magical” nature perfectly complemented tra­ ditional entertainment. The venues were also complementary. Utsushi-e was usually performed after dark at yose, the small vaudeville houses meant for casual entertainment such as rakugo, magic, mimicry, and other small-scale performances for audiences of less than a few dozen. While kabuki was considered a major spectacle with hours-long daytime programs that allowed the audience to enjoy gorgeous stages in the daylight, yose provided evening entertainment, with limited lighting, that people could enjoy after work at an affordable price. Naturally, utsushi-e performers had to work in darkness behind the screen. Although all the slides were pre-arranged in the right order, the number of slides they could handle without making mistakes was probably limited. It therefore made sense for showmen to follow the dra­ matic tradition, customary in kabuki, for example, of performing single episodes from wellknown stories. The Subscription List, an episode in the eight-volume Gikeiki (The Chronicle of Yoshitsune, compiled circa thirteenth or fourteenth century), is one example. Before the kabuki act (called a dan) opens, the chanter summarizes the background story of the defeated hero [Minamoto no] Yoshitsune (1159–1189) and his loyal follower, Benkei. In contrast, a rakugo 185

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performer tells the whole story (including the background when necessary) because it is shorter. Utsushi-e followed these existing conventions. In order to better understand how stories traversed popular storytelling cultures to reach utsushi-e, it is instructive to turn to the legend of Anchin and Kiyohime, which generated a variety of classics including the kabuki dance Dōjōji. The legend of the bell of Dōjōji, a temple in the Kishū region (Kii Peninsula), first appears in various texts and picture scrolls from the beginning of the eleventh century. As is usually the case with legends, there are variations, but the basic version is about a young woman, Kiyohime, and Anchin, a handsome young Buddhist monk in training who is bound by a vow of chastity. Kiyohime falls in love with Anchin while he stays at Kiyohime’s parents’ house on his way to the sacred mountains of Kumano. When he leaves, Anchin tells Kiyohime that he will return on his way home, but he ultimately decides against this in order to keep his vow. When Kiyohime realizes that Anchin has already passed through the region without seeing her, she runs after him, only to find that he had crossed the Hidaka River and told the boatman not to take her aboard. Kiyohime cries, and jumps into the river out of despair. Her anger and resentment turn her into a monstrous serpent, which swims across the river (in bunraku or utsushi-e, Kiyohime’s transformation is anticipated by the pattern of her kimono, which mimics the serpent’s scales).11 Seeing the serpent swimming across the river, Anchin rushes to the nearby Dōjōji temple and asks for help. The priests hide him under a huge bell placed on the ground, but the serpent finds him. It coils itself around the bell as it breathes fire from its mouth and sheds tears of blood from its eyes. Finally, the young priest dies inside the bell and the serpent vanishes into thin air. The noh play Dōjōji was created as a sequel to the original legend. More precisely, it was originally adapted as Kanemaki (literally, “coil around the bell”), which is no longer played; it was replaced by Dōjōji, which contains slight modifications. This play takes place years later, when a ceremony for installing the new bell is to take place at the temple. A traveling woman, a shirabyōshi dancer, shows up and asks the low-ranking priests if she could dance as a memorial service. Her solo dance continues with unusually active steps accompanied by drums, creating a sense of urgency. She goes under the bell and lets it fall, covering her. The chief priest appears and tells the legend. With the help of prayers the priests succeed in lifting the bell, only to find a serpent inside (in the noh version, this scene is communicated by the noh actor’s change of kimono and mask while inside the bell). The priests fend off the aggressive serpent with prayers until it finally disappears in the Hidaka River. This noh version was popularized as a kabuki play in 1753 and renamed Musume Dōjōji (The Maiden at Dōjōji Temple). It became much more spectacular than the noh play. There are an increased number of exaggerated comical acts by the low-ranking priests and the prolonged dance scene is even more spectacular. The dance can continue for as long as an hour, featuring magical changes of kimono using a technique called hikinuki (literally, “pulling out”), which communicates the changes in the dancer’s emotions. The magic of the woman’s transformation is a key element of the kabuki play, which is still popular today. As it gained popularity, different versions started to appear while the dance became a classic in its own right. The utsushi-e version of Dōjōji is based on the play Hidakagawa iriaizakura (Sunset Cherry Blos­ soms on the Hidaka River), which was originally written for the bunraku puppet theater in 1759 by Chikamatsu Hanji in collaboration with Takeda Koizumo (owner-director of Osaka’s Take­ moto-za, the most important puppet theater at the time). It is often abbreviated as Hidakagawa (Hidaka River). The story weaves the original legend into a complex court history of the tenth century. There is a kabuki version in which actors play Kiyohime and the boatman in a way that mimics the movements of puppets, alluding to the play’s bunraku origins. For the utsushi-e version, there is a surviving slide set that was used by the showman Tamagawa Bunraku (along 186

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with Ryōkawatei Sen’yū, he was considered the best utsushi-e showman in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century). The slides have been perfectly preserved by Tamagawa Bun­ raku’s family. The performance takes about 40 minutes and uses fifteen slides, including slipping slides and background slides (Kobayashi 1987: 97). Minwa-za made a complete replica of the Hidaka River set and recreated the performance in 1999 with the help of Shiba Ayako, the daughter of Kobayashi Genjirō, who learned how to perform the title. Minwa-za’s performance opens with the musician narrating the background story to musical accompaniment. As the song continues, the background and props appear one by one, each dimly flickering at first and slowly forming shapes. A stone pillar showing the name of the river, ripples on the water surface, a willow tree by the river, and a boat on the other side of the river appear on the wide screen, projected from several magic lanterns placed on tables behind the screen. Kiyohime appears by the river, upset. Her sorrow, anger, and the grudge she holds are made manifest by the ballad and subtle animation of her figure. The boatman, appar­ ently asleep on the boat, awakens and the dramatic story starts to unfold to the music, ballad, and sound effects. We might liken the experience to watching an animated film even though the mechanical nature of the images make the “animation” effect far less smooth. Spectacular scenes of Kiyohime’s transformation and the serpent’s fire breath are well suited to the optical illusions that the utsushi-e medium could achieve. Utsushi-e was born in the midst of a pursuit of magical transformations or transfigurations in kabuki and bunraku entertainment, which mechanically created these effects through increasingly sophisticated techniques such as hayaga­ wari (quick transformation), karakuri (automata), and the aforementioned hikinuki. As Yokoyama Yasuko has observed, this was an era of magic as entertainment and theatrical performance (Yokoyama 2012). Sometimes utsushi-e’s optical illusions could realize what the mechanical techniques in kabuki and bunraku could not do. Another intermedia junction to consider is the relationship between utsushi-e and ukiyo-e woodblock prints. A series of ukiyo-e prints titled Edo no hana meishō-e (Flowers of Edo: A Col­ lection of Famous Places, 1863, from the author’s collection) gives us an idea of just how popular utsushi-e was. The Flowers of Edo woodblock series features different districts of Edo, with each print divided into several sections representing a district from multiple angles: the local young townsmen’s proud firefighters’ emblem; a distinct landscape or landmark; and a kabuki actor performing a play related to the area. Major ukiyo-e artists of the time (notably Utagawa Toy­ okuni III, Kawanabe Kyōsai, Hiroshige II, Utagawa Sadahide, and Ochiai Yoshitora) were involved in the series; in most cases, multiple artists contributed to a single sheet. Out of fiftyeight prints that make up the series, as many as five depict utsushi-e. It is notable that utsushi-e figured so prominently when most other prints featured landscapes and events, with the excep­ tions of a print for the district of Ningyō-chō (literally “puppet town”), which depicted puppet theater, alongside a print depicting the local legendary cat monster (nekomata) for the district of Hikawa-shita. The prominence of utsushi-e in the woodblock series must be a token of its popularity and proximity to kabuki (famous kabuki actors were true celebrities whose images circulated via ukiyo-e). Interestingly, representative utsushi-e showmen were invited to design the illustrations for the woodblock prints based on their lantern slides, while ukiyo-e artists filled in the rest with landscapes and the kabuki actors. For example, the print for the district of Kōjimachi was painted by Tosan (or Tozan), an utsushi-e showman, and completed by ukiyo-e artists Toyokuni III and Kyōsai. In another example, Tokyō (an utsushi-e showman who had been Toraku’s assistant and inherited his title as Toraku III) worked with ukiyo-e artists Toy­ okuni III and Katsushika Isai (Katsushika Hokusai’s successor). The prints featuring utsushi-e in the series were meant to be collected as an interrelated mini-series, evidenced by the long tail of a ghostly fireball traversing four of the five prints, and the inclusion of kabuki actors performing 187

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the popular Yotsuya Ghost Story. Images of these prints can be found in Waseda University’s Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum collection (Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum 2015). Other than the Flowers of Edo series, there is an interesting ukiyo-e woodblock print titled Imayō nenchū gyōji: kurabe koshi yuki no yanagi-yu (Fashionable Customs of the Present Day: Slender Hips Like Willows in Snow at the Yanagi-yu Bathhouse, by Ochiai/Utagawa Yoshiiku, 1868, author’s collection), which is a triptych of a public bath in the Edo era that includes a poster on the wall advertising an utsushi-e performance at a yose. The poster features an image of a ghost. Ghost stories performed in yose were a popular and affordable entertainment during the hot summer because of their “chilling” effect. With the dim light of an oil dish, which was widely used before the oil lamp became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, the pro­ jected image could not have been very bright. But the ghostly images appearing on a dark screen and swaying with the fluttering of the flames would have surely sent a chill through the audi­ ence, especially with the operators and tricks hidden behind the screen.

Material matters The essence of utsushi-e could be understood as real-time character animation with narrative. I borrow the phrase “real-time animation” from today’s computer games in which a sequence of moving images can be generated in real time according to the player’s action. Granted, we do not call the puppet theater and shadow plays “animation,” even though these media appear to fit the word’s etymological definition, which is traced back to the Latin expression for bestow­ ing life (to a non-living object). In our current modern usage, the word “animation” is insepar­ able from the historically specific origin of the most dominant form of animation consisting of frame-by-frame shots. By the same token, with the disappearance of celluloid film (as material) and the expanding possibility of real-time manipulation of moving images, it is also true that the meaning of “animation” is no longer clear-cut. The spectacle of moving images formed the core of the popular but short-lived phantasma­ goria boom in Europe in around 1800. Yet the relative importance of moving images declined with the subsequent rise of the more narrative-based magic lantern culture in the nineteenth century. As a modern form of visual media, magic lanterns were used for public lectures and presentations rather than for mystical shows. A typical nineteenth-century magic lantern per­ formance in the West consisted of sequential showings of still images projected from glass slides illustrating, for instance, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Utsushi-e worked in a radically different manner. Movement was everywhere: the pro­ jectors, the operators, and the images. “Moving images” were its essence, not a fringe attraction. Another critical difference was the way in which a scene is composed. In Western magic lantern practice, each slide filled the screen with a circle of light (or a square of light, depending on the choice of the paper mount sandwiched between the image glass and the cover glass), in which all the elements of the scene—characters, objects, background—are shown like a painting. In the case of utsushi-e, a scene is formed as a collage of images on a screen, projected from two to eight (and possibly more) lanterns. A character or object was painted against a black background on the glass plate, like slides for phantasmagoria, ready to be projected and moved anywhere, independent from other objects. In other words, the size of the projection surface was not limited by the diameter of the light from a single magic lantern unit. Image elements freely move on the wide screen made of semitransparent and sturdy Japanese paper. Large size Japanese paper had become easily available thanks to the popularity of shōji, sliding paper doors. These doors dividing a wide room in parlors and townhouses provided an instant 188

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screen for a showman invited to perform at a private party. Shōji also gave rise to kage-e (shadow play) as a party game (this should not be confused with the “Dutch shadow” magic lantern side­ show before utsushi-e). In this shadow play as party game, the aforementioned zashiki kage-e (parlor shadow play), familiar images such as birds, a stone lantern, or Mt. Fuji were supposed to be projected as shadows using only one’s body and objects at hand. Both Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), the best-known ukiyo-e artists, published series of prints that could serve as instructions for such performances. Sometimes these prints include seemingly impossible compositions, perhaps meant as party jokes. This type of shadow play became popular at about the same time as utsushi-e: both capitalized on the nature of semi­ transparent Japanese paper, which enabled behind-the-scenes operations. The distinguishing feature of utsushi-e was the use of multiple, lightweight, hand-held wood projectors, called furo (“bathtub,” because of their material and shape) operated by a team of showmen (lanternists) behind the screen. This is in stark contrast to mainstream magic lantern performances in the West, which developed around the concept of a single magic lantern unit (although some lanterns were biunial and triunial) placed on a fixed pedestal facing the screen and operated by a single lanternist visible to the audience. The manner of operation was, to a large extent, determined by the material chosen for the device. Western magic lanterns were typically made of metal from the start. The lanterns became hot from the light source burning inside them. Heavy wood such as mahogany was also used for the body, which also added weight. There was an early type of magic lantern to be held at one’s waist using a belt, made by Philip Carpenter in 1823. It might have been used for special effects during theatrical perform­ ances such as Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman, but hand-held projection was not a favorable option in Western magic lantern practices. The fantascope, a wheel-mounted magic lantern used for the rear-projected phantasmagoria, was often made of wood and was “mobile” but it was bulky and heavy. There were several reasons why lanterns were made of wood in Japan. The lack of sheet metal technology is an obvious explanation. Moreover, because the use of bolts and screws was exclusively associated with guns, there was no reason to use metal for the lens tube necessary for focus. The predominant use of wood was also a cultural tradition. Wood was the most familiar material for building things in Japan over many centuries. Even elaborate automata dolls such as Tanaka Hisashige’s “Arrow Shooting Boy” and “Calligrapher” were built using wooden gears and cams instead of metal. Furo were commonly made of wood that was soft and easy to handle such as cedar, the most popular tree for lumber, and paulownia, the favored material for making wardrobes and boxes, given its light weight and fire resistant quality. Wooden furo made of such material could be hand-held because unlike metal, wood does not get hot. The choice of wood was also crucial in making the slides, which were called tane-ita (literally, “source plate”). These thin wooden plates were also made of paulownia or cedar. Using thin Japanese paper and glue, pieces of glass with images were attached to openings (“windows”) carved on the wooden plate. Circular windows are typically about 4–5 cm wide, but often many windows are irregularly shaped. In general, the windows are roughly half the size of the slides used in Western magic lantern shows. As sheet glass technology did not yet exist, the supply of glass plates was limited. Tane-ita offered a solution: their soft wood could easily be carved to house small and irregularly shaped pieces of glass. Thicker glass plates were introduced by the end of the nineteenth century, but even then, the tane-ita slides continued to be made in a similar manner. An overview of the physical composition of tane-ita helps us to better understand the kinds of animation effects that utsushi-e could produce. Simpler tane-ita slides for projecting still images (for background or props) have one or two windows. Two-frame transformation or 189

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Figure 11.1 Furo with oil lamp and a set of tane-ita from the Meiji era in Machiko Kusahara’s collection. Source: Photograph courtesy of Machiko Kusahara.

animation can be achieved with slipping slides with one or two windows accompanied by a hiki-ita (pulling plate). For more sophisticated character animation, an extended slipping slide tane-ita as long as 40 cm was used. The size and structure were basically standardized, usually with four (but sometimes three or five) windows, each holding a glass plate with a picture of a character in different positions. The number of possible poses for a character was doubled with masks and image parts on the hiki-ita. By switching between them, a rather long sequence could be projected without interruption. This was probably a key invention that distinguished utsushi-e from the earlier “Dutch shadow” performances and Western magic lantern practice.

animating characters A survey carried out in 2007 of existing tane-ita housed in eight collections revealed that a set of seven to eighteen tane-ita was typically used to perform a single story.12 For the abovementioned story of Anchin and Kiyohime, another complete set survives in Waseda University’s Theatre Museum Collection that consists of fourteen tane-ita with a total of forty-three windows. A complete set for a different story housed in the same collection has fourteen tane-ita with sixty-two windows in total. Despite the limited number of slides, we can imagine how these sets could produce a reasonably rich variation of the characters’ images with the moveable masks and body parts provided by the pulling plates. The relatively limited number of tane-ita 190

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per set also made it easier for showmen to hand-carry them to performances in yose and private houses. Moreover, having fewer tane-ita made sense because this mitigated the risk of picking up the wrong one during a performance; manipulating and changing tane-ita in darkness was a complex operation. This complexity made utsushi-e a special art that could be practiced only by trained showmen. While the magic lantern in the West developed as a technology that anyone could practice, utsushi-e embodied the tradition of esoterica that is often observed in Japanese culture. Animating multiple characters required collaboration among lanternists operating multiple lanterns. For a typical scene of conversation or interaction between two characters, at least two lanternists are needed, each holding a furo in his left arm and manipulating the tane-ita with the right hand. There may be additional characters and objects operated by other lanternists, while backdrops on both sides could be projected from lanterns placed on tables. All these images col­ lectively formed a scene. The light source for each lantern was weak—a candle or an oil dish with several wicks—and pictures painted on the glass were small as glass plates were still a rarity.

Figure 11.2 Four tane-ita from Kanjinchō showing twenty of the different possible poses for Benkei. The character could be animated non-stop by combining these poses with multiple modes of moving the image. Original slides from c.1900 now kept by Minwa-za. Source: Photograph courtesy of Machiko Kusahara.

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But this method enabled more expansive scenes and actions on the wide, rectangular screen, which could be a few meters wide. Judging from existing screens, the size varied from 182 cm by 273 cm to 182 cm by 546 cm (Iwamoto 2002: 101–102). Using such equipment allowed for several modes of animating a character. Kobayashi Genjirō lists eleven ways of manipulating images by zooming, overlapping, manipulating light intensity, and fading in and out. For our purposes, it suffices to condense these methods into the following types. First, slides could be manipulated. As described earlier, a single, long, wooden tane-ita could produce character motion for a relatively long sequence. Second, operators could trans­ ition from one tane-ita to another using two furo, switching from the first to a second one, which had already been loaded by a second lanternist. Thus, the image would remain in place and uninterrupted on the screen. Third, it was possible to move the lanterns to produce different types of motion, such as a character walking or an arrow flying. A lanternist could move a char­ acter or an object across the screen simply by slowly rotating the furo. Fourth, one could slightly shake the slide inside the furo to achieve more subtle motions, such as a character crying or shivering. Unlike the Western magic lantern, which held the slides tightly in place with metal springs, the furo had a margin that allowed for a slide’s slight vertical movement. This seemingly minor feature was actually important, not only for representing a characters’ emotion but also for maintaining the audience’s attention while the narrator spoke at length. In the example of the story of Anchin and Kiyohime, this technique could be applied when the young woman cries by the river, her shoulders shaking, or when Anchin shivers with fear at seeing the woman become a serpent. Finally, one could use a piece of black cloth attached to the lens tube in front of the projection lens to make an image—a ghost or lightening, for instance—gradually or sud­ denly appear and disappear. Interestingly, this last technique was also used in Western magic lantern performances. These techniques could be combined to create complex movement across the screen. Rear projection was critical in combining these techniques without drawing the audience’s attention to the operators’ movements. The correspondence between a character’s motions and the oper­ ator’s body is a unique feature of utsushi-e performance, which makes it similar to puppet theater practice. This marks a clear break from Western magic lantern culture, in which magic lanterns were installed on tables or stands. A popular title that demonstrates highly developed and original techniques for animating characters is Daruma no yobai (Daruma Sneaking into a Woman’s Bed), a well-known story in the mid-nineteenth century based on a rakugo story with an erotic flavor. “Daruma” originally referred to the Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, whose limbs degenerated and dis­ appeared, according to the legend, after nine years spent sitting against a wall to attain enlight­ enment. But Japanese popular culture had turned the highly respected figure, regarded as the founder of Zen, into a humorous character. In the rakugo story, a painted Daruma on a hanging scroll jumps out from the picture when everyone has left the room, and stretches his arms and legs (they magically appear). He finds and enjoys leftover sake and snacks, gets drunk, and dances cheerfully. Eventually, he tries to sneak into the housemaid’s bed (or wife’s bed, in some versions) in the next room. The woman is stronger than Daruma expected and his own limbs are weak from long disuse. As they wrestle, the master of the house returns. Daruma tries to go back into the hanging scroll but cannot quite succeed in returning to his original pose. Minwa-za Company’s restored slide set based on the surviving original tane-ita allows us to appreciate this incredible story (although the troupe usually performs a familyfriendly version). In the original set, there are more than twenty pictures of Daruma in different poses, not counting the masks and body parts on the pulling slides. They look exactly like key frames in animated films today. With the help of masks and body parts to fill 192

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the gaps between the key frames, it is possible to achieve a good duration of reasonably smooth animation. Of course, there are additional slides for props, the woman, and other characters to make the scene more complex. In addition to these slipping slides, two special tane-ita deserve attention. The first creates the motion of each of Daruma’s limbs appearing and disappearing repeatedly until finally all the limbs appear. This represents him stretching his limbs upon awakening before he explores the house, a scene that receives applause as one of the story’s highlights. The motion is achieved by a tane­ ita made of thick cedar wood on which a glass plate image of the Daruma is mounted. Four small pieces of wood cover his limbs so that they are invisible until the operator slides the pieces to make the limbs appear and disappear again, one by one. The second tane-ita of note is used in a scene in which Daruma rolls and flies around like a bouncing ball with his limbs hidden. The image of Daruma is painted on a piece of round glass, which rotates in opposite directions by pulling the thread that wraps around the glass. The operator moves the furo while manipulat­ ing the thread to make the Daruma rapidly move and roll around. Rotating mechanisms were not uncommon among Western magic lantern slides, especially for chromatropes used to project mesmerizing kaleidoscopic images that usually closed the shows. The Japanese rotating mech­ anism using thread might look crude compared to a typical British chromatrope equipped with gears embedded in a thick mahogany plate, but the cleverly designed, rotating Daruma tane-ita shows the ingenuity of utsushi-e showmen and their pursuit in creating movements that would surprise the audience.

after Utsushi-e Japan opened its borders to the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century amid the world­ wide boom of magic lantern practices. A century after the magic lantern’s first arrival from Holland, it came to Japan for a second time. This time it was called gentō, or “phantom lantern.” Although the word “gentō” harkens back to the pre-utsushi-e translation for “magic lantern” proposed by rangaku doctors, gentō assumed a new role in Japan as an important tool for mod­ ernization. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 had put an end to the feudal era, abolishing the feudal class system and introducing capitalism. In the process of rapid modernization, the latest scient­ ific and technological knowledge from abroad was brought to Japan. Colleges and universities were founded, inviting young scholars, educators, medical doctors, engineers, and artists from Europe and the United States. The best students were selected from the traditional feudal clan schools to study in Tokyo, and the best among them studied abroad at the government’s expense. It is no surprise that magic lanterns and slides were brought to Japan by both foreigners and Japanese in various fields. The Ministry of Education officially introduced the magic lantern in the 1870s, commission­ ing the photographers Nakajima Matsuchi (1850–1938) and Tsurubuchi Hatsuzō (1847–1909) to produce lanterns and slides to be distributed to schools nationwide for the purpose of educat­ ing future teachers for free. Although the project ended after a few years because of insufficient funding, it paved the way for the educational use of magic lanterns. Nakajima and Tsurubuchi’s studios remained major suppliers of high quality lanterns and slides for professional use along with Ikeda Toraku III and IV (the successors of Toraku, the founder of utsushi-e). These magic lantern shops fabricated metal magic lanterns and standard size slides modeled after those from Europe and America. So-called gentō-kai (magic lantern shows) attracted large audiences with the combination of slides for entertainment (such as mechanical slides and caricatures) and slides for promoting hygiene, education, temperance, charity, or newly established organizations such as the Red Cross. Buddhist temples actively used gentō for local gatherings and classes for young 193

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people. Ikeda Toraku III and IV were particularly active in producing slides with Buddhist and touristic themes. As the democracy movement arose in the 1870s and spread nationwide in the 1880s, political magic lantern lectures were organized in the countryside as well. Endo Miyuki and I have relevant contributions on the role gentō played in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its relationship to utsushi-e or to the rise of kamishibai (paper theater, a form of street theater and storytelling) in the 1910s in The Magic Lantern: A Short History of Light and Shadow (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum 2018). Erkki Huhtamo’s contribution to this 2018 publication is an excellent source for understanding the relationship between the Western magic lantern and utsushi-e. An excellent source of information for the kinds of performances that took place at theaters and yose during the Meiji era (1868–1912) is the eight-volume book Meiji no engei (Popular Entertainment in the Meiji Era, Kurata 1981–1987). In Tokyo, there was a new wave of utsushi-e that attracted much attention. Ryōkawatei Sen’yū, helped by his son, Sen’yū II (also known as Yūki Magosaburō IX) started to perform utsushi-e on a roofed boat on the Sumida River (Yūki 1966). Soon his fame spread across Tokyo for the refined images he produced with original techniques, including the use of vapor to create a swaying effect for a ghost (Kobayashi 1987: 56, 92; Yūki 1981: 174). His show was even referred in a popular song (kouta) from the era titled Ageshio (Rising Tide), which is still performed today. It is said that Ikeda Toraku also performed on an utsushi-e boat but could not compete with Sen’yū’s show. Upon request, the utsushi-e boat would approach the client’s boat to perform alongside it. Shorter titles (less than 20 minutes long) were preferred, based on humorous, erotic, horror, and nonsense stories (Kobayashi 1987: 56–57). The projected pictures were refined and colorful in the style of ukiyo-e that reflected the fine taste of old Edo’s townspeople. It is probable that Sen’yū’s performance was the last shimmer of the “flowers of Edo” period of utsushi-e. Utsushi-e’s popularity was fading in the cities in the shadow of newly developed entertainment, including the gentō-kai. Utsushi-e boats on Sumida River dis­ appeared as the son of Sen’yū II decided to concentrate on the puppet theater. Traveling showmen changed their banners from utsushi-e to “educational gentō-kai” to meet the trend, circulating around elementary schools and community halls proudly showing their modern magic lantern equipment. In urban areas, cinema was taking over yose. Utsushi-e became outdated by around 1910 in most places. An exception was Tokyo’s western suburbs, where “modern” entertainment rarely reached and people running silk farms traditionally gathered together to have fun. To conclude, utsushi-e was an idiosyncratic version of Western magic lantern practice. As I have demonstrated, it combined features from Japanese storytelling traditions and the optical “magic” of technology invented in the West. Moreover, while phantasmagoria shared some of the techniques used in utsushi-e, such as rear projection and the black background for the images painted on the glass slides, the mode of operation was significantly different. In this chapter, I emphasized the importance of materiality, namely, the use of lightweight wood for the lantern (furo) as the key technology that made utsushi-e a unique form of screen practice. I also highlighted the essential network of entertainment culture—including kabuki, bunraku, and karakuri (automata)—that informed the development of utsushi-e. The influence was mutual, flowing in both directions. Utsushi-e transformed traditional stage performance into the domain of the image, replacing human actors and puppets with pictures. Utsushi-e did not directly contribute to the emergence of cinema in the same manner as the Western magic lantern, but it probably laid the basis for appreciating moving images, especially animation. By studying the graphic style and stylized motion in utsushi-e—which originated in kabuki, bunraku, nishiki-e woodblock prints, and older forms of Japanese visual culture—we gain a new 194

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perspective on the cultural background of modern anime and our persistent enthusiasm for animating characters and rendering their emotions. A more thorough understanding of the culture of utsushi-e not only allows us to reconsider the history of Japanese cinema from a fresh perspective, it also grants us a heightened awareness of the synergy between already existing cultural forms and newly arriving technologies. It is in fact an intriguing case study in media archeology.

Notes 1 The first three volumes of their books were bound in the Japanese style and privately published with hand-colored illustrations by Kobayashi Genjirō. Kobayashi Ayako, Utsushi-e-shi (History of Utsushi-e, 1951); Kobayashi Genjirō, Utsushi-e (1968); Kobayashi Genjirō, Utsushi-e tsuiho (Utsushi-e: A Supple­ ment, 1975). These were later integrated and published by Chuo University Press as Kobayashi Genjirō, Utsushi-e (1987), which is considered the ultimate reference book complete with the color-plate illus­ trations drawn by Kobayashi himself. 2 See www.youkiza.jp/sp/koten/en/ (accessed November 21, 2018). 3 The five-volume book was published from 1832 to 1836 but was banned by the government in 1841 because of its satirical nature. 4 Screech’s essay contributed to the 2006 utsushi-e/nishiki kage-e joint performance in Tokyo supported by the Agency of Cultural Affairs. “Exchanging gifts” was usually beneficial for both parties involved. Smuggling also existed despite the central government’s strict punitive policy. 5 The invention has often been attributed to the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) because of his book Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1646). But the correct description and illustration only appears in the book’s 1671 edition, while Huygens had already left an accurate drawing of the optical system in 1659. 6 In the book Tengu-tsū, written by Hirase Hose (aka Hosei or Sukeyo: referred to by Screech as Suke­ nari), the magic lantern is called kage-e megane (“shadow scope”). Matsumoto concluded that lenses for eyeglasses were used for magic lanterns in Japan. He points out that Portuguese boats brought more than 58,000 pairs of eyeglasses to Japan between 1636 and 1638. Lenses were also imported from China, where the technique to polish quartz was highly developed. Lenses were being produced in Kyoto by the mid-seventeenth century (Matsumoto 2012: 101–102). 7 Tover means magic in Dutch, so “tover lantaarn” is the equivalent of “laterna magica” in Latin or “magic lantern” in English. Screech’s mistranslation of “tover” as “devil” has been used in later publi­ cations, including Iwamoto’s. Another famous rangaku doctor, Sugita Genpaku, referred to “tover lantaren” based on another possible spelling for “lantern” in Dutch. Yōtō meant magic lantern. Both yōjutsu and genjutsu meant the art (jutsu) of performing magic. 8 A slide set in my collection, dated 1806 (only three years after the birth of utsushi-e, when the old style “Dutch shadow” was still around), contains seven panoramic slides and seventeen slipping slides for two-frame animation or transformation. Matsumoto Natsuki found a set comprising a magic lantern with twenty-one slides (including seven panoramic slides) in Shikoku. The magic lantern has a peculiar shape, similar to the one in the Matsue City collection dating from Edo era. Erkki Huhtamo found a set of thirty-nine slides in the USA. A gorgeous set of a magic lantern and slides in the Irie Collection (Hyōgo Prefectural History Museum) is attributed to the private ownership of a feudal lord’s daughter, while the set in the Matsue City collection includes multiple lanterns and originally belonged to a showman. 9 Of the three major Japanese theatrical traditions (the other two are kabuki and bunraku), noh has the longest history. Its origins date back to the eighth century; performances close to the current form were codified in the fourteenth century. Its sophisticated repertory evolved for enjoyment by the upper classes. Some titles were later configured and adapted for kabuki and bunraku. 10 “Ekiman-kyo” also appears in a different article from 1798. Although Screech’s interpretation of “Ekiman-kyo” as “Eichmann lamps” and his explanation that “by the end of the century magic lanterns were being illuminated by Eichmann lamps” have been cited in studies, including Iwamoto’s book, it is probable that he has confused Argand lamps (which were the source of illumination for magic lan­ terns) with the “Eichmann lamp” (which actually does not appear in magic lantern historiography) (Screech 1996: 108). Kobayashi Genjirō suggests the possibility that “Ekiman-kyo” came from “giyaman-kyo” or e-giyaman-kyo”; giyaman meaning “glass,” derived from the Dutch word for

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Machiko Kusahara diamond, which was used for glassworks (Kobayashi 1987: 19 and 120). Screech’s erroneous descrip­ tion about the showman and Kameya Kumakichi was excised in the Japanese translation of his book (Screech 1998: 228). 11 Tane-ita from the utushi-e version of the play, found in Waseda University’s Tsubouchi Memorial Theater Museum collection, depicts images of Kiyohime’s transformation into a serpent and the scale pattern of her kimono (Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum 2015). 12 The survey was led by the Office of Katsura Beichō, the late rakugo performer who inherited a set of nishiki kage-e lanterns and slides from the last showman in Osaka. The survey was supported by the Agency of Cultural Affairs and was carried out by a team of seven members, including Iwamoto Kenji, Matsumoto Natsuki, Yamagata Fumio and Tanaka Yūko from Minwa-za, and myself. Existing mater­ ials of both utsushi-e in the Tokyo region and nishiki kage-e in the Kansai region were studied.

Works cited Iwamoto, K. 2002. Gentō no seiki: Eiga zen’ya-no shikaku bunkashi (Centuries of Magic Lanterns in Japan at the Dawn of Cinema). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Kitamura, N. 1933 (1830). Kiyū shōran. Tokyo: Seikōkan. Kobayashi, G. 1987. Utsushi-e. Tokyo: Chuo University Press. Kurata, Y. 1981–1987. Meiji no engei 1–8 (Popular Entertainment in the Meiji Era, Vol. 1–8). Tokyo: Kokuritsu Gekijō. Maeda, I. 1966. Kamigata engei jiten (Dictionary of Entertainment in Kyoto and Osaka). Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan. Mannoni, L. 1995. Trois siècles de cinéma: de la lanterne magique au cinématographe: collections de la Cinémathèque française. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Mannoni, L. 2000. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema. Trans. R. Crangle. Exeter: University of Exeter Press (original French Edition: Paris: Editions Nathan, 1995). Mannoni, L. and Pesenti Campagnoni, D. 2009. Lanterne magique et film peint: 400 ans de cinéma. Paris: Edi­ tions de la Martinière. Matsumoto, N. 2012. “Shin hakken no Edoki no mokusei gentō ni kansuru kōsatsu: ‘Utsushi-e, nishiki-e’ to hikaku no chūshin ni” (“Study of Newly Discovered Wooden Magic Lanterns of the Edo Period: A Comparison with Other Japanese Magic Lanterns”). Engeki kenkyū 35 (March 30): 91–113. Online at http://hdl.handle.net/2065/35727 [accessed March 10, 2019]. Minwa-za. 2018. Utsushi-e ni tsuite. Online at www.minwaza.com/edoutsushie/edoutsushie-nitsuite/ index.html [accessed January 11, 2019]. Ōkubo, R. 2015. Eizō no arukeorojī: Shikaku riron, kōgaku media, eizō bunka (Archeology of the Screen in Early Modern Japan). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Ōtsuki, G. 1972 (1799). Ransetsu benwaku (Clarifying Errors in Theories about the Dutch), reprinted in C. Morishima et al., Kōmō zatsuwa/Ransetsu benwaku (The Red-Hair Miscellany/Clarifying Errors in Theories about the Dutch), Seikatsu no koten sōsho (Classic Works on Daily Life), Vol. 6, 195–196. Tokyo: Yasaka Shobō. Robida, A. 1882. The Twentieth Century. Trans. P. Willems and A.B. Evans. Reprint, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Screech, T. 1996. The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Screech, T. 1998. Ō-Edo shikaku kakumei: jūhachi seiki Nihon no seiyō kagaku to minshū bunka (The Revolution of Visual Perception in the Edo Period: Western Science and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan). Tokyo: Sakuhinsha. Terakado, S. 1974–1976 (1831–1836). Edo hanjōki (Popular Things in Edo), 3 vols. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (ed.) 2018. Majikku rantan: Hikari to kage no eizōshi (The Magic Lantern: A Short History of Light and Shadow). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University. 2015. Gentō suraido no hakubutsushi: Purojeks­ hon, media no kōkogaku (A Natural History of Magic Lantern Slides). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Yamamoto, K. 1998. Edo no kage-e asobi: Hikari to kage no bunkashi (Shadow Play in Edo Era: The Cultural History of Light and Shadow). Tokyo: Sōshisha. Yokoyama, Y. 2012. Yokai tejina no jidai (The Era of Conjuring Demons). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Yūki, M. 1966. Ito ayatsuri (Marionettes). Tokyo: Seiabō. Yūki, M. 1981. Kugutsushi ichidai (The Life of a Puppet Master). Tokyo: Hakusuisha.

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Further reading Crangle, R., Heard, M., and Dooren, I. (eds) 2005. Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 21st Century. London: The Magic Lantern Society. Kusahara, M. 2008. “Gentō kara kamishibai e: Taishū no eizō media to sensō” (“From Gentō to Kam­ ishibai: Popular Visual Media and the War”). In Y. Inui (ed.), Sensō no aru kurashi (Life with War), 101–129. Tokyo: Suiseisha. Kusahara, M. n.d. Japanese Traditional Magic Lantern Show. Online at www.f.waseda.jp/kusahara/Utsushi­ e/Welcome_to_Utsushi-e.html [accessed January 11, 2019]. Magic Lantern Society. The Magic Lantern Society. Online at www.magiclantern.org.uk/ [accessed January 11, 2019]. Robinson, D., Herbert, S., Crangle, R., and The Magic Lantern Society (eds) 2001. Encyclopedia of the Magic Lantern. London: The Magic Lantern Society. Rossell, D. 1998. Living Pictures: The Origins of the Movies, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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“Inter-MedIatIng” global ModernIty Benshi film narrators, multisensory performance, and fan culture Kyoko Omori

History and significance of benshi Despite the fact that the soundscape is an integral part of the cinematic experience, movies today are commonly described as something to “watch,” the specular verb serving as shorthand for experiencing a work that includes both visual and auditory dimensions. We might readily assume that for films from the early twentieth century, before the advent of sound, the visual spectacle must have been the primary sensory experience in going to the movies, as the very term “silent film” implicitly suggests. In reality, however, Japanese movie theaters were anything but silent.1 The first part of this chapter will provide an overview of the multifaceted performing art of benshi narration, which arose in direct response to the arrival of film as a new, modern artistic medium during the early twentieth century in Japan, thereby helping to form a new modern soundscape. Furthermore, benshi became popular through the proliferation of other sonic and print media such as records, radio, newspapers, and magazines, which played increasingly significant roles in forming a sense of community among cinema and benshi fans in everyday life. The term “benshi” alone means “lecturer,” “orator,” or “rhetorician.” In the context of the silent film era, however, it is an abbreviated version of the term, katsudō shashin benshi, which literally means a “motion picture lecturer.” Other terms such as eiga setsumei-sha (motion picture explainer) and eiga kaisetsu-sha (motion picture commentator) were also used. Katsudō shashin benshi was often shortened to benshi or to katsuben. Between these two terms, “benshi” became the preferred term because the performers generally considered the pronunciation of “katsuben” as more derogatory than the neutral sounding benshi. Whether the full or shorthand version, these terms all referred to “live vocal performers,” who sat or stood in a dimly visible spot adjacent to the movie screen and spoke as a group of musicians performed music at silent film exhibitions.2 Theaters often used standing placards on the stage to display the name of the benshi along with the title of the motion picture. During a silent film screening accompanied by benshi, the sonic aspect of the film experience (i.e., the commentary, dialogue lines of the characters, and narration, all by the same benshi) came from a source visibly separate from the cinematic world. 198

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Furthermore, a benshi usually did not change his or her voice much to provide realistic representations of each character’s voice. Benshi also occasionally reacted to the audience’s responses and improvised their lines on the spot, which resulted in a different benshi narration each time, and among different benshi performers, even for the same movie. Some benshi, such as Tokugawa Musei (1894–1971), who were popular among upper-middle class intellectuals also utilized adaptations of other source texts in their benshi performance in order to enrich the film experience.3 These dynamic and more fluid film experiences in Japanese silent movie theaters in the early twentieth century resulted from local responses to global forces and developments. Benshi came into existence directly as a result of the advent of film in Japan, and their performances soon became an integral part of the cinematic experience for theater patrons throughout the country. Until recently, however, benshi and their crucial role in “mediating” (or “inter-mediating”) the arrival of movies for Japanese audiences in the early years of the twentieth century have been overshadowed by the sensory power of the visual image in discussions of film in Japan and elsewhere.4 Additional challenges to understanding and defining the exact nature of the benshi’s role derive from the elusive nature of benshi performance itself, which was a transitory phenomenon in at least five ways. First, each performance by a benshi was a unique, time-bound, live, oral/aural event, though of course performances could be and were repeated. Moreover, the state of technology at the time did not allow for any sort of documentation of these performances, a situation that reinforces their temporal finitude. Subsequently, as I will discuss below, some record companies did make and sell phonograph records that featured selected highlights of popular benshi performances; and these studio recordings are the closest aural evidence we have of this performance tradition in its contemporary moment.5 Second, these performances took place only alongside and in coordination with a projected cinematic image at a commercial entertainment venue, that is, together with another form and medium of entertainment unavailable for repeated enjoyment at home. Third, script preparations and performing styles, even for the same film, differed widely among benshi, particularly since each movie generally appeared at a theater for only one week. This commercial practice worked against standardization by leaving little time for script preparations and much interpretive freedom for each benshi to approach each film and to decide on the appropriate manner of performance. Fourth, the styles of benshi performance changed over time as the grammar of filmmaking evolved. For example, benshi experimented with approaches including a classicalsounding, flowery kōdan-style of storytelling, kowairo-kakeai (employing multiple performers to voice different characters), as well as more contemporary and colloquial spoken vernacular approaches to description and plot exposition.6 Finally, benshi performance was part of popular consumer culture and thus often considered disposable. Nevertheless, this transitory performance tradition left behind material traces in the ephemera that were produced, consumed, and collected as part of the culture of benshi fandom, which continues to live on today. I address this legacy in the chapter’s final section introducing my “Benshi: Silent Film Narrators in Japan,” a digital archive that gathers examples of the rich constellation of material ephemera that arose as part of this popular entertainment. It currently features items such as records, mass-published stories and essays, newspaper articles, advertisements, flyers, illustrations and photographs, and other commercial materials related to the phenomenon of benshi from the silent film era up to the present. Through digitization, the archive makes historical and contemporary materials available to general audiences interested in benshi, silent cinema, or early twentieth-century popular culture in general. I also have audio recordings of live benshi performances from the 1950s and later. In addition, by leveraging Virtual Reality, GPS, synchronization of image with sound, and other digital technologies, the archive also seeks to recreate the experience of going to the movies during the silent cinema era in Japan. 199

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Since benshi came into existence with the introduction of film in the 1890s and disappeared when talking pictures replaced silent films in the 1930s, their history is rather brief. Thus, benshi performance never had the time to be fully standardized and established as a traditional performing art. Nevertheless, their performance was one of the primary elements in film viewings, as indicated by the fact that 1926 saw approximately 8,000 benshi performing at hundreds of theaters all over the country.7 Some benshi narrated alongside both Japanese and foreign movies, while others specialized in only one of them, or even focused more narrowly upon particular genres (e.g., romance, comedy, action, and horror). Although the benshi’s oral performances were commonly referred to as setsumei (literally, “explanation”), benshi went beyond simply explicating plot and visual imagery. Somewhat akin to contemporary voice actors for animation who play many characters on a single show (like Hank Azaria from The Simpsons), but with a much more prominent profile, a benshi was visible to the audience alongside the movie screen and would commonly undertake three distinct roles in her or his performance: plot narration, character dialogue, and impromptu commentary on the movie, actors, and story.8 In the rest of this chapter, I will use the historical designation, “setsumei,” to refer to benshi performance because there is no single English word that covers the multifaceted nature of the Japanese term in this context. One of the ways that benshi went beyond simply providing information to the audience was in their style of delivery. They delivered their narration in often poetic and lyrical timbres, thereby actively framing the reception of these visual works through their verbal efforts. They paused to let the audience enjoy the silence at crucial moments, a convention also used by narrators and chanters in the traditional performing arts of noh drama and bunraku puppet plays. In an interview, the world-renowned Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa Akira (1910–1998) emphasized the contributions of benshi to the emotional enjoyment of film: The narrators not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing the voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of the events and images on the screen—much like the narrators of the Bunraku puppet theater. The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the patronage of a particular theater. Under the leadership of the famous narrator Tokugawa Musei, a completely new movement was under way. He and a group of like-minded narrators stressed high-quality narration of well-directed foreign films. My brother [Kurosawa Heigo, 1906–1933, also known by his benshi stage name, Suda Teimei] joined them and, although it was a third-run theater, he took a job as the chief narrator at a movie house in the suburb of Nakano. (Kurosawa 1983) Perhaps because of their ability to shape the reception of motion pictures through their setsumei, benshi were often even more popular than movie actors. Fans chose a theater based on the location of their favorite benshi. The newspaper advertisement for Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), for example, shows the name of the most popular benshi at the time, Tokugawa Musei, in a larger font than the internationally renowned Chaplin, the movie’s director and star. Some benshi took advantage of the freedom they were given in writing their scripts because the process of preparing benshi performance was almost always hastily done after a single viewing of a film shortly before its initial public exhibition. In addition, since benshi always performed live (except when performing for studio recordings of phonograph records that featured brief, select highlights), some benshi even improvised and digressed wildly from the synopsis provided by production companies and distributors, as well as the text in the intertitles. Benshi might also 200

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make the projectionist crank the projector more slowly if they wanted to add extra comments or provide longer lines for characters. Considering the rhetorical and emotive power of benshi as potentially injurious to public morals, the Japanese government attempted to standardize benshi setsumei through testing and licensing systems under prefectural authorities. Some prefectural governments implemented their own testing and licensing systems and monitored benshi to ensure that they adhered to the guidelines. For example, Tokyo prefecture enacted Metropolitan Police Order No. 12 (Tokyo Keishichō meirei 12-gō: Katsudō shashin kōgyōjō torishimari kisoku, or in English, “Rules and Regulations Supervising the Exhibition of Movies”) in 1917; and police officers often sat in the theaters to inspect and ensure that benshi were not changing the plot of the movie into something immoral.9 These efforts show the Japanese government’s recognition of benshi as a significant cultural force.10 However, attempts to control benshi were haphazard and far from thorough. Although there were discussions by the Home Ministry to centralize testing and licensing under their authority, such a plan never materialized. In fact, some prefectures neglected altogether to regulate benshi scripts and oral performances. Quite literally (“inter-”)mediating for popular Japanese audiences the global spread of film as both modern technology and artistic medium, benshi performers navigated between the shifting currents of global modernity and the specifics of local traditions at an especially charged historical moment. Notably, modern transportation not only facilitated the global circulation of film reels and other cinematic technologies from Europe and North America as well as among Japanese towns, but benshi themselves also circulated globally to Japanese settler communities in Thailand and Vietnam, as well as in China and Korea.11 Benshi also performed in Hawaii and in cities along the east and west coasts of North and South America, from Canada to Brazil. Wherever they traveled or even settled, benshi functioned, by means of their complex oral performances, as a cultural interface for the global spread of film and its various technological and formal developments. It is in this sense, then, that they served as “inter-mediaries” for film as a global medium to their Japanese-speaking audiences. Even in the local context of neighboring parts of Tokyo, benshi represented various levels of cultural sophistication and functioned as interpreters of represented cultures in the motion pictures, making the stories accessible and enjoyable to their target populations. Uptown (yamanote) theaters catered to white-collar workers and intellectuals with psychological dramas and artistic and experimental films, while downtown (shita­ machi) theaters featured casual and simpler entertainment movies. Benshi would be hired for their strengths to interpret the motion pictures that each theater had available via the distribution system. In all of these efforts, benshi facilitated the establishment and subsequent rise of film as a cultural medium in Japan by shaping the conditions of its reception through their oral performances. Indeed, being a benshi was initially considered a vulgar and lowbrow vocation, on the level of tent performers or street barkers. As film became an increasingly complex artistic form, however, some benshi (Tokugawa Musei, for instance) became recognized for their dynamic, multilayered performances, wherein they drew upon different narrative styles from a range of artistic media including film, literary texts, and oral performing arts in ways that were comparable to the formal experiments taking place under the auspices of literary modernism.

Tokugawa Musei: fan favorite, vernacular modernist, and informal theorist of benshi performance Born on April 13, 1894, Fukuhara Toshio gained fame under the stage name Tokugawa Musei. Commonly referred to as Musei (literally “dream voice”), he became the most renowned 201

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performer of the era, playing a major role in the development of benshi narration as well as the fan culture that the benshi generated. Gaining initial fame during the height of benshi popularity from the mid-1910s through the mid-1930s, Musei began contributing to coterie and popular magazines such as Osanai Kaoru’s Eiga shinchō (New Tide of Motion Pictures) and Shinseinen (New Youth) beginning in the mid-1920s. In addition, he wrote and performed scripts for mandan comic oral storytelling routines and adaptations of popular movies, both on stage and over the radio airwaves, as well as on phonograph recordings starting in the late 1920s and continuing throughout the 1930s. Once motion pictures changed from silent to sound in the mid-1930s, Musei shifted to acting in films and performing storytelling of literary and cinematic works on the radio. From 1953 onwards, he began appearing on television, therewith extending his stardom into yet another new medium. As a result of his many achievements, Musei consolidated his position as the leading multimedia star in Japan from the 1920s until his death on August 1, 1971. As a benshi performer, Musei narrated for both Japanese and foreign films. He enjoyed greatest acclaim, however, for his setsumei alongside European films with strongly psychological themes, including Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920) by the German director Robert Wiene and La Chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928) by the French director Jean Epstein, when they were screened at Shinjuku Musashino-kan, the movie theater where he was appointed principal benshi in 1925. Adapting techniques from different sources across multiple media, he successfully developed new methods of fluid, firstperson narration in Japanese as part of his performances. In doing so, he pursued a range of formal experiments that engaged with literary and cinematic modanizumu in Japan, the broader cultural and aesthetic program from around the turn of the twentieth century that took shape in response to technological advancements and the impact of new media on human experience and perception. By “modanizumu,” I refer to the term that was repeatedly discussed in literary, general, and popular magazines such as Bungei jidai, Shinchō, and Shinseinen. A phonetic transliteration of the English term “modernism,” it did not refer to any one particular experimentalist theory or practice. Rather, it designated an attitude or rhetorical stance that consciously employs the notion of the “modern” in an effort to represent human experience within the context of a world undergoing rapid and monumental change. Among other things, technological advancements such as public transportation and new means of data transmission during the early decades of the twentieth century promoted increasingly larger and faster human migration, as well as the movement of goods and information. In turn, such movement generated new physical and cultural experiences. While not necessarily claiming this designation for themselves, many artists who appeared in the venues that discussed and promoted modanizumu felt strongly that portraying such experiences required a new “language,” and even more broadly, a new sensory paradigm. Hence, within this broader context of unprecedented social change, the term modanizumu was variously used in Japan to refer to phenomena as different from each other as coterie avantgarde art movements, literature depicting the hedonistic, consumerist lifestyles of young urbanites (referred to by the contractions moga and mobo as Japanized shorthand for “modern girls” and “modern boys”), and vernacular cultural production prompted by new mass media technologies. No matter what the term meant in any given instance, however, Japanese modernists assumed an iconoclastic stance toward tradition. As a contested term employed most prominently during the 1920s–1930s to critically discuss the dynamic—and often chaotic—shifts in everyday life that were brought about by rapid changes in technology, politics, and social mores (and thus perceptions of the world), modanizumu helps us understand Japanese arts from the early twentieth century as more than formal experiments overshadowed by the precedent of 202

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Western achievement. Rather, it is more useful (and accurate) to regard modanizumu in Japan as a distinctive cultural constellation at once reflecting and responding to a world already globally connected on the material level. For Musei, modanizumu describes an eclectic range of thematic concerns and formal strategies all focused in some way on depicting the experience of modernity in Japan. To be sure, Musei was not the only artist both concerned with, and inspired by, modern technological advancements and their capacity to transform different artistic traditions and practices as they spread across the globe and, especially, into Japan. For example, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947), Edogawa Rampo (1894–1965), Kitagawa Fuyuhiko (1900–1990), and many other modernist writers and poets sought to adapt and cross-fertilize between visual and literary formalist techniques. In serial adaptations of literary works, the youth magazine Shinseinen (New Youth) similarly explored different ways of playfully combining multiple forms of media such as photography and printed text in order to produce a multivalent narrative voice. In his role as a popular entertainer, Musei contributed to the flourishing of modanizumu as a Japanese expression of what Miriam Bratu Hansen calls “vernacular modernism” (Hansen 1999).12 At motion picture exhibitions, on the radio, and in phonograph recordings, he did so by approaching his oral performance as a creative process of cultural production in its own right. In addition, he inflected his writing with his celebrated style of oral delivery, as we shall see below. Musei’s understanding of benshi performance appears most clearly in his essays, which amount to an informal theorization of his benshi practice. They also highlight his phenomenological approach to modern culture. The following passage comes from the opening paragraph of the preface to the June 1925 inaugural issue of Sakkaku, Musei’s coterie magazine offering commentary on the vernacular pleasures of the day, or as a line on the front cover declares, “music, movies, and silly chats.” The magazine’s front cover also displays the title Sakkaku written in kanji (adopted logographic Chinese) characters, accompanied by the English word “hallucination” incorporated in an abstract cover design. The cover seems to suggest that the altered mental state cannot be depicted in a single “language,” but rather, needs two languages and an additional illustration. In the preface, Musei further expands upon the implications of the title: Life is hallucination [sakkaku]. On a large scale, the illusory relationship between time and space is the greatest example of the intuitive hallucination of man. Just as, on a small scale, a little boy’s bedwetting cometh from the reflexive hallucination of his peripheral nervous system, so there is truth in all things that exist between heaven and earth. At the same time, however, there is nothing that is not phenomena. This is so because, while every existence is true, our perception is complete hallucination. “IS THAT WHAT THE GENTLEMAN SAID?”—Such a remark revealeth an extreme case of hallucination.13 (Tokugawa 1925) In this passage, Musei begins by using pseudo-classical Japanese that evokes a more conventional kōdan style of storytelling to declare that “Life is hallucination [sakkaku]” (sore, jinsei wa sakkaku nari). Such hallucination, furthermore, operates both at the macro-level in our collective perception of time and space, and at the micro-level of individual physiological reactions like a little boy’s bedwetting. Hence, “there is truth in all things that exist between heaven and earth. At the same time, however, there is nothing that is not phenomena.” Namely, he makes a phenomenologist argument that things surely exist, but only as phenomena we perceive with our 203

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senses. Complicating matters even further, near the end of this paragraph, Musei inserts a humorous meta-commentary in a contrastingly vernacular idiom, te na koto o osshaimashita ka ne. Rendered partly in the phonetic katakana syllabary (te na … mashita ka ne) to indicate a colloquial and even comical tone, this commentary introduces a layer of skeptical reflexivity to the verbal performance: “IS THAT WHAT THE GENTLEMAN SAID?” To connote the comical tone of the other voice, which is clueless about the significance of the grandiose statement the initial narrator made about everything in the cosmos being the product of the viewer’s hallucination, Musei mixes katakana and kanji characters in his writing, and uses a casual and colloquial style evinced by the contraction tena (instead of to iu yō na) and the sentence-ending particle “ne.” This particle softens the voice of the preceding interrogative particle “ka,” and invites readers or listeners to wonder with him whether the other narrator actually made such a grand statement. Then, in the final sentence, he adds yet another layer of irony by returning to the earlier pseudo-classical and didactic idiom; he couches his skeptical comment about a phenomenological viewpoint by reducing it to part of the final sentence, dismissing it as “an extreme case of hallucination.” Throughout this brief but rich passage, Musei expresses his phenomenological worldview, but more importantly, he also strives to illustrate the texture of such an evanescent existence by mimicking a variety of verbal and vocal techniques taken from his benshi repertoire. By utilizing the benshi narrative technique, Musei presents multiple perspectives without a pause, as if to say that new media have required the modernite to acquire multiple perspectives. This pervasive and varied practice of adaptation among and across different media constituted the very core of what was referred to as modanizumu in early twentieth-century Japan. Through his benshi performance, Musei sits at the nexus of these intersecting cultural domains. While his performance as a benshi may have receded into the mists of a nostalgic subculture, he nevertheless helped to mediate the growth of modanizumu in Japan across the early decades of the twentieth century. While silent film cinephiles generally considered most benshi’s performances to be more vulgar than artistic, Musei was a favorite of middle-class to uppermiddle-class audiences because his setsumei narration satisfied their intellectual curiosity. Musei accomplished this by undertaking and theorizing his benshi performance as a dynamic, synchronized process of adaptation across cultural, linguistic, and mediatic boundaries, which in turn served as a model for modernist cultural production more generally. [In my very first benshi performance, in 1913] I looked at the screen obliquely from where I stood [on the side of stage] and realized that the movie appeared extremely flat. It looked different from what you would see from the front. The images on the screen flickered strangely, and the figures all looked like thin sticks intertwined with one another. I couldn’t tell them apart. (But once I got used to that angle, I became able to recognize the figures and the intertitles very clearly. After making further advances, a benshi can view the images on the screen—from either front or sideways— exactly as if they were normal. After many successive generations on the job, benshi might well evolve to have eyes on one side of their face, just like flounder or sole.) The scenes on the screen proceeded regardless of my benshi narration. You may think that’s as expected. But we do not grasp that fact until we actually try benshi performance ourselves. That’s because spectators have the illusion [sakkaku] that the scenes are moving alongside benshi narration, especially when the benshi is good.14 (Tokugawa 1928: 275–276) When done properly, this process of interpreting a motion picture in preparation for benshi performance not only has transformative effects on the benshi himself, but crucially, it also has 204

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the potential to redefine perceptions of cause and effect more broadly for the film audience (and by implication, for society). For Musei, then, benshi fill the weighty role of facilitating a new approach to reality, one more in tune with the rapid transformations and resultant ambiguities of the modern world, including most especially the emergence of new artistic media, such as film. Musei also seems to argue that the advent of new media such as film necessarily entails the adoption of a new perspective on the world. A benshi looks at the two-dimensional screen from an unusual angle, which makes everything appear compressed and warped. Through experience and unspecified “advances” in technique, however, the benshi can adjust his vision to accurately perceive the filmic images. Through practicing novel ways of viewing the world and even becoming physically adjusted to the new reality, a good benshi can turn the artificial, flat world of film with its own limits and grammar into a fuller experience. In fact, the performance can become so effective that ordinary moviegoers fail to recognize that “[t]he scenes on the screen proceed regardless of benshi narration.” As this claim in particular shows, Musei’s understanding of the phenomenology of audience perception rests in part on the historical and cultural precedent of the oral storytelling tradition known as katarimono, which originated in medieval Japan and is still seen in contemporary performing arts and literature. Perhaps even more significantly, by underscoring the multisensory dimensions of film alongside the dominating image, Musei anticipates later important theoretical statements about the logic of cinema, most notably that of Gilles Deleuze in his seminal study on film, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985): [C]inema remains a fundamentally visual art in relation to which the sound continuum is differentiated in two directions, two heterogeneous streams, but is also re-formed and reconstituted. This is the powerful movement by which, already in the silent film, visual images are internalized in a changing whole, but at the same time as the changing whole is externalized in visual images. With sound, speech and music, the circuit of the movement-image achieves a different figure, different dimensions or components; however, it maintains the communication between the image and a whole which has become increasingly rich and complex. It is in this sense that the talkie perfects the silent film. Silent or talkie, we have seen, cinema constitutes an immense “internal monologue” which constantly internalizes and externalizes itself: not a language, but a visual material which is the utterable of language (its “signified of power” the linguist Gustave Guillaume would say), and which refers in one case to indirect utterances (intertitles), in the other case to direct enunciations (acts of speech and of music). (Deleuze 1985: 241) Such remarkable foresight and anticipation on Musei’s part underscore the global contemporaneity not just of film as a medium of modernity, but also of Musei himself as a practitioner and an informal theorist of benshi setsumei as vernacular modernist performance. As exemplified in the passage from Sakkaku, Musei tried to recreate the style of his benshi performance, including his diction, pacing, and other vocal dynamics, in his writing. While performing as a benshi, Musei referenced other sources (such as literary works), as seen in his reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s original tale, The Fall of the House of Usher (published in 1839) while interpreting Jean Epstein’s 1928 loose film adaptation, La Chute de la maison Usher. Musei, therefore, saw this process of adaptation as an act of dynamic and creative synthesis, rather than simple mimesis. Through his efforts as a benshi, he aimed at nothing less than developing new modes of representation adequate to the challenges of depicting modern reality. 205

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Digital archive: recreating the multisensory experience of film exhibitions and preserving ephemera Today, the biggest challenge in learning about benshi is the historical inaccessibility of the fleeting experience of a live performance. While the primary allure of setsumei lies in the multisensory experience generated by the benshi’s inter-media performance, we have no access—not even in recordings—to such three-dimensional activity at historical film exhibitions. This is because the technology a century ago did not allow film or audio recordings of such live events. Other than contemporary benshi performances at retrospective silent film events or international film festivals and conferences, we do not have venues where we can experience the full range of multisensory pleasures of benshi performance, such as the timbre of the voice and the lyrical rhythm of the narration coming from the entertainer before us, dimly visible in the flickering light of the projector. Another challenge is the scarcity of historical contextual material preserved and restored in museums, because ephemera related to benshi were generally regarded as part of popular (i.e., disposable) culture. At the same time, however, benshi fans did collect various ephemera, even if they kept it all to themselves. In an effort to recreate the dynamic multisensory and inter-media performance of benshi, I have been building a digital archive called “Benshi: Silent Film Narrators in Japan.” With support from the Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) at my home institution, Hamilton College, I have digitized and synchronized historical materials and created VR theater models. The design of the archive may change as it develops further. Figure 12.1 is an image of the beta version design. This archive has four objectives. First, it aims to map out the constellation of ephemera surrounding benshi performers, as their contemporary audience in the silent film era developed an appetite for materialized versions of the transitory experience of such performances. For example, audiences enjoyed listening to studio-recorded highlights of benshi performances on phonograph records and reading setsumei scripts published in pocket-sized fan magazines, even without watching the movies. These recordings were not necessarily sold with the foresight of preserving ephemeral art for the future. Rather, they were purchased for the sheer enjoyment of replaying or recreating the performance as many times as desired, and wherever possible. Fans enjoyed listening to highlights, as well as memorizing and emulating their favorite lines. Other mass-produced benshi items also helped to create a fan-based community, generated by consumption and aesthetic enjoyment. For example, benshi performers were ranked according to a system similar to those used for sumo wrestlers. In addition, through mass-produced stories provided as essays, reviews, photographs, illustrations, and printed versions of benshi’s storytelling, fans even developed this sense of community outside of film theaters. Second, the archive provides the dynamic experience of enjoying benshi performance by synchronizing audio files of benshi with digitized silent films. The benshi audio sources are either pre-war phonograph records (studio-recorded, with excerpts of highlights only) or more contemporary live audio recordings captured at silent film exhibitions in the 1950s through the present. The on-stage recordings include ones by Tokugawa Musei, Fukuchi Gorō (1900–1987), Sawato Midori, a female benshi who debuted in 1973, and Kataoka Ichirō (1977–). The archive also features studio recordings of contemporary (recently or currently active) benshi such as Matsuda Shunsui, Sawato Midori, and Kataoka Ichirō. Such synchronization allows us to compare the performances of Tokugawa Musei (a male benshi, who performed in the pre-war years) and Sawato Midori (a currently active female benshi) for Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher. The archive presents each synchronized movie scene with automatically scrolling text: a transcription of both the original benshi script in Japanese and its English translation. The 206

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Figure 12.1 A screen shot of the working model for the home page of the “Benshi: Silent Film Narrators in Japan” digital archive. Source: Image by Kyoko Omori.

site also provides contextual information drawn from historical sources such as essays, fan comments sent to popular magazines, and newspaper articles. The archive’s third mission builds upon the second by offering Virtual Reality Movie Theater models of historical silent movie theaters that have long since been demolished, such as the Aoikan (built in 1914; rebuilt in 1924 after being destroyed by the Great Kantō Earthquake), and the Shinjuku Musashino-kan (built in 1920 with 600 seats; rebuilt in 1928 for expansion to 1,500 seats; destroyed in an air raid in 1945; reopened in 1968 with 500 seats as part of the Musashino Building Complex), both in Tokyo. Visitors to the archive will first see a contemporary map of Tokyo (GPS). Clicking on the historical location of a theater will let them time-travel to the 1910s–1920s. Wearing VR devices, they will enter the theater building and learn historical facts regarding the theater and its affiliated benshi. Then, they will walk around to feel the space, look around, and understand the relations among the orchestra pit, benshi podium, and the audience seats, as well as noting the smaller screen. They can go up to balcony seats to compare how the projected image looks from various locations in the building, and how the benshi is less audible in the upper balconies because there was no PA system in these historical theaters. 207

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Fourth, the archive includes a section that features the pedagogical possibilities of applying “benshi” in the classroom. For example, Crossroads in Context (2017), a silent documentary film about refugees attending English classes in Utica, NY, shows the collaborative process that several of my students, the support team at Hamilton’s DHi, and I undertook in making the film while studying about refugees and practicing benshi narration. The project investigates what it means to learn about others’ histories and cultures while seeking to tell their stories with empathy. Students were mindful that the refugees had their own voices, and that they were learning English to have their voices heard and understood in the USA. They had thoughtful discussions about how their benshi performance could possibly help disseminate the stories of the refugees. This section of the archive also includes three interviews. The first features the refugee students who appear in the Crossroads in Context film. In the second interview, the three organizers/teachers of the ESOL classes that I followed in the documentary film discuss the objectives and outcomes of the project. The third offers reflections by the Hamilton students who performed as benshi. The archive does not present all four foci as separate, isolated features. For example, one section of the archive provides selected scenes from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (restored Kino edition DVD), synchronized with a 1955 benshi performance by Fukuchi Gorō (the first half of the movie) and Tokugawa Musei (the second half), together with its transcription in Japanese and an English language translation. I compare the setsumei by Fukuchi and Musei with another benshi’s narration in an article in the literary magazine, Shin shōsetsu (New Novel) in 1921, the year the film opened in Japan. Titled “Hyōgenha eiga Karigari hakase ni tsuite” (“Regarding the Expressionist Movie, Dr. Caligari”), the article offers a “movie synopsis” (eiga kōgai) by benshi Umemura Shisei (1900–1969), accompanied by nine illustrations that depict specific scenes from the movie. Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934), one of the most popular artists of his time, contributed these illustrations for Umemura’s movie synopsis, as well as his own short essay, titled “Karigari hakase no inshō” (“Impressions of Dr. Caligari”), in which Yumeji critiques the film’s visual aesthetics (Takehisa 1921). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had a strong impact on writers, filmmakers, and painters in Japan at the time primarily because of its depictions of abnormal psychology. In the opening scene, a young man named Francis is sitting with an old man in some sort of desolate outdoor space. Francis tells the unidentified old man about a blood-chilling serial murder case that he became involved in. Then, the film’s narrative perspective shifts as the diegesis transitions to Francis’s story through the use of an iris shot. In this embedded storyline, Francis discovers that the killer of his friend, Alan, and other innocent citizens is a phantom-like somnambulist, Cesaré. Subsequently, Francis learns that there is actually a puppet master behind Cesaré, the freak show charlatan Dr. Caligari, who takes on multiple guises ranging from an eighteenth-century mystic to the respectful gentleman director of a mental institution. What differentiates this movie from a more conventional detective story is the nature of the plot twist that resolves the narrative. By nesting Francis’s story about his experience within a framing visual narrative that reveals him to be a paranoid mental patient, the film ultimately casts the “evil” Dr. Caligari as a dramatically different character. Dr. Caligari changes from an evil mastermind to a compassionate psychiatrist, and the head of the institution where Francis is being treated. In short, the entire story of a smart and heroic young man who tried to catch a criminal is revealed as the feverish hallucination of a mental patient. In interpreting the same film, the three benshi narrators (Fukuchi Gorō, Tokugawa Musei, and Umemura Shisei) focused on different information and timing in their narration. Additionally, because Shisei was not constrained by the temporal restrictions of an actual film screening, the opportunity to write for the magazine prompted him to provide more information while 208

“Inter-mediating” global modernity Table 12.1 A chart comparing the narrative information provided by the original silent film of Dr. Cali­ gari, the printed text by benshi Umemura Shisei (1921), and a transcription of benshi Fukuchi Gorō’s live setsumei from 1955. Intertitles in the Movie

Shisei’s synopsis (magazine article in Fukuchi’s setsumei (live recording in 1921) 1955)

Intertitle #1: “There are spirits. They are all around us. They have driven me from Hearth and Home from Wife and Child …” Intertitle #2: “That is my Fiancé …” Intertitle #3: “What she and I have lived through is stranger still than what you have lived through …” Intertitle #4: “I will tell you about it.” Intertitle #5: “The little town where I was born …” Intertitle #6: “Him …” Intertitle #7: “Alan, my friend”

“Among the dozens of madmen housed in the insane asylum, Francis is the only one the director and other doctors could not easily figure out the cause of the illness. They were not even sure whether he was really mentally ill.” “Ghosts would hang around us, and in the end, they took away my wife, children, and house from me …” The attending doctor has been trying this and other stories every day as they sit in the corner of a dimly lit garden. He is trying to see how Francis reacts to these stories.” Just at that point, an insane young woman wearing a white dress appeared like a shadow and passed by the two like a shadow. Francis said as he gazed at the back of the crazy woman, “Look, that is my fiancée over there … The incident we ran into was even more terrible and mysterious than the story you just told me.” Apparently, the sight evoked specific memories. As Francis fixated his gaze up at the sky, he began his story, showing his enthusiasm, as though concentrating his power into the account. “This is about an event that happened in my small hometown … I will never forget that it was the day of the festival … Yes, that was that man. He called himself Dr. Caligari.”

Source: Compiled by Kyoko Omori.

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A professor from Stanford University is at some mental hospital in order to investigate the condition there. He is talking with a young patient named Francis. Oh, that’s her. My fiancée. The experience she and I had— that’s something much more out of the ordinary and odd than the story you just told me. I was born in a town called Holstenwall. This is what happened in that town. The town had an annual festival just at that time. A lot of travelling freak show exhibitors are in town.

Kyoko Omori

telling the story, and to use more vernacular language instead of the flowery kōdan-style typical of oral performance. Such “movie synopses” were popular as radio broadcasts and in mass print media as another form of entertainment that derived from the movies and benshi narration. Although Musei and Fukuchi were also known for their colloquial oratory style, their narrations are more selective, with frequent pauses because they can let the image speak on its own. Table 12.1 displays the first section of a chart comparing the narrative information provided by the original silent film of Dr. Caligari, the printed text by Shisei, and a transcription of Fukuchi’s live setsumei from 1955. The digital archive incorporates the video files of the scenes from the film and the audio files of Fukuchi’s setsumei, as well as the illustrations by Takehisa for Shisei’s synopsis, so that the visitors to the archive see the complex and dynamic storytelling in each instance. These digital resources allow for a more robust—multisensory and collaborative—exploration of benshi performance as a distinctive feature of Japanese modanizumu that simultaneously highlights the global reach and impact of this cultural movement. It also enables us to reexamine the significance of benshi in a contemporary setting. For example, I have been working closely with current benshi such as Sawato Midori and Kataoka Ichirō to explore the contemporary meaning of benshi performance in international settings like film festivals and academic conferences.15 A close study of benshi oral performance alongside film screenings shows us how a transitory, vernacular mode of cultural entertainment generated an intricate web of other popular cultural forms. Collectively, this multimedia assemblage helped to create new habits of listening and other forms of enjoyment in response to the shifting soundscape of modernity during the early twentieth century.

Notes 1 Live oral performance accompanying a film exhibition was not exclusively a Japanese phenomenon. For example, lecturers in the United States, bonimenteurs, commentateurs, and compères in Frenchspeaking regions performed for slides and silent movies, occasionally with live music and sound effects, for slide and movie exhibitions around the turn of the twentieth century. For discussions about lecturers in the USA, see Altman 2004. 2 Although live music often accompanied benshi oral performance, the discussion of music is outside the scope of this article. 3 I follow Japanese traditional order in giving Japanese names, with the family name first, followed by the given name (e.g., Tokugawa Musei and Kurosawa Akira). I also refer to individuals by the name for which they are best known in Japan. For example, Tokugawa Musei is referred to as Musei, while Kurosawa Akira is Kurosawa. 4 While it comprises only a small portion of existing English-language scholarships on Japanese film, there are several pioneering academic works about benshi, as well as the transitional period from silent to sound films. For further information on the benshi and silent cinema in English, see Bernardi 2001, Dym 2003, Fujiki 2006, Gerow 2001, Komatsu 1997, and Nornes 2007; for the transitional early sound period, see Johan Nordström’s work, including his Chapter 13 in this volume. 5 Other surviving recordings of benshi include the audio track for Mizoguchi Kenji’s The Downfall of Osen (Orizuru Osen, 1935) and post-war live recordings of famous benshi from pre-war times at retrospective screenings of old silent films. 6 The early history of benshi included kowairo-kakeai performances, wherein multiple benshi typically voiced individual roles while standing behind the movie screen. But performers during what is considered to be the “golden age of benshi” in the 1920s predominantly performed alone without changing their voices to match different roles (longer movies were often divided between two benshi performers, and the senior benshi typically performed the second half). It was possible for individual benshi to mix different styles in their performances. For example, Tokugawa Musei was known for a more modern and colloquial style, but he also mixed in highly poetic, traditionally derived kōdan-style phrases in his performance.

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“Inter-mediating” global modernity 7 According to Kajita Akira, registration records indicate that in 1926, there were 7,264 male and 312 female benshi performers nationwide. Tokyo prefecture alone had 1,717 male and 94 female benshi in 1927, but in 1929, the number decreased to 1,201 male and 15 female benshi (Kajita 2011: 82). 8 The style of benshi performance varied depending on the location and time in the history of silent film. Hiroshi Komatsu summarizes the changing roles of benshi as follows: In the primitive era they introduced the films and told their outlines to the audience before the show began. But, as the films became longer and increasingly complex, the benshi explained the scenes and spoke the dialogue, accompanied by Japanese music, while the silent images flickered on the screen. (Komatsu 1997: 177) 9 For further readings about the benshi’s changing roles within the Japanese film industry, see Bernardi 2001, Gerow 2001, and Nornes 2007. 10 Dym (2003) devotes a book chapter to the discussions of the governmental attempts and actual ineffectiveness of such governing mechanisms. Also, see Gerow (2001) on the government control over benshi, and Bernardi (2001) on related discussions by supporters of the Pure Film Movement. 11 As a result of colonization by Japan, Korea and Taiwan produced their own benshi performers (called pyonsa in Korean and piansu in Chinese), who narrated in their native languages for the local audiences. 12 Hansen defines vernacular modernism as follows: I take the study of modernist aesthetics to encompass cultural practices that both articulated and mediated the experience of modernity, such as the mass-produced and mass-consumed phenomena of fashion, design, advertising, architecture and urban environment, of photography, radio, and cinema. I am referring to this kind of modernism as “vernacular” (and avoiding the ideologically overdetermined term “popular”) because the term vernacular combines the dimension of the quotidian, of everyday usage, with connotations of discourse, idiom, and dialect, with circulation, promiscuity, and translatability. (Hansen 1999: 60) 13 In the English translation, I attempt to approximate Musei’s word choices and his quick shift from the archaic, pseudo-classical style to a more contemporary and vernacular style. 14 I use “hallucination” as the English translation of sakkaku in the first quote because Musei chose to use this English word on the front cover of the magazine. In the second quote, I translate sakkaku as “illusion” because this word works better in this particular context. 15 Although the archive is still under construction as of this writing, further information (including demo video and synchronized videos) is available at www.hamilton.edu/academics/centers/digitalhumanities-initiative/projects/Benshi-Silent-Film-Narrators-in-Japan [accessed March 14, 2019].

Works cited Altman, R. 2004. Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press. Bernardi, J. 2001. Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Deleuze, G. 1985. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dym, J. 2003. Benshi, Japanese Silent Film Narrators, and Their Forgotten Narrative Art of Setsumei. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. Fujiki, H. 2006. “Benshi as Stars: The Irony of the Popularity and Respectability of Voice Performers in Japanese Cinema.” Cinema Journal 45(2): 68–84. Gerow, A. 2001. “The Word before the Image: Criticism, the Screenplay, and the Regulation of Meaning in Prewar Japanese Film Culture.” In D. Washburn and C. Cavanaugh (eds), Word and Image in Japanese Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hansen, M.B. 1999. “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism.” Modernism/Modernity 6(2): 59–77. Kajita, A. 2011. “Yōga no dendō Shinjuku Musashino-kan” (“The Foreign Film Palace: Shinjuku Mushashino Theater”), 82–83. Eiga no dendō Shinjuku Musashino-kan (Film Palace: Shinjuku Musashino Theater). Tokyo: Kaihatsusha.

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Kyoko Omori Komatsu, H. 1997. “Japan: Before the Great Kanto Earthquake.” In G. Newell-Smith (ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kurosawa, A. 1983. Something Like and Autobiography. New York: Vintage Books. Nornes, M. 2007. Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Takehisa, Y. 1921. “Karigari hakase no inshō” (“Impressions of Dr. Caligari”). Shin shōsetsu 26: 7. Tokugawa, M. 1925. “Kantō no gen” (“Foreword”). Published under T. Fukuhara. Sakkaku: Hallucina­ tion 1: 1. Tokugawa, M. 1928. “Benshi minarai to naru” (“Becoming a Benshi Apprentice”). Musei jiden Jō (Auto­ biography of Musei Vol. 1), 267–278. Reprint, Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1978. Umemura, S. 1921. “Hyōgenha eiga Karigari hakase ni tsuite” (“Regarding the Expressionist Movie, Dr. Caligari”). Shin shōsetsu 26: 7.

Further reading Friends of Silent Films Association and Matsuda Film Productions. 2001. The Benshi: Japanese Silent Film Narrators. Tokyo: Urban Connections. Gerow, A. 2010. Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895–1925. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Misono, K. 1990. Katsuben jidai (The Age of Katsuben). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yokokawa, S. 2006. Hawai no benshi: Nikkeijin imin to katsudō shashin no jidai (The Benshi of Hawai’i: Second Generation Immigrants and the Age of Moving Pictures). Tokyo: Nichibei Eiga Bunka Kyōkai.

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13

Between Silence and Sound

The liminal space of the Japanese “sound version”

Johan Nordström

Introduction Japanese cinema’s transition to synchronized sound constituted a complex non-linear process within a larger context of evolving technological means of electric sound mediation in the 1920s and 1930s. These technological shifts came to destabilize relations among existing media, and as the form and purpose of old and new technologies were recast, the rigid infrastructure of estab­ lished corporate systems became increasingly fluid. The impact of these industry-wide changes was felt throughout Japanese cinema: in its changing production models, modes of delivery, and aesthetic inflections. During the global transition from silent to sound films, the practice of releasing so-called “sound versions”—silent films with a mechanically synchronized soundtrack consisting of music, song, special effects, and unsynchronized dialogue/narration—was a widespread practice. Unlike the situation in the United States, however, where the production of sound version films had ceased by 1930, in Japan, the format enjoyed an extended life, existing in one form or another from 1931 to at least 1941. This was partially because of the continuous reorganizing of the constituent parts of the Japanese sound version. This ensured that the resulting bricolage was flexible enough to serve a multitude of purposes by adapting to the changing needs of the film industry, and therefore remaining a viable mode of production for much longer than in most Western film industries. As a result, the Japanese sound version becomes a lens for under­ standing the process by which production teams and studio executives negotiated the demands of new sound technologies and changing screening practices. At the same time, its aesthetic liminality forces us to set aside simplistic binaries between silent and sound cinema. Japanese sound version films were most commonly referred to as saundo-ban or onkyō-ban (lit­ erally, “sound versions”), but depending on their form and function, they were further distin­ guished by a wide variety of terms that served to differentiate between various types: as in, for instance, the difference between “regular” saundo-ban films (silent films with an orchestral score and special effects soundtrack) and kaisetsu-ban or kaisetsugo-ban, literally, “explanation versions” that also included recorded benshi narration on the soundtrack. These terms also varied among different production companies. For example, kaisetsu-ban were also marketed by Shochiku as sūpā saundo-ban (super sound versions) and neo sūpā tōkī (new super talkies), while other studios marketed kaisetsu-ban as benshi-ban (benshi versions), setsumei fukikomi (“explanation recorded” 213

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versions), setsumei hairi saundo-ban (sound versions with explanation), or kaisetsu tōkī (explanation talkies). It was also common practice among the studios that produced sound versions throughout the 1930s to use their studio name as part of the descriptive term, as in Kamata ōru saundo-ban ([Shochiku] Kamata [studio] all-sound version), or Shinkō saundo (Shinkō [studio] sound [version]). Yet another practice was to include words that helped elucidate the category or genre of film, such as saundo-ban kouta eiga (sound version ballad film).1 This chapter will focus on those sound version films for which both the actual film and the soundtrack were produced by Japanese film production companies, but it is also important to acknowledge the coeval presence of foreign-produced films that had been fitted, retrofitted, or otherwise altered to varying degrees in order to accommodate a mechanically synchronized Japanese soundtrack. These were commonly referred to as nihon-ban (Japanese versions), although the term was most frequently utilized to denominate foreign films that had been fitted with written Japanese language translation in some form or other.2 Even as the meaning of the term changed several times during the 1930s, the nihon-ban continued to constitute an important aspect of the sound version phenomena at large, a sound culture that was indicative of larger changes in the Japanese film industry throughout the decade. The liminal nature of Japanese sound films situates them as neither silent nor sound; instead, “they were part of a ‘culture of the sound image’ that incorporated the transmedia exploitation of properties across multiple media, from popular records to radio narratives to electronic sound in the cinema” (Raine and Nord­ ström forthcoming). Just as the intermedial genre of kouta eiga (silent films that were inspired by and screened together with popular songs, kouta) was given short shrift in the canonical early histories of Jap­ anese cinema (see Sasagawa 2003), sound version films were often held in low esteem by both contemporary critics and canonical early Japanese film historians (although mentioned briefly in the context of Shochiku’s transition to sound in, e.g., Tanaka 1980). For instance, in July 1932, music critic, theoretician, and (later) film score composer Kakeshita Keikichi dismisses the sound version and “part talkie” as being without value, stating that their production “is entirely a con­ sequence of economic reasons and there is no value in discussing them as talkies; however from the vantage point of film’s development they are an important product of a transitional time” (1932). Similarly, in a 1934 motion picture yearbook, the sound version is dismissed as merely a necessary step along the way toward full-talkie cinema (Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha 1934). The sound version format has been largely dismissed from serious consideration or completely ignored as well by more recent scholarship. A striking example is the absence of any discussion of sound version films in Iwamoto Kenji’s 2007 book-length study exploring Japan’s transition to sound. In English language scholarship, the kouta eiga has recently been the focus of scholarly attention, but with a few exceptions, the same cannot be said for sound version films.3 Most contemporary discussions and reviews of early sound version films in film journals such as Kinema junpō usually paid little attention to the actual aural composition of the film, unless it was to lament that Japanese cinema had still not gone full-talkie (see, for instance, music critic, theoretician, and [later] film score composer Kakeshita Keikichi’s quote above). The emergence of the kaisetsu-ban and Shochiku’s neo sūpā tōkī in around 1936 incited certain critical reflec­ tion regarding the changes under way in the sound version format, but once again these discus­ sions were broadly framed and failed to address the structure of the soundtrack and its implications for the aesthetic totality of the film. This chapter aims to break away from the often implicitly stated view of the Japanese sound version as characteristic of the fragility of the Japanese movie industry, or, at best, a failed attempt at sound cinema that merely functioned as a stopgap measure for the industry before it was willing to fully commit to full-talkie film production. Instead, we need to recognize the 214

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multiplicity of form, function, and content within the Japanese film industry and situate the Japanese sound version within the genealogy of Japanese cinema’s relation to sound, where it not only played a significant role in ushering in the sound era, but also came to manifest a dis­ tinct form of aesthetic delivery.

The Japanese film industry and the sound version film In 1931, much ink in the trade press and newspapers was devoted to the release of Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine, dir. Gosho Heinosuke), Japan’s first commercially success­ ful talkie, produced with Shochiku studio’s custom-made Tsuchihachi sound system. That same year, however, just as The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine broke new ground by forging one possible stylistic and economic path forward for the nascent Japanese sound cinema, Tokyo Shinema Shokai released Daikūgūn (Great Airforce, dir. Ozawa Tokuji and Hatoyama Kiyomasa), a gen­ daigeki (drama with a contemporary setting) propaganda film commissioned by the army.4 This was an early sound version iteration, and an example of what would become the de facto dominant mode of sound film production in Japan until 1935. That year, the production of full-talkies outnumbered that of sound version films for the first time, and sound cinema in its wide variety of forms constituted the majority of films produced in Japan. The sound version remained a viable mode of sound film production during the latter half of the 1930s, but its presence in the cinematic landscape gradually diminished as the Japanese film industry moved toward full-sound talkie cinema. The worldwide transition from silent to sound cinema occurred in the midst of economic austerity. In Japan, the impact of the Shōwa Financial Crisis of 1927 was felt throughout the film industry. So, too, was the subsequent Shōwa Depression of 1930–1931, when the repercussions of the Great Depression were further aggravated by Japan’s return to the gold standard at the old parity. This resulted in severe deflation and economic decline. Japan’s subsequent departure from the gold standard in December 1931 was followed by severe market devaluation, causing a sharp increase in the cost of foreign imports (Shizume 2009), which negatively impacted the film industry’s ability to invest in the technological equipment and sound stage infrastructure necessary for the production of sound cinema. These crises further affected the Japanese film industry’s source of revenue as cinema theaters were forced to lower their prices by approxi­ mately one-third, from an average ticket price of 35 sen in 1929 to 24 sen in 1932 (Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha 1934: 51). The Japanese studios’ initial response was similar to that in the USA, where Warner Bros., looking to cut costs as well as to standardize film entertainment, first introduced sound via their Vitaphone sound-on-disc system to feature film production in 1926; the studio intended to use recorded music as a replacement for the musical accompaniment and stage acts that sometimes preceded the feature film (Slowik 2012: 53). Michael Slowik points out that in Hollywood, between 1926 to 1929, three major types of sound films were produced: “synchronized” films that featured a soundtrack consisting of mechanically synchronized music and often sound effects but no dialogue; “part-talkies” con­ taining synchronized talking sequences alternating with synchronized music; and “100% talkies” featuring synchronized talking and/or singing for the duration of the film (2012: 52). Whereas in Hollywood sound cinema had become a fait accompli by 1930, they did not constitute the majority of films produced in Japan until 1935. The reasons for this were primarily economical and structural in nature. As Komatsu has argued, financial constraints delayed investment in the necessary facilities and technology by Japanese film companies (2005: 365). Moreover, the structure of the Japanese film industry was geared toward the quick production of cheaply made 215

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products designed for rapid dissemination, in contrast to the more expensive, high-end product that sound films—said to cost three times more to produce than silents—constituted at the time (Kinoshita 2011). Kaeriyama Norimasa, a film producer, director, theoretician, and prolific writer on cinema, foresaw the turn the industry would take toward using recorded discs as musical accompaniment when he argued in 1928 that sound-on-disc technology would increase the cost efficiency of exhi­ bition practices. Such technology would make it possible to use recordings to replace live perform­ ances by musicians and benshi. Kaeriyama explained that the performers could be jointly recorded on a disc, synchronized with the film, and played back in cinemas (1928: 124). Mori Iwao, who wrote voluminously on the coming of sound and what this would entail for the Japanese film indus­ try, put forth a similar argument, although unlike Kaeriyama, he avidly advocated for the use of sound-on-film technology systems in order to facilitate the synchronization of picture and sound (1928: 4). They were both partially correct. The introduction of disc-based musical accompaniment in the cinema would displace musicians in the coming years, but the benshi’s live performance was not rendered obsolete until the advent of mechanically synchronized sound-on-film technology. In May 1929, Shochiku advertised in their film theater brochure that their five flagship theaters in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nagoya had all been equipped with the latest Shinefon sound system, a sound-on-disc sound system, and other theaters increasingly followed suit (Shochiku-za 1929). Although the spread and popularization of sound cinema in Japan was still predominantly an urban phenomenon, the proliferation of film theaters wired with some kind of sound film technology increased substantially from twenty-three in 1929 and twentyseven in 1930, to ninety-two in 1931 (Nordström 2020). That number more than tripled once again to 339 at the end of 1932 (Fujioka 2002). By 1934, more than half of Japan’s film theaters had been wired for sound, and in 1935 the number increased from 806 to 1,207, or 78 percent of Japan’s total number of theaters (Kinoshita 2011: 6). As Kinoshita has pointed out, “while wired theaters had steadily increased, the leap from 60% to 80% in a single year significantly altered the landscape of exhibition nationwide” (2011: 6). Michael Raine has argued that recorded sound served the dual purpose of both authenticity and frugality (Raine forthcoming). It gave film theaters access to recordings of Western music, while simultaneously providing a cheaper alternative to musicians, because “the electronic amplifier produced greater volume than mechanical systems and allowed the cinema to fire musicians who cost 600–700 yen per month” (Raine forthcoming). As the wiring of cinemas picked up pace in the 1930s, and sound systems improved their sound reproduction capabilities, theaters continued to replace musicians with machines, although as Raine points out, “many of the larger first-run cinemas hired back or absorbed the fired musicians and put on stage shows to attract audiences” (Raine and Nordström forthcoming). Initiated by the turn to manually synchronized record accompaniment and electronic ampli­ fication, the change from live, human performance was greatly accelerated by the gradual prolif­ eration of mechanically synchronized sound-on-film technology, coupled with the installation of even more modern sound systems. Many commentators saw the elimination of cinema’s live musical accompaniment and the introduction of new technologies to assist with merging image and sound as signs of how film production and screening practices were becoming increasingly mechanical and artificial (Nordström 2020). Mori Iwao located the mechanization of cinema within the wider context of a society on the cusp of modernity. In 1930, he stated that “the Japanese cinema’s shift to talkies simultaneously means that the Japanese cinema has stepped into a mechanical civilization, […] [a shift] reminiscent of the industrial revolution” (Mori 1930). Mori expressed sympathy for cinema musicians, but he pitied the benshi the most. He saw no future for them, stating that although 216

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it is unavoidable that the setsumeisha [benshi narrators] will lose their jobs and this is necessary from the viewpoint of mechanical civilization, as [victims of] a tragedy in the history of Japanese cinema history, they are worthy of our deep sympathy. (Mori 1930) Kido Shirō, Shochiku’s chief producer at the time, stated that even after the success of The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine issues remained that needed addressing before Shochiku could commit to full sound film production (Kido 1956). For this reason, Shochiku chose to produce sound version films with only a music soundtrack or partial dialogue for a time while it gradually increased its sound film production. He noted that this process dealt a “fatal blow” to the benshi and the musicians, and this was “how the benshi was gradually pushed out” (Kido 1956). It is important to emphasize, however, that this was a gradual process. The benshi’s influence on the production and screening practices of Japanese cinema continued to be felt, as attested to by The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine’s director Gosho. In 1933, Gosho described how the process of scoring early sound version films was directly affected by the benshi’s influence. At Shochiku, it was up to the director to select the music for a film, or to choose to leave scoring to the music department. After having gone to great pains to select the most suitable music for specific scenes, Gosho laments that “The part that I put my energy into is the same part that the benshi wants to put his energy into. Therefore, it isn’t possible to score the film the way that you want to” (Gosho et al. 1933). In the context of the films of Ozu Yasujirō, Raine draws attention to how the place of speech and language in the cinema became a central problem in the transition to sound, and argues that in the struggle over agency between director and benshi, Ozu’s sound version films came to utilize sound and intertitles so as “to silence the benshi, while creating subtle, synaesthetic effects that we might liken to visual repartee” (2018: 102). Yet, even though the benshi’s voice had undergone various changes, both in status and in its form of delivery and function, it had nevertheless remained a ubiquitous part of Japanese cinema exhibition practices. In this context, the gradually decreasing use of silence in the sound version soundtrack can be seen as signaling the benshi’s diminishing influence. The benshi’s dominance was challenged by the introduction of electric sound, recorded music, and foreign sound cinema, yet it was the mechanically synchronized sound version films that truly challenged, dethroned, 700 600

Films

500 400 300 200 100 0

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

Sound/Part-talkie

Figure 13.1

1935 Talkie

1936

1937

1938

1939

Silent

Production of sound versions, talkies, and silent films, 1930–1939. Data sourced from the “Nihon eiga seisaku tōkei” statistics published in Kinema junpō annually on April 1, 1931–1940.

Source: Table compiled by Nordström.

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and eventually subsumed the benshi’s voice—just as it had also subsumed the role of live musi­ cians—into its mechanically reproduced aural substrata. This attests to the inherent functional­ ity, flexibility, and plasticity of the sound version format, and, as argued by Kitada, the still lingering attachment to the benshi’s voice among the cinema audience (2009: 17). This is because the benshi’s voice did not entirely leave cinematic space after the major production companies switched to full-talkie production around 1936. Instead, in the latter half of the 1930s, the benshi’s voice became part of cinema’s mechanical modernity. Specifically, through its presence on the soundtrack of the various forms of benshi sound version films, and more broadly, through its continuing presence on radio and records, it continued as part of a “culture of the sound image.”

Sounding but not talking, the liminal aesthetics of the sound version Shochiku was by far the most prolific producer of sound version films during the 1930s, both in terms of the quantity of films produced and the visibility of their critical acclaim: several Shochiku sound version films were included in Kinema junpō’s annual Best Ten list.5 Between 1932 and 1936, the studio produced a total of 123 sound version films, and all of its major dir­ ectors either transitioned from silent film to sound version production, or alternated between silent film, sound version, and the occasional talkie film. Shochiku gradually abandoned sound version film production only after 1936, when it moved to the new Ōfuna studio facilities that had been constructed and equipped for full-talkie production. This oscillation between silent, sound version, and talkie production by the major studios was a reality acutely felt by those working in the industry (Nordström 2020). In 1934, Gosho argued that the artistic maturation of the Japanese talkie and the development of a distinctive “sound film sensibility” was held back partially because staff and directors working at most studios had to divide their attention between talkies and silent films (Gosho 1934). Gosho also argued that because film studios dealt with the talkies’ inherently high production costs by lowering their level of intellec­ tual sophistication (thus appealing to the widest possible audience), Japanese talkies—at least those made by Shochiku—ended up being limited to the genre of melodrama (1934). We might say that in this respect, the sound version films allowed Shochiku directors to experiment with the filmic soundscape, while relying on the familiar craft of silent cinema that by then many of them had fully mastered. Naturally, as Gosho points out, the soundtrack of the sound version film was still tied to the exhibition practices of silent cinema, which meant live benshi narration, and Gosho’s comment on the perceived frustration this created is illuminating in that it helps explain the often idiosyncratic use of silence in many early Shochiku sound version films. The music is, in many cases, muted or eliminated completely when intertitles appear, and in scenes of intense action or heightened drama, it frequently seems as if the musical score and silent sequences are vying for dominance within the diegetic narrative. It is interesting to note that this interplay between music and silence on the sound version soundtrack gradually shifted as we move farther into the 1930s so as to favor the musical parts on the soundtrack and/ or the pre-recorded voice of the benshi. Although the nature, composition, and potential future form of talkie film soundtracks received considerable attention in contemporary publications and trade journals such as Kinema junpō, Kinema shūhō, Kokusai eiga shimbun, and Eiga hyōron, references to the composition of sound version film soundtracks were scarce. Perhaps due to the sound version film’s liminal nature, the discussions were instead often focused on foreign talkie soundtracks, or the few but growing numbers of Japanese talkie films being produced (for representative examples, see Nakane 1932 and Kakeshita 1932). 218

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The films of veteran directors such Nomura Hotei, Shimizu Hiroshi, and Shimazu Yasujirō came to embody the Shochiku Kamata-style sound versions. These directors appear to have taken the format as an invitation for ludic experimentation, actively using it to make works that are distinctively sound films yet retain elements of silent film aesthetics. In films such as Shima no musume (Island Girl, 1933), Tenryū kudareba (If We Go Down Tenryū River, 1933), and Tōkyō ondo (Tokyo Ondo,1933), Nomura Hotei experimented with the actual composition of the soundtrack by incorporating both sound effects and popular songs. These titles are characteristic examples of the kind of sound version films in which popular songs, kouta, take center stage. Both Island Girl and Tokyo Ondo feature songs by the female singer Katsutarō (1904–1974), who achieved immense popularity in the 1930s. Katsutarō had worked as a geisha in the pleasure quarters in Yoshichō, Tokyo, performing in traditional vocal genres with shamisen accompani­ ment, before her discovery by a Victor executive led to her first Victor recording in 1931. Her songs in these films were used as both “theme songs” and what Hosokawa Shūhei has labeled “title songs” (i.e., the song titles also became the film titles and were played over the opening credits). As Hosokawa writes: The title-song system, or title-song association, suggests the centrality of song in the marketing campaign and the strong interdependence between the commercial sectors of the entertainment business. The film public would have recognized the song before they went to the cinema because the song could be heard on the radio, in public spaces, and at home, intentionally or not. The song motivated audiences to see the film, and not the other way around. (Hosokawa forthcoming) In the case of Island Girl, the song’s success was unexpected, and no film versions associated with the song had been planned. Four production companies then competed with one another to produce film versions based on the song. This resulted in three silent films and one sound version, but Nomura’s sound version account of Okinu, a poor girl on a small Japanese island who is loved by both Ichiro (a sailor) and Okawa (a student from Tokyo), was generally hailed as the finest of the four by contemporary critics (Kinema Junpōsha 1933a, 1933b, 1933c, 1933d, 1933e).Today, it is the only surviving version. With Tokyo Ondo, Shochiku managed to secure an exclusive contract with Victor for use of the title song. The biggest musical hit of the summer of 1933, Tokyo Ondo was promoted on the radio and records as well as on film. The film became the second collaboration after Island Girl between director Nomura and the musical director Shimada Haruyo. It had an all-star cast fea­ turing Fushimi Nobuko and Oka Jōji in the leading roles of Yajima Nobuko and her fiancé, Saitō Susumu. The musical scores for Island Girl and Tokyo Ondo closely followed the scoring practices for silent cinema, underscoring nearly all the scenes. Hosokawa argues, however, that Tokyo Ondo uses its title song in a more sophisticated manner than Island Girl, in which the song was tied to the content of specific scenes (forthcoming). In Tokyo Ondo, he writes, “it is not the lyric that matters to the plot but the [song’s] festive mood,” and, indeed, the song is sometimes heard in instrumental variations. In addition, the climax “seems to go beyond silent routines by using different music sources depending on the filmic space.” This was also acknowledged by con­ temporary reviewers. Kinema junpō reviewer Kitagawa Fuyuhiko, for example, picked up on the way in which the music, plus occasional synchronized sound effects, moved beyond the norms of silent film accompaniment, and commented, “[t]his is certainly sound film” (1933). 219

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If We Go Down Tenryū River, which Nomura made in between Island Girl and Tokyo Ondo, also utilizes a song, effectively placing all three films in the same category of sound version films. In this case, however, the song was a hit written by the poet Nagata Mikihiko, composed by Nakayama Shinpei, and sung by Katsutarō’s rival, the popular former geisha singer Ichimaru. The film, which tells the story of a university student’s tragic relationship with a geisha that he encounters while rafting down the Tenryū River, is rich in sound effects and experiments with sound perspective. Its title sequence and opening are lost, but the title song is also used over key sequences, as well as toward the ending, when the student remembers his first trip down the river in a flashback. Finally, after the geisha has died and the student returns to Tokyo alone, the song is once again played over the sequence. Although Shimazu Yasujirō received wide praise for his early talkies such as Jōriku dai ippo (First Steps Ashore, 1932), Tonari no Yae-chan (Our Neighbor Miss Yae, 1934), and Shunkinshō Okoto to Sasuke (Okoto and Sasuke, 1935), his sound version films met with considerable criti­ cism.6 Partially, this might be due to the fact that the story material of these films were far from the kind of realism that he had been praised for in his talkie films. Yet, judging from his one extant sound version film, Osayo koi sugata (The Loves of Osayo, 1934), scripted, directed, and based on the original idea by Shimazu, he utilized the sound version format for ludic experi­ mentation. The resulting film was labeled a “sound version ballad film” (kouta eiga saundo­ ban), and the film is in many ways a hybrid product that encapsulates many of the intermedial aspects of the sound culture at large, as well as the liminal aesthetics associated with the sound version. The Loves of Osayo is based on an eponymous popular song and takes place at a hot spring resort. It opens with the song playing over a montage sequence that matches the lyrics with various shots of Tanaka Kinuyo’s kimono-clad figure looking forlorn and dreaming of her love, and rural location shots. The camera then cuts away to a painting of Tanaka as Osayo in the atelier of her love interest, played by Yamanouchi Hikaru. Halfway through the film, however, it is revealed that the melodrama thus far has been the work of a writer staying at the spring, and the film transitions into another story in which many of the same actors re-appear, but now in new roles. The film’s raison d’être—also picked up in the contemporary reviews of the film (Kitagawa 1934)—clearly lies in the utilization and performance of Tanaka Kinuyo in the double role as Osayo. Tanaka is the only one of the main actors to appear in a more or less similar fashion within both the main narrative of the film (the melodrama focusing on the tragic love between the painter and Osayo), and within the film’s framing story. Furthermore, the film is almost a part-talkie, as it features several instances of unsynchronized dialogue: the first occurs within the writer’s fictional melodramatic story, as the painter lies on the floor thinking to himself and his thoughts become vocalized on the soundtrack. The dialogue is matched to the character, yet Shimazu skillfully structures the scene to take full advantage of the spoken word without full lip synchronization. Shimazu repeats using dialogue in this way in two other scenes, as well as also including the murmuring voices of a crowd and off-screen shouting. The film ends with a melancholic jazz rendition of the titular song as the camera zooms in on Osayo, who has been abandoned by her lover. As the camera holds her face in a close-up, a voice-over nar­ rator intones, “Two months later, Sayo was seen no more. But soon in the hot-spring town the rumor spread that she had been seen in a car in Joshuji,” a suggestion that she and her lover have reunited. Ozu Yasujirō’s first sound version film, Tōkyō no yado (An Inn in Tokyo, 1935), featured a music and sound effects soundtrack with a musical score commissioned by Itō Senji. The influ­ ence of talkie cinema is tangible throughout the film, and Ozu even stated that Shochiku “made me make [the film] just as though it were sound” (Noda 1964). The structure of the shots, 220

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frequent use of off-screen sound, and the way the dialogue intertitles do not always correspond to what is spoken by the character onscreen seems to support Raine’s argument for the likeli­ hood that “Ozu made this film as an aesthetic project, to be played with no benshi, or at least with a benshi suppressed by Itō Senji’s commissioned score” (2018: 111). “Sound version” production at Shochiku functioned on multiple levels. For the studio, such films constituted a stopgap measure as the studio prepared to convert to full-talkie production, a process that was to take more than five years. For the directors working at Shochiku, sound version production instigated an increased awareness of how sound effects and music might be used on the soundtrack, paving the way for their artistic transition to full sound. The relatively lower production costs also allowed directors to work with material that would have been deemed too intellectually sophisticated or otherwise unsuitable for the burgeoning production of talkie cinema.

The sound version film after 1936

Films

In 1936, Shochiku, Shinkō Kinema, and Nikkatsu all ceased or substantially reduced sound version film production, initiating a shift in its liminal status, dominant genre, and target audi­ ence. Shochiku and Shinkō Kinema had been two of Japan’s largest producers of sound version films, both producing predominantly gendaigeki films, typically with a melodramatic approach. Industry wide production of gendaigeki sound version films had already started to decrease by 1935, and when Shochiku and Shinkō Kinema ceased their production by the end of 1936, they almost completely disappeared. In 1934 and 1935, Shochiku produced a total of 43 percent and 53 percent respectively of the total number of gendaigeki sound versions, and Shinkō Kinema produced 37 percent and 36 percent respectively. Shochiku and Shinkō Kinema’s withdrawal from sound version film production precipitated a substantial shift in the type of sound version films being produced, as well as in the demographics of their intended audience. During Shochiku’s last year of full sound version production, the company focused on the so-called neo sūpā tōkī, which featured soundtracks with benshi narration. That Shochiku, even after their move to Ōfuna, put considerable effort into the production of benshi-narrated sound version films has been attributed to the company’s failure to produce talkies efficiently enough 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

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Jidaigeki

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Gendaigeki

Figure 13.2 Production of Jidaigeki versus Gendaigeki, 1931–1941. Data compiled by cross-referencing information from the Japanese Movie Database, the Nihon eiga jōhō shisutemu, and Kinema junpō bessatsu: Nihon eiga seisaku daikan. Titles that could not be confirmed because of conflicting information were omitted from the data (1935: 8; 1936: 6; 1938: 27; 1940: 4). Source: Table compiled by Nordström.

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to meet their bi-weekly release schedule (Kinema Junpōsha 1936: 69). The development of Shochiku’s neo sūpā tōkī as a stopgap solution was mirrored at other film studios as well. It is telling that Shinkō Kinema’s last sound version film, Jiraiya yōun no maki—henge no maki (Jiraiya, Part I: Ominous Clouds and Jiraiya Part II: Transformation, dir. Yamauchi Eizō), which premièred on January 7, 1937 was a jidaigeki (period drama) kaisetsu-ban sound version film with a recorded benshi soundtrack. From 1937 on, the dominant mode of sound version film production shifted in two major ways: from gendaigeki to jidaigeki, and from sound version films with music and special effects soundtracks to soundtracks featuring benshi or other forms of narration. In contrast to gendaigeki sound version production, jidaigeki sound version film production continued to increase during 1935, then dropped off after Nikkatsu ceased sound version pro­ duction in 1936. Jidaigeki sound version film production picked up again during the following two years due to the formation of several smaller production companies specializing in lowbudget, silent and sound version film production. Many of these companies were based in the western Kansai area, especially Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. Their target audience was predomi­ nantly working class and young. The short-lived Kyoto-based Etona Eigasha, founded in September 1934, is one example. With a staff mostly drawn from Makino Purodakushon, Nikkatsu, and Takarazuka Kinema, it produced a total of nine jidaigeki films before ceasing production in April 1935. Several of its films were a form of sound version film labeled rōkyoku eiga (rōkyoku film), in which the film narrative would be matched with the recorded perform­ ance of rōkyoku, a genre of traditional Japanese narrative singing usually accompanied by shamisen music. After closing down, members of its staff went on to found the production stock com­ panies Kyokutō Eiga and Daitō Eiga, which turned out a substantial number sound version films (among other films) during the following years. Kyokutō Eiga, later known as Kyokutō Kinema, was founded in May 1935 in Kyoto with the objective to produce mass entertainment films under the company motto “Bright, Happy, and Fun” (Yonezawa 1998a: 66). It quickly became famous for mass-producing chanbara, or swashbuckling period swordfight films. It produced a total of 208 films, and a majority were

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Figure 13.3 Production of sound version films with and without Benshi Narration on the soundtrack, 1931–1941. Data compiled by cross-referencing information from the Japanese Movie Data­ base, the Nihon eiga jōhō shisutemu, and the Kinema junpō bessatsu: Nihon eiga seisaku daikan. Titles that could not be confirmed because of conflicting information were omitted from the data (1935: 8; 1936: 6; 1938: 27; 1940: 4). Source: Table compiled by Nordström.

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released as sound versions before being subsumed into the Toho block in 1941. In 1936, when Kyokutō Eiga relocated to Osaka from their Kyoto Kōyō film studio facilities, several staff members and directors choose to remain behind to create a new film studio, Kōyō Eiga (in existence from May 1936 to May 1937). Kōyō Eiga also specialized in chanbara films, producing twenty-four films in total. Fourteen of these were sound versions and their last film was a talkie. Kyokutō Eiga director Yonezawa Masao later recalled that neither Kyokutō nor Zenshō Kinema ever went full-talkie, although they both used post-synchronized sound (Yonezawa 1998b: 95). According to fellow Kyokutō director Matsuzaki Seiji, Kyokutō shot only silent films when it was founded, despite the late date, and started producing sound version films around 1938, the same year that Kyoto theaters became more or less completely wired for sound. Matsuzaki recounts that in constructing the soundtrack, the studio used either post-recordings of actors’ voices or benshi narration, usually by a group consisting of four to five benshi (Yonezawa 1998c: 118).7 The Nara-based Zenshō Kinema (May 1936–January 1941), another important producer of low-budget sound version films, was founded with a capital of 200,000 yen by Yamaguchi Tenryū, the older brother of movie star Ichikawa Utaemon. It was housed in the studio that had previously been built for and occupied by his brother’s independent production company, Ichikawa Utaemon Purodakushon. Active for only approximately four years, Zenshō Kinema focused on the mass production of cheaply made films, producing a total of 170 sound version films, mostly period pieces. It became officially affiliated with Shochiku in September 1940, and Shochiku restructured it into the new joint-stock company, Kōa Eiga, in January 1941. Similarly, in Tokyo, the extremely prolific Daitō Eiga (1933–1942) specialized in producing cheaply made films with a mass appeal under the guiding principle of “Fun, Cheap, and Fast” (Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha 1935). Its founder Kawai Tokusaburō aimed to produce over 100 films per year. Daitō Eiga productions spanned multiple genres, and many were released as sound version films. Conscious of its target audience, Daitō Eiga clearly staked its claim in 1935 with the polemical statement that “daring to not aim for the lofty, or attempt to be refined, nor heeding those so-called critics calling it low quality, [we will] stay the course without changing our production model” (Daitō 1935). Daitō’s policy of cheap and fast production resulted in the company producing a total of 864 films before it was merged with the production division of Nikkatsu and Shinkō Kinema in 1942 (as part of the wartime integration policy) to form the production company Dai Nihon Eiga, which later became Daiei. The emergence of these second-tier production companies pushed sound version film pro­ duction to a new all-time high in 1939, after which production decreased and the form eventu­ ally disappeared in 1941. Not generally seen as rivals of the major film studios,8 these newly established film companies instead catered to a different market and played in cheaper priced cinemas. In 1926, for instance, a Shochiku ticket would generally cost around 50 sen, whereas Daitō affiliated theaters would screen double or triple bills that would be renewed every two weeks with a ticket price of 30 sen for adults and 5 sen for children (Honjō 2009: 47). Tickets cost 10 sen or less in rural areas (Kinema Junpōsha 1936: 70). Daitō Eiga’s founder, Kawai Tokusaburō, declared, “As long as working women, factory workers, apprentices, children and their baby sitters are happy I am pleased” (Honjō 2009: 47). These second-tier films were gener­ ally overlooked or frowned upon by urban theater patrons and writers on film, who often referred to them as “nothing more than program pictures” (Kinema Junpōsha 1938b: 85) or “commercial potboiler[s]” (Kinema Junpōsha 1938a: 71). Their appeal in suburban and rural areas, however, was so strong that one critic in a Kinema junpō round table discussion claimed that in some areas they even outperformed Shochiku pictures, which were seen as too highbrow (Kinema Junpōsha 1936: 70). 223

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As screening practices became increasingly mechanical, regional differences in the delivery of benshi commentaries gained increased visibility. For example, in 1933, director Gosho Heino­ suke dismissed the idea of pre-recording the benshi’s voice on soundtracks as economically unviable because of regional differences in the benshi’s performative style. “If the benshi and his voice are separated then [the movie] won’t perform in the countryside. Because a Kyūshū benshi in Kyūshū and a Kyoto benshi in Kyoto is an absolute necessity” (Gosho et al. 1933: 45). Three years after Gosho made this statement, Shochiku launched their neo sūpā tōkī featuring soundtracks with recorded benshi narration, but the need for regional specificity was still being argued in magazines such as Kinema junpō, “When you go to the rural areas […] the film becomes more popular if it is explained in the words of that area. Explanations in standard Japanese won’t become popular” (Kinema Junpōsha 1936: 69). Nevertheless, production of so-called kaisetsu-ban or “explanation version” films continued to increase toward the end of the 1930s, from approximately 11 percent of the total number of films produced in 1937 to approximately 23 percent in 1938, compared to about 2 percent (1937) and 3 percent (1938) for regular sound version films (Kinema Junpōsha 1937a and 1937b). This was clearly an indication of the continuing appeal of the benshi’s voice; considered alongside the rapid decrease in silent film production (approximately 23 percent of the total number of films produced in 1937), it might also indicate an increasing rejection by audiences of films without recorded words on the soundtrack. Just as intertitles ensured narrative comprehension when cinemas had yet to be wired for sound and films were projected with only benshi narration and musical accompaniment, the plasticity of the later sound version with benshi narration gave theaters the opportunity to mute the soundtrack and screen the film with a local performer instead. Although the benshi’s phys­ ical presence in the cinema virtually disappeared in around 1936, as silent film without a soundtrack became increasingly rare (thanks to the neo sūpā tōkī and other forms of sound version films with narration on the soundtrack), the presence of the benshi’s voice, now disembodied, continued to live on in the rural and second-tier cinematic spaces of cities. Mechanically medi­ ated and electrically amplified, its presence there even increased briefly. Very few directors working in the major studios produced sound version films with narration on the soundtrack, although at Shochiku a few veteran directors, such as Saitō Torajirō and Sasaki Yasushi, directed one each and younger directors like Sasaki Keisuke, Hoshite Tsuroku, and Munemoto Hideo directed more than one. The film Kagayaku ai (Shining Love, dir. Shimizu Hiroshi, 1931), created by Shochiku’s cultural film department on behalf of the Ministry of Education, is a notable early oddity in this context. The film features a musical score, sound effects, and benshi narration. Based on an ironic anecdote that juxtaposes the fate of a poor cooper’s son and that of the son of a middle-class salaried worker, it champions the virtues of honest hard work and diligence. Halfway through its filming, the director Nishio Yoshio fell ill and was replaced by Shimizu Hiroshi. Although the film was completed in May 1931, it was shelved and never given a general release. Benshi narration is skillfully layered on the soundtrack together with sound effects and musical accompaniment. Compared to the sonic soundscape of Shochiku’s early sound version films released over the following years, the almost complete lack of silent interludes on the soundtrack to coincide with intertitles or dramatic sequences is noticeable. Mizoguchi Kenji is perhaps the most prestigious director to have created a sound version film featuring benshi narration on the soundtrack. Orizuru Osen (The Downfall of Osen, 1935), pro­ duced for Daichi Eiga and distributed by Shochiku, should be considered as something of an anomaly. Originally intended as a talkie, it became Mizoguchi’s last sound version film only because the sound equipment did not arrive on time. It was shot as a silent film and released 224

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with a pre-recorded benshi commentary by the highly respected benshi Matsui Suisei as well as a music score, also selected by Matsui, that draws on Western orchestral standards such as Mus­ sorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain (Jacoby and Nordström 2018: 182). Contemporary critics judged Matsui’s commentary as anachronistic. According to Chika Kinoshita, The reviewers at both Kinema junpō and Eiga hyōron dismissed Matsui’s performance as a hindrance to an otherwise moving or at least interesting film. Most tellingly, the manager of Asahiza, one of the theaters where the film opened in Osaka, turned off the sound and thereby achieved a two-week run. (Chika Kinoshita 2011) The various forms of sound version films with or without narration, especially those produced by Shochiku, Nikkatsu, and Shinkō Kinema, continued to be criticized in the pages of Kinema junpō and Kinema shuhō. Gosho’s Akogare (Yearning, 1935) won considerable praise, but was never­ theless criticized because it was a sound version film (Murakami 1935). The reviewer stated that “just like Hidari uchi wa [A Life of Luxury, dir. Gosho, 1935], I want it to be a talkie. A sound version just isn’t enough” (Kisaragi 1935: 26). The extent to which several directors, like Nomura and Ozu, were experimenting with sound film aesthetics within the sound version format can be gauged by the reviews that occasionally criticized directors who didn’t. For instance, Nakagawa Nobuo, famous for his post-war horror films, made his directorial debut, Tōkai no kaoyaku (Tokai Boss, 1935), in the sound version format. The film was essentially a star vehicle for Ichikawa Utaemon that was produced by Ichikawa’s independent studio and distributed by Shochiku. The Kinema shuhō reviewer criticized the film for its lack of sound utilization, stating that: although it is described as a “sound version,” it is on the level of adding music to a silent film and therefore might as well be called a “music version” because not a single thing has been done to achieve the effects of sound. (Kisaragi 1935: 22) When the reviewer of Shochiku’s neo sūpā tōkī, Sugata naki majin (The Shapeless Demon Sword, dir. Hoshite Tsuroku, 1936), dismissed it as perhaps suitable for a rural audience, “there is a certain segment in Tokyo that will appreciate it as well, so I don’t think it will be un­ appreciated in the rural areas,” a rural film fan replied that it wouldn’t be popular in the coun­ tryside either (Yamamoto 1936: 108). The fan later checked his local theater and wrote to the reviewer once again, reluctantly admitting that the film did seem to be doing well. The reviewer concluded, “We knew from the start that it wouldn’t be a hit with the intelligentsia” (Kinema Junpōsha 1936: 69). There appears to have been a different standard for films produced by second-tier studios such as Daitō Eiga, Kōyō Eiga, and Kyokutō Kinema. In March 1937, Daitō Eiga released their first “sound explanation” film, Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, aka, The Loyal FortySeven Rōnin), directed by Shirai Sentarō. This was a large-scale project for the studio, and critics praised it for eliminating intertitles so that the benshi “could narrate freely,” which brought the film closer to the aesthetics of the talkie (Mizumachi 1937: 98). Similarly, Kinema junpō praised Ninjutsu Togakure hakkenshi (The 800 Heroes of Togakure Ninjutsu, dir. Yamaguchi Teppei, 1937), the first kaisetsu-ban made by Kyokutō Eiga and also a large-scale project for the studio, as “entertaining” (Kinema Junpōsha 1937b: 94). As the production of sound version films shifted from studios like Shochiku, Nikkatsu, and Shinkō Kinema to that of smaller production companies and to the chanbara genre during the 225

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latter half of the 1930s, these films were granted increasingly less space in contemporary film publications. Although most of films by Daitō Eiga, Kyukutō Kinema, and Kōyō Eiga seemed to receive longer reviews by Kinema junpō in 1936 and 1937, thereafter the space offered to them rapidly declined, their loss of status mirroring their diminishing presence within the film industry at large. By 1940, the sound explanation films of Zenshō Kinema and Kyokutō Eiga were routinely given only the one or two sentence kōgyō kachi (“sales point”) comment in Kinema junpō that before had capped the end of a review, in the style of “fans of [name of studio/ actor/director] will surely like it” and/or “another [name of studio/actor/director] sword drama” (Kinema Junpōsha 1940b and 1940c). There was also an occasional backhanded compli­ ment, such as “this film will be a sure hit with those spectators who are satisfied as long as there is chanbara-style sword play” (Kinema Junpōsha 1940a: 62). As very few of these late sound version, or sound version films with narration on the soundtrack films, survive in complete or fragmentary form, it is not possible to properly assess their visual aesthetics and use of sound. A cursory examination of several fragments held by the National Film Archive of Japan and the Russian Gosfilmofond film archive, however, reveal dynamic chanbara­ style swordfighting, the use of several benshi, sound effects such as swords clashing during chanbara sequences, and parts of the music score synchronized with the action on screen.9 Toward the latter half of the 1930s, the lack of critical attention given in the trade press and film journals to sound version films despite their apparent popularity not only reveals a procliv­ ity among both contemporary critics and canonical early historians to largely dismiss these later stage sound version films, but also raises the issue of the reluctance of contemporary critics to engage with cinema made for a rural and working-class audience. Their apparent lingering popularity in effect calls into question not only the view that these films merely constituted a transitional form, or an embarrassing indication of the economic weakness of the Japanese film industry, but also the view rooted in essentialist notions of medium specificity that sees cinema as a monolithic art form, developing along a teleological trajectory. Such a view of cinema limits our understanding of its historical specificity, whereas a view that instead accommodates its many parallel processes of technological breakthroughs and cul­ de-sacs reminds us how cinema’s dual identity as both art and industry is continuously negoti­ ated through its use rather than its inherent properties. It is through this very process of renegotiation and contestation that cinema becomes visible as both technology and human activity. Allowing for this multiplicity becomes a prerequisite for a fuller understanding of Jap­ anese cinema’s transition to sound in particular, and cinema in general.

Conclusion The sound version was born partially out of industrial necessity, as a way for the Japanese film industry to negotiate the restructuring brought about by the introduction of new technologies of mechanical and electric mediation. The plasticity of its format allowed it to continually evolve and adapt to the changing circumstances of the Japanese film industry, and its resulting multiplicity drew attention to Japanese cinema’s aesthetics of transition. Although largely neglected by contemporary critics, as well as most canonical early histor­ ians, the sound version was neither a temporary phenomenon nor a passing fad quickly aban­ doned in the mid-1930s. It constituted an economically viable mode of production well beyond the period of 1927–1935, generally considered Japanese cinema’s transitional period from silent to sound production. It was a rich cinematic form that speaks to the multifarious nature of Japan’s sound culture in the first half of the 1930s, as well as this culture’s intermedial nature, raising questions of medium specificity. 226

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As a vibrant form of cinematic expression, the Japanese sound version allowed stylistic experimentation and the establishment of a popular form of cinema that achieved a broad popular audience in the early 1930s, after which it continued to carry a strong rural and working-class appeal. At one point it was seen as an emblem of mechanical modernity, facilit­ ating the studios removal of musicians and benshi from their theaters and proudly advertised as the latest development of cinema as art and entertainment. It later became a de facto reposi­ tory of cinematic storytelling by absorbing the most human aspect of the Japanese cinematic experience, the benshi’s voice, raising questions regarding cinema and the role of the human in the process of mechanical modernization. The sound version, much like the kouta eiga, compels us to resist notions of media purity, and instead embrace an understanding of cine­ ma’s relationship to sound as part of a larger culture of aural modernity, wherein its very limi­ nality becomes its defining trait.

Notes 1 Sasagawa Keiko defines the kouta eiga (ballad films) as: a genre of silent films that were inspired by and dramatized popular songs (kouta). The films were screened accompanied by songs at specific moments, played from phonograph records or performed by singers, or even by benshi narrators in some cinemas, with the lyrics inserted as inter-titles or superimposed against a background of people and landscapes. (Sasagawa forthcoming) 2 For a detailed examination of the changing form and function of the nihon-ban, see Kitada 2009. 3 Recent historical research such as Tomita 2002 and 2005, Sasagawa 2003, and Lewis 2013 constitutes a welcome re-evaluation of the genre of the kouta eiga. For recent scholarship on sound version films, see Freiberg 1987, Kinoshita 2011, Raine 2018, Hosokawa forthcoming, and Raine forthcoming. 4 Great Airforce was released in three different formats: silent, sound-on-film, and sound-on-disc versions. According to most accounts, the sound-on-film version seems to have been Japan’s first sound version film. 5 These were 1932, sixth place: Mushibameru haru (Motheaten Spring, dir. Naruse Mikio); 1933, ninth place: Izu no odoriko (The Dancing Girl of Izu, dir. Gosho Heinosuke); 1934, first place: Ukigasa monoga­ tari (A Story of Floating Weeds, dir. Ozu Yasujirō); 1935, seventh place: Kono ko sutezareba (If I Abandon This Child, dir. Torajirō Saitō), ninth place: Tokyo no yado (An Inn in Tokyo, dir. Ozu Yasujirō); and 1936, tenth place: Hikyōnekka (Unexplored Chengde, Kiroku Eiga/Photography Akutagawa Kōzō). 6 See, for instance, contemporary reviews of Shōhai (Win or Lose, 1932), Jōen no toshi (City of Passion, 1934), Osayo koi sugata (The Loves of Osayo, 1934), and Kekkon kōfunki (Story of the Excitement of Mar­ riage, 1934). 7 For an example of this, see the surviving fragment of Bijōbu Sakyo (Tetsuroku Hoshi, 1931) [Katsuben Talkie Version]. The film was originally released as a silent film in 1931 and was re-released without intertitles and with a soundtrack with several benshi performing the narration and dialogue. In the process, the film was retitled from Renbo Satsuma bikyaku (approximately translated as “The Loves of a Messenger in Satsuma”) to Bijōbu Sakyo (Sakyo the Handsome Man). 8 Instead, as remembered by Kyokutō director Matsuzaki Seiji, Kyokutō’s rivals would have been pro­

duction companies on the level of Zenshō Kinema, Daitō Eiga, and Shinkō Kinema (see Akai 1998).

9 One such fragment is Kōyō Eiga’s Kyōkotsubanzuiin (Sonoike Naruo, 1936, 39 min). Most of the frag­

ments held at the Gosfilmofond archive in Russia remain unidentified.

Works cited Akai, S. (ed.) 1998. Chanbara ōkoku Kyokutō (Swashbuckling Kingdom Kyokutō). Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Daitō. 1935. “Seisaku nōritsu yoki Daitō satsueijo” (“Good Production Efficiency at Studio Daitō”). Kokusai eiga shimbun (International Film Newspapaer) 159, November 5: 15. Freiberg, F. 1987. “The Transition to Sound in Japan.” In T. O’Regan and B. Shoesmith (eds), History on/ and/in Film, 15th edn, 76–80. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia.

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Johan Nordström Fujioka, A. 2002. “Nihon eiga kōgyōshi kenkyū: 1930 nendai ni okeru gijutsu kakushin oyobi kindaika to firumu purezentēshon” (“Japanese Film Industry History Research: Technological Innovation as well as Modernization and Film Presentation in the 1930s”). CineMagaziNet! 6. Online at www.cmn. hs.h.kyoto-u. ac.jp/CMN6/fujioka.html [accessed July 23, 2018]. Gosho, H. 1934. “Nihon tōkī no danpenteki jōhō” (“Fragmentary Information on the Japanese Talkie”). Ongaku sekai 6(6): 57–62. Gosho, H., Fushimi, A., Kimura, S., Matsuzaki, K., and Takimura, K., 1933. “Tōkī seisaku no jissai o kataru—eiga shinjin dōmei zadankai” (“Speaking the Truth about Talkie Production: Roundtable Discussion [with] Allied New Comers to Film”). Shineiga 3(12): 42−45. Honjō, K. 2009. Maboroshi no bīkyū Daitō Eiga ga yuku (The Phantom [Studio] of B-Films: The Way of Daitō Eiga). Tokyo: Shūeisha. Hosokawa, S. Forthcoming. “Katsutarō’s Trilogy: Popular Song and Film in the Transitional Era from Silent Film to the Talkie.” In M. Raine and J. Nordström (eds), The Culture of the Japanese Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Iwamoto, K. 2007. Sairento kara tōkī e: Nihon eiga keiseiki no hito to bunka (From Silent to Talkie: The People and Culture of the Formative Period). Tokyo: Shinwa-sha. Jacoby, A. and Nordström, J. 2018. “Saundo-ban 2: The Japanese Silent Cinema Goes Electric.” In C.A. Surowiec (ed.), Le Giornate del Cinema Muto: Catalogo (Pordenone Silent Film Festival: Catalogue), 177–182. Pordenone, Italy: Associazione Culturale Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. Kaeriyama, N. 1928. “Hassei eiga no jitsuyōteki sōchi to seisakuhō ni tsuite” (“Regarding the Practical Equipment and Production of Talkies”). Kinema junpō 306 (September 1): 123–125. Kakeshita, K. 1932. “Nihon tōkī tanjō zengo” (“Before and After the Birth of the Japanese Talkie”). Eiga to ongaku (Film and Music), 250–253. Reprint, Tokyo: Shinkō Ongaku Shuppansha, 1943. Kido, S. 1956. Nihon eiga den: Eiga seisakusha no kiroku (A Life of Japanese Film: Record of a Film Producer). Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū Shinsha. Kinema Junpōsha. 1933a. “Nihon eiga shōkai” (“Preview of Japanese Film”). Kinema junpō 464 (March 11): 56–59. Kinema Junpōsha. 1933b. “Bangumi oyobi keikyō chōsa” (“Report on Programming and Attendance”). Kinema junpō 465 (March 21): 25–28. Kinema Junpōsha. 1933c. “Iizuka Toshiko.” Kinema junpō 466 (April 1): 26. Kinema Junpōsha. 1933d. “Bangumi oyobi keikyō chōsa” (“Report on Programming and Attendance”). Kinema junpō 466 (April 1): 31–32. Kinema Junpōsha. 1933e. “Shuyō Nihon eiga hihyō” (“Criticism of Major Japanese Titles”). Kinema junpō 466 (April 1): 124–127. Kinema Junpōsha. 1936. “Eigakai kentō tokumei zadankai: Kōgyō haikyū no mondai” (“Anonymous Roundtable Discussion Regarding the Film World: The Industries’ Distribution Problem”). Kinema junpō 586 (September 1): 69–70. Kinema Junpōsha. 1937a. “Nihon eiga seisaku tōkei” (“Japanese Film Production Statistics”). Kinema junpō 606 (April 1): 211–233. Kinema Junpōsha. 1937b. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Ninjutsu Togakure hakkenshi” (Review of The 800 Heroes of Togakure Ninjutsu, dir. Yamaguchi Teppei). Kinema junpō 625 (November 1): 94. Kinema Junpōsha. 1938a. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Anba hachiryū” (Review of Anba hachiryū, dir. Gotō Masa­ nobu). Kinema junpō 651 (July 11): 71. Kinema Junpōsha. 1938b. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Kanzaki azumakudari” (Review of Kanzaki azumakudari, dir. Ishiyama Minoru). Kinema junpō 653 (August 1): 85. Kinema Junpōsha. 1939. “Nihon eiga seisaku tōkei” (“Japanese Film Production Statistics”). Kinema junpō 676 (April 1): 183–222. Kinema Junpōsha. 1940a. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Saigenkōmorima kōhen zenpen” (Review of Saigenkōmorima kōhen zenpen, dir. Satō Kiichirō). Kinema junpō 716 (May 21): 62. Kinema Junpōsha. 1940b. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Genrokuara daimyō” (Review of Genrokuara daimyō, dir. Hashimoto Matsuo). Kinema junpō 728 (September 21): 34. Kinema Junpōsha. 1940c. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Hakurōkishi” (Review of Hakurōkishi, dir. Shiratori Masa­ kazu). Kinema junpō 728 (September 21): 34. Kinema Junpōsha. 1961. Kinema junpō bessatsu Nihon eiga seisaku daikan 5 (Kinema Junpō Extra Number Comprehensive Survey of Japanese Film Production vol. 5). Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. Kinoshita, C. 2011. “The Benshi Track: Mizoguchi Kenji’s the Downfall of Osen and the Sound Trans­ ition.” Cinema Journal 50(3): 1–25.

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Between silence and sound Kisaragi, K. 1935. “Tōkai no kaoyaku” (Tokai Boss, dir. Nakagawa Nobuo). Kinema shuhō 231 (March 1): 22. Kitada, R. 2009. “Tōkī jidai no benshi: gaikoku eiga no Nihongo jimaku aruiwa ‘nihon-ban’ seisei o meguru kōsatsu” (“The Benshi in the Talkie Period: A Consideration of ‘Nihonban’ or the Japanese Subtitling of Foreign Films”). Cinema Studies 4: 4–21. Kitagawa, F. 1933. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Tōkyō ondō” (Review of Tokyo ondō, dir. Nomura Hotei). Kinema junpō 486 (October 21): 88. Kitagawa, F. 1934. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Osayo koi sugata” (Review of The Loves of Osayo, dir. Shimazu Yasujirō). Kinema junpō 519 (October 1): 113. Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha. 1934. Kokusai eiga nenkan Showa 9 nenban: Ashita no eiga toshite tōkī no hatten furi o miyo (The International Yearly Motion Picture Book 1934: Let Us Look Toward the Growth of the Talkie as the Film of Tomorrow). Tokyo: Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha. Kokusai Eiga Tsūshinsha. 1935. “Tokushū hōga satsueijo seisaku kikō kikaku no hihan” (“Special Feature: Critique of Organization, Design, and Production in Japanese Film Studios”). Kokusai eiga shimbun (International Film Newspaper) 159, November 5: 847. Komatsu, H. 2005. “The Foundation of Modernism: Japanese Cinema in the Year 1927.” Film History 17(2/3): 365. Lewis, D.W. 2013. “Media Fantasies: Women, Mobility, and Silent-Era Japanese Ballad Films.” Cinema Journal 52(3): 99–119. Mizumachi, S. 1937. “Nihon eiga hihyō: Chūshingura” (Review of The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, aka, The Loyal Forty-Seven Rōnin, dir. Shirai Sentarō). Kinema junpō 605 (March 21): 98. Mori, I. 1928. “Hassei eiga no sekaiteki ryūkō ni tsuite” (“Regarding the World Wide Vogue for Sound Film”). Yomiuri shimbun, 29 July: 4. Mori, I. 1930. “Honkakuteki Nihon tōkī wa itsu kara hajimaru” (“When will the Real Japanese Talkies Start”). Yomiuri shimbun, May 20: 4. Murakami, Y. 1935. “Akogare” (Yearning, dir. Gosho Heinosuke). Kinema shuhō 247, July 26: 26. Nakane, H. 1932. Tōkī ongakuron (A Theory of Talkie Music). Tokyo: Ōraisha. Noda, K. 1964. “Ozu Yasujirō to iu otoko” (“The Man called Yasujirō Ozu”). In Kinema junpō zōkan, Ozu Yasujirō: hito to geijutsu 358 (February): 38–43. Nordström, J. 2020. “Intermediality and Theories of Sound in Japanese Cinema of the 1930s.” In A. Phil­ lips and H. Fujiki (eds), The Japanese Cinema Book. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Raine, M. 2018. “A New Form of Silent Cinema: Intertitles and Interlocution in Ozu Yasujiro’s Late Silent Films.” In J. Choi (ed.), Reorienting Ozu: The Cinema of Ozu and His Influence, 101–118. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raine, M. Forthcoming. “No Interpreter, Full Volume: The Benshi and the ‘Sound Version’ in 1930s Japan.” In M. Raine and J. Nordström (eds), The Culture of the Japanese Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Raine, M. and Nordström, J. (eds) Forthcoming. The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Amster­ dam: Amsterdam University Press. Sasagawa, K. 2003. “Kouta eiga ni kansuru kisochōsa: Meiji makki kara Shōwa shoki o chūshin ni” (Basic Research on Kouta Film”). Engeki Kenkyū Sentā kiyō 1: 175–196. Sasagawa, K. Forthcoming. “A Genealogy of Kouta Eiga: Silent Moving Pictures with Sound.” In M. Raine and J. Nordström (eds), The Culture of the Japanese Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Shizume, M. 2009. “The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period: Instability in the Financial System and the Impact of the World Depression.” Bank of Japan Review (2009-E-2). Online at www.boj.or.jp/ en/research/wps_rev/rev_2009/rev09e02.htm/ [accessed November 15, 2018]. Shochiku-za Kyoto. 1929. Leaflet for May 16–22. Slowik, M. 2012. “Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926–1934.” PhD Dissertation. University of Iowa. Tanaka, J. 1980. Nihon eiga hattatsushi 2 (Developments in Japanese Film History 2). Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha. Tomita, M. 2002. “ ‘Ba’e no kaiki: Miasa kouta to iu sōchi” (“Returning to ‘Place’: The Stage Setting of Ballad of Miasa”). Āto risāchi 2, 105–114. Online at http://hdl.handle.net/10367/2828 [accessed November 10, 2018]. Tomita, M. 2005. “R. 2005. “Rakusei chiiki eigashi kikitori chōsa hōkoku 4 Etona eiga no kiseki” (“Fourth Report on the Investigation of the Aural Film History of the Rakusei Area: The Miracle of

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Johan Nordström Etona Film”). Āto risāchi 5, 105–117. Online at http://hdl.handle.net/10367/2787 [accessed November 10, 2018]. Yamamoto, K. 1936. “Review: Sugata naki majin” (Review of The Shapeless Demon Sword, dir. Hoshite Tsuroku). Kinema junpō 578 (June 11): 108. Yonezawa, M. 1998a. “Kyokutō Kinema ni tsuite.” In S. Akai (ed.), Chanbara ōkoku Kyokutō (Swashbuck­ ling Kingdom Kyokutō), 66–68. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Yonezawa, M. 1998b. “Yonezawa Masao kantoku intabyū.” In S. Akai (ed.), Chanbara ōkoku Kyokutō (Swashbuckling Kingdom Kyokutō), 78–106. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan. Yonezawa, M. 1998c. “Matsuzaki Seiji kantoku intabyū.” In S. Akai (ed.), Chanbara ōkoku Kyokutō (Swash­ buckling Kingdom Kyokutō), 107–140. Tokyo: Waizu Shuppan.

Further reading Raine, M. and Nordström, J. (eds) Forthcoming. The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan. Amster­ dam: Amsterdam University Press.

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14

Marionettes no Longer

Politics in the early puppet animation of

Kawamoto Kihachirō Noboru Tomonari

Puppet animation (ningyō anime) has long been recognized as a distinct subgenre within the more broadly defined and wide-ranging category of Japanese animation, which celebrated its centennial in 2017. While Japanese animation (or anime, as it is more commonly called) has become a popular area of research in recent decades, scholarship on puppet animation has been sparse. Though not as commercially lucrative as some of the better-known examples of animation produced by Toei Doga, Studio Ghibli, or various studios working with television studios, puppet animation boasts a rich and complex history. This chapter sheds light on the history of puppet animation with a particular emphasis on the early works of puppet stop-motion animation by Kawamoto Kihachirō (1925–2010). Alongside Mochinaga Tadahiko (1919–1999) and Okamoto Tadanari (1932–1990), Kawamoto enjoys an elevated reputation as a representative puppet stopmotion animator both within and outside Japan (Okada 2003: 176–227). Existing scholarship on Kawamoto has tended to take an auteurist approach, emphasizing the psychological development of the filmmaker (e.g., Yokota 2013: 265–284). This chapter will take a different approach by positioning his films within the broader context of puppet plays in the twentieth century, which cannot be divorced from leftist politics and the inventive use of cross-media storytelling. Even though the history of stop-motion puppet animation in Japan might at first sound like an obscure subject, it is important to recognize its transnational dimension at the outset. Many credit Mochinaga Tadahiko, known as Tad Mochinaga outside Japan, for introducing puppet stop-motion animation in Japan in 1953. Mochinaga started making puppet stop-motion animation in China and is recognized as among the pioneers of animation in China. He is the namesake of a prestigious animation prize there. Although Mochinaga might not be a household name elsewhere, many (particularly in North America) are familiar with his puppet stop-motion animation through Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), which was commissioned by Rankin/ Bass Productions. Mochinaga and his Japanese staff were acknowledged by Rankin/Bass, but their participation was relegated to secondary status (Clements 2013: 106–108). Today, we can find the legacy of post-war puppet animation in the works of independent animators. A notable representative is Yamamura Kōji (1964–). As scholar Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano points out, Yamamura has distanced “his animation style from the ubiquitous ‘anime look’ [while] promoting his work via another type of mediation—namely animation film festivals” (Wada-Marciano 2012: 88–89). Even though Yamamura primarily works on traditional animation today, his early experiments in puppet animation are evidence of the genre’s influence on his practices. 231

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By specifically observing the history of Japanese contemporary puppet plays in theaters and television, as well as the confluences between different media, it becomes possible to identify contemporary puppet plays as the basis of Japanese puppet stop-motion animation as well as its political aspects. Kawamoto’s films are better suited for my analysis than Mochinaga’s because Kawamoto worked by moving between various media, frequently engaging with different forms simultaneously. As such, the contents of Kawamoto’s puppet stop-motion animation can be interpreted through the lens of “convergence.” According to Marc Steinberg, the meaning of convergence shifted in the 2000s: [D]esignating the fated collapse of distinction between hardware platforms—the idea that television, video games, telephones, and computers would merge into one technological form—to a divergent proliferation of content across different media forms … [the term] refers now to the ways in which particular texts are made to proliferate across media forms, from television to novel to comic to video game to toy. (Steinberg 2012: vii) Kawamoto’s path is also distinctive from Mochinaga’s career in that Kawamoto continued to make puppets and films throughout the late twentieth century until 2005, while Mochinaga directed puppet animation for Japanese audiences only briefly, between 1953 and 1959. Throughout the 1960s, Mochinaga made animation exclusively for Rankin/Bass and its North American market. After that, he is credited for just two more films in Japan. Japanese puppet plays in general and puppet stop-motion animation in particular, however, proliferated far beyond the 1950s and continued to serve political roles. Kawamoto’s puppet stop-motion animation was therefore invested in the politics of his time period. My argument here is that Kawamoto chose to remain within that subgenre in keeping with a tradition of activism in Japanese popular culture. The study of puppet plays in Japan reveals how Kawamoto’s art was in sync with mainstream puppet play performances in post-war Japan. In contrast, Mochinaga’s capitulation to the American corporation, Rankin/Bass, was in fact an anomaly among post-war puppet creators and companies. The conventional auteurist approach to Kawamoto emphasizes the fact that Kawamoto studied under the Czech puppet stop-motion animator Jiří Trnka (1912–1969) and was influential in raising the status not only of puppet stop-motion animation but also of animation in general in Japan. In the 1970s, Kawamoto earned a reputation overseas through his artistic animation shorts, which were largely stop-motion animation. He then created and directed puppet productions for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) television series such as Sangokushi (The Three Kingdoms, 1982–1984) and Heike monogatari (The Tale of Heike, 1993–1995). Among his puppet stop-motion animations made in the 1970s, Oni (The Demon, 1972), Dōjōji (Dōjōji Temple, 1976), and Kataku (House of Flame, 1979), which make use of pre-modern Japanese narratives, have been called his “absurd” (fujōri) trilogy. His final film, also a stop-motion animation, Shisha no sho (The Book of the Dead, 2005), was based on Orikuchi Shinobu’s historical fiction originally published in 1939. With Kawamoto’s admirable film corpus, the Iida City Kawamoto Kihachirō Puppet Museum (Iida-shi Kawamoto Kihachirō Ningyō Bijutsukan), a museum dedicated to Kawamoto and his works, was founded in 2007. This chapter focuses on Hanaori (The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, 1968), Kawamoto’s directorial debut and his first stop-motion film. This focus allows me to clarify the political genealogy inherent in the history of twentieth-century puppet stop-motion animation in Japan. Kawamoto served briefly in the Japanese military, first in Manchuria in 1944 and then as a naval air force cadet in 1945—the final year of World War II. After the war ended, Kawamoto 232

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joined the Toho film company in 1946 and worked in the art department on live action films. As a young, idealistic worker at Toho, Kawamoto became a union activist during the three strikes that took place at the company between 1946 and 1950. In fact, Toho became one of the centers for union activism during the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), a period marked by robust political participation of citizens finally freed from military rule. Toho’s studio culture became politicized to the extent that, according to one critic, “Toho’s films frequently became dreary polemics—flag-waving tributes to the power of the proletariat at the expense of drama” (Galbraith IV 2008: x). The final strike of 1950 was especially heated and the US-led Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Japan directly intervened, despite having constructed its public image as the “liberator” of Japanese citizens at the beginning of the Occupation period. SCAP brought the situation under control with the use of force and it was noted at the time that they brought every military means possible to Toho except their naval battleships (Kawamoto 2007: 136). It was during the Toho strikes that Kawamoto started making puppets for Iizawa Tadasu (1909–1974), who later became a playwright and critic. Iizawa was then a chief editor of the magazine Asahi Graph and commissioned Kawamoto to make puppets for the magazine’s social satire column. Iizawa was to become a permanent mentor for Kawamoto. Even after being “purged” by Toho in 1950 for his union activism, Kawamoto continued to make puppets for Iizawa and others. In 1951, he founded the Puppet Art Production Company (Ningyō Geijutsu Purodakushon) with Iizawa and the illustrator Hijikata Shigemi (1915–1986). A notable example of Kawamoto’s work during this period are the puppets he made for Asahi Beer advertisements, both for print media and television, based on the drawings by Hijikata (Hijikata 1978: 13 and 40). The year 1953 turned out to be an important one for Kawamoto; Mochinaga returned to Japan from the PRC and started teaching Kawamoto puppet stop-motion animation (Mochinaga 2007: 339–341). During that year, Kawamoto took part in the making of a short film, shot as stop-motion animation under Mochinaga’s supervision, for an Asahi Beer advertisement featuring the character Horoniga-kun, which Kawamoto created with Hijikata (Hijikata 1978: 44). During this period, Kawamoto continued making puppets for Asahi Beer as well as for theaters and children’s picture books with Iizawa and Hijikata. Mochinaga oversaw their stop-motion animation (Hijikata 1978: 44). Several of their picture books, such as Cinderella (1972), were made with a foreign market in mind and were published in the United States. Kawamoto, Iizawa, and Hijikata’s Puppet Art Production Company evolved into Shiba Productions in 1958, and Kawamoto managed the company together with his two colleagues until 1962. At around that time, his company also turned toward making children’s programs for television, a media in its infancy, in addition to commercials. Their most successful puppet series for television was arguably Bū Fū Wū (Boo, Foo, Woo, 1960–1967), a prototype of television shows for children in Japan. Iizawa wrote the screenplay, Hijikata designed the three piglets together with other characters, and Kawamoto made the puppets for the series. On a more technical note, Boo, Foo, Woo used rod puppets with actors in costumes; stop-motion animation was also used, albeit sparingly. Another turning point for Kawamoto came in 1962. At age thirty-eight, he quit Shiba Productions to study in Prague under Jiří Trnka, a master of puppet stop-motion animation. Kawamoto lived in Prague between May 1962 and October 1964, during which time he traveled to other cities in Europe, mostly in the Eastern Bloc in addition to cities in the Soviet Union. His time in Prague plays a crucial role in auteurist narratives as a watershed moment marking the emergence of Kawamoto the artist. Animation scholar Yokota Masao, for example, argues that Kawamoto experienced a typical midlife crisis and his sojourn in Prague resulted in a “spiritual wakening” of the artist (Yokota 2013: 265 and 273). While such a psychological 233

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interpretation is certainly valid, it risks underplaying the impact the changing media environment had on Kawamoto’s work. I will offer here a different reading of the trajectory of Kawamoto’s life and work by treating his films as sites of “tension and transition” in which the old and new media converge (Jenkins 2008: 2). Kawamoto’s 1968 film constitutes an early instance of “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go anywhere in search of the kind of experiences they want” (Jenkins 2008: 2, quoted in Galbraith and Karlin 2016: 9). In Kawamoto’s case, his identification with puppet-making and stop-motion animation stemmed largely from the evolution of Japanese puppet plays in immediate post-war Japan. Those plays were initially performed in theaters, but then quickly made their way into television and simultaneously into film. Kawamoto’s ingeniousness was that he forged a further connection between puppet plays and film. Most of his contemporaries stopped at a straightforward shooting of the puppet plays for television or films, but he, Mochinaga, and Okamoto were exceptional in that they used their puppets for stop-motion animation.

Contemporary puppet plays in Japan It is well known that Japan maintains vibrant forms of traditional theater, such as noh, kyōgen, bunraku, and kabuki. Needless to say, there are differences between noh, kyōgen, and kabuki, which use live actors, and bunraku (i.e., ningyō jōruri), which uses puppets. Bunraku’s development in the seventeenth century was also later than that of noh and kyōgen, though it was still earlier than kabuki. We should note that the iconic plays attributed to the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725), were originally written for Takemoto-za, a bunraku theater company. In other words, most of Chikamatsu’s plays were originally written for puppet plays and only later adapted for kabuki and cinema. Kawamoto himself has maintained that his films and puppets are profoundly influenced by bunraku. In his conversation with bunraku puppeteer Yoshida Bunjaku (1928–2016), for example, Kawamoto says that his designing of the faces of his puppets is based on existing bunraku puppet archetypes rather than on life models (Kawamoto 2007: 112). In the same conversation, he maintains that the puppets he creates are central to his stop-motion animation. The primacy of puppets in Kawamoto’s animation is corroborated by puppet animator Michael Dudok de Wit. Kawamoto is said to have told de Wit that “[the] position of the puppet is between God and the human being,” about which the Dutch puppet animator comments that “[Kawamoto] has a deep respect for puppets and he searches for stories that suit them” (Kawamoto 2007: 29).1 In order to study Kawamoto’s early career, however, I consider it crucial to contextualize it with the history of puppet theater (ningyōgeki) in Japan, specifically in the twentieth-century history of contemporary puppet performances covering the period between the interwar years and Kawamoto’s first puppet stop-motion animation film of 1968. The prominent Japanese scholar of puppet plays Nan-e Jirō (1902–1982) and others frequently categorize the main historical traditions of puppet play styles as: (1) marionettes, which make use of strings and are controlled from above; (2) hand puppets (such as Guignol in France), into which the puppeteer inserts a hand (or sometimes just one finger) and controls the puppet from below; and (3) rod puppets, a variation of hand puppets, which are controlled from below by using wire or wooden rods (Nan-e 1969: 2–83). Katō Akiko writes that this was also the case in pre-modern Japan. What these scholars also commonly point out is the relative scarcity of puppet plays that rely on marionettes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan, or even earlier. Katō argues that Europeans envisioned puppets as miniature human beings or understood them as metaphors for humans, hence the marionettes that are controlled from above. 234

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The Japanese, however, regarded puppets as intermediaries between deities and human beings, as we have seen in Kawamoto’s comments cited by de Wit. In this line of thought, puppets are recognized as gifts to be presented by humans to the gods above and are hence offered from below (Katō 2007: 37–38). This philosophy partially informs bunraku’s unique development of its style that involves puppets operated by three people by hand from below. Inge C. Orr observes that, “the Bunraku puppet of Japan, for all its present-day mechanical and artistic sophistication, has derived from the glove type puppet” (Orr 1971: 70). Bunraku thus belongs to the second category in Nan-e’s classification. With bunraku, moreover, all the lead puppeteers are visible onstage with their two assistants, called kurogo (black-costumed assistants), who cover their faces, heads, and are entirely clad in black. When it comes to the lead puppeteers, such as Yoshida Bunjaku, their faces and heads are exposed to the viewers as they perform in formal kimonos. There was a relative monopoly of hand puppets in bunraku and hand and rod puppets in other forms of puppeteering that lasted through the twentieth century in Japan, possibly because of their roots in indigenous traditions. As I will discuss later, however, indigenous traditions became rallying points for political activism in different parts of the world including Japan, particularly for movements promoting communism. From around the time of the Great Kantō Earthquake that destroyed Tokyo in 1923, new puppet play companies started to emerge in Japanese cities. Among such companies was Puppet Theater PUK (“PUK” is an abbreviation of “La Pupa Klubo,” which means “The Puppet Club” in Esperanto). PUK was founded by Kawajiri Tōji (1908–1932) in 1929. Also, at around this time, from 1930 to 1933, the aforementioned puppet scholar Nan-e Jirō published Japan’s first magazine on contemporary puppet plays. PUK is very much an active puppet company today holding performances at its theater in Shibuya, Tokyo.2 Kawajiri Tōji, PUK’s founder, was inspired by the avant-garde Dadaist artist, Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901–1977) with whom he collaborated (Katō 2007: 73–74). Among the colleagues who founded PUK with Tōji was Hijikata Masami (1909–1997), who became a prominent journalist after finishing college. Masami was the older brother of Hijikata Shigemi, the illustrator I have discussed above who founded Shiba Productions with Kawamoto in the postwar years. It is useful here to recognize the impact Murayama’s art and theater performances had on 1920s Japan, which Gennifer Weisenfeld summarizes as follows: [Murayama] asserted an antimilitarist, prewar intellectual movement that had posed a vigorous, if ultimately unsuccessful opposition to nationalism. It provided an alternative to characterizations of Japan as a country of homogeneous automatons inexorably and blindly led to war, offering instead a narrative of active resistance and subsequent suppression by a malevolent nationalist state. (Weisenfeld 2002: 259) The major Japanese puppet companies such as PUK, then, had been conceived as endeavors that were part of political activism that subverted the authoritarian state in pre-war Japan. Murayama had been arrested and imprisoned twice for his informal affiliation with the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) (Weisenfeld 2002: 252). This was one major characteristic that distinguished PUK’s art from that of bunraku, which still relied on a pre-Meiji era (1868–1912) repertoire. PUK’s performances, which regularly featured contemporary plays and political allegories, became a steadfast part of theater activities in the metropolis. In both style and content, the Meiji Japanese puppet theater was initially influenced by the Western marionette company D’Arc, which toured Japan in 1894. PUK and other Japanese 235

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puppet companies, however, while relying initially on marionettes, soon switched over to hand puppets (Katō 2007: 15 and 27). Bunraku also was a possible factor in this, as it had made a comeback in Japan in the mid-Meiji period, the 1880s and 1890s. Thus, old and new Japanese puppet plays mutually reinforced their inclination toward the hand and the rod puppet style. They constituted the basis of Kawamoto’s post-war puppet animation. It is vital to recognize also that PUK was a proletarian movement that developed during an illiberal era. As the crackdown on proletarian movements intensified in the 1930s, Kawajiri Tōji, like Murayama, was imprisoned several times for his political activities. These prison sentences broke his health and he died at the tender age of twenty-four. His brother, Kawajiri Taiji (1914–1994), who was more attuned to international proletarian movements, took over the reins and carried PUK forward. His left-wing puppet theater continued to suffer the government’s wrath. Taiji and many of his PUK colleagues also faced imprisonment, remaining incarcerated until the end of World War II (Kawajiri 1984: 88–99). Upon their release, Taiji and his colleagues quickly revived PUK. In July 1948, they held their first post-war performance in Tokyo that featured a puppet play adaptation of Miyazawa Kenji’s Opperu to zō (Oppel and the Elephant, originally published in 1926). The audience responded enthusiastically to the play that dramatized oppressed elephants rising together against the tyranny of the cunning landowner Oppel, who exploits their labor. Moreover, they turned their criticism toward SCAP with their play Pū-kichi no Kingu Kongu taiji (Pū-kichi Wages Victory over King Kong) that was performed on May Day of 1950. SCAP, which maintained a strict censorship regime for all forms of public entertainment and communication, responded by banning one of their other plays (Katō 2007: 128). An organization that played a particularly important role in the post-war revival of PUK was the Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyōso). In addition to the trauma of the devastation of World War II, which affected the whole generation, teachers and parents carried the additional psychological burden of having played a pivotal role in sending young people (including Kawamoto) to the battlefield. With an acute sense of regret, the Japan Teachers Union became one of the most political and militant among post-war Japan’s labor unions. They unwaveringly backed puppet plays performed by PUK and other contemporary puppet theater companies. In the context of the immediate post-war years, left-wing propaganda was understood to have a place in public education as a means of ensuring that fascist and militarist Japan would never be revived. Tarō-za (Tarō Company) was another politically inclined hand and rod puppet theater company, and a contemporary of Kawamoto and PUK. Tarō-za would later play a pivotal role in bringing puppets to the big screen and prepared the way for Kawamoto to start making his stop-motion animation films. The company was founded and managed by Segawa Takuo (1929–1975). His father was a socialist in his youth and was among the left-leaning Japanese who found themselves drawn to Manchuria as a utopian project, ultimately becoming a public official of Manchukuo (the puppet regime constructed by the Japanese military). If Segawa was influenced by his father’s political leanings, he was also scarred from the traumatic experience of just barely returning to Nagano, their hometown, after Japan’s defeat and the collapse of the empire. Upon returning to Nagano, Segawa joined a cultural division of JCP where, in part with party directives, he began to run puppet theater performances in the prefecture in 1947. Segawa renamed his puppet theater Minshū-za (People’s Company) in 1948 and later brought the company to Tokyo. There, he met Matsutani Miyoko (1926–2015), a budding author of children’s stories at the time, who joined his company in 1952. The two married in 1954. They renamed their theater company Tarō-za in 1955 (Tarō is a popular name for firstborn sons) and 236

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carried out active puppet performances (Matsutani 2007: 170–250). In choosing their company’s new name, they communicated their idea of nurturing a new generation of young Japanese men and women as leaders and catalysts of radical political change. It was also important that the name Tarō evokes the heroes in Japanese folktales; a particular example they had in mind was “Momotarō” (Peach Boy). In the early 1950s, Segawa and Matsutani had carried out fieldwork to collect folklore that could be turned into puppet plays, starting in the Nagano region and later expanding to other rural regions. With the successful establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in 1948, the PRC in 1949, and the outbreak of the Korean War (1950–1953), the JCP deemed it strategically vital to connect with tenant farmers in order to bring about a revolution in Japan. In fact, the rural regions already had been a focus in the 1920s. Germaine A. Hoston summarizes this in the following: [Japanese] farmers suffered disproportionately greater distress during these years of recession and bank panics, and the rural population became increasingly receptive to programs for radical change offered by both the left and the right. (Hoston 1986: 9) Collecting folktales and transforming them into propaganda plays thus met JCP’s strategic objectives in the early stages of the Cold War. As a mobile and inexpensive medium, puppet plays offered vanguard intellectuals the ideal means to build solidarity with the general public. They were also understood as an effective means to reach children and uneducated adults. This was another reason why puppet plays were later adopted to television and cinema. In the context of the early 1950s, leftism also involved a certain measure of nationalism. Sone Kiichi, who worked with Segawa in the early 1950s, recounts the group’s sentiment at the time that their puppet plays were helping the Japanese to achieve national independence by disengaging themselves from subservience to the United States. Their emphasis on Japanese folklore stemmed in part from their desire to resist the developmentalist narrative as determined by the US-led Western bloc (Matsutani et al. 1982: 62). Fujita Shūhei, a film scholar, succinctly summarizes this, explaining that the JCP’s cultural policy of the 1960s was to propagate socialism/communism through mobilizing folktales and ethnic traditions in theater performances and cinema targeting children and their parents (Fujita 2016: 29). According to their own historiography, Tarō-za’s most successful retelling of the folktales was Tatsu no ko Tarō (Taro the Dragon Boy), written by Matsutani and first published as a book in 1960. When it was adapted for a Tarō-za play in 1961, it immediately became the company’s signature title, and was performed repeatedly until Segawa’s premature death at the age of fortysix in 1975. Taro the Dragon Boy is the story of an orphaned boy who embarks on a fantastic adventure in pre-modern Japan, through which he contributes to improving the lives of people in impoverished rural regions. Significantly for this study, Tarō-za was involved in television from the media’s infancy. The company’s puppets made their first on-air appearance in 1956 (Matsutani et al. 1982: 92–93). Moreover, the puppet play Taro the Dragon Boy was adapted for a film in 1966 (directed by Michibayashi Ichirō). We should note that, unlike Kawamoto’s films, this was not stop-motion animation, but rather a film featuring rod puppets. The unionrun film company Kyodo Eiga both produced and exhibited the film with support from regional teachers’ unions. Other labor unions, notably the National Railway Workers’ Union (Kokutetsu Rōdō Kumiai), also helped to finance the film. We get a sense of the film’s popularity in a review that appeared in Yomiuri Shimbun dated December 19, 1967: 237

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[U]unending lines of mothers holding their children’s hands formed in front of the local hall with a capacity of 1,400. Such a turnout exceeded the expectation of the teachers, the film company, and mothers who organized the screening. They had to apologize profusely to ask the audience to give up on watching the film that day and to come back another time. They had to show the same film three times altogether. (Fujita 2016: 26) Bolstered by the film’s critical and commercial success, Tarō-za went on to adapt two more of their puppet plays as independent films: Kurohime monogatari (The Story of the Black Princess, 1968) and Chikara Tarō (literally, “Strongman Taro,” 1969). Segawa and Yamagata Yūsaku wrote the screenplay for these two films, based on folktales that Segawa and Matsutani had collected. The director was renowned filmmaker Ieki Miyoji (1911–1976), who had been “purged” from Shochiku in the early 1950s for his union activism (Matsutani et al. 1982: 221–222).

Puppet plays on early Japanese television Puppet companies such as PUK and Tarō-za developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the nascent television industry. The year 1953 marked a watershed moment as broadcast began both by NHK, a public network, and Nippon Television Network Corporation, a private network. As Jayson Makoto Chun summarizes: The two approaches to broadcasting would complement each other: commercial stations would operate on the logic of capitalism free from most government restrictions on speech, while the public NHK would act as a counterweight to excess commercialism and serve the public interest. (Chun 2007: 43) Early television targeted children, the demographic that made up the baby boomers.3 Because of this, critics raised concerns over the alleged poor quality of programming. Social critic, Ōya Sōichi summed this up in 1957 with the famous statement that the new medium would bring about “a nation of 100 million idiots [ichioku sō hakuchi ka]” (Chun 2007: 160–165). Responding to these concerns, reformist movements appeared within the industry from the late 1950s into the early 1960s. By 1959, both NHK and the private station NET (Nippon Educational Television/Nippon Kyōiku Terebi) set up channels specifically “broadcast[ing] a higher ratio of educational and cultural programs than [channels run by] usual commercial stations” (Chun 2007: 188). Puppet plays were well positioned to deliver what the television industry needed. PUK’s official history recounts that NHK, Nippon Television, and TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, which started as KR television in 1955 and was renamed TBS in 1960) all started children’s television programs during the late 1950s, and such programs became further invigorated during the early 1960s. The PUK history recounts that with this, the 1960s for the company became “an era of progress and development” (zenshin to hatten no jidai). Regular appearances on television enabled PUK to improve its revenues greatly (Kawajiri 1984: 211). Puppet plays’ migration to television involved a stylistic change. Even though hand puppets were initially used, rod puppets eventually became the convention for televised puppet programs. This shift cannot be simply explained by the tradition of bunraku puppets in Japan. A detour to Europe is called for, in order to understand the proliferation of rod puppets in the political context of international communism. It is important to note that Kawajiri Taiji and his 238

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PUK colleague Yamamura Yū became the first Japanese puppeteers to experience post-World War II European puppet plays in person. This happened when the two visited the Sixth World Congress of UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette/International Puppetry Association), which was held in 1958 in Bucharest, Romania (Katō 2007: 146–147). UNIMA was founded in Prague in 1929, in part to oppose the rise of fascism in Europe. Many of the governments of Eastern bloc countries that emerged after the war sponsored and encouraged puppet plays that had already been part of the cultural traditions in their respective countries. Their shared understanding was that international communism could be strengthened by becoming connected to the various regional, indigenous cultural customs. The puppet theater was understood as the means for the people to acquire agency and to become subjects in their own societies and traditions: to remain “marionettes” no longer, in both the metaphorical and literal sense. Kawajiri and Yamamura saw firsthand that the rod puppet style was in vogue in Eastern Europe during the 1950s. They were shocked to observe what such a style could achieve onstage. Following their visit to Romania, rod puppeteering became a style to emulate for PUK and other Japanese puppet companies both in their theatrical and televised performances (Katō 2007: 147). Kawamoto’s puppet stop-motion animations such as The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, which did not use rod puppets, were also informed by the ethos of rod puppeteering. Like rod puppets, Kawamoto’s puppets were full-bodied; significantly, they moved without strings controlling them from above. Moreover, Kawamoto later designed, built, and operated rod puppets for NHK puppet dramas such as The Three Kingdoms and The Take of Heike. We should also note that Tarō-za, which remained popular into the 1960s, also used rod-style puppets (Matsutani et al. 1982: 122, 180). The puppet play scholar Nan-e Jirō, who had begun working for NHK in 1934 concurrently with his role as the publisher of Japan’s first magazine on contemporary puppet play theaters, was eventually promoted to the position of a scheduler at the station in the post-war years. He was then further promoted to take the helm as director of the whole network. Even after his retirement in 1967, Nan-e continued to serve as an adviser to NHK. The connections that Nan-e and others forged between the developing television industry and contemporary puppet theater had a significant effect on Kawamoto and his colleagues. Nan-e’s partiality toward puppet plays, however, was not the only factor contributing to their frequent appearance on television. According to Katō, the increasing popularity of puppet shows on Japanese television in the 1960s occurred for several reasons. The sudden transition from radio to television meant that television lacked human resources. The puppets were able to fill that gap. Also, the smallscale, easily manipulated puppets were well suited to the relatively unsophisticated technology of early television (Katō 2007: 134–135). Like PUK and Tarō-za, Kawamoto’s Shiba Productions also played an important role in educational programs aired on NHK and private stations. In 1958, in the same year that Kawamoto founded Shiba Productions with Iizawa and Hijikata to produce stop-motion animation commercials, journalists coined the neologism “modern three sacred treasures” (sanshu no shinki) to summarize the extent to which television sets, washing machines, and refrigerators had become three must-haves for Japanese consumers. Iizawa had left Asahi Graph in 1954 and had become a prominent playwright known for comedies and political allegories. He also wrote for children’s programs on NHK and other channels. Iizawa writes in his memoir that when he first met Kawamoto in the early 1950s, the puppeteer was a fervent communist who had just been “purged” during the Toho strikes of 1950. In the three decades that followed, Kawamoto and Iizawa switched political allegiances: Iizawa started voting for communists or socialists, while Kawamoto’s political fervor cooled down considerably (Iizawa 1987: 443–444). In the 239

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1950s, however, they were both astounded by the quality of puppet plays in the Eastern bloc, which they witnessed through Trnka’s puppet animation. In 1952, Iizawa took Kawamoto to a Trnka film, The Emperor’s Nightingale (1949), which made Kawamoto commit himself to puppetmaking and eventually to travel to Czechoslovakia so that he could work with Trnka (Kawamoto 2007: 124, 133–134). Even into the early 1960s, Kawamoto was still inclined toward socialism, and it was his subsequent dissatisfaction with having to make commercials that ultimately led to his departure from Tokyo. In Prague, Trnka encouraged Kawamoto to rely on Japanese traditions in creating his own strand of puppet animation. In a letter written in Prague to his friend in Japan, Kawamoto reflected: The East (tōyō) must rediscover the virtues of its own and show them to the world. Such virtues are the things that are forgotten in rushed cycles of production/consumption. They are, nevertheless, of fundamental importance to us human beings. We carry the responsibility to rediscover them. (Kawamoto 2015: 232) Kawamoto’s subsequent experiences in Prague and Eastern Europe, however, together with the military suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 by the Soviets, largely dissipated his belief in socialism (Iizawa 1977: 137). As socialist/communist sympathizers, however, Kawamoto and Iizawa initially saw their role at NHK as a form of non-commercial, state-based intervention that was democratic, compassionate, and conscientious. In the early 1960s, they still naively imagined such interventions to be widespread in nation states of the Eastern bloc such as the PRC, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and those in Eastern Europe. Writing a decade later, Iizawa describes the closing of Shiba Productions and their subsequent alignment with NHK as a departure from a mode of work driven by profit incentives (Iizawa 1977: 137–138). NHK was understood as the venue for them from which to carry out a state-based intervention that was undiluted by corrupt, commercial ventures carried out by private corporations. Kawamoto was part of the entourage that Iizawa brought to NHK. Kawamoto’s work for NHK, prior to his studies in Prague, began in 1960 with the aforementioned Boo, Foo, Woo (Iizawa 1977: 58–59). After his return from Prague in 1965, he resumed working for NHK as a freelancer. The animations and puppet art that Kawamoto created for the NHK program Nani shite asobō (What Shall We Play?) won prizes in 1966, and his work for NHK educational programs for children paralleled his independent puppet animations throughout the 1970s (Kawamoto 2007: 133–134).

The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden as a political allegory The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden is a stop-motion animation that Kawamoto began working on during his sojourn in Prague. In the auteurist paradigm represented by Yokota’s writing, this work was the first instance in which Kawamoto showed his métier. Yokota also sees the film as being the director’s first turn toward indigenous Japanese traditions and resources. This is indeed the case, as the animation is an adaptation of the Mibu Kyōgen play of the same title. Kyōgen (noh farce) is a traditional Japanese form of comic theater closely linked to noh that was performed between noh plays or as a single multi-act play. Mibu Kyōgen is a form of kyōgen that takes place at the Mibu Temple in Kyoto; it is believed to have originated in the late twelfth century. The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden is one of thirty plays that continue to be performed to this day (Umehara 1997: 31–32). An auteurist analysis of style or an 240

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art-historical study of the original story, nevertheless, only gets us so far in understanding the particular importance the work held in Kawamoto’s career as a key figure in contemporary puppet animation. In light of the political genealogy running through the modern history of puppet animation that we have outlined above, it is possible to approach Kawamoto’s first film also as a political allegory. Given that the turn toward indigenous Japanese traditions was, after all, a facet of JCP’s cultural policy since the 1950s, Kawamoto’s decision to adapt a play from Mibu Kyōgen hardly meant a withdrawal from contemporary political references. The original play and Kawamoto’s animation is about a young monk who is instructed to keep watch over a cherry tree in full bloom in the temple garden while his master, the head priest, is away. Unfortunately for him, a samurai and his servant take notice of the blossoming tree as they are passing by, and they try to enter the temple grounds to watch the flowers and to enjoy some sake. The two visitors are initially rejected by the young monk, but after tempting him with sake, they succeed in overpowering him. The visitors enter the temple grounds and hold a feast. The monk eventually becomes thoroughly intoxicated with sake and passes out. The visitors later leave the temple, but not before they dress the monk up as a woman and break a branch of blossoms from the cherry tree to take home with them. The head priest returns to find the branch broken and the monk, dressed up as a woman, unconscious under the tree. He severely reprimands the young monk.

Figure 14.1 From left to right: the samurai, the servant, and the young monk in The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden. Source: Kawamoto Kihachirō, 1968, still courtesy of Kawamoto Productions.

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Yokota’s auteurist reading takes a symbolist approach that interprets the film as a coded expression of Kawamoto’s biography. For instance, he sees the head priest as a stand-in for Kawamoto’s mentor and colleague Iizawa, and the young monk who abandons his responsibility as Kawamoto himself. With this, Yokota argues that the film expresses Kawamoto’s sense of guilt in having left Iizawa to study in Prague (Yokota 2013: 268). There is little in the letters and diaries of Kawamoto from his Czech years, however, that shows any breach having occurred between the two (Kawamoto 2015). If anything, kyōgen was what united them; it was Iizawa, who loved and frequented kyōgen performances, and who invited Kawamoto to watch a kyōgen performance for the first time in his life (Kawamoto 2007: 34–35). Yokota is right to detect the film as a multivalent text that invites active interpretation of hidden meanings, but it is more apt to look beyond the artist’s personal life as the referents, given the political history of contemporary puppet animation. Like all allegories, Kawamoto’s Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden can be enjoyed at face value as an adaptation of pre-modern Mibu Kyōgen, but we can also actively approach it for double meanings. We can investigate these meanings by focusing on three aspects: the puppet design, the spatial configuration of the story, and the analogies to contemporary events. First, regarding puppet designs, unlike his later puppets for NHK dramas such as The Three Kingdoms, which were consciously modeled after bunraku puppets, Kawamoto took more liberties designing the puppets for his first film, notably in ways that emphasized comedy. Three of the four main characters in the film have large, round eyes, not unlike characters in contemporary Japanese manga and anime. Their mouths and noses, the beards of the samurai and the head priest, and the skin color of the samurai are also caricaturized. Kawamoto’s stop-motion animation also emphasizes and exaggerates the changes of their facial expressions and body movements. This duality is echoed in the spatial configuration of the narrative. From the start, the focus of the film is squarely on the boundary between the sacred and the profane: the wall that separates the temple grounds from what lies outside of it. The focus on boundaries and walls might at first appear to foreshadow Kawamoto’s final film, The Book of the Dead (2006), in which such elements delineate the worlds of the living and the dead as well as the transgressions and communions between the two worlds. The seriousness and religiosity of that later film, however, remain largely peripheral in Kawamoto’s 1968 film. We can further read into the significance of the wall in the specific context of Kawamoto’s choreography. It is across the wall that the servant manipulates the young monk in order to enter the temple grounds. What motivates the transgression is the blossoming cherry tree. As it is widely known, cherry blossoms acquired symbolic significance in the twentieth century as an icon of the Japanese mindset and of the Japanese nation state. As Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney explains, this association was promoted to an unprecedented degree during World War II (Ohnuki-Tierney 2002). If we can see the blossoming cherry tree and the temple grounds as signifying Japan, then, we might read the young monk who fails at defending them as a stand-in for Kawamoto, a young naval air force cadet at the time of Japan’s defeat in 1945, who failed at halting the air raids on Tokyo and the post-war occupation of Japan by the Allied Forces. In fact, Kawamoto recounts the main motive for making his later work, The Book of the Dead, in a similar vein: “I am trying to heal those innocent people who have died in recent wars. … The theme is relieving these people’s souls” (Sharp 2004). His sense of connection between himself and the Japanese victims of World War II would have been even more acute forty years earlier, when he was making his first film. Continuing in this vein, we can return to the topic of puppet design and interpret the samurai, tall, muscular, with a face that is completely red even before getting intoxicated, and equipped with two swords at his waist, as a stand-in for the United States as it registered for 242

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Kawamoto’s generation of Japanese. This reading is corroborated by the fact that the samurai in Kawamoto’s original sketch was not carrying two swords; it was their inclusion in the final design that emphasizes the military aspect (Yokota 2013: 277). Moreover, the samurai’s underkimono, which becomes half revealed when he dances beneath the blossoming cherry tree, carries red and white stripes to evoke the American flag. Similarly, his fan with the rising sun symbol further underlines Japan’s statehood as an issue. The servant who accompanies the samurai appears to symbolize the Japanese establishment. The samurai and his servant arrive from the left-hand side of the frame (the West) and try to enter the temple grounds facing the right (the East). Is it far-fetched to associate the temple grounds in the East with Kawamoto’s understanding of Japan as “the East” (tōyō), whose spirituality he sought to rediscover in order to counter the “rushed cycles of production/consumption,” as we have seen in his letter from Prague? Perhaps the point of an allegory is less in the point-to-point correspondence of certain elements in the animation with particular life-elements than in the more general parallels that the public would have detected between the story and contemporary reality. For instance, the Japanese audience in 1968 would have been sensitive to the issue of USA–Japan relations and to the popular movement objecting to the renewals of the US–Japan Security Treaty (commonly known as Anpo for short in Japan) that kept Japan firmly within the Western bloc. Objections to the treaty were a rallying point for the communists and student radicals in Japan, with the height of their activism occurring from 1959 to 1960, and then again from 1969 to 1970. Both protests ultimately failed, in the face of the leading Liberal Democratic Party’s strategy of curbing popular dissatisfaction and opposition through policies that prioritized economic development and material affluence. As a member of the left wing in 1950s and 1960s Japan, Kawamoto also objected to the Security Treaty. In this light, we can revise a previous reading that the young monk who, blinded by the lure of liquor, abdicates his responsibility, thus represents not only former military cadets such as Kawamoto but also Japanese citizens at large in the late 1960s. Like the monk who is corrupted through the lure of liquor, the Japanese allowed themselves to be blinded by material gain; they tolerated spatial transgressions (one of the main results of the renewals of the US–Japan Security Treaty was a permanent stationing of American military bases on Japan’s main islands), and allowed their mindset and spirituality to be corrupted. In other words, instead of making a one-on-one connection of the characters with real-life individuals, an allegorical reading becomes possible by pointing out the relevance of the story to a particular historical moment. What Kawamoto’s film as a political allegory highlights, then, is the complicity of the Japanese (leadership and citizens) and intruders in pursuing tangible material benefits guided by consumerism, which ends up intoxicating the people and ultimately impairing the blossoming cherry tree, a symbol of the integrity and soul of the Japanese. In fact, it is neither possible nor necessary to gauge the extent to which domestic and overseas audiences saw Kawamoto’s film in this allegorical framework in order to recognize the political undertone of his work. What we do know is that the film was first recognized in the Eastern bloc context; the film brought Kawamoto his first-ever awards, the silver prize at the International Animation Festival held in Mamaia, Romania. As we noted above, Kawamoto had made a puppet stop-motion animation that had been popular in the Eastern bloc during the Cold War era. Thinking via the Eastern bloc not only justifies the allegorical reading that I provided above, but also opens up the potential reference beyond the narrow context of postwar Japan. We can also place Kawamoto’s first film at a historical juncture that marked the unraveling of post-war Japan’s grand narrative of development and material wealth as the Vietnam War (a war in which many Japanese saw their country as being complicit) dragged on with no end in 243

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sight. Seen from a more transnational angle, this was a time in which, as Orr writes, “Vietcong troupes in South Vietnam have been using itinerant puppet ensembles” (1971: 77). Orr goes on to describe the transnational dimension of puppet plays: [This, the Vietcong troupes] may have learned from their allies in PRC, where after 1949 the communist regime seized upon the puppet theater, as it seized upon all other forms of folk tradition, as a means of spreading its message of the class struggle. The Chinese puppet theater and its repertoire, traditionally based upon folktales, were revitalized and reconstructed along communist lines. (Orr 1971: 77) Puppet plays and animations were regarded at the time as significant means for the citizens of various countries to assert and to repossess their own subjectivity and agency, in order to build a civil society. The 1968 film was followed by Kawamoto’s even more explicitly political animation Kenju giga (Anthropo-Cynical Farce, 1970). This later film, based on the short story “Silk Hat” by Yokomitsu Riichi, was an outright criticism of the dehumanization that contemporary society brings about. The nucleus of Kawamoto’s film and Yokomitsu’s story likens people living in modern societies to greyhounds blindly following temporary urges and gains, with the establishment punishing anyone who dares call the race for what it is. We should also remember another of his films, Shijin no shōgai (Life of a Poet, 1974), which is an adaptation of Abe Kōbō’s short story of the same name. We might condense this film to the idea that the fundamental work of poets and artists lies in taking an unflinching gaze toward social alienation, destitution, and economic exploitation.

Conclusion When The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden first came out, it was in fact interpreted as part of the history of puppet plays in Japan and elsewhere. Nan-e Jirō, for example, wrote then that Trnka’s puppet stop-motion animation and The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden were the culmination of puppet plays at that time. Both rely on indigenous language, traditions, and cultures, and are thus prime examples, writes Nan-e, of “[p]uppets being a mouthpiece for nations, their peoples, and their resistance: they will not yield to the domination of the invaders” (Nan-e 1969: 86). Even later, during the 1970s, Kawamoto kept on performing puppet plays, showing them together with his animations. In the puppet anime shows in which he collaborated with Okamoto from 1972 to 1980, for example, the live puppet performances remained an important part of their events, together with the screenings of their stop-motion animation films (Katō 2007: 174–175). Looking at the puppet play contexts of The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, then, enables us to see that the film cannot be confined merely to the history of animation in Japan nor seen as another added sequence in the apolitical, traditional lineage of folk art. As my reading demonstrates, this was a work that attests to the political genealogy running through contemporary puppet animation and the ways in which the cross-media migration of puppet plays itself was rooted in the political concerns for reaching the broadest audience. Despite his disappointment at seeing the lack of freedom of the puppet animators in Prague in the 1960s, Kawamoto maintained his relationship with his counterparts in the Eastern bloc. His Kataku (House of Flames, 1979) won a Grand Prix at the International Animation Festival in Varna, Bulgaria. In 1988, he was invited by Shanghai Animation Film Studio and collaborated with the Chinese to make Fusha no sha (To Shoot without Shooting). At the end of the Cold War, 244

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in 1989, he began collaborating with Czech filmmakers in Prague and completed Ibara hime mata wa nemuri hime (Briar Rose, or the Sleeping Beauty) in 1990. Kawamoto was markedly inspired by religious and spiritual impulses, but an examination of the historical multimedia context of his films tells us that his impulses were deeply entrenched in his own social and political views as well as those of his time period.

Notes 1 All translation of direct quotes from Japanese sources is mine unless otherwise stated. 2 See www.puk.jp/ (accessed March 30, 2019). 3 Called the “Nodule Generation” (dankai no sedai) in Japan, the first wave of Japanese baby boomers was born between 1947 and 1949.

Works cited Chun, J.M. 2007. A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953–1973. New York: Routledge. Clements, J. 2013. Anime: A History. London: Palgrave. Fujita, S. 2016. “Oyako eiga undō to higekijō eiga no atarashii kankyaku” (“New Audience in ParentsChildren Film Movement and Non-Theatrical Cinema”). Eiga kenkyū 11: 22–38. Online at http:// jscs.h.kyoto-u.ac.jp/eigakenkyu-2016.pdf [accessed January 25, 2019]. Galbraith IV, S. 2008. The Tōhō Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Galbraith, P.W. and Karlin, J.G. (eds) 2016. Media Convergence in Japan. Ann Arbor, MI: Kinema Club. Hijikata, S. 1978. Zōkei no sekai (The World of Making Art). Tokyo: Sakuhinsha. Hoston, G. 1986. Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Iizawa, T. 1977. Buki toshite no warai (Laughter as a Weapon). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Iizawa, T. 1987. Kenryoku to warai no hazama de (Between the Power and the Comedies). Tokyo: Seidōsha. Jenkins, H. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Katō, A. 2007. Nihon no ningyōgeki: 1867–2007 (The Japanese Puppet Plays: 1867–2007). Tokyo: Hōsei University Press. Kawajiri, T. (ed.) 1984. Gendai ningyōgeki sōzō no hanseiki: Ningyō gekidan pūku 55 nen no ayumi (Half a Century of Contemporary Puppet Theater: Puppet Theater PUK’s 55 Year History). Tokyo: Mirai-sha. Kawamoto, K. 2007. Kawamoto Kihachirō: Ningyō sono inochi aru mono (Puppets Are Alive). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Kawamoto, K. 2015. Cheko tegami & cheko nikki: Ningyō animēshon e no tabi/tamashii o motomete (Czech Letters and Diaries: My Journey Toward Puppet Animation). Tokyo: Sakuhinsha. Matsutani, M. 2007. Jiden: jōchan (Young Miss: An Autobiography). Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun. Matsutani, M. et al. (eds) 1982. Sengo ningyōgekishi no shōgen: Tarō-za no kiroku (The Testimonies on the History of Post-War Puppet Plays: The Tarō-za Records). Tokyo: Isseisha. Mochinaga, T. 2007. Animēshon nitchū kōryūki: Mochinaga Tadahito jiden (Japan and China Exchanges through Animation: The Autobiography of Mochinaga Tadahito). Tokyo: Tōhō Shoten. Nan-e, J. 1969. Ningyōgeki nyūmon (Introduction to Puppet Plays). Tokyo: Hoikusha. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. 2002. Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Okada, E. 2003. Ningyō animēshon no miryoku: Tada hitotsu no unmei (The Wonderful World of Puppet Anima­ tion). Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha. Orr, I.C. 1971. “Puppet Theater in Asia.” Asian Folklore Studies 33:1: 70. Online at https://nirc.nanzan-u. ac.jp/nfile/1012 [accessed March 23, 2019]. Sharp, J. 2004. “Kihachiro Kawamoto.” Midnight Eye: Visions of Japanese Cinema. Online at www. midnighteye.com/interviews/kihachiro-kawamoto/ [accessed December 28, 2019]. Steinberg, M. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Noboru Tomonari Umehara, T. 1997. Mibu kyōgen no miryoku: Umehara Takeshi no Kyōto henreki (Mibu Kyōgen’s Appeal). Kyoto: Tankōsha. Wada-Marciano, M. 2012. Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age. Honolulu, HI: Hawai’i University Press. Weisenfeld, G. 2002. Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905–1931. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yokota, M. 2013. “Animation and Psychology: The Midlife Crisis of Kawamoto Kihachiro.” In M. Yokota and T.G.H. Jackson (eds), Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 265–284.

Further reading Dalton, T. and Harryhausen, R. 2008. A Century of Stop-Motion Animation: From Méliès to Aardman. New York: Watson-Guptill. Jenkins, H. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jones Jr., S.H. 2012. The Bunraku Puppet Theater of Japan: Honor, Vengeance, and Love in Four Plays of the 18th and the 19th Centuries. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Steinberg, M. and Zahlten, A. (eds) 2017. Media Theory in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yoshimoto, M., Tsai, E., and Choi, J. 2010. Television, Japan, and Globalization. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies.

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RhetoRics of Autonomy

And mobility in JApAnese “AAA” GAmes The Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil series within a global media context Daniel Johnson

Sensations of wonder and novelty produced by the movement of images have become a renewed area of interest in film and media studies. This is due, in part, not only to a shift toward reevaluating the role of animation in the history and theory of the moving image, but it also follows a pivot toward viewing screen media from a globally inclined perspective. In other words, it is not just the technologically produced sensation of movement in the projected image that is at stake, but also how those same images travel around the world as objects of commerce, culture, and artistic achievement. The increased recognition of Hollywood’s transnational identity (Kokas 2017) and abstractions of identification with spectacular digital bodies (Whissel 2006: 24) have accompanied this transformation in the scholarship, further demonstrating the mobility of screen media from intersecting contexts of technology and representation. What, then, can we say about video games and their ability to generate images, bodies, and commodities that move? Games are globally mobile media forms at the levels of production and consumption, and often in ways that are less industrially centralized than big budget blockbuster filmmaking. Games also demonstrate fantastic instances of moving image spectacle by connecting those sensations to player-initiated action, a point Alexander Galloway stresses in his characterization of video games as an “action-based” medium (Galloway 2006: 3). Indeed, this association of onscreen action to player control exaggerates the fantasies of mobility and autonomy that are embedded in many forms of commercial, action genre filmmaking by connecting those sensations to the spectator’s own agency. In that sense, while the debts of genre and borrowed aesthetic and narrative conventions that many games owe to cinema make up one dimension of game’s recontextualization of cinematic spectacle, the intensification of how bodies move onscreen, and subsequent linkage of those feelings to a globally inclined understanding of mobility, provide an additional instance of how games draw from, expand upon, and amplify the rhetorics of personal mobility and autonomy that we understand from other forms of screen media. To that end, this chapter offers an analysis of games from the Metal Gear Solid (Konami, 1998–2015) and Resident Evil series (Capcom, 1996–present), two of the most popular flagship 247

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franchises from Japanese game studios. Metal Gear Solid is a third-person stealth action series that puts the player in the shoes of the character Snake, a highly skilled and expertly trained soldier specializing in infiltration and rescue operations.1 Gameplay typically revolves around guiding the character into an enemy compound to retrieve a document or a captive prisoner by sneaking past guards and bypassing obstacles such as surveillance cameras and security locks. As such, moving undetected is frequently prioritized over direct combat. Resident Evil helped to popularize the “survival horror” genre, pitting the player against zombies, mutants, and bestial chimeras spawned by bio-weapon research that has gone awry. As with the Metal Gear Solid series, Resident Evil usually employs a third-person perspective to mediate player control over characters and showcase in-game environments.2 Early entries in the Resident Evil series stress resource management and survival over direct combat, although since Resident Evil 4 (2005) the series has adopted a more ballistic, action-based approach with a semi-dynamic camera property. In-game tasks frequently revolve around rescue operations and infiltrating hostile locations, putting an emphasis on player mobility and navigation through game-world space and obstacles. As blockbuster games that enjoy popularity around the world and which frequently depict dramas of globetrotting action and conspiracy, these series represent globally mobile media at the level of both content and commerce. Furthermore, they re-contextualize cinematic expressions of mobility through their use of virtual camera effects, high production value set pieces, and player-directed movement through game-world space. Linking games with motion picture film suggests an inherently comparative approach to analyzing media forms, and the connection to Hollywood film aesthetics, and commercial practices to game franchises produced in Japan provides additional dimensions of comparison. Production value in games is tied to Hollywood’s global appeal through shared strategies of visual spectacle, while the “borderless” content of these series (a concept I define in more detail below in relation to both Hollywood and popular cinema in Japan) is placed alongside the cultural rhetoric of blockbuster cinema as a transnational art form. The expression of human autonomy in games with regard to how characters and cameras move often follows the visual logic and perceptual codes of film, suggesting an additional affinity between cinema and games, and one that also figures into a more significant point concerning the neoliberal fantasy of personal autonomy. The intersection of these three aspects of mobility—cinematic, ludic, and ideological—are where this chapter will focus its analysis.

Games as blockbuster media Multi-game series such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil offer multiple perspectives for approaching issues of mobility in game media. Both are mega-franchises that span multiple decades and generations of gaming platforms through numerous sequels, remakes, and spin-offs. The longevity of each series has allowed them to live through multiple cycles of gaming technology, and as flagship titles for their respective studios, new installments are frequently used to debut new gaming engines, gameplay mechanics, and advancements in sound design and storytelling. More generally, the two series are also among the most internationally recognized “AAA” (read as “triple A”) game series from Japan. “AAA” refers to games that are high budget and production value titles, often linked to the signature franchises associated with major studios and developers. For some developers in Japan, the significance of AAA production also refers to games that have global status and reach, an observation that Yoshida Shuhei (President of Sony Worldwide Studios) shares in a discussion with game director Tabata Hajime (Final Fantasy XV) about how game design in Japan is looking to keep up with global standards and the complications raised by transnational design environments (Yoshida and Tabata 2016). This latter global 248

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dimension of AAA gaming has become even more relevant as studios increasingly rely on internationally outsourced production assistance, a topic Mia Consalvo discusses in relation to Square-Enix, the makers of popular roleplaying series such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (Consalvo 2016: 111–115). Within AAA game design, both the Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil series have remained at the foreground of global perceptions of Japanese gaming, even as the domestic industry has appeared to move toward less costly mobile platforms that are marketed primarily toward consumers in Japan. For all of their commercial significance within the domestic industry, the Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil series each adopt a stylistic tone that gestures more toward the global status of Hollywood blockbuster cinema than cultural products readily identifiable as Japanese. This resonance with Hollywood in terms of production value, spectacle, and appeals to borderless identity through characterization, setting, and narrative conceits is also one of the ways that these games are compelling objects for considering games alongside other types of visual media, and as images that transmit cultural and material experiences of pleasure and power. Both series made their debut on the original Sony PlayStation console (1996 for Resident Evil and 1998 for Metal Gear Solid) and were among the first home console titles to make extensive use of spoken character dialogue performed by voice actors and cutscenes that render dramatic moments from the games’ stories as non-interactive narrative sequences. Such elements have led critics and fans to describe this style of game as “cinematic.” The Resident Evil series is often discussed this way in game studies scholarship because of its heavily foregrounded simulated camera effects (Chien 2007; Kirkland 2009) and thematic similarities with horror films (Taylor 2009). Metal Gear Solid is more generally considered emblematic of cinematic authorship because a single director, Kojima Hideo, oversees almost the entire series.3 The sense of visual style, playful touches of absurdity, and complex, conspiracy laden storytelling featured throughout the Metal Gear Solid games has granted Kojima the equivalent status of an auteur among his peers in game design and by game critics.4 The Resident Evil series has gone on to be adapted as a Hollywood film franchise, and over time has become more intent on reproducing the thrills of blockbuster cinema through its focus on action hero theatrics, conspiracy driven plots, and increasingly complex continuity between entries. This sensibility was incorporated into the series almost as soon as the first sequel went into production, with the producers of Resident Evil 2 looking to the James Bond series as a model for developing the sequel into part of an ongoing series with shared characters, events, and a strong brand identity (Gēmu Hihyō Henshūbu Biohazard Research Group 1998: 179). The introduction of context-sensitive quick-time events that allow for limited player response and control within largely non-interactive cutscenes has also become a staple of the series since its fourth installment in 2005, further mixing the pleasures of gaming with appeals to cinematic spectacle. The aforementioned re-contextualization of cinema narrative cutscenes and high production value through detailed, actionable set pieces are some of the ways in which these games echo the stylistic qualities of global film aesthetics. Richard Maltby describes the significance of the visible “money on the screen” in Hollywood cinema as part of its appeal to audiences around the world. He identifies elements such as costumes, sets, and stars as representing “areas of pleasure” that are distinct from the fictional content of a film, and which demonstrate the powerful “synthetic” quality of Hollywood cinema (Maltby 2003: 42). Games are able to achieve a similar expression of production value by not just representing synthetic worlds for us to inhabit and explore, but also by constantly pushing the technological limitations of their medium in ways that can dazzle audiences with new forms of spectacle. The Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil series have contributed to this aspect of game design not only through the aforementioned innovations such as the extended use of voice acting for their characters and for 249

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presenting narrative cutscenes with the in-game rendering engine, but also in their use of large, visually detailed environments for the players to explore, integration of new gameplay mechanics into action set pieces, and a near-constant sense of diegetic expansion through episodic storytelling. Unlike Hollywood’s historically dominating command of big-budget filmmaking on the global scale, however, AAA game design is much more globally diffuse, with major studios located in France, Poland, and of course Japan. Although produced by game studios in Japan, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil do not foreground their place of origin in obvious ways and instead appeal to the global aesthetic of Hollywood blockbusters and American military hegemony. This quality of borderlessness in popular media provides another example of movement that is perhaps similar to that of Hollywood’s global reach (or even that of Japanese animation), but more significantly it also speaks to a cultural logic of neoliberalism that celebrates the unrestrained, autonomous subject and the pleasures of global political mobility. Neoliberalism is frequently discussed as a matter of globally expanding markets, the cultural rhetoric of competition, and of economics overtaking political policy and thought (including areas such as education and social support programs) (Harvey 2005: 20; Davies 2017: 41; Ong 2006: 6). This aspect of political subjectivity being linked with an idealized form of personal autonomy and intensified global mobility should not be overlooked, however, and game media provide particularly legible examples of how this ideology can be expressed and made to feel available to players. What is significant about what games like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil reveal about the rhetorical forms associated with neoliberalism—especially in comparison to adjacent media forms such as Hollywood film—is this wedding of fantasies of personal mobility and political autonomy within the cultural frame of “borderlessness.” These games appeal to the desire for unfettered movement in the world and to being unburdened by traditional markers of identity, inviting us to feel as a “mobile, dispersed, anonymous self” (Roquet 2016: 135). The following sections will explore this dynamic of ludic mobility and expressions of political mobility in games, beginning with the relationship between a virtual camera and ludic realization of player action, then moving on to how narrative and thematic conceits in each game series frame our understanding of our characters’ actions within a borderless world.

Embodiment in perception and play Sensations of mobility and autonomy in screen media are often attached to our perception of a camera and how it moves through space. Recent film studies scholarship has revisited camera movement from the question of how we experience films as a form of “epistemological fantasy” that engages our identification with both the camera eye and onscreen character action (Morgan 2016: 225; also see Morgan 2011). This raises complications for understanding how audiences perceive and experience a feeling of agency through the relationship between the camera and the body, each of which are also mediated by the frame of the screen. Animation and game studies have also articulated the distinct ways in which each medium might suggest a camera, something that is frequently achieved in relation to human subjectivity and the expanded feeling of agency that “virtual” camera effects can afford (Jones 2016). Film studies scholarship on special effects and the movements of digital bodies provides a bridge between these two areas of research, connecting issues of perception and agency to embodiment and mediation (Whissel 2014). Following this trend in scholarship, we can turn our attention to how games such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil invoke a cinematic camera alongside a digital body to intensify the experience of player-controlled agency and the slipperiness of human autonomy when interacting with a game machine. 250

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In formal film analysis, the concept of a camera usually refers to how the audience registers a quality of framing, proximity, and movement onscreen based on the perception of scaling within the image and through the edge of the frame. From a more technical standpoint, a camera is also something that occupies the space of production in a film location or studio, guided by a human operator or remote-controlled device. This is not the case in game media, where the camera is a virtual effect instead of a physical object. As Mike Jones has noted, virtual camera space is composed for the camera rather than before it, demonstrating that the virtual camera is less a matter of recording and framing than deliberate synthetic digital composition (Jones 2007), echoing Lev Manovich’s claim about digital cinema and its relationship to animation (Manovich 2001). That being said, each of these components suggests a different form of movement and method of rendering spatial contrast within the image, which is why it can be problematic to use the camera as a conceptual device to describe filmmaking effects. Games can further blur this distinction by giving the player a degree of control over a virtual camera, which is often tethered to the character model that the player operates within the game world. In other words, as we move our character through three-dimensional game space, the virtual camera moves in sync with us, anchoring our perception of the game world to our movement through and into it. But perhaps camera movement (and by extension, camera effects) constantly produces a visual logic and mode of expression that mixes up these two ways of experiencing movement. This mediation of human action and perception through a media interface introduces the problem of autonomy in camera vision. Dan Morgan calls this conflation of the camera in production and camera in perception a “conceptual incoherence” in how we perceive and understand camera effects, also noting that this confusion is most powerfully felt in cases where the camera appears to occupy a kind of ocular perspective, such as a character’s point of view (Morgan 2016: 223 and 224). Such first-person or POV shots typically conflate the sightlines of a member of the audience seated before the screen with that of a character within diegetic space. The effect of embodiment that this produces is not always the same. Alex Galloway notes that in games, such shots provide an “intuitive sense of motion” for the player, whereas in films they often suggest an alienating, frightful sensation (Galloway 2006: 40). Because of the dramatic sense of embodiment that such shots incur, they foreground qualities of space and movement in highly pronounced ways, such as in the scaling of objects before the camera, the movement of objects and actors in and out of frame, and even shifts in focal length and interaction between space and the lens. Two examples, one from Metal Gear Solid and one from Resident Evil, give us a better understanding of how these effects can work in games. They help clarify how the feeling of autonomy is rendered in each case, and also demonstrate how camera effects resonate with questions of mobility in visual media and control over one’s body. “Awakening,” the opening sequence to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015), introduces some of these topics as they relate to an embodied camera. The majority of the game is played in an open-world setting (i.e., one that allows players to explore and take on missions as they see fit), but this opening sequence offers a very different experience. The game begins with the player character bound to a hospital bed in Russia, having just woken up after nine years in a coma following the events depicted in the final cutscene of Ground Zeroes (2014), the first part of Metal Gear Solid V. And while all of the previous Metal Gear Solid games have been played in third-person perspective (with the player character visible at the center of the screen), “Awakening” opens in a disorienting first-person perspective, with the in-game camera simulating the vantage point of a human eye. This is achieved not only through camera placement and its fixed sense of movement, but also through an eyelid effect as the character blinks. The player can move the right analog stick on the controller to rotate the character’s head in different directions, 251

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but at this point that is the only control they have over the game (Figure 15.1). Even that sense of control is frequently withdrawn as the game moves between “playful” events of interaction and non-interactive in-engine cutscenes, all of which happen without the game cutting from one mode to the next. What the game introduces right away is its combined interest in a camera effect and player autonomy. By emphasizing restricted movement and suspended agency, however, it brings into relief the very ambivalence of the concept of player autonomy. As the scene progresses, an assassin sneaks up behind the doctor and nurse attempting to treat the character. The player can see this but can do nothing about it. The assassination attempt fails thanks to the intervention of another patient, and following that rescue, two changes occur. First, the camera switches to a third-person perspective. The player can freely move the camera 360 degrees, swinging it around the player character model. This creates the experience of a wider perspective of observing the player character’s surroundings. Second, the player can direct their character to move. This movement is, however, quite limited. Pushing forward on the left analog stick will cause the player character to move forward, but no other directional movement is possible (Figure 15.2). Furthermore, no other actions can be taken with the controller. Even trying to pause the game or access game-specific menus is denied. This state of suspended play persists for a few minutes, as the player follows the patient who foiled the assassination attempt through the hospital, now under siege as these two characters try to escape. More transitions between playable moments and cutscenes occur, but it is not until the player character has his dislocated arm fixed that a greater sense of mobility is restored to the player. At this point, the ability to crawl on the ground is introduced and movement in multiple directions is finally granted. The game moves away from a rail-based sense of movement to a more threedimensional, actionable sense of space.

Figure 15.1 A first-person view of the player character lying in bed in a Russian hospital. The symbol of a PlayStation controller is visible in the upper right corner, and acts as a cue for moments when the player can move the camera. The player can see the assassin killing a nurse behind the doctor, but is powerless to act, increasing the sensation of helplessness. Source: Image captured from PlayStation 4 version.

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Figure 15.2

The player character tries to crawl to safety, using a medical cart for leverage to stand. At this point in the game, the only input that will produce a response is pressing forward on the left analog stick, which will move the character forward along a fixed path.

Source: Image captured from PlayStation 4 version.

The tension of a freely moving camera and a body suspended in immobility are central to this sequence. This dynamic is communicated by the ways in which the player is rendered as inhabiting the body of their character, making that experience of immobility feel more tangible. This anchors the experience of play (control within the game) to a particular kind of body. We can observe this in both the ocular point of view sequence, in which the only control we have over the game is the ability to turn the character’s head left to right or up and down in order to view the character’s surroundings, and the restricted sense of movement directing the character forward on a fixed path. This latter movement simulates the experience of trying to move without being able to walk properly because of muscle atrophy, and the disorientation of having only recently emerged from a prolonged period of unconsciousness. This movement is, of course, mediated by two parts of the game machine, the controller and the screen. Games aren’t always precise at producing one-to-one representations of physical experiences, but The Phantom Pain offers a consistent presentation of trying to render the effects of inhabiting a body with restricted mobility in a way that still allows for “playful” engagement by the player.5 In many ways, this stands in contrast to later parts of the game, during which the player character is granted an almost superhuman sense of mobility as they travel freely across rugged terrain, sneak into enemy bases, and scale all manner of obstacles with almost no resistance. This sense of unfettered mobility is also achieved in a way that relies on a more indirect, figurative style of control in which player input commands (pressing a button or moving the analog stick) produce in-game actions and responses that exceed the quality of player input. The Leon Kennedy episode of Resident Evil 6 (2012) begins in a similar fashion, with the player being thrown into an ongoing action set piece in a first-person perspective and given limited control over their character’s movements. As in Metal Gear Solid, the Resident Evil games are usually played in a third-person perspective, so opening with an embodied first-person 253

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perspective not only offers a form of immersion and dramatic spectacle, but would also catch veterans of the series off guard. While The Phantom Pain elicits bodily alienation through this effect, Resident Evil 6 uses this mode of perception as part of its invocation of a cinematic rollercoaster: the player must defend themselves from shambling zombies while a hovering gunship begins to fire upon their position, and the first-person perspective intensifies the sense of disorientation and the pressure to act immediately.6 As in the hospital scene in Phantom Pain, our view eventually shifts to a third-person perspective, but even then our character’s movement is limited to a single direction: pressing any direction on the analog stick will cause the character to move forward along a set path toward the inevitable destination. This form of limited control is complemented by context-sensitive moments of gameplay that maintain the sensation that the game resembles an interactive Hollywood blockbuster. These set sequences will play out in one of two ways (success or failure), depending on how the player responds to the input cues. The cinematic presentation used during this sequence of Resident Evil 6 is quite different than the deliberate, claustrophobic atmosphere that is the hallmark of the series. The first four games in the series (including Code Veronica, 2000) use fixed camera angles that show the character moving through pre-rendered backgrounds from a third-person perspective. Directing the player character to move to the edge of the frame will cause the game to “cut” to the next shot, with the character’s movement also carried over between shots through a continuity of motion. Beginning with Resident Evil 4 (2005), the series has employed an “over the shoulder” style camera system that follows the player character model as they move, a change which further aligned the perspective of the player with that of the character and facilitated a shift toward a more ballistic style of gameplay that emphasized run-and-gun shooting over carefully sneaking around and trying to avoid enemy ambushes. The resemblance between the use of fixed camera angles in the Resident Evil games and horror cinema is immediately apparent. In the earlier Resident Evil games, the player’s perspective is often from an obscured point of view, gazing down on the action from a high angle or peering down the length of a corridor or room in a way that emphasizes deep staging, but which also frustrates the player character’s ability to move around in an intuitive manner. The control schema that maintains a continuity of direction for player control even when the continuity of space and direction is reversed for character model movement provides further disorientation, often causing players to overcorrect their movements and go back and forth between the same transitions across screens (Taylor 2009: 52). Furthermore, limiting the player-character’s view to the perspective of the camera property instead of the character model allows for jump scares by enemies lurking just off-screen between shot set-ups, and similar tropes, common in horror cinema. As with the first-person perspective sequences in Metal Gear Solid V and Resident Evil 6, this limitation on player control raises questions about autonomy in gameplay. Rather than directly indulging in the fantasy of unfettered mobility and agency, however, such instances put these sensations of mobility into question by making the agency of movement (and by extension, autonomy in relation to the game machine) appear (and feel) more fragile and ambivalent. As such, while other states of play make player autonomy—the feeling of agency in relation to the interface of the game machine—feel pleasurable and intuitive, these sequences draw attention to the very idea of agency, linking autonomous play to different types of visual spectacle and control schemas that foreground the gap in experience between human action and onscreen representation. This is partially achieved by the re-contextualization of cinematic composition by placing those images alongside player-directed movement through space. The evocation of a cinematic camera and its close linkage to player agency represents one aspect of how these games express mobility and autonomy through visual and ludic means. This 254

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is complemented by the appropriation of Hollywood-style action set pieces, genre tropes, and synthetic production value. The appeal to blockbuster aesthetics and commercial slickness is also part of the global identity of these games, although that “global” dimension should also be understood within the context of how many forms of popular media from Japan represent themselves on the global stage through a cultural and aesthetic frame of borderlessness.

The cultural identity of borderless media The concept of “borderless” (mukokuseki) culture and media in Japan initially emerged in the commercial and critical discourse on a particular brand of popular cinema. During the 1950s and 1960s, Nikkatsu studio adaptations of Hollywood genre and celebrity culture through homegrown westerns, spy films, and crooner star vehicles were marked by a narrative emphasis on spaces that perform cultural liminality within a Cold War era geopolitical configuration, a point that Watanabe Takenobu makes as part of his discussion of the genres and stars that helped to define the studio’s identity (Watanabe 2004). Gangster films such as Koruto wa ore no pasupōto (A Colt is My Passport, dir. Nomura Takashi, 1967) primarily take place in airports and shipyards, locating the drama and action around places of international passage and mobility (as well as technology and commerce). The actor Kobayashi Akira’s popular westerns are adorned with the costumes of Hollywood cowboys while transforming Japan (and sometimes other parts of East and South East Asia) into a cinematic mode of popular tourism.7 When they were made, these films were part of an ongoing process of negotiation between issues of local and foreign cultural identity, but this was often conceptualized in a way that preserved a sense of difference by measuring this potential for borderless hybridity in respect to Hollywood. These films were made, after all, primarily for domestic consumption, despite the stylistic trappings of borderlessness. Contemporary game media, including series such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil, often express a similar preoccupation with border-crossing travel through their set pieces and their appeal to globally circulating genre forms, and often with Hollywood as a reference point. These media are also highly mobile on the international stage: worldwide, Metal Gear Solid has sold close to 50 million copies, while Resident Evil has moved approximately 70 million units (Konami Holdings Corporation 2016: 13; Capcom Co., Ltd. 2016). In the years since Nikkatsu’s branding of borderless action cinema, the term “mukokuseki” has since been adopted to describe all manner of cultural objects, ranging from consumer electronics and appliances to television animation. What borderless means in each case varies, and these differences can be attributed both to historical transformations of cultural production in Japan during the twentieth century and to the general adaptability of the very concept of borderlessness, which can itself change shape to suit a particular cultural form, audience, or market. Iwabuchi Koichi has observed how Japan’s borderless culture has been part of Japan’s triangulation of its regional identity in East Asia with a global relationship with the United States, emerging partially from the history of Japanese imperialism within the region and Cold War geopolitical alliances (Iwabuchi 2002). He traces this relationship between Japan, the United States, and East Asia as a transformation of Japan’s adaptation of American cultural and commercial forms for audiences in other parts of East Asia to a more regionally inclined “return to Asia” that has cultivated relationships within the region to re-center cultural and economic relationships around Japan (Iwabuchi 2002). Film has been part of this process as well, with Hollywood cinema being part of the mediation of modern life for audiences in Japan and East Asia, as described by scholars such as Miriam Hansen and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano in relationship to gender and the material world of commodities (Hansen 2010; Wada-Marciano 2005). The study of Japanese globalization has often focused on television and popular music, but we can also include film 255

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and games into the system of relationships that Iwabuchi describes. At the level of commerce and media platforms, gaming systems help to promote Japanese electronics and media formats (e.g., the PlayStation 3 played a role in popularizing the Blu-ray format), while game software often adopts a culturally ambivalent mode of representation in a way that is reminiscent of early anime. Characters such as Mario (from Super Mario Brothers), Simon Belmont (Castlevania), and Link (The Legend of Zelda) project cultural identities not fixed to Japan, not unlike “de-raced” anime characters such as Speed Racer (known as Go Mifune in the Japanese version of the series). How do games such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil elaborate upon the concept of mukokuseki identity found in related media such as film and animation? What issues related to movement and mobility do they raise? The above-mentioned narrative emphasis on movement across borders and globally peripheral spaces gestures toward a similar approach to locating identity and autonomy as things that exist in the world (in both a physical and cultural sense). There is an appeal to the same sensibility that informed Nikkatsu action films in the 1950s and 1960s, although one that has been further displaced by doing away with a Japanese setting or cast of characters altogether. In other words, the audience is no longer asked to identify with a Japanese agent in appreciating the pleasures of personal mobility; the player characters are almost always white Americans. Masculinity remains a central site for identification, however, and a significant part of how each media form expresses fantasies of agency and mobility. Furthermore, the weight of borderlessness is being located less in specific locations than in the mobility of human agents that traverse those very spaces, a distinction that speaks to the growing distance between these games and their cultural space or origin. This is part of how these games exhibit qualities of borderlessness that can be connected to both Hollywood film and parts of Japanese popular cinema. With that in mind, we can understand these types of games as representing a shift in what mukokuseki media and culture represent. If Nikkatsu action films were about a playful engagement with Hollywood and American power within the context of a Cold War power structure for audiences in Japan, contemporary game media that express an ambition toward borderlessness present a world in which the geopolitical centers and margins are no longer in negotiation. They are rather caught in a clear separation of unfettered personal mobility for some, and suspended political agency for others, with the player more tangibly implicated by being put in control of a character agent—a spy or Special Forces agent, for example—who enjoys such autonomy. The industrial distinctions are also significant, with Nikkatsu action offering a regional response to Hollywood’s global scale and reach, and AAA game production providing an alternative network for global media production and distribution. In other words, the cultural triangulation of negotiating the West for East Asia via Japan (as Iwabuchi describes it in relation to Cold War era popular culture) has been replaced with an aspiration toward the unmarked “global” identity (one based on Hollywood-style spectacle) and fantasies of personal autonomy in a world of unregulated markets. These sentiments are often expressed through the feeling of power that the player can enjoy and by setting the action in the global South. The locations, characters, and conflicts depicted in Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil demonstrate this resonance. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) is set primarily in Kabul and Southern Africa, drawing on their historical role as locations in the Cold War battle between superpowers and their frontier-like quality in terms of global citizenship and legal protections. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) focuses on the ambiguous legal jurisdiction of American military bases in Guantanamo, Cuba as a backdrop for its conspiracy against the stateless army that Snake and his alley Kaz had developed during the previous title, Peace Walker (2010). The autonomy of the player character is therefore embedded in issues of political sovereignty. 256

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In the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 5 (2009) travels to Africa while protagonist Chris Redfield moves in pursuit of the arch-villain in the series, Albert Wesker; Resident Evil 4 (2005) is placed in a throwback, nearly medieval rural Spain; and Resident Evil 6 (2012) takes the player across the world to multiple locations, including a fictional port city in China and post-Soviet Eastern Europe border regions. The “in between” spaces of national jurisdiction are part of how each series approaches the politics and pleasures of international mobility, with the unmarked, individual agent wielding that autonomy over national borders. The aforementioned association of masculine agency with international mobility is one that echoes that of Nikkatsu action cinema (especially in terms of the emphasis on liminal spaces), but the geopolitical orientation that those scenarios depict is one that has more in common in Hollywood’s global mobility as a commodity form. We can also observe this sensibility in the gameplay of each series, through how they respectively frame player and character agency within their game-world spaces.

The logistics of agency Within the Metal Gear Solid series, the two games that make up the fifth game (Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes) are particularly salient to a consideration of mobility and autonomy as properties of gameplay because of their shift away from linear progression through game space and narrative to an open world design. This allows players to move willfully around the game world, deliberately taking on missions and other tasks without linear sequencing, and solving in-game tasks (such as infiltrating an enemy base) from whichever direction or by whatever method they choose. This emphasis on player agency extends to the ability to interact with game-world objects and environments in a way that invites the continued “play” at solving in-game problems with in-game solutions. For example, cardboard boxes, which are normally used as camouflage throughout the series, can be employed as improvised sleds to skid down hillsides, and otherwise useless toy water pistols can cause enemy electronics to short-circuit. As the Resident Evil franchise has grown, the series has also gradually introduced a gradual increase in elements that allow for player control. Some of these include a choice between “A” and “B” narrative progression sequences with distinct scenarios in Resident Evil 2, local and online cooperative play options in Resident Evil 5, the shift to a “following” third-person perspective camera and context-sensitive actions in Resident Evil 4, and dynamic, mobile combat in Resident Evil 6. Many of these features highlight the player’s ability to interact with and control the game state. But complementing this emphasis on player agency, we can also observe a thematic and narrative intersection with topics such as the proliferation of private military companies, humanmachine hybridity, and military hot spots in the periphery of geopolitical power. Player agency is being made pleasurable, but in a way that also associates it with destructive ideological formations. These comprise the logic through which these games conjure up a sense of unrestricted mobility. Resident Evil increasingly shares many of these interests as the series progresses, with the villainous Umbrella Corporation becoming a global non-state force pulling the strings of political change through technological and extra-military might. Player characters are in turn globetrotting super-cops or soldiers who seem able to go anywhere, anytime, and there is a progressive trend toward giving players a greater sense of control over their characters as new mechanics are introduced with each successive title. Logistics are key to making sense of how this interplay between player autonomy, borderless worlds and military mobility are woven together. We can understand logistics as the management of moving human and material cargo around the world in order to advance corporate militaristic objectives. Deborah Cowen describes logistics as representing a shift in military, political, and commercial practices of interpreting spaces such as national borders in the wake of 257

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World War II and the emergence of “supply chain security” interests that mixed war and trade, as well as military and civilian life (Cowen 2014: 6). This shift also follows the reorganization of production to multi-site component manufacturing, which transforms borders into a type of space that is not perceived by policy makers and strategists as something distinct or absolute that limits mobility, but rather as something to be moved through and across in order to expand efficiency and reduce production costs (Cowen 2014). As with the rhetoric of neoliberalism, space is ideologically perceived as always already navigable, always opening up additional avenues of mobility and expansion, through the logic and rhetoric of security and the demands of market-based policy objectives. This mobility of people and things has also been tied to a rescaling of the nation state in public policy and political thought. New types of citizenship, personage, and jurisdiction over territory also develop out of this context, such as Somali piracy and non-citizen laborers in Dubai (Cowen 2014: 12, 72). The Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil games are frequently concerned with the same mixing of commercial and military interests in the management of national space, looking to narrative conceits such as global economies driven by a state of permanent war waged between private military companies to pontificate on the seemingly inevitable decline of individual human autonomy in the face of network culture and information society. These games depict the historical period in which neoliberal ideology and policy has emerged (beginning with the end of World War II, but intensifying post-Vietnam War), but they are each set in a science fiction alternative universe. Private armies of human soldiers bolstered with nano-machine augmentation and artificial intelligence make up some of the SF elements in Metal Gear Solid, while Resident Evil has its “biohazard” undead and monstrous creatures. These elements all travel under the guise of international conspiracy, moving through the same channels as illegal weapons trade and nuclear proliferation. In the later Metal Gear Solid games, child soldiers and the use of human body parts for developing new cyborg technologies are some of the ways in which the games try to represent human exploitation in a technology-infused world, while Resident Evil shows how anonymous subalterns become subject to experiment in the design of bio-organic weapons peddled to the highest bidder. The narrative focus and ludic pleasures are focused on spy-craft, but in the background lurks the portrait of a world in which uneven technological and economic development has consigned much of the non-Western world to the losing side of an aggressive global competition for resources and power (Davies 2017: xvii). What is significant about these spaces beyond their markedly peripheral and borderless identities is that they are easy targets for international mobility, something that is expressed through the ludic mobility afforded to the player character. In other words, the gameplay and narrative context can naturalize the fantasy of unfettered personal autonomy associated with the ideological underpinnings of neoliberalism (not to mention the inherently imperialistic ambitions of military-corporate expansion). Traveling across national borders expresses one version of mobility that is shared with earlier action films from Japan as well as contemporary Hollywood blockbusters such as the Fast and Furious and Mission Impossible series. But infiltrating an occupied and war-torn region suggests an asymmetry of power that favors the invading force, preserving the unequal distribution of autonomy and mobility across different national and regional forms of citizenship. The world is shown to be available for passage and entry to the player, who is given the tools to act on that feeling of power through both the narrative conceits of each game and their ludic emphasis on superior mobility and ease of passage through stealth routines and outmaneuvering foes. In contrast, the populations of these spaces that are borderless are anything but. Hanli Geyser and Pippa Tshabalala (2011) discuss the use of zombies in Resident Evil 5 as an extension of the perception of a homogeneous Africa from the perspective of the imperial West, 258

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while Scott Juster has written on Metal Gear Solid’s cycles of escalation in military-industrial management as the world is transformed into a constant battlefield of logistics and expansion (Juster 2015). Each series paints a world in which citizens of the global South are relatively fixed in their political situation, caught in the battles waged between factions represented by the player character(s) and their rivals. In this sense, the feeling of mobility wielded by the player character is often achieved at the dramatic expense of the world they inhabit. Even as these games present exteriors that are sometimes critical of neoliberal ideology, they often draw upon narrative and playful forms that indulge in those very pleasures.

The novelty of autonomy Let’s return to the connection between games and other forms of visual media as we work toward the conclusion of this chapter. The technological movement of images in popular visual media to instill a sense of animation or vitality is frequently linked to notions of spectacle and wonder (Bukatman 2003: 115–116; Hansen 2011: 262–265). This link is perhaps most closely associated with critical discourse on the origins of early cinematic and projection technologies, but Kristen Thompson notes that early cel-based animation technique preserved the novelty of technologically produced movement even after live-action filmmaking shifted the horizon of spectacle to elements such as film stardom, production value, and narrative (Thompson 1980: 108–110). She describes how the figural rendering of movement in cartoons captures the wonder of technology and the visual sensation of agency through the use of colorful characters, plasmatic forms, and trick-like effects. Further pursuing this continuity between games and other forms of moving image media, we can perhaps consider how games also preserve a sense of novelty in the way images are made to move in response to our input as players. Beyond that, image sequencing in games coincides with some of the visual logics of contemporary blockbuster cinema, which utilize digital bodies and ballistic mobility to engage with a fantasy of unfettered movement and seemingly unlimited personal autonomy (Whissel 2014). The spectacle that games like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil present is therefore not just a matter of imagination, but of world-making and creating the experience of what it would be like to inhabit such a world as a subject with unfettered autonomy. In Hollywood cinema, this sense of spectacle is also part of its expanding global appeal, with visual spectacle speaking across languages, unburdened by the need for translation. Nikkatsu action films presented cinematic mobility as something adaptive, which could in turn be made available and turned into new sites of pleasure. The ludic spectacles of games and the sensation of autonomy that they offer can be seen as speaking to an adjacent dynamic that operates through similar thematic and visual rhetorics. This continuity also can be seen as contributing to the borderless appeal and rhetoric of so many blockbuster AAA games, including Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil. This convergence of spectacle, novelty, and play is how games instill a sensation of world building, one that again intersects with animation (Crafton 2012). Games allow for the imagination of a world by showing what such a world might look like and how it might feel to act with agency within it. Furthermore, the content of Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil also frames this sensation of experiencing a gamic world as one linked to the social and political world we inhabit by drawing on the same rhetoric of nation states, borders, and political mobility. It is filled with problems that appear familiar but are presented as possible to overcome or be mastered in a way that feels liberating. This sense of unfettered agency, then, is perhaps the spectacle that these games are entertaining most powerfully by rendering the relationship between the human body, the political subject, and the world as one of autonomy and mobility. 259

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Notes 1 There are actually three characters that go by the name “Snake” in the series: “Big Boss” in the third game and the spin-off Peace Walker; “Solid Snake” in the first, second, and fourth games; and “Punished” Snake in The Phantom Pain, the second part of Metal Gear Solid V. 2 The most recent original game in the series, Resident Evil 7 (2017), shifts to a first-person perspective. The 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 returns to a third-person perspective. 3 The Gametrailers video review of the HD remastered collection of Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, and Peace Walker uses this language, saying the series helped to “pioneer the cinematic experience” in gaming; see YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BX4lDtPCas (accessed July 7, 2016). 4 Leigh Alexander has also analyzed The Phantom Pain as an allegory of Kojima’s strained relationship with Konami, as well as the precarious turn of the AAA console game development market in Japan (Alexander 2015). This notion of a Japanese auteur game designer has become a common perception among international fans of high-budget Japanese game media, with figures such as Mikami Shinji, Kamiya Hideki (who both worked on early Resident Evil games), Ueda Fumito, and Miyazaki Hidetaka all enjoying similar reputations as innovative, genre-defining designers, who carry the torch of Japanese game culture for a global audience. Polygon’s web-magazine on Japanese gaming, Life in Japan (2015), focuses largely on such figures and the games they produce. American and European game developers have also gained this type of recognition, although often as a studio or team rather than as individual designers. 5 Ian Jones has written on an even more pronounced version of how game media will ask players to inhabit an onscreen/in-game body in “fumblecore” games such as Octodad and QWTPY. In addition to the experience of play that these games offer, Jones also considers whether or not the possibility of inhabiting these virtual bodies can produce a quality of empathy for actual world bodies with limited mobility. MGSV perhaps does something opposite but emphasizes the fantasy of personally unrestricted mobility as the ideal state of human autonomy and agency; see Jones 2016: 86–99. 6 The game has the player go through this sequence later on, during one of the final parts of Leon’s storyline. However, during the retread, the game is conducted entirely in the third person, with normal controls. 7 Kobayashi (2011) describes these films and their popularity in other parts of East Asia in his memoir, Eien no maito gai (Forever Mighty Guy Akira). He also shares anecdotes of being invited to Hollywood, further stressing his borderless brand and aspiration toward Hollywood-like iconicity.

Works cited Alexander, L. 2015. “The Final Word on ‘The Phantom Pain,’ a Video Game about Video Games.” Vice. com. Online at www.vice.com/read/the-final-word-on-the-phantom-pain-a-video-game-aboutvideo-games-1015 [accessed January 15, 2018]. Bukatman, S. 2003. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Capcom Co., Ltd. 2016. Public Sales Data for Resident Evil. Online at www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/ finance/salesdata.html [accessed August 13, 2016]. Chien, I. 2007. “Playing Undead.” Film Quarterly 61(2): 64–65. Consalvo, M. 2016. From Atari to Zelda: Japan’s Videogames in Global Contexts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cowen, D. 2014. The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Crafton, D. 2012. Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-Making in Animation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Davies, W. 2017. The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Galloway, A. 2006. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gēmu Hihyō Henshūbu Biohazard Research Group. 1998. BIOHAZARD 2 kenkyū tokuhon (Research on Biohazard 2 Final Edition). Tokyo: Micro Design Publishing. Geyser, H. and Tshabalala, P. 2011. “Return to Darkness: Representations of Africa in Resident Evil 5.” In M. Copier, M. Kennedy, and A. Waern (eds), Think, Design, Play: Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA

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Autonomy and mobility in “AAA” games International Conference. DiGRA/Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, September 14–17. Online at www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/11312.58174.pdf [accessed March 15, 2019]. Hansen, M. 2010. “Vernacular Modernism: Tracking Cinema on the Global Scale.” In N. Durovicová and K. Newman (eds), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, 287–313. New York: Routledge. Hansen, M. 2011. Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Iwabuchi, K. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jones, I. 2016. “Do the Locomotion: Obstinate Avatars, Dehiscent Performances, and the Rise of the Comedic Video Game.” Velvet Light Trap 77: 86–99. Jones, M. 2007. “Vanishing Point: Spatial Composition and the Virtual Camera.” Animation: An Interdisci­ plinary Journal 2(3): 225–243. Juster, S. 2015. “Getting Trapped in ‘Metal Gear Solid V’s War Economy.” Popmatters. Online at www. popmatters.com/getting-trapped-in-metal-gear-solid-vs-war-economy-2495473978.html [accessed March 15, 2019]. Kirkland, E. 2009. “Resident Evil’s Typewriter: Survival Horror and its Remediations.” Games and Culture 4(2): 115–126. Kobayashi, A. 2011. Eien no maitogai (Forever Mighty Guy Akira). Tokyo: Tachibana Shuppan. Kokas, A. 2017. Hollywood Made in China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Konami Holdings Corporation. 2016. Consolidated Financial Results for the Three Months Ended June 30, 2016 (Prepared in Accordance with IFRS), July 29. Online at www.konami.com/ir/en/ir-data/statements/2016/en0729_w9ei5r.pdf [accessed August 13, 2016]. Maltby, R. 2003. Hollywood Cinema, 2nd edn. Malden, MD: Blackwell Publishing. Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Morgan, D. 2011. “Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and Ethics of Camera Movement.” Critical Inquiry 38: 127–163. Morgan, D. 2016. “Where Are We? Camera Movements and the Problem of Point of View.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 14:(2): 222–248. Ong, A. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Polygon.com. 2015. “Life in Japan.” Online at www.polygon.com/a/life-in-japan [accessed January 15, 2018]. Roquet, P. 2016. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Taylor, L.N. 2009. “Gothic Bloodlines in Survival Horror Gaming.” In P.B. Jefferson (ed.), Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play, 46–61. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Thompson, K. 1980. “Implications of the Cel Animation Technique.” In T. De Lauretis and S. Heath (eds), The Cinematic Apparatus. 106–120. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Wada-Marciano, M. 2005. “Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman’s Film.” Camera Obscura 20(5): 15–55. Watanabe, T. 2004. Nikkatsu akushon no kareina sekai 1954–1971. Tokyo: Mirai-sha. Whissel, K. 2006. “Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special Effects.” Film Quarterly 59(4): 23–34. Whissel, K. 2014. Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yoshida, S. and Tabata, H. 2016. “Seikai kijun ‘AAA taitoru’ o mezasu FF15 no kaihatsu hiwa o kataru! Hajime Tabata tai Yoshida Shuhei” (“Discussing the Hidden Development of Final Fantasy 15’s Quest for the Global Standard of a AAA Title”). Dengeki Playstation.com. Online at http://dengekionline. com/elem/000/001/353/1353131/ [accessed January 15, 2018].

Further reading Beckman, K, (ed.) 2014. Animating Film Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Berardi, F. 2015. Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide. New York: Verso Books. Huntemann, N. and Aslinger, B. (eds) 2012. Gaming Globally: Production, Play, and Place. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Daniel Johnson Polygon.com staff. 2015. Life in Japan. Online at www.polygon.com/a/life-in-japan/ [accessed January 15, 2018]. Pulos, A. and Lee, S. (eds) 2016. Transnational Contexts of Culture, Gender, Class, and Colonialism in Play: Video Games in East Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Whaley, B. 2015. “Who Will Play Terebi Gēmu When No Japanese Children Remain? Distanced Engagement in Atlus’ Catherine.” Games and Culture 13(1): 1–20. Wolf, M. (ed.) 2015. Video Games Around the World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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16

Pointing through the

Screen

Archiving, surveillance, and atomization in the

wake of Japan’s 2011 triple disasters Joel Neville Anderson

In a gesture toward increasing transparency following the nuclear accidents caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 (commonly referred to as “311”), the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) installed a live internet video feed surveilling the nuclear waste clean­ up process at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant where the multiple meltdowns had occurred. Nearly six months after the quake, a figure in radiation protection gear walked into view of the stationary camera, extended their right arm, and pointed toward the lens. After holding this position for 20 minutes, the figure disappeared. This mysterious act was recorded and circulated online without explanation until an anonymous email to a Tepco official began to tease at the identity of the finger-pointing worker and the intent to bring attention to the situation of temporary nuclear workers. This study is written in response to the formal proced­ ures and social circumstances of the anonymous pointing figure’s protest/performance—subse­ quently revealed in a Tokyo gallery exhibition—and those of other artists, archivists, and activists working through the aesthetic and political potentials of the post-311 image and its circulation. Surveying the visual culture of post-311 Japan through cultural workers’ interventions, this chapter argues for a transmedia approach to understanding social crisis amid environmental col­ lapse, analyzing a diverse selection of projects in photography, film and video, performance, archiving, and community media. These practitioners repeatedly point to the insufficiency of their mode of representation to render the scale of unthinkable catastrophe, re-contextualizing vernacular photography, appropriating surveillance technologies, and embracing non­ representational documentary images to place or displace the self in reference to media in circu­ lation. A comparison of these works not only reveals these practitioners’ common interrogation of a disaster’s construction through media, it also identifies disaster management as a paradig­ matic model of the mediation of environment and self through the particular context of con­ temporary Japanese documentary. The Great East Japan Earthquake, popularly known as 311 (3.11 or 3/11 in international contexts), was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off the coast of the Tōhoku region of Northeastern Japan, causing a massive tsunami that killed over 18,000 people and precipitating multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The immediate effects of the natural disaster and forced evacuation of land deemed uninhabitable because of 263

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radioactivity displaced nearly 500,000 people to temporary housing in the surrounding areas. In addition to the devastation of the region’s coastline, destroying homes and livelihoods, com­ munities were torn apart by an arbitrary no-go zone imposed by the government within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant. With numerous feature-length titles produced in the immediate aftermath of 311, documen­ tary emerged as a popular object of analysis among scholars of cinema and media (DiNitto 2014; Hirano 2014; Domenach 2015). This large body of work exhibits several key tensions: between a cinema exploiting images of devastation and ruin, and one made useful for the purposes of recovery and reconstruction, with filmmakers deepening analysis for public understanding or participating as volunteers. This moment also reveals a cinema in a process of transformation itself, drawing on salvaged archives of family photographs and amateur digital video capturing the rising waves. These documentary films circulate within a media ecosystem along with dra­ matic features addressing 311, constituting vital local and transnational film cultures, and sketch­ ing the contours of political imaginations. However, the urgency of documentary in post-disaster environments—and this instability of its form—necessitates the broader scope of documentary adopted in this chapter, mediating traces of history through environment and subjectivity.1 The mysterious pointing figure’s relocation of conceptual art into a nuclear clean-up site intersects with the activities of Photohoku, a group of professional photographers and volun­ teers who work “to help restart family photo albums for those in Japan affected by the events of March 11” (Photohoku 2019a). These activities are central to this chapter’s investigation. While media attention to the region has waned as the country’s third prime minister since the disaster promotes a nationalist agenda that includes a successful bid for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, and attempts to reverse Japan’s pacifist constitution, this group of largely amateur photographers continues traveling from the capital to Tōhoku for the purpose of giving rather than simply taking photographs. Situating Photohoku’s practice and the “finger-pointing worker” within the broader circula­ tion of images following 311, I address the political implications of ethnographic and philan­ thropic enterprises alongside activist and fine art projects that similarly implicate domestic portraiture under the assault of natural and human-produced disasters, and their subsequent management by states and corporations. Mediating anxiety over the image as a site of political contestation, each of these forms of media practice emphasize collaboration while revealing pro­ cesses of the image’s transmission; they deny objectification of the “victim” or triumphant indi­ vidual while advancing a model of collectivity resistant to nationalism, or the maintenance of a uniform collective. As Kyoko Hirano has observed, after the quake, the phrases and words Ganbatte Nippon! (Hold on, Japan!), fukkō (reconstruction), and kizuna (connecting) took hold in Japanese popular culture—including feature-length documentary films—associated with striv­ ing for recovery, economic renewal projects, and maintaining connections to survivors (Hirano 2014: 2). As Hirano argues, however, such sentiments limit the imperative to work collectively toward reparations, personal accountability, and structural reform (Hirano 2014: 11–12). Pho­ tohoku’s practice does not emerge from the traditions of socially engaged art but is a community media project in productive tension with its online instantiation. The opacity of the gesture of “giving a picture,” and the material and formal operations Photohoku maintains, are produc­ tively placed in juxtaposition with the finger-pointing worker and the traditions of conceptual art and video performance. Each project negotiates representation of the self in the context of disaster management, complicating discourses around the control over one’s own image, as the ethics of circulating survivors’ images blends with neoliberal governmentality, or the preroga­ tive of controlling the self and its representation taking precedence over social bonds and demo­ cratic structures. The intersection of these critical media practices in the post-311 environment 264

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constitute a mode of resistance that makes the hegemonic structuring of everyday life visible, encouraging us to look through screens of representation and imagine life beyond their boundaries.

Missing archives Photohoku is far from the only group exploring the gaps left by the loss of life in Tōhoku and its missing visual archive. The medium of photography has a long history in Japan, and the personal photographic archives of the aging population in the rural countryside range across various analog and digital formats. That being the case, each of the homes destroyed, damaged, or abandoned under duress represented a small tragedy in terms of lost elements of personal and collective histories kept within family photo albums. While Photohoku sought to rebuild them, other organizations were active in restoring and archiving them. The Salvage Memory Project was initiated two months after the earthquake, when research students in the Japan Society for Socio-Information Studies traveled to Yamamoto and collected photos and albums that had been discovered during the clean-up process. The project attracted the participation of archivists and photographers who volunteered their assistance. The 750,000 photographs that the Salvage Memory Project discovered were entered into Google’s Picasa online image storage service. By using that platform’s facial recognition and tagging features, project members were able to create a searchable database. Through this process, it was possible to return 19,200 photographs to their owners (Ono 2012). Many of the photos rescued by the group were nearly unrecognizable as having once been indexical representations, resembling abstract paintings instead. The processes of water damage, mold, and decomposition create visual effects that ominously encroach upon their photographic subjects. Looking at these pic­ tures inevitably raises questions about the mortality of the people appearing in these injured images, with physical damage to the photographic medium standing in for more gruesome visions of bloated corpses in swallowed up towns. Two people involved with the Salvage Memory Project, Takahashi Munemasa, who had been with the project since May 2013, and Hoshi Kazuto, a resident of Yamamoto decided to put together an exhibition of these severely damaged photographs, which otherwise would have been discarded. The resulting exhibition, “Lost & Found Project: Family Photos Swept Away by 3.11 East Japan Tsunami,” first ran from January through February 2012 at Tokyo’s AKAAKA Gallery. It then traveled to the Hiroshi Watanabe Studio (Los Angeles), Aperture Foundation (New York), Photo Gallery International (Tokyo), the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) and Wallflower Photomedia Gallery (Australia), Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco), and finally, the Fotografia Festival (Rome). Each show arranged the photographs differently according to the specifics of each gallery area, as well as different conceptual references to and recreations of domestic space. In most locations, The Lost & Found Project was mounted so that entire walls were patterned with unframed photos, their dimensions varying wildly. When seen from afar, the arrangement produced painterly associations of blurred acidic colors, pushing the viewer to consider the incomprehensibility of the massive number of lives lost. Walking closer, one could recognize small details of human countenances, although most images were rendered abstract: a face here, a standing figure’s silhouette there, still recognizable records of birthday parties, special events, or gatherings. As such specifics elude gallery visitors, the images’ chemical distortions evoke the ultimate unknowability of anyone who had perished in time’s unsparing disaster. With its grotesque and beautiful mixture of colors, its effect is different from an exhibition of perfectly preserved images of people likely taken in the same wave, pointing instead to a general instability of representation and its social bonds. 265

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Instead of massive walls of images, Italy’s Fotografia Festival used the photos to entirely cover the cramped festival space, even plastering them on the ceiling. Unlike a typical gallery with a high ceiling, these physical dimensions more closely resembled those of domestic living spaces. The Aperture Foundation in New York took a similar approach toward recreating a sense of domestic space through the use of old photo frames accenting the spread of images on the wall, and decorating the space of the gallery with framed photos set on surfaces as if it were a typical living room. This had the effect of mixing together the ambience of a gallery, home, and mau­ soleum. The total effect was as if some gas had swept through the rooms of a house and acceler­ ated the natural aging processes of the photographs. In Geoffrey Batchen’s reading of the exhibition, he imagines an attack on a broader scale: One can’t help but feel that the flesh of photography itself is under attack here, as though these few damaged remnants are all that survive of a mode of representation that once bestrode the world like a behemoth. Kodak’s recent decision to declare itself bankrupt only adds to the sense that photography as we once knew it is no more, swept away by a digital, rather than an oceanic, tsunami. (Batchen 2012) This mourning for the analog is different from Photohoku’s efforts to reconstitute family photo albums. In this central project, the photochemical film medium functions to revivify photo­ graphic practices through an interdependent relationship with the digital medium. In addition to these archival and curatorial efforts, the purposeful destruction of photo­ graphic material to express risk or anxiety was also part of the visual response to 311 from the very beginning. In a series of photographs captured on (or close to) the day of the disaster, the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki slashes his own prints, suggesting sheets of “black rain” that recalls memories of deadly nuclear fallout. While Araki links the precarity caused by nuclear energy to the nuclear risk of warfare through the absence of scratched-off photographic material, others have attempted to make creative connections by registering the presence of radiation on the photochemical film material itself. This is the case in (New York-based 2002–2014) artist Shimpei Takeda’s “Trace” series (Trace—cameraless records of radioactive contamination), which he created by exposing film to soil collected from sites across Fukushima, as well as Chiba, Ibaraki, Iwate, and Tochigi prefectures. This camera-less photographic process reveals the unpredicta­ bility of the effects of radiation, and produces cosmic imagery resembling a dark night sky or galaxy of stars otherwise achievable only through a long-range, lens-based process. Similar natural imagery is evoked by another camera-less work, a short two-minute film by Tomonari Nishikawa (another artist working in the USA as well as Japan) called sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars (2014). This film was produced by burying 35 mm negative motion picture film, from one sunset to sunrise, under a bed of fallen leaves fifteen miles from the site of the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Scratches remained on the surface of the film, as well as curious artifacts that suggest exposure to radiation and tempt us to read them as such a record. Just as no image is captured through a lens, the film has no recorded soundtrack. Nevertheless, audio is important because artifacts remaining on the film can be picked up by the film projector’s optical sound reader: they are reminiscent of a quiet night’s chorus of insects, or the clicking of a Geiger counter. A final title card states that the site of the film’s production had been previously decontaminated through the removal of surface soil, and the Japanese government subsequently announced that it was safe for people to return to their homes in the area. The film’s playful title—sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars—lit­ eralizes the dissolution of boundaries between nature and technology, celebrating a natural 266

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scene while suggesting its potential loss under nuclear regimes. In removing the portal of sub­ jectivity afforded by a lens, Nishikawa’s camera-less film provokes us to contend with the pre­ carious logics of representation. The accusation it nevertheless levies on viewers forces them to consider the dissolution of the singular subject as a coherent point of subjectivity: the potential for nuclear technology to atomize literally as well as figuratively in social organization.

Humans of Fukushima According to Naomi Klein’s model of disaster capitalism, the “shock doctrine” refers to “orches­ trated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treat­ ment of disasters as exciting market opportunities” (Klein 2007: 6). Derived from the orthodoxies of post-Keynesian neoliberal economics, and developed through case studies in post-Katrina New Orleans, post-invasion Iraq, Pinochet’s Chile, as well as post-revolution China and apart­ heid South Africa, Klein’s work examines how natural, human-made, and perceived threats of disaster are used to assert a blank plane on which to impose oppressive policies. She points out, however, that, Most people who survive a devastating disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage what they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places that formed them. (Klein 2007: 9) Photohoku (a multilingual portmanteau of “photo” and “Tōhoku”) takes portraits of people living in temporary housing in Northern Japan using peel-apart instant film, giving the instan­ taneously developed photographs to their subjects along with blank photo albums for them to fill. They then dispose of the original negative peeled-off side (unlike conventional instant Polaroids, peel-apart instant film produces a negative sheet). What remains are playful docu­ ments of an encounter, digital mise en abyme images of framed photos, or subjects holding an image captured (and released) only moments before. These digital images document the initial encounter between photographer and subject, and are primarily used to promote the group’s project. They function as evidence to raise funds for future trips by the group to restart more albums, to “give” more pictures. The Photohoku project began on September 11, 2011, half a year after the disaster. The co­ founders were Yoshikawa Yuko, the owner/manager of Tokyo Kids Photo, a family photog­ raphy studio, and one of her photographers, Brian Scott Peterson. Driving North in a van with roughly fifteen other photographers, they visited the many barracks-like temporary housing units, offering to take pictures of people displaced by the disaster. Using a Konica Instant Press and other camera models, as well as film donated by Fujifilm (in 3 × 4 and 4 × 5 dimensions), they interacted with local people, composed quick portraits, and gave the results directly to their subjects. In addition, they gave away photo albums donated to the project by Nakabayashi Co. Ltd. An additional component of their mission was to distribute functional digital cameras with chargers and memory cards (also donated), and later, to return to select areas with a digital printer and photo paper to support past participants’ growing albums. Within less than two years, they had completed over twenty trips to more than a dozen communities, begun over 300 new photo albums, and captured (and given away) more than 4,000 photos (Yoshikawa and Peterson 2013). These images circulated by Photohoku on their blog and social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) show people standing, either outside or within their temporary housing 267

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Figure 16.1 Photohoku snapshot from the second trip to Ishinomaki. Source: Photograph courtesy of Yuko Yoshikawa, Photohoku.

units, while holding the instant photograph of themselves. In these original “inner” photo­ graphs, these people smile, look pensive, or perform some action that is playfully timed to the moment of exposure. Showing its subjects jumping in mid-air, or flashing the peace sign, these inner images suggest a performative, presentational conceit characteristic of typical domestic photography produced by and for members of a social unit. At the same time, these qualities suggest a bond between the subject and the photographer, and trust in that photographer’s skill to produce moments that feel casual and informal. In the “framing” double-image digital photo, these same subjects hold their instantaneously self-developing photographs, tightly framed with just their fingers seen at the edges, or framed more widely (from the waist up, or capturing their entire figures from head to foot) to create a new portrait in which the subjects hold their own image. In these double-image portraits, the subjects often hold their photograph or open album pages to their chest, frequently fixing their gaze directly at the photographer. (Because image crediting and notation of time and place in the group’s postings is inconsistent—their trips involve mostly volunteers and its organizers make their livelihood in different jobs—in most cases it is not noted whether the same photographer took both pictures. The group’s practice varies considerably in this respect, with photographers digitally documenting analog photo­ graphs they have just taken, as well as others taking care of this documentation.) These double-image portraits allow viewers to compare details of clothing, hairstyle, setting, and weather to confirm that both images were likely to have been captured in successive 268

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moments. The multiple, visible facial expressions of the subjects create a narrative that suggests their initial encounter with the photographer has somehow changed them. An image of a happy person holding a photograph in which they appear melancholic suggests something different than an image of a melancholic person holding a photograph in which they look happy. Both attest to the great emotional power held in the device of the still camera: the potential to shift a social situation by the apparatus’s very presence, and the power to create a narrative of trans­ formation in presenting “before and after” images, no matter what the difference between the two moments captured mean in reality. In Photohoku’s case, this difference pertains to the rel­ ative conditions generated by analog and digital means of photographic image production. The circulation of Photohoku’s work online bears necessary comparison to the “Humans of New York” (HONY) photography blog and social media channels, founded in 2010, which pairs portraits of average pedestrians with interview excerpts as captions. The project’s success launched international excursions as well as a photo book, and led to additional branches founded independently worldwide (including “Humans of Tokyo” in 2014). HONY’s reduc­ tion of visual and textual storytelling from the traditions of Jacob Riis, Erskine Caldwell, and Margaret Bourke-White to short, revelatory statements fit for scrolling a social media feed misses, for critics such as Vinson Cunningham, that “the truest thing about a person, that per­ son’s real story, is just as often the thing withheld—the silent thing—as the thing offered” (Cun­ ningham 2015). Photohoku operates on a similar level and is designed for encounter in the same media ecosystem; however, because the images do not rely on captions, the textual element is replaced by the alternative address of the doubled image within, both offered and withheld. Photohoku’s use of photochemical film (highlighted or literally framed by another—digital— image) might seem to fetishize the analog, but it has a practical purpose in developing trust with the photographic subject. In the tsunami’s aftermath, as well as during the immediate recon­ struction period and the initial stages of the nuclear crisis, an influx of domestic and international media mined people in the Tōhoku region for images of despair and grief, and then largely abandoned them. Photohoku’s use of photochemical film ensures that the images their members capture will not be taken away (many, but not all of them, are foreign nationals), that they can remain as foundational components of new personal archives. These photographs can become memories with which to create a potential future. The group’s organizers expand on this notion of the value of domestic photography in their mission statement: “Photos are the true treasures of our lives. We collect them over the years and assemble them into photo albums which in turn become our own autobiographies” (Photohoku 2019b). However, it is only through the digital images that Photohoku circulates capturing their process (documenting subjects presumably more comfortable with the group and having given their consent), that we can view the original portraits, creating new autobiographies not of the subjects but of the objects themselves, as images in circulation. The two photographic technologies’ shared presence in these images not only invites a commentary on the distinct practice of each photographic medium, but also on the intersection of domestic and public spheres in visual culture, of post-disaster environments, and their spectacularization and subsequent erasure under capital. These digital remainders—not unlike scraps from Photohoku’s peel-apart instant film, it would seem—what work do they do? Once the place-based interaction of this community media project is complete, their purpose is unclear. Posed as antidotes to the commodification of images of post-disaster victims as news material, they suggest a hierarchy of value inherent in the relationship between the analog and the digital. In one course of analysis, the “rich” analog domestic portrait remains in the possession of its subject, while the digital becomes the “poor” image and is given up to massive circulation (a drop in the tastelessly deployed metaphor of a tsunami of images described to follow contemporary media events). As artist and theorist Hito 269

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Steyerl writes, the poor image is a “copy in motion,” passed on as a “reminder of its former visual self” (Steyerl 2009). Photohoku, in their simultaneous generation of personal domestic archives in the analog format, and emotionally compelling documentary artifact for promotional circulation in the digital format, participates in this phenomenon. Despite the copyright claims that Photohoku presents on their website, these double-image digital photographs can be reshared, downloaded, added to slideshows, animated in online videos, compressed, and cropped; like the poor image of Steyerl’s formulation, Photohoku’s picture of a picture is “thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance” (Steyerl 2009). Photohoku, in their zealous reconstitution of domestic photo albums in Northern Japan, and in promoting the joy of personal photo documentation abroad, would seem to sidestep the pit­ falls of many humanitarian photography projects that depend on the circulation of their primary photographic spoils. Instead, Photohoku’s operation might be described as a kind of surrogate auto-ethnography: an attempt to jump-start the personal documentation of a community that had become increasingly marginalized under neoliberalism, with the scaling back of local agri­ culture and the tactical colonization of the region by the “nuclear village” (genshiryoku mura, the network of public and private bodies, experts, and politicians that compose the nuclear power industry) for the economic benefit of Southern metropolises. The group’s members open up the possibility for a means of internal image production within an oppressed subculture, changing peoples’ relationship to the self and community through reinvestment in the image as physical object. They also stand to make it possible for a digital instantiation of that image to be wit­ nessed, copied, and remixed by the broader public, lending visibility to a group of people that mainstream media seems bent on dismissing as a reminder of national failure and embarrassment. By creating these opportunities, however, they conscript people in the acts of creating and dis­ tributing images; as Steyerl observes regarding the economy of poor images, Photohoku drafts their subjects into production. One might consider the danger of perpetuating the immediate domestic unit as the primary means of regenerating community and documenting personal history. One could imagine a similar photography project in which the inhabitants of Tōhoku’s temporary housing com­ plexes—often glorified trailers lined in orderly rows—are recomposed to form similarly tidy nuclear units of family members, smiling at the camera and demonstrating various conveniences during an inconvenient but ultimately bearable stage of life. Although such photographs do exist among Photohoku’s output, images of an elderly couple, individual elders, a lone person in their twenties and thirties, and many, many children are far more common. Looking at the digitally reframed photographs without knowledge of each person’s story, the spectator is left to fill in the blanks, wondering who has been left out; yet the picture’s double framing is never without a narrative component. There is the sense that the act of rebuilding and reconstituting is one of open possibility that is not limited to the reproduction of conservative domestic relations. However intimate the relationship between the subject(s) and photographer is in the initial analog portrait, there is always a composed quality to its reframing within the secondary digital image. The impression that this is a community requiring the intervention of outsiders to encourage its self-documentation is never far from the images the group circulates, whether or not that implication is true, challenging a normative account of the Japanese nuclear family as less open to outside assistance or modes of philanthropy or charity. The new owners of the analog instant photos would have an entirely different set of associ­ ations based on relationships to loved ones appearing in (or missing from) the images. The sense of loss at the particulars of who is not there, as well as the experiential knowledge of life in the temporary housing units when looking back on that period of time in the future (or imagining a time when one might be able to do so), is distinct from the discourse of the victim, the poor 270

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image, or the reinforced conservative collective summarized above. Photohoku’s two interde­ pendent technologies of production effect images with substantially different agencies. But can it be said that one format is more or less politically efficacious than the other? As Steyerl suggests, intervening in the circulation of contemporary digital imagery necessitates confronting the screen (television or any other screen-based media) itself. As she puts it, if we perceive the world as built of pixelated images, then we can try to adapt to it. Understanding this logic is key to political agency and contemporary photography, so that when images cross screens into reality, they are transformed, and: If reality is post-produced, then it also means that we can change it by post-production. We can sort of “reverse-Photoshop” it, if you like, no? We can intervene into reality, with imaging techniques. So this shifts the question, I think. So the question may no longer be “what is represented in images?” or “how do we read images?” These remain important, no? Absolutely. But additional questions are “which images do we want to become real?,” no? As makers and producers, and co-producers of images. “How do we change reality by means of post-production?” “How can it be Photoshopped?” so to speak? “How can it be edited?” (Steyerl 2013) The suggestion of Photohoku’s operations giving analog photos is not simply that some people would rather not be seen, but that if they are, they would prefer to control their own image within its own circulation. Who wants to be seen, and to do so cross through the screen itself?

Surveillance culture On August 28, 2011, over five months after the initial earthquake, the mysterious figure first known as the “pointing man” appeared on the live internet video feed that Tepco (Tokyo Elec­ tric Power Company) installed for the nuclear waste clean-up process’s publicly crowdsourced overseers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant. The figure had removed the typical identi­ fication markings from his white, ghost-like uniform. These markings were standard for the many temporary workers who were hired by the plant at low wages, and released once they had reached their radiation exposure quota. In the low-quality color recording, which includes Tepco’s watermark, copyright information, and timecode, piping juts out across the plant grounds and through some light foliage, toward the structures in the background. The man walks toward the camera from a distance and steps on top of a platform. He stops short once he is framed in the center of the image. The small object he had been holding in front of him is now clearly visible as a mobile phone, which he raises up to his face with his left hand. He slowly and deliberately raises his right arm and points a finger at the camera, holding it in place as if in accusation. After maintaining this position for 20 minutes, the figure moves closer to the camera. Standing on a structure just below the camera’s immediate vantage point, he raises his yellow glove to point directly at the lens. He remains unidentifiable, his goggles and breathing mask obscuring the details of his face, which we catch glimpses of behind his outstretched finger. In the pixelated surveillance video, his arm wavers in exhaustion for another 40 seconds before he steps down and disappears. The pointing man’s video appearance went viral on YouTube, edited into clips of various lengths documenting the figure’s appearance. As these clips circulated on social media, his actions became valorized as an act of protest against a company that failed to provide the plant with properly regulated safety inspections, endangering a formerly agricultural community whose role had been transformed into that of a service 271

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provider, sending power South to the Tokyo metropolis. While Steyerl writes that, “The cir­ culation of poor images feeds into both capitalist media assembly lines and alternative audio­ visual economies,” the appearance of the finger-pointing worker has served to support formation of the latter (Steyerl 2009). While its target remained open to interpretation, this accusatory image served to represent a large section of the populace frustrated by an industry that had responded to the shock of natural and human-made disaster by following a long-term protocol of public relations damage control, suppressing figures and internal studies attesting to the sever­ ity of the nuclear emergency by staggering their release in bits and pieces in an attempt to elude public attention, outcry, and demands for meaningful structural change. Early in the following month of September, an unnamed man identifying himself as the person in the video feed emailed a Tepco official, posting photos from the plant, as well as a sketch of the surrounding architecture of the site opposite the surveillance camera’s view, to an anonymous blog. The crude rendering shows the same piping seen in the recording (only from the opposite direction), and the pointing man seen from behind, directing his finger toward the surveillance camera affixed to a railing. The man explained that he used the smart phone in his hand to orient himself for the camera, and that he was not only acutely aware of, but also stra­ tegically dependent upon, this circuit of media transmission. In other words, he used this relayed image of himself to frame his own portrait, and it was not a camera he was pointing at, or any one individual, but the screens displaying his transmitted image. Yes, his outstretched finger pointed in accusation toward the Tepco authorities, but this action also effectively attributed

Figure 16.2 The “finger-pointing worker” in the Tepco livestream.

Source: Image captured from archived segments of the Tepco livestream found on YouTube.

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blame to the multitude of silent witnesses, revealing the structure of the media ecologies that they participate in and reproduce without protest. In addition, he gave some context to his own political aims, writing that he desired to bring attention to the plight of temporary nuclear workers in the post-311 environment. Historically, temporary workers in Japan’s nuclear power industry have been drawn from marginalized communities of transient individuals located in day laborer pick-up hubs, as well as the burakumin, members of Japan’s centuries old “untouchable” class, who were for generations conscripted to socially stigmatized livelihoods such as leather working, butchery, and undertaking. Japanese discussion of the pointing man has thus been colored by class, and it is important to highlight that the title, yubisashi sagyōin, or “FingerPointing Worker,” given to him by the artist that would later claim to represent him as an agent has connotations of blue-collar labor. Illustrating his claims in a blog post, the man supposedly appearing in the video also digitally rendered a diagram explicating the media flow involved in his protest/performance (FingerPointing Worker 2011). In it, a cartoon-like pointing man holding a mobile device stands as one node, accompanied by an adjacent camera, a box labeled as Tepco’s server, and another representing his cell phone service provider, forming a loop from the figure’s performance to his self-observation on the cell phone screen. In between, rest floating sets of eyeballs, represent­ ing spectators of the event. Cognizant of this audience, the pointing figure splits his gaze between his mediated reflection on the mobile device and the surveillance camera, his pupils rolling in opposite directions. A unidirectional arrow points from the man’s finger toward the camera, and another from the camera toward the man’s eyes. A bidirectional arrow extends from the camera to the server, then past the eyeballs to the cell phone provider, returning full circle to the fingerpointing worker, and entering into his phone. Only the arrows in the initial encounter between the camera and its subject (the finger-pointing worker) are unidirectional. The arrow extending from the figure’s finger is directed exclusively toward the camera, and the arrow extending from the camera beams toward the man’s eyes. This is the space of contestation as seen by the eyes that represent the public sphere, an undefined mass subjectivity breaking the direct flow of gazes, laying bare the flow of media and perspectives. The finger-pointing worker’s split gaze (one googly eye rolled toward the camera and one directed toward the phone screen) is signi­ ficant: not only fixated on his own reflection, but looking through the screen where the accused and the spectators merge. Although the finger-pointing worker’s performance is broken by interruption and reposi­ tioning, the act was in part an homage to Vito Acconci’s influential video work Centers (1971). As is well known, Acconci’s piece shows the artist raise his arm to an early video camera. Using a connected video monitor as a mirror, he centers his finger on the screen and holds this pose for over 22 minutes in what appears to be an excruciatingly uncomfortable performance before the camera. Seen in crackling black and white analog video, his arm tires and his finger curls inward as the stationary camera faithfully returns his gaze. Acconci’s focus on his own finger, directed toward an image of himself in the moment of production and at the spectator during the moment of exhibition, intensifies to the point of exhaustion for both himself and his viewers. This is perhaps Acconci’s most well-known piece. As he describes it, “The result (the TV image) turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer. I end up widening my focus onto passing viewers (I’m looking straight out by looking straight in)” (Zippay 1991: 12, emphasis mine). Here, the duration of Acconci’s exercise is key, creating an initial fascination that develops into a sustained intersubjective stare. But this locked gaze is importantly lopsided due to the fixity of Acconci’s pointed look—what is he pointing at? Its subject and object become the nature of gesture in mediation, due for constant renegotiation through technological change and shifts in the social uses of media. 273

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Resistant self-fashioning The episode of the “finger-pointing worker” in Fukushima appropriates Acconci’s exercise from its context of the conceptual rigor of video and performance art in the 1970s best con­ sidered in combination with the radical possibilities of alternative television. The work inserts Centers into the simultaneity of internet broadcasting, specifically the performative information transparency of corporate-state self-surveillance, met with the culture jamming of post-disaster management. The natural and human-made disasters of 311 not only resulted in a proliferation of images documenting the catastrophe from professional and amateur sources, but also insti­ gated a widespread investigation of the formal and social capacities of still and moving pictures to respond to such a crisis, pointing through the screen of representation to address structures of social control and subjectivity. As Jean-Luc Nancy has commented, not all catastrophes are equivalent; they are “not all of the same gravity, but they all connect with the totality of inter­ dependencies that make up the general equivalence” (Nancy 2015: 6). That is, they intersect with the interchangeability of forces in the realm of financial markets and warfare, and are subject to the “general equivalent” of capital that Karl Marx identified. In Nancy’s formulation, in view of this connection between capitalism and technological development, the measure­ ment of disasters’ impact today is always based on the threatening paradigm of nuclear risk, and the duration of nuclear time. The historical traumas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—which had their seventy year anniversaries this decade—introduced the prospect of the world as potential target throughout the Cold War period, where, as Nancy writes, Human lives taken en masse are annihilated in the name of an aim that goes well beyond combat (the victims, after all, are not combatants) to assert a mastery that bends under its power not only lives in great number but the very configuration of peoples, not only lives but “life” in its forms, relationships, generations, and representations. (Nancy 2015: 11) If the historical task of capitalism for Marx was to lead to its transcendence and produce a state of true humanity, as Fukushima proves, natural catastrophes are always already technolo­ gical, social, economic, and political disasters: situations in which the boundary between nature and technology dissolves (Nancy 2015: 33–34). For Nancy, this calls for an assertion of a common incommensurability, rejecting the atomization of “subjects,” and their catastrophic equivalence (Nancy 2015: 40–41). Nancy’s formulation is nicely illustrated by Han Ishu’s “Life Scan Fukushima,” a mosaic representing the now iconically familiar structural components of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that were damaged in a meltdown and explosion famously broadcast live on television news. Upon closer inspection, however, the mosaic image is revealed to be composed entirely of Japanese currency, one-yen coins repeated in a digital pattern of light and dark shades. Such a gesture upends the appearance of transparency adopted by Tepco in its disaster management tactics and redirects attention to the opacity of the non-representational global currency whose equal is its repetition through exchange. Han’s work points toward the economic interests that put the Tōhoku region at risk. At the same time, it foregrounds a crisis of visuality representing a widely depicted site of trauma. The finger-pointing worker’s accusatory address over the Tepco video stream represents a coordinated operation of counter-surveillance that serves to lay bare hidden structures, and does so by relocating an axiomatic circuit of self-observation. At the time of the exhibition of Acco­ nci’s Centers, Rosalind Krauss wrote influentially of the video medium, noting its “simultaneous reception and projection of an image” as a defining characteristic, in which Acconci’s action of 274

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pointing at an image of himself demonstrates the basic social relations allowed by the video medium (Krauss 1976: 52). As Krauss writes, the place of the human in such instantaneous representations is important, for the body is therefore as it were centered between two machines that are the opening and closing of a parenthesis. The first of these is the camera; the second is the monitor, which re-projects the performer’s image with the immediacy of a mirror. (Krauss 1976: 52) Anne Wagner suggests, however, that “these ‘parentheses’ only apparently enforce a closure: the technology of the monitor opens outward, as well as in. Not only does it register a process of surveillance, it itself asks for monitoring” (Wagner 2000: 68, emphasis mine). Tracing Krauss and Wagner’s critical debate on video and performance art in the context of this mysterious solitary act before a camera in Fukushima allows us to consider the content of this parenthetical, and how personal subjectivity may enter a public sphere through media circulation.

Pointing through the screen The small mystery of the finger-pointing worker continued until the artist Takeuchi Kota, in the announcement for his solo gallery show at Tokyo’s SNOW Contemporary titled OPEN SECRET (held March–April, 2012), declared that he would be exhibiting the pointing video, as well as a performance in which he would personally talk to visitors one-on-one (SNOW Contemporary 2012). The gallery installation of the captured Tepco video stream is exhibited under the title of “Pointing at Fukuichi Live Cam” (2011), and credited to Finger-Pointing Worker (“Fukuichi” is shorthand for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, for the first of sister plants, followed by the second, Fukushima Daini). His own personal blog also docu­ mented his experience as a low-wage temporary plant clean-up worker in Fukushima, and while he simply claimed to have had a relationship with the finger-pointing worker, and was working to explore the issues this acquaintance had brought up, these dramatic revelations expanded the scope of the performance and deepened its critique, blurring the boundary between the identity of Takeuchi the artist and the worker in the suit. In this orchestrated plan, withholding resolution of the question of whether or not the artist and the laboring activist were one and the same, Takeuchi forced spectators to consider their relationship to the image of this pointing man, stating in an interview, How can you identify a person? How can you verify what people say? That is the theme for me. So, by turning this person into a motif, I will be able to see just how much people are willing to believe. The question is the point. (Corkill 2012) Takeuchi had a history of similarly politicized performance projects. In his 2008 “Portable Mind, Yokohama,” for example, he painted the portraits of faces depicted in the fugitive crim­ inals poster tacked up at the Kanagawa prefecture police station in Yokohama (his artwork cir­ culated as the painted portraits, as well as photographs of the process of painting them in public). This most-wanted poster is widely reproduced and distributed in public places, often including outdated images of people from decades into the past. As Takeuchi himself explains of the project: 275

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The portraits of wanted fugitives are omnipresent in various places around the town such as stations, public baths and police boxes or on the internet. They have been burnt into our mind as an image of death and fear such as murder, robbery and ter­ rorism. Burying such images in the cityscape has paralyzed our sense of fear though it strikes a note of warning. I think that, by building such an environment, we make our lives full of both anxiety and safety. (SNOW Contemporary 2012) Resembling the aestheticized noise of the United States’ color-coded terror alert system, the most-wanted posters function to structure daily life in a rhythm of uneasy reassurance, vaguely identifying a threat while assuring its management by authorities. In a case that seemed to prove Takeuchi’s point in “Portable Mind, Yokohama,” one of the top names on the most wanted list, Hirata Makoto, a former Aum Shinrikyo chief who had been a fugitive from the law for sixteen years, attempted to turn himself in on the evening of December 31, 2011. The ordeal took hours as Hirata had to walk to several police stations before finding an officer who didn’t think he was joking by impersonating the actual criminal whose likeness had been abstracted as a quotidian icon on most-wanted posters visible throughout the country. For Takeuchi, the incorporation of these images in the urban environment means, “we are raising the alarm but at the same time we are deadening our own sensibility to the danger” (Corkill 2012). At the time of this writing, a similar view to the one captured in the finger-pointing worker video (while now significantly elevated above strolling interaction) is still available via the electric utility holding company as the clean-up proceeds (Tepco n.d.). Both of these works by Takeuchi—“Portable Mind, Yokohama” and “Pointing at Fukuichi Live Cam”—refigure the act of pointing, either by fully aestheticizing the accusation of the wanted poster (“Portable Mind”), or by creating a networked circuit of surveillance distributing the finger-pointing worker’s gesture (“Pointing at Fukuichi Live Cam”). The juxtaposition of these two works by Takeuchi reveals their shared operation: that of conscription. Think of the US army recruitment poster’s straightforward statement and pointing gesture from “Uncle Sam,” “I want you.”2 The army recruitment poster makes it clear that this threat of war solicits a similarly militaristic response. Takeuchi pierces a similar state of suspended risk and social response in each of these works, media environments that solicit the vigilance of potential victims protecting themselves against a criminal attack (wanted posters) or nuclear catastrophe (surveillance video). In the aftermath of 311’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe, those working with documentary media have highlighted the crisis of visuality posed by the total threat of the nuclear and its specific character in the instance of Fukushima. In the case of Photohoku, the medium of photography can be seen as the non-site of a community art project, and the political potential of its negotiation of the analog and digital media circulation directly relevant to these stakes of representation. If one were to create a hypothetical diagram for Yoshikawa, Peterson, and their Photohoku collaborators modeled after that of Takeuchi’s finger-pointing worker, it might look somewhat similar. But the arrow pointing back through the screen would be initiated by Photohoku’s capture of their secondary digital image: it would originate from the eyes of the subject with their analog image held to their chest, or from their fingers gripping the edges of their analog image. Like the interruption of Tepco’s self-surveillance, the Photohoku project instigates a similar line of inquiry about access and the photographic archive. Together, the interruption of Tepco’s self-surveillance and the Photohoku project demonstrate the tensions between opacity and transparency in post-311 visual culture, and broader concerns of collectivity and atomization under neoliberalism, the threat of nuclear cata­ strophe, and environmental collapse. 276

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Notes 1 I have addressed the ways in which documentary films produced immediately following 311 approach the scale of the disaster and efforts toward reconstruction, as well as how this natural and human-made event inform our understanding of contemporary documentary in Anderson (2015). 2 I am indebted to Soyoung Yoon for this connection, as well as for hosting Takeuchi and me during a visit to her New School class in April 2018 with Fumiko Miyamoto of Japan Society, New York.

Works cited Anderson, J.N. 2015. “Cinema in Reconstruction: Japan’s Post-3.11 Documentary.” In A. Wright (ed.), Film on the Faultline, 215–231. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Batchen, G. 2012. “Lost & Found Project.” Online at http://lostandfound311.jp/en/essay/index.html [accessed April 19, 2019]. Corkill, E. 2012. “Are We Pointing at the Right Guy?” The Japan Times, March 8. Online at www.japan­ times.co.jp/culture/2012/03/08/arts/are-we-pointing-at-the-right-guy-2 [accessed April 19, 2019]. Cunningham, V. 2015. “Humans of New York and the Cavalier Consumption of Others.” The New Yorker. Online at www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/humans-of-new-york-and-the-cavalier­ consumption-of-others [accessed April 19, 2019]. DiNitto, R. 2014. “Narrating the Cultural Trauma of 3/11: The Debris of Post-Fukushima Literature and Film.” Japan Forum 26(3): 340–360. Domenach, É. 2015. Fukushima en cinéma. Voix du cinéma japonais/Fukushima in Film: Voices from the Japanese Cinema. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. Finger-Pointing Worker. 2011. About the Pointing a Finger toward Fukuichi Live Cam. Online at http:// pointatfuku1cam.nobody.jp/index.html [accessed April 19, 2019]. Klein, N. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada. Krauss, R. 1976. “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism.” October 1: 50–64. Hirano, K. 2014. “311: Documenting a Catastrophe as a National Experience.” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 18(3): 378–390. Nancy, J.L. 2015. After Fukushima: The Equivalence of Catastrophes. New York: Fordham University Press. Ono, A. 2012. “Lost and Found: Salvaging Memories.” PLANET Magazine, April 11. Online at www. planet-mag.com/2012/art/aiya-ono/lost-and-found [accessed April 19, 2019]. Photohoku. 2019a. Photohoku [Facebook]. Online at www.facebook.com/photohoku/info [accessed April 19, 2019]. Photohoku. 2019b. PHOTOHOKU: An Effort to Help Restart Family Photos and Photo Albums for Those Need. Online at http://photohoku.org [accessed April 19, 2019]. SNOW Contemporary. 2012. Kota Takeuchi/OPEN SECRET [press release]. February 20. Online at http://snowcontemporary.com/pdf/PR_201203_en.pdf [accessed December 1, 2019]. Steyerl, H. 2009. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux 10. Online at www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/ in-defense-of-the-poor-image/ [accessed April 19, 2019]. Steyerl, H. 2013. “Photography and Political Agency?” The Photographic Universe II Conference, New School, New York, April 11. Online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQ3UTWSmUc [accessed April 19, 2019]. Tepco. n.d. TEPCO: Nuclear Power Station Fukushima Live Camera (Video Pictures of Units 1 to 4 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station). Online at www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/f1-np/camera/index2-e.html [accessed April 19, 2019]. Wagner, A.M. 2000. “Performance, Video, and the Rhetoric of Presence.” October 91: 59–80. Yoshikawa, Y. and Peterson, B.S. 2013. Photohoku Presentation in Tokyo [PechaKucha Presentation]. March 27. Online at www.pechakucha.org/presentations/photohoku [accessed April 19, 2019]. Zippay. L (ed.) 1991. Electric Arts Intermix: Video. New York: Electronic Arts Intermix.

Further reading Allison, A. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Geilhorn, B. and Iwata-Weickgenannt, K. (eds) 2017. Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster. London: Routledge.

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Part IV

The object life of film

Site-specific approaches to Japanese cinema studies

In contrast to the preceding part, which explored Japanese cinema’s hybridity and ongoing reci­ procity within a wider visual culture ecosystem, the five chapters in our final part provide a fresh perspective on how Japanese cinema’s past—and the future of that past—is shaped by the attributes of analog film: its materiality as organic matter with a finite life cycle; its symbiotic relationship with technology (throughout the production, exhibition, and preservation contin­ uum); and the collective experience of film projection in theatrical or domestic settings. Recent scholarship highlighting the complexities involved in preserving analog film heritage has been a welcome outcome of cinema’s digital turn (see, e.g., Cherchi Usai [2019] and Negri [2016]). These chapters feature scholarship in new areas that reflect the changing contours of the broader discipline of Japanese cinema studies, further destabilizing a history of Japanese cinema delimited by classical films. By definition, the notion of a classical canon assumes the everlasting quality, relevance, and material presence of titles selected for the intangible values that they convey, such as their aesthetic and ideological expression, social and cultural significance, or even their evi­ dentiary value. The five authors in this part take the tangible, ephemeral, and transmutable nature of analog film as carrier material and the attendant challenges of preserving the communal “cinematic experience” as their starting points instead. By investigating the activities of collect­ ing, re-appropriating, preserving, and exhibiting a “Japanese cinema” more broadly defined, these chapters provide new possibilities for alternative historiographies complicated by founda­ tional issues that include provenance (e.g., how films migrate geographically or from one col­ lection or format to another) and what Paolo Cherchi Usai calls “the entire spectrum of material cinematic objects: prints, negatives, and technology” (Cherchi Usai forthcoming). By design, the chapters in this final part collectively bridge the long-standing and arbitrary divide between archive and academic work. By integrating an historical perspective of film archiving with case studies focusing on photochemical film processing and preservation, exhi­ bition, and specific cinematic objects and collections, this section foregrounds the complex network of people and places that implement and sustain film access and exhibition as film preservation’s ultimate objective. This perspective highlights the wide range of individuals (not just makers, distributors, consumers, or even academics and archivists, but also collectors, programmers, and photochemical film laboratory professionals) and places (collecting institu­ tions, exhibition venues, and laboratories) that actively shape the field of Japanese cinema studies today. 279

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There are other significant links between the individual chapters in this part that reinforce its cohesive thematic structure. Kanta Shibata’s Chapter 18 on the history of Osaka’s IMAGICA WEST Corp. film laboratory, Shota Ogawa’s Chapter 20 on Yasui Yoshio’s Kobe Planet Film Archive, and Joanne Bernardi’s Chapter 21 on the backstory of Ōta Yoneo’s Toy Film Museum in Kyoto address film preservation, exhibition, and access in the three metropolitan areas that comprise the Keihanshin region, Japan’s second most densely populated urban area after Tokyo. Four chapters (Ishihara, Hirano, Ogawa, Bernardi) focus on activities with formative roots in the 1970s, a decade that has yet to receive the comprehensive attention it deserves. All five chapters in this part reaffirm the transnational dimension of film heritage, challenging nationbased interpretive paradigms by drawing attention to the different cultural, social, and geo­ graphical contexts through which films travel (both during their commercial lifetimes and beyond, subject to conservation).1 Finally, all of the chapters in this part highlight innovative recuperative initiatives spearheaded by individuals or small, non-profit groups in the private sector that supplement the already well-documented but no less significant activities of the National Film Archive of Japan. Through specific restoration projects and creative approaches to distribution, programming, collecting, collaboration, and networking, these individuals and groups have taken on the task of ensuring the survival of Japanese cinema in the absence of systematic and comprehensive national policies. Film archivist and scholar Kae Ishihara makes precisely this point in the part’s first chapter, “A Historical Survey of Film Archiving in Japan.” Covering a period that includes the film librarianship movement before World War II, the emergence of institutional film collections (including a national collection) in the 1960s and 1970s, and subsequent developments leading up to the present, this chapter provides a useful foundation and context for the chapters that follow. Ishihara draws on her pioneering book, Nihon ni okeru firumu ākaibu katsudōshi (History of Film Archiving in Japan) (2018), to skillfully contextualize the background of film archiving in Japan within the broader development of audio-visual archiving work as a distinct professional field, with its own ethical, curatorial, and collection management standards and best practices. She similarly sheds light on Japan’s engagement with other larger historical events, from Japan’s role in motion picture film stock manufacturing in the first decades of the twentieth century to the establishment and activities of FIAF (the International Federation of Film Archives, founded in Paris in 1938), which became more actively invested in the welfare of cinema heritage in Asia in the early 2000s.2 Ishihara’s chapter focuses in particular on the contributions of the film pro­ ducer and curator Kawakita Kashiko, a key figure bridging film preservation advocacy initiatives in Japan and parallel movements in the international archival community. Kawakita Kashiko is perhaps best known outside Japan for her work promoting Japanese cinema abroad, but as Ishi­ hara’s research shows, her Japan Film Library Council (Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai, now the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute) also played a critical role in the “Film Preservation Cam­ paign” leading up to the opening of the National Film Center as part of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (in April 2018, the National Film Center became one of Japan’s six independently administered national art museums and was renamed the National Film Archive of Japan). The next chapter in this part, Kanta Shibata’s “Japanese Film History and the Challenges of IMAGICA WEST Corp.,” builds on Ishihara’s historical foundation by reconsidering her chronological time-frame from an entirely new perspective, the vantage point provided by the history of an independent commercial film processing laboratory. Both chapters focus on profes­ sional practices that are critical to how we understand cinema’s history and historiographical practice. Each chapter highlights this history’s fluidity and malleability in response to the ebb and flow of newly discovered material, recuperative restorations, and the new connections, 280

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reassessments, and re-evaluations they encourage. Just as Ishihara’s overview draws attention to the complexity and critical consequences of archive work,3 Shibata’s history of IMAGICA WEST and its forerunners underscores the exigencies of photochemical film as an organic object by providing important context for the processes involved in its manufacture, processing, and preservation. This material dimension of cinema’s history, entailing a shift of methodological focus from the image projected onscreen to the artifact hidden in the projection booth (a reel of film, the image carrier) is especially relevant today as we confront the need to protect photochemical film’s integrity as a three-dimensional object, while negotiating cinema’s increasing investment in digitization, digital restoration, and digital preservation processes.4 In this respect, Shibata’s Chapter 18 goes beyond detailing important historical background that is often overlooked or taken for granted to consider the future of analog film in a constructive framework. On the one hand, analog film has had a precarious past, subjected to disposal, recycling, destruction, and decay under adverse cultural, political, and environmental conditions. On the other hand, as Shibata argues, it has shown a remarkable tenacity by remaining a viable medium for well over 100 years. As Shibata points out, it is possible today to “handle new and old films in the same way precisely because motion picture film as a tangible medium has been perfected over its 120­ year history without any fundamental changes made to its basic composition.” Shibata persua­ sively argues that it is essential to sustain people and places that are knowledgeable about the medium’s materiality precisely for this reason. The next two chapters in this part emphasize the transnational dimension of film heritage with case studies that examine film exhibition and access at specific venues in the USA and Japan. In “A Case Study of Japanese Film Exhibition in North America: The Japan Society, New York,” former Japan Society film curator Kyoko Hirano recounts her experience (1986–2004) programming film screenings at the greater New York City region’s primary destination for Japanese culture devotees and followers of Japanese cinema. The Society was established in 1907 to facilitate a better understanding of Japanese culture in the USA, and to promote friendly relations between both countries; by the 1910s, it was organizing group tours to Japan. During this decade, it sponsored lectures on the country and culture, sometimes illus­ trated with magic lantern slides or motion pictures, at the Hotel Astor in Times Square. As Hirano points out, the Society formally held its first film screening in 1922, and later hosted US premières of the first Japanese theatrical releases to win awards at international film festivals in the 1950s. In 1954, the Society began distributing educational films and slides about Japan; in 1984, as evidence of the Society’s continued support for teaching about Japan through film, it published a comprehensive catalog of over 630 relevant documentary and theatrical films then available in the USA (Grilli 1984). In 1971, the Society moved to its current location in midtown Manhattan (the first building by a leading Japanese architect in New York City), where it initi­ ated a regular program of film screenings that continues to shape the profile of Japanese cinema and popular perceptions of Japan for US audiences. From the start, screenings regularly have been coupled with related lectures and events, attracting large crowds and the attention of influ­ ential cultural critics and scholars in the fields of Japanese studies and Asian cinema. Hirano’s Chapter 19 provides valuable insight into the complex cultural contexts and busi­ ness strategies behind promoting and disseminating Japanese cinema in North American during three decades that were consequential for cinema, for Japanese cinema studies, and for Japan– USA relations, from the mid-1980s to 2004. The range of titles subtitled in English that were available for theatrical and educational distribution on 35 mm and 16 mm film is especially illu­ minating. This period coincides with a dramatic shift in distribution models and modes of con­ sumption when tape media emerged as a dominant home theater format before it was eclipsed 281

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by DVD in the early 2000s, but Hirano’s account confirms that procuring subtitled versions of Japanese releases—whether classic or contemporary narrative feature films, documentaries, ani­ mation, or shorts—required skillful and creative programming, marketing, and promotion strat­ egies. In this respect, it is worth reiterating that the film screenings and related events that Hirano describes were often unique and memorable “happenings”—one-off chances to see a rarely screened classic or a current popular hit. In “Regional Film Archive in Transit: Yasui Yoshio and Kobe Planet Film Archive,” Shota Ogawa calls attention to the transnational reach and impact of Japan’s second largest film archive, the personal collection of film prints, film technology, books, and magazines amassed by cine-club organizer and film preservation advocate Yasui Yoshio. Today, Yasui’s Kobe Planet Film Archive is renowned as a major resource for researchers, cinephiles, and festival programmers. It comprises a collection of at least 10,000 books and magazines, 16,000 film prints of heterogeneous origins, and a venue for regularly programmed reparatory film screenings; however, its origins as a small collective library in Osaka over four decades ago were modest. Ogawa provides a detailed account of how this private entity, with its intrinsic ties to the Keihanshin (greater Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe) region, has evolved over the years in response to local factors and needs, from the collection’s genesis in the region’s vibrant cineclub culture during the 1960s and 1970s to its relocation from Osaka to Kobe in 2006. Ogawa goes beyond chronicling regional dynamics: he draws on regional film archive scholarship and discourse in order to demonstrate how such paradigms can ultimately obscure alternative perspectives. By contextualizing the archive’s relocation to Kobe—still in recovery mode after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake—within the broader spatial politics of the city’s reconstruction, Ogawa provides a fresh perspective on the protean “scale jumping” scope of Yasui’s archive. In the final chapter, “New Paths Toward Preserving Japanese Cinema: The Toy Film Museum Backstory,” Joanne Bernardi details the events that led to the founding of Ōta Yoneo’s Toy Film Museum in Kyoto in 2015 and the significance of its collection. Bernardi traces the museum’s roots back to Ōta’s college experiences in Kyoto (from the late 1960s to the early 1970s) and the emergence of film and media studies as an academic discipline. Ōta’s encounter, as a college student, with the screenwriter Yoda Yoshikata led to a position in 1972 at Osaka University of Arts, where Yoda headed the newly established Visual Concept Planning Depart­ ment. His formative relationships with Yoda and the cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo, another department colleague and mentor, led to a series of film restoration projects culminating with the large-scale Toy Film Project (2003–2011). This collaborative initiative, based at the university and sustained by a diverse network of regional constituents that included IMAGICA WEST Corp., Yasui Yoshio and other local collectors and researchers, resulted in the restor­ ation and digitization of 800 films, mostly 35 mm “toy films” on highly flammable cellulose nitrate film stock exhibiting varying forms of degradation. Under Ōta’s direction, the project revitalized local photochemical lab work and inspired the collaborative “Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop,” an annual event started in 2006. This chapter discusses Japan’s toy films, nontheatrical entertainment especially popular in the 1920s and 1930s, within a broad historical context and demonstrates how the project’s focus on this format as a distinct form of film culture creates new opportunities for researching nonthe­ atrical film production and consumption in Japan at that time. Brief highlights excerpted from popular theatrical jidaigeki (period films), many of them produced in Kyoto, were popular toy film subjects; today, such films often represent the only surviving traces of the original titles from which they were taken. As such, they can restore historical specificity to our under­ standing of this popular genre and challenge long-standing historiographical assumptions. The 282

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Toy Film Museum’s mission is multifaceted, as Bernardi’s chapter makes clear, but important objectives include ensuring continued access to digitized toy films and other small-gauge film restorations, promoting knowledge of film heritage through hands-on engagement with the museum’s artifacts (from pre-cinema optical toys to toy film and small-gauge projectors), and disseminating awareness of Kyoto’s distinct contributions to Japanese cinema. The chapters in this final part are intentionally ordered so that it, and by extension, this volume, ends with the co-editors’ contributions. Shota Ogawa’s Chapter 20 on Yasui Yoshio’s Kobe Planet Film Archive and Joanne Bernardi’s Chapter 21 on Ōta Yoneo’s Toy Film Museum bring the part’s theme full circle by referring back to Kae Ishihara’s observation in the part’s opening chapter that in the absence of formal Japanese government funding or systematic pol­ icies, private individuals and non-profit groups in Japan have taken on the task of preserving and promoting Japanese cinema. Both venues developed in response to unique regional dynamics (they share a geographical proximity in cultural hubs outside of Tokyo), but their activities have had far-reaching impact beyond geographical and cultural borders. Occasionally working as collaborators—and each working together with the National Film Archive of Japan—Yasui and Ōta have facilitated restorations that have drawn attention to unknown titles, artists, or genres. Their contributions in advancing preservation, exhibition, and access represent only a sample of the many restorative projects led by private sector individuals and groups that are generating new opportunities for researching Japanese cinema today.

Notes 1 For this expanded view of a film’s lifespan, see Cherchi Usai (forthcoming). 2 As a case in point, FIAF’s 58th International Congress was the first to be held in Asia, at the Korean Film Archive in Seoul in April 2002. This was followed by the 60th Congress at the Vietnam Film Institute in Hanoi (2004), the 63rd Congress at the National Film Center in Tokyo (2007), and the 68th Congress at the China Film Archive in Beijing (2012). The 2021 Congress is scheduled to take place at the Bangladesh Film Archive in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 3 For a definition of appraisal theory that underscores the significant consequences of the decisions that archivists make in the course of their work, see Kula (2002). As he points out, archivists identify and create value by attributing it to an object they select for acquisition (and/or preservation and conserva­ tion), but they also “destroy” value by taking it away through the act of de-accession. 4 The work of Edwards and Hart (2004), who argue for a methodological shift from a preoccupation with the image to the object that carries that image in the field of photography, provides useful paral­ lels for film studies. For a discussion of research toward developing technologies to protect the integ­ rity of photochemical film in digitization and digital restoration and preservation processes, see Flückiger et al. (forthcoming).

Works cited Cherchi Usai, P. 2019. Silent Cinema: A Guide to Study, Research and Curatorship, 3rd edn. London: Bloomsbury on behalf of the British Film Institute. Cherchi Usai, P. Forthcoming. “Film Provenance: A Framework for Analysis.” In J. Bernardi, P. Cherchi Usai, T. Williams, and J. Yumibe (eds), Provenance and Early Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer­ sity Press. Edwards, E. and Hart, J. 2004. Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images. London: Routledge. Flückiger, B. et al. Forthcoming. “Shattered Provenance in the Digitization of Early Film.” In J. Bernardi, P. Cherchi Usai, T. Williams, and J. Yumibe (eds), Provenance and Early Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Grilli, P. (ed.) 1984. Japan in Film: A Comprehensive Annotated Catalogue of Documentary and Theatrical Films on Japan Available in the United States. New York: Japan Society.

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The object life of film Ishihara, K. 2018. Nihon ni okeru firumu ākaibu katsudōshi (History of Film Archiving in Japan). Tokyo: Bigaku Shuppan. Kula, S. 2002. Appraising Moving Images: Assessing the Archival and Monetary Value of Film and Video Records. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Negri, S. 2016. “Simulating the Past: Digital Preservation of Moving Images and the ‘End of Cinema.’ ” Cinéma & Cie: International Film Studies Journal 16(26–27): 45–53.

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17

A HiStoricAl Survey of film

ArcHiving in JApAn

Kae Ishihara

The richness of Japanese cinema history is well recognized internationally, but the present state of film archiving in Japan is in a critical condition. First, the survival rate of domestic films is very low. As a parameter, as of 2015, Japan’s National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (hereafter NFC in this chapter, and now known as the National Film Archive of Japan, or NFAJ, since April 2018), held 6,728 titles (18.1 percent) out of the 37,233 Japanese feature films produced between 1910 and 2015 (Daibō 2017). Second, there is a serious lack of full-time staff members at Japan’s five public film archives: the National Film Archive of Japan (Kokuritsu Eiga Ākaibu, hereafter NFAJ), the Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library (Hiroshima-shi Eizō Bunka Raiburari), The Museum of Kyoto (Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan), the Kawasaki City Museum (Kawasaki-shi Shimin Myūjiamu), and the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive (Fukuoka-shi Sōgō Toshokan Firumu Ākaibu). Third, no laws or regulations like a mandatory legal deposit system for films exist in Japan to systematically safeguard the country’s film heritage. In addition, Japan’s overall cultural budget is the lowest when compared with six other countries (France, Korea, UK, Germany, USA, and China) and the proportion of funding devoted to culture from the national budget is the second lowest in comparison (Platform for Arts and Creativity 2016: 8–11). The allocation of funds for film preservation in Japan is therefore hardly sufficient. Since the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)’s annual congress was held in Tokyo in 2007, frequent symposia, seminars, and workshops on film preservation have taken place, and the latest discoveries, restoration workflows of specific film titles, and the current situation of related organizations are discussed. Ironically, because of the rapid shift to digital cinema around 2011, film preservation has received increased attention, and yet it seems people are not delving into the past to find the causes of these present-day challenges to Japan’s film heritage. This chapter provides an outline of the history of film archiving in Japan by focusing first on the Imperialist era before and during World War II, and subsequently, on the post-war period up until 1970, when NFC opened as part of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (hereafter MoMAT).1 I then examine the period from the 1970s onwards, with the ultimate goal of illustrating the importance of the roles that individuals, small groups, and the private sector play in safeguarding Japan’s cinema heritage. There was no comprehensive written history on this subject at the start of this research, so this chapter owes much to previous studies and 285

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publications such as MoMAT’s bulletin Gendai no me, NFC newsletters, annual reports of the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, corporate histories by film companies and laboratories, and documents maintained at the FIAF secretariat in Belgium.

Imperial Japan: an emerging film manufacturer and early film librarianship According to conventional narratives of film history, Kodak first manufactured a thin roll film in 1889, and William K.L. Dickson cut this film to a width of 35 mm with perforations along each edge (spaced four per frame) for Edison’s Kinetoscope. This became the universal standard format for motion picture film. The Lumière brothers also used 35 mm film (but with different perforations) for their Cinematograph. Japan imported these modern inventions from the West, and shortly thereafter, came the start of a domestic film culture and one of the most prolific national industries. As early as 1898, Polish cinematographer Bolesław Matuszewski published Une nouvelle source de l’histoire: Creation d’un dépot de cinématographie historique, in which he suggested the need for institutions like today’s film archives and advocated for film archiving as a profession. The earliest “film archives” (they were of various configurations and defined in different ways) were set up in Europe in the 1910s, and included the Den Danske Stats Arkiv for Films og Stemmer founded in Denmark in 1913, and the Nederlandsch Centraal Filmarchief (The Dutch Central Film Archive), established in 1919 (Ishihara 2014). In 1911, the oldest known Japanese movie magazines, Katsudō shashin kai (Moving Picture World) reported on the emerging “universal film museums” (bankoku firumu hakubutsukan) in Denmark and the Netherlands, and recommended the establishment of one in Japan too (Okajima 2016). It took fifty-nine more years to realize this. The fact that cinema was not Japan’s own invention is sometimes given as a reason for its irresponsibility toward saving films. In terms of raw materials, however, Asia made a sizeable contribution to early cinema. A few years after Taiwan came under Japanese rule (as the Republic of Formosa) in 1895, the Japanese government began monopolizing camphor production on the island’s plantations; within a decade, it held the largest market share of camphor (Saitō 2017: 127–135). On his visit to Japan in 1920, Kodak’s founder George Eastman praised the satis­ factory sales of Kodak products in Japan during his speech at a party hosted by Konishiya Rokubeiten (now Konica Minolta). He also made a point of acknowledging how much camphor Kodak was buying from Japan for the production of celluloid (Konishiroku Shashin Kōgyō 1973: 281). Attempts to manufacture motion picture film stock in Japan with only domestic raw mater­ ials began in the late 1920s. In 1933, the Shashin Kagaku Kenkyūjo used film stock manufac­ tured by Orientaru [oriental] Shashin Kōgyō for Kimura Sotoji’s film Ongaku kigeki horoyoi jinsei (Intoxicated Life), but its manufacture still depended on some imported raw materials (Orientaru Shashin Kōgyō Kabushiki Gaisha 1950).2 Founded as part of the government’s plan to establish a domestic photochemical film manufacturing industry, the Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (Fuji Shashin Kōgyō, now the Fujifilm Corporation) finally succeeded in manufacturing a 35 mm positive film stock that was a purely domestic product in 1936, and a negative 35 mm film stock in 1937 (Fuji Shashin Fuirumu 1984: 22–23). These products did not yet match Kodak’s level of quality, but it was a significant achievement for Japan to become one of the few countries manufacturing photochemical film. From that point on, Japan pursued the latest technological development, whether it was the transition to sound, color, or the development of a new base material for photochemical film. Eventually, during the rapid growth of the Japanese economy after World War II, Fujifilm became a major film manufacturer second only to Kodak. 286

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In the early history of film archives, such film collecting and lending institutions and/or repositories were sometimes referred to as film libraries. These institutions often dealt with non­ commercial films intended for use in schools or for social education at other venues. The subject matter of the films at such institutions encompassed art, industry, agriculture, religion, or health. These film libraries could be considered prototype film archives, although they lacked the facili­ ties or expertise to ensure long-term physical conservation of original material. In order to develop a network of these film libraries, the League of Nations set up the Inter­ national Educational Cinematographic Institute (IECI) in 1928. IECI had its headquarters in Rome, and was led by Luciano de Feo from Institute LUCE, a public film corporation that flourished under Italy’s fascist regime. There were some film libraries in Japan at the time. The leading example was the Daimai Film Library (Daimai Firumu Raiburarī), established in 1927 by the Osaka Mainichi Newspaper Company (Ōsaka Mainichi Shimbunsha, commonly referred to as “Daimai”), the predecessor of the Mainichi Newspaper Company (Mainichi Shimbunsha). Daimai’s sister company, the Tokyo Nichinichi (“Tonichi”) Newspaper (Tōkyō Nichinichi Shimbunsha) established its film library in the following year, in 1928. Daimai was a pioneer, creating its own film section in 1908, despite public criticism of the new media because of its low social status. Writing in 1932, Daimai president Motoyama Hikoichi noted the significance of three films that elevated the status of moving pictures: the government film promoting the National Census in 1920; film footage of Crown Prince (later Emperor) Hirohito’s trip to Europe in 1921; and breaking news footage of the disastrous Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923. By the 1930s, several branches of government such as the Ministry of Communications and the Navy had their own film libraries, but the Daimai Film Library was unique in terms of the scale of its operation. As of 1932, it (together with the Tonichi Film Library) held over 8,000 reels and the number of annual rentals, made primarily to member schools and factories nationwide, reached 150,000 (Ōsaka Mainichi Shimbun Katsudō Shashin­ han 1932). The presence of what is commonly known as “The Film Prayer” in the Tonichi-Daimai Film Library catalog indicates that among their librarians there was affection for film’s material­ ity. The original prayer was written in the USA by Andrew P. Hollis in the 1920s, and it is well known (with some variations) among film archivists as it was often found with old circulation prints (Mackenzie 2014: 523–524). Most versions of the prayer open with the first sentences, “I am celluloid, not steel. O God of the machine, have mercy,” and end with, “misuse me and I disappoint thousands; cherish me and I delight and instruct the world.” The prayer frequently appears throughout the historiography of film preservation, for example, at the beginning of the documentary Keepers of the Frame (Mount Pilot Productions, 1999), in the appendix of Paolo Cherchi Usai’s Silent Cinema: An Introduction (2000), and more recently, read by Keanu Reeves in The Film Prayer, a short poetic film made by the Toronto International Film Festival. Inada Tatsuo was one of the Daimai staff members who recognized the importance of film archiving (Inada 1935). Inada left a position in the Ministry of Education in 1927 and entered the Daimai Film Library in the following year. From then, up until the 1960s, he devoted himself to promoting the educational use of audio-visual materials. His archival theory is exem­ plified by his collection policy, which focused on accessibility and modeled a three-step process for starting up a film library: a touring program of screenings while traveling with both equip­ ment and films (junkai jōei); bringing in films to screen at a venue with installed equipment (shutchō jōei); and film rental (kashidashi). Inada acknowledged the lack of a preservation plan at his workplace. As if to compensate for this, he was responsible for having two articles from the IECI journal translated in 1932 that introduce the state of film archiving in Germany: “The Problem of Cinematographic Archives” by Hans Curlis, and “Cinematographic Archives of the 287

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City of Berlin” by Walter Günther. This evinces his desire to introduce ideas from overseas as new concepts with the potential to improve the situation in Japan. We can imagine that the transformation from film library to film archive would be the fourth phase to be added to his three-step model. Unfortunately, after the Pacific War broke out in 1941, the Daimai Film Library practically disappeared when it was absorbed by a public foundation for educational films, The Dai Nippon Educational Film Foundation (Zaidan Hōjin Dai Nippon Eiga Kyōikukai) (Mainichi Shimbunsha 1972: 572–575). The Japanese diplomat Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933) was one of the original IECI Board Members. Nitobe was the former Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations, where he was responsible for creating the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (the spir­ itual forebear of UNESCO, founded in 1946). It is significant that even after Japan’s infamous withdrawal from the League in 1931, it remained part of IECI (Nitobe’s successor at IECI was Yoshida Shigeru, ambassador to Italy at the time, and prime minister of Japan in the post-war era). Nitobe’s role as an adviser to Daimai is also worth noting, even though this was probably only one of the many honorary posts he held. In IECI’s monthly journal, the Daimai Film Library introduced itself as a representative film library in Japan, even proposing to host an annual IECI congress (Mizuno 1931). The journal covers information from quite a range of countries and regions, but the annual congress was held exclusively in European cities. Set up in 1933, the British Film Institute (BFI) in London was represented at IECI’s 1934 congress, just one year before its internal National Film Library (now the BFI National Archive) was established; however, BFI’s National Film Library would then distance itself from IECI because of the latter’s fascist influence (Nowell-Smith 2012: 23–24). In New York, in 1935, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s Film Library (later its Film Department) was also in the process of being set up, and it planned to join IECI (Abbott and Barry 1995 [1935]) in the near future, but IECI dissolved following Italy’s departure from the League of Nations in 1937. Then, in 1938, as a separate initiative, FIAF—the most prestigious international organization in film archiving to this day—was founded in Paris, with four member institutions; BFI, MoMA, the Reichsfilmarchiv (Germany’s first national film archive, in Berlin), and the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. The late 1930s marked a point of divergence between the film library activities in Japan (its nascent film archiving movement) and broader international developments. The best way to highlight this divergence is by comparing two events in 1939: the passing of the Film Law (Eigahō) in Japan (which secured government control over the film industry and strict censor­ ship laws), and the first annual FIAF congress in New York. In Japan, the Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai (Dainihon Film Association), a quasi-public film institu­ tion, was founded in 1935 and mainly served to promote the Film Law before and after its enforcement in 1939 (Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai 1935). The two pillars of the Film Law were the Home Ministry, which controlled censorship, and the Ministry of Education, which promoted the production of desirable films. Ever since the French film, Zigomar (dir. Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1911) opened in Japan in 1911 and caused a sensation, film censorship in Japan had gradu­ ally increased, causing the suppression of certain titles and exerting a strong influence on film production by curtailing content.3 One by-product of this censorship was that it generated now precious records of lost or damaged films made between 1925 and 1944.4 As of 1911, rules and guidelines were put in place for recommended subjects for films and standards for defining what was considered to be appropriate or excellent films. Nitobe was chosen as one of the twentyfive committee members for this selection process (Nakata 1928: 27–50). While it is difficult to justify the Film Law, we cannot ignore its productive dimension. Article 15, for instance, promoted Bunka eiga (“culture film,” translated from kulturfilm, formerly 288

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kyōiku eiga, or “educational film”) and Article 11 called for the registration of Japanese films for long-term preservation. In 1941, Fuwa Suketoshi, one of the drafters of the Film Law, noted in the book Eigahō kaisetsu (An Explanation of the Film Law) that the first registered film was Tasaka Tomotaka’s Tsuchi to heitai (Mud and Soldiers, 1939) (Fuwa 1941: 59–60). Tasaka made some restrained propaganda films in the 1930s, such as his previous Gonin no sekkōhei (Five Scouts, 1938), which was awarded the Italian Popular Culture Ministry Award at the sixth Venice International Film Festival. Fuwa also spelled out the need for a national institution for film preservation. This fact is important in the history of film archiving but not well known today; there is no mention of Mud and Soldiers having been registered for preservation in Nikkatsu’s corporate history. In 1946, one wartime censor, Toba Yukinobu (who later became NFC’s second director in the 1970s and was known as a film collector and an amateur benshi film nar­ rator or lecturer) wrote that no film was registered under the Film Law (Toba 1946), so it is possible that Article 11 was not enforced toward the end of the war. Some ambiguity remains about the actual practices surrounding the registration and preservation clause. In July 1939, in between the Film Law’s proclamation in April and its enforcement in October, FIAF’s first congress was held in New York. According to the records kept at the FIAF archives, twenty delegates from twelve countries attended. The future Minister of Educa­ tion Maeda Tamon was one of two Japanese included in the group of delegates, even though Japan was already isolated from the international community because of its invasion of China. In 1934, an incorporated foundation called the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai) had been established with government funding as an instrument of public diplomacy.5 The Society opened The Japan Institute (Nihon Bunka Kaikan) at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in November 1938. As its head, Maeda tried to follow his mentor Nitobe’s precept to foster a bridge across the Pacific, but after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he was sent to an internment camp (Shibasaki 1999: 139–144). There were some efforts to export Japanese films during the 1930s, for example, Kawakita Nagamasa, head of the distribution company Towa (now Toho-Towa),6 attempted to do so on at least three occasions with the omnibus Nippon (aka Liebe und Leidenschaft in Japan, 1932), the German-Japanese production Die tochter des samurai (The Daughter of the Samurai, aka Atarashiki tsuchi, dir. Arnold Fanck and Itami Mansaku, 1937), and Tōyō heiwa no michi (The Road to Peace in the Orient, dir. Suzuki Shigeyoshi, 1938), starring Chinese actors. All of these were commer­ cial failures; the latter two were used as political propaganda. Towa was commercially successful in bringing many European films to Japan, and the company closed a deal at the sixth Venice International Film Festival for Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938). This would be Kawakita Nagamasa’s last visit to Europe until after World War II. In 1939, he became a vice-president of the Chūka Den’ei film studio in Shanghai. Fuwa Suketoshi also moved to Chūka Den’ei in 1943 to take part in the foundation of their film school headed by film director Ushihara Kiyo­ hiko (1897–1985), but this project was never realized. There was no national film school, film studio, or film archive in pre-war Japan, in contrast to Imperial Japan’s allies Germany and Italy. There was some awareness of the concept of film preservation gaining traction overseas, but nothing materialized in Japan before the war ended. Towa’s involvement in wartime politics was conspicuous, and Nagamasa was temporarily purged from public office between 1947 and 1950 (Kawakita 1988: 39). It is possible that for Nagamasa, a sense of bitterness combined with his unfulfilled ambitions to export Japanese films contributed to his support for the film archiv­ ing movement in the post-war era. In 1943, Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai’s monthly magazine published a column written by Urushi­ yama Mitsuko in which she dreamed of visiting the art gallery in Ueno Park (now the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum), to find that classic films could be stored there just like classic 289

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artworks (Urushiyama 1943). It was as if she were predicting a future in which a Japanese national film archive would become part of a museum of art.

The post-war period from the occupation to the 1970s: Kawakita Kashiko and the “Film Preservation Campaign” After briefly serving as the head of the short-lived Eiga Kōsha, a film corporation that was founded shortly before Japan’s defeat in 1945, film director Ikeda Yoshinobu (1892–1973) became the first director of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (Nihon Eiga Seisakusha Renmei, commonly known as Eiren). Eiren kept films and related materials from Eiga Kōsha to prevent them from being further scattered during the chaotic period of the post­ war American-led Allied Occupation. Ikeda expected the National Diet Library (Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan), founded in 1948, to be the depository of Japanese film heritage (Sazaki 2012). The “National Diet Library Act” (Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan Hō, 1948) defines legal deposit from a cultural preservation point of view and motion picture film is included as one of its targets. Film was temporarily exempted through a supplementary provision, however, and this continues to the present day. The explanation for this exemption by the first head of the National Diet Library in the parliamentary proceedings is unconvincing but the decision was rushed through without much attention. The probable reasons were first, the cost under the fair trade-off system (daishōkin), in which the library pays about half the retail price of deposited publications, and second, fear of nitrate film’s flammability (Haruyama et al. 1996). Kodak switched from nitrate-based film to cellulose acetate film stock (also known as “safety film”) in 1951 but Fujifilm did not completely discontinue manufacturing nitrate film until May 1958 (Fuji Shashin Fuirumu 1984: 72–73). The National Diet Library was housed at that time in the Akasaka Palace (originally built as a palace for the Crown Prince, and now a State Guesthouse), and it accepted only non-film materials. Fortunately for Ikeda, the vice-president of the National Diet Library was Nakai Masakazu, a well-regarded aesthete and amateur filmmaker himself (for more on Nakai, see Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano’s Chapter 5 in this volume). Ikeda and Nakai agreed in their discussions to set up a separate room for archiving film material in the future National Diet Library building (Ikeda et al. 1959). For the time being, Ikeda would be allowed to transfer non-film material to the National Diet Library’s “special collection room II,” along with maps, braille, and children’s books (Banba 2009: 368). Nakai died suddenly from cancer in May 1952, however, and their plan did not come to pass. After losing his key ally at the National Diet Library, Ikeda shifted his attention to MoMAT, which was due to open in December 1952. Ikeda campaigned for MoMAT to be housed in the former Nikkatsu headquarters, which was equipped with an eighty-seat film projection room (Nihon Eiga Rengōkai 1952). MoMAT used MoMA in New York as an ideal model, and it opened with a film library as part of its broad definition of modern art. The MoMAT Film Library started in 1952 with less than ten Japanese films, including such titles as Rojō no reikon (Souls on the Road, dir. Murata Minoru, 1921), Kantsubaki (Winter Camellia, dir. Hatanaka Ryōha, 1921), Umarete wa mita keredo (I was Born, But, … dir. Ozu Yasujirō, 1932), Tsuma yo bara no yō ni (Wife! Be Like a Rose!, dir. Naruse Mikio, 1935), and Ninjō kami fūsen (Humanity and Paper Balloons, dir. Yamanaka Sadao, 1937). Saitō Munetake, who had become involved in filmmaking at the Ministry of Education in the 1930s, was the only film specialist. The govern­ ment did not have a strong commitment to setting up a national film archive, but Ikeda’s contri­ bution was significant, even though very few of the silent films that he himself directed survived, as was the case for those featuring his wife, the immensely popular Kurishima Sumiko, who starred in over 100 silent films. 290

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In 1952, the same year that MoMAT’s film library section was set up, an article by BFI’s National Film Library head Ernest Lindgren that included his strict collection management policy was translated into Japanese (Lindgren 1952). This was even before BFI renamed the film library the National Film Archive (in 1955), in order to emphasize its focus on preservation. An anonymous reviewer of Lindgren’s translated article wrote enviously of film fans in London, who could see such masterpieces as Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), Pare Lorentz’s The River (1937), and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) on 16 mm prints (Eiga Bunka Kenkyūkai 1952). According to correspondence kept at the FIAF archives, Henri Langlois (co-founder of the Cinématèque Française and FIAF), whose personality is often described as the opposite of Lindgren’s, was already contacting people at MoMAT before its official opening to welcome them to FIAF membership. He even proposed co-organizing film festivals. Accord­ ing to Eiren’s bulletin, in 1952, he requested three Japanese silent films, including Jasei no in (The Lust of the White Serpent, dir. Thomas [Kisaburō] Kurihara, 1921), Dokuro no mai (Dance of the Skull, dir. Tanaka Eizō, 1923), and Kurutta ippeiji (Page of Madness, dir. Kinugasa Teinosuke, 1926), unaware that these three films were thought to be lost at the time. Only Page of Madness was later discovered in the 1970s in the director’s storage house, when he went in to look for a magazine he published long before at the request of Kawakita Kashiko7 (1908–1993), vicepresident of the aforementioned Towa film distribution company. Kashiko was the key player in connecting Japan’s film preservation initiatives to the move­ ment in the West. She moved to a luxury flat in London in 1955 and, on the recommendation of Langlois, attended the 1956 FIAF congress held in Dubrovnik (former Yugoslavia) together with Ushihara Kiyohiko, who was already a MoMAT Film Library committee member. Accord­ ing to Ushihara, MoMAT became authorized as a member of FIAF at this congress (Ushihara 1956), which they considered one of their most important achievements (Shimizu 1962; Saitō 1968). Joining an international organization made them think seriously about creating a national film archive (Takiguchi 1961). The most surprising occurrence at the congress, however, was a proposal made by Wang Hui, who represented the planning committee for the China Film Archive (two years before its official opening in Beijing). After Ushihara gave a presentation on the dire survival rate of Japanese films, Wang proposed repatriating 1,400 Japanese films located in China (Ushihara 1956). Ushihara continued his efforts to bring this to fruition, but he was not successful because of the political tension between China and Japan (Ushihara 1967). Japanese film was in demand after Kurosawa Akira’s Rashōmon (Rashomon, 1950) won the his­ toric Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice International Film Festival. This finally allowed Towa to promote Japanese films overseas and revive the company’s idealistic objective to realize mutual understanding and, ultimately, world peace by cultural exchange, especially through film. In autumn 1957, BFI’s National Film Theatre opened on London’s South Bank. Kumonosujō (Throne of Blood, 1957), Kurosawa’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was shown at the opening gala, with Queen Elizabeth II present. This was Kurosawa’s first trip overseas. Kashiko negotiated with film companies and prepared fifteen prints of Japanese films. In New York, MoMA also featured Japanese films, which Eiren supported by sending over Japanese movie stars to attend (Ikeda 1958). In Kashiko’s essays and columns, other than stories about her glamorous encounters with celeb­ rities, she started writing about the importance of film preservation, especially saving original negatives and nitrate films, which were not well taken care of in Japan. Although Kashiko joined FIAF’s Executive Committee (she served as vice-president with Lindgren in 1960), she distanced herself from FIAF after Henri Langlois left in 1959 because of conflicts with other members. In 1964, according to the minutes of the annual FIAF congress, the MoMAT Film Library was offi­ cially dismissed from membership because of unpaid membership fees. 291

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When Kashiko moved back to Japan, her fight advocating for film preservation began right away. In 1960, she left Towa and set up a non-profit group unassociated with MoMAT, the Japan Film Library Council (Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai, now the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute). Her campaign to realize a national film archive was bolstered by the demands of film fans (Tōdai Eiga Kenkyūkai 1960) and the Film Library Council added executives from major film studios and related organizations to its list of members. The list included Nagata Masaichi (head of Daiei) as Chair, and Shochiku director Ozu Yasujirō’s name appears as a member of the Board of Trustees (after his death in 1963, director Gosho Heinosuke took his place). Ikeda Yoshinobu and Kashiko were Standing Directors, and former Towa executive and film critic and historian Shimizu Akira became Secretary-General (Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai 1964). From then on, through the 1970s, the Japan Film Library Council realized countless achieve­ ments. Nearly ten years after it was founded, the MoMAT Film Library still had only twentyfour Japanese films and an annual acquisitions budget of slightly more than US$8,000 (Saitō 1961). Nevertheless, the Film Library Council succeeded in helping them hold a JapaneseFrench film festival beginning in 1962. A total of 155 French films were screened at MoMAT’s renovated theater (the capacity increased to 200 seats). The Film Library Council then negoti­ ated with film companies to prepare projection prints of 133 Japanese films to send to the Ciné­ matèque Française for a “Masterpieces of Japanese Cinema” retrospective in 1963. When these films were sent back to Japan, they entered MoMAT’s collection (Saitō 1970). In order to con­ tinue introducing classic foreign films to Japan, and Japanese films overseas, the Film Library Council also fielded requests from researchers visiting Japan (including film historian Georges Sadoul in 1964), who were happy to see Japanese classics but so surprised by the small scale of the Film Library that they advised the government to increase MoMAT’s budget (Sadoul 1964). The Film Library Council published a journal annually from 1966 to 1992, introducing over thirty foreign film archives. It also sponsored the translation of Herbert Volkmann’s technical manual, The Preservation of Film (FIAF 1963) into Japanese in 1975, even though few people were paying attention to that area of study. Serving as a window to Japan for other film archives overseas, the Film Library Council practically took on the role of a national film archive. It was sometimes mistaken for the MoMAT Film Library, and complicated inquiries were often addressed directly to Kashiko (Shimizu 1968). Thanks to her international presence, some lost Japanese films were returned as gifts or exchanges; a major historic repatriation came about in 1967, comprising over 1,400 nitrate films from the Library of Congress, including an incomplete version of Tasaka Tomo­ taka’s aforementioned wartime film, Mud and Soldiers. This repatriation, which was promoted by the Film Library Council, had tremendous impact, not only in terms of volume but also in creating collaborative relationships with film laboratories and providing an opportunity to improve the range of skills necessary for a film archive. This repatriation took place before many other confiscated artifacts, such as wartime paintings, were returned to MoMAT, and before books and documents were returned to the National Diet Library in the 1970s. The Film Library Council’s multiple successes forced people to recognize the need for a national film archive. When it was decided to move MoMAT to expanded premises (the move took place in 1969), the Ishibashi Foundation offered to donate the construction cost, so the government did not have to sell the land that the old building occupied (Fukuma 1994: 272–301).8 The Film Library Council took this opportunity to propose setting up NFC separately. This was a big step forward, but NFC was still not independent from MoMAT, which the Film Library Council had stipulated (Shimizu 1988), and Hata Akio, who worked at NFC in the early years of its 292

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operation, wrote that the lack of manpower and the budget were highly unsatisfactory (Hata 1970). At the party celebrating NFC’s opening in 1970, Daiei head Nagata Masaichi made a speech expressing gratitude for Kashiko’s contribution to fostering film preservation (Kon 1970), but that was a year before Daiei itself went bankrupt. In 1971, Japan’s oldest major film studio, Nikkatsu, decided to focus on the production of pornographic films (known as Nikkatsu Roman Porno) in order to stay solvent. At this point in time, the Japanese film industry in general fell on financially difficult times as television’s popularity continued to rise. This was the back­ ground for NFC’s launch. It is important to remember that Kyoto prefecture, where many film studios were built for the production of period dramas (jidaigeki), initiated a film library project in 1970. Commis­ sioned by the prefecture, the Film Library Council’s Yamada Kazuo submitted an interim report on the possibilities of setting up a film archive in Kyoto to be called the Kyōto-fu Eizō Kaikan (Kyoto Prefecture Image Arts Hall). Yamada emphasized the importance of geographically dividing Japanese film heritage between Tokyo and Kyoto in order to safeguard against natural disasters (Yamada 1971). According to the floor plan by Ema Michio, the major proponent of the film library, the proposed facility had a broader scope than MoMAT. It included film labo­ ratory facilities and focused on training film archivists. Ema also put a great deal of effort into building up the collection. Unfortunately, the plan was abandoned because of a change in the prefectural administration and funding problems (Takizawa 1997). Nevertheless, this project formed the basis of the film collection of The Museum of Kyoto, established in 1988. Today, the western region of Japan is very active in the film archiving field.

From the 1980s to the present: Japanese films as cultural heritage The Japan Film Library Council’s role in the film preservation movement did not end after NFC’s foundation. Kashiko had worried about a major earthquake hitting the Tokyo area someday, based on her own experience of the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923; for this reason, she wanted a state-of-the-art film storage facility in the suburbs (Kawakita 1973). In collabora­ tion with other groups, the Film Library Council proposed this to the government in 1972, and in 1975, it was finally decided to build such a facility in Sagamihara, a suburb to the west of Tokyo. On Kashiko’s recommendation, Martin Scorsese became the first foreign film director to have a major retrospective as part of NFC’s program of screenings. Scorsese visited in 1981 and gave a lecture over five hours long on color fading (Okajima 1981), transcribed by Okajima Hisashi, a former president of FIAF, former director of NFC, and now the founding General Director of the National Film Archive of Japan. Scorsese recommended the film vault be kept cool and dry, but at that time, NFC’s collection was not yet stored in such ideal conditions. A major tragedy occurred on September 3, 1984, when a fire broke out at NFC and destroyed about 300 foreign titles, including those that Scorsese had just donated. Eventually, it was pos­ sible to acquire replacements for most of these titles, thanks to a fundraising campaign by Kashiko (Shimada 1986), but the incident made the government’s serious lack of financial support for cultural institutions glaringly apparent (Togawa 1984). That same year, Okajima went to study the film archiving practices in place at BFI and MoMA, and this experience provided a founda­ tion for implementing new practices and policies at NFC in the 1990s. When Kashiko died in 1993, more than fifty years after Japanese delegates attended the first FIAF Congress in New York, NFC finally became a full member of FIAF. In a sense, one could say this marked the real start of archival film practice in Japan. The year 1995 was doubly special as it celebrated the centenary of cinema, as well as the opening of the new National Film Center building. 293

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In 1994, a partial print of Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka (What Made Her Do It? dir. Suzuki Shigeyoshi, 1930) was discovered at the Gosfilmfond film archive in Moscow by a descendant of the founder of Teikoku Kinema, where the film had been made (for background on the restoration of this film, see Joanne Bernardi’s Chapter 21 in this volume). This discovery stimu­ lated the repatriation of about 350 titles from Gosfilmfond (Saiki 2001). The style of repatriation varies, and in this case, NFC received only safety copies, not original nitrate prints, because this was in accordance with Gosfilmfond’s policy. The original nitrate film prints that had been repatriated from the Library of Congress in the 1960s were not adequately stored after being returned to Japan. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Education had an idea for building a nitrate film vault in Inagi City, a suburb of Tokyo, on the site of a wartime explosives warehouse, but plans never materialized. In 2000, NFC added a vault in Sagamihara for films with vinegar syndrome after Towa donated deteriorated acetate copies (Saiki 2000), but a vault for storing nitrate film prints (which have unique conservation needs because of nitrate’s flammability) was not added until 2014.9 This vault has a capacity of a little over 1,000 cans (Tochigi 2014); the rest of the nitrate collection is separately kept in private storage. Fukuma Toshinori, NFC’s first director, admitted regret for having thrown away original nitrate films after making safety film copies.10 Despite lacking adequate storage facilities for nitrate film, however, NFC at least tried to keep the original nitrate prints of tinted, toned, or hand colored silent films (Fukuma 2011: 245–256). Saiki Tomonori, a former chief curator of NFC, recalls that it stopped disposing of nitrate films in the 1990s, when they became aware of FIAF’s international standard for nitrate preservation. Saiki also points out that the discovery of Itō Daisuke’s masterpiece Chūji tabi nikki (A Diary of Chuji’s Travels, 1927) brought about a fundamental change in NFC’s preservation policy. The nitrate print was discovered by Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library, reconstructed by NFC with supplementary reference from The Museum of Kyoto, and restored by Ikueisha, a Tokyo film laboratory, in 1992. Its screening unexpectedly attracted a great deal of attention (Saiki 1996b). From this point on, proper documentation of the restoration work­ flow for preservation projects became standard procedure. Former Ikueisha film technician, Imada Choichi, recalls that the film of the Crown Prince’s 1921 trip to Europe that was dis­ covered at The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd. was the very first film “restoration” project in which he was involved, in 1971 (Film Preservation Society 2003), and Ikueisha played an important role in preservation activities until other large-scale domestic laboratories started up their own archival services later in the 2000s. Despite Itō’s adage that films expire within a week (Saiki 1996a), his films that are pre­ sumed lost have occasionally turned up, as if to remind us of the importance of film preserva­ tion.11 Their rediscovery highlights two aspects of film preservation today. First, since it is rare to find negatives or nitrate originals of lost films, we cannot discount the importance of incomplete versions and small-gauge film versions sold for home use. Itō’s Zanjin zanba ken (Man-Killing, Horse-Slashing Sword, aka Sword that Slashes Human and Horse, 1929), for example, was discovered in a donated 9.5 mm collection at NFC, and in 2003, it became NFC’s first digitally restored film. Second, as the example of A Diary of Chuji’s Travels demonstrates, regional film archives are indispensable partners in saving films. Another Itō film, Oatsurae Jirōkichi kōshi (Jirokichi the Rat, 1931) was found in Ema Michio’s film library in Kyoto. In addition to the aforementioned Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library (founded in 1982) and The Museum of Kyoto (1988), the other two regional public film archives are the Kawasaki City Museum (1988) and the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive, which opened as part of the Fukuoka City Public Library in 1996 (the film archive has been an affiliate of FIAF since 2004). These four public film archives are equipped with 294

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Figure 17.1

Imada Choichi at Ikueisha.

Source: Photograph courtesy of Kae Ishihara, Film Preservation Society.

climate-controlled film vaults and theaters with film projection capability (Film Preservation Society 2014). In addition, Kobe Planet Film Archive has a collection of about 15,000 films. Although it does not have climate-controlled vaults, this is the second biggest collection after the National Film Archive of Japan (Shota T. Ogawa’s Chapter 20 in this volume focuses on this collection). There are also much smaller community-based groups involved in film preservation in some capacity all over the country. According to research by MoMAT, there are at least fifty non-film collections in Japanese memory institutions (Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan 2016). In 2014, the Documentary Film Preservation Center (Kiroku Eiga Hozon Sentā) conducted funda­ mental research on film collections nationwide, and confirmed about 60,000 films stored at 481 institutions of various sizes and backgrounds other than public film archives and public audio­ visual libraries (Kiroku Eiga Hozon Sentā 2016). Without any sponsorship or public funding, the annual international Home Movie Day, held on the third Saturday of October in celebra­ tion of small gauges and amateur footage, has spread to nearly twenty sites in Japan. At the same time, individuals such as Matsumoto Atsushi, who is a member of NPO remo, a cultural NPO based in Osaka, contributed to saving home movies through micro projects all over Japan. Prob­ ably the best-known digital regional film archiving is being accomplished by Niigata University. Young benshi performers are contributing to film preservation by saving long lost silent films often discovered through internet auctions, and at a time when so many 35 mm film projectors are discarded, Tokyo cinema owner Katō Tadashi is storing over 160 of them at his warehouse, 295

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maintaining them voluntarily (Chiura 2016). These complementary activities reveal the extent of a grassroots movement in Japanese film archiving. Since the 2007 FIAF Tokyo congress, more people from Japan have been attending the South East Asia–Pacific Audiovisual Archives Association (SEAPAVAA) or Association of Moving Image Archives (AMIA) conferences, which are professional associations belonging to UNESCO’s Co-Ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives (CCAAA), and other related international events. Sometimes these conference attendees are unaffiliated individuals studying film preservation at their own expense. In Japan, as a result of the digital shift, Fujifilm made the decision in 2012 to discontinue the manufacture of all motion picture film products, with the exception of archival film stock, leading to a loss in jobs related to photochemical film produc­ tion, processing, and preservation (Fujifilm 2012). Japan is not the only country to experience such a loss in the number of film laboratories, theaters equipped with analog projectors, skilled technicians, and projectionists. Under such circumstances, more people have become aware of the importance of film archiving and preservation. Raising awareness that film is everyone’s cultural heritage is more important than ever in this digital era. UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage was set up to celebrate the twentyfifth year since the “Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images” was adopted on October 27, 1980. Many audio-visual records, including films, have been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927, Germany), the MGM musical The Wizard of Oz (1939, dir. Victor Fleming, USA), the World War I documentary The Battle of the Somme (1916, dir. Geoffrey Malins, UK), films by the Lumière brothers from France, and newsreel collections from Italy’s LUCE archives (UNESCO 2015). Which Japanese films could be nominated? Three Japanese films have been registered by the Japanese government as Important Cultural Properties (jūyō bunkazai) since 2009: the oldest surviving footage in Japanese cinema, Momijigari (Maple Viewing, 1899); the Crown Prince’s visit to see movie star Onoe Matsunosuke on loca­ tion in Shigeki Nankō ketsubetsu (Historical Drama: Farewell of Nanko, aka The Farewell Scenes of Kusunoki Masashige and his Son, Taishō Katsuei [Taikatsu], 1920–1928); and the documentary record Kobayashi Tomijirō sōgi (The Funeral of Kobayashi Tomijiro, Yoshizawa Shōten, 1910). Their total running time is less than 30 minutes (projected at 16 frames per second), and they are all silent, black and white documentary footage from the nitrate era shot in the Tokyo area and stored at NFC. These three titles motivated the government to allow NFC to build the nitrate storage vault at the Sagamihara facility for its nitrate film collection; however, a wider variety of Japanese films deserve special care as well as national distinction. In comparison, the US National Film Registry lists over 750 titles from all eras, modes, and genres of filmmaking. There are examples of special recognition for Japanese film culture at a local level. In 2009, Osaka registered a 16 mm film promoting sightseeing in the city. Dai Ōsaka kankō (A Tour of Greater Osaka, 1937), as a cultural property of Osaka, and in 2013, Elmo’s first domestic 16 mm film projector was the sixtieth item registered as Mechanical Engineering Heritage (kikai isan) by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (Nihon Kikai Gakkai). Some old cinema build­ ings have been registered as cultural properties, such as the Takada Sekai-kan, a movie theater established in 1911 in Jōetsu city, Niigata prefecture. The maintenance and management of such sites often heavily rely on volunteer efforts and crowd funding. In this way, many projects com­ pensate for the lack of government initiative, but they constantly require assistance. Researchers in the field of film studies are the core users of the collections, whether held by film archives or other entities, so their involvement in film preservation activities is needed to improve accessi­ bility. The empowerment of the film archiving community is essential to the survival of future cinema culture. 296

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Conclusion Historically, film preservation and archiving in Japan has not been guided by strong national policy. Rather, the field has advanced gradually through the efforts of individuals or members of the private sector who have realized the seriousness of the situation. The survival rate of Jap­ anese film could be considered a miracle, surviving wartime conditions, the post-war Occupa­ tion, no legal deposit system and lack of government funding, the film industry’s financial difficulties, and the recent rapid digital shift. Despite such challenges, there have always been individuals working to save films. The legacy of their efforts is a film heritage of incalculable value, represented by such collections as the National Film Archive of Japan (approximately 80,000 films), the Kobe Planet Film Archive, and many more. As this study has shown, Kawakita Kashiko and her Japan Film Library Council were key actors in the history of film preservation in Japan. Kashiko’s contribution to film archiving in particular cannot be overstated. Today, Japan still has no legal deposit process, and no guarantee exists that born digital cinema will be systematically saved. In order to sustain and pass on the achievements of Kashiko and others of her generation, the government needs to implement a legal deposit system for moving images with a well-defined selection process. Other needs include continued support for the existing network of preservation activists, proposals to build more climate-controlled film vaults, and advanced research in this field. International cooperation that might lead to the discovery of long lost films and their restoration and release (and con­ tinued access), official registration of films as cultural assets, and broadening the range of genres, production modes, and film-related heritage to include home movies, equipment, and cinemas are all activities that have the potential to invigorate and advance the present-day film preserva­ tion movement.

Notes 1 “MoMAT” is used hereafter for the sake of convenience (“Tokyo” was added to the museum’s name after the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto opened in 1963). 2 Shashin Kagaku Kenkyūjo later became PCL (Photo Chemical Lab), and eventually, Toho. 3 Editors’ note: Zigomar (Jigoma in Japan) was criticized for glorifying criminal activity by depicting the antagonist, the thief Zigomar, as a criminal mastermind. 4 The Home Ministry’s censorship records (Katsudō shashin ken’etsu jihō and Eiga ken’etsu jihō) were dis­ covered and reprinted by Makino Mamoru in 1985–1986. 5 Editors’ note: in operation from 1934–1972, this was the forerunner of the Japan Foundation, founded in 1972. 6 The precise name has changed at least four times since its foundation but I use Towa here to avoid confusion. 7 Kawakita Kashiko is known as Madame Kawakita in Europe and the USA. In this chapter, I refer to Kawakita Kashiko as Kashiko, and her husband Kawakita Nagamasa as Nagamasa. 8 Ishibashi Foundation runs the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo; its core collection is donated by Bridgestone Corporation’s founder, Ishibashi Shōjirō, who was also a famous art collector. 9 Editors’ note: “Vinegar syndrome” is a common term referring to the decomposition of cellulose acetate film base. Acetic acid is released during the decay process, producing an acrid odor. Acetate base degradation is a progressive, autocatalytic chemical process that can be delayed but not halted, resulting in, for example, shrinkage, brittleness, and buckling. 10 Editors’ note: Discarding nitrate prints after they were copied onto acetate film was relatively common. Cellulose nitrate film was considered unsuited to long-term storage because it is highly flammable and chemically unstable when subjected to less than ideal storage conditions; furthermore, the long-term conservation characteristics of acetate (“safety”) film were as yet untested. 11 Editors’ note: Itō was referring to the fact that a film’s popularity after it opens is short-lived.

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Works cited Abbott, J.E. and Barry, I. 1995 (1935). “An Outline of a Project for Founding the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art.” Film History 7(3): 325–335. Banba, T. 2009. Nakai Masakazu densetsu: nijūichi no shōzō ni yoru yūwaku (The Legend of Nakai Masakazu). Tokyo: Potto Shuppan. Cherchi Usai, P. 2000. Silent Cinema: An Introduction. London: British Film Institute. Chiura, R. 2016. “Firumu jōei ga eiga o futatabi moriageru hi made” (“Until the Day when Film Screen­ ings Rejuvenate the Movies”). BRUTUS 2(837): 88–91. Daibō, M. 2017. “Firumu sentā ni okeru dejitaruka no torikumi” (“Digitalization Efforts at NFC”). Eiga ni okeru dejitaru hozon to katsuyō no tame no shinpojiumu (Symposium on the Digital Preservation and Archival Use of Film Collections). National Film Center, Tokyo, January 26–27. Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai. 1935. Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai to sono jigyō (Dainihon Film Association and its Operations). Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai. Eiga Bunka Kenkyūkai. 1952. Eiga bunka 2: 69–50. Film Preservation Society. 2003. “Choichi Imada, film technician.” Online at http://filmpres.org/ preservation/interview03e/ [accessed October 30, 2017]. Film Preservation Society. 2014. “Public Film Archives in Japan.” Online at http://filmpres.org/link/ hiroshima/; http://filmpres.org/link/kyoto/; http://filmpres.org/link/kawasaki/; http://filmpres.org/ link/fukuoka/ [accessed October 30, 2017]. Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai. 1964. “Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai ni tsuite” (“About Japan Film Library Council”). Kawakita Kashiko fujin no geijutu senshō o iwau kai (A Celebration of the Art Achievements of Mrs Kashiko Kawakita), leaflet. Tokyo: Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai. Fuji Shashin Fuirumu. 1984. Fuji fuirumu gojūnen no ayumi (Fifty-Year History of Fujifilm). Tokyo: Fuji Shashin Fuirumu. Fujifilm. 2012. Fujifilm to Receive the Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science [press release]. January 6. Online at www.fujifilm.com/products/motion_picture/ information/1201_01.html [December 5, 2019]. Fukuma, T. 1994. Mimizu no uwagoto (Earthworm’s Message). Tokyo: Dai-ichi Hōki Shuppan. Fukuma, T. 2011. Mimizu no uwagoto zoku (Earthworm’s Message 2). Tokyo: Fukuma Toshinori. Fuwa, S. 1941. Eigahō kaisetsu (An Explanation of the Film Law). Tokyo: Dainihon Eiga Kyōkai. Haruyama, M. et al. 1996. “Zadankai, Toshokan to bunka no nettowāku o megutte” (“Roundtable Dis­ cussion on the Role of the Library and Cultural Network”). Gendai no toshokan (The Modern Library) 34(3): 115–128. Hata, A. 1970. “Firumu sentā no kaikan” (“The Opening of the Film Center”). Bijutsu techō (Monthly Art Magazine) 22(328): 128–129. Ikeda, Y. 1958. “Bunka kakkai honnen no bōfu to tenbō” (“This Year’s Aspirations and Prospects in Various Cultural Fields”). Kokusai bunka (National Culture) 44: 5–6. Ikeda, Y. et al. 1959. “Sekai no firumu raiburari to Nihon” (“World Film Libraries and Japan”). Gendai no me (Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) 56(7): 2–5. Inada, T. 1935. “Fuirumu raiburari to sono keiei” (“The Film Library and its Management”). Monbushō kyōiku eiga jihō (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture’s Educational Film Newsletter) 15: 26–45. Ishihara, K. 2014. “A Research Note on Early Film Preservation and Film Archiving.” Nagoya Gakugei Daigaku Media Zōkei Gakubu kenkyū kiyō (Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences School of Media and Design Research Bulletin) 7: 29–38. Kawakita, K. 1973. “Eiga purinto hozon no mondai” (“Issues in the Preservation of Film Prints”). In Eiga hitosuji ni (For Cinema’s Sake), 215–217. Tokyo: Kodansha. Kawakita, N. 1988. My Recollections by Nagamasa Kawakita (1903–1981) Founder, Toho-Towa Co. Ltd. Kanagawa: Kawakita Memorial Institute. Kiroku Eiga Hozon Sentā. 2016. Nihon no bunka shisetsu ni eiga firumu wa nanbon aru no ka (How Many Motion Picture Films are Stored at Japanese Cultural Facilities?). Online at: http://kirokueiga-hozon.jp/ images/hozon/pdf/film.pdf [accessed October 30, 2017]. Kon, H. 1970. “Firumu sentā settchi ni atatte” (“At the Time of Setting Up the Film Center”). Gendai no me (Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) 184(3): 2. Konishiroku Shashin Kōgyō. 1973. Shashin to tomo ni hyakunen (One Hundred Years with Photography). Tokyo: Konishiroku Shashin Kōgyō.

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A historical survey of film archiving Lindgren, A. 1952. “Eiga no hozon” (“Film Preservation”). In R. Manvell (ed.), Eiga no gendai chishiki (Contemporary Film Knowledge), 171–174. Trans. I. Inoue. Tokyo: Itagaki Shoten. Mackenzie, S. 2014. Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology. Oakland, CA: Univer­ sity of California Press. Mainichi Shimbunsha. 1972. Mainichi shimbun hyakunenshi 1872–1972 (One Hundred Year History of the Mainichi Newspaper 1872–1972). Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbunsha. Mizuno, S. 1931. “Motion Picture Education in Japan.” International Review of Educational Cinematography 3(1): 5–10. Nakata, S. 1928. Waga kuni ni okeru kyōiku eiga no kinkyō. eiga kyōiku (Current Status of Educational Films in Japan). Tokyo: Tōyō Tosho. Nihon Eiga Rengōkai. 1952. “Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Firumu Raiburarī tanjō” (“The Birth of MoMAT Film Library”). Eiren tokuhō (Eiren Special Report) 5: 10–13. Nowell-Smith, G. 2012. “Foundation and Early Years.” In The British Film Institute, The Government and Film Culture, 23–24. 1933–2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Okajima, H. 1981. “Kinkyu apīru, kara eiga firumu no taishoku no kiki, Machin Sukosessi” (“Emergency Appeal by Martin Scorsese: The Crisis of Fading Color Motion Picture Films”). Image Forum 2(6): 76–80. Okajima, H. 2016. “Eiga no rekishi to firumu ākibisuto: ima motomerareru jinzai to wa” (“Film History and Film Archivists: The Kind of Human Resources that We Need Today”). Eiga no fukugen to hozon ni kansuru wākushoppu (The 11th Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop). IMAGICA, Tokyo, August 26–28. Ōsaka Mainichi Shimbun Katsudō Shashinhan. 1932. Daimai Fuirumu Raiburarī mokuroku (Daimai Film Library Catalog). Ōsaka: Ōsaka Mainichi Shimbun Katsudō Shashinhan. Orientaru Shashin Kōgyō Kabushiki Gaisha. 1950. Orientaru Shashin Kōgyō Kabushiki Gaisha 30 nenshi (Three Decades of Oriental Photo Industrial). Tokyo: Orientaru Shashin Kōgyō. Platform for Arts and Creativity. 2016. “Shogaikoku no bunka yosan ni kansuru chōsa hōkokusho” (“Research Report on State Cultural Funding Abroad”). In Heisei 24 nendo Bunkachō itaku jigyō, shogaikoku no bunka seisaku ni kansuru chōsa kenkyū, Heisei 28 nendo ichibu kaitei (A Study Commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2012 on Cultural Policies of Foreign Countries [Partially revised in 2016]). Plat­ form for Arts and Creativity. Sadoul, G. 1964. “Firumu raiburarī no kachi” (“The Value of the Film Library”). Geijitsu seikatsu (Life Is Art Magazine) 17(7) (196): 60–61. Saiki, T. 1996a. “Kaisō, Itō Asako, Itō Daisuke fujin” (“Recollections of Ito Asako, Ito Daisuke’s wife”). In Eiga dokuhon Itō Daisuke, hangyaku no passhon, jidaigeki no modanizumu! (Film Reader: Daisuke Ito, Passion for Rebellion, Modernism of Period Drama!), 46–57. Tokyo: Filmart-Sha. Saiki, T. 1996b. “Chūji tabi nikki kaisetsu” (Commentary on A Diary of Chuji’s Travels”). In Eiga dokuhon Itō Daisuke hangyaku no passhon, jidaigeki no modanizumu! (Film Reader: Daisuke Ito, Passion for Rebellion, Modernism of Period Drama!), 85–87. Tokyo: Filmart-Sha. Saiki, T. 2000. “NFC no arata na binega shindoromu taisaku” (“NFC’s New Vinegar Syndrome Meas­ ures”). NFC Newsletter 33: 15–16. Saiki, T. 2001. “Rekishi o ikinuita eiga tachi” (“The Films that Survived History”). NFC Newsletter 35: 15–18. Saitō, M. 1961. “Firumu raiburarī to Furansu eigasai” (“The Film Library and French Film Festivals”). Kokusai bunka 91: 6–8. Saitō, M. 1968. “Henkan eiga no jōei made” (“Until Repatriated Films are Screened”). Gendai no me (Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) 163(6): 7. Saitō, M. 1970. “Firumu raiburarī no kaikō” (“Film Library’s Retrospective”). Gendai no me (Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) 84(3): 6–7. Saitō, N. 2017. Suzuki shōten to Taiwan (Suzuki Shoten and Taiwan). Kyoto: Kōyō Shobō. Sazaki, Y. 2012. “Catalog of Material of the Public Film Corporation.” Bulletin of the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo 16: 61–62. Shibasaki, A. 1999. Kindai Nihon to Kokusai Bunka Kōryū—Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai no sōsetsu to tenkai 1934–45 (International Cultural Relations and Modern Japan: History of Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai 1934–45). Tokyo: Yūshindō Kōbunsha. Shimada, M. 1986. “Firumu sentā shōshitsu firumu no tame no bokin no kai keika hōkoku” (“Progress Report on the Fund-Raising to Support the Film Center after its Destruction by Fire”). In Sekai no firumu raiburarī 1985 nen (World Film Libraries 1985 Edition), 14–15. Tokyo: Kawakita Memorial Film Institute.

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Kae Ishihara Shimizu, A. 1962. “Nihon ni okeru firumu raiburarī 1 firumu raiburarī no enkaku” (“Film Library in Japan 1, A History of our Film Library”). Eiga geijutsu 10(12) (182): 32–33. Shimizu, A. 1968. “Firumu raiburarī josei kyōgikai no ayumi” (“History of Japan Film Library Council”). In Tōwa no 40 nen 1928–1968 (Forty-Year History of Towa 1928–1968), 168–170. Tokyo: Tōwa Kabushikigaisha. Shimizu, A. 1988. “Kawakita kaichō to kinen zaidan” (Mr Kawakita and his Memorial Foundation”). In Tōwa no 60 nen shi (Sixty-Year History of Towa), 46–64. Tokyo: Tōhō Tōwa Kabushikigaisha. Takiguchi, S. 1961. “Firumu raiburarī no shimei” (“Mission of the Film Library”). In Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō (Takiguchi Shūzō Collection) 6, 273–277. Reprint, Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1991. Takizawa, O. 1997. “Kikigaki, Ema Michinari shi, firumu raiburarian toshite” (“Interview: Film Librarian, Mr. Michinari Ema”). Eiga kenkyū shi FB 9: 79–134. Toba, Y. 1946. “Eiga koten no hozon” (“The Preservation of Classic Films”). Kinema junpō 3: 36–38. Tochigi, A. 2014. “NFC Sagamihara no shin shisetsu eiga hozon tō III ni tsuite” (“About Film Archive III, a New Facility in NFC Sagamihara”). NFC Newsletter 117: 12. Tōdai Eiga Kenkyūkai. 1960. Minna no firumu raiburari o tsukurō: Dai 34 kai gogatsusai kōkai tōronkai shiryō (Let’s make our Film Library: Leaflet for an Open Debate Session at Tokyo University’s 34th May Festival). Tokyo: Gogatsusai Jōnin Iinkai, Tōdai Eiga Kenkyūkai, Eiga Tankyū Shūdan. Togawa, N. 1984. “Firumu shōshitsu no kyōkun” (“Lessons from Films Destroyed by Fire”). Asahi Shimbun: 7. Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan. 2016. Zenkoku eiga shiryō kanroku 2015 (2015 Nationwide Compilation of Film Reference Materials). Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan. UNESCO. 2015. Memory of the World Register. Online at www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and­ information/memory-of-the-world/register/ [accessed October 30, 2017]. Urushiyama, M. 1943. “Koten eiga no hozon” (“The Preservation of Classic Films”). Nihon eiga 28: 49–51. Ushihara, K. 1956. “Firumu raiburarī/Ōshū eiga nikki kara” (““Film Library/From the Film Diary in Europe”). Gendai no me (Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) 25(12): 7. Ushihara, K. 1967. “Kaigai ni sanzai suru nihon eiga” (“A Scattering of Japanese Films Overseas”). Sekai no firumu raiburarī 1966 nen (World Film Libraries: 1966 Edition), 49. Tokyo: Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai. Volkmann, H. 1975 (1963) Firumu no hozon (The Preservation of Film), Translated by Kiyohiko Shimasaki. Tokyo: Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai. Yamada, K. 1971. “Kyōto furitsu firumu raiburarī ni tsuite” (“About the Kyoto Prefectural Film Library”). Sekai no firumu raiburarī 1970 nen (World Film Libraries: 1970 Edition), 22–23. Tokyo: Firumu Raiburarī Josei Kyōgikai.

Further reading Deocampo, N. 2006. Lost Films of Asia. Manila: Anvil Publishing. Edmondson, R. 2016. Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles, 3rd edn. Bangkok: UNESCO. Online at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000243973 [accessed December 10, 2019]. Tsuneishi, F. 2011. “From a Wooden Box to Digital Film Restoration.” The Journal of Film Preservation 85: 63–71. Okajima, H. 2002. “Kyoto Tales and Tokyo Stories: Incidents in Japanese Film History.” This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film, 482–485. Brussels: FIAF.

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18

Japanese Film History and

tHe CHallenges oF imagiCa

West Corp.

Kanta Shibata (translated by Thomas Kabara and Isabelle Bilodeau)

As of this writing (September 2018), there are only two for-profit independent motion picture film labs in Japan: Tokyo Laboratory Ltd. and IMAGICA WEST Corp. I use the term “forprofit independent labs” to refer to film processing companies that can stay profitable while operating independently from any specific film studio, production company, or film archive, handling professional grade 16 mm and 35 mm motion picture negative film, master positives, dupe negatives, and release prints that are still widely used today. Ten years ago, there were as many as five companies processing motion picture film, including IMAGICA WEST and its parent company IMAGICA Corp. The recent trend in the industry is one of merger, contraction, and discontinuation of film processing divisions. This chapter takes a fresh look at Japanese film history, with a special emphasis on the periods before and after World War II, from the vantage point of IMAGICA WEST, the only commercial lab still in operation that traces its origin to the pre-World War II era. By anchoring my study on an independent commercial lab and its changing business model over time, I aim to provide a new perspective on film history without reiterating the familiar narrative marked by key films, directors, and studios. Because there is little prior research on Japanese film history seen from the vantage point of film processing labs, this chapter chiefly relies on internal company publications and oral history. Unless otherwise specified, the history recounted in this chapter uses the following publications as sources: Sangyō furontia monogatari 36: firumu puro­ sesshingu Toyo Genzosyo [Tōyō Genzōsho] (Industry Frontier Stories vol. 36: Film Processing at Toyo Genzosyo) (Daiyamondosha 1970); Nagase Tokutarō shōden (Biographical Sketch of Nagase Tokutarō) (Toyo Genzosyo Corp. 1979); and Hikari e hito e: IMAGICA Eizō no 55-nen (Toward Light and Toward People: IMAGICA: Fifty-five Years of IMAGICA Imaging) (Imajika 1992). IMAGICA WEST Corp. operates as a film processing lab, which also offers production planning and postproduction services. The history of IMAGICA WEST, however, reveals many previous incarnations, including IMAGICA Corp., Toyo Genzosyo (Far East Laboratories Ltd.), Kyokuto Film Kenkyusyo (Far East Film Laboratory), and before that, a film research center within Nagase Shoten (currently the Nagase & Co., Ltd. chemicals trading firm).1 In March 1926, Nagase Shoten created a department of motion picture materials, which later became its Motion Picture Products Division. Nagase Shoten was based in the Kansai region, the cradle of Japanese cinema. In fact, the birthplace of Japanese cinema is broadly considered to be the three major cities of Kansai: Kobe, 301

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Kyoto, and Osaka. If the term “movie” refers to “moving images,” then the birthplace could be considered Kobe, where Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope made its Japanese debut in November 1896. However, opinions are divided over whether a mechanism in which a single person stares into a peephole box can truly be called a “movie.” Many would argue that it is not a “movie” unless it is a “projected image” visible to a large crowd. The Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe was brought to Japan by Inabata Katsutarō and projected for the first time in Kyoto in January 1897. Notably, the Kyoto screening was merely a free preview for a screening scheduled for Osaka in February. Since the Osaka showing was a “paid admission screening,” some consider it to be the first proper movie screening in Japan. By this logic, if the Lumière brothers’ screening at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895 was the very “beginning of cinema,” then Osaka might be considered the site where cinema originated in Japan. But that is not the main issue here. For this chapter, it is enough to say that the history of cinema in Japan began roughly two years after the Paris Lumière screening, and emerged contemporaneously in Kansai’s three major cities. As an Osaka native, IMAGICA’s founder, Nagase Tokutarō, might have witnessed the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe in Osaka—one of the origins of Japanese cinema. Upon joining Nagase Shoten in 1904, Tokutarō had spent the 1910s and 1920s representing the company’s business in the West. Could he have seen European and American films during that time, at the peak of the silent era? The documents at hand offer us no details on Tokutarō’s experience of cinema from the phase of his life before he entered the film business. What is clear, however, is that Tokutarō had the opportunity to witness nascent cinema maturing as an industry and art form, first in his native Kansai, and then in Europe and the USA. We also know that Nagase Denzaburō, Tokutarō’s father-in-law and owner of Nagase Shoten at the time, had published a trade journal on dyed fabrics in Nishijin (a Kyoto district famous for weaving) in 1893, together with the aforementioned Inabata Katsutarō (Nagase & Co., Ltd. 2019). Prior to Tokutarō’s time, Nagase Shoten had a relatively close relationship with fellow dye-importer Inabata Shōten; for this reason, we can entertain the interesting possibility that the company was somehow related to the movies (i.e., the Cinématographe), which Inabata brought to Japan a few years later. In 1926, Nagase Shoten expanded into motion picture materials as major shifts were occurring in the Japanese film industry. The Great Kantō Earthquake on September 1, 1923 devastated the industry, which had already been suffering from economic depression. With the earthquake destroying many of the studios in Tokyo, movie companies were forced to relocate to Kyoto in western Japan. As a result, a new era of Japanese cinema emerged with Kyoto at its center. In April 1923, the photography specialist assigned to the sundries division of Nagase Shoten’s flagship store added Eastman Kodak products to his inventory, alongside developing chemicals and other photographic materials such as dry plates, photographic paper, and X-ray film. This was meant as a countermeasure against the economic downturn, but it not only failed to compensate for the poor showing in the textile-dye import division in the beginning, it also risked putting the whole company in the red. From within the company, there was a strong opposition to the risky endeavor of venturing into the volatile market of the motion picture industry. Nevertheless, Tokutarō focused on acquiring a greater share of Kodak’s market in Japan by outstripping the already active companies in the so-called Hachi-K-Kai (8-K Association), a consortium of Eastman Kodak’s vendors in Japan. His strategy was that of small margin and quick return; helped by the recovery of the film industry, he realized the rapid growth of Nagase Shoten’s film department (Imajika 1992: 8–9). By cutting deals with major movie studios like Shochiku Cinema and Nikkatsu Motion Pictures, Nagase Shoten managed to out-compete its 8-K Association rivals, eventually becoming Eastman Kodak’s main distributor in Japan. When an Eastman Kodak executive visited the 302

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country in 1931, he approached Nagase Shoten (with whom Kodak already had a strong relationship) with the idea of opening a commercial motion picture film-processing lab. It is instructive to turn to Nagase’s corporate historiography for its account of the state of film processing in Japan at the time: In those days, all the processing labs in Japan belonged to the film studios. None were independent. The processing machines were hand-operated drums. Film was wound around a drum, and the drum was spun by hand, developing the film and drying it with the airflow generated by the spinning motion. Processing was often done by the cameramen themselves, and each one employed his own formula. In other words, film processing at the time was still a job that required the artisanal skills of cameramen. (Daiyamondosha 1970: 20) In light of this, Eastman Kodak proposed that Tokutarō build Japan’s first commercial lab equipped with an automated processor for motion picture film. It is said that the executive effectively asked Tokutarō “whether he was willing to throw away half a million dollars [equivalent of a million yen at the time]” (Imajika 1992: 9). This was a sum that matched Nagase Shoten’s total capital at the time. It is not difficult to imagine that such a proposal would have met a strong opposition from within the company, the same company whose prudent approach initially resisted its foray into the motion picture industry. This anecdote also reveals that even in the USA, where independent commercial labs already existed, film processing was thought of as requiring a high degree of technological capability, and as such, it was considered a highly risky endeavor despite being the backbone of the fast-growing motion picture industry. We must also keep in mind that this was the eve of the sound film revolution. At this point, the film industry was testing the variable density sound-on-film system, which involved creating soundtracks by printing the sound record directly onto film as silver halide images of varying density. Reproducing these variable density soundtracks required a more precise film processing procedure, and this increased the impetus to establish Japan’s first commercial film processing lab. Tokutarō sensed the business potential for film processing and flew to the USA to observe the processing labs there for talkie films. After returning to Japan, convinced of the possibilities, he created the Kyokuto Film Kenkyusyo (Far East Film Laboratory) in 1932 as part of Nagase Shoten’s film division. Construction on the Far East Film Laboratory facility began in February 1932. Before construction was even completed, the laboratory received its first commission from the Oriental Film Company in April of that year, namely, to handle processing their talkie Namiko (Tanaka Eizō, 1932). A DeVry automated processor had already been delivered to the laboratory from France, but it was not yet ready for operation. Accordingly, since Namiko was being filmed in Tokyo, the laboratory responded by opening a temporary processing facility in nearby Yokohama where they used the aforementioned hand-operated processing system. With some prodding by Eastman Kodak, it had been decided that this would be Japan’s first film using the Western Electric (later Westrex) optical sound system. This likely resulted in a fair amount of anxiety among staff members who had to rely on their old-fashioned artisanal processing method to achieve the precision comparable to automated processing machines. Even though Namiko narrowly missed claiming the title of “Japan’s first use of automated processing,” Nagase Shoten’s corporate historiography credits the film for bringing a “meteoric rise in the company’s status” thanks to the staff’s efforts (Toyo Genzosyo Corp. 1972: 1). While the Far East Film Laboratory earned ample praise for its work on Namiko under the challenging circumstance using hastily assembled equipment, the company subsequently spent 303

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considerable time and expense on research and testing. This was another reason why the Eastman Kodak executive had asked Tokutarō whether he was prepared to burn through a large sum of money. A little over a year after its founding, the laboratory received an order from Nikkatsu to process and print the talkie Tawamure ni koi wa sumaji (No Trifling with Love, dir. Aoyama Saburō, 1933), and this film became the first “machine-processed,” rather than hand-processed, film in Japan. Additionally, the laboratory was commissioned to handle the processing of an Asahi Shimbun newsreel on the All-Japan Middle School Baseball Tournament (Zenkoku Chūtōgakkō Yakyū Taikai) as well as Chiezō Productions’ silent film, Hotta Hayato (Hotta Hayato, dir. Itō Daisuke, 1933), thus consolidating its standing as an independent commercial lab. There was criticism in the beginning, particularly from laboratories attached to film studios, that Nagase Shoten “was trying to turn a profit on film processing commissions on top of its earnings from sales of film stock” (Daiyamondosha 1970: 40). By establishing its credibility by machine processing optical sound films and maintaining the promise of reliable quality and turnaround, the Far East Film Laboratory gradually increased the number of commissions, for both silent and sound films, requested by a variety of clients. These clients ranged from small studios with no processing facilities of their own to major studios with stringent deadlines and quality standards. In every case, it was the introduction of automated machine processing, once seen as a major gamble, that helped the company meet the needs of the studios. Another factor that helped the Far East Film Laboratory’s success in the film business was its subtitling work. In 1933, the laboratory began processing and printing foreign movies with superimposed subtitles, thus ending the practice of importing release prints of foreign movies that already came with Japanese subtitles. The laboratory helped to standardize the new norm of importing master positives and producing duplicate negatives and subtitles in Japan. Starting with Paramount Picture’s Song of the Eagle (dir. Ralph Murphy), released in 1933, the laboratory secured a monopoly on subtitling foreign imports from MGM, Fox, RKO, Universal, and Warner Bros. If starting a commercial lab might have appeared at first like a risky venture, with no guarantee of recouping investments despite its business potential, such risk was finally offset with the increase in the volume of work during this period (Imajika 1992: 20). It was also during this period that the Far East Film Laboratory entered into an agreement with Fuji Photo Film Holdings Corporation (Fuji Shashin Fuirumu Kabushiki Gaisha, later Fujifilm, founded in 1934) to use its film stock for positive release prints of foreign movies. At the time, the Japanese government was spending heavily on funding research and promoting the goal of nationalizing motion picture film production, and Kodak (which had already dominated the market) made no major objections about the Far East Film Laboratory’s deal with Fuji Photo Film (Toyo Genzosyo Corp. 1979: 70).

From wartime controls to the post-war color boom The Far East Film Laboratory had initially opened as a division within Nagase Shoten in order to sell motion picture film before starting its operation as the country’s first commercial motion picture film lab with automated processing. It disbanded in 1935, only to be immediately reorganized as Kyokuto Genzosyo (Far East Laboratories, Ltd). Its managing director was Nagase Tokutarō, who would soon become the president of the parent company Nagase Shoten. The emergence of rival independent processing labs during this period suggests that the Nagase-led Far East Film Laboratory and its successor, Far East Laboratories Ltd., were pioneers that established the business model of “processing motion picture film at specialized processing labs.” This model continues to inform the operation of commercial motion picture film labs today. 304

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As the sound era matured in the latter half of the 1930s, industry demand grew for more precise control over processing than what the problematic hand-operated drum processors allowed. Thus, commercial labs with machine-controlled automated processors came to assume a vital position. To meet the growing need, a new processing plant in Yokohama was opened to complement the existing lab in Kyoto soon after the founding of Far East Laboratories in 1935 (see the timeline in Imajika 1992). The sound era grew in the same period that saw Japan’s increasing involvement in its imperial expansionist war, from the Manchurian Incident (1931) through the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Pacific War (1941–1945). This historical background helps to contextualize the fact that movie production increased from 3,711 titles in the 1920s to 5,089 titles in the 1930s, but then dropped to 1,401 movies in the 1940s (most of these titles have not survived today) (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 2012). The Far East Laboratories were part of the history of this period that saw the production of some of the masterpieces enshrined in the canon of Japanese film. We can see this by listing a number of the films processed by the Far East Laboratories which made it into the top five of Kinema junpō’s annual ranking: Tange Sazen (Tange Sazen, dir. Itō Daisuke, 1933, Nikkatsu), Gion no shimai (Sisters of the Gion, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936, Daiichi Eiga), Naniwa erejī (Osaka Elegy, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936, Daiichi Eiga), Owarinaki zenshin (Unending Advance, dir. Uchida Tomu, 1937, Nikkatsu), Gonin no sekkōhei (Five Scouts, dir. Tasaka Tomotaka, 1938, Nikkatsu), and Tsuchi (Earth, dir. Uchida Tomu, 1939, Nikkatsu). This partial list illustrates what a momentous era it was for both Japanese cinema and the Far East Laboratories. At the same time, the wartime distribution economy cast a dark shadow on the film industry, making it increasingly difficult to import foreign film titles, film equipment, and raw film stock. Eventually, the importation of raw film stock was forbidden with the outbreak of the SinoJapanese War in 1937 (Imajika 1992: 40). Nevertheless, even with these challenges, Far East Laboratories found a way to survive without shutting down their processing machines. From early on, the company had been working on developing domestically manufactured processing machines, and by 1937, it had its first positive film processor, manufactured in-house, installed at its Kyoto plant. Nagase’s corporate historiography stresses the importance of Far East Laboratories’ early foray into developing machinery related to in-house film processing. The selfmanufactured processing machine laid the groundwork for the company culture that values “in-house development,” which outlived the war era to materialize in the founding of an independent Engineering Division (kōsakubu) responsible for building its own processing machines and printers. In November 1938, the Japanese government implemented a licensing system for screening foreign films and restricted the importing of American movies. As a result, the demand for printing subtitled movies decreased dramatically, dealing a blow to Far East Laboratories’ wartime business. One response was the release of their own independently produced film, Bokura no testudō (Our Railway, 1940), which was officially included in the Ministry of Education’s “Selected Movies for Pupils and Students” (Monbushō sentei jidō seitomuke eiga). Following this, the Far East Laboratories began producing culture films (bunka eiga) and propaganda films at the behest of the military, including such titles as Bokura no tsubasa (Our Wings, dir. Ichikawa Tetsuo, 1941, Nikkatsu Tamagawa) and Kaigun gungakutai (Naval Military Band, dir. Kiyosei Eijirō, 1941, Nikkatsu Tamagawa). This allowed the company to continue its core business of film processing despite the limited resources of wartime Japan. Another factor was its raw film stock business. Even before the company was forced to sever ties with the American company, Eastman Kodak, it had consolidated its relationship with Fuji Photo Film by adopting the Japanese company’s positive film for exhibition prints. This could be interpreted as Far East 305

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Laboratories’ attempt not only to overcome the challenging circumstances of the times, but also to build a foundation to support the development of Japan’s future film industry. In 1942, the military ordered Far East Laboratories to change its Japanese name from Kyokuto Genzosyo to Toyo Genzosyo (the English name remained unchanged). With resources growing scarce and the military government imposing a cap on the number of movies produced, the volume of film processing work decreased drastically, thus making business tight. Toyo Genzosyo managed to preserve itself and cling to the chance of staying in the movie business by collaborating in the production and film processing of military propaganda movies. Toyo Genzosyo was able to continue this indispensable job of film processing while also adopting more pragmatic measures, like manufacturing fasteners for flight suits or changing the company name; it also helped that both its Kyoto and Yokohama plants escaped devastation from air raids. The company, therefore, was able to build momentum toward a major breakthrough in the business after the war. If movies are meant as entertainment, then the business of motion picture film processing ought to be a peaceful one, and the opportunities and challenges of maintaining the company during the war turned out to be two sides of the same coin. Restoring the business began immediately after the war ended. The disbanding of the Japanese army meant the loss of a major customer for Toyo Genzosyo, but it was replaced with a new client: the General Headquarters for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ). Since Toyo Genzosyo owned the only automated processors to escape damage from the war, the GHQ relied on the Yokohama plant to have a large volume of confidential film materials processed. Subsequently, in 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East began. The trials were recorded on numerous cameras and more than 500,000 feet of film are said to have been processed there (Imajika 1992: 65). With private movie studios resuming production, and US movies being imported once again, there was a rapid increase in the volume of work for film laboratories. Meanwhile, the Kyoto plant was slow to recover because of a lack of supplies. The additional factor of decreasing commissions from Daiei Kyoto—Toyo Genzosyo’s biggest customer (the commissions fell to about one-third compared to their peak in 1938)—caused Toyo Genzosyo’s workload to fall primarily to the Yokohama plant. Concurrently with the commission to process the Far East Tribunal footage, GHQ’s Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) delivered a large processing work order related to its educational film initiative. The CIE wanted these educational movies to be widely distributed all over the country, so it needed them in large numbers of 16 mm prints. Toyo Genzosyo had no experience handling reduction prints (16 mm positives made from 35 mm negatives), so a specialized facility was installed at the Yokohama plant under the CIE’s direction. In order to finish the CIE processing work more efficiently, Toyo Genzosyo built a separate facility in Tokyo around this time. Construction began in Gotanda, Tokyo in December 1950. Employees were dispatched from the Kyoto and Yokohama plants along with equipment and materials produced by the aforementioned Engineering Division of the Kyoto plant. By January 1951, the new facility was ready for operation. The Engineering Division in Hanazono, Kyoto, which played a pivotal role in the expansion, was renamed the Mechanical Research Center (Kikai Kenkyūsho, or Mechanical Research Institute) in 1950 and later, the Hanazono Engineering Division (Hanazono Kōsakubu) in 1961, as its reputation grew as one of Toyo Genzosyo’s key assets. With the board of directors confident in the Laboratory’s rising volume of incoming orders, Toyo Genzosyo was in a good position to take up new challenges on the eve of the color film era. The transition to talkies had been a watershed moment for Nagase Shoten’s Far East Film Laboratory as it built its reputation as a technologically advanced lab equipped with machine 306

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processing. Similarly, the arrival of the “color film revolution” in the 1950s brought about another crucial turning point, as Toyo Genzosyo adapted to processing color negatives. Fuji Photo Film’s Karumen kokyō ni kaeru (Carmen Comes Home, dir. Kinoshita Keisuke, 1951, Shochiku) and Konishiroku Shashin Kogyō’s Nichirin (The Sun, dir. Watanabe Kunio, 1953, Toei) are considered the first Japanese movies to be produced using domestically developed color systems. Daiei, which had earned an international reputation for producing some of the finest black and white movies of the era, including Rashōmon (Rashomon, dir. Kurosawa Akira, 1950, Daiei) and Ugetsu monogatari (Ugetsu, dir. Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953, Daiei), differentiated itself from other studios with Jigokumon (Gate of Hell, dir. Kinugasa Teinosuke, 1953, Daiei), the first film in Japan to use Eastmancolor motion picture film. Gate of Hell won the Grand Prix at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival and an Honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Film first released in the USA in 1954, but more pertinently, it brought Toyo Genzosyo accolades and an award from the Motion Picture Engineering Society of Japan (Theatrical Motion Picture Processing Section) for its work processing the prints for the critically acclaimed film.2 As a result of the high domestic and international acclaim that Gate of Hell received by adopting Eastman Kodak’s Eastmancolor motion picture film and Toyo Genzosyo’s machine processing, the coupler-in-emulsion negative/positive film coloring method became the industry standard that is still in use today. This was confirmed when, in 1955, Fuji Photo Film began sales of color film (negative and positive) using a similar coupler-in-emulsion system. Toyo Genzosyo was slow in introducing Fuji Photo Film and Konishiroku’s respective color systems when they hit the market, but it is worth noting that the company’s management had already accurately assessed the commercial potential of color film after their visit to the USA, where Eastmancolor was already being sold. Toyo Genzosyo entered a period of growth with the popularization of color film. It is significant that in the color film era, Toyo Genzosyo made a foray into processing and printing amateur still photographs. Eastman Kodak had launched Kodachrome (multipack coupler-in-developer color reversal film) in 1935, Kodacolor (color negative film for still photographs) in 1942, and Ektachrome (multipack coupler-in-emulsion color reversal film) in 1946, successfully selling them for both motion pictures and still photography (slides). Toyo Genzosyo, with its strong ties to Eastman Kodak, took calculated steps to lay claim to the still photography film market in Japan, initially by processing still photography film brought in by GHQ staff members and their families during the Occupation (1945–1952). They gradually increased its share by keeping an eye on contemporary trends; they started taking orders on Ektachrome in 1956, Kodacolor in 1958, and Kodachrome in 1962. Toyo Genzosyo was the only lab in Japan, and only the fourteenth lab worldwide, to become Eastman Kodak’s officially designated Kodachrome lab, enjoying a virtual monopoly thereafter. The rise of television in the 1950s prompted several changes in the motion picture industry, notably the switch to color, the increase in screen size (i.e., widescreen systems exemplified by Cinemascope), and the adoption of multi-screen formats. Film processing techniques made possible Tōkyō Orinpikku (Tokyo Olympiad, dir. Ichikawa Kon, 1965, processed by Toyo Genzosyo), an official film with a uniquely filmic aesthetic, which, alongside the audio-visual exhibits showcased in the pavilions of World Expo Osaka in 1970, pointed to new horizons for cinema. As movie formats grew larger, smaller gauge film, particularly 8 mm film, increased in popularity. Movies had already entered the domestic spaces of homes with 9.5 mm film in the 1920s, followed by 16 mm and double 8 (16 mm film cut in half, also known as Standard 8 or Regular 8). These gauges, however, remained unaffordable for many in the post-war years, which meant that mass dissemination of home moviemaking had to wait until two key events. First, in 1965, the arrival of Super 8 (Eastman Kodak) and Single 8 (Fuji Photo Film) greatly simplified shooting with the 307

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adoption of a magazine format. Second, the Osaka Expo of 1970 provided a major spectacle for the entire country. Subsequently, sales of 8 mm film increased on the coat-tails of a nationwide “leisure boom” and provided a key market for Toyo Genzosyo’s operation until the advent of home video in the 1980s. It is important to stress that Toyo Genzosyo, from its founding, played active roles during the different stages in the development of both the film medium and the film processing industry, from sound film through color and widescreen film, as well as amateur film and home movies. At the same time, the corporate historiography stresses the importance of the strategy to apply the company’s expertise in motion picture processing to opening up a new core business for the television and video era. This period comprised image production using color grading and optical-composite effects, and from the latter half of the 1960s, production of color commercials and duplicate prints for television broadcast. The 1980s saw considerable diversification in the moving image industry, and this spurred major changes for the fifty-year-old company. Following the separation of its photography division, the decline of the film division, and the expansion of the video division, Toyo Genzosyo was reorganized as IMAGICA Corp. in 1986. The new company’s mission statement emphasized continuity with its predecessor “to contribute to society and culture by expanding the possibilities of moving image communication” (Imajika 1992: 244). Further restructuring and rationalization followed in order to create the company that exists today.

New challenges called “old films” By the end of the twentieth century, another turning point arrived in the company’s history that traces its roots to the establishment of the Far East Film Laboratory within Nagase Shoten in 1932. Since the rise of television, Osaka had become the company’s center of operation in Western Japan. In March 1990, in order to respond to the decline in demand for negative film processing—once the heart of theatrical movies—and innovations in video technology, IMAGICA built Osaka Imaging Center to serve the Kansai region (western Japan); at around the same time, it closed the Kyoto Imaging Center, a site that had been integral to the history of Japanese cinema and the country’s film industry (Imajika 1992). In 2000, the Osaka Imaging Center was incorporated as an independent entity and renamed IMAGICA WEST Corp.3 In the period leading up to the founding of IMAGICA WEST Corp, the Osaka Imaging Center had been working mainly on processing negatives for the Kansai area as well as striking new prints of old release titles commissioned by the Tokyo Imaging Center. Before the mass conversion of movie theaters’ conversion to digital projection, the core function of IMAGICA’s motion picture division had been to provide answer prints and strike additional prints of new feature-length theatrical releases. Most of this work took place at the Tokyo Imaging Center. Because the Tokyo facility was designed to efficiently handle large volumes of positive film, it was necessary to have a separate facility in Osaka that was better calibrated to accommodate the sensitive work needed to complete a single new print, or a few new prints, of repaired and restored historical film elements and faded film elements requiring color correction. Therefore, Tokyo developed in a direction that focused on the workflow for new release titles, while Osaka specialized in handling the old ones. The larger context for the increase in commissions related to the work of film preservation, which involves the repair and restoration of historical films, was the establishment of the National Film Center4 at the National Museum of Modern Art in 1970, and notably, the opening of the Sagamihara Annex film vaults in 1986. This helped to establish the National Film Center’s functional role as a film archive, namely, a designated site for film preservation (Okada 2016: 308

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34). A milestone was reached in June 1999, when Saiki Tomonori, then curator at the National Film Center, approached Susami Akira, the section chief (at the time) at IMAGICA Kansai Moving Image Headquarters, about a project to restore Taki no shiraito (The Water Magician, dir. Mizoguchi Kenji, 1933, Irie Productions). This project involved reconstructing the most complete version of the film by assembling multiple extant versions scattered in both the Kantō (eastern) and Kansai (western) regions of Japan. This became IMAGICA’s first joint restoration project with the National Film Center and was a departure from the task of processing reprints of old films, which had been more typical in the days of the Osaka Imaging Center, before the creation of IMAGICA WEST. During this restoration project, Susami’s team at IMAGICA was responsible for inspecting three different 16 mm positive prints: researching their generations and the number of frames per cut; preparing the prints by cleaning and mending them; making blow-up inter-negatives; and making an answer print (and conducting a quality check) for the 35 mm restoration print (Saiki, Susami, Yatōji, and Miyamoto 2000: 18–24). In an interview conducted for this chapter, Susami spoke of the excitement and the sense of new possibilities that accompanied “film preservation” work that was different from the traditional task of film duplication, as his team inspected and treated deteriorated film, at times by improving the equipment as needed for the specific damage in ways that might be considered standard protocol today. In other words, social trends such as the invigoration of the film preservation movement in Japan surrounding the National Film Center added to the internal rationalization of the company’s operation into “new releases at Tokyo and old titles at Osaka.” This operational model enabled IMAGICA WEST to go independent as a lab specializing in film restoration. Since branching off in this direction, IMAGICA WEST has strengthened its relationship with the National Film Center through film restoration projects. Other collaborative partnerships have included: Ritsumeikan University’s research project, “Basic Research on the Methods for Preserving Intangible Cultural Assets in Theater and Entertainment” (Geinō/Engekibunya no Mukeibunkazai Hozon no Hōhō ni kansuru Kisoteki Kenkyū, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1998–2000); the “Makino Project: Restoration of Misasa kouta” (Makino Eiga Misasa kouta Fukugen Purojekuto, a restoration project led by the Makino Art Research Center, also at Ritsumeikan University, 2004); and the “Toy Film and Film Restoration Project” (Omocha Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen Chōsa Kenkyū Purojekuto, Osaka University of Arts, 2003–2011). IMAGICA WEST has given its technological support to each of these research projects by restoring and digitizing their respective film materials. Furthermore, since 2006, IMAGICA WEST has co-hosted the “Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop” (except in 2016–2017, when it was held in Tokyo) with the Osaka University of Arts, the Museum of Kyoto, and Kobe Planet Film Archive, thus maintaining a special presence in the field of film preservation and restoration (The “Toy Film and Film Restoration Project” and “Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop” are addressed in Chapter 21 in this volume). Among the preservation projects that IMAGICA WEST has participated in, there are several examples with film-historical significance, but let us reframe some of them from the perspective of a commercial lab. Namakura gatana (The Dull Sword, dir. Kōuchi Jun’ichi, 1917) is the oldest extant Japanese animation. The second half of the movie was found in 2008 and the first half was recovered in 2014. The restored print currently housed at the National Film Center is the most complete version available and close to the original. For this project, the IMAGICA Group (IMAGICA and IMAGICA WEST) printed a black and white inter-negative from the original flammable nitrate positive print element. Then, after scanning and digitally restoring the inter-negative, we produced a black and white recording negative and a black and white positive with the density adjusted to account for the tinted colors that would be applied to the film. Finally, the film was tinted yellow and green (Daibō 2014). Details on the tinting process, which 309

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required arduous and repeated research, testing, and inspection, are available in articles published in specialist journals (Matsuo 2007). Like The Dull Sword, the film Momijigari (Maple Viewing, dir. Shibata Tsunekichi) holds the title of “the oldest” extant domestic film, even though it is even older than The Dull Sword, having been filmed in 1899. In 2009, Maple Viewing made headlines when the duplicate negative from 1927 became the first motion picture film to be registered as an Important Cultural Property (jūyō bunkazai) of Japan. At IMAGICA WEST, we aim to conduct high-quality work on all materials, regardless of the title, director, story, or critical acclaim, but this was a special case. We designed a new workflow in order to ensure the safety of this Important Cultural Property and the quality of the finished product, and we assembled a larger team than usual to conduct repairs, cleaning, and color grading before printing the master positive print. Shortly after Maple Viewing was registered as an Important Cultural Property, other films followed suit, such as Shigeki Nankō ketsubetsu (Historical Drama: Farewell of Nanko, aka The Farewell Scenes of Kusunoki Masashige and his Son, 1920–1928, registered in 2010) and Kobayashi Tomijirō sōgi (The Funeral of Kobayashi Tomijirō, 1910, registered in 2011), thus consolidating motion picture film’s status as cultural heritage. In 2009, the same year that Maple Viewing was restored, IMAGICA WEST was commissioned to photochemically restore, without the use of digital technology, Ichikawa Kon’s Kōfuku (Lonely Heart, 1981, Toho), a film that adopted a silver retention process in order to realize the color scheme that Ichikawa envisioned. This technique, also known as the “bleach bypass” or “skip-bleach” process (gin nokoshi) involves bypassing the bleaching step during color film processing, so that the silver in the film emulsion is retained along with the color dyes to produce a grainier, higher contrast image with less saturated color. The processing equipment therefore had to be reassembled to accommodate this different workflow. Specifically, the color positive processor and black and white positive processor were connected in one workroom; converted into a darkroom, this room thus became a giant, specialized processor. The operation was an acrobatic feat that involved synchronizing two different processors with separate motors in a set up that had films flying mid-air in the dark room as they were being processed (Suzuki 2009). It is clear that these restoration projects marked important milestones in the company’s history, on a par with the restoration of Water Magician, which took place right before the founding of IMAGICA WEST as an independent company. It is important to acknowledge the significance of such film preservation work that adapts today’s machines and materials to revive historical color processes (tinting, toning, and combined tinting and toning) which had already been obsolete by the time Nagase Shoten’s Far East Film Laboratory was founded in the 1930s, or work that reproduces unique filmmaking techniques of the past. Such feats are the legacy of company employees who weathered hardships during World War II thanks to advanced technological know-how, adaptability, and mechanical skills. In this tradition, the company has added valuable tools for completing restoration projects such as a scanner developed in-house, specialized “film rescue” techniques for damaged films, protocols to handle nitrate film—whose survival alone makes it our cultural heritage—and the know-how to duplicate amateur small-gauge film (notably by making 35 mm blow-ups, a process that has been revalorized in recent years). This chapter only briefly mentions some of the projects that IMAGICA WEST has undertaken to restore and conserve famous and obscure films alike, commissions that contribute to the accumulated experience of company employees. IMAGICA WEST continues to restore historical films, process films for new productions, and work on digitization projects. It continues to deepen its commitment to motion picture film with tenacity and persistence. Under the motto of “Prevention and Preservation,” 310

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IMAGICA WEST offers solutions for improving film storage conditions by conducting environmental monitoring for film conservation, developing acid-gas absorbents to counteract acetate film decomposition, developing binary fluid water cleaning and air-based cleaning with minimum biological and environmental impact, and holding seminars on the health effects of degraded film. All of these endeavors continue the company’s corporate tradition, passed down from its predecessors, of riding the trends while also anticipating the future.

Conclusion In 2015, as part of an operations overhaul at IMAGICA Tokyo Imaging Center, all film processing—negative and positive, color and black and white, 35 mm and 16 mm—was delegated to and consolidated at IMAGICA WEST. IMAGICA thus placed the company’s fortunes on the industry-wide sea change at a time when significantly fewer productions are shot on film, editing has almost exclusively become part of a digital workflow, and screenings of new releases on film are becoming extremely rare. In this context, it was a watershed moment for the screen industry when IMAGICA abandoned its processors at its main lab in Gotanda, Tokyo, where innumerable films had been processed over its eighty-year history (including the Toyo Genzosyo years). Conversely, Osaka’s IMAGICA WEST surprised and delighted many when it went against the tide of digitization, and renovated its processing lines for both negative and positive film prints (Yuni Tsūshin Sha 2015). As a consequence of the company’s restructuring, all negative processing orders sent to the IMAGICA group end up at IMAGICA WEST, which thus effectively inherited IMAGICA’s loyal clients in the Tokyo area. On a personal level, this means that the section I belong to at IMAGICA WEST, which had previously specialized in coordinating the repair and restoration of old movies, now also deals with processing film for new releases. For instance, my team is responsible for inspecting freshly processed negatives for new releases in addition to working on preservation projects. When new release negatives arrive, we conduct inspection by running them while watching the monitors for scratches, dust, and signs of shooting errors. Consider the strange sensation of starting the day by inspecting a 100-year-old film, and in the afternoon, using the same hands to inspect a fresh print that has yet to be seen by the film’s director or cinematographer. The old film registers the weight of 100 years in the form of scratches and stains that we remove, as well as perforation tears and damaged splices that require attention. The newly processed negatives might be immaculate, but they are not yet assembled into a complete film. What the two films have in common is their materiality as photochemical motion picture film. We are able to handle new and old films in the same way precisely because motion picture film as a tangible medium has been perfected over its 120-year history without any fundamental changes made to its basic composition. Let me end with an interesting anecdote. One day recently, while working beside one of my colleagues, a film restorer with forty years’ experience, I noticed her staring at the head leader of the film she was working on. Following her gaze, I saw the title of the film written in her own handwriting. She had made the inscription herself soon after joining the company. Forty years had passed and the same film had circled back to her. Will other laboratory technicians, including myself, ever have the opportunity to experience this? If so—in other words, if a film we process and restore today returns to us again after a few decades—it would mean that IMAGICA WEST will have been in the business of restoring film for over a hundred years, and cinema will have been in existence for even longer. If IMAGICA WEST has a role and a mission in the historiography of Japanese cinema, it is to continue meeting the technical challenges posed by the materiality of film. 311

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Notes 1 Editors’ note: we have maintained the original romanization style for the names of these entities at the request of IMAGICA Lab. Inc. 2 The National Film Center at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art (now the National Film Archive of Japan) is spearheading an ongoing project to reassess the early years of color filmmaking in pre- and post-World War II Japan. In 2014, the Center presented a program titled Early Japanese Color Films (Nihon no shoki karā eiga). Featuring both original prints and digitally restored versions of films showcasing the color reproduction methods used by different manufacturers of photosensitive material, the program allowed spectators to systematically experience the technical transitions of the time. It included the digitally restored version of Narayama bushiko (The Ballad of Narayama, dir. Kinoshita Keisuke, 1958, Shochiku), which had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, showcasing Fujifilm’s color, negative, and positive systems. In 2015, with additional restoration prints of the earliest examples of tinting and toning techniques, the Center presented a special program titled Richness and Harmony: Colour Film in Japan for Il Cinema Ritrovato at the annual film restoration festival in Bologna, Italy. This was a novel program that urged a reconceptualization of Japanese film history from the vantage point of color. 3 It is necessary to note an important development that took place after completing this chapter. On October 1, 2018, IMAGICA Corp., IMAGICA WEST Corp. and IMAGICA Imageworks merged to form IMAGICA Lab. Inc. (CEO: Katsumi Obayashi, Located in Shinagawa, Tokyo). 4 As of April 1, 2018, the National Film Center was restructured as the National Film Archive of Japan.

Works cited Daibō, M. 2014. “Fukusū bājon to dejitaru fukugen no genzai” (“Considering Digital Restoration Today through ‘Multiple Versions’ ”). NFC Newsletter 117: 2–3. Daiyamondosha. 1970. Sangyō furontia monogatari 36: firumu purosesshingu Toyo Genzosyo [Tōyō Genzōsho]’ ” (Industry Frontier Stories vol. 36: Film Processing at Toyo Genzosyo). Tokyo: Daiyamondo-sha. Imajika. 1992. Hikari e hito e: IMAGICA Eizō no 55-nen (Toward Light and Toward People: Fifty-Five Years of IMAGICA Imaging). Tokyo: IMAGICA. Matsuo, Y. 2007. “Eiga firumu no shūfuku genba kara (1) Chakushoki firumu no fukugen ni tsuite” (“From the Site of Film Restoration [Part 1] Restoring Tinted Films”). Eiga terebi gijutsu 659: 12–17. Nagase and Co. Ltd. 2019. History of Nagase. Online at www.nagase.co.jp/english/company/history/ ayumi/initiation/ [accessed September 31, 2017]. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 2012. Eiga hozon to firumu ākaibu no katsudō no genjō ni kansuru Q&A (Q&A on the Current State of Film Preservation and Archiving). Online at www.momat. go.jp/fc/aboutnfc/filmbunka/ [accessed September 31, 2017]. Okada, H. 2016. Eiga to iu “buttai ekkusu”: Firumu ākaibu no me de mita eiga (“The Thing” from Film World: Cinema through the Eyes of a Film Archive). Tokyo: Rittōsha. Saiki, T., Susami, A., Yatōji, T., and Miyamoto, K. 2000. “Yomigaeru firumutachi. Taki no shiraito to Ugayama korekushon no fukugen: ‘Hakkutsusareta eigatachi 1999’ (Firumu sentā) yori” (“Restoration of Classic Films: Taki no Shiraito and the Ugayama Collection”). Eiga terebi gijutsu 571 (March): 18–24. Suzuki, Y. 2009. “Kōfuku tokubetsu jōeikai: shirubā karā no fukugen” Kōen sairoku 1 “Shirubā karā to sono fukugen” (“Kōfuku [Happiness] Special Screening: Restoration of Silver Color” Lecture Transcription 1 “Silver Color and its Restoration”). NFC Newsletter 88: 11–13. Toyo Genzosyo Corp. 1972. Toyo Genzosyo shahō shukusatsuban dai 1–31 gō (Toyo Genzosyo Newsletter vol. 1–31), reduced edn. Tokyo: Toyo Genzosyo Corp. Toyo Genzosyo Corp. 1979. Nagase Tokutarō shōden (Biographical Sketch of Nagase Tokutarō). Tokyo: Toyo Genzosyo Corp. Yuni Tsūshin Sha 2015. CM tsūshin 4887 (January).

Further reading Adachi, H. 2008. “Eiga firumu no shūfuku genba kara (3) ‘Eiga no sato-oya daiyonkai sakuhin Kirigakure Saizō [Pate Bebī han] no fukugen sagyō ni atatte.’ ” Eiga terebi gijutsu 676 (December): 40–44.

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Japanese film history and IMAGICA WEST Ōtake, T. 1979. “Utsumi Tsuneo moto-fukushachō ga kataru Toyo Genzosyo [Tōyō Genzōsho] sōgyō kara no gijutsu shōshi.” Kojinbetsu ryōikibetsu danwa shūroku ni yoru eigashi taikei (History of Cinema Based on Recorded Conversations by Person and Area Series). Tōkyō: Nihon Daigaku Geijutsu Gakubu Eiga Gakka. Ōtsubo, H. 2007. “Eiga firumu no shūfuku genba kara (2) ‘Binegā shindorōmu ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu: kasuibunkai=kasakubunkai?’ ” (“From the Site of Film Restoration [Part 2] A Consideration on Vinegar Syndrome-Hydrolysis”). Eiga terebi gijutsu 660 (August): 26–30. Yagi, N. 1987. “Utsumi Tsuneo moto-fukushachō ga kataru Toyo Genzosyo [Tōyō Genzōsho] sōgyō kara no gijutsu shōshi.” “Kojinbetsu ryōikibetsu danwa shūroku ni yoru eigashi taikei” kara no bassui/kikite: Nihon daigaku geijutsu gakubu eiga gakka Yagi Nobutada (History of Cinema Based on Recorded Conversations by Person and Area Series/Interviewer: Yagi Nobutada, Department of Cinema, Nihon University College of Art) (Memorial booklet for Mr. Utsumi), IMAGICA Corp.

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A CAse study of JApAnese

film exhibition in north AmeriCA The Japan society, new york Kyoko Hirano

Introduction The Japan Society in New York City, a US non-profit organization, was founded in 1907 by a group of Americans and Japanese in order to promote friendship and cultural exchange between these two countries. Its office closed in 1942 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and its activities resumed in 1947. The Society organized its first film screening in 1922. A four-reel documentary of Crown Prince Hirohito’s 1921 visit to Europe drew an audience of close to 600 people. In 1954, during the decade when Japanese films were first widely screened at inter­ national film festivals, the Society hosted the US premières of Mizoguchi Kenji’s Ugetsu monoga­ tari (Ugetsu, 1953) and Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Jigokumon (Gate of Hell, 1953) at the Plaza Theater, and honored their star, Kyō Machiko, at a reception held at the Columbia University Faculty Club in 1955. The president of Daiei Film, Nagata Masaichi, also attended, demonstrating the Japanese film industry’s interest in the Society. The Society’s film-related educational program also started in 1954, distributing documentaries and slides for use in schools throughout the United States (Auslin 2007: 26, 44, 98, and 100). A regular program of film screenings at the Society began in 1971, when the Society moved into a permanent location at 333 East 47th Street with an office space, an art gallery, and an auditorium with 260 seats for public events, including lectures, performing arts, and film pro­ grams. The auditorium was equipped with 35 mm and 16 mm projectors. From the start, film was recognized as playing an integral role in presenting Japanese culture abroad. As Japan Society’s film curator from 1986 to 2004, I was responsible for more than 800 feature length and short film screenings. I also responded to inquiries from the general public, press, educators, and film professionals. Working with other film and cultural organizations, I promoted Japanese films and circulated film packages to venues throughout North America. These activities gave me a unique perspective on the business and cultural context of disseminat­ ing Japanese films in North America.1 In this chapter, I describe the types of films shown in North America from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, thanks to dynamic interactions among filmmakers, distributors, festival 314

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organizers, curators, critics, scholars, and the general public. During this period, the avail­ ability of English-subtitled film prints substantially determined the topics and trends of scholar­ ship in the disciplines of Japanese culture and film studies, creating critical exposure for new genres, styles, approaches, socio-cultural subject matter and, ultimately, the public perception of Japan. Before today’s access to contemporary Japanese culture through the Internet and diverse forms of popular culture, 35 mm and 16 mm screenings of subtitled Japanese films were one of a more limited number of sources of Japanese culture for the general public. As a first step in programming our film series, we gathered information on English-subtitled Japanese films in the US-based trade magazine Variety and the Japanese film magazine Kinema junpō, as well as from film critics like Donald Richie. Then we collaborated with organizations, archives, companies, and individuals willing to loan us their subtitled film prints. The two most important sources were The Japan Foundation, an organization promoting Japanese culture abroad, and the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, founded by Kawakita Nagamasa and Kashiko, who pioneered importing European films to Japan and introducing Japanese films abroad before World War II (for more details on the Kawakitas, see Kae Ishihara’s Chapter 17 in this volume). Their films, mostly classics, were occasionally prepackaged around particular auteurs or themes. Japanese independent film producers were willing to show their films to the world. The major Japanese studios, on the other hand, demanded high screening fees for both their new and classic titles. Additional shipping costs made these screenings increasingly expensive, forcing us to plan programs a few years in advance in order to raise the necessary funds. Our main financial sources, besides ticket sales, were grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Japan Foundation, and the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund. We were con­ stantly writing grant proposals and reports. In order to avoid a project deficit, we usually mixed unknown films worthy of broader recognition along with familiar titles in order to guarantee sizable audiences. Other venues sometimes approached us to collaboratively share films in order to curtail shipping expenses. We took advantage of Japanese filmmakers who came to New York by asking them to intro­ duce their films. Hara Kazuo, Yokoyama Hiroto, Suzuki Junichi, and Yamamoto Masashi introduced their films at the Japan Society when they were Fellows with the Agency for Cul­ tural Affairs (Bunkachō); when producer Misawa Kazuko came to New York to shoot a film, she introduced her film Haru (1996), directed by Morita Yoshimitsu. New Yorker Films had been distributing Yokoyama’s Jun (1979), a modest, independent film about lonely youth in Tokyo. Yokoyama was grateful to Kawakita Kashiko for subtitling the film and taking it to the Cannes Film Festival, where its foreign rights were sold. Experimental director Andō Kōhei also acknowledged how much Kawakita Kashiko assisted his work. In 1995, we presented the series “A Tribute to Madame Kashiko Kawakita: The Best of Japanese Classic Films,” which was dedicated to this formidable and insightful advocate of Japanese cinema. We invited Ōshima Nagisa, then the President of the Directors Guild of Japan, and he discussed her contribution to introducing Japanese films abroad. During this series, Martin Scorsese introduced Ōshima with a superb tribute to this icono­ clastic director. Scorsese often contacted us to request VHS tapes or 35 mm prints from our programs. In such cases, we had to ask permission from the right holders and video or print owners. Typically, we never received a reply and had to contact them several times by email, fax, and phone. They would show no interest in cooperating or request a fee for a private screening. This undoubtedly had a negative effect, limiting the promotion of Japanese film abroad. In this chapter, I discuss the types of series that we programmed in four parts: Classics and Pioneering US Retrospectives, Genre Series, Strategized Programs, and Contemporary Cinema. 315

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Classic films were mostly presented as part of an individual artist’s retrospective. A genre series that focused on, for example, literary adaptations, often included both classic and contemporary films. Strategized Programs were designed to effectively promote Japanese culture and broaden our audiences. Contemporary Cinema series introduced new trends and subject matter. We often organized accompanying lectures and roundtable discussions by specialists from both Japan and the USA. Adding the perspective of an American speaker further illuminated the distinctive styles and themes of Japanese films. We also compiled related publications of film notes and booklets to further enhance our programming objectives.

Classics and pioneering US retrospectives Soon after I arrived in New York in 1979 to attend New York University, director Shinoda Masahiro invited me to the screening of his film Yashagaike (Demon Pond, 1979) at the Japan Society. The film’s star Bandō Tamasaburō was also participating, making its première an excit­ ing event. I was introduced to the film program director Peter Grilli and curator David Owens, and learned about the Society’s discerning past programs, many of which were introduced by the filmmakers or actors themselves. These included the retrospectives of Okamoto Kihachi in 1976; Yamada Yōji in 1977; Nakadai Tatsuya in 1977; Hidari Sachiko in 1978; Terayama Shūji in 1978 in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Takakura Ken in 1979. The Japan Society continued to present programs with the filmmaker’s introduction: Kurosawa Akira in 1981; Matsuyama Zenzō and Takamine Hideko in 1983; Ōshima Nagisa in 1983; Mifune Toshirō in 1984; and Yamada Isuzu in 1985. The high level of participation of these important filmmakers in promoting their work was impressive. Rare classics of the late Shimizu Hiroshi, Shimazu Yasujirō, and others were also introduced during the series “Before Rashomon: Japanese Film Treasures of the 30s & 40s” (1985). In the early 1980s, the Society popularized Japanese major directors in collaboration with two neighboring New York institutions, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Film Forum. The first large-scale retrospectives of Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujirō at the Society and MoMA took place in 1981 and 1982 respectively. Around the same time, Film Forum had an enormously popular Ozu/Mizoguchi series, with each screening consisting of a double feature with one Ozu and one Mizoguchi title. Mizoguchi’s retrospective returned to Film Forum in 2006 and Ozu’s returned to the Film Society at Lincoln Center in 2003. Planned by my predecessors for 1986, an Ozu/Hara series included films directed by Ozu that starred the actress Hara Setsuko, such as Banshun (Late Spring, 1949) and Tōkyō boshoku (Tokyo Twilight, 1957). On the opening night, a constant stream of people quickly filled the lobby. Tickets sold out, but the people did not leave and the atmosphere became tense. Peter Grilli added one more screening that night, and also added an additional screening for each title throughout the rest of the series. Television personality Dick Cavett showed up at every screen­ ing with his famous friends, such as Bianca Jagger and Carly Simon. I realized then that Ozu and Hara were popular icons among New York cinephiles. In 1984, a Naruse Mikio retrospective (a collaboration between MoMA and the Japan Society) created a sensation in New York, following its success at the Locarno International Film Festival the year before. Japanese film scholar Audie Bock curated and presented this series on both conti­ nents. According to MoMA’s film curator at the time, Adrienne Mancia, the museum never received “such enthusiastic responses by mail for a series before” (Lopate 1998: 167). The Naruse series returned to MoMA in 1985 after a tour to nine US cities that was coordinated by Richard Peña, the then director of the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (now the Gene Siskel Film Center). Peña also edited a booklet on Naruse. 316

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Later in 1985, Film Forum screened Naruse’s Bangiku (Late Chrysanthemums, 1954) and The Public Theater screened Nagareru (Flowing, 1956), both distributed by Bock. She later distrib­ uted three more Naruse titles. Major film critics enthusiastically embraced Naruse. Vincent Canby of the New York Times invoked a comparison with Tennessee Williams (Canby 1985: C8), while J. Hoberman of the Village Voice compared Naruse with Douglas Sirk and R.W. Fassbinder (Hoberman 1985: 23–24). After this success, we always found every excuse to screen Naruse: for example, Hataraku ikka (The Whole Family Works, 1939) during “Japan At War: Rare Films from World War II” series (1987); Kimi to wakarete (Apart From You, 1933) during the “Japanese Silent Films” series (1989); Ginza keshō (Ginza Cosmetics, 1951) during the Tanaka Kinuyo retrospective (1993); Ukigumo (Floating Clouds, 1955) during “Pacific Reflections: How Japan and America See Each Other in Film” (1994); Meshi (Repast, 1951) during “Critic’s Choice: Donald Richie on Japanese Film” (2001); and Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, 1960) during the “Susan Sontag Series Part 2” series (2004). After the 1999 San Sebastian International Film Fes­ tival’s presentation, the second Naruse retrospective toured North America in 2005 coordinated by James Quandt, then the senior programmer at the Cinematheque Ontario (now the TIFF Cinematheque). At the Film Forum, I saw a new generation of fans discovering this master, while old fans returned with new energy. A group of over a dozen fans, including film curators and writers, discussed Naruse films and exchanged information in a chat group, “NaruseRetro,” created by filmmaker Dan Sallitt. He later published a book on Naruse (Sallitt 2016). MoMA and Japan Society collaborated in presenting more Japanese director retrospectives in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to Adrienne Mancia’s passion for Japanese cinema. Kinoshita Keisuke, Gosho Heinosuke, and Shimizu Hiroshi were introduced as popular and critically recognized directors working in a wide range of genres, including comedy, melodrama, literary adaptations, and period films. A collaborative Kinoshita retrospective took place from late 1987 to early 1988. Kinoshita was first introduced widely abroad at the 1986 Locarno International Film Festival, thanks to the efforts of Audie Bock. This was followed by a Kinoshita series at London’s National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank). In the 1987–1988 collaborative retro­ spective in New York, MoMA showed seven films, from Rikugun (Army, 1944) to Fuefukigawa (The River Fuefuki, 1960); the Japan Society showed twenty-four titles, including his debut, Hana saku minato (The Blossoming Port, aka Port of Flowers, 1943), and his last film, Shin Yorokobi mo kanashimi mo ikutoshitsuki (Big Joys, Small Sorrows, 1986). Part of the series continued on to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Ber­ keley (now BAM/PFA, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). The Kinoshita series was revived at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2012. Gosho Heinosuke is known for his shomingeki (films about ordinary people), represented by Entotsu no mieru basho (Where Chimneys are Seen, 1953). A collaborative Japan Society–MoMA Gosho series was presented from late 1989 to early 1990. MoMA screened seven films, from the first Japanese “talkie,” Madamu to nyōbo (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine, 1931) to Osorezan no onna (An Innocent Witch, 1965). Japan Society showed twenty-four films, from two films made in 1933, Ramūru (L’Amour) and Hanayome no negoto (The Bride Talks in Her Sleep), to Utage (Rebel­ lion of Japan, 1967). Arthur Nolletti, Jr., a professor at Framingham State College, introduced the series. Shimizu is most famous for his films about children. His retrospective took place from late 1991 to early 1992. MoMA showed three films: Hanagata senshu (A Star Athlete, 1937), Kaze no naka no kodomo (Children in the Wind, 1937), and Hachinosu no kodomotachi (Children of the Beehive, 1948). The Japan Society sponsored six titles, including Arigatō-san (Mr. Thank You, 1936) and Jirō monogatari (Tale of Jiro, 1955), all screened at the United Nations because the Society’s 317

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auditorium was under renovation. The late Keiko I. McDonald, then a professor at the Univer­ sity of Pittsburgh, introduced the series. The series traveled to the University of Michigan and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Japan Society further introduced important classic directors who also demonstrated their versatile talent in diverse genres and distinctive styles. Tanaka Kinuyo was honored in a series showcasing her work as both an actor and a pioneer woman director of six films. We opened the series with Ichikawa Kon’s biopic of Tanaka, who was played by Yoshinaga Sayuri titled Eiga joyū (Actress, 1987). Tanaka worked for many directors, but we only screened twenty-two films, from Okoto to Sasuke (Okoto and Sasuke, 1935) directed by Shimazu Yasujirō to Sandakan hachiban shōkan: Bōkyō (Sandakan No. 8, 1974), directed by Kumai Kei. Toyoda Shirō is known for his literary adaptations (bungei-mono), such as Wakai hito (Young People, 1937) and Yukiguni (Snow Country, 1957). His Japan Society retrospective in 1994 included sixteen films made between 1937 and 1973. His broad range of genres was represented in such films as Kigeki ekimae ryokan (The Hotelman’s Holiday, aka The Inn in Front of the Train Station, 1958), which launched a popular comedy series, and Amai ase (Sweet Sweat, 1964), a powerful women’s drama. From director Masumura Yasuzō’s first film, Kuchizuke (Kisses, 1957) to his final works, which included Daichi no komoriuta (Lullaby of the Earth, 1976) and Sonezaki shinjū (Double Suicide of Sonezaki, aka The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, 1978), he championed individualism over selfindulgent sentimentality. The Society’s Masumura series in 1997 included fifteen titles and traveled to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Museum of Art, and Cinematheque Ontario. His incisive critique of hypocrisy and social compliance is manifested in melodramas like Danryū (Warm Current, 1957) and Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru (A Wife Confesses, 1961), or in thrillers like Kuro no tesuto kā (Black Test Car, 1962). Katō Tai, mostly known for his yakuza/gangster films, was introduced in his retrospective of nine titles in 1999, after its tour to Cinematheque Ontario, the Pacific Film Archive, and the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. We included a quote from Paul Schrader in our bro­ chure: “Red Peony Gambler (Hibotan bakuto, 1968) remains my favorite yakuza film—not only for the incomparable joy of seeing Junko Fuji and Ken Takakura at their prime, but also for Tai Kato’s assured expressionism.” Some unknown masterpieces like Shafu yūkyō-den: Kenka Tatsu (Fighting Tatsu: The Rickshaw Man, 1964) and Otoko no kao wa rirekisho (By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him, 1966) were also introduced. Donald Richie regarded Hani Susumu as the true pioneer of the Japanese New Wave, and in 1998, he organized a Hani series to be presented at the Telluride Film Festival, the Pacific Film Archive, and MoMA/Japan Society. Hani traveled to these venues with Richie to intro­ duce his films. MoMA curator Laurence Kardish presented seven films, including Kyōshitsu no kodomotachi (Children in the Classroom, 1954), E o kaku kodomotachi (Children Who Draw, 1956), and Furyō shōnen (Bad Boys, 1961). The Japan Society screened the first two films. In 1996, the International Film Festival Rotterdam presented a retrospective of Kumashiro Tatsumi, a representative director of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno genre, a component of the Japanese adult film genre (which also includes Pink films, known as pinku eiga). The Japan Foundation courageously subtitled his films including Ichijō Sayuri: Nureta yokujō (Following Desire, aka Ichijō’s Wet Lust, 1972), Koibitotachi wa nureta (Twisted Path of Love, aka Lovers are Wet, 1973), and Yojōhan fusuma no urabari (The World of Geisha, 1973). In 2001, we organized a Kumashiro Tatsumi series that presented an additional six titles. In the early 1970s, influential Japanese film critics like Satō Tadao and Hasumi Shigehiko had helped Kumashiro gain recognition as an innovative director. In 1980, however, when the Society presented Kumashiro’s Akasen Tamanoi nukeraremasu (Red Light Distrtict: Gonna Get Out, 318

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aka Street of Joy, 1974) and Akai kami no onna (The Woman with Red Hair, 1979) during the series “High Tide, Low Tide: Effects of the New Wave in Japanese Cinema,” this drew criticism. We knew we needed a good strategy in order to present a Kumashiro retrospective in the USA. Kumashiro’s directorial debut at Nikkatsu was the 1968 film Kaburitsuki jinsei (A Thirsty Life, aka Fan Life: Front Row Life). In the 1960s, some directors in the adult film genre, such as Waka­ matsu Kōji and Adachi Masao, had elevated the status of the genre with their low-budget pro­ ductions that featured a radical and guerrilla-like political stance against the establishment and middle-class values. Similarly, Nikkatsu had several excellent directors whose aesthetic con­ cerns, exploration of human desire, and social criticism fascinated viewers. In 1971, after finan­ cial difficulties, Nikkatsu decided to produce only two genres of films, the adult film Nikkatsu Roman Porno and educational films for school children. We made a case that women supported Kumashiro because he did not exploit them. In our promotional materials, we quoted an article by Tsuneishi Fumiko, then a film curator at the National Film Center, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (now the National Film Archive of Japan). We invited two women to introduce the series, Kumashiro’s scripter and screenplay writer Shiratori Akane and film critic Tanaka Chiseko. Kumashiro’s former assistant director, Sakuda Takashi, who was working for a US distributor in New York at the time, introduced Kamu onna (Love Bites Back, 1988). Furthermore, we had full support from the Soci­ ety’s management and a Society board member, Nakazaki Keisuke (then working at NTT America), who was an unexpected film connoisseur and fan. It was reassuring to have such internal support for a potentially controversial program. Thanks to good reviews by J. Hoberman and Dave Kehr’s interview with critic Tanaka Chiseko, the series was a big success (Hoberman 2001a, 2001b: 131, 74; Kehr 2001: E36). People religiously read our film notes. Over 300 people came to the Nikkatsu Roman Porno films, although the size of the audience slightly shrank for Kumashiro’s mainstream (non-Roman Porno) films like Seishun no satetsu (The Bitterness of Youth, 1974) and Modori-kawa (Appassionata, aka Modori River: The River of No Return, 1983). Thanks to our series, some Kumashiro films were distributed in the USA. So far, I have discussed our auteurist director programs, but film is a collaborative medium. Recognizing this, my predecessors at the Japan Society, Peter Grilli and David Owens, organ­ ized series such as two 1981 retrospectives of the work of composer Takemitsu Tōru and cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo. In the 1980s, the Athénée Français Cultural Center in Tokyo presented a retrospective of art director Kimura Takeo, who worked on more than 200 films. He is best known for his collabo­ ration with the director Suzuki Seijun, both as art director and co-screenwriter, starting with Akutarō (The Young Rebel, aka The Incorrigible, 1963). He worked for various directors in addition to later directing four films of his own. We were inspired by US retrospectives of art directors such as William Cameron Menzies and Alexandre Trauner, and in 1990, we presented the series “Takeo Kimura: Art for Film’s Sake.” We screened ten films, including classics and new films like Zipangu (aka Jipangu, 1990), directed and introduced by Hayashi Kaizō. In addition to locally available films like Toyoda’s Gan (Wild Geese, 1953) and Itami Jūzō’s Tampopo (1985), we also included rarely shown films like Tasaka Tomotaka’s Jochūkko (The Maid’s Kid, 1955) and Kuroki Kazuo’s Matsuri no junbi (Preparation for the Festival, 1975).

Genre series In 1986, I took on an enormous project to showcase films made during World War II. “Japan at War: Rare Films from World War II” was so large in concept and scale that funding it took 319

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several years. The series took place in 1987 and included twenty-seven titles. Many of these titles had never been publicly screened in the USA before. Seven films came from the Library of Congress Japanese Captured Foreign Films collection, which consists of films originally captured by the US military during World War II. The US government mobilized these titles for educational purposes during the war (both for studying Japanese culture and as the basis of a psychological analysis by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services [OSS]). Satō Takeshi’s Chokorēto to heitai (Chocolate and Soldiers, 1938) is a good example of the feature films in this collection, and it is a representative title that survived from this period. The film portrays an ordinary family with young children. The father is drafted into the army. From the front, he sends coupons printed on chocolate wrappers back to his son who collects them to exchange for toys from the candy company. When news of the father’s death arrives, his family stoically accepts it. The OSS concluded that this was an effective propaganda film for Japanese audiences, although it does not portray overtly jingoistic activities (United States Office of Stra­ tegic Services, Research and Analysis Branch 1944: 15). The Library kept a version of the film made during the war by the OSS for educational purposes, with English language voice-over narration used over the film’s original soundtrack. The narration describes the plot and explains specific Japanese customs that can be seen on screen. This version of the film has become an important primary source for understanding how Americans interpreted the original film seen by Japanese audiences. We decided to screen this OSS version for the public. This series stands out as a unique example of how the Japan Society participated in the dis­ covery and restoration of wartime films. The original film prints in the Library’s collection had no English language subtitles, and the Society decided to provide subtitles for six films to include in the series. These included Fushimizu Osamu’s Shina no yoru (China Night, 1940), Yoshimura Kōzaburō’s Nishizumi senshachō-den (The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi, 1940), and Marune Santarō’s Kakute kamikaze wa fuku (The Divine Wind Blows, 1944). The Library sent us these films on 16 mm. There were no dialogue sheets or screenplays that we could use as reference, so we had to transcribe the Japanese dialogue line by line. In order to do this, we had to first transfer the six 16 mm film prints to half-inch videotape as screeners for our translators to work with. Then, each 16 mm print was transferred to one-inch videotape on which the English language subtitles were printed, line by line, at a lab. Finally, we had to transfer these one-inch videotapes to three-quarter-inch videotapes for the public screenings. Historians John Dower, Carol Gluck, and William Hauser, writer John Toland, archivist Paul Spehr (the Library of Congress), and the Japanese film critics Satō Tadao and Shimizu Akira participated in a two-day symposium that complemented the series. Chinese residents protested, infuriated by screenings of militaristic Japanese films in New York, while some Jap­ anese residents complained that the Japanese were too apologetic about these protests. Such controversial subjects often arouse protests from many directions, and we always informed the public that we were presenting these programs in order to examine the issues associated with the films from a historical and cultural perspective. As silent film studies began to flourish in the late 1970s, mostly in Europe and the United States, the performative dimension of silent film exhibition in Japan began to attract the atten­ tion of international scholarship. In the late 1980s, Japanese silent film benshi narrator Sawato Midori began to perform at international venues, including the 1987 Tokyo International Film Festival and the 1988 Avignon Theatre Festival. We asked the Japan Foundation’s assistance in bringing their library prints of silent titles, Sawato, and Matsuda Yutaka of Matsuda Film Pro­ ductions (Matsuda Eiga-sha), a collector and distributor of silent films, who handled tapes of musical accompaniment for the films. JoAnn Hanley of the American Museum of the Moving Image co-sponsored the series in 1989. 320

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Sawato usually writes her own scripts, and at the Japan Society, she performed narration for Mizoguchi Kenji’s Taki no shiraito (The Water Magician, 1933), Saitō Torajirō’s Kodakara sōdō (Kid Commotion, aka The Treasure that is Children, 1935), and Itō Daisuke’s Chikemuri Taka­ danobaba (Blood Splattered at Takadanobaba, 1928). She repeated The Water Magician and per­ formed narration for D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919) at the American Museum of Moving Image. It was a rare opportunity for American audiences to hear a benshi performance and their response was enthusiastic. We coordinated a continuation of Sawato and Matsuda’s tour to the Cleveland Museum of Art (John Ewing was then in charge) and the Pacific Film Archive. In addition to our usual contacts, like Mona Nagai, Edith Kramer, and Judy Bloch, the Pacific Film Archive staff at the time included silent film specialists Lisa Spaulding and Stephen Gong. The soundtracks of some Japan Foundation film prints included music and benshi narration by Sawato’s mentor, Matsuda Shunsui, and this presented an opportunity for audiences to experience different benshi styles. We added other silent titles, such as Ozu’s Shukujo to hige (The Lady and the Beard, 1931) and the innovative contemporary silent film by Hayashi Kaizō, Yume miru yō ni nemuritai (To Sleep so as to Dream, 1986). Japanese film scholar Joseph L. Anderson gave an introductory lecture and demonstration at the opening of both New York venues, and we held a panel discussion in which Anderson and practitioners Sawato and Matsuda Yutaka participated. They were joined by the scholars Hiroshi Komatsu, Charles Musser, and Richard Koszarski. Thanks to this exposure, Sawato later per­ formed in Belgium, and has been back to the USA and Europe several times. We occasionally included Japanese anime in our program for our annual series of recently released Japanese films. For example, we screened Miyazaki Hayao’s Tenkū no shiro Rapyuta (Castle in the Sky, 1986) long before this director became an internationally renowned figure, a decade later. The film’s producer, Tokuma Shoten, asked us to distribute a questionnaire to our viewers after the screening. I was surprised by the responses from some parents, who felt that the battle scenes in the film were too violent for children. This type of reaction is not common in Japan. In the 1980s, there were still problems inherent in introducing anime in the USA such as stereotypical views of anime as “kid’s stuff” or, conversely, “too violent.” Even after Miya­ zaki’s reputation became well established worldwide, the violent scenes in his film Mononoke­ hime (Princess Mononoke, 1997) were criticized. We contributed to the interpretation and appreciation of Japanese anime by presenting a historical survey in our series, “The History of Japanese Animated Films,” from late 1998 to early 1999. The Japan Foundation loaned their print of the pre-war classic by Masaoka Kenzō, Kumo to chūrippu (Spider and Tulip, 1943). The Japan Association of Cultural Film Producers (now the Japan Association of Audiovisual Producers) loaned us their rare titles, Ōfuji Noburō’s chiyogami animations Kujira (Whale, 1952) and Yūreisen (The Phantom Ship, 1956).2 Many other anime companies collaborated on the series, such as Tezuka Productions, Mushi Production, and Kawamoto Productions. US distributors also participated. Palm Pictures contributed Oshii Mamoru’s Kōkaku kidōtai (Ghost in the Shell, 1995) and Buena Vista contributed Miyazaki’s Majo no takkyūbin (Kiki’s Delivery Service, 1989). By the early 2000s, a number of Japanese live action films were made based on the popular graphic novels and comics known as manga. Manga are a unique form of Japanese culture boast­ ing massive popularity, a rich diversity of genres, themes, narrative structures, and graphic designs, and a huge market. We asked video maker Higashitani Reina to curate and introduce the 2004 series, “From Manga to Eiga: Japanese Comic Books Live on Screen.” We included classic films like Ichikawa Kon’s Pūsan (Mr. Pu, 1953), Sōmai Shinji’s Tonda kappuru (Dreamy Fifteen, 1980), as well as contemporary films such as Toyoda Toshiaki’s Aoi haru (Blue Spring, 2001) and Yamada Isao’s Jōhatsu tabinikki (Diary of a Disappearance, 2003). 321

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Japanese contemporary horror films, popularly referred to as J-Horror, gained international popularity in the 1990s with such films as Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (The Ring, 1998). Nakata’s The Ring was remade in South Korea and Hollywood (the first US remake was directed by Gore Verbinski); Nakata himself directed a sequel to The Ring, The Ring Two (2005), in the USA, Nakata’s other films, like Kaosu (Chaos, 2000) and Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water, 2002), were distributed and remade in the USA by American directors. Shimizu Takashi followed a similar path as Nakata with his film Ju-on (Ju-on: The Grudge, 2002), which he remade in the USA as The Grudge (2004). Film scholar Daisuke Miyao co-curated the Society’s series, “The History of Japanese Horror Films,” in 2004. Members of a panel discussion analyzed and compared the unique aspects of Japanese traditional ghost films and contemporary horror films with their Amer­ ican counterparts. The panel included Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (then at New York University), Kent Jones (the Film Society of Lincoln Center), and Gavin Smith (then at Film Comment). For “The History of Japanese Horror Films” series, we presented two different film adapta­ tions of the kabuki drama Yotsuya kaidan (Ghost Story of Yotsuya, 1825) by Tsuruya Nanboku IV (1755–1829), Kinoshita Keisuke’s adaptation released in two parts, Shinshaku Yotsuya Kaidan zenpen and Shinshaku Yotsuya Kaidan kōhen (New Interpretation: Yotsuya Ghost Story Parts 1 and 2, 1949), and Fukasaku Kinji’s Chūshingura gaiden Yotsuya Kaidan (Crest of Betrayal, 1994). Cult horror director Yamamoto Michio was represented by his Chi o sū ningyō (The Vampire Doll, 1970), thanks to Uda Norihiro of Toho Co., Ltd.’s New York office, while Nakagawa Nobuo’s Jigoku (Sinners of Hell, 1960) was included thanks to its producer, Kokusai Hōei Co., Ltd.’s Nakano Eiki, who also provided various supporting materials. We were also able to screen four episodes from the television drama series Gakkō no kaidan (Ghosts at School, 1994–2001) thanks to Tanaka Takehiko of Kansai TV and producer Masui Shōji, who made English-subtitled ver­ sions for our series. This horror television series introduced the works of Nakata, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Tsuruta Norio, and Yaguchi Shinobu made between 1997 and 2001. “The History of Japanese Horror Films” series was an excellent example of our collaboration with producers.

Strategized programs In the late 1980s, the Japan Society started encouraging us to present cross-departmental pro­ grams. By hosting such programs, collaborations bringing together film, performing arts, Gallery exhibitions, lectures, and the Society’s educational and corporate programs, it was possible to present a more comprehensive perspective of Japan. In 1999, “1960s Japan: Legacies of the Counterculture Generation” was one of the highlights of such programs. It included an exhibition of photographs by Moriyama Daidō, a performing arts program featuring such artists as the butoh dancer Ōno Kazuo, and the playwright, theater director, and actor Kara Jurō, as well as a lecture series. The titles in our film component demonstrated the vibrant spirit and turbulence of the 1960s through their subject matter and unconventional styles: Suzuki Seijun’s Tantei jimusho tsū-surī: Kutabare akutōdomo (Detective Bureau 23: Go to Hell Bastards!, 1963), Ogawa Shinsuke’s documentary Sanrizuka: Dainitoride no hitobito (Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress, 1971), and Wakamatsu Kōji’s Tenshi no kōkotsu (Ecstasy of the Angels, 1972), among others. Accompanying a performance by the stage actress Shiraishi Kayoko, we presented film director Hamano Sachi’s experimental biography of the avant-garde poet Osaki Midori, Dai-nana kankai hōkō: Osaki Midori o sagashite (In Search of a Lost Writer: Wandering in the Realm of the Seventh Sense, 1998), which featured Shiraishi in the title role. Shiraishi and Hamano introduced the film. In 2003, Japan Society presented “Bridging Change in Asia: New York Looks to Japan and Korea,” centering on the exhibition of the seventh- and-eighth century Buddhist sculptures 322

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from Japan and Korea. In conjunction, we presented a film series on the theme of Japan’s rela­ tionship with Korea. Many titles were Japan–Korea co-productions made at the time of the 2002 World Cup soccer games co-hosted by Japan and Korea. Yukisada Isao’s Go (2001) explores a third-generation Zainichi Korean (ethnic Korean per­ manent resident of Japan) protagonist’s search for identity, and Zainichi Korean theater director Kim Sujin’s Yoru o kakete (Through the Night, 2002) portrays the harsh survival of Zainichi Koreans in Osaka during the 1950s. Mihara Mitsuhiro introduced his Dojji Go! Go! (Dodge-aGo-Go!, 2002) about Korean and Japanese children playing dodge ball games together, and Korean-American documentary filmmaker and author Dai-sil Kim-Gibson introduced her historical investigative documentary, A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans (1995). We also expanded our audience by taking advantage of the famous individuals who, as New Yorkers, frequented our events. Susan Sontag, a respected writer and celebrity of the New York cultural scene, often attended our screenings and we were honored when she wanted to curate a film series at the Japan Society. She once indicated that two of her favorite Japanese films were Kinoshita’s Nijūshi no hitomi (Twenty-Four Eyes, 1954) and Hara Kazuo’s Yukiyukite shingun (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, 1987). Dennis Doros, then working for Kino International, saw The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On at the New Directors/New Films series co-sponsored by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He negotiated the rights with Hara and his wife, producer Kobayashi Sachiko, who came to introduce the film. The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is now well known, with followers like Michael Moore, but Kino International told Kobayashi that Sontag’s promotion of the film had the most influence on those requesting to rent the film (Kobayashi 2013). Sontag selected eight films, including the two titles above, Mizoguchi Kenji’s Gion no kyōdai (Sisters of Gion, 1936), Kurosawa Akira’s Waga seishun ni kui nashi (No Regrets for Our Youth, 1946), and Yoshimura Kōzaburō’s Anjō-ke no butōkai (A Ball at the Anjo House, 1947), among others. On the opening night in 2003, she gave a lecture arguing that the essence of Japanese films teaches us how to navigate life’s dilemmas, as seen in Ozu’s Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1954), a film she had seen twenty times (Figure 19.1). Sontag’s series attracted huge audiences. She brought her friends Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed to Ōshima’s Kōshikei (Death by Hanging, 1968), and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, the last film in the series, which she briefly introduced. That evening, President George W. Bush had declared war on Iraq, and in Sontag’s introduction, she drew a parallel between the subject matter of The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, about a former Japanese soldier’s search for the truth about his experience during World War II, and the US war in Iraq. She began by thanking the audience for having chosen to see the film she selected rather than listen to the President’s planned television broadcast on the invasion that evening, and declared that “today, our country transformed from a republic to an empire.” We asked Sontag to present a sequel to this series, and she readily agreed. In this follow-up, we presented ten films, from Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Kurutta ippeiji (A Page of Madness, 1926) to Yanagimachi Mitsuo’s Himatsuri (Fire Festival, 1985). After finalizing the film selection, she became ill and died at the end of 2004, while this second series was still taking place. Film series focusing on Japan’s hot springs (onsen), food (shoku), and festivals (matsuri) exemplify events that we planned in order to increase the scope of our publicity and diversify our audience beyond cinephiles and fans of Japanese cinema. While I was in Tokyo in 2000, I saw film critic Nishimura Yūichiro, who had published a book on Japanese onsen portrayed in films. Going through his book, I immediately identified films that had been subtitled in English, and within a few minutes, I had compiled an Onsen film series, presented later that year. 323

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Figure 19.1 Susan Sontag at the Japan Society, New York in 2003. Source: Photograph courtesy of Rie Kusama/Japan Society.

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I consulted with Takenaga Hiroyuki, then working in New York in the publicity depart­ ment of Asahi Shimbun America. He brought in representatives from the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) New York office. They asked the tourism offices in each of Japan’s prefectures to collaborate with us on this project. We showed a rich variety of classic and contemporary films featuring onsen. These included Kurosawa Akira’s Shūbun (Scandal, 1950), Yoshida Yoshishige’s Akitsu onsen (Akitsu Springs, aka Affairs at Akitsu, 1962), and Imamura Shōhei’s Fukushū suru wa ware ni ari (Vengeance is Mine, 1979). Even though the print of Shimizu Hiroshi’s Kanzashi (Ornamental Hairpin, 1941) was in poor condition, viewers were completely engrossed in the story and everyone remained seated until the film’s end. Actress Matsuzaka Keiko, who plays the lead character in Takkyū onsen (Ping Pong Bath Station, 1998), directed by Yamakawa Gen, introduced this film and was a star attraction. Jap­ anese businessmen who had never before crossed the Society’s threshold came en mass to see her in person. The audience was delighted to have this opportunity, as were our sponsors, Asahi Shimbun America and Japan Airlines (JAL), which both collaborated in bringing Matsuzaka from Japan. We asked JNTO to obtain small souvenirs from local tourism offices to give away to our ticketholders. We received yunohana packets (bath powders made from onsen mineral waters), postcards, hand towels, lacquer ware chopsticks, and other items that would appeal to local audiences who otherwise might not have been interested in Japanese films. Each participating prefecture sent promotional brochures and English language videotapes; we displayed the bro­ chures and made them available to viewers and played the videos in the lobby. JAL also created a special promotion, an onsen trip for less than US$1,000 that included a three-night stay in an onsen inn. This series was great fun for everyone involved. It was so successful that other venues and organizations that present Japanese films later asked us about this effective strategy. A crea­ tive approach like this has great potential to popularize Japanese films abroad. After our Onsen film festival, JNTO suggested that we co-host similar series that would introduce Japanese regional culture. We presented “Shoku: Japanese Food on Screen” in 2001 and “Matsuri: Festivals in Japanese Cinema” in 2002. We offered souvenirs such as green tea bags when we screened Ozu’s Ochazuke no aji (The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, 1953) and key holders and other local products from relevant prefectural tourist offices for films in the Matsuri film series. The Matsuri film festival opened with Yaguchi Shinobu’s highly popular comedy Wōtābōizu (Waterboys, 2001), about a high school’s all-male synchronized swimming team. We doublebilled the film with a short, Paruko fikushon (Parco Fiction, 2002), a quirky comedy co-directed by Yaguchi and Suzuki Takuji. Yaguchi introduced both films, thanks to the collaboration of Asahi Shimbun America and All Nippon Airways (ANA). We also included films that had rarely been screened outside Japan, like Inagaki Hiroshi’s Muhōmatsu no isshō (The Rickshaw Man, aka, The Life of Muhomatsu the Untamed, 1943), featuring a southern festival in Fukuoka, and Osabe Hideo’s Yume no matsuri (A Festival of Dreams, 1989) featuring the northern festivals of Aomori prefecture.

Contemporary cinema Almost every year, the Japan Society presented a series introducing films made during the last few years. We wanted to showcase a wide range of subject matter and styles by including docu­ mentaries and experimental films in addition to popular and mainstream commercial studio films. Films can shatter Japan’s stereotype as a monolithic society. For this reason, we wanted to show films that focus on diversity in Japanese society, such as Painappuru tsuāsu (Pineapple Tours, 325

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1992) directed by Makiya Tsutomu, Nakae Yūji, and Tōma Hayashi, Nakae’s Nabi no koi (Nabbie’s Love, 1999), and Hoteru haibisukasu (Hotel Hibiscus, 2002), which are all perfect intro­ ductions to Okinawan culture. Sai Yōichi’s Tsuki wa dotchi ni deteiru (All Under the Moon, 1993), a comedy about a secondgeneration Zainichi Korean cab driver in Tokyo dating a Filipino bar hostess, received unpre­ cedented critical attention in Japan because of its unconventional focus on the perspective of ethnic minorities living within Japan. When the producer Lee Bon-U introduced the film, he addressed issues such as “prohibited subjects for broadcasting” and whether Sai’s film could be seen as perpetrating minority stereotypes. Zainichi Korean director Lee Sang-il’s student film Ao Chong (Chong, 2000) received several awards at the Pia Film Festival in Japan. We screened this entertaining film about the experience of third-generation Zainichi Korean youth in Japan to enthusiastic audience response. Donald Richie often traveled to the USA and we always asked him to introduce films on such occasions. In 1991, we invited him to discuss contemporary experimental films in order to attract audiences who otherwise would not be interested in Japanese films. He selected Yama­ mura Kōji’s Hyakkazukan (Japanese–English Pictionary, 1989) and three other shorts. In collaboration with Women Make Movies, we screened the documentary Onna kara onna­ tachi e (Ripples of Change, 1993), about the Japanese women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, introduced by director Kurihara Nanako. Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. started the Earth Vision-Tokyo Global Environmental Film Festival in Japan in the early 1990s. They sent us selections of awarded films, including television docu­ mentaries, commercials, and student films, along with their directors, from Japan. Documentary filmmaker Satō Makoto introduced his film Aga ni ikiru (Living on the River Agano, 1992) about the lives of mercury contamination victims; Akai Akemi introduced her Ishikawa television documentary Noto no umi kazedayori (Rumors from the Noto Sea, 1993) on the traditional village life threatened by plans to construct a nuclear power plant; and Shinomiya Hiroshi introduced his film Wasurerareta kodomotachi: Sukabenjā (Scavengers: Forgotten Children, 1994), about Filipino children collecting garbage in the Manila slums. When sponsors had ample budgets and brought stars to screenings, these lavish premières were especially memorable for audiences, particularly Society members and donors. The 1987 US première of Ichikawa Kon’s Kaguyahime (Princess from the Moon, 1987) was an opulent affair thanks to the film’s producers, the Toho Company and Fujisankei Communications. There were two special screenings at the Japan Society and one at MoMA, all introduced by Ichikawa and the stars of the film, Mifune Toshirō and Sawaguchi Yasuko. Sawaguchi sat in MoMA’s garden wearing the twelve-layered kimono worn by noblewomen of the Heian period (794–1185), the setting for the film. This was made possible by collaborating with a custom kimono maker from Japan. The 1989 US première of Teshigahara Hiroshi’s Rikyū (1988) was presented as a special program for Society members. The film was introduced by Teshigahara and costume designer Wada Emi, accompanied by an exhibit of Wada’s costumes in the Society’s Gallery. Visually impressive period films were always crowd-pleasers and the two screenings of Kumai Kei’s Sen no Rikyū: Honkakubo ibun (The Death of a Tea Master, 1989), included in “Takeo Kimura: Art for Film’s Sake” series, sold out immediately. When working with US distributors, we often co-presented their new acquisition at a première for Society members. This was the case with Iwai Shunji’s Love Letter (1995), which was extremely popular in East Asian countries, and Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Wandafuru raifu (After­ life, 1998). Several distributors fought over the rights to Kore-eda’s film at the Toronto Inter­ national Film Festival. 326

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Not surprisingly, upbeat comedies were usually very popular. After Film Forum’s director, Karen Cooper, saw Society screenings of Takita Yōjirō’s Kimura-ke no hitobito (The Yen Family, 1988), and Bakayarō! Watashi okottemasu (Bakayaro! I’m Plenty Mad, 1988), directed by Watanabe Eriko, Nakajima Tetsuya, Hara Takahito, and Tsutsumi Yukihiko (an omnibus film supervised by Morita Yoshimitsu), she selected them for her own venue as well. The director Kitano Takeshi began to attract international attention by the time he made his fourth film, Sonachine (Sonatine, 1993). J. Hoberman wrote about this film enthusiastically when we included it in our annual “New Films from Japan” series in 1994 (Hoberman 1994a: 53, 1994b: 39, 1999: 51). By the time he made his sixth film, Kizzu ritān (Kids Return, 1996), Kitano had established an international reputation and many venues sought out his work. Jap­ anese producer Horikoshi Kenzō contacted us and coordinated with Kitano’s office in order to introduce his unreleased films in the USA. In addition to Kids Return, we screened his third film, Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi (A Scene at the Sea, 1991) and his fifth film, Minna yatteruka (Getting Any?, 1994). After Kitano received the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1997 for his seventh film, HANA-BI (Fireworks, 1997), Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films, the film’s US distributor, contacted us. They wanted to invite Kitano to the USA, for the film’s première. The Society worked with JAL in bringing Kitano to New York for our screenings at the begin­ ning of 1998. An unprecedented crowd of 200 people attended our press screenings and our member’s special screening sold out immediately. We held a reception in honor of Kitano between screenings, when attendees were able to talk with Kitano. The popularity of three influential Japanese comedies made in the 1980s and 1990s had a significant impact on the profile of Japanese cinema and its marketability in the USA. These were Morita Yoshimitsu’s Kazoku geimu (The Family Game, 1983), Itami Juzō’s Tampopo (1985), and Suō Masayuki’s Shall we dansu? (Shall We Dance?, 1996). The Family Game was first intro­ duced to US audiences during the annual New Directors/New Films series. Vincent Canby gave an enthusiastic review (Canby 1984: C3) and Circle Releasing distributed it in the USA. Its highly inventive style, visual and auditory design, and acting captivated American viewers and we often received comments from the public praising these qualities. The first feature-length film that actor Itami Jūzō wrote and directed, Osōshiki (The Funeral, 1984), immediately became a big hit in Japan when it opened. No film festival or distributor in the USA showed interest in this clever satire. After the success of Itami’s second film, Tampopo (1985), a US distributor picked up The Funeral as well, bringing Itami a step closer to recogni­ tion as a major Japanese director. His subsequent films Marusa no onna (Taxing Woman, 1987), Marusa no onna 2 (Taxing Woman Returns, 1988), and Mimbō no onna (Mimbo, 1992) all found US distributors, definitively establishing his international reputation as an influential representative of contemporary Japanese cinema. Tampopo was first shown during our “Tokyo: Form and Spirit” series from late 1986 to early 1987. New Yorker Films bought the US rights after its representative saw it at our enormously popular press screening. Tampopo became a highly sought after title when Vincent Canby praised it during the New Directors/New Films series (Canby 1987: C21). His enthusiasm for the film was a major factor contributing to Itami’s phenomenal popularity in the USA, just as his reviews of Family Game had fueled its success. Canby was so fascinated by Itami that he went to Japan to meet him and later wrote about this experience in The New York Times Magazine (Canby 1989: 26, 28, 29, and 42). The Japan Society showed Suō Masayuki’s second film, Fuanshī dansu (Fancy Dance, 1990), during its 1990 “New Films from Japan” series. Based on a popular manga, this well-made comedy is about a rock singer trained as a monk. In 2004, its producer, Masui Shōji introduced 327

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it when we screened it again during the series “From Manga to Eiga.” In 1992, we screened Suō’s third film Shiko funjatta (Sumo Do Sumo Don’t, 1991), another comedy about a university sumo club, during the “Changing Society: New Ways in a Traditional Society” series co­ sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Suō’s big break came when Miramax’s young buyer Amy Israel saw his fourth film, Shall We Dance? at the American Film Market in Los Angeles and bought the US rights. The film was screened at the annual “New Directors/New Films” series before it was commercially released to overwhelmingly popular response in the USA. In 1998, the Japan Society invited Suō and his wife Kusakari Tamiyo, the ballet dancer and star of Shall We Dance?, for a lecture and screening open to the general public. At the time, Shall We Dance? was the biggest box office hit for a Japanese film in the USA, surpassing Kurosawa Akira’s Ran (1985), and Suō discussed the business side of film production and distribution, both domestic and international, with Miramax’s Israel at the Society’s corporate program as well.

Conclusion Easy access to films with good quality English subtitles is the first requirement for promoting Japanese films overseas. After I left the Japan Society, it became possible to employ an electronic subtitling system that allows the subtitle track to be projected over a film while it is being screened. This broadened the film programming staff’s curatorial choices. Similarly, subtitles became irrelevant in underground communities when computers, internet communication, and digital technology advanced in the 1990s. North American fans of Japanese anime personally began including lines of translated English text over pirated versions of films and circulated them among themselves. This method of circulation, however, was limited to fan-based subcultures. The cooperation of rights holders and the owners of film prints are also essential to dissemi­ nating Japanese cinema more broadly. Sometimes, programming films at the Japan Society involved detective work. Questions of ownership and rights are complicated by the financial details that are involved in film production, and the process of striking new prints. Digital formats have largely displaced 35 mm print projection because of the poor physical condition of many 35 mm film prints and the high cost of film restoration. (The Society’s auditorium is now additionally equipped with digital projectors.) A filmmaker’s family members are often critical in securing access to projection prints. We introduced Akanishi Kakita (Capricious Young Man, 1936), directed by Itami Jūzō’s father, Itami Mansaku, during our “Kigeki/Comedy” series in 1988. Itami Juzō was delighted by this oppor­ tunity to present his father’s work, and he made a new 35 mm print with new English language subtitles for the occasion. After our event, the print was also shown at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and then donated to MoMA. Actor Onoe Kuroemon, the son of kabuki actor Onoe Kikugorō VI (1885–1949), wanted to screen Ozu Yasujirō’s Kagamijishi (The Lion Dance, 1936)—a rare documentary short featur­ ing his father performing this well-known kabuki dance. Kuroemon negotiated the rights with Shochiku and was able to make a new 35 mm print in 1994. We screened this with an introduc­ tion by kabuki expert Faubion Bowers. The film was so successful that we had to add an addi­ tional screening. The print was then donated to MoMA. The exposure provided by screenings of subtitled Japanese films at international film festivals, and good reviews through influential media channels facilitate the distribution of Japanese cinema in the USA. The endorsement of influential figures, like Sontag and Scorsese, is also helpful. Donald Richie, whose opinion on Japanese cinema was greatly sought after by many curators and professionals in West, played a unique role in making Japanese cinema accessible to 328

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the US public particularly before easy access to sources on the Internet and online databases. New trends popularized by the work of Kitano Takeshi, Miike Takashi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Tsukamoto Shinya, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Kawase Naomi, and Sono Shion, and the discovery of an older, previously neglected generation of directors, including Suzuki Seijun, Fukasaku Kinji, and Wakamatsu Kōji were facilitated by popular figures like Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, John Zorn, Jim O’Rourke, and others. At the Japan Society, our specific mission to promote Japanese culture through our film programming was carried out within this context. Collaboration with other organizations was crucial to increasing audience diversity. The Onsen series, for example, helped popularize our film program, expanding our audiences beyond fans of Japanese cinema. We also had to collaborate with other exhibitors for the practical purpose of reducing program expenses. In addition to the institutions already mentioned, we worked with Asia Society in New York, the Harvard Film Archive, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and several universities. Unfortunately, lack of funds affected every sphere. As their operating costs increased, archives began downsizing their activities and became less willing to loan out prints. Irresponsible exhib­ itors, mostly amateur film festivals, and inexperienced university students and faculty caused print owners to be reluctant to loan out their prints. Regardless of these challenges, my experience at the Japan Society convinces me that con­ tinued efforts to sustain collaboration across many sectors—film production, distribution, exhi­ bition, press, and academia alike—will ensure that future US audiences have ever-increasing opportunities to enjoy and learn about Japanese cinema.

Notes 1 For additional information on my experience as Japan Society film curator, see Hirano 2006. 2 This animation technique uses cut-outs from chiyogami, a type of Japanese paper (washi) made of handprocessed fiber that is then hand-stenciled or printed with colorful patterns.

Works cited Auslin, M.R. 2007. Japan Society Celebrating a Century, 1907–2007. New York: Japan Society.

Canby, V. 1984. “Film: Family Game from Japan.” New York Times, September 14: C3.

Canby, V. 1985. “Flowing.” New York Times, November 29: C8.

Canby, V. 1987. “Tampopo, A Comedy from Japan.” New York Times, March 26: C21.

Canby, V. 1989. “What’s so Funny About Japan?” New York Times, June 18: 26, 28, 29, and 42.

Hirano, K. 2006. Manhattan no Kurosawa: Eigo no jimakuban wa arimasuka? (Kurosawa in Manhattan: Do You

Have an English-Subtitled Version?). Tokyo: Seiryū Shuppan. Hoberman, J. 1985. “Broken Blossoms.” Village Voice, December 3, 1985: 23–24. Hoberman, J. 1994a. “Life on a String.” Village Voice, November 1: 53. Hoberman, J. 1994b. “The Short List: Sonatine.” Village Voice, November 8: 39. Hoberman, J. 1999. “The Short List: Only the Best, Going Down in History.” Village Voice, January 5: 51. Hoberman, J. 2001a. “The Short List: Tatsumi Kumashiro.” Village Voice, January 23: 74. Hoberman, J. 2001b. “Sadsack Hitman, Swamp things, Softcore Minimalism, Waking the Dead, A Tatsumi Kumashiro Retrospective.” Village Voice, January 23: 131. Kehr, D. 2001. “At the Movies: On Kumashiro.” New York Times, January 12: E36. Kobayashi, S. 2013. Conversation with K. Hirano, July 22. Lopate, P. 1998. Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies. New York: Anchor Books. Sallitt, D. 2016. A Mikio Naruse Companion: Notes on the Extant Film, 1931–1967. Online at https:// mikionaruse.wordpress.com [accessed November 21, 2018].

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Kyoko Hirano United States Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch. 1944. “Japanese Films: A Psycho­ logical Warfare.” OSS Research and Analysis Branch Report, March 30, no. 1307. National Archives, Washington, DC.

Further reading Hirano, K. 2006. Manhattan no Kurosawa: Eigo no jimakuban wa arimasuka? (Kurosawa in Manhattan: Do You Have an English-Subtitled Version?). Tokyo: Seiryū Shuppan.

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Yasui Yoshio and Kobe Planet Film archive

Shota T. Ogawa

In an oft-quoted passage, Jacques Derrida challenges the common understanding of the “archive” as a depository of documents of the past, for it also “call[s] into question the coming of the future” (Derrida 1996: 33–34). To think of the archive in Derrida’s terms, we need to inquire, “what [the archive] will have meant,” using the future perfect tense (1996: 36). Recent scholarly writings on film archives have taken a similar turn, liberating us from the linear progressive framework of nineteenth-century historicism. In one of the most theoretically rigorous writings on film archives, Paula Amad has discussed Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète in Paris not simply as the world’s earliest film archive (in operation from 1908 to 1931), but also an unfinished archive waiting to be interpreted at an indeterminate point in the future. The nonfiction films that Kahn commissioned for his ambitious “archive of the planet” went straight to the vaults for an unspecified future audience, thereby confining them to an “a-cinematic slumber of the unprojected film reels” (Amad 2010: 7). This proto-film archive was thus at the same time a counter-archive insofar as it reversed the usual procedure of history-writing by safekeeping records of events not yet processed as memories. Amad’s description of a “supplementary realm where the modern conditions of disorder, fragmentation, and contingency came to haunt the already unstable positivist utopia of order, synthesis, and totality” is meant as a historically specific analysis of Kahn’s early twentieth-century project, but it also captures the complex roles all film archives have played in subsequent decades (Amad 2010: 21). Debates on film archives’ changing roles in the transitional moment of the digital age have also prompted commentators to imagine film archives from an indeterminate future vantage point (“posterity” in Paolo Cherchi Usai’s term, Cherchi Usai 2011: 4) or to “discuss transition in medias res” without assuming a smooth linear succession from old media archives to new media archives (Fossati 2009: 21–22). While it is difficult to find a scholarly writing on film archives today that does not critically engage with the question of temporality, the same cannot be said of the question of space. It is not that scholars discount the importance of space. On the contrary, spatial dimension figures prominently in any historiography of film archives. Instead, the problem lies in the particular ways in which we imagine space in the “cartographic” paradigm, that is, “as container or stage of human activity” (Soja 2009: 2) and as “sovereign space” organized around nation states (Agnew 1994). Granted, the rise of regional film archives since the 1970s has complicated the nationally oriented rationale of FIAF (International Federation of Film 331

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Archives). Emulating the model of heritage preservation under UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizations), FIAF has traditionally empowered selected state-run archives to take leadership not only in preserving films within their own sovereign space, but also in facilitating international repatriation of films (Frick 2011: 5, 11, and 116). Despite the pluralization of film archiving models, however, there is still a dominant territorial understanding of space, namely, as a bounded, divisible, and governable entity. For instance, Roy Edmundson’s UNESCO-commissioned study doubles down on the territorial rhetoric even as it welcomes the rise of regional archives. In his account, “geographic status defines the territory the archive covers or represents,” so that “[a] national archive has a broader, but perhaps less detailed, collecting and service scope than an archive working at regional, provincial or local level” (Edmundson 2016). Debates around film archives thus perpetuate the “over-insistent focus on the discrete at the expense of continua, things at the expense of processes, recognition at the expense of encounter” when it comes to the question of space if not for the question of time (Massey 2005: 2). This chapter explores the open, multiple, and contingent relationship that film archives have to space through a case study of the Kobe Planet Film Archive (unrelated to the aforementioned Archives de la Planète in Paris), a unique collection of motion picture film, projection equipment, and paper-based documents that has, during the course of forty years, responded to changing demands particular to the Keihanshin region (the metropolitan region consisting of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe). With approximately 16,000 films and over 10,000 books and magazines, the Kobe Planet Film Archive is the second largest film collection in Japan after the National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ) and the largest outside the capital.1 As a point of contrast, NFAJ holds over 80,000 films and 800,000 related artifacts (Okajima 2018: 2). As impressive as the collection’s size might be, we would be missing the point if we sought to summarize the significance of the Kobe Planet Film Archive exclusively in quantitative terms. What we need to consider instead is the qualitative asymmetry between NFAJ, a publicly funded institution making up the six national museums of art, and the Kobe Planet Film Archive, a non-profit built around a personal collection that is currently run by two full-time employees—founder and director Yasui Yoshio and manager Tanaka Noriko—and operating without public funding until 2014. One only needs to visit the archive in Nagata Ward, Kobe, and attend one of their curated programs in the thrity-eight-seat theater, where Yasui is often found in the projection booth, to realize the personal nature of the operation. What makes Kobe Planet Film Archive a meaningful case study is the gap between the de facto roles it has come to play as Keihanshin’s premier film archive and repertory cinema and the idiosyncratic, contingent events that culminated in its current form. I will break the chapter into three sections to address different ways to think of the collection’s relationship to space: the Keihanshin region’s oppositional relationship to the capital; Nagata Ward after the Hanshin Earthquake; and Nagata’s “scale jumping” relationship to broader transnational geographic imaginaries. One technical note must be made on organization names. As is the case with most film collections, the trajectory of Yasui’s collection is marked by periodic name changes, relocations, and reorganizations. I use Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma (a cooperative library in Osaka, 1974–1994), Planet Studio Plus One (the repertory cinema in Osaka run by Tomioka Kunihiko, 1995–present), and Kobe Planet Film Archive (the film archive and repertory cinema in Nagata, 2006–present) as proper nouns with fixed referents. By contrast, I use the abbreviated designation “Planet” more flexibly to refer to the continuity of Yasui’s cinephilic activity that pre-dates the film collection.

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Film collection as tactics: Keihanshin cine-clubs against Tokyo centric geography In the office near the leafy Utsubo Park, one of Planet’s delicate staff members will be there (all is welcome, no need for souvenirs, donations appreciated); push open the white door. You might also see that this small place leads to a wonderful something [subarashī samushingu]. Planet is a film reference library [eiga shiryō toshokan] founded to assist in self-publication and self-produced films [jishu eiga]. (Back Matter, Noa’s Vessel, vol. 3, 1974) In Kobe Planet Film Archive’s own account, the origin of the project dates back to 1974, when the editors of the film magazine Noa no hakobune (Noa’s Vessel [sic.]) rented a small office space and placed a sign that read Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma (Figure 20.1). Noa’s Vessel was one of the many peer-to-peer (dōjin) film magazines to have emerged in post-war Japan (for a fuller discussion on the topic of peer publications in relation to independent filmmaking in the 1970s, see Zahlten’s Chapter 10 in this volume). Yasui was one of the five editors of the magazine that ran special features on various subjects such as Robert Bresson (vol. 3), Ingmar Bergman (vol. 5), Science Fiction (vol. 6), and Walt Disney (vol. 8), with guest articles contributed by a wide range of critics and artists, including animator Tezuka Osamu, animation researcher Watanabe Yasushi, and cultural critic Mori Takuya. As the name Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma suggests, its ostensible function was as a cooperative library where Noa’s Vessel’s editors pooled film-related books and made them available to visitors. That this was more than just a library is evident in the excerpt cited above;

Figure 20.1

Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma in Utsubo, West Ward, Osaka.

Source: Photograph courtesy of Kobe Planet Film Archive.

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it was meant as a creative space for voluntary association. Without determining what the “proper” use of the space might be, the magazine editors invited the readers to visit, explore, and define the space for themselves. Among the most visible creative projects to come out of this open-ended creative space were self-published books such as the science fiction novel, Dōsonviru hakushaku fujin wa ame ga suki (Comtesse d’Haussonville Likes the Rain, 1979), written by Noa’s Vessel’s chief editor Ishizuka Toshiki, whom Yasui also credits for naming the library (the word “planet” is accordingly a signifier of the sci-fi genre rather than an homage to Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète), and the ambitious monograph, Nihon animēshon eiga-shi (The History of Animation Film in Japan, 1978), written by Watanabe Yasushi, a pioneer in animation studies in Japan. The latter publication, which featured a preface by the “godfather of manga,” Tezuka Osamu, attests to the productivity of the voluntary associations facilitated by the do-ityourself cultural movement of the 1970s. Equally important as such concrete evidence of the productivity of the voluntary association, however, is the library’s contribution to the broader ecology of cinephilic activities in the Keihanshin region. The collection of motion picture film was not part of the cinephilic peer-to-peer activities that the Planet facilitated. The goal of this section is thus to examine how Keihanshin’s cinephilic culture, symbolized by the robust cine-club movement in the late 1960s and the 1970s, motivated Yasui to start collecting obsolete films, initially as a means to cut the film rental fee needed for cine-club screenings. Two sources are particularly helpful for the purpose of this section. For Yasui’s biographic background and a chronological overview of his collection’s development, I have referred to Sasagawa Keiko’s interview with Yasui (2013). For the broader context of Keihanshin’s cine-club culture, I have referred to Tanaka Shinpei’s insightful article, “On the Independent Screening Groups in the Kansai Area During the late 1970s” (2017). Although Noa’s Vessel was not itself a cine-club and Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma did not start holding independent screenings until 1988, its editors, writers, and readers were connected through alternative screenings held by cine-clubs across Keihanshin. A network of cine-club screenings had a particularly important role to play in Keihanshin where they made up for the vacuum left by the concentration of cultural institutions in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The uneven distribution of cultural centers had an ambivalent effect on the country’s second most populous metropolitan area. On the one hand, cinephiles in Keihanshin were deprived of the opportunities to frequent the hotspots of alternative film culture such as Shinjuku Bunka (the art-house film production company Art Theatre Guild’s flagship cinema in central Tokyo), Sogetsu Art Center (promoter of avant-garde art as well as art-house and student film), and the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (predecessor to NFAJ). On the other hand, the shared sense of cultural deprivation helped the growth of cine-clubs and the public sphere, that turned the whole Keihanshin area into a networked media city of sort. In this respect, it comes as no surprise that Playguide Journal (1971–1987), serving Western Japan, pre-dated Tokyo’s better-known counterparts such as Pia and Cityroad as magazines that aggregated information on cultural happenings in the region (Tanaka 2017: 88). Tanaka cites the renowned director Kurosawa Kiyoshi (1955–), a Kobe native, to underscore the kinds of urban literacy that Keihanshin’s film fans were required to develop—“collecting screening information, train schedules, running times, first-run or second-run theater”—in order to access a broad range of films. Kurosawa concludes the passage by highlighting the productive dimension of all these efforts: “the accumulation of the practice of selecting each and every individual film to watch has created the person I am today” (Tanaka 2017: 87). Among other things, Kurosawa’s example helps us to see cinephilia as a spatial practice, a tactical maneuvering made possible by the dense railway system connecting Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. It is useful to borrow the concept of scalar gestalt from the discussion in humanist geography 334

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(a branch of geography investigating space as a social construct) on how the same social practice might appear drastically different based on the scale in which it is observed (Yamazaki 2017: 58). Considered on a national scale, Keihanshin’s cine-club movement registers as an oppositional response to the lopsided Tokyo-centric geography. On an urban scale, it reveals the productive dimension of individual film fans’ creative uses of a uniquely networked region. We find echoes of Kurosawa’s regionally inflected account of cinephilia in Sasagawa’s interview with Yasui. Examples of this range from his rationale for choosing Osaka Prefectural University for higher education (“the only university with a film production program was Nihon University in Tokyo; no such option existed in Western Japan”) to his motive in founding Osaka Japanese Film Appreciation Association (Nihon Eiga Kanshōkai OSAKA), a studentrun cine-club specializing in Japanese classics (“one had to travel to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Film Center [NFAJ] to watch old films; there was no such place in Osaka”) (Sasagawa 2013: 26 and 35). In the proceedings of the symposium “Potential of Kobe Planet Film Archive” (Kōbe eigas hiryōkan no kanōsei 2010), Yasui applies this formula to explain how a small collective library came to be Japan’s largest non-public film collection: “if the Film Center were in Osaka, I wouldn’t have gone through such trouble [collecting films]” (Symposium 2010: 8). His collection started out of necessity, as he explains it, since venues in Tokyo would screen films he was itching to see, and since red tape made it virtually impossible to rent them from the National Film Center (Symposium 2010: 8). Born in 1948 in Kobe, Yasui belongs to the post-war baby-boomers whose childhood coincided with the peak years of Japan’s film industry. Interestingly, his recollection of his early introduction to film does not take place in commercial cinemas but instead in the space of education. He recounts attending screenings held in his primary school auditorium (kōdō) and visiting the local cinema as a formalized after-school activity (where a whole class would walk to a cinema and see new releases at a discount rate) (Sasagawa 2013: 22). Moreover, his junior high school maintained a highly ambivalent relationship to motion pictures that combined interdiction and encouragement; the school forbade students from patronizing commercial cinemas unless they applied for permits on the condition that they pledge to submit written reflection papers upon their return. The strict policy against cinema going did not indicate the teachers’ ignorance of cinema’s artistic value or its expressive power. On the contrary, the school had invested in installing permanent 35 mm projectors (unlike his primary school’s temporary projectors brought in by traveling projectionists) so that teachers could screen “quality films” such as Kurosawa Akira’s Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954) and Kakushi toride no san akunin (Hidden Fortress, 1958), or Kon Ichikawa’s Tōkyō Orinpikku (Tokyo Olympiad, 1964), among others, sometimes before the film’s general release (Sasagawa 2013: 21–25). On the one hand, the story of Yasui’s film collection reminds us of the famous case of the Cinémathèque Française (1936–). Like the Cinémathèque whose cultural significance cannot be fully appreciated in a vacuum, in isolation from “the incredibly rich world of cine-clubs and specialist cinemas” that emerged in interwar and post-war Paris, Yasui’s film collection was a contingent product of the robust cine-club culture that emerged in post-war Keihanshin (covering Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe) (MacCabe 2003: 51). On the other hand, the prominent role that formal education plays in Yasui’s memory of his childhood induction to cinema appears at odds with the oft-used rhetoric of the cinema as an alternative to formal education. As it is emblematized by the title, “Why the Cinema Is Not a Bad School,” retroactively given to a speech young Jean-Paul Sartre gave during his stint as a high-school teacher in the early 1930s, we are familiar with the notion that cinephilia offers a counterpoint to formal education as a more inclusive, egalitarian, and oppositional mode of education (MacCabe 2003: 57). French New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were only two of the many 335

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academic dropouts that flocked to Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque for lessons in ethics, aesthetics, and politics via an encyclopedic exhibition of world cinema. Yasui’s account reminds us of the extent to which cinema had been thoroughly enmeshed in post-war liberal education, so that the impression that pupils and students received might be summed up by reversing Sartre’s wording to become “why the school is not a bad cinema.” Yet, the difference between postwar Paris and Keihanshin might not be as stark as it seems, in the sense that cinephiles growing up in both contexts understood film screenings as a powerful site of self-guided learning. If there is a meaningful difference, it is that the cinephilic milieu from which Yasui’s collection emerged consisted of a broader base that included actors such as liberal educators, high school and university film circles, and, as we will see, the benshi (narrators of silent film: for the history of benshi, see Omori’s Chapter 12 in this volume). As Murayama Kyōichirō observes in his genealogical study of non-commercial screenings, post-war cine-clubs belong to either of two traditions established in the 1920s through the 1930s: first, the political or educational screenings held by proletarian groups, governmental bodies, and political parties; and second, the cinephilic screenings organized by various individuals, often within the film industry, that centered on bringing French, German, and Russian avant-garde films to Japan (Murayama 2016: 94–96). In both the pre-war and post-war contexts, however, it is counterproductive to imagine a strict division between these two traditions. Take the famous example of Tokyo’s Cine-Club Research Group (Shine Kurabu Kenkyūkai), which was founded in 1966, ostensibly to excavate and screen out-of-circuit films with artistic merit. Within just two years, in 1968, it became embroiled in a high-profile conflict with Nikkatsu when the studio jettisoned the cine-club’s plan to hold a Suzuki Seijun retrospective, exercising what it saw as its rightful role to act as gatekeeper. Nikkatsu maintained its right to stop the circulation of Suzuki’s films because it regarded him as “a director who makes incomprehensible films” and it would be “shameful for Nikkatsu to show [them]” (Miyao 2007: 194). Alongside the equally high-profile court case challenging Nikkatsu’s firing of Suzuki earlier in the same year, the cine-club’s clash with the studio grew into a protest movement co-led by the cine-club founder Kawakita Kazuko and the firebrand critic Matsuda Masao. The “Suzuki Seijun affair” of 1968 invites a comparison with the “Langlois Affair” of the same year in which students, cinephiles, and New Wave directors led a protest against firing Henri Langlois, the founding director of the Cinémathèque Française. In order to recognize the politics of cine-clubs, it is necessary to understand that the locus of politics was not confined to the political issues represented onscreen, but extends to how, where, and for whom the film screenings take place. It is hardly surprising in this context that Yasui, in his college years, was concurrently involved in the Osaka chapter of The Independent Screening Association (Jishu Jōei Soshiki no Kai), a nationwide network that supported Ogawa Shinsuke’s manifestly leftist documentaries, as well as in the less explicitly political activities of the Osaka Japanese Film Appreciation Association (Nihon Eiga Kanshōkai OSAKA) (Sasagawa 2013: 29–30 and 34). Yasui cofounded the latter group so that he and his like-minded peers could see the canonical works of Japanese cinema that rarely played outside Tokyo: the masterpieces of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa, as well as representative titles of the “New Wave” directors. More than the threshold between the political/educational and the cinephilic strands of cineclub movements, we ought to pay closer attention to the divergence between the kinds of doit-yourself independent screenings held at cine-clubs across Japan through the 1960s and the 1970s and the professionalized, for-profit operations of “mini-theaters” (the Japanese equivalent of art-house cinemas) that emerged in the 1980s. From the audience’s vantage point, there is a sense of continuity from the cine-club screenings to “mini-theater” screenings, because both offered opportunities to watch foreign films, classics, and political documentaries that were shunned by mainstream theater chains. The brief mini-theater boom of the 1980s was fueled by 336

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a very different logic from the do-it-yourself ethos of the cine-club movement, however. Minitheaters operated as cultural capital for corporate sponsors, especially for publishers (e.g., Iwanami Hall, founded in 1974), department stores (e.g., Cinema Square Tokyū, founded in 1981), and credit card companies (e.g., Cine Vivan Roppongi, founded in 1983) (Murayama 2016: 101). In order to disarticulate the linear progressive narrative of cinephilic consumption of film, which leads from cine-clubs to mini-theaters (a narrative that could be further extended to rental video stores and online streaming), it is vital to consider the often-overlooked convergence between the cine-club movement and various forms of film archiving movements. Broadly speaking, there were three contexts informing Planet’s transformation to a film collection. First, there were still a handful of benshi (silent film narrators) in the 1970s—Imaizumi Gorō, Mitsuyu Ichirō, Hama Seiha, to name a few (Takatsuki 2015: 88)—who would hold public screenings of silent films with live oration and music accompaniment (piano, trumpet, violin, shamisen, and percussion instruments). In order to hold these alternative screenings, these benshi had their own collections of silent film prints (Sasagawa 2013: 42). The first film that Yasui ever acquired was a 16 mm print of Edo kaizoku-den kagebōshi (Kageboshi, dir. Futagawa Buntarō, 1925); it had been sold to a collector in Saitama by a benshi who had struck a new print for his performances, rendering this tired print redundant (Sasagawa 2013: 44). This was part of a broader history in which benshi exhibition practices formed the basis for film archives in Japan. This history includes the better-known cases of Toba Yukinobu, the second director of the National Film Center (predecessor to NFAJ), who was also a film collector and an amateur benshi, and Matsuda Shunsui, a benshi whose extensive collection is housed at Matsuda Film Company in Tokyo. Many film researchers today encounter benshi performances at this institution (Ishihara 2018: 253). Second, there were other cine-club organizers who purchased rather than rented film prints. For instance, some of the experimental films in Yasui’s collection come from Satō Shigechika, a former editor of Eiga hyōron and the leading advocate for experimental cinema in post-war Japan. Satō operated his own cine-club cum archive, Mokkosu Film Archive, which imported prints from the USA for its cine-club screenings, and then sold them off afterwards (Yasui 2016). Finally, it is vital to remember that before the rise of video home release, there were numerous 16 mm film distributors, many of them located in Osaka, which were potential sources for purchasing dupes of Japanese and foreign classics. If the business rationale of mini-theaters lies in selecting the films they present to the viewers as a way to enhance the cultural capital associated with film consumption, Yasui’s collection has maintained an open-door policy, embodying the ethos of film archiving that archivist Okada Hidenori calls the “universal equality of all films” (Okada 2016: 21). Yasui’s non-selective collection policy also appears to inherit the spirit of the student cine-club movement, notably the movement’s critique of juried competitions which culminated in the boycott of the 1969 Sogetsu Film Art Festival (Sasagawa 2013: 27–28). Planet served as the final stop for film prints migrating from one collector to another, or donated en masse by folding film companies, and the families of invalid or deceased individual collectors. We can trace the growth of Yasui’s collection by summarizing its successive relocations: 1974: Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma opens in Utsubo, West Ward, Osaka; 1979: Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma moves to Osaka Nichi-Futsu Center, a private French-language school in Minami-morimachi; 1988: Planet Film Library moves to Doyama-chō; 1995: Planet Studio Plus One, a small screening space equipped with 16 mm and 35 mm projectors opens in the basement of the same building; and 2006–2007: Kobe Planet Film Archive opens in Shin-Nagata, Kobe. 337

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Before settling in Kobe, the collection had repeatedly moved within a small area in Osaka that is no more than 2 square miles in size. At first glance, these moves might appear to have been motivated by the search for a better screening space. The French-language school in Minami morimachi gave Planet its first in-house screening space, even though screenings were limited to weekends when the school was closed.2 The subsequent relocation to Doyama-chō gave Planet its first designated screening space. The opening of Studio Planet Plus One in 1995 was a milestone as the beginning of a unique hub for autonomous (jishu) film production, dissemination, and exhibition that was later inherited and further developed by scriptwriter Tomioka Kunihiko. This history warrants further exploration. For the purpose of my study, however, it is important to focus on Yasui’s own account of the relocation, which had less to do with film exhibition than with the perennial concerns for better storage space, storage conditions, and cheaper rent that motivated these frequent relocations (Yasui 2016).

Contesting the regional: Kobe Planet Film Archive Visitors approaching Kobe Planet Film Archive today are first greeted by a towering 18-meter statue of Tetsujin 28, a giant robot from the manga and anime series of the same name. It stands as the most visible symbol of Nagata Ward’s initiative to reinvent itself as a hub for the media contents industry. If the jishu do-it-yourself culture of the Keihanshin area accounted for the founding of Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma, as well as its subsequent transformation from a shared library to a film collection, it was yet another locally specific factor that elicited Planet’s migration from Osaka to Kobe, which contingently formalized its function as a regional film archive. In the early hours of January 17, 1995, a powerful earthquake hit the densely populated Hanshin area (covering Osaka and Kobe), ultimately claiming upward of 6,000 lives. The majority of the victims were in Greater Kobe, and Nagata, a largely working-class neighborhood known for its “chemical shoes” industry, was one of the worst hit wards. At the time of the earthquake, Yasui’s growing film collection had been stored in a warehouse in the low-lying area of Amagasaki (between Kobe and Osaka), which was vulnerable to water damage during the typhoon season, even though it was spared destruction by the earthquake. Through the Shin-Nagata Town Management Company (Shin-Nagata Machizukuri, hereafter Town Management Company), an arrangement was made for Yasui’s collection to be housed on the second level of Asuta Plaza, a shopping arcade built on the ruins of Kobe Department store that was destroyed in the fire resulting from the earthquake. According to the Town Management Company’s vision (not necessarily shared by Yasui), opening a “mini-theater” in the style of Planet Studio Plus One in Osaka was deemed strategic for attracting media contents businesses into the area (Symposium 2010: 8 and 10). From 2005 to 2008, Kobe Planet Film Archive was technically overseen by the Town Management Company, with Yasui working as a contractor. After a year of preparation, the new archive opened its doors in 2006. Kobe Planet Film Archive was reorganized as an independent non-profit in April 2009, and restructured again in August 2014 in order to establish the Kobe Film Preservation Network as a new non-profit corporation operating with a limited term grant from the Agency of Cultural Affairs. Relocation to Kobe thus involved a series of organizational transformations that brought the collection’s raison d’être into question. In addition to setting up a cinema with curated film programs drawing on Yasui’s own collection as well as contemporary independent films, the milestone achievement of the first few years (at least for the Town Management Company) was the community-oriented project featuring Kobe residents’ amateur film and video recordings of the earthquake and reconstruction (Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru Kai 2009: 1). In light of similar projects such as Sendai Mediatheque’s 338

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“Center for Remembering 3.11,” Niigata University’s “The Digital Image Archives of the Minamiuonuma Regional Communities,” and Bunkyō Film Archive’s “Firumu ni nokoru Bunkyō no kioku” (“Memories of Bunkyō Left on Film”), which have been spearheaded by public institutions and offices, it is remarkable that a private film archive was able to undertake such a labor-intensive project. In a symposium convened in 2010, at the end of the first year of Kobe Planet Film Archive’s independent operation, Town Management Company’s Shishida Masayuki reflects that there was a gap between, on the one hand, his initial vision for a “minitheater” that would help promote the newly redeveloped mixed residential-commercial district, and on the other hand, the actual needs of the archive to organize and research the collection in order to preserve valuable films (Symposium 2010: 8). Indeed, under the slogan “A Film Archive, Small but Mighty,” Kobe Planet Film Archive’s current English website spells out its unique position as a “private archive whose origins lay outside governmental or corporate incentives” (2014). It candidly admits the difficulty of researching the holdings with limited resources. As a tentative solution, the website promotes “working cooperatively with associates” so that, for instance, “non-professional film fans can take part in cataloguing pamphlets, posters and flyers” in collaboration with specialists (Kobe Planet Film Archive 2014). The solution harkens back to the origin of Yasui’s collection in the do-it-yourself cine-club movement, even though the focus of the cooperative project has shifted from filmmaking and film screenings to researching and cataloging. To be clear, Kobe Planet Film Archive is hardly unique for not perfectly fitting into a preexisting model. It is useful here to briefly recapitulate the trajectory of Planet’s transformation using Paolo Cherchi Usai’s breakdown of ten “models” of film archives that are not meant to be mutually exclusive, but rather indications of different emphases: National Film Archives, Major Collections, Regional Film Archives, Municipal Film Archives, Specialized Collections, “Programming” Film Archives, University Film Archives, Film Museums, and Spontaneous Archives (Cherchi Usai 2000: 81–85). The organic ways in which Yasui started to accumulate film prints as an unintended consequence of running cine-club screenings fits well with Cherchi Usai’s definition of “Spontaneous Archives” (Cherchi Usai 2000: 85). Moreover, the organizational transformation that coincided with the relocation to Kobe might be productively discussed as a transition from a “major collection” (a model of an archive started by a collector, as in the case of the Cinémathèque Française, which evolved from Langlois’ collection) to a “regional archive,” responding to the public interests of the region (Ishihara 2018: 253 and 336). Even though the Kobe Planet Film Archive has not adopted any of these categories in their official publication, recent academic writings on the archive have sought to clarify its current functions by calling it a de-facto “regional film archive” (Itakura 2016: 16–18, 2018: 89) or “municipal film archive” (Ishihara 2018: 336). The goal of this section is to approach the “regional film archive” as an aspirational model rather than a stable category with fixed standards, to avoid naturalizing the socially constructed discourse of the regional. In a recent edited volume that proposes considering the interrelation of locality (chīkisei) and media at the interstices of praxis and theory, film historian Itakura Fumiaki makes the most compelling argument for considering Kobe Planet Film Archive as a de facto regional film archive. Itakura underscores two features of the archive to support his argument. First, although the archive houses over 2,500 titles of theatrically released narrative fiction, the great majority of the collection falls under the category of “orphan film.” This term is broadly defined to include ephemeral materials unclaimed by rights-holders: for instance, educationals, PR films, independent documentary films, amateur films, sponsored films and commercials, and various other small-gauge films (Itakura 2018: 92). This recognition allows us to see Yasui’s idiosyncratic collection as the norm rather than the exception in the eco-system of film archives around 339

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the world. Even though FIAF had traditionally privileged studio-produced narrative fiction (i.e., mainstream cinema) by framing such works under the rubric of national heritage, the film preservation movement’s decentralization and the “rise of the regional” since the late 1970s has made it clear that the majority of the world’s film archives (many non-FIAF members) focus on preserving non-mainstream materials that fall outside of the national heritage paradigm (Frick 2011: 9 and 120–121; Okajima 1997: 2). The second feature that Itakura highlights is the pivotal role that the archive has come to play as a regional “hub.” Itakura’s primary example is a joint project between the archive and Kobe University that he led, which aimed to cast new light on Kobe’s film-historical importance by sorting through the archive’s vast stills and posters collection to compile a list of materials published by Kobe-based theaters, and to inspect amateur films in order to identify images of notable local sites and events (Itakura 2016: 95–96). The archive has also partnered with Kobe Design University in order to digitally transfer parts of the film collection using the university’s Cintel film scanner. The archive also hosts an annual film festival that has served both as a showcase of collaborative projects and a networking platform to facilitate further collaboration among journalists, researchers, and film fans. The brief overview above cannot do justice to the range of cultural events that the archive has organized in partnership with various individuals and institutions. I will bracket individual examples in the interest of addressing the more structural issues that arise from the regional paradigm. With the wisdom of hindsight, we can contextualize Yasui’s relocation to Kobe in the embattled state of Nagata Ward’s reconstruction project in the early 2000s, by which point it was evident that the chemical shoes industry that had provided jobs, social connections, and local character was permanently lost. The industry’s failed recovery has been attributed to different factors ranging from the rise of Chinese manufacturers to the diverse interests dividing manufacturers of vastly different sizes (Edgington 2010: 193). While it is beyond my scope here to weigh in on this contentious debate, it is essential to recognize the broader picture of Kobe’s so-called “creative recovery” plan, which urged affected districts to envision new roles for themselves in the new century rather than rebuild existing industries. Paradoxically, more than 90 percent of private and public reconstruction funds ended up being funneled to Tokyo-based contractors, further aggravating the lopsided economic balance and exacerbating the Hanshin area’s base economy (Edgington 2010: 189). Seen in this context, Shin-Nagata Town Management Company’s vision for reviving Nagata as an “incubator for [media] contents industry,” in part invigorated by the new regional film archive, faced an unfathomable challenge from the start (Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru Kai 2009: 1). Kobe Planet Film Archive was, in a sense, a symptom of the uneven geography of post-disaster Kobe, where cultural institutions—appraised as cultural capital—were overburdened with the unrealistic expectation of countering the accelerating centralization of capital and white-collar jobs in Tokyo. In one sense, Kobe Planet Film Archive appears to be an outlier among the various regional film archives that have played key roles in the film preservation community since the 1970s, both in Japan and around the world. Kae Ishihara’s comprehensive history of film preservation movements in Japan lists the primary examples of its regional film archives as Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library (1982–), the Museum of Kyoto (1988–), Kawasaki City Museum (1988–), and Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive Collection (1996–). In one way or another, these all function with the support of elected officials, and they are housed within or adjacent to larger public cultural institutions.3 Caroline Frick’s overview of film preservation movements in Europe and North America also locates the rise of regionalism in the 1970s. She places a particular emphasis on the founding of the Scottish Film Archive in 1976, realized against the backdrop of post-war Scottish nationalism and “the United Kingdom’s complicated cultural balance between increasingly empowered self-governing nations [as in 340

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historically autonomous Scotland and Wales]” (Frick 2011: 121–122). Unlike the British national-regional archives that were part of the political process known as devolution—the transfer of power by the central government to local or regional administration—Kobe Planet Film Archive is a product of a different kind of devolution, in which the central government appears to be delegating the burden of social services to regional governments. By the same token, Yasui’s DIY-regional archive is no less a product of the broader geopolitical tide than its British national-regional counterparts. To this end, it is far from an outlier. Rather, it is an example that merits study from both the global scalar perspective as well as the local scalar perspective.

Toward a scale jumping film archive In the inaugural issue of a mock newspaper titled Hihyō shimbun Cadrons (Critical Newspaper: Cadrons), we find an extensive interview with Yasui where he speaks of his impression of the independent film, Tsukiyo no Kamagassen (The Kamagasaki Cauldron War, dir. Satō Leo, 2018). As the editors of the mock paper (the filmmakers behind the film) explain, the purpose of publication was to create an opportunity to solicit critique from the people whose views they were most eager to learn. The film’s director, Satō Leo, begins the interview by acknowledging Yasui’s impact on Satō’s consequential decision to shoot, edit, and screen (except in some international film festivals) the film on 16 mm. The conversation around whether or not digital projection marks the end of film (eiga) is not in itself unique or illuminating, but the interview is interesting for demonstrating Yasui’s mentorship role: he provides the filmmakers with technical support and tactical knowledge, explaining how to organize out-of-theater screenings if theaters refuse to screen the film on 16 mm (Kajii 2017: 11). Ultimately, the film was first screened in independent theaters in the Keihanshin region, and then hit international film festivals, leveraging the top prize it won at Porto/Post/Doc in Portugal to persuade Tokyo venues to screen the film on 16 mm. We cannot overstate Yasui’s impact on shaping the film. There was at least another major factor that justified shooting on 16 mm, even at the cost of the filmmakers’ retraining themselves and risking a further delay in the project that eventually took five years to complete (Satō 2017: 69). Using 16 mm allowed them to differentiate their position from that of the journalists covering Kamagasaki, a district of Osaka famous for its century-long history as the center for day-laborers.4 The proper context for discussing the film would require an analysis of Tomioka’s Planet Studio Plus One in Nakazakichō, Osaka, rather than Yasui’s Kobe Planet Film Archive: this was a film produced by members of NDS (Nakazakichō Documentary Space), a loose documentary collective formed around Nakazakichō’s gravitational pull. Yet, it is interesting to consider the unexpected ways in which Yasui’s collection has come to serve as a counter-historical and counter-geographic space for those seeking to think outside the dominant narratives of technological obsolescence, or Tokyo-centric national geography. In this final section, I will demonstrate that the Kobe Planet Film Archive is not merely a product of Kobe’s “creative recovery,” but also an oppositional site for imagining alternative geographies. To make my argument more concrete, we can once again turn to the humanist geographers’ debate regarding geographic scale, a socially produced construct that is always naturalized by different actors for the sake of their own geographic strategies. The production of scale thus marks a “site of potentially intense political struggle” (Smith 1993: 97). One of the most popularly studied case studies of the politics of scale is gentrification, and the challenges that activists face in resisting the geographic strategy of developers. In his famous reading of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s installation art, “the Homeless Vehicles,” Neil Smith has explained how certain social activities (such as homeless people collecting cans and bottles) are virtually evicted from the geographic scale of developers that privileges a citywide movement of commuters and 341

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consumers, and the larger-scale mobility of finance, goods, and information. In addition to erasing the presence of homeless people (as an inconsequential proportion), the developers’ macro-scale imaginary forces its opposition to take the local position in a stalemate that Doreen Massey calls “a retreat to place”: drawbridges pulled up and walls built in a bid to counter the global finances backing redevelopment (Massey 2005: 1). With his modified shopping cart that allows, among other things, a collection of cans from much wider areas of the city, Wodiczko’s intervention urges the opposition to “jump scales,” so that we might imagine a broader scale geography that accommodates the everyday activities of homeless people. Smith coined the expression “scale jumping” to capture the ways in which micro-scale social practices are interconnected with macro-scale processes, so that an attentive tracing of such practices facilitates a flipping of perspectives to reveal social relations that are otherwise difficult to see in local, fragmented forms. As I have argued above, the production of a particular scalar perspective was an integral part of Kobe’s reconstruction. While allocation of reconstruction funding took place on the national scale, town-management initiatives (machiokoshi jigyō) involving greater local participation were compartmentalized to micro-scale practices and mandated to serve the interest of the community. As long as each scale is observed on its own terms, scale jumping social realities of, say, the 15,000 Koreans, 12,000 Chinese, and other ethnic minorities from Vietnam, Peru, and Brazil in Nagata remain outside the picture. By the same token, a new geographic strategy emerges by recentering our analysis around Nagata’s diverse denizens. Over 85 percent of the chemical shoes factories in existence before the earthquake were owned by Zainichi Koreans (colonial-era Korean migrants and their descendants), and there were, in fact, robust discussions about reviving the industry around the slogan of Nagata as an International Town, or Korea Town (SIN-A 1995: 11). The alternative vision for Nagata’s future failed to materialize as the future of the chemical shoes industry became unclear, and this vision was ultimately replaced by the post-industrial plan for a media production hub. At least that is the impression we get before revisiting the debates surrounding Kobe Planet Film Archive from a transnational vantage point. In the 2010 symposium I discussed above, Shin-Nagata Town Management Company’s Shishida Masayuki recounts that the impetus for inviting Yasui’s collection came from Kim Sun-gil, the founder of Kobe Friendship Center, an NPO founded after the earthquake to help Vietnamese residents, and Park Byong-yan (formerly, Lee Saburo), a former Terayama Shūji actor turned film importer. Seen in this light, Kobe Planet Film Archive was as much an offshoot of the ultimately unrealized International Town initiative as it was a product of the embattled campaign to rebuild the town as a media production center. In one of Kobe Planet Film Archive’s earlier leaflets, a blurb by Park Byong-yan highlights the importance of Yasui’s collection on a transnational scale: “In 2005, Liberation News (1946), containing vivid images of [first president of Republic of Korea] Syngman Rhee and [Premier of the Provisional Government of Republic of Korea] Kim Gu, has returned home to Korea.” Park’s comment goes on to note the Korean peninsula’s low survival rate of films from before the Korean War, which makes Yasui’s work of collecting, identifying, and preserving Korean films in Japan even more remarkable. By 2011, ten titles found in Yasui’s collection had been preserved in partnership with the Korean Film Archive and the Taiwan Film Institute (Ishihara 2018: 336), and digital copies of nonfiction films shot in colonial Korea had been donated to Korea University’s Korean Modern History Motion Image Database. The transnational dimension of Yasui’s contribution is hardly news for those familiar with his work as a curator of sidebar programs at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. The four-reel Liberation News was in fact exhibited at Yamagata as part of Borders Within: What It Means to Live in Japan (2005), a milestone retrospective of films made by and/or about Japan’s post-colonial Korean 342

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residents.5 In this context, it is remarkable how easily the transnational dimension becomes overshadowed by the dichotomy of the regional and the national underpinning Kobe Planet Film Archive’s self-presentation. The present website and leaflet of the archive list an impressive line-up of historically significant films that had been once considered lost until Yasui located and helped to preserve them: Meiji nijyūhachinen no Ryōgoku ōzumō (Meiji 28: Ryōgoku Grand Sumo in 1895, 1900, cinematographer Tsuchiya Jyoji), a work attributed to one of Japan’s earliest generation of cameramen; animator pioneer Ōfuji Noburō’s first film, Noroma na jijii (An Old Fool, 1924); the only surviving 35 mm nitrate print of Mizoguchi Kenji’s Orizuru Osen (The Downfall of Osen, 1935); Tamashī o nagero (Throw the Soul, dir. Taguchi Satoshi, 1935), the oldest known extant film featuring actress Hara Setsuko; and Shimizu Hiroshi’s exemplary post-war film, Hachinosu no kodomotachi (Children of the Beehive, 1948) (Kobe Planet Film Archive 2014; Kinoshita 2011: 3). Needless to say, the reversion to the national narrative is not the result of any intentional policy to neutralize the transnational contribution that the archive continues to make. Rather, it is a reminder that the scale of perspective does matter, and that one of the defining features of Yasui’s collection lies in its flexible ability to jump across different scales.

Conclusion As a spontaneous film collection arising in response to the lopsided geography of post-war Japan, and subsequently institutionalized as an “archive” in the idiosyncratic dynamic of reconstruction after the Hanshin Earthquake, the Kobe Planet Film Archive provides an instructive case study for considering the interrelations of spatial politics and film archives. While it is important to recognize the site-specific factors that inform the emergence of a spontaneous film collection in a particular region, it is equally vital to recognize the category of the regional as an open, fluid, and dynamic field that interrelates with other geographic scales. I coined the expression, “a scale jumping archive,” not so much to replace the “regional film archive” discourse, but rather to underscore the always already supra-regional nature of the regional scale. Planet’s case study provides the ground from which we can re-envision Japanese film history not only from a regionally inflected perspective that is attentive to the unique dynamics within the Keihanshin region (Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe), but also from the transnational scale that recognizes how such regionally specific dynamics emerge from a world that is already interconnected.

Notes 1 I quote the number provided by the archive here (Itakura 2018); there are over 16,000 film titles not counting duplicate copies of the same film titles, an addition of which would push the number up to 20,000 in Yasui’s estimate (Yasui 2016). We should note that the National Film Archive of Japan individually counts different formats (e.g., 16 mm, 35 mm), generations (e.g., positive, negative), and versions (e.g., director’s cut, excerpts, subtitled, accompanying benshi narration) of the same film title, which makes it difficult to compare the size of the two collections purely on a quantitative basis (Ishihara 2018: 29). 2 There are, in fact, other examples where foreign-language education intersected with cinephilia: Athénée-Français, a premier cine-club in Tokyo, started as a cultural division attached to a Frenchlanguage center, while Euro Space, a pioneering “mini-cinema” (art-house cinema) in Shibuya, has been bankrolled by a language-school-cum-travel-agent (Murayama 2016: 101). 3 To the extent that Ishihara gives agency to the unique individuals whose persistent efforts were indispensible for realizing these regional film archives, the stories of these archives are not entirely different from the story of Yasui’s collection. A notable example is Ema Michio, a former student cine-club member and Toho employee who became a Kyoto prefectural bureaucrat charged with the task of building a film library in the 1970s; his efforts crossed paths with Yasui’s as both acquired films from the same collectors (Ishihara 2018: 218–219; Takatsuki 2015: 95–96).

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Shota T. Ogawa 4 The name Kamagasaki was officially erased from the map in 1966, replaced (or whitewashed) by “Airin” (combining the characters for “love” and “neighbor”). Kamagasaki has long been on the developers’ radar, and the controversial closure of Airin Labor Welfare Center in April 2019 spells the end of one chapter in Kamagasaki’s history as the center for construction laborers in Osaka. 5 The retrospective showcased thirty-one documentaries, ten fictions, and a handful of newsreels and television programs (Yasui and Tanaka 2005).

Works cited Agnew, J. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1(1): 53–80. Amad, P. 2010. Counter-Archive: Film, the Everyday, and Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète. New York: Columbia University Press. Cherchi Usai, P. 2011. “The Lindgren Manifesto: The Film Curator of the Future.” Journal of Film Preservation 84: 4–5. Derrida, J. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edgington, D.W. 2010. Reconstructing Kobe: The Geography of Crisis and Opportunity. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Edmundson, R. 2016. Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles, 3rd edn. Bangkok: UNESCO. Fossati, G. 2009. From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Frick, C. 2011. Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ishihara, K. 2018. Nihon ni okeru firumu ākaibu katsudōshi (History of Film Archiving in Japan). Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Itakura, F. 2016. “Kōbe eizō shiryōkan o kyoten toshita eizō purojekuto kara” (“Moving Image Project Based on Kobe Archive”). Library Resource Guide Special Issue 2: 16–18. Itakura, F. 2018. “Chīki nettowāku no shūseki kyoten (habu) o kōsei suru” (“Forming a Hub for a Regional Network”). In K. Harada and H. Mizushima (eds), Te to ashi to me to mimi: chīki to eizō ākaibu o meguru jissen to kenkyū (Hands, Feet, Eyes, Ears: Research and Practices Surrounding Regional Moving Image Archive), 88–102. Tokyo: Gakubunsha. Kajii, H. 2017. “Rongu intabyū: Yasui Yoshio” (“Long Interview: Yasui Yoshio”). Hihyō shimbun Cadrons 1. Kinoshita, C. 2011. “The Benshi Track: Mizoguchi Kenji’s The Downfall of Osen and the Sound Transition.” Cinema Journal 50(3): 1–25. Kobe Planet Film Archive. 2014. “About Us.” Kobe Planet Film Archive. Online at http://kobe-eiga.net/ aboutus/ [accessed May 10, 2019]. Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru Kai. 2009. “Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan kongo no kadai” (“Challenges for Kobe Planet Film Archive”). In Nenkan Report No. 2 (Annual Report No. 2). Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru kai. MacCabe, C. 2003. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy. London: Bloomsbury. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. Miyao, D. 2007. “Dark Visions of Japanese Film Noir: Suzuki Seijun’s Branded to Kill (1967).” In A. Phillips and J. Stringer (eds), Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, 193–204. Abingdon: Routledge. Murayama, K. 2016. “Hishōgyō jōei no rekishi: senzen no jōei katsudō kara 70 nendai made” (“History of Non-Commercial Exhibition: From Pre-War Exhibition Practices to the 1970s”). Eiga jōei katsudō nenkan. Tokyo: Community Center Cinema. Okada, H. 2016. Eiga to iu “buttai ekkusu”: Firumu ākaibu no me de mita eiga (“The Thing” from Film World: Cinema through the Eyes of a Film Archive). Tokyo: Rittōsha. Okajima, H. 1997. “FIAF no atarashī chōsen: hozon taishō toshite no amachua eiga” (“New Challenges at FIAF: Amateur Film as Objects of Preservation”). NFC Newsletter 14: 2–6. Okajima, H. 2018. “Kokuritsu eiga ākaibu no tanjō ni atatte” (“Regarding the Birth of National Film Archive”). NFAJ Newsletter 1(1): 2–3. Sasagawa, K. 2013. “Waga eiga jinsei o kataru: Yasui Yoshio-shi, intabyū” (“Speaking of My Life and Cinema: Interview with Yasui Yoshio”). In Ōsaka furitsu kankō sangyō senryaku kenkyūjo, Kansai daigaku Osaka toshi isan kenkū sentā, Ōsaka-fu, and Shin-Naniwa-juku sōshi kikaku iinkai (eds), Ōsaka ni Tōyō ichi no satsueisho ga atta koro: Taishō, Shōwa shoki no eiga bunka o kangaeru (When Osaka had Asia’s Largest Film Studio: On Early Showa Film Culture), 19–106. Osaka: Burensentā.

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Regional film archive in transit Satō, L. 2017. “Nunokawa Tetsurō no nokoshita toi: Tsukiyo no kama gassen to iu kotae” (“The Question Nunokawa Tetsuro Left Behind: The Kamagasaki Cauldron War as a Response”). Eiga geijutsu 461 (Autumn): 69–71. SIN-A. 1995. “Kyūjo katsudō no arikata to fukkō no yukue” (“Assessing Rescue Operations and the Outcome of Reconstruction”). SIN-A 2 (March): 7–12. Smith, N. 1993. “Homeless/Global: Scaling Places.” In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, and L. Tickner (eds), Mapping the Future: Local Cultures, Global Change, 87–120. London: Routledge. Soja, E. 2009. “The City and Spatial Justice.” Spatial Justice 1 (September): 1–5. Online at www.jssj.org [accessed May 10, 2019]. Symposium. 2010. Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru Kai. “Symposium: Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan no kanōsei” (“Symposium: Potentials of Kobe Planet Film Archive”). Nenkan Report No. 3 (Annual Report No. 3). Kōbe Puranetto and Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan o Sasaeru Kai. Takatsuki, M. 2015. Eiga tantei: Ushinawareta senzen nihon eiga o sagashite (Film Detective: In Search of Once Lost Pre-War Japanese Films). Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha. Tanaka, S. 2017. “On the Independent screening groups in the Kansai area during the late 1970s.” Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō 40: 87–97. Yamazaki, T. 2017. “Chiseigaku no sōbō ni tsuite no oboegaki” (“Notes on the Different Manifestations of Geopolitics”). Gendai shisō 45(18): 51–59. Yasui, Y. 2016. Interview with S. Ogawa, July 12, Kobe Planet Film Archive, Kobe. Yasui, Y. and Tanaka, N. (eds) 2005. Borders Within: What It Means to Live in Japan. Tokyo: Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Tokyo Office.

Further reading Department of History, Korea University. 2014. Han’guk Kŭnhyŏndae Yŏksa Yŏngsang Ak’aipŭ (Korean Modern History Motion Image Database). Online at http://kfilm.khistory.org/?r=home [accessed December 9, 2019]. Frick, C. 2011. Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Itakura, F. 2019. Kōbe to eiga: Eigakan to kankyaku no kioku (Kobe and Cinema: Memories of Movie Theaters and Spectators). Kobe: Kōbe Shimbun Sōgō Shuppansentā. Kobe Planet Film Archive. 2014. “About Us.” Kobe Planet Film Film Archive. Online at http://kobe-eiga. net/aboutus/ [accessed May 10, 2019].

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New Paths toward

PreserviNg JaPaNese CiNema

The toy Film museum backstory Joanne Bernardi

Introduction Located on a small side street in Kyoto’s Nakagyō Ward, the Toy Film Museum (Omocha Eiga Myūjiamu) opened in a restored machiya, a traditional Japanese wooden town house, on International Museum Day (May 18), 2015. Flyers and posters outside the museum’s entrance advertise current and upcoming events promoting pre-cinema visual culture, film heritage, and film preservation, but the location is more readily identifiable by the distinctive round logo above the front door. Resembling stained glass, in bright red, blue, yellow, green, and orange, it depicts a hand cranking a film projector with a triangle of white light emanating from the lens. This image denotes the museum’s highlights, about 200 Western and domestically produced film projectors made for home entertainment from the 1900s to the 1940s and their corresponding visual “software”: a database of about 900 digitized short films, also originally made for nontheatrical use, and film samples used to demonstrate the projectors at work. Most of the digitized films, dubbed “toy films” (omocha [or gangu] eiga) by collectors and fans, were originally on highly flammable 35 mm cellulose nitrate film prints, many of which were badly decomposed. They were restored under the auspices of the “Toy Film and Film Restoration, Investigation, and Research Project” (Omocha Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen Chōsa Kenkyū Purojekuto), commonly referred to as the Toy Film Project (Omocha Eiga Purojekuto). Based at the Osaka University of Arts, this nine-year preservation project was initiated in 2003 by Ōta Yoneo, a faculty member and the Toy Film Museum’s founder. Beyond identifying the premises, the museum’s logo thus extends a welcoming invitation to passers-by. It promises hands-on engagement with film heritage broadly defined as pre-cinema optical toys, daguerreotypes and other vintage photographs, and legacy film formats, and technology. The Toy Film Museum celebrates cinema through this access to haptic exploration, as well as an emphasis on Kyoto’s distinct contributions to Japanese cinema and the need to preserve this legacy for future generations. This chapter documents the course of events that led to the museum’s founding, its mission, and the significance of its collection. I draw on eight hours of interviews with Ōta, newspaper articles, Ōta’s published research, and our association over the years to contextualize his role, and that of the museum, in contributing to grassroots film preservation efforts in Japan.1 Ōta’s journey toward creating the museum began in the early 1970s, when he began a long association with mentors Yoda Yoshikata (1909–1991), Miyagawa Kazuo 346

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(1908–1999), and other former members of the Kyoto Daiei studio who had closely collaborated with major directors such as Mizoguchi Kenji (1898–1956) and Kurosawa Akira (1910–1998). It progressed with a succession of projects to recover and extend the lives of endangered films so they could be shared with others, an objective that increased in importance after the death of his mentors. The Toy Film Project (2003–2011), which involved hundreds of films with variations in decomposition and mechanical wear and tear, kick-started an ongoing endeavor to master the knowledge and expertise needed to meet such challenges, and revitalized local photochemical film lab activity. The annual “Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop” (Eiga Fukugen to Hozon Wākushoppu), which Ōta first organized with collaborators in 2006, was a natural extension of this work. The workshop attracts a diverse range of participants. It plays an important role in disseminating knowledge about audio-visual preservation, making it possible for like-minded individuals to forge the connections that are essential to the collaborative nature of preservation and archive work. By way of introduction, the museum is formally known as “The Toy Film Museum: Kyoto Film Art Cultural Research Institute” (Kyōto Eiga Geijutsu Bunka Kenkyūsho). The first part of its name derives from the aforementioned Toy Film Project, which focused on the restoration of “toy films” on 35 mm nitrate film. These films were formally known as “home moving pictures” (katei katsudō shashin) or “home movies” (katei eiga): professionally made films sold for entertainment at home or other nontheatrical venues (not to be confused with the term “home movies” that refers to non-commercial films made by individuals for personal rather than professional purposes). Ōta added “Kyoto Film Art Cultural Research Institute” to acknowledge the capacity of these films to educate us beyond the canon and our received knowledge of Japanese film history, and to invite others to study his collection (Ōta 2016). The 35 mm toy films (loops [tasuki], fragments, or spools from around 20 seconds to 3 or 4 minutes long) include titles produced expressly for toy film projectors by the companies marketing them, but most were copies of excerpts from commercial domestic and foreign features, newsreels, and animations. Their popularity peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, in parallel with transformations in Japanese silent film production and formative years for period films (jidaigeki), a predominant genre among Kyoto studios. In addition to representing a distinct mode of cinema marginalized by film historiography, toy films are often the only surviving fragments of titles otherwise presumed lost. Ōta’s choice of a traditional Kyoto machiya as the Toy Film Museum’s venue underscores the museum’s function as a nexus for the study and appreciation of Kyoto film art and culture. Machiya have functioned as combination residences and places of business in Kyoto for centuries. With their characteristically narrow street frontage, deep interiors, and wood-slatted windows, they dominated the cityscape until the 1950s and 1960s, when a majority were razed and replaced by high-rise apartments. Community-driven efforts to restore and rehabilitate these historic buildings helped save them from extinction. Most of the films recuperated by the Toy Film Project, which form the core of the museum’s moving image collection, are jidaigeki produced in Kyoto studios, and raising awareness of this local legacy through community engagement is an integral part of the Toy Film Museum’s mission. By occupying premises that represent Kyoto’s regional cultural identity as well as community-driven preservation, the museum draws attention to and celebrates this important connection. I visited the Toy Film Museum and interviewed Ōta in August 2016, when the museum had been in operation for just over one year. This opportunity to experience the museum firsthand and investigate its background clarified its significance as the culmination of Ōta’s efforts since the early 1990s to promote the preservation of Japanese cinema with a focus on local film culture. This chapter complements other contributions to this volume representing an approach to Japanese film history that allows us to think beyond canonical film titles, auteurs, and specific 347

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Figure 21.1 A threaded King (Kingu) brand “Family [Moving] Picture Projector” (“Kingu katei shashinki”) and a stack of toy films from the Toy Film Museum Collection. King was one of the largest toy film companies. Source: Photograph courtesy of the Toy Film Museum.

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studios, or to reconsider them from a new perspective. It details efforts to reclaim a regionally inflected history of Japanese cinema through consequential connections and interactions between individuals—in the industry, in education, in festival and museum programming and archive work, in photochemical film restoration—working together across professional and disciplinary boundaries, often in collaboration with collectors and hobbyists.

Origins: navigating a changing landscape Ōta’s concept of the Toy Film Museum as a communal base for exploration and the appreciation of cinema culture—a place where people with similar interests can meet, collaborate, and exchange ideas—was inspired in part by a community media center that he visited in Hamburg in 1997.2 As a faculty member at Osaka University of Arts, Ōta was visiting Germany as part of a cultural delegation from Osaka that was invited to Hamburg in order to learn more about the city’s cultural resources. Hamburg and Osaka had established a sister city relationship in 1989 and the trip was arranged to facilitate collaboration between the two cities on events commemorating the tenth anniversary of this relationship. Ōta recalls his visit to this community center with vivid detail (the following quote is edited for space): [Our hosts] wanted us to learn as much as possible about the place. Hamburg is a very affluent city, the heart of German media, where Der Spiegel’s main office is located. We saw film schools, an old building renovated as a movie theater; I was shown places related to cinema. [This included] schools and separate offices for short films and foreign films, a café named “Eisenstein,” a movie theater called “Metropolis,” and a place that was referred to as a “media center.” It was a small building like this machiya, where people would gather at five o’clock, after work. There was a screen on the wall that could be pulled down for screenings, and everything—editing equipment, cameras, electricity, rent, computers—was subsidized or owned by the city, so people could use all of the resources for free. Summertime in Hamburg is bright until around ten o’clock at night. So, during the summer after work people would get together and make films. Then in the winter, from October to March, it gets dark around three o’clock in the afternoon, so at night people held film screenings. When they showed me this place I thought it was a fantastic idea. (Ōta 2016) The Hamburg trip was a transformative experience for Ōta beyond its significance in helping to shape his plans for a museum. One immediate consequence of his visit was the establishment of a long-standing relationship between the city and Osaka University of Arts, including ongoing film festivals in both locations, often featuring work by recent university graduates. At this point in time, Ōta had also completed the first three of a long list of film restoration projects that he has been involved with since at least the early 1990s: Muhōmatsu no isshō (The Rickshaw Man, aka The Life of Muhomatsu the Untamed, dir. Inagaki Hiroshi, 1943), Bokura no otōto (Our Younger Brother, dir. Sunohara Masahisa, 1933), and Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka (What Made Her Do It? aka Sumiko, dir. Suzuki Shigeyoshi, 1930). The establishment of an ongoing relationship with Hamburg centered on filmmaking and film screenings would prove advantageous a few years later, when Ōta was able to screen such film restoration projects for Hamburg audiences. I knew that this visit to Hamburg’s community media center contributed to Ōta’s idea of a museum that would allow for a similar collaborative atmosphere. For this reason, I expected our discussion of key factors leading up to the Toy Film Museum to begin with this trip. Instead, 349

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Ōta circled back to an earlier time to locate the source for his investment in film preservation and the idea of a museum dedicated to the legacy of Kyoto’s unique film culture. This was his opportune encounter, while still a university student, and subsequent long-term association as both an assistant and colleague, with Kyoto-based filmmakers, especially the screenwriter Yoda Yoshikata, best known for his collaborations with director Mizoguchi Kenji on films such as Naniwa erejī (Osaka Elegy, 1936) and Ugetsu monogatari (Ugetsu, 1953); and the cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo, internationally renowned for his groundbreaking camera and lighting technique on Rashōmon (Rashomon, dir. Kurosawa Akira, 1950), and other films. Ōta formed close relationships with Yoda and Miyagawa when the three of them worked together in the Visual Concept Planning Department (Eizō Gakubu) at Osaka University of Arts. Their association continued after Yoda and Miyagawa retired from the faculty. In fact, Ōta’s relationship with these two mentors eventually led to his first restoration projects, which expanded our knowledge of their work: Miyagawa was the cinematographer in 1943 for Inagaki’s The Rickshaw Man, and Yoda wrote the screenplay for the 1933 film by Sunohara, Our Younger Brother, the earliest and only surviving example of Yoda’s silent work. Ōta attributes the creation of the Toy Film Museum, and his drive to preserve Japanese cinema, to his desire to pass this legacy on to a new generation—his way of repaying his two mentors for the knowledge that they had entrusted to him (Ōta 2016). Ōta’s account of the formative events leading up to the Toy Film Museum therefore begins with his perspective, as an aspiring film student in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of a consequential shift in Kyoto’s film culture. A confluence of a declining industry and a rising interest in film education and student filmmaking brought a number of prominent film professionals into local university classrooms. Rich in well-preserved historical settings, Kyoto had served as a central location for jidaigeki film production since Japanese cinema’s origins. Before Yoda and Miyagawa began teaching at Osaka University of Arts, they had been associated with the Kyoto studio belonging to the Daiei Film Company, a major producer of jidaigeki throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these films, beginning with Rashomon and Ugetsu in the early 1950s, established an international profile for Japanese cinema after World War II by winning awards on the foreign film festival circuit. By the 1970s, as cinema attendance declined in response to television’s popularity, the migration of productions to the newer, ascendant medium also challenged Kyoto’s jidaigeki film tradition. In 1971, Daiei declared bankruptcy. Kyoto Daiei failed for several reasons, but the changing dynamics in jidaigeki production was a notable factor. The studio’s demise did not put an end to opportunities for seasoned professionals like Yoda and Miyagawa, but it marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new chapter in their careers. In 1969, when Ōta was a second-year fine arts student at the newly expanded and rebranded Kyoto City University of Arts, the institution reassessed its curriculum and allowed students to propose new courses. Ōta successfully petitioned for a seminar on the art of moving images (kenkyū zemi eizō). In 1970, the university invited Yoda to teach a morning course in moving image theory (eizō ron) and a screenwriting seminar in the afternoon. The next year, Ōta was the only student; by this point, he and Yoda had formed a special bond, discussing films, screenwriting technique and, especially, Yoda’s experiences working with Mizoguchi. In 1970, Yoda was also invited to teach at Osaka University of Arts, where he became the first head of the newly formed Visual Concept Planning Department in 1971. When Ōta graduated from the Kyoto City University of Arts in 1972, prospects for finding work in film production were slim and he accepted a contract position as an instructor in the Visual Concept Planning Department. He became Yoda’s assistant, attending his classes and keeping track of the material he covered in his lectures. The university also hired the film critic and writer Takizawa Osamu (1914–1993) 350

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in 1972. In 1973, it hired Miyagawa Kazuo and several other commercial film and television directors, as well as the cinematographer Morita Fujio (1927–2014), who had been Miyagawa’s assistant on Rashomon earlier in his career. Ōta subsequently gained valuable production experience working as a camera assistant to both Miyagawa and Morita, and after he was formally appointed to the faculty in 1978, he began teaching courses in film production. Eventually, Takizawa gave Ōta his course on the history of Japanese cinema (Ōta 2016). Ōta recalls that during the department’s formative early years, when the training of filmmakers transitioned from learning on the set to learning in the university, it included a core group of former Kyoto studio people who translated their professional experience into the new curriculum. They brought a strong work ethic—one that valued technique—to their job, but also traces of the studio system’s inherent labor divisions. Ōta credits the department’s early success to having been built around a screenwriter. Figuratively speaking, just as a screenplay serves as the base on which the director and others can build, Yoda was, as department head, more of a supportive coach than a director with a top–down approach (Ōta 2016). The collaborative environment under Yoda’s tenure made it possible for Ōta to work with and learn from a remarkable assembly of individuals whose collective professional experience represented key contributions to Kyoto’s film culture. The experience and knowledge that Ōta gained under the tutelage of his mentors in the department and his network of professional connections and consequential encounters (mono no deai) that date from this time were essential to realizing his vision for the Toy Film Museum (Ōta 2016).

Portals to the past: three formative film restorations Yoda’s retirement from the university in 1990 and his death in the next year marked the start of a transition as Ōta pursued new interests beyond his ongoing work at the university. This period coincided with two consequential events that drew attention to the state of film preservation in Japan, and the low survival rate for silent cinema. First, in 1990, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy), the oldest and largest festival dedicated to silent cinema, screened a program of Japanese silents from the 1920s with benshi narration by Sawato Midori: Futari Shizuka (Love and Sacrifice, 1922), Kyoei wa jigoku (Vanity Leads to Misfortune, dir. Uchida Tomu, 1925), and Nankō fushi (Sir Kusunoki, Father and Son, dir. Makino Shōzō, 1921). This was a rare opportunity, especially for an audience outside Japan. All three titles were from the collection of the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (now the National Film Archive of Japan). Four years earlier, the NFC had published a catalog of feature films in its collection listing only twenty titles from the 1920s that survived in some form (Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Firumu Sentā 1986). Second, a 35 mm nitrate print of Itō Daisuke’s major work, Chūji tabi nikki (A Diary of Chuji’s Travels, 1927), was discovered in 1991, and the National Film Center screened an enthusiastically received “restored version” (fukugenban) of the film in the next year.3 This project established a new standard for film restoration in Japan (see Kae Ishihara’s Chapter 17 in this volume). At around this time, Ōta was helping Miyagawa organize his personal records when they came across footage that had been cut from Inagaki’s 1943 film, The Rickshaw Man. This discovery led to Ōta’s first experience in film restoration. The material they found turned out to be test strips (without sound) that Miyagawa had made while shooting the film. This footage was mixed in with “cut pieces” and other film that Miyagawa shot while experimenting with various lighting techniques for Rashomon and other works.4 According to Miyagawa’s notes, this test footage corresponded to scenes previously thought to be lost that had been cut by the US censors during the post-war occupation (Ōta 1994, 2016). A print of The Rickshaw Man with 351

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these scenes re-added was screened at The Museum of Kyoto (Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan) in 1993. This “restored version” (fukugenban) of The Rickshaw Man was subsequently featured at the 1995 Kyoto Film Festival.5 Miyagawa was also the source for the material that led to Ōta’s next and more complex restoration project, which he worked on at approximately the same time as The Rickshaw Man. This second project involved a recently discovered 16 mm print of Our Younger Brother, a silent film based on a script that Yoda wrote three years before gaining recognition for his work on Osaka Elegy, his first collaboration with Mizoguchi, which was critically praised for its unprecedented use of the local Kansai dialect. Produced in 1933 at Kyoto’s Nikkatsu Uzumasa studio, Our Younger Brother was director Sunohara Masahisa’s (1906–1907) directorial debut, and Yoda is listed as screenwriter in the credit sequence. Yoda began working at the Nikkatsu Uzumasa studio in 1930; in 1933, he was still working under his first mentor, the director Murata Minoru (1894–1937). As the only surviving example of Yoda’s silent work before he began his twentyyear collaboration with Mizoguchi, Our Younger Brother sheds new light on the screenwriter’s career. According to a September 1987 NHK television news broadcast, a teacher at Kyoto’s Nishiyama High School discovered the only known extant print of Our Younger Brother in a stairway storage space at the school. While visiting Miyagawa sometime later, Ōta learned that someone from NHK who thought the film should be preserved had given a VHS copy to Miyagawa. Before Yoda died, Ōta asked him if he remembered the screenplay, but by that point Yoda had only a dim recollection of the film (Ōta 1998, 2016). After extensive research, Ōta eventually uncovered more information about Our Younger Brother’s provenance and the story’s source material, a newspaper article about a boy who took charge of his younger siblings when his widowed father was forced to seek work away from home. An officially announced state of national emergency, or “crisis time” in Japan (hijōji Nippon), a result of the worldwide economic depression and the political fallout after Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931–1932, provides the larger context for Our Younger Brother.6 In light of this historical context, and the film’s significance as Sunohara’s debut and Yoda’s early work, Ōta wanted to recuperate the film for new audiences. In 1995, he began working on the intertitles to make them more legible in preparation for a new 16 mm print, which he financed with research funds (Ōta 2016). This print was screened for the first time at the Museum of Kyoto in 1999 as part of a children’s summer film festival. According to Ōta, Our Younger Brother was the “seed” for his investment in film restoration, but his subsequent work on Suzuki Shigeyoshi’s What Made Her Do It? gave him a sense of direction (Ōta 2016). Produced by the Osaka-based Teikoku Kinema (Teikine) film company, What Made Her Do It? received critical acclaim and broke box office records when it opened in 1930. Long believed lost, it was well known because of its reputation as a major success and a leading example of the “tendency film” (keikō eiga). This term was used for commercial films made in the late 1920s and early 1930s that expressed a “tendency” toward a leftist social agenda while avoiding explicit ideological commentary. What Made Her Do It?’s young protagonist, Sumiko, endures a series of tragedies and betrayals that culminate in a confrontation at a home run by a Christian charity. Humiliated by a hypocritical headmistress, Sumiko can endure no more and sets the church on fire. In 1990, Yamakawa Teruo, the grandson of the film’s producer (and Teikine’s founder), was looking for a print of the film for an exhibit on Teikine when he learned that Moscow’s Gosfilmofond archive might have a copy. The archive actually had four positive prints in its collection that had been in local circulation, and these were used as the basis for another positive element that represented the most complete version of the film possible. Gosfilmofond made this print available for Yamakawa to purchase in 1993 (Ōta 2000, 2001, 2016). 352

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Ōta started working on Yamakawa’s print of What Made Her Do It? in 1996, after it was determined that the National Film Center could not undertake the restoration of privately owned material (Ōta 2000, 2016). This restoration project, a collaboration with Mizuguchi Kaoru (who had also contributed to the restoration of Our Younger Brother), was uniquely challenging for a number of reasons. To begin with, Yamakawa’s print was already the end result of one restoration process, comprising footage that had been culled from four positive print elements in Gosfilmofond’s collection. In addition, the print’s translated Russian-language intertitles further distanced it from the original Japanese version. These titles were so different from the titles in a published version of the Japanese screenplay that they almost seemed to belong to a different narrative.7 Finally, Yamakawa’s print lacked a beginning and an end (including the climactic church fire), and there appeared to be footage missing elsewhere in the film (Ōta 2000, 2001). Although Ōta’s work on Our Younger Brother had provided him with useful experience (Ōta 2001), he considers What Made Her Do It? to be “his first actual restoration,” forcing him to think beyond “just making it possible to screen something that audiences otherwise couldn’t see.” The project’s complexity required him to “conceptualize a strategy” in order to achieve an end result as close to the original as possible, with the least amount of intervention. This entailed taking into account more involved ethical as well as technical considerations (Ōta 2016). The key element that made the restoration of What Made Her Do It? possible was a paperback novelization of the film, a mass market format known as a tōkī bunko (talkie paperback). This was essentially a detailed transcription of what transpires onscreen. Suzuki Shigeyoshi’s family discovered the paperback among the director’s papers, along with newspaper clippings (articles and reviews) related to the film. Ōta used this material as a reference in replacing lost footage with explanatory title cards that summarized the missing scenes. He deliberately wrote these titles in a style that made them easy for audiences both to read and to recognize as extraneous material that was not part of the original version of the film. Ōta also replaced the translated Russian intertitles with new Japanese-language intertitles. He did this by comparing translations of the Russian titles, the published version of the screenplay, the “talkie paperback,” and references to or descriptions of the film in Suzuki’s newspaper clippings. Fortunately, a single frame of an original Japanese intertitle remained in Yamakawa’s print, and this provided evidence of a distinctive rhetorical style that had been noted in contemporaneous reviews: many titles ended by referring to Sumiko with the third-person pronoun “kanojo” (“she” or “her”), just as she is referred to in the film’s title (Ōta 2001: 113–116). The restoration of What Made Her Do It? had its world première in February 1997 as a special “pre-event” of the Kyoto Film Festival, with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra performing an original score by Günter Buchwald, who also conducted. That October, it opened the “classics” program at the Tokyo International Film Festival, with Buchwald conducting the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his original score. The film was subsequently exhibited in Germany, at the Munich Goethe Forum in 1998, and at the Metropolis in Hamburg, in the next year. In October 1999, it was shown at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival with Buchwald’s impressive accompaniment on piano and violin.8 The film’s positive reception gave Ōta both the confidence and the motivation to take on more film restorations (Ōta 2016). It also established film restoration screenings as an integral part of the Kyoto Film Festival (the forerunner of the Kyoto International Film and Arts Festival). Ōta’s evolving association with the festival led to its role as a critical source of funding for future film restoration projects. When Ōta attended the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 1999, it was the third year of its extensive D.W. Griffith retrospective, “The Griffith Project.” This massive endeavor 353

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entailed screening, over twelve years, all of the director’s more than 500 extant films in chronological order, with the publication each year of a new volume of expert commentaries that has become a catalogue raisonné of his work. When the Toy Film Project was formally launched at the Osaka University of Arts three years later as a collaborative, multi-year project at scale, Ōta was inspired by this international undertaking and borrowed from its title (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 167–168; 2016).9 Ōta subsequently contributed to the Pordenone International Silent Film Festival on two more occasions, in 2005 and 2018. In 2005, the festival screened a 35 mm print of Tokkyū san­ byaku mairu (aka Tokkyū sanbyaku ri, Special Express: 300 Miles, dir. Saegusa Genjirō, 1928), restored under Ōta’s supervision. This was a collaboration with Yasui Yoshio, owner of the original 35 mm nitrate film print and founder and director of the Planet Film Library (Puranetto Eiga Shiryō Toshokan), currently the Kobe Planet Film Archive (Kōbe Eiga Shiryōkan); and the Osaka film laboratory, IMAGICA WEST Corp. (See Chapter 20 by Shota Ogawa on Yasui Yoshio and Chapter 18 by Kanta Shibata on IMAGICA WEST Corp. in this volume). Günter Buchwald and the Silent Movie Music Company provided live musical accompaniment of Buchwald’s score. At around this time, Japanese silent films were becoming an increasingly common feature at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Following the 1990 program featuring benshi Midori Sawato and the 1999 screening of What Made Her Do It?, the festival presented its first major retrospective in 2001 of forty-five Japanese films made between 1898 and 1935. In 2005, in addition to Special Express: 300 Miles, the festival presented another groundbreaking program of twenty-one Japanese silents, “Celebrating Japanese Cinema: Shochiku 110–Naruse 100.” During the 2001 program, a National Film Center representative announced that from then on the archive would work with the festival to ensure that Japanese silent films would be represented on a regular basis, and this has been true nearly every year since 2009. In 2018, the festival presented Ōta’s third contribution, a DCP of the Toy Film Museum’s 9.5 mm Pathé Baby version (an edited or “digest version” reduction print sold for personal nontheatrical use) of Ozu Yasujirō’s theatrically released comedy, Tokkan Kozō (aka A Straightforward Boy, 1930). This version is slightly longer than another 9.5 mm Pathé Baby version previously screened at Pordenone and held by the National Film Archive of Japan, which was also responsible for its restoration.

Expansion and diversification: the Toy Film Project Ōta’s next major undertaking, the collaborative Toy Film Project (2003–2011), was his most extensive restoration project in terms of scale, and as the project’s title suggests, instrumental to the development of the Toy Film Museum. It is even possible to think of the museum as an extension of the project, because the museum continues to support several project objectives. For example, the museum continues to attract potential donors of films and other objects, promoting awareness of both the exigencies of film preservation and the importance of preserving and exhibiting moving image technology. Perhaps most importantly, the museum also ensures continued access to the Toy Film Project’s film restorations, facilitating future research that can build on the project’s accomplishments. A brief overview allows us to consider the Toy Film Project in the context of Ōta’s previous film restorations from the 1990s, and the subsequent opening of the Toy Film Museum in 2015. As with Ōta’s previous restorations, the Toy Film Project developed from a deeply rooted network of local connections and its objectives were regionally relevant. To begin with, the recovered films included major jidaigeki excerpts that enrich our understanding of Kyoto’s role as a center of film production. The project’s constituents at both the individual and group level 354

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were also locally situated and thus easily connected. Matsumoto Natsuki, a collector in Sakai, Osaka and adjunct faculty at the Osaka University of Arts, provided the initial incentive for the project in the form of a group of toy films in poor condition that urgently needed attention. He was willing to donate these films to the university if it would fund their restoration. The university was at that moment in the process of establishing a museum, and it was decided that toy films and gramophones would make an excellent opening exhibit of early twentieth-century modernism and mass-produced audio-visual media. The Toy Film Project was therefore launched with university support as a collaborative research project with the university’s Arts Laboratory (Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Kenkyūsho). Two other local collectors, Yasui Yoshio (then director of the Planet Film Library) and Furubayashi Yoshio, also helped the project get started by making relevant films that they owned available for restoration (Ōta 2016; see also Ōta and Matsumoto 2002; Ōta 2007a). The Kyoto Film Festival once again played a key role, beginning with bringing the project participants together. Ōta learned about Matsumoto’s toy film collection when he sought out material to commemorate the 100th birthday of Bandō Tsumasaburō (1901–1953) at the third Kyoto Film Festival in 2001. Referred to as “Bantsuma” by fans, this Kyoto actor and producer was a skilled and phenomenally popular jidaigeki star (he also plays the titular protagonist in the aforementioned The Rickshaw Man). The 2001 edition of the festival featured an exhibit and demonstration of toy films and toy film equipment belonging to Matsumoto’s collection that included Bantsuma toy films as examples of the actor’s early work. Furubayashi, a major collector of ephemera related to Bantsuma, also assisted. Finally, the collaboration of IMAGICA WEST, the Osaka film laboratory that carried out the restoration work, was essential to the Toy Film Project’s success. The laboratory customized its equipment and developed a special workflow that entailed inspecting and repairing 35 mm nitrate film prints, acetate “safety” (nonflammable) prints, and prints on recycled film stock (saisei firumu, i.e., film base that had been stripped of its emulsion in order to reclaim the silver content, recoated, and reused), all in various stages of decomposition (Ōta 2016; for the project’s background and workflow, see also Ōta and Matsumoto 2002; Ōta 2007a, 2012). The Toy Film Project was unprecedented, however, in its scope, the heterogeneous nature of the material it recuperated, and its primary focus on a distinct mode of film culture. The project lasted nine years, involved a broad base of collaborators (individual and institutional), and recovered 800 films. They represented a variety of genres and subjects as well as different technologies and processes of creation (different film formats and film stocks). The range of problems caused by degradation and mechanical damage, manageable only because of the short length of these films, posed a unique opportunity to rapidly acquire expertise and experience in film restoration technique. By focusing on photochemical film as an artifact that can be appreciated both as a final object and for the technology and processes that created it, the Toy Film Project signaled new directions for Ōta and his collaborators. It marked the beginning of Ōta’s interest in building a technology collection to complement moving images, and it eventually led to the creation of a collaborative annual workshop on photochemical film restoration and preservation issues and hands-on training. In the introduction to this chapter, I briefly outlined toy films as short lengths or brief loops of 35 mm nitrate film sold directly to consumers for home projection on machines made for this purpose, a form of entertainment that became especially popular in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. The scope of this chapter precludes an in-depth study of toy films per se: the Toy Film Project prioritized the restoration and study of 35 mm toy films as material objects over sociological research and analysis (Ōta 2007a: 91). Nevertheless, it is necessary to situate such professionally made films sold for projection at home (and possibly other nontheater venues) within a 355

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broader historical context for two reasons. First, the toy film market in Japan, during the first decades of cinema, had unique characteristics that distinguish it from its European and North American counterparts, such as domestically produced merchandise (films and machines), the continued use of flammable 35 mm nitrate film even after safety (nonflammable) small-gauge film (kogata eiga) became available for the home market, and the predominant popularity of the jidaigeki genre as subject matter. Second, historical contextualization makes it is easier to understand how the term “toy film” is used in the specific case of the Toy Film Project. The term “toy film” was loosely defined in the context of the Toy Film Project insofar as it was used as an umbrella term that also included professionally made small-gauge films restored under the project’s aegis. These were commonly 9.5 mm or 16 mm shortened (edited digest version) reduction prints of 35 mm feature films originally released in commercial theaters. Ōta has explained that it was not uncommon to encounter such films during the course of the project (as part of a donation, for example) and to restore them if warranted (Ōta 2007a: 93–94, 2007b). Ben Singer’s seminal 1988 study, “Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Kinetoscope,” a detailed history of the emergence and development of a “home cinema” market in Europe and the USA, provides useful historical context for understanding Japan’s 35 mm nitrate toy film phenomenon. According to Singer, the development of a market for viewing moving images in the home began “within months of the first public projections” in the late nineteenth century, when the popularity of moving images encouraged entrepreneurs to bring modified forms of the cinema experience into the home or other venues beyond the parameters of commercial theaters. Singer uses the term “home cinema” to distinguish this form of entertainment from “home movies,” a term commonly used for nonprofessional filmmaking and films that are usually personal in nature (both in terms of subject matter and purpose). Singer’s study focuses on the development of home cinema in the USA through the 1940s, and underscores the ways in which home cinema prefigured the emergence of television and VCRs (Singer 1988: 37). Although he does not address the market in Japan, there are commonalities between the early development of home cinema in Europe and the USA up until around 1912 and its emergence in Japan, where the first home projection machines were imported in 1907. According to Singer, a wide variety of equipment was available for home projection of moving images in Europe and the USA as early as the late nineteenth century. These included a 35 mm apparatus that could be used to modify magic lanterns for film projection, inexpensive machines designed to project celluloid film or even paper, and convertible magic lanterns, mostly made by German toy manufacturers (also major producers of magic lanterns) that could project both glass slides and brief loops or short lengths (50–100 ft.) of film. Early sources of illumination for these machines ranged from oil lamps to an electric set-up. Such machines continued to be sold into the 1900s, when the first home projection machines were imported to Japan. According to Singer’s study, up until 1912, all photochemical film available for home moving image projection machines was made using highly flammable cellulose nitrate film base and available in 35 mm (the international standard) or 17.5 mm (half the width of 35 mm) formats (Singer 1988: 40). A divergence between the foreign and domestic Japanese markets occurs after 1912, when home cinema systems using nonflammable acetate film stock on “substandard” formats (smaller than the professional 35 mm standard, which was still only available on flammable nitrate) were introduced in Europe and the USA. According to Singer, although new home cinema projectors for 35 mm nitrate film continued to be marketed after 1912, “none of these ventures survived” (Singer 1988: 46).10 Eventually, 35 mm home projection in the USA and Europe was superseded in the 1920s and 1930s, when smaller formats on nonflammable acetate film (9.5 mm 356

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introduced in 1922, 16 mm in 1923, and 8 mm in 1932) became the new, increasingly affordable standards for home projection. This was not the case in Japan. The first home projection machines imported to Japan were relatively expensive. By the 1920s, however, cheaper and lightweight domestic versions of 35 mm home projectors (katei eishakki) were being manufactured and sold to the general public, and domestically produced and marketed 35 mm projectors and films continued to thrive into the 1930s (Ōta 2012). Notably, Ōta has often made the point that although these home projectors are commonly called “toys,” the films that were available to project on them were made from the same professional 35 mm nitrate film stock as those projected in commercial theaters (see, e.g., Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 170–171; Ōta 2007a: 91, and 2012: 36–37). Toy films were sold in small boxes or cans, and could be procured in a number of ways. They were sometimes sold in small shops alongside other collectibles such as publicity shots (“bromides”) of movie stars and film frames cut from projection prints (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 170–171; Ōta 2007a: 90–91);11 they were also available for purchase in department stores (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 175; cf. description for item JC-27). Sometimes, they were included as a bonus with the purchase of a projector, or sold directly by the manufacturer. Although the manufacturers produced some of the animated shorts expressly for the toy film market, most toy films were copies of scenes excerpted from actual theatrical projection prints. They were sometimes tinted or toned but always silent, even if the original source had a soundtrack. The color scheme for toy films did not necessarily correspond to the original version shown in theaters because the toy film manufacturers were responsible for adding color. The major toy film manufacturers included Lion, King, Asahi Katsudō, and Haguruma; Prince, Marusan, and Condor joined the market after World War II (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002; Ōta 2007a, and 2016).

Figure 21.2 A sampling of the types of containers used to sell toy films on exhibit at the Toy Film Museum. Source: Photograph courtesy of the Toy Film Museum.

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What can we learn about the types of images people watched on these machines from the films that the Toy Film Project rescued? When the project ended in 2011, it had restored 800 films. Divided into the project’s general subject categories, these included: 320 jidaigeki films; 210 domestic animations; 110 domestic “live action” (jissha) subjects (e.g., actualities, documentaries, travelogues, war footage, and newsreels); eighty foreign films (e.g., comedy, drama, actualities, news, documentaries, and travelogues); and eighty foreign animations (Ōta 2012: 38). Families with children were the targeted demographic for the toy film market, and this might explain the large number of jidaigeki, a favorite genre among children. It is also true that this genre’s choreographed swordfight scenes were inherently well suited to the toy film’s brevity, which precluded a narrative. The jidaigeki restored by the Toy Film Project include excerpts that are the only surviving traces of titles that are not held in any other archive, so this collection is a valuable source of information about changing practices in acting, staging, and camerawork. These brief fragments also can amplify the dynamic energy of these excerpted highlights, and the performances by the genre’s iconic stars, such as Onoe Matsunosuke (1875–1926), Ōkōchi Denjirō (1898–1962), Bandō Tsumasaburō (1901–1953), Arashi Kanjurō (1903–1980), Kataoka Chiezō (1903–1983), Ichikawa Utaemon (1907–1999), and Hayashi Chōjirō (later known as Hasegawa Kazuo, 1908–1984). A sampling of titles from the Toy Film Project’s other categories provides a glimpse of the range of films that were available for home projection. The domestically produced animated shorts category includes numerous titles featuring the popular anthropomorphic black and white dog Norakuro (an abbreviation of norainu, meaning “stray dog” and kuro, or “black”). This character was the star of a manga series by Tagawa Suihō (Takamizawa Chūtarō, 1899–1989), which debuted in the magazine Shōnen kurabu in 1931; a number of Norakuro films were made during the 1930s. One title in the Toy Film Project collection, Norakuro oni chūi to Mikki (Lt. Norakuro and Mickey Mouse), is unusual in bringing together these two popular characters from Japan and the USA. Examples of foreign animated shorts include several titles each featuring Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Betty Boop. The domestically produced films in the “live action” category include both newsreel or documentary footage of contemporary events, represented by such titles as Kantō daishinsai (The Great Kantō Earthquake, 1923, tinted red), Manshū jihen (The Manchurian [or Mukden] Incident), and Shanhai jihen (The Shanghai Incident, 1932); and topical films, such as Kagayaku dai Tōkyō (Glorious Tokyo), and Sakura mankai no Tenmangu (Cherry Blos­ soms in Full Bloom at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine). The category of foreign productions includes comedies (e.g., Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle), dramatic features (e.g., William Wellman’s Wings, 1927), actualities, news, documentary footage, wrestling, and horse racing. One film listed only by a descriptive title (“Fire on ship”) consists of excerpts from an unidentified feature, with Cines intertitles, three tinted scenes, and one brief scene in black and white. This category also includes a film with circa 1920s–1930s documentary footage of the Manhattan cityscape (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 172–177; Ōta 2007a: 93, 2012: 37). These general categories were already fairly well defined when the Toy Film Project was officially launched with Osaka University of Arts funding in 2003. In addition to serving as an organizational schema for the films being restored, this division by genre or type of subject was intended to provide a rationale for funding the project on an ongoing basis, with a different category of films being proposed for restoration each year (Ōta 2016). The divisions were based on the group of approximately 300 toy films that seeded the project and belonged to Ōta’s three original collaborators, Matsumoto Natsuki, Yasui Yoshio, and Furubayashi Yoshio. The original October 2003 project proposal includes details about the films’ physical condition, a list of known logistical and technical challenges, and a preliminary plan for a restoration workflow by drawing on the results of IMAGICA WEST’s first attempt to restore a batch of sixty films from 358

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Matsumoto’s collection and what was known about the toy films belonging to all three collectors (“Omocha Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen Chōsa Kenkyū Purojekuto,” 2003). IMAGICA WEST was able to restore only half of the initial group of sixty films from Matsumoto’s collection because they were too shrunken to run through the lab’s optical printer. At this point, IMAGICA WEST had not yet become a professional restoration lab, but it was considering altering its course in order to specialize in such work. The lab agreed that if the Toy Film Project team would commit to continuing the project on an ongoing basis, they would modify their equipment (e.g., grind down or remove the optical printer’s registration pins that advance the film) to better accommodate the films that they had been unable to complete. In this way, the project took shape as a long-term, multi-year undertaking that also helped advance photochemical film restoration knowledge and expertise at IMAGICA WEST (Ōta 2012). The large number of films and their short length made the project uniquely suited to the rapid acquisition of such expertise. This was because 100 toy films could be restored for the same amount of money that it would cost for one feature-length film print, and each toy film presented a unique challenge (Ōta 2016). While the project was being funded, it continued to receive films to restore as news about it spread. Films were either donated or lent by collectors (or their family members and other individuals invested in restoring them), or they were found in antique stores and flea markets. Ōta believes that a project with a similar scope would be difficult to replicate today, because the collectors—fan networks of individual stars, for example—have aged and their groups have decreased in size. They have been replaced by a new generation of collectors, but the films tend to be in worse condition today and more expensive to buy. Perhaps for this reason, it is more common these days to receive donations of equipment, or small-gauge home movies or amateur films, rather than 35 mm films (Ōta 2016). From the start of the project, the Osaka University of Arts prioritized making 35 mm safety film prints of the toy films and digital files for preservation and access rather than archiving the original toy films. The possibility for collectors to lend their films rather than donating them outright helped broaden the network of collaborators to include those who were reluctant to part with objects in their collections (Ōta 2016). The agreement with all collaborators was that in return for the use of their original toy films, they would receive a new 35 mm safety film print, with the option of having their original material returned to them after it had been inspected, cleaned, repaired, and reprinted. A brief outline of the restoration workflow helps clarify the nature of the restoration work carried out during the project. First, the donated or borrowed film would be inspected in order to document details about its physical condition: its estimated length; type of film stock (not all films were on nitrate); presence, type, and number of splices; and presence or type of decomposition. The type of decomposition was different whether the film had a cellulose acetate (safety film) or nitrate base, and some individual films were actually a combination of both. Types of decomposition might include shrinkage, warping, cracking or flaking of the emulsion, brittleness, base or emulsion scratches, perforation damage, mildew or mold, and—specifically in the case of nitrate—softening, bubbling, congealing, or complete disintegration (a point at which the film turns to dust). Other information collected at this stage included whether the film was tinted, toned, or black and white, and any discernable title and other information that could be used to document the year of production and the production company. Identifying toy films is a particular problem because very often the toy film manufacturing companies used their own titles instead of the original title of the source material, or the title might be missing altogether (the “heads” and “tails” of projected film reels or spools are especially vulnerable to mechanical damage). Finally, donors occasionally made specific requests for information about 359

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a film’s physical condition and/or content. After inspection, the film was cleaned, classified according to color or black and white, and repaired. For preservation purposes, a clean, dustfree 35 mm duplicate negative was made from the original film. This original 35 mm duplicate negative (dupe neg) was then used to strike two new 35 mm positive prints on safety film. These new prints were also scanned in order to make digital files or DVDs, which were returned to film owners; the project also kept digital copies for routine access and exhibition, and a comprehensive master database of the digitized titles. Finally, the university kept one of the new 35 mm positive safety film prints along with the original duplicate negative for preservation purposes, and one 35 mm print was given to the owner, along with a DVD copy or digital file and the original film that had been provided if this was part of the agreement (Ōta 2012: 38–40).12 This policy of striking two new 35 mm positive prints, one to return to the collector and one for the university, raised the project’s overall expenses but also helped increase the number of collaborators (Ōta 2016). Summarized in this way, the restoration workflow sounds relatively straightforward, but in reality it was full of ups and downs. Perhaps the greatest hurdle was in just getting the restoration work off the ground. Ōta has written that at the time the project started in the early 2000s, large film labs were in the business of processing new films and were not accustomed to dealing with decomposition (Ōta 2012: 39). This was especially true for nitrate film: after a nitrate print was copied to safety film, it was customarily disposed of as hazardous waste. According to a reference in Kae Ishihara’s Chapter 17 in this volume, as of 1995, only two labs in Japan were capable of restoring nitrate film. In addition to modifying and improving their printing equipment so it could accommodate prints with negative print perforations (a problem posed by recycled film) and shrunken film, IMAGICA WEST set up a dedicated room for nitrate film repair, increased the number of personnel, and improved their film developing, color timing, and audio capabilities. They also initiated extensive research on toning processes and the dyes used in tinting films (Ōta 2012: 40). As we have seen, the Toy Film Project helped revitalize local photochemical film processing activity by advancing film restoration practices, particularly pertaining to the handling and treatment of nitrate film degradation. By focusing on home cinema films and technology in Japan as a distinct form of film culture outside the parameters of the commercial theater experience, the project also created new opportunities for researching alternate modes of film production and consumption in Japan during the first half of the twentieth century. It is also important to note the project’s commitment to mobilizing its film restorations through the compilation of a master database that can be accessed for research, and frequent screenings beginning with the Kyoto Film Festival and eventually even abroad through events sponsored by the Toy Film Museum. Ōta has also disseminated information about the project’s findings and the availability of these films for further research through conference presentations, published research, and the continued activities of the Toy Film Museum. The recuperated toy films are valuable aids in enhancing our knowledge of silent Japanese cinema, which to date we have access to only as fleeting glimpses. When Ōta presented the project at the 2007 FIAF congress in Tokyo, half of the 200 jidaigeki that had been recovered at that point were not held by any other film archive in Japan. Such films represent a primary source of information about a vibrant period of filmmaking that has all but disappeared (Ōta 2007b). Filling in the “black holes” of silent film history is especially pertinent in the case of Japanese cinema history. Statistics that the National Film Archive of Japan compiled on the survival rate of Japanese theatrical releases as of 2016 reveals how much of Japanese cinema has been lost to time. According to these statistics, 12,096 of the 37,233 theatrical feature films made in Japan between the 1910s and 1940s survive, but only 6,728 (18.1 percent) can be definitively identified by their date of production. Broken down by 360

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decade, this amounts to a mere 0.2 percent of the films made in the 1910s, 4.1 percent for the 1920s, 11.7 percent for the 1930s (when the industry gradually transitioned to sound), and 33 percent for the 1940s (National Film Archive of Japan 2019).

The Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop The original proposal for the Toy Film Project was broadly inclusive, including plans for oral histories, a collection of film ephemera, and a database of Yoda Yoshikata’s screenplays, as well as the restoration of small-gauge films and feature films on 35 mm (“Omocha Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen Chōsa Kenkyū Purojekuto” 2003). Project results suggest that film restoration and preservation took precedence, however, beginning with the 2004 restoration of Saegusa Genjirō’s Special Express: 300 Miles, shown at Pordenone in 2005. Ōta says he became convinced that an ongoing series of workshops was needed to promote film preservation and handson technical training after his experience on a subsequent parallel project in 2006 (Ōta 2016). This was the restoration of a 16 mm digest print of Kimura Sotoji’s Kaigun bakugekitai (Navy Bomb Squadron, 1940). Navy Bomb Squadron, a Toho propaganda film about Japan’s air attack on the Northern Chinese army, is the first film to credit Tsuburaya Eiji (1901–1970) with directing the special effects.13 The film surfaced when the owner sought advice on its condition: it had started to fuse together in places and could no longer run through a projector. Neither Toho nor the National Film Center had copies of the film, which confirmed that this edited reduction print was the only known extant version of the film. The Navy’s Military Affairs Public Awareness office (Kaigunshō Gunjifukyūbu) often distributed such 16 mm reduction prints of theatrical propaganda films to public organizations or the Japanese Patriotic Women’s Association (Aikoku Fujinkai); this print probably ended up in a private collection, where it survived being confiscated after the war. The Toy Film Project, the Kyoto Film Festival, and the National Film Center formed a committee to restore the film, but ran into complications with Toho over copyright issues. The incongruence between the rapidly diminishing window of opportunity to save the film and Toho’s lack of commitment while insisting on ownership revealed a fundamental lack of awareness. Although the digest version of Navy Bomb Squadron was too degraded to blow up to 35 mm, it was successfully transferred to 16 mm on a contact printer through the collaborative efforts of the restoration committee, and this new print was screened at the 5th edition of the Kyoto Film Festival in 2006 (Ōta 2007a: 96–98; 2016). The first Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop, which would become an ongoing annual event and a consequential outcome of the Toy Film Project, was also held in conjunction with the 2006 Kyoto Film Festival. This was the Toy Film Project’s fourth year, and the workshop was conceived as an opportunity for the older generation of IMAGICA WEST film technicians to pass on their expertise before they retired, while the equipment was still available (Ōta 2016). Concern that digital technology was increasingly endangering the welfare of small photochemical film labs was another factor. The first workshop was held for two weeks, from September 2–15, 2006. The first week focused on lectures on film heritage preservation and the state of the field in both Japan and overseas. This was followed by a week of hands-on training, mostly on site at IMAGICA WEST. The curriculum was designed to allow participants to receive instruction directly from professionals while using professional equipment and materials. The event’s flyer featured a photograph of a bubbling reel of nitrate in an advanced stage of decomposition. It proved to be very effective. Thirty people attended, including professionals, students, and members of the general public. The organizers of this collaborative event included the Toy Film Project, IMAGICA WEST, The Museum of Kyoto, the Film Preservation Society (NPO Honin Eiga Hozon Kyōkai), Planet Film Archive, The National Film Center, the Kyoto 361

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Film Festival, the Japanese Association of Motion Picture Cinematographers (Nihon Eiga Satsuei Kantoku Kyōkai), the Kyoto branch of the Japanese Film and Television Technical Association (Nihon Eiga Terebi Gijutsu Kyōkai Kyōto Shibu), Fujifilm, and other organizations (Ōta 2007a: 94–96). The workshop was shortened in length to an average of three days after it became an annual event, but it expanded its coverage to include conservation issues related to a broader category of audio-visual media, drawing lecturers and participants from a range of professions and institutional venues (Ōta 2012). Although to date it is centered in the Kansai area, with venues concentrated in Osaka and Kyoto, it has also taken place in Tokyo. By the fifth year, sixty-four participants from various parts of the country attended, including film laboratory employees, archive, museum, and stock image company professionals, film festival programmers and organizers, and film and media studies students (Hasegawa 2010). The curriculum today remains faithful to the original format by including one to two days of lectures, presentations, screenings, and roundtable discussions, as well opportunities to tour audio-visual collecting institutions, companies specializing in audio-visual conservation, or hands-on training at such venues.

Conclusion: a communal base for fostering film preservation Ōta presented his plans for the Toy Film Museum at the 9th Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop held at the Museum of Kyoto at the end of August 2014. He had already set up a website in anticipation of the museum in April that year, featuring clips of a selection of toy films. He decided on the museum’s venue in October, and renovations on the machiya, a former factory specializing in yūzen fabric dying (a resist-dye process using stencils and ricepaste) were underway before the year’s end. In redesigning the characteristic interior layout—a narrow entrance hallway the length of the building, with two spaces for dying and displaying dyed fabric—Ōta had help from acquaintances who were professional set design or studio art department staff (Ōta 2016). The former display room to the right of the entrance became an exhibit space for the technology collection, and the central workspace was converted to use for events such as demonstrations and performances, screenings, lectures, workshops, and collaborative projects. A second-floor alcove serves as the museum’s combination administrative and research hub. The extended entrance hall displays a variety of goods related to the museum and the collection that serve as promotional items and a minor source of revenue. These include not only signature souvenirs (bookmarks made from 35 mm toy film reprints, T-shirts, cups and buttons with images of the museum’s logo, cartoon characters, or famous stars), but also DVDs of toy films accompanied by benshi performances, museum publications, and reproductions of pre-cinema optical toys. The museum’s mission statement lists ten objectives, beginning with its role as a center “for cultural outreach through the exhibition of cinema-related devices and images” and for researching film-related content, including the Toy Film Project database. Other functions include the design, production, and sale of publications and educational materials, promoting research on filming locations, film-related historical venues, and tourism related to these places. In addition to events such as those described above, the museum lists support for “young film and media artists,” “film creation” and “the experiences of young artists abroad” through film festivals and informational exchange, objectives that call to mind Ōta’s experience at the Hamburg community media center. Finally, in addition to renting out equipment for film screenings, the museum also handles “consignment sales, brokering, and film sales.”14 In fact, the museum’s film database has grown since the Toy Film Project ended and now comprises approximately 900 digitized titles. 362

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Mobilizing the films that Ōta has helped restore through screenings and traveling programs has always been a key objective for him, and the museum serves as a base for such activity. One month after the museum opened, the museum held a screening of Our Younger Brother, the first of a number of on-site restoration screenings that have also featured benshi performances, guest lectures, and the opportunity for roundtable discussions. The toy films and other restored titles have traveled extensively to venues in Asia, Europe, and the USA. For example, a program of animated toy films featuring fantastical creatures, including ghosts, supernatural monsters, goblins, and demons (obake and yōkai) was a highlight of “Obake Family Day,” a Halloween event at New York’s Japan Society in 2015. The museum puts on many events for children and students that keep alive the role of objects in the collection that were created as toys. Children (as well as adults) are encouraged to engage with the machines in order to learn how they work and how images are made. The animated toy films often play a dual role as entertainment and education, serving as an introduction to the history of domestic animation and animation’s relationship to other forms of illustrated entertainment. While I was visiting the museum in August 2016, for example, I watched a group of children completely engrossed by a paper theater (kam­ ishibai) performance, a visual form of storytelling and street theater entertainment that was popular from sometime around 1930 through the post-war period. The museum’s website keeps a running list of its events, both local and overseas, on its website. Only four years after the museum’s founding, it runs to well over thirty-five pages long. The Toy Film Museum’s greatest challenge today is sustainability. Ōta acknowledges that he could not have founded the museum without the major support and assistance of his wife, Ōta Fumiyo, who also helps him manage the museum’s daily operations. The rental fee for the premises is considerable, and income from annual memberships, the small entrance fee for nonmembers, and donations and public support fall short of covering this and other expenses. The museum does not have climate-controlled storage facilities (archival film elements related to the Toy Film Project are stored at the Osaka University of Arts), but there are still utility bills to pay. Thus far, the only way to make ends meet has been to draw on Ōta’s personal finances. As much as Ōta has prioritized events with local relevance, a majority of patrons are from out of town or even overseas (Ōta 2016), although this might be explained by Kyoto’s status as a tourist destination. Despite these challenges, the museum has maintained an active schedule of exhibits and events, but with Ōta’s imminent retirement, its future is uncertain (Ōta 2019). The Toy Film Museum, the Toy Film Project, and the other projects that Ōta has been involved with are only a small sample of many consequential film preservation efforts in Japan that have been initiated by private individuals, non-profit groups, or ad hoc committees formed to support the restoration of a specific title. They fill the void left by a lack of government policies or regulations that would sustain the systematic preservation of Japan’s film heritage. This case study sheds light on the current state of film preservation in Japan, and the extent to which recent developments in recuperative archiving and preservation projects open up new paths of inquiry. As researchers of Japanese cinema, we often neglect to consider how and why the particular material objects that are our tangible links to this cinema’s history survive. We overestimate the probability of a systematic process of archival conservation as an “automatic” safety net. As the academic discipline of film studies has developed over time, we overlooked—or at best underestimated—the fragility and mutability of film. As an organic object, it is inherently ephemeral. The digital age has made us more mindful of the need to better understand the relationship between film as object and film history, and how material loss affects the history-making process. This awareness of film’s materiality underscores the vital link between academic research, archive work, and collecting. The backstory of the Toy Film Museum adds another page to the history 363

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of Japanese cinema as an example of how the recuperative activities of collecting, preservation, and collaboration across professions open up new possibilities for research, and forge new paths toward preserving Japanese cinema.

Notes 1 Ōta was my supervisor when I was a student in the Visual Concept Planning Department (Eizō Gakubu) at the Osaka University of Arts in 1976–1977, and I have had the opportunity to closely follow several projects mentioned in this chapter. I was included as an overseas consultant when the Toy Film Project committee was formed, provided the English-language intertitle translations for Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka (What Made Her Do It?, dir. Suzuki Shigeyoshi, 1930) and Tokkan Kozō (A Straighforward Boy, dir. Ozu Yasujirō, 1929), and attended two of the annual Film Restoration and Preservation Workshops (as a presenter in 2011 and a participant in 2016) that Ōta began in Kyoto and Osaka in 2006. 2 See, for example, a local newspaper article about the Toy Film Museum published three months before it opened on May 18, 2015 that cites Ōta’s visit twenty years earlier to a small community filmmaking center in Germany (Kawamura 2015). 3 The term “restored version” (fukugenban) refers to a specific version of a film that “returns” the film to a form more closely corresponding to its initial release. 4 The term “cut pieces” refers to test strips (processed but unedited footage) that Miyagawa customarily used to compare differences between film stocks, exposures, and lighting conditions, while working toward a desired effect. They were essential during the production of Rashomon because of Kurosawa’s interest in testing the limits of natural light. The film’s expressive use of high-contrast lighting, achieved through techniques that included reflecting mirrors and shooting toward the sun, marked a departure from the tone of Miyagawa’s previous work (see Miyagawa 1985: 58–65). 5 The two scenes restored to the film depict a victory celebration after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and a lantern procession of students marching and singing war songs (Ōta 1995: 28). Ōta recalls (2016) that the term “restored version” (fukugenban) was still relatively new at the time, having been used to refer to the groundbreaking 1992 “restored version” of A Diary of Chuji’s Travels. 6 This context is reflected in the appearance of the term hijōji appearing on the title card of the rescued 16 mm print (Ōta 1998, 1999). 7 Ōta and Mizuguchi originally thought they could just translate the Russian intertitles back into Japanese while referring to the published version of the screenplay, included in Volume 2 of Nihon eiga shinario koten zenshū (Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 1966). This version, however, has 298 intertitles compared to the 165 intertitles in the extant Gosfilmofond print. Moreover, once the Russian intertitles were translated into Japanese, it became clear that a significant amount of explanatory information had been added to assist Soviet audiences, and there were changes that possibly were made because of Soviet censorship regulations. Also, the screenplay published by Kinema Junpōsha is a preproduction version (junbikō) of the script and not the version used on the set; this would also explain differences between the two sets of (Japanese and Russian) intertitles (see Ōta 2001: 113–114). 8 A 1997 recording of Buchwald’s original score for What Made Her Do It?, performed by the Filarmonica Banatul Timisoara (Banatul Philharmonic, Timisoara, Romania) can be heard on the critical edition DVD of the film issued (with English subtitles) by Kinokuniya in 2009. 9 Ōta also acknowledges being equally impressed by the “Lumière Project,” a joint European film heritage project initiated by the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) (Ōta and Matsumoto 2002: 167–168). This project preserved and restored over 1,000 films between 1991 and 1996. 10 Another challenge to 35mm in the United States and Europe was the popularity and convenience of popular film rental libraries (like the Pathescope Library, and the Kodascope Library started in 1924) that circulated reduction prints of dramatic features and comedies and other genres such as travel films on smaller format safety film (e.g., 9.5mm, 16mm, and 28mm). The Kodascope Library’s network was particularly extensive, reaching major cities in China and Australia, with films still circulating as late as the 1960s. 11 According to Ōta, film hobbyists most likely also used toy film projectors to project loose footage (available for purchase at such shops) that was not necessarily sold commercially as prepackaged toy films (Ōta 2016). 12 One collector, Furubayashi Yoshio, requested new 16 mm rather than 35 mm positives prints because this format was more convenient for him to project (Ōta 2016).

364

New paths toward preserving Japanese cinema 13 Tsuburaya Eiji is best known as the director of special effects at Toho for the propaganda film Hawai marē oki kaisen (The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya, dir. Yamamoto Kajirō, 1942), a long list of science fiction films that included the original Gojira (Godzilla, dir. Honda Ichirō, 1954) and subsequent titles in the series, and Ultraman, the 1966 television series produced by Tsuburaya Productions, which he established that same year. 14 The museum’s objectives appear in an undated bilingual (English–Japanese) museum handout written in 2015, and on its website under “Concept.” A list of equipment available to rent is also provided on the site under “Goods.”

Works cited Hasegawa, C. 2010. “Uzumoreta rekishi tsunagiawase: Eizō firumu no shūfuku, hozon” (“Connecting Hidden Histories: Restoration and Preservation of Motion Picture Film”). Asahi shimbun (evening edn), September 17: 2. Kawamura, R. 2015. “Machiya ni ‘Omocha eiga’ hakubutsukan” (“A ‘Toy Film’ Museum [Located] in a Machiya”). Kyōto shimbun, February 6: 1. Miyagawa, K. 1985. Kyameraman ichidai: Watakushi no eiga jinsei 60-nen (Cameraman Kazuo Miyagawa: Sixty Years of My Life Working in Film). Kyoto: PHP Kenkyūjo. National Film Archive of Japan. 2019. “Eiga hozon to firumu ākaibu no katsudō no genjō ni kansuru Q&A” (“Q&A Regarding the Current State of Film Preservation and Film Archive Activity”). Online at www.nfaj.go.jp/research/filmbunka/ [accessed June 30, 2019]. “Omocha Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen Chōsa Kenkyū Purojekuto” (“The Toy Film and Film Restoration, Investigation, and Research Project”). 2003. Unpublished document, October 17: n.p. Ōta, Y. 1994. “Eiga Muhōmatsu no isshō saisei (I): eiga ken’etsu to sono fukugen kenshō” (“Bringing the Film The Rickshaw Man/The Life of Muhomatsu the Untamed Back to Life: Film Censorship and Restoration”). Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts) 17. Ōta, Y. 1995. “Miyagawa Kazuo: The World-Class Cameraman of The Life of Matsu the Untamed 1943.” In Eiga 100 nen: Kyōto kokusai fesutibaru (Cinema 100: Kyoto International Festival), 28. Kyoto: Eiga 100 nen: Kyoto kokusai fesutibaru jikkō iinkai. Ōta, Y. 1998. “Hijōji no shonen tachi (I): Eiga Bokura no otōto o megutte” (“Youth in a Time of Crisis (I): About Our Younger Brother”). Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts) 21: 182–194. Ōta, Y. 1999. “Hijōji no shonen tachi (II): Eiga Bokura no otōto o megutte” (“Youth in a Time of Crisis (II): About Our Younger Brother”). Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka Univer­ sity of Arts) 22: 175–187. Ōta, Y. 2000. “Eiga no fukugen Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka (1929) ni kanshite (I)” (“The Restoration of What Made Her Do It? Part I”) Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts) 23: 141–153. Ōta, Y. 2001. “Eiga no fukugen Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka (1929) ni kanshite (II)” (“The Restoration of What Made Her Do It? Part II”) Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts) 24: 108–121. Ōta, Y. 2007a. “Omocha eiga purojekuto hōkoku” (“Report on the Toy Film Project”). Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts). 30: 90–100. Ōta, Y. 2007b. “Omocha eiga to sono hozon” (“The History of Toy Film in Japan and the Challenges of its Preservation”). 63rd FIAF Congress, National Museum of Modern Art National Film Center, Tokyo, April 8. Unpublished. Ōta, Y. 2012. “Omocha [Gangu] Eiga oyobi Eiga Fukugen, Chōsa, Kenkyū Purojekuto” (“The Toy Film and Film Restoration, Investigation, and Research Project”). Mirai ni tsunagu jinrui no gi 11: Onsei eizō kiroku media no hozon to shūfuku/Conservation of Industrial Heritage, 36–46. Tokyo: Tokyo bunkazai kenkyūsho. Ōta, Y. 2016. Interview with J. Bernardi. August 22–23, The Toy Film Museum, Kyoto. Ōta, Y. 2019. Email to author, July 16. Ōta Y. and Matsumoto, N. 2002. “Omocha eiga to firumu ākaibu ni tsuite” (“Regarding Toy Films and Film Archiving”). Geijutsu: Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku kiyō (Art: Journal of the Osaka University of Arts) 25: 165–179. Singer, B. 1988. “Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope.” Film History 2(1): 37–69.

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Joanne Bernardi Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Firumu Sentā (Tokyo Museum of Modern Art National Film Center). 1986. Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Firumu Sentā shozō eiga mokuroku: Nihon geki eiga (Catalog of Films in the National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo: Japanese Feature Films: Japanese Feature Films). Tokyo: Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Firumu Sentā. Toy Film Museum. 2019. Omocha Eiga Myūjiamu (Toy Film Museum). Online at https://toyfilm-museum. jp [accessed June 30, 2019].

Further reading Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka kurichikaru ejishon (What Made Her Do It? Critical Edition). 2009. Directed by S. Suzuki. [DVD] (English-language subtitles). Tokyo: Kinokuniya. Ōta, Y. 2012. “Toy Film and Motion Picture Film Restoration, Investigation and Research Project” (English translation of “Omocha [Gangu] Eiga Oyobi Eiga Fukugen, Chōsa, Kenkyū Purojekuto). In Mirai ni tsunagu jinrui no gi 11: Onsei eizō kiroku media no hozon to shūfuku (Conservation of Industrial Heri­ tage), 40–51. Tokyo: Tokyo Bunkazai Kenkyūsho. Omocha Eiga Myūjiamu. 2015. Toy Film Museum (Omocha Eiga Myūjiamu) 1: 1–20. Saika, H. 2017. “Omocha eiga toshite no chambara eiga no jyuyō: Bandō Tsumasaburō no chūshin ni” (“The Reception of Chambara Films as Toy Films with a Focus on Bandō Tsumasaburō”). In Nihon Eizō Gakkai (ed.), Nihon Eiga Gakkai dai 12 kai taikai puroshīdingusu (Proceedings of the 12th Japan Society for Cinema Studies Conference), 5–14. November 26, 2016. Osaka University, Osaka.

366

Contributors

Joel Neville Anderson is a PhD Candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester working in experimental film and video, personal documentary, community media, environmental justice, film festival studies, and Japanese cinema and visual culture. Anderson’s writing has been featured in Millennium Film Journal, Studies in Documentary Film, Senses of Cinema, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Hyperallergic, Afterimage, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, and Film on the Faultline, and he curates JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film at the Japan Society in New York, and On Film in Rochester, New York. Joanne Bernardi is Professor of Japanese and Film and Media Studies at the University of Rochester, New York. She is author and editor of Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture, a multimedia digital humanities project and original collection of tourism, education, and entertainment ephemera. Publications include Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (2001); Provenance and Early Cinema (forthcoming); and book chapters and articles on Japanese cinema; moving image and media history, historiography, and preservation; Godzilla and nuclear culture; and digital humanities research and pedagogy. Takafusa Hatori is Project Assistant Professor at Niigata University. He received his PhD in Human and Environmental Studies from Kyoto University in 2013, and published Nihon eiga no taishūteki sōzōryoku (The Popular Imagination of Japanese Cinema), the updated version of his doctoral dissertation, in 2016. He curated two special exhibitions at The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum of Waseda University: Ikebe Ryō no sekai (The World of Ikebe Ryō) in 2012 and Shinkokugeki to kengeki no sekai (The World of Shinkokugeki and Sword-Fighting Drama) in 2014. He is a member of Archival Research Center for Regional Image Studies of Niigata University. Kyoko Hirano is an independent scholar and former film curator of the Japan Society, New York. After completing her PhD in Cinema Studies at New York University, she has taught at New York University, New School University, the University of Ljubljana, the University of Tokyo, Temple University Japan Campus, and Meiji Gakuin University, among others. Her publications include: Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation 367

Contributors

1945–1952 (1992), Tennō to seppun: Amerika senryōka no Nihon eiga ken’etsu (1998), and Nihon no eiga-shi: 10 no tēma (2014). Kae Ishihara (PhD) studied at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House (now George Eastman Museum) in Rochester, New York. She founded the Film Preservation Society, Tokyo (FPS) in 2001 and has been promoting the importance of film preservation through activities such as “Adopt-a-Film,” which aims at discovery, restoration, and screenings of long-lost Japanese films; the community-based film archiving project “Bunkyo Film Archive;” “Film Salvation Project,” to save films and videotapes damaged in the earthquake and tsunami of 2011; as well as being a driving force behind Home Movie Day in Japan. Daniel Johnson is Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Yuka Kanno is Associate Professor in queer studies, film, and visual culture at the Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Japan. Her publications include “Queer Resonance: The Stardom of Miwa Akihiro,” in Hideaki Fujiki and Alastair Phillips (eds), The Japanese Cinema Book (forthcoming); “Panpan Girls, Lesbians and Postwar Women’s Communities: Girls of Dark (1961) as Women’s Cinema,” in Michael Smith and Irene González-López (eds), Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom, and Female Subjectivity (2018); “Love and Friendship: The Queer Imagination of Japan’s Early Girls’ Culture,” in Mary C. Kearney (ed.), Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls’ Media Culture (2011); among many others. Machiko Kusahara is a scholar in media art and media archaeology, and Professor Emerita at Waseda University. She has written, curated, and taught internationally in the fields of computer graphics, media art, and (more recently) media archaeology since the early 1980s, and has served on juries at international competitions including Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, and Japan Media Arts Festival. Her research focuses on the interaction between art, culture, society, science, and technology in visual media including Device Art, magic lantern culture, and panorama phenomenon. She holds a doctorate degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo. Diane Wei Lewis is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on Japanese film and media, and cinema’s connections to mass media, capitalism, and modernity. Her essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, positions: asia critique, Feminist Media Histories, and Screen. She is author of Powers of the Real: Cinema, Gender, and Emotion in Interwar Japan (2019). Anne McKnight is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages at University of California, Riverside. She has previously published a monograph Nak­ agami, Japan: Buraku and the Writing of Ethnicity (2011), as well as articles on Japanese pink cinema, blackness in Japanese robot literature, and feminist media activist Rokudenashiko. Ryoko Misono was an associate professor in the College of Japanese Language and Culture at the University of Tsukuba. She is the author of Eiga to kokuminkokka: 1930-nendai Shōchiku merodorama eiga (Film and the Nation State: 1930s Shochiku Melodrama Films) (2012)—winner of the annual prize of the Association for Studies of Culture and Representation—and co-editor 368

Contributors

of Awashima Chikage: joyū to iu purizumu (Awashima Chikage: The Actress as Prism) (2009). Her essays on directors such as Ōshima Nagisa, Kinoshita Keisuke, and Yoshida Kijū are reprinted in Eiga no koe: sengo nihon eiga to watashi tachi (Voices in Cinema: Post-War Japanese Cinema and “We”) (2016). Hideyuki Nakamura is Professor of Cinema Studies at Rikkyo University. Among his books are Akatsuki no ākaibu: sengo nihon eiga no rekishiteki keiken (Archive at Dawn: Historical Experiences of Post-War Japanese Cinema); Tokkōtai eiga no keifugaku: haisen nihon no aitōgeki (The Genealogy of “Kamikaze” Films: Mourning Plays of the Defeated Japan); and Haisha no miburi: posuto senryōki no nihon eiga (Gestures of the Defeated: Japanese Films in the Post-Occupation Period). He has also published articles that review Hollywood canonical films such as Stella Dallas (1937), Citizen Kane (1941), and Vertigo (1958). Johan Nordström is a Full-Time Lecturer at Tsuru University, Japan. He completed a PhD at Waseda University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Meiji Gakuin University. He is completing a book on the Tokyo-based early sound film studio PCL/Toho and is co-editor of The Culture of the Japanese Sound Image in Pre-War Japan (forthcoming). His essays on film culture in Japan appear in Kawashima Yūzō wa nido umareru (Kawashima Yūzō is Born Twice) (2018), A Com­ panion to Japanese Cinema (forthcoming) and Film Criticism. He has co-curated many programs of Japanese cinema for international film festivals. Shota T. Ogawa is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Nagoya University, Japan. His research explores the interrelations of cinema and the questions of mobility. His writings on diasporic Korean cineastes have appeared in journals such as Screen, Japan Focus: The Asia-Pacific Journal, and the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. His current book project examines travelogue films in imperial Japan. Kyoko Omori is Associate Professor of Japanese in the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Her research focuses on twentiethcentury popular culture, with an emphasis on interwar film and magazines, as well as on postWWII Occupation Period radio shows. She has been a core member of the Digital Humanities Initiative at Hamilton College since 2010, and has been working on a project that ties literary and cinematic analyses together through an examination of benshi performance. Paul Roquet is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (2016). His work focuses on the cultural politics of mediated space, with a focus on perception, emotion, and technologies of the self. His other writing on Japanese animation has appeared in the journals Mechademia, Representa­ tions, and Animation. Kanta Shibata audited courses on film preservation and motion picture history at University of Bologna and received a MA from Osaka University of Foreign Studies before joining IMAGICA WEST (now IMAGICA Lab. Inc.) in 2008. He is responsible for inspecting and restoring damaged motion picture film, working on optical printing, and coordinating customized film preservation plans with various clients. He has been involved in running the annual Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop in Japan since 2008 and Home Movie Day in Kyoto from 2011 to 2015. 369

Contributors

Takeshi Tanikawa is a visiting professor of film history and popular culture studies at the Graduate School of Political Science, Waseda University. He has worked both in academia and journalism, and he has published more than thirty books in both fields. His academic publications include Amerika eiga to senryō seisaku (American Cinema and Occupation Policy) (2002), Sengo Chūshingura: Eiga no zenbō (Post-War Chūshingura Films); (2013), Kōraiya sankyōdai to eiga (Three Kōraiya Brothers and Cinema) (2018), and Baseball and the Occupation of Japan: America’s Pastime as a Tool to Promote Social Values (2019). Noboru Tomonari is Associate Professor of Japanese at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, specializing in Japanese literature, cinema, and popular culture. He is the author of Constructing Subjectivities: Autobiographies of Modern Japan (2008). He has published articles on representations of minorities in Japan. His current focus is on the themes of masculinities, hikiko­ mori, manga, and puppetry in Japan. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Transcultural Studies, Kyoto University. She is the author of Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s (2008) and Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age (2012); co-editor of Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema (2009) and Sengo nihon eiga ron: 1950-nendai o yomu (Viewing “PostWar” in 1950s Japanese Cinema) (2012); and editor of Posuto 3.11 media gensetsu saikō (Rethinking the Discourse of Media Post-3.11) (2019). Research interests include Japanese cinema and media culture, East Asian cinemas, and queer digital media. She is currently completing Sayonara, Nuclear Power: Voices from Japanese Filmmakers in the Wake of Fukushima. Alexander Zahlten is Associate Professor at Harvard University. His work centers on film and audio-visual culture in East Asia, with a focus on Japan. His recent work touches on the transition from media environment to media ecology and “amateur” film production. Publications include the co-edited volume Media Theory in Japan (2017, with Marc Steinberg) and the monograph The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies (2017). He was Program Director for the Nippon Connection Film Festival, the largest festival for film from Japan, from 2002 to 2010.

370

Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures, those in bold denote tables. Films are indexed selectively, under director and also alphabetically in English with Japanese titles in brackets 35mm film standard 286 “AAA” gaming 248, 249, 250; autonomy and mobility in 249–51, 257–9; see also video games Acconci, Vito, Centers 273–4 actors’ union 111; see also Japan Screen Actors Association After Effects software 143, 147 Airy Me (dir. Kuno Yōko) 148–50, 149 Akasen kichi see The Red Light Military Base Akatsuki no dassō see Escape at Dawn Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women 9, 72; Japanese translation 74 Allied Occupation (1945–52) 130, 233, 290 amachua eiga (amateur film): filmmakers 160; international networks 160; magazines 159; and Prokino 159 Amad, Paula 331 Amateur Cinema League of Japan 159 Amateur Cinema League (New York) 159–60 amateur film see amachua eiga Amemiya Kōmei, on The Flying Maiden 82 Anthropo-Cynical Farce (Kenju giga, dir. Kawamoto Kihachirō) 244 animalization: in animation 146, 147; Azuma on 146 animation 141; animalization in 146, 147; at Cannes Film Festival 142; Master’s degree in 143; meaning 188; stop-motion 171, 173–4, 231, 232, 234; studio 144, 145; see also anime; puppet animation; solo animation Animation Association of 3; founders 142 anime 256; studio, animality in 146; television 144

Anpo Jōyaku, Anpo see Mutual Security Act (US–Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security) anti-Americanism, films 37–8 Araki, Nobuyoshi 266 archives, past and future perspectives 331; see also film archives art, independent and commercial, blurring 143 Aru hi no higata see A Day at the Tidelands Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) 144 autonomous film see jishu eiga (jishu film) autonomy: and mobility, in “AAA” gaming 249–51, 257–9; and novelty 259 Awashima Chikage Collection 138 Azuma Hiroki 144–5; on animalization 146 Baboona: An Aerial Epic Over Africa (dir. Martin & Osa Johnson) 100 Baby Cinema magazine 159 Bakushū see Early Summer Bangiku see Late Chrysanthemums Banshun see Late Spring Battle of the Somme, The (dir. Geoffrey Malins) 296 Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei Eisenstein) 291 Benjamin, Walter 7; “Little History of Photography” 95; on “optical unconscious” 94; “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production” 85 benshi: demise 216–17; digital archive 206–10, 207; history and significance 198–201; meaning 198; mediating role 199, 201; origins 200; performers 199, 200–1, 337; sound version films 217, 222; see also Tokugawa Musei Berlin International Film Festival 165

371

Index Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (Berlin: Die Sinfonie

der Großstadt, dir. Walter Ruttman) 82

Black Fog: The Challenge Against Smog (Kuroi kiri:

Sumoggu ni idomu, Sumitomo Heavy Industries)

105

Blossfeldt, Karl, on plant photography 94

body: and camera movement 250; and media,

overlap 164

Bokura no otōto see Our Younger Brother Bolshevization period, Japan 53–4 border crossing: American films 14, 15, 24, 26;

Morocco 27, 28n4; That Night’s Wife 17–19, 20,

22, 23

borderless (mukokuseki): Hollywood’s global appeal 248–50; in Nikkatsu film 255–6; in Ozu’s miseen-scène 18; video games and 174, 255–7 Bordwell, David: on film narration 88–9; on Ozu’s filmic style 15–16, 18, 28n3 Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, The (Hanaori,

dir. Kawamoto Kihachirō) 232, 234, 239,

240–4, 241

British Film Institute (BFI), National Film Library

288

Brooks, Peter, on melodrama 23, 72

Buchwald, Günter 353, 354, 364n8

bunka eiga (culture film) 96, 98–9; examples 98,

101–2; and the Film Law 288–9; production by

Far East Laboratories 301

bunraku theater: development 234; influence on

Kawamoto 234; Meiji era 235; puppeteers 235

Burch, Noël, To the Distant Observer 2

cinephilia: as mode of education 335–6; as spatial practice 335–6 cities: immigration 19; and imperialism 21;

Keihanshin 333–5; urbanization 51, 54, 82,

102; see also flâneur/flanerie

CLAMP manga collective 165

Clap Vocalism/Ningen dōbutsuen (Human Zoo) (dir.

Kuri Yōji) 146

colonialism 1; Korean residents in Japan (Zainichi Koreans) 342; Manchuria 236; Taiwanese camphor 286; and Tokyo 21; see also imperialism color film: experimental film 82, 160; film

processing 307

COM magazine 161–2 Comiket 165, 166; female readership 162

Comintern, “Theses on Japan” 54

COMITIA conventions 165

connectivity: Kitada on 162; and leftism 163; and

Prokino 163

Convex Lens (Totsu Renzu, Iwanami Productions)

103

Co-Operative Farm (Kyōdō kōsaku) 61, 63, 64

cross-dressing: Garbo in Queen Christina 74;

Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett 75

Cukor, George: Little Women 74; Sylvia Scarlett 74

Cuushe (Hitotsuyanagi Mayuko) 148

Daiei Studio 113–14; establishment 233; and the

Five Company Agreement 130; Gamera vs Zigra

(Gamera tai shinkai kaijū Jigura) 123, 125; Majin

the Monster of Terror (Daimajin) series 116; and

Osaka University of Arts 350–1; and Tokyo

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (Das Cabinet des Dr. Genzosyo 306–7

Caligari, dir. Robert Wiene) 208–10 Daikaijū kūchūsen: Gamera tai Gyaosu see Return of camera, in game media 251; movement and the

the Giant Monsters body 250; and player autonomy 252

Daikyojū Gappa see Monster from a Prehistoric Planet Campaign for the Cultivation of National Strength Daimai Film Library 287

55

Daimajin see Majin the Monster of Terror film series Canal (Sosui, dir. CINÉ FRONT KIOTO) 82

Daimajin gyakushū see Daimajin Strikes Again Cannes Film Festival, animation subsection 142

Daimajin Strikes Again (Daimajin gyakushū, dir.

capitalism, disaster, Klein on 267

Mori Kazuo) 116

captioning, use by Harada 96, 97

D’Arc marionette company 235

Castle, Terry, on ghostly lesbianism 69

Day at the Tidelands, A (Aru hi no higata, dir.

Catch, The (Shiiku, dir. Ōshima Nagisa) 134

Shimomura Kenji) 99

Chaplin, Charlie, The Gold Rush 200

Day of Nose/Hana no hi (dir. Wada Atsushi) 145,

Chikamatsu Monzaemon 234

146, 147

Chikara Tarō see Strongman Taro

Deleuze, Gilles 44

Children of Mixed Blood (Konketsuji) 39

Demon Pond (Yashagaike, dir. Shinoda Masahiro)

China Film Archive 5n2

316

Chocolate and Soldiers (Chokorēto to heitai, dir. Satō

Densō shashin see Electric Photos Takeshi) 320

Derrida, Jacques 331

Chokorēto to heitai see Chocolate and Soldiers digital technology: and access 4n1, 18n1, 199,

CINÉ FRONT KIOTO group 81; Canal (Sosui)

207, 210, 328; and analog format 266, 269–70,

82; cine-club movements 334, 336; and film

276, 283n4; in film and media studies,

archiving 337; The Flying Maiden (Tondeiru

disciplinary boundaries 105; media art 143;

shojo) 82–3

participatory culture 155; see also film

Cinémathèque Française 335

preservation; film restoration

372

Index Doi Nobuaki 141, 142

Downfall of Osen, The (Orizuru Osen, dir.

Mizoguchi Kenji) 224

Dragnet Girl (Hijōsen no onna, dir. Ozu Yasujirō)

15

Early Spring (Sōshun, dir. Ozu Yasujirō) 128

Early Summer (Bakushū, dir. Ozu Yasujirō) 76

Earth We Live On, The (Wareware ga sumu daichi,

dir. Harada Mitsuo) 97

Eastman, George 286

Eastman Kodak 302–3, 305, 307

Eigahō see Film Law Eisenstein, Sergei 86; Battleship Potemkin 291; The General Line 87

Electric Photos (Densō shashin, dir. Harada Mitsuo)

95

Elsaesser, Thomas, on melodrama 23

End of St. Petersburg, The (dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin)

87

Escape at Dawn (Akatsuki no dassō, dir. Taniguchi

Senkichi) 47

European science, Yoshihara on 102

Everything (dir. David OReilly) 143

Far East Film Laboratory/Far East Laboratories Ltd. 303–4; films processed 305–6; landmark events 306–7; see also Nagase Shoten; Toyo Genzosyo A Feather Stare at the Dark/Yami wo mitsumeru hane (dir. Tsuji Naoyuki) 145–6 FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives)

280, 285, 293, 331–2; New York Congress

(1939) 289

Fighting Fish (Tōgyo, dir. Shimazu Yasujirō) 130

film archives 286, 288, 294–5; film as cultural

heritage 296; models 339; and space 331–2;

“The Film Prayer” 287; see also film

preservation; Kobe Planet Film Archive

film collectors, collecting 4, 279, 282, 363–4;

Matsumoto Natsuki 355; Toba Yukinobu 289,

337; toy films 348–8, 359; Yasui Yoshio 334,

335, 337, 334, 355; see also Matsuda Film

Productions; Ōta Yoneo

Film Export Promotion Financing System 113,

114

Film Forum (New York) 316, 317

Film Law (Eigahō 1939): censorship 99, 288;

positive aspects 288–9

film libraries: establishment 287; see also film archives film narration, Bordwell on 88–9 film preservation 279, 280–1, 289, 294–7; and Kawakita Kashiko 291–293; feature film survival (Japan 1910–2015) 285; technique 308–10; “The Film Prayer” 287; see also film archives; film restoration

film prints, nitrate (Japan) 290–1; disposal of

297n10, 360; home cinema market 356–7;

repatriation 292, 294; storage vaults 296

film processing 303; bleach bypass process (gin

nokoshi) 310; color film 307

film processing laboratories 301; see also Far East Film Laboratory; IMAGICA WEST Corp.; Tokyo Laboratory Ltd film restoration 309–11, 351, 360–1; IMAGICA

WEST Corp. 358–9, 361; Ōta Yoneo 349,

351–5; see also film archives; film preservation

Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop 282,

309, 347; attendees 361–2

film stars, and the studio system 129–31 film theory: emergence 83–5; Nakai 83–9;

narrative theory 71–2; theory-history

dichotomy 8

finger-pointing man, Fukushima Daiichi

Nuclear Power Station meltdown 263, 264,

271–5, 272

First Emperor, The (Hatsukuni shirasumera mikoto,

dir. Hara Masato) 163

Five Company Agreement (1953) 111, 130–1; see also studio system Flaherty, Robert J., Nanook of the North 291

flâneur/flanerie 8

Fleming, Victor, The Wizard of Oz 296

Flies (Hae, dir. Yoshino Keiji and Mura Haruo) 103–4 Flowing (Nagareru, dir. Naruse Mikio) 317

Flying Maiden, The (Tondeiru shojo, dir. CINÉ FRONT KIOTO) 82–3 Formalism, Russian 88

Four Love Stories: First Love (Yottsu no koi no

monogatari: Daiichiwa, hatsukoi, dir. Toyoda

Shiro) 130

Fuji (Mt.), identity issues 44, 45

Fuji Photo Film 286, 304, 305, 307

Fukiya Kōji (illustrator) 73

Fukuda Yasukazu 85

Fukuma Toshinori 294

Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive

(Fukuoka-shi Sōgō Toshokan Firumu Ākaibu)

285

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

meltdown (2011) 109, 263; finger-pointing

man 263, 264, 271–5, 272

Fun’en see Smoke Fushichō see Phoenix Fushimizu Shū, Women of Tokyo (Tōkyō no josei) 75–6 Galloway, Alexander 251

Gamera blockbuster film series 110, 115

Gamera tai shinkai kaijū Jigura see Gamera vs Zigra

Gamera vs Zigra (Gamera tai shinkai kaijū Jigura, dir.

Yuasa Noriaki) 123, 125

373

Index gangster films 23; melodrama, dialectic 23; Ozu 16, 22

Garbo, Greta, cross-dressing in Queen Christina 75

Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, dir. Kinugasa Teinosuke)

307, 314

Gendaijin see The Moderns General Line, The (dir. Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov) 87

George Eastman Museum 4

ghost stories, and utsushi-e 185

Ginoza Naomi 76

girls’ culture 9, 68–9; and film culture 74; see also

queer girls’ culture

girls’ fiction 72, 77; illustrations 73; seaborne,

examples 73; translated 73

Girls in Uniform (Mädchen in Uniform, dir. Leontine

Sagan) 76–7

girls’ magazines 74; examples 72

Godzilla (Gojira, dir. Honda Ishirō) 47

Gojira see Godzilla

Gold Rush, The (dir. Charlie Chaplin) 200

Gomery, Douglas 131

Gosho Heinosuke, The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine

(Madamu to nyōbō) 215, 217; retrospective 317

Great Depression 18

Great East Japan Earthquake (Tōhoku 2011; aka

3.11) 109; consequences 263–4; documentary

films 264; Salvage Memory Project 265; slogans

264

Great Hanshin Earthquake (Kobe 1995) 338

Great Kantō Earthquake (1923): and educational

film distribution 101; ephemerality of utsushi-e

178–9; influence on commercial film industry

302; and Pathé Baby camera 158; popularity of

puppet theater 235; Tokyo reconstruction 7, 20

Griffith, D.W.: retrospective 353–4; Way Down

East 86

Hae see Flies Hana no hi see Day of Nose/Hana no hi Hanaori see The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden handbooks, obsolescence problem 3

Hani Susumu, retrospective 318

Hansen, Miriam 7, 203; see also vernacular

modernism Hara Kazuo, at Japan Society (New York) 323

Hara Masato, The First Emperor 163

Hara Setsuko 75, 76

Harada Mitsuo 10, 93; captioning use 96, 97; The

Earth We Live On (Wareware ga sumu daichi) 97; Electric Photos (Densō shashin) 95; science kits 97

Harootunian, Harry 21

Haru (dir. Morita Yoshimitsu) 315

Hasegawa Kazuo (Hayashi Chōjirō) 135; see also

Hayashi Chōjirō

Hashiura Hōnin, Song of the Scattering of Youth: Days I

Can’t Leave Behind (Seishun sanka: okenai hibi) 157

Hasumi Shigehiko 164

Hatsukuni shirasumera mikoto see The First Emperor

Hausu see House

Hayashi Chōjirō (Hasegawa Kazuo) 130, 358; see

also Hasegawa Kazuo Hays Code (1934–68) 8, 39–40 Hepburn, Katharine 9, 69; cross-dressing in Sylvia Scarlett 75; “strangeness” in Little Women 74–5 Hidden Fortress (Kakushi toride no san akunin, dir.

Kurosawa Akira) 335

Higgins, David 172

Hijōsen no onna see Dragnet Girl Hirai Kazuko (feminist historian) 37, 41

Hiraoka Masanobu, Land 148

Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-

Visual Library (Hiroshima-shi Eizō Bunka

Raiburari) 285

Hisaita Eijirō 63

Hitchcock, Alfred, Marnie 68

Hitotsuyanagi Mayuko see Cuushe Hokusai: Black Fuji 40; Red Fuji 40

Hollywood: as ideal model 7, 15–16; and Ozu 13,

15; and post-Allied Occupation Japan 39–40;

queer icons 69; transnational identity 247, 249;

as vernacular modernism 7; see also gangster

films

home cinema: emergence 356, 360; films 348,

357; projectors 348, 356–7

Hong Kong International Film Festival 165

HONY (Humans of New York) photography 270

horror films: influence of jishu film 154–5; Japan

Society (New York) 322

House (Hausu, dir. Obayashi Nobuhiko) 164

Hoyt, Harry O., The Lost World 97–8 Huygens, Christiaan 181

Ichikawa Kon: Lonely Heart (Kōfuku) 310; Tokyo

Olympiad (Tōkyō Orinpikku) 307, 335

identity: cultural, of borderless media 255–7; Mt.

Fuji 44, 45; Ozu 14; Takeuchi 275; and The

Red Light Military Base (Akasen kichi) 9, 42, 43,

44, 46, 47; transnational, Hollywood 247, 249

Ieki Miyoji: Strongman Taro (Chikara Tarō) 238;

The Story of the Black Princess (Kurohime

monogatari) 238

Ikebe Ryō 128, 129; collaboration with Sada 138;

films 130–1; and the studio system 130; The

Man in Macao (not made) 131–3, 134, 135, 138

Ikebe Ryō Collection 128, 131–4, 137, 139

Ikeda Yoshinobu 290

Imada Choichi 294, 295

Image Forum Festival 165, 167n26 Image Forum journal 165

IMAGICA WEST Corp. 280–1, 309–11; film

restoration 358–9, 361; previous incarnations

301, 311; see also Nagase Shoten; Toyo

Genzosyo

374

Index Imamura Taihei 144; on kagaku eiga 99–100 imperialism: and cities 21; cultural imperialism 27; and modernist culture 22; see also colonialism In a Pig’s Eye/Wakaranai buta (dir. Wada Atsushi)

146

In Spring (dir. Mikhail Kaufman) 87

Inada Tatsuo, archival theory 287–8 Inagaki Hiroshi, The Rickshaw Man (Muhōmatsu no isshō) 325, 349–50, 351–2 Inn in Tokyo, An (Tōkyō no yado, dir. Ozu Yasujirō) 220–1 institutionalization: jishu film 164–5; manga dōjinshi 165–6 International Educational Cinematographic

Institute (IECI) 287

International Federation of Film Archives see FIAF Ishii Sōgo (Ishii Gakuryū), Panic in High School

(Kōkō dai panikku) 164

Island Girl (Shima no musume, dir. Nomura Hotei)

219

Itakura Fumiaki 339, 340

Izawa Jun 42

Kaeriyama, Norimasa 216

Kaeru no hanashi see The Story of Frogs kagaku eiga (science films) 10, 93; definition 101;

Enjoyable Science series 105–6; examples 100;

framework 94–5; Imamura on 99–100; invisible

worlds 94, 95; and journalistic reportage 94, 95;

mass audiences 95; optical unconscious in 95;

post-World War II 102–6; The Story of Frogs

(Kaeru no hanashi) 100

Kahn, Albert, Archives de la Planète 331

kaiju monster and special effects films 4, 110, 114,

126; budgeting examples 123; examples 116;

foreign characters in 119–20; table 118–19

Kakeshita Keikichi 214

Kakushi toride no san akunin see Hidden Fortress Kamagasaki Cauldron War, The (Tsukiyo no

Kamagassen, dir. Satō Leo) 341

Kamata Modernism 13, 15

Kameya Kumakichi (Toraku) 184, 185

Kan Satoko 72

karakuri (“automata”) 181, 187, 189, 194

Kashiko see Kawakita Kashiko Katō Masao 73

Jacoby, Alexander, Critical Handbook of Japanese

Katō Tai, retrospective 318

Film Directors 2

Katsutarō (singer) 219

Japan Film Export Promotion Association (Nihon Kaufman, Mikhail: In Spring 87; The Power of

Eiga Yushutsu Shinkō Kyōkai) 110, 113;

Plants 98

bankruptcy 125; criticism of 120–1, 124; failure Kawaita hana see Pale Flower 125–6; function 115

Kawakita Kashiko (Kashiko) 280, 290, 315; film

Japan Film Library Council 280, 292, 293, 297; see

preservation initiatives 291, 292, 293, 297

also Kawakita Memorial Film Institute; film

Kawakita Memorial Film Institute 292, 315

preservation

Kawamoto Kihachirō 171, 173–4, 231; Anthropo-

Japan Foundation 315

Cynical Farce (Kenju giga) 244; as auteur 232,

Japan Media Arts Festival 143

240–1, 242; biography 232–3, 240, 242;

Japan Screen Actors Association 135, 137

bunraku influence on 234; film corpus 232; Life

Japan Society (New York): anime program 321;

of a Poet (Shijin no shōgai) 244; Prague sojourn

classic films 316–19; collaborations 329;

233; puppet making 233; The Breaking of the

comedies programs 327–8; contemporary

Branches is Forbidden (Hanaori) 232, 234, 239,

cinema 325–8; film exhibitions 314; film

240–4, 241; union activism 232

sources 315; film subtitling 328; finance 315;

Kawanaka, Nobuhiro 143

genre series films 319–22; horror films program Kawasaki City Museum Kawasaki-shi Shimin

322; retrospective programs 316–18; strategized

Myūjiamu 285

programs 322–5; World War II films 320

Kikuchi Kan 96

Japan Teachers Union 236

Kimura Takeo, retrospective 319

JCP (Japanese Communist Party) 52, 235, 237

“Kino Glaz” (“Cinematic Eye”) 87

Jigokumon see Gate of Hell “Kino Satz” (“Cinematic Language”) 87, 88, 90

jishu eiga (jishu film, autonomous film) 111–12,

“Kino Tone” (“Cinematic Tone”) 87

142; boom 163; definition 153–6; influence on Kinoshita Keisuke: and Japanese horror 322;

horror films 154–5; institutionalization 164–5;

Carmen Comes Home (Karumen kokyō ni kaeru)

leading directors 158, 164; manga dōjinshi,

307; Phoenix (Fushichō) 130; retrospective 317;

comparison 162–3; Matsuda Masao on 154, 157

Susan Sontag and Twenty-Four Eyes (Nijūshi no

Johnson, Martin & Johnson, Osa, Baboona: An

hitomi) 323

Aerial Epic Over Africa 100

Kinugasa Teinosuke, Gate of Hell (Jigokumon) 307,

Jones, Mike 251

314

Juppunkan no shisaku see Ten-Minute Meditation Kitada Akihiro: on connectivity 162; on Walter

Benjamin and Nakai Masakazu 81

kabuki, source for utsushi-e 178–83, 185, 187

Klein, Naomi, on disaster capitalism 267

375

Index Kobayashi Genjirō, and utsushi-e 178

Kobayashi (Shiba) Ayako, and utsushi-e 178

Kobayashi Yonesaku 100

Kobe Design University 340

Kobe Film Preservation Network 338

Kobe Friendship Center 342

Kobe Planet Film Archive 5n2, 338–43;

community projects 338–9; contents 332,

343n1; historically significant films 343;

opening 338; origins 333; partnerships 340; and

production of scale 341; as regional film archive

339–41; website 339

Kodachrome film 307

Kōfuku see Lonely Heart Kojima Hideo 249

Kōkō dai panikku see Panic in High School Konketsuji see Children of Mixed Blood KOPF (Federacio de Proletaj Kultur Organizoj

Japanaj) 52

Korean Film Archive 5n2 Kracauer, Siegfried 7

Kumashiro Tatsumi, retrospectives 318–19 Kuno Yōko, Airy Me 148–50, 149

Kuri Yōji: “Animation Association of 3” 142;

Annecy festivals 142; Clap Vocalism/Ningen

dōbutsuen (Human Zoo) 146

Kurohime monogatari see The Story of the Black Princess Kuroi kiri: Sumoggu ni idomu (Sumitomo Heavy Industries) see Black Fog: The Challenge Against Smog Kurosawa Akira: and benshi 200; Hidden Fortress (Kakushi toride no san akunin) 335; Rashōmon (Rashomon) 291; retrospective 316; Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) 335; see also Miyagawa Kazuo Kurosawa Kiyoshi 335, 336

Kyōdō kōsaku see Co-Operative Farm Kyoto Baby Cinema Society 159

Kyoto Film Festival 352, 353, 355, 360, 361

Lamarre, Thomas 146

Land (dir. Hiraoka Masanobu) 148

Landecker, Hannah 96

Lang, Fritz, Metropolis 296

Lindgren, Ernest 291

Langlois, Henri 291, 335–6

Late Chrysanthemums (Bangiku, dir. Naruse Mikio)

317 Late Spring (Banshun, dir. Ozu Yasujirō) 316

lesbian films: examples 69, 76; White on 69

lesbianism: ghostly 74, 75; (Castle on 69); signs of

70–1, 74; and tomboyism 70

Life of Muhomatsu the Untamed, The; see The Rickshaw Man Life of a Poet (Shijin no shōgai, Kawamoto

Kihachirō) 244

Little Caesar (dir. Mervyn LeRoy) 16

Little Women: novel by Louisa May Alcott 74,

1933 film (dir. George Cukor) 74

Lonely Heart (Kōfuku, dir. Ichikawa Kon) 310

Lorentz, Pare, The River 291

Lost World, The (dir. Harry O. Hoyt) 97–8 Love Me Absolutely (Zettai aishite) 130

Loves of Osayo, The (Osayo koi sugata, Shimazu Yasujirō) 220

Lumière brothers 286, 302

McCarthyism 8, 38

Madamu to nyōbō see The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine Mädchen in Uniform see Girls in Uniform magic lantern: current performers 178–9; educational use 193–4; history 178, 181–4; longevity 177; motifs 182; re-introduction 193; slide sets 183–4; sources on 194; and storytelling 178; studies on 178; uses 177–8, 188; wood construction 189; see also shadow play (kage-e); utsushi-e Majin the Monster of Terror (Daimajin) film series 116

Makao no otoko see The Man in Macao

Maltby, Richard 249

Mamoulian, Rouben: Becky Sharp 82; Queen

Christina 75

Man in Macao, The (Makao no otoko, not made)

131–3, 134, 135, 138

Man Who Left His Will on Film, The (Tōkyō sensō

sengo hiwa, dir. Ōshima Nagisa) 158

Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov) 87,

103

Manchurian Incident (1931) 18, 21, 304

manga dōjinshi (peer-produced manga publications) 154; boom periods 161; CLAMP collective 165; conventions 162; institutionalization 165–6; jishu film (autonomous film), comparison 162–3 Manovich, Lev 251

marionettes 234, 236, 239

Marnie (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 68

Masumura Yasuzō, retrospective 318

Matsuda Film Productions, Matsuda Film

Company (Matsuda Eiga-sha) 320, 327

Matsuda Masao 153; deportation from France 163;

on jishu film 154, 157; personal life 156

Matsuda Shunsui 206, 321, 337

Matsumoto Toshio 143; toy film collection 355

Mayne, Judith 70

media: and body, overlap 164; borderless, cultural

identity 255–7; convergence 232, 234, 259; and

human interiority 164; see also digital

technology

Meiji Restoration (1868) 193

melodrama: Brooks on 23, 72; Elsaesser on 23;

gangster films, dialectic 23; mother figure in 25;

origins 23

376

Index Metal Gear Solid action series 248, 249;

“Awakening” sequence 251–2, 252–3; global

aesthetic 250; sales 255

Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang) 296

Metz, Christian, Film Language: A Semiotics of the

Cinema 88

Michibayashi Ichirō, Taro the Dragon Boy (Tatsu no ko Tarō) 237–8 Midori Sawato 354

military base films 34–5; examples 35; production

guidelines 36

military bases, Japan 31

mini-theater boom 336–7 Mirai Mizue 148

Miyagawa Kazuo 282, 346–7, 350, 351

Miyao, Daisuke, Oxford Handbook of Japanese

Cinema 2, 4

Mizoguchi Kenji: The Downfall of Osen (Orizuru

Osen) as sound version film 224–5; former

collaborators at Osaka University of Arts 346–7,

350–2; retrospective 316; The Water Magician

(Taki no shiraito) 309; Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari)

314

Mizushiri Yoriko, films 147

Mochinaga, Tad (Mochinaga Tadahiko) 231–4;

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 231

modernity/modernism: and global capitalism 24;

and imperialism 15, 22; modanizumu 202–3;

modernity thesis 7; and Ozu 27; see also Kamata

Modernism; vernacular modernism

Moderns, The (Gendaijin, dir. Shibuya Minoru)

130, 136

monster films see kaiju monster and special effects films Monster from a Prehistoric Planet (Daikyojū Gappa,

dir. Noguchi Hiroshi) 116

montage: Hollywood-style 86; Nakai on 86–7;

Soviet 86

moral education campaigns 55

Morgan, Dan 251

Morita Yoshimitsu, Haru 315

Morocco (dir. Joseph von Sternberg) 9, 15, 27, 28,

75

Motion Picture Engineering Society of Japan 307

Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan

290

Motion Picture Production Code see Hays Code Movie Makers magazine 160

Muhōmatsu no isshō see The Rickshaw Man mukokuseki see borderless Munby, Jonathan 22

Münsterberg, Hugo, The Photoplay: A Psychological

Study 10

Murayama Tomoyoshi: influence of 235; political

activism 235

Murphy, Ralph, Song of the Eagle 304

Museum of Kyoto, The (Kyōto Bunka

Hakubutsukan) 285, 340, 351–2, 294;

establishment 293; and The Film Restoration

and Preservation Workshop 309, 361–2

musical scores, sound version films 219–20 Mutual Security Act (US–Japan Treaty of Mutual

Cooperation and Security, aka Anpo Jōyaku)

36, 243

Muybridge, Eadweard 95

Nagareru see Flowing Nagase Denzaburō 302

Nagase Shoten 301, 302–3, 304; see also Far East Film Laboratory; IMAGICA WEST Corp Nagase Tokutarō 302, 304

Nagata Hidemasa 115–16 Nagata Masaichi 114, 292, 293, 314

Nakahara Jun’ichi 74

Nakai Masakazu 81, 290; “copula”, use of term

85–6, 90; film theories 83–91; filmmaking

82–3; films, Ten-Minute Meditation (Juppunkan

no shisaku) 82; on montage 86–7; on Soviet

cinema 87

Nakamura Hideyuki 103

Nakamura Rinko, Flies (Hae) 103–4 Nakano Yoshio 42; on The Red Light Military Base

37

Nakata Hideo, Ring (Ringu) 154–5, 322

Nakaya Ukichirō: on popular vs expert knowledge 101; Snow Crystals (Yuki no kesshō) 95–6 Namiki Shinsaku: A Complete History of the

Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino) 63; on

proletarian films 56, 57, 63

Namiko (dir. Tanaka Eizō) 303

Nanook of the North (dir. Robert J. Flaherty) 291

NAPF (Nippona Artista Proleta Federation) 52

Naruse Mikio: Flowing (Nagareru) 317; Late

Chrysanthemums (Bangiku) 317; retrospectives

316, 317

National Diet Library 290

National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ, Kokuritsu

Eiga Ākaibu) 4n1, 285, 293

National Film Center, National Museum of

Modern Art, Tokyo (NFC) 285, 292–3, 351;

MoMAT Film Library 290–1, 292; preservation

policy 293, 294; Sagamihara Annex film vaults

293–4, 296, 308; see also National Film Archive

of Japan (NFAJ)

Neighbor’s Wife and Mine, The (Madamu to nyōbō,

dir. Gosho Heinosuke) 215, 217

NHK, television series 135

Nihon Eiga Yushutsu Shinkō Kyōkai see Japan Film Export Promotion Association Nikkatsu Studio 116–17, 123, 255, 319

Ningen dōbutsuen see Clap Vocalism/Ningen dōbutsuen Nippon Connection Film Festival 165

Nitobe Inazō 288

377

Index Noa’s Vessel (Noa no hakobune) magazine 333, 334

Nochlin, Linda 70

Nolletti, Arthur & Desser, David, Reframing

Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History 2

Nomura Hotei: If We Go Down Tenryu River

(Tenryū kudareba) 219; Island Girl (Shima no

musume) 219; Tokyo Ondo (Tōkyō ondo) 219

Nornes, Markus & Gerow, Aaron, Research Guide

to Japanese Film Studies 2

Obayashi Nobuhiko, House (Hausu) 164

Ogino Shigeji 160

Okada Sōzō 103

Okajima Hisashi 293

Okamoto Kihachi, retrospective 316

Olympia (dir. Leni Riefenstahl) 289

Omoide no Mānī see When Marnie Was There Ōmori Kazuki, Orange Road Express (Orenji rōdo

kyūkō) 164

optical unconscious: Benjamin on 94; Black Fog:

The Challenge Against Smog 105; Convex Lens

(Totsu Renzu) 103; Flies 104; kagaku eiga 95; as

manifesto 106; Snow Crystals 96; The Story of

Frogs 100

Orange Road Express (Orenji rōdo kyūkō, dir. Ōmori

Kazuki) 164

OReilly, David, Everything 143

Orenji rōdo kyūkō see Orange Road Express Orizuru Osen see The Downfall of Osen Osaka Imaging Center 308

Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) 144

Osayo koi sugata see The Loves of Osayo Ōshima Nagisa: The Man Who Left His Will on

Film 158; The Catch (Shiiku) 134

Ōta Yoneo. 346, 347, 351; film restoration

projects 351–5; Hamburg visit 349, 362; Toy

Film Project 354–61; see also Toy Film Museum

Our Younger Brother (Bokura no otōto, dir. Sunohara

Masahisa) 352

Ozu Yasujirō: American film influence 14–15, 16,

27; An Inn in Tokyo (Tōkyō no yado) 220–1;

border-crossing themes 28; diary excerpts 13,

14; Dragnet Girl (Hijōsen no onna) 15, 16; Early

Spring (Sōshun) 128; Early Summer (Bakushū) 76;

filmic style 15–16; gangster films 16, 22;

Hollywood film posters, use 24; identity 14;

Late Spring (Banshun) 316; military service 14,

15, 28; retrospective 316; Smoke (Fun’en) 111,

129, 136–7, 138; subjectivity 14, 26–7; That

Night’s Wife 8, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20–1, 21,

24–5, 26; Tokyo Twilight (Tōkyō boshoku) 316

Pacific War (1941–1945) 130, 132, 288, 304

Pale Flower (Kawaita hana, dir. Shinoda Masahiro)

128 Panic in High School (Kōkō dai panikku, dir. Ishii

Sōgo) 164

Pathé-Baby film camera 53, 158–9, 166n6; in

Taiwan 160; home cinema 354

Peace Preservation Act (Japan) 18

Phillips, Alastair & Stringer, Julian, Japanese

Cinema: Texts and Contexts 2

Phoenix (Fushichō, dir. Kinoshita Keisuke) 130

Photohoku project 264, 267–71, 268;

photochemical film 269

Photoshop software 143, 147

Pia Film Festival (PFF) 165

Pictorial Science magazine 93

Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma 332, 333, 334,

338; publications 334; see also Kobe Planet Film

Archive

Playguide Journal magazine 334

Poem of the Sea (Umi no uta, dir. Tsujibe Seitarō) 82

Pordenone Silent Film Festival 351, 353, 354

Power of Plants, The (Moe izuru chikara/

Kraftleistungen der Pflanzen, dir. Nicholas

Kaufman) 98

Prohibition-era America (1920–1933) 22

Prokino (Proletarian Film League of Japan) 9, 51,

52–3, 54, 64–5, 159; and amateur films 159;

censorship 56, 159; and connectivity 163;

influence 159; mobile film units 56–7, 63;

output 159

proletarian films, Namiki on 56, 57

Public Enemy, The (dir. William A. Wellman) 16

Pudovkin, Vsevelod, The End of St. Petersburg 87

Puppet Art Production Company (Ningyō

Geijutsu Purodukushon) 233

puppet theater: contemporary puppet plays 234–8; puppet plays on early television 238–40; history 234–5; and leftism 237; rod puppeteering 238–9; see also bunraku Puppet Theater PUK 235–6, 238

Queen Christina (dir. Rouben Mamoulian) 75

queer girls’ culture 68, 69, 73–7

queer icons, Hollywood 69, 77

Quimby, Kimberly, on the “queer middle” 72

Raine, Michael 216, 217

rakugo (storytelling), and utsushi-e 178, 179, 180,

181, 184; comparison to kabuki 185–6; Daruma

Sneaking into a Woman’s Bed (Daruma no yobai),

story 192

Rashomon (Rashōmon, dir. Kurosawa Akira) 291

Red Light Military Base, The (Akasen kichi, dir.

Taniguchi Senkichi) 9, 31–6, 37, 40–1, 42, 44, 47

Resident Evil game series 248; camera angles 254;

film franchise 249; global aesthetic 250;

perspectives 253–4; sales 255

Return of the Giant Monsters (Daikaijū kūchūsen:

Gamera tai Gyaosu, dir. Yuasa Noriaki) 116,

123

Rich, Ruby 76

378

Index Richie, Donald 326

Richie, Donald & Anderson, Joseph L., The

Japanese Film: Art and Industry 2

Rickshaw Man, The (Muhōmatsu no isshō, dir.

Inagaki Hiroshi) 351–2

Riefenstahl, Leni, Olympia 289

Ring (Ringu, dir. Nakata Hideo) 154–5, 322

Ringu see Ring

River, The (dir. Pare Lorentz) 291

Robinson, Joan G., Marnie (When Marnie Was

There) (novel) 68

Roof, Judith 71

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (dir. Tad

Mochinaga) 231

Ruttman, Walter, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis

82

Shimomura Kenji, A Day at the Tidelands (Aru hi

no higata) 99

Shinoda Masahiro: Demon Pond (Yashagaike) 316;

Pale Flower (Kawaita hana) 128

Shintoho Studio, demise 133, 134

Shochiku Studio: Kamata Modernism 15; sound

version films 218; special effects film 116, 122

shōji sliding paper doors, as projection screen 188–9 Shōwa Financial Crisis (1927) 215

Silent Movie Music Company 354

Singer, Ben 7, 356

Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) 14, 304

slides see tane-ita Smoke (Fun’en) 111, 129, 136–7, 138

Snow Crystals (Yuki no kesshō, dir. Nakaya Ukichirō) 95–6 Sada Keiji 128, 129; collaboration with Ikebe 138; solo animation: and cellular transformation 148;

films 130; and the studio system 130

definition 141; and labor of animation 143–4,

Sada Keiji Collection 128, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137

145, 150

Sagan, Leontine, Girls in Uniform (Mädchen in

Song of the Eagle (dir. Ralph Murphy) 304

Uniform) 76–7

Song of the Scattering of Youth: Days I Can’t Leave

Said, Edward 22

Behind (Seishun sanka: okenai hibi, dir. Hashiura

Saitō Minako 73

Hōjin) 157

Salvage Memory Project: exhibitions 265–6; Great Sono yo no tsuma see That Night’s Wife East Japan Earthquake (2011) 265

Sontag, Susan 323, 324

Satō Leo, The Kamagasaki Cauldron War (Tsukiyo

Sōshun see Early Spring no Kamagassen) 341

Sosui see Canal Satō Takeshi, Chocolate and Soldiers (Chokorēto to

sound-on-film technology, proliferation 216

heitai) 320

sound version films (saundo ban eiga): gendaigeki vs

SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied

jidaigeki 221, 222; and Japanese film industry

Powers) 96, 236

215–18; Japanese versions 214, 221–7; musical

Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks) 16

scores 219–20; Shochiku Studio 218;

science films see kagaku eiga

soundtrack experiments 219; The Downfall of

science journalism 93

Osen (Orizuru Osen) 224–5; transition medium

science kits, Harada 97

214; types of 213–14, 215; vs silent films

science magazines 93

(1930–9) 217; with and without benshi

scientific management see Taylorism

narration 222

Scorsese, Martin 293, 315

spectatorship: audience identification 43; and girls’

Screech, Timon 181

culture 74; and Nakai Masakazu 83, 88–9; in

Segawa Takuo 236–7

post-Allied Occupation Japan 39

Seishun sanka: okenai hibi see Song of the Scattering of Steinberg, Marc 144, 232 Youth: Days I Can’t Leave Behind Stella Dallas (dir. King Vidor) 43

Self-Defense Force, Japan 37

Sternberg, Joseph von, Morocco 9, 15, 27, 28, 74,

Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, dir. Kurosawa

75

Akira) 335

stop-motion animation see animation, stop-motion shadow play (kage-e) 178; see also magic lantern

Story of the Black Princess, The (Kurohime monogatari)

Sharp, Jasper, Historical Dictionary of Japanese

238

Cinema 2

Story of Frogs, The (Kaeru no hanashi, Committee

Shibuya Minoru, The Moderns (Gendaijin) 130, 136

for 16 Millimeter Educational Film) 100, 101

Shichinin no samurai see Seven Samurai

Strongman Taro (Chikara Tarō) 238

Shiiku see The Catch

Studio Ghibli 70, 78n1 Shijin no shōgai see Life of a Poet

Studio Planet Plus One 338; see also Kobe Planet Shima no musume see Island Girl

Film Archive Shimazu, Yasujirō: Fighting Fish (Tōgyo) 130; The

studio system: and film stars 129–31; and Ikebe

Loves of Osayo (Osayo koi sugata) 220

130; and Sada 130; television alternative 131,

Shimizu Hiroshi, retrospective 317–18

134, 135–6, 137, 138

379

Index Sunohara Masahisa, Our Younger Brother (Bokura no

otōto) 352

Suzuki Shigeyoshi. 336; What Made Her Do It? (Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka) 294, 352–3 Sylvia Scarlett (dir. George Cukor) 74

Taishō democracy 18

Taiwan Film Institute 5n2 Takabatake Kashō 73

Takeuchi Kota: identity 275; portrait projects 275–6 Taki no shiraito see The Water Magician Tama Art University 148

Tanaka Eizō, Namiko 303

Tanaka Jun’ichirō, A History of the Development of

Japanese Cinema 129

Tanaka Kinuyo, retrospective 317, 318

Tanaka Noriko 332

tane-ita (slides) 178, 190–1; Daruma Sneaking into a

Woman’s Bed (Daruma no yobai) 192–3;

examples 190, 191; manipulation 192, 193;

material 189

Taniguchi Senkichi 39; The Red Light Military Base

(Akasen kichi) 9, 31–6, 37, 40–1, 42, 44, 47

Tanikawa Yoshio (film historian) 93, 98

Tarō Company 236

Taro the Dragon Boy (Tatsu no ko Tarō), folktale adapted as play, book, and film 237–8 Tatsu no ko Tarō see Taro the Dragon Boy Taylorism 55–6 Teidai Settlement (Tokyo Imperial University

Settlement) 61, 62

television: alternative to studio system 131, 134,

135–6, 137, 138; early, puppet plays on

238–40; presence in everyday life 158

Ten-Minute Meditation (Juppunkan no shisaku, dir

Nakai Masakazu) 82

Terada Torahiko 97, 101–2 Tetsuwan Atomu see Astro Boy That Night’s Wife (Sono yo no tsuma, dir. Ozu Yasujirō) 8, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20–1, 21, 24–5, 26

Thompson, Kristen 259

time-lapse photography, Black Fog: The Challenge

Against Smog 105

Tōgyo see Fighting Fish Toho Studio 9, 31; Ikebe Ryō 130; kaiju films

120; Mori Iwao 125; strikes 233

Tokugawa Musei 199, 200, 201–5; benshi

performer 202; benshi theory 203–5

Tokyo Actors Club, meeting (1959) 138

Tōkyō boshoku see Tokyo Twilight Tokyo Cinema 103

Tokyo Laboratory Ltd. 301

Tōkyō no josei see Women of Tokyo Tōkyō no yado see Inn in Tokyo Tokyo Olympiad (Tōkyō Orinpikku, dir. Ichikawa Kon) 307, 335

Tokyo Ondo (Tōkyō ondo, dir. Nomura Hotei) 219

Tōkyō Orinpikku see Tokyo Olympiad Tōkyō sensō sengo hiwa see The Man Who Left His Will on Film Tokyo Twilight (Tōkyō boshoku, dir. Ozu Yasujirō)

316

tomboyism 72, 73, 77, 78n3; and lesbianism 70

Tondeiru shojo see The Flying Maiden Toraku see Kameya, Kumakichi Totsu Renzu see Convex Lens Town Without Flies, A (Hae no inai machi, dir. Yoshino Keiji and Mura Haruo) 104–5 Toy Film Museum 283; contents 346–7, 348,

357; database 362; design and layout 362;

involvement of children 363; logo 346;

objectives 362; opening 354; origins 349–51;

sustainability issues 363

Toy Film Project 346–7, 354–61; collaborators 359; database 360; launch 358; origins 354–5; scope 355; see also Film Restoration and Preservation Workshop toy film (s): color scheme 357; containers 348,

357; definition 355, 356; examples 358;

intended audience 358; manufacturers 357;

restoration workflow 359–60; sources 357, 359;

star players 358; subject categories 358

Toyo Genzosyo 306, 307, 308; see also IMAGICA

WEST Corp

Toyoda Shiro: Four Love Stories: First Love (Yottsu

no koi no monogatari: Daiichiwa, hatsukoi) 130;

retrospective 318

Tsuji Naoyuki, A Feather Stare at the Dark/Yami wo mitsumeru hane 145–6 Tsujibe Seitarō, Poem of the Sea (Umi no uta) 82

Tsukamoto Kōji 160

Tsukiyo no Kamagassen see Kamagasaki Cauldron War

Turin, Victor, Turksib 87

Turksib (dir. Victor Turin) 87

Uchū daikaijū Girara see The X from Outer Space Uemura Shūkichi 56

Ueno Ichirō 75

Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari, dir. Mizoguchi Kenji) 314

Ugetsu monogatari see Ugestu ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and utsushi-e 187–8 Umi no uta see Poem of the Sea utsushi-e: animation effects 189–90; essence of 188; furo projectors 189, 190; ghost stories 185; hand-held wood projectors 189; and Japanese cinema 194–5; kabuki source for 185; legend of Anchin and Kiyohime 186–7; meaning 179; nineteenth century performance 179–80; origins 184–5; popularity 187; repertoire 185; slipping slides technique 185; sources on 194; typical performance 180–1; and ukiyo-e woodblock prints 187–8; venues 185; see also magic lantern; tane-ita

380

Index Variety magazine 315

vernacular modernism 7–8, 203, 211n12; see also modernity/modernism Vertov, Dziga 86, 88; Man with a Movie Camera

87, 103

video games 143, 247; autonomy in 254;

cinematic features 249; global identity 255

Volkmann, Herbert, The Preservation of Film 292

Wada, Atsushi 143; Day of Nose/Hana no hi 145,

146, 147; In a Pig’s Eye/Wakaranai buta 146

Wakaranai buta see In a Pig’s Eye/Wakaranai buta

Wall Street Crash 18

Wareware ga sumu daichi see The Earth We Live On Water Magician, The (Taki no shiraito, dir. Mizoguch Kenji) 309

Way Down East (dir. D.W. Griffith) 86

Western Electric (Westrex) optical sound system

303

What Made Her Do It? (Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka, dir. Suzuki Shigeyoshi) 294, 352–3 When Marnie Was There (Omoide no Mānī, dir.

Yonebayashi Hiromasa) 68, 69, 70–1, 72, 73,

77

White, Patricia, on lesbian films 69

Wiene, Robert, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 208–10 Williams, Linda, on Stella Dallas 43

Williams, Raymond, on cities and imperialism 21

Wilson, Sandra 54

Wizard of Oz, The (dir. Victor Fleming) 296

Women of Tokyo (Tōkyō no josei, dir. Fushimizu Shū) 75–6 X from Outer Space, The (Uchū daikaijū Girara, dir.

Nihonmatsu Kazui) 116, 122

Yamamura Kōji 231

Yami wo mitsumeru hane see A Feather Stare at the Dark/Yami wo mitsumeru hane Yanagita Kunio 21

Yashagaike see Demon Pond Yasui Yoshio 332, 335; film collection growth

337–8

Yoda Yoshikata 282, 350, 351, 352

Yonebayashi Hiromasa, When Marnie Was There

68, 69, 70–1, 72, 73, 77

Yoshihara Junpei 93; on European science 102

Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro 8

Yoshiya Nobuko: Alcott, comparison 73; Hana

monogatari (Flower Tales) 72; influence 72–3;

Little Women, Japanese subtitles 74; Suzuran

(Lily of the Valley) 72, 73

Yottsu no koi no monogatari: Daiichiwa, hatsukoi see Four Love Stories: First Love Yuasa Noriaki 119

Yuki no kesshō see Snow Crystals Zervigón, Andrés Mario 94–5 Zettai aishite see Love Me Absolutely Zimmermann, Patricia 156

381