Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen 9780367722975, 9780367722999, 9781003154259

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Japanese Visual Media

This book uncovers and explains the ways by which politics is naturalized and denaturalized, and familiarized and de-familiarized through popular media. It explores the tensions between state actors such as censors, politicized and nonpoliticized audiences, and visual media creators, at various points in the history of Japanese visual media. It offers new research on a wide array of visual media texts including classical narrative cinema, television, documentary film, manga, and animated film. It spans the militarized decades of the 1930s and 1940s, through the Asia Pacific War into the present day, and demonstrates how processes of politicization and depoliticization should be understood as part of wider historical developments including Japan’s postwar devastation and poverty, subsequent rapid modernization and urbanization, and the aging population and economic struggles of the twenty-first century. Jennifer Coates is a senior lecturer in Japanese studies in the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. Eyal Ben-Ari is director of the Kinneret Center for Society, Security and Peace, Israel.

Routledge Culture, Society, Business in East Asia Series Editorial Board: Heung Wah Wong (Executive Editor) The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Chris Hutton The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Wayne Cristaudo The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Harumi Befu (Emeritus Professor) Stanford University, USA

Shao-dang Yan Peking University, China

Andrew Stewart MacNaughton Reitaku University, Japan

William Kelly

Independent Researcher

Keiji Maegawa

Tsukuba University, Japan

Kiyomitsu Yui

Kobe University, Japan

How and what are we to examine if we wish to understand the commonalities across East Asia without falling into the powerful fictions or homogeneities that dress its many constituencies? By the same measure, can East Asian homogeneities make sense in any way outside the biases of East-West personation? For anthropologists familiar with the societies of East Asia, there is a rich diversity of work that can potentially be applied to address these questions within a comparative tradition grounded in the region as opposed the singularizing outward encounter. This requires us to broaden our scope of investigation to include all aspects of intra-regional life, trade, ideology, culture, and governance, while at the same time dedicating ourselves to a complete and holistic understanding of the exchange of identities that describe each community under investigation. An original and wideranging analysis will be the result, one that draws on the methods and theory of anthropology as it deepens our understanding of the interconnections, dependencies, and discordances within and among East Asia. The book series includes three broad strands within and between which to critically examine the various insides and outsides of the region. The first is about the globalization of Japanese popular culture in East Asia, especially in greater China. The second strand presents comparative studies of major social institutions in Japan and China, such as family, community, and other major concepts in Japanese and Chinese societies. The final strand puts forward cross-cultural studies of business in East Asia.

Japanese Animation in Asia Transnational Industry, Audiences, and Success Edited by Marco Pellitteri and Heung Wah Wong To view more titles in the series, follow this link: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Culture-Society-Business-in-East-Asia-Series/book-series/CSBEA

Japanese Visual Media Politicizing the Screen

Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari The right of Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them 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 A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-72297-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-72299-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-15425-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by MPS Limited, Dehradun

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments Note on the Romanization of Japanese Introduction

vii viii ix 1

JENNIF ER C O A T ES A N D EYA L BE N - A RI

SECTION A

Historical contexts 1 A question of form: dissent and the nouvelle vague

13 15

ISO LDE STAND I S H

2 Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films

28

KA TSUY UKI H I D A K A

3 The four lives of Matsugorō the Lawless: agency, constraint, and what is “worthy” of film censorship in trans-war Japan

47

IR IS HAUKA MP

4 Tarzan and Japan: racial portraits of a nation in Boy Kenya DEA NNA T . NA R D Y

71

vi Contents SECTION B

Critique, contestation, and resistance 5 Down in the dumps: Tokyo wastelands and marginalized groups in Japanese film and anime

95

97

A LISA FRE E D MA N

6 Cinema at the edge of the world: visions of precarity in the films of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi

118

LINDSA Y N E LS O N

7 How to remember 3.11? Post-Fukushima documentary and the politics of Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy (2011–2013)

136

R AN M A

SECTION C

Creating the political subject through media 8 The Japanese self-defence forces and cinematic productions: resonance and reverberation in the normalization of organized state violence

159

161

A TSUKO F U K U UR A AN D EY A L B EN -A R I

9 Politicizing the audience? Film fans’ experiences of cinema in the 1960s

180

JENNIF ER C O A TE S

10 Fading away from the screen: cinematic responses to queer ageing in contemporary Japanese cinema

201

Y UTAK A KU BO

Index

220

Figures

4.1 Venn diagram illustrating the heroic qualities a character may possess, who possesses them, and how they intersect to form a Japanese hero 4.2 Cover image of Boy Kenya 5.1 The character Roku-chan moves his “trolley” through the rubble in Kurosawa Akira’s Dodes’kaden (1970). 5.2 Yentown in Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly – a sprawl of factories, warehouses, ports, and other sites of production and cheap labour 5.3 On Christmas Eve, Gin, Hana, and Miyuki discover a baby in an illegal dumping site in Kon Satoshi’s Tokyo Godfathers (2003) 6.1 Characters in Sketches of Kaitan City watch the sunrise from the top of a cliff. Copyright Broadway Inc., Japan 2010 6.2 Hana and Jungo balance on ice floes. Copyright Happinet 2014

89 90 103

106

109 127 129

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank all contributing authors for their time, patience, and excellent work. We are indebted to Kyoto University academics and administrators, particularly at the Hakubi Centre for Advanced Research and the Graduate School of Literature for their kind support in facilitating the conference that inaugurated this project in 2017. The conference was jointly funded by the Hakubi Centre and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. We are further grateful to our friends and families for their support throughout the production of this volume, and to colleagues and coworkers who have encouraged the project throughout its development.

Note on the Romanization of Japanese

Japanese names are given in the Japanese manner of family name first, followed by the given name. Where a Japanese academic publishes in English and uses the Anglophone convention of given name followed by family name, authors have given their name in the same order. For the romanization of Japanese words in the text, macrons indicate long vowels, but are not given in words commonly used in English (for example, Tokyo rather than Tōkyō). Authors have used the standard English translations of the titles of books, magazines, television shows, and films; where a text has been distributed under an alternate English title, that title is cited as “a.k.a.” Japanese titles are given in brackets at the first mention of each text, alongside the date of publication or release in Japan. All translations are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated.

Introduction Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari

This edited volume investigates the relation of politics to visual media in Japan through the twinned, and often overlapping, processes of politicization and depoliticization. This collection offers new research on a wide array of visual media texts including classical narrative cinema, television, documentary film, manga, and animated film. Asking “How are visual media texts created, positioned, or read by consumers in such a way as to foster politicization or its opposite, depoliticization?,” we consider the various roles played by popular entertainments in the production of political or apolitical, ideologies and subjectivities. This question, we suggest, centres on the particular character of such entertainment products as fulfilling multiple roles, whether these be edifying and enriching, preaching and indoctrinating, or providing escapes from people’s everyday lives. The power of visual media texts can be found in two interrelated dimensions. First, they are public (often commercially created) means to access either mass or elite audiences and possibly influence their attitudes towards different social issues, potentially leading them to political action. Second, they are devices for creating multi-sensory experiences that appeal to viewers in ways that capture their attention (or deflect it) and (again, possibly) mobilize their interests (Aarseth 1997). In identifying visual media texts’ potential for mobilization, we are suggesting that visual media may evoke emotions and sentiments that lie at the basis of collective political action. Furthermore, while visual media texts differ from other entertainment and educational forms such as theatre performances or educational classes, visual media productions often resonate with – echo, mimic, and reinforce – other forms of cultural production. Historicity, transnationality, considerations of intentionality and agency, and a timely engagement with the impacts and influences of visual media are core concerns of this volume. The volume’s chapters span almost a century, from militarizing 1930s Imperial Japan through to the present day, as the Japanese government reconsiders the nation’s global military presence in light of renewed efforts to revise the 1947 “pacifist” Constitution written in the wake of Japan’s defeat and Occupation (1945–1952). Accordingly, spanning the militarized decades of the 1930s and 1940s, through the Asia

2 Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari Pacific War and World War II into the present day, the various chapters and the volume as a whole demonstrate that processes of politicization and depoliticization should be understood as part of wider historical circumstances, including Japan’s postwar devastation and poverty, followed by rapid modernization and urbanization, and on to the ageing of the population and the economic struggles of the country in the twenty-first century. Our focus on non-canonical texts, and visual media texts less commonly studied and written about in English, is designed to engage more popular, if not populist media with the question of how political attitudes are formed. By analyzing media texts outside the core group of Japanese visual media productions recognized by Anglo-European scholars and critics, we aim to avoid the reinforcement of Western-centric assumptions and orientations. As Japan’s role in our ever more globalized world shifts around the changing triangulated relationship between the nation and leading world powers such as the USA and China, the 2021 Tokyo Olympics has become an occasion to consider how Japan’s changing political landscape is represented through visual spectacle. At the same time, we must consider how those visual representations in turn inform political attitudes, both within and about Japan. We believe that this edited volume offers a timely intervention, bringing together research from disciplines such as film studies, media studies, and art history, with approaches drawn from anthropology, sociology, and history to demonstrate the value of an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing the political implications of the visual media of these fast-changing times.

Framing visual media studies through politicization and depoliticization The contrasting and complementary concepts of politicization and depoliticization encompass a variety of explicit and implicit, intended and unintended, and individual and collective processes centred on politics (Flinders and Wood 2014; Wood and Flinders 2014). In using the terms “politics” and “visual media,” we refer to the positioning of producers, disseminators, and consumers in fields of power, the structure and distribution of resources among social groups, contentions about the modes and worthiness of individual and collective action, the transformational capacities of the state and of visual productions, the manner by which various resistances are waged and discordant voices expressed, and the way that belonging to different political and ideological camps is positioned within contemporary discourse (Rand-Hendriksen 2013; Schattkowsky and Jaroz 2017). At the most basic level, politicization and depoliticization refer to various actions – behavioural and rhetorical – that underscore or deny the presence of political agency, to the degree that agency can be traced and determined. Accordingly, to politicize implies to render in tone or awareness or to actively participate in an activity that is determined to be political, by actors or

Introduction

3

observers. For instance, to politicize a policy is to introduce it into overt engagement with political influence or control by actors, while depoliticizing policy is to remove it from such engagement in the name of professional or neutral decision-making processes or interests. It is difficult and perhaps inadvisable to develop a more rigid definition of “politicization” and “depoliticization” here, as the terms are open to interpretation. In the chapters which follow, individual authors mean different things when they use either or both of these terms. While contributors to this volume trace the overlapping, competing, and connected processes of politicization and depoliticization through analysis of specific visual media texts, we are not arguing that depoliticization renders a space, time, text, or place free of “politics.” In many cases, one outcome of the process of removing one form of politics is the emergence or creation of another kind of politics. For example, where a lack of direct political engagement arises in Japan, we might observe a rise in xenophobic or nationalistic politics in tandem. In this and similar cases, “depoliticization” can be a form of (re-)politicization, and the agents of depoliticization become political actors or subjects.1 Further, we must also account for the historically situated social processes by which political outcomes have been naturalized, normalized and at times fetishized, and which underlie the invocation of such terms as “professional” or “neutral” (Barbi 2018; de Nardis 2017). The aim of this volume is to uncover and explain the ways by which politics is naturalized and denaturalized, and familiarized and de-familiarized through popular media. The volume is organized around key clusters of issues: historical contexts of politicization and depoliticization in Japanese visual media; critique, contestation, and resistance in and through visual media texts; and the creation of (or attempts to create) political subjects through the design and exhibition of particular kinds of media texts. Chapters have not been organized according to a historical progression, as we conceptualize the processes of politicization and depoliticization as “entangled” in a series of ebbs and flows, or currents that can pull in different directions simultaneously or sequentially. To follow Hodder (2012), “entangled” means something qualitatively different than the mere connection of separate entities. Rather, “entangled” describes a state based on complex dialectic relations between entities, to their mutual effects (positive and negative), and to the unique kinds of joint entities created by such relations. We thus emphasize that these twin processes are not linear, nor inevitable, but can sometimes reverse, or combine, in ways that appeal to different groups of consumers.

Key themes A number of themes are intertwined throughout the volume, both in relation to the media texts that we take as our research objects, and in terms of the approaches we employ in our research practice: historical contexts,

4 Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari transnational ties, the agency of both producers and consumers and contemporary social issues. Historicization While this volume engages seriously with the idea that even seemingly apolitical texts may have been crafted with a particular (often implicit) political intention in mind, we insist on the formative influence of the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts of those texts as a major part of the meanings that they make for viewers and scholars. Media texts cannot be separated from their environment, in terms of their creation, circulation, and their reception (Campbell et al. 2013, 2014). At the same time, the existence of a visual media text or narrative across a long historical period changes the meaning of that text or narrative. These more historical contributions offer models through which to consider the future lives of the contemporary media texts explored in a number of chapters. At the same time, grassroots viewers and elite critics alike are always open to reinterpreting a text through the lens of hindsight, suggesting that the political implications of visual media texts are never fixed in perpetuity. In other words, the meaning of cinematic productions is not only diverse at one point in time between groups and individuals but transforms along a timeline. More specifically, as the chapters in the volume emphasize, what we take to be political (or non-political) are the outcomes of historically situated actions and discourses. During Japan’s Asia Pacific War and World War II, state authorities used cinematic productions to produce and reproduce legitimacy, to shape people’s perception of the war, and to mobilize support (Hori 2017). As the country modernized and further developed into a consumer society, later intensified with the advent of the neo-liberal regime, processes and discourses of depoliticization emerged as combinations of implicit and explicit sets of practices that simultaneously draw attention away from explicit politics and political mobilization, and create a seemingly natural “a-political” marketplace (Kawaii 2014; Marotti 2006; Orr 2001; Pope 2017). In this sense, the “long postwar” is considered by many scholars and citizens alike to have continuing impact on life in Japan today (Harootunian 2000). As the first four chapters demonstrate, political debates in the media of this formative era largely centre on how to narrate and memorialize the recent war, and the events leading up to it (Napier 2005). Yet each chapter also details the emergence of more structural concerns, including debates about media form versus politicized content, questions of fidelity across remakes and reimaginings, the actual practical application of media censorship techniques and their outcomes, and the re-positioning of Japan in relation to differing racial identities across the turbulent historical period encompassing colonial expansion, war, defeat, and occupation (1945–1952) (Ben-Ari and Otmazgin 2011).

Introduction

5

Transnational ties The importance of a transnational approach to the analysis of processes of politicization and depoliticization emerges explicitly in Ran Ma’s consideration of documentary practices after the triple disaster of 11 March 2011 in Tōkohu, and in Deanna Nardy’s analysis of the use of representations of blackness in cinema and manga texts to position Japan on various ends of an imagined racialized hierarchy before and after World War II. Transnational considerations are also a major part of Isolde Standish’s engagement with French and Japanese filmmakers and their theory in her opening chapter on film form in the 1960s. For Standish, film is “an historic process of transcultural cross-fertilization,” and the chapters that follow make strong cases for considering manga and anime in the same light. This global emphasis has been part of a number historical trends in Japan, but is perhaps particularly crucial in light of contemporary understandings of the construction of subjectivities as a rather messy set of processes drawing upon a vast variety of sources, be they global (film noir), regional (East Asian anime productions), national (governmental policies applied to the film industry), or personal (for example, participating in a film club). Placed alongside each other, these three chapters underscore how transnational ties shape cinematic productions, both in terms of their forms and style, and the wider global issues that feed into and interact with each national context. Although our volume does not address this issue, a cognizance of transnationality and politics (Jaeger 2007; Press-Barnathan 2016) as these chapters underscore, raises the question of how cinematic productions produced in Japan politicize or depoliticize publics in other countries (Kelts 2007; Otmazgin 2013). In this sense, our volume can be read alongside analyses of how full-feature films, documentaries, or anime produced in Japan are central components of governmental policy centred on promoting the country’s “soft power” (Iwabuchi 2016; Watanabe and McConnell 2008). Intentionality and agency While taking seriously the intentionality at play in crafting and consuming visual media texts, we insist on a degree of messiness and unpredictability in the reception and assessment of texts that have been censored or commissioned by actors (Hanich 2018). This disorderliness arises from the fact that once produced and disseminated, texts take on a life of their own; that is, they become part of public discussions and interpretations that may differ (sometimes radically) from the intentions of their producers. Exploring the wartime and postwar censoring of Inagaki Hiroshi’s 1943 period drama The Life of Matsu the Lawless (Muhō Matsu no issho), Iris Haukamp draws attention to similarities between censorship processes during the nationalist wartime era and its supposedly democratic opposition

6 Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari during the Allied Occupation of Japan. At the same time, she demonstrates instances of omission, accident, and reading against the grain that show the limits of even the strictest of censorship processes. Eyal Ben-Ari and Atsuko Fukuura trace the extent of the influences of the Japanese Self Defence Forces (JSDF) on media featuring themselves, from commissioned works to those produced in co-operation with the JSDF, noting where fan reception seems to accord or differ from that which the texts were designed to create. Katsuyuki Hidaka also considers the representation of military presences in his chapter on the many film texts that feature the story of Abe Sada, noting where the presence of the military and Japan’s road to war is emphasized and de-emphasized across 60 years of telling and re-telling the story. The ebb and flow of the politicizing and depoliticizing of Abe’s story across these representations chimes with the audience memories of the 1950s and 1960s recorded in Jennifer Coates’ chapter, which explores film viewers’ narratives about the role of 1960s film content and cinema theatre culture in the formation of their own political attitudes. On both the left and the right of the political spectrum, we see that visual media texts are deployed reflexively to uncertain outcomes as fans and viewers appropriate and reinterpret texts designed to transmit a particular political message. In this respect, the very messiness of a production’s acceptance is indicative of agency. Contemporary issues Individual chapters also engage with a number of topics that connect Japanese studies, film studies, media studies, anthropology, and sociology in portrayals of contemporary Japan. For example, several contributors consider media representations of the people living in the precarious parts of Japan (Allison 2013; Gill 2015), from Lindsay Nelson’s chapter on contemporary film representations of the “edges” of Japanese society, to Alisa Freedman’s exploration of the use of trash and rubbish heaps as a visual metaphor for the breakdown of social structures among Japan’s disadvantaged. Ran Ma considers the uncertain futures of the participants in documentary filmmaking in disaster zones, while Yutaka Kubo explores fiction film representations of the sense of a lack of models for the future that is felt among many in the LGBTQIA community in Japan. The introduction of films about the country’s (geographical and social) periphery echoes previous scholarship, and at the same time links to the wider move in the social scientific study of Japan that emphasizes inequality, prejudice, and social problems (Chiavacci 2008; Niimi 2018; Oshio and Kobayashi 2010).

Organization of the chapters Standish’s chapter sets the scene by distinguishing politicized form from political content in 1960s classical narrative cinema. Beginning from an observation made by the editor of Art Theatre to the effect that: “Of the

Introduction

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people here from Japan’s nouvelle vague, there are many whose films are born based on concrete events of the times,” Standish argues that the young filmmakers of the Japanese nouvelle vague working in the early 1960s posed a threat to establishment norms through their challenge to form, which they married to controversial topics of the day as in Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri, Ōshima Nagisa, 1960). Katsuyuki Hidaka follows the cinematic representation of one of Ōshima’s most famous subjects in his chapter on sex and the bizarre. The Abe Sada Incident of 1936, in which a woman mutilated and killed her lover, has become well known due to its treatment in Ōshima Nagisa’s In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda, 1976), and various stories around the unusual crime has been repeatedly filmed by numerous directors up to the present day. Hidaka explores why and how the incident has been represented, tracing the transformation of representations of the incident across changing political contexts, and noting how the story is politicized or depoliticized in accordance with the times. The various renditions of the original story can be read both for their intentional and unintentional effects, for example where comedic or satirizing interpretations that seem apolitical may carry significant political meaning. The relationship of sex to politics is also touched upon in the third chapter in this section, where Iris Haukamp examines the workings of censorship in the lifecycle of Inagaki’s The Life of Matsu the Lawless. Noting the removal of romantic and sexualized themes, Haukamp argues that censorship is not limited to the actual act in a government office, but reaches far deeper into the minds and hearts of artists in terms of often unspoken, and more or less unconscious, assumptions about what is acceptable to the zeitgeist and what is not. By tracing the production of the film from the script-writing stage to its postwar afterlife, Haukamp sheds light on the official and unofficial censoring of pieces of footage and of creative thought that responded to the seemingly dramatic changes of the zeitgeist between 1943 and 1946, and yet demonstrate a systemic continuity between wartime and postwar that is still often ignored in favour of dichotomizing narratives. Finally, Deanna T. Nardy picks up the theme of political consistencies and inconsistencies across the perceived ideological break between war and postwar that Standish, Hidaka, and Haukamp, as well as Ōshima and Inagaki demonstrate. Exploring how stereotypical representations of black bodies in Japanese manga demonstrate how stereotypes, orders of power, and identity relate, Nardy follows the trajectory of a singular pop culture icon, Tarzan, and his unlikely incarnation as a Japanese boy in the 1951 picture book Shōnen Keniya. Drawing through the pre- and postwar eras, Yamakawa Sōji’s work depicts adjustments to Japanese self-perceptions in the wake of defeat. As the American Tarzan, a literal symbol of whiteness, transforms into the white-passing, yet very Japanese hero of Shōnen Keniya, the social reordering that ensues provides a clear illustration of how historical power dynamics affect stereotypes and representation.

8 Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari The second cluster of chapters draws from this historical context to explore operations of critique, contestation, and resistance in visual media in Japan. These involve understanding how the techniques of contestation – implicit and explicit, individual or collective – work. At certain times cinematic productions may use hints and suggestions that are apparently taken up by their viewers, while at other times state institutions and commercial firms may channel protest through specific modes of funding media production. Such productions may entail the politics of solidarity in different ways, for example in small discussion groups centred on movies, in manga programmes that are shared and commented upon by fans electronically, or in limited social categories who come to view certain media productions in film festivals or public gatherings. Alisa Freedman addresses the theme of depoliticization by exploring the use of trash as a visual metaphor in a group of popular film texts from the 1970s to the 2000s. Showing how these films, which she understands as designed primarily to entertain rather than to edify or educate, empathetically portray people cast out of the urban mainstream, Freedman argues that by associating marginalized people with garbage dumps, these films ultimately undercut any clear political statements that the filmmakers might aspire to make. In three well-known, critically acclaimed examples from different time periods: Kurosawa Akira’s Dodes’kaden (1970), Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly (Suwarōteiru, 1996), and Kon Satoshi’s Tokyo Godfathers (Tokyo goddofāzāzu, 2003), Tokyo can be read as a metonym for the nation, and depictions of poverty and alienation as an indictment of a predicament that afflicts many around Japan. Freedman’s conclusion is that these films evoke affect but do not lead to activism. Yet we could also suggest that the very affective response a film evokes is an essential precondition for political activism. Lindsay Nelson takes our consideration of the problems associated with social and geographical peripherality away from the central Tokyo area towards the edges of Japan, in Hokkaido. Analyzing the images of the ocean used by contemporary Japanese filmmakers to reflect on the idea of the Japanese archipelago as an island world unto itself, Nelson notes that borders are never distant, but that escape is often equated with death. Director Kumakiri Kazuyoshi’s My Man and Sketches of Kaitan City depict lives on the edge in Hokkaido, imagining a world in which characters are literally balancing on icebergs in a frozen, lonely landscape that they experience as “the end of the world.” Nelson examines Kumakiri’s depiction of precarious lives and spaces in the context of Japan’s continuing posttsunami economic and social crises, a period in which, as Anne Allison has argued (2013), large numbers of people feel a sense of “refugeeization” (nanminka) within their own country. In My Man and Sketches of Kaitan City, Nelson suggests that we can see the possibility of a kind of re-birth from a spiritual and physical wasteland, but also the strange, potentially destructive types of communities and connections that precarity and the

Introduction

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disintegration of traditional community structures can create. Nelson’s contribution closes with the argument that the films do not explicitly critique government policy and actions. However, her analysis seems to echo that of Freedman in the sense of discerning an implicit critique that can under certain circumstances lead to political action. Finally, Ran Ma carries this exploration of the representation of the marginalized up to the present day, with an analysis of the filming methods employed by documentary filmmakers working with the people affected by the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that has affected the Tōhoku region of Fukushima prefecture in Japan since 11 March 2011, also known as “3.11.” Examining the production of the four documentary features that make up the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy (Tōhoku kiroku eiga sanbusaku, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Sakai Ko, 2011–2013), Ma addresses the burning question haunting filmmakers and other arts practitioners after the disaster: what can art can do in the aftermath of 3.11 apropos its role within “a wider social, economic, and political context” (Mōri 2015, 170). A crucial question posed in this chapter concerns how we could use the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy to better rethink the politics of artmaking and filmmaking in a post-Fukushima society. Ma’s chapter is the most explicit in showing how “what is worthy of cinematic production, circulation and consumption” is deeply political. Thus choices, even seemingly apolitical ones, around the making, screening, and viewing of a film carry political implications. The third cluster moves the volume further towards the production and exhibition spaces of visual media culture in Japan, exploring what kinds of political subjects or selves are created through and around visual media productions. For example, are the subjects created through and around media texts economic citizens, citizen-less consumers, or alienated beings at the margins of society? Deciphering the positioning of such subjects may suggest entry points for comprehending the potentials and limitations of visual media for social change. Eyal Ben-Ari and Atsuko Fukuura consider the frequent use of the term “normalization” in discussions about contemporary Japan’s security policy and military power, questioning what this normalization might entail. While previous analyses have focused on the processes by which Japan’s military (along with key politicians and civil servants) actively seeks to normalize itself, that is, portray its relation to organized violence in a way that would be acceptable to wider publics in the country, Ben-Ari and Fukuura develop the discussion of normalizing the country’s military through consideration of the way it appears in a variety of cinematic productions, including fulllength movies, anime films, and documentaries. This contribution underscores the potentially mass influence that popular cinematic texts carry given that they are distributed and consumed by very large groups and that their appeal lies in the entertainment value of the productions. This effect is heightened by the way that cinematic productions ripple out – resonate and

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Jennifer Coates and Eyal Ben-Ari

reverberate – into other genres and forms of consumption. To echo other chapters, the effects of cinema can be found not only in specific texts but how they resound with books, consumer goods, social commentaries, or academic texts like this one. Picking up on Ben-Ari and Fukuura’s identification of unexpected practices and reception among anime fans that might constitute a kind of “reading against the grain,” Jennifer Coates connects the postwar visual media cultures of the first part of the volume to memory practices persisting into the present day in Japan by considering audience memories of going to the cinema during the peak protest years of 1960–1968. While cinematic representations of this era range from the contemporary to the memorial, from supportive to critical, and from images of sentimental hope to dark violence, we are continually confronted with new representations of the 1960s protests even as we grapple with the impact of the era on a developing “cinema of actuality” (Furuhata 2013). This chapter analyzes ethnographic material from a project on memories of cinema viewing, alongside archival materials and popular print journalism of the era, to explore cinema audiences’ reactions to mediated and actual protest activities during this period of politicization. In this case study which focuses on the activities of one film-viewing club and the memories of its members, we can see the use of cinema as a mode of depoliticizing, or avoiding protest culture, as well as an evocative call to politicization. This chapter, alongside Ben-Ari and Fukuura’s contribution, points us to the power of the social contexts within which cinematic texts are consumed. The very collective nature of, say, a focus on film clubs thus involves not only multiple interpretations by members but also the emotional resonance between them and their power to affect. In the final chapter, Yutaka Kubo considers the futures facing the generation who grew up in this era, and particularly those who identify as LGBTQ. Looking towards the future and Japan’s population crisis as more than one-third of the population reaches the over 60 demographic, Kubo examines a variety of queer Japanese cinema texts in which ageing or planning for the future seems to play an important role, either in the narrative itself or in describing a specific relationship between characters. Although there have been a number of discourses on LGBTQ issues in Japan, Kubo argues that many queer people still lack a model of ageing. By examining films that include the issue of queer ageing as a response to LGBTQ discourses and changes that have been made, at least in relation to the recognition of same sex partnerships if not at societal levels, this chapter opens up questions related to Japan’s ageing population to include the queer community.

Politicizing the screen: Japanese visual media Throughout this volume, we demonstrate how analysis of Japan’s popular media cultures can trace how political engagements or stances, including processes of depoliticization, have been imagined, negotiated, or refuted.

Introduction

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At the same time, everyday political engagements may be influenced by media imagery, narratives, or characterizations. The particular power of cinematic products, to reiterate a point made earlier, lies in their multimodality in terms of facilitating an interaction between written, auditory, and visual images in a manner that may resonate bodily and emotionally. It is this sensory accompaniment to cinematic texts that makes particularly potent their potential to inform or educate, proclaim or deny, or entertain or question issues arising both within and outside the texts themselves. Encompassing new research on Japanese popular media, as well as new or divergent platforms for media exhibition, this volume brings together scholarship from a variety of disciplines and time periods to compose a fuller picture of the intersections of visual media and political engagement, or disengagement, in Japan.

Note 1 We thank our two anonymous manuscript reviewers for these points.

Bibliography Aarseth, E. J. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, MD: JHU Press. Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Chapel Hill NC: Duke University Press. Barbi, Guido Niccolo. 2018. “The Depoliticization of the Political: An Arendtian Account of Expertise in Politics.” Raisons Politiques 2 (70): 75–96. Ben-Ari, Eyal, and Otmazgin, Nissim. 2011. “Cultural Industries and the State in East and Southeast Asia.” In Otmazgin, Nissim, and Ben-Ari, Eyal (eds.) Popular Culture and the State in East and Southeast Asia, pp. 3–26. London: Routledge. Campbell, Richard, Jensen, Joli, Douglas, Gomery, and Fabos, Bettina. 2013. Media in Society: A Brief Introduction. Bedford: St. Martin’s. Campbell, Richard, Martin, C.R., and Fabos, Bettina. 2014. Media and Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age. Boston: St Martin’s. Chiavacci, David. 2008. “From Class Struggle to General Middle-Class Society to Divided Society: Societal Models of Inequality in Postwar Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 11 (1): 5–27. Flinders, Matthew, and Wood, Matthew. 2014. “Depoliticisation, Governance and the State.” Policy and Politics 42 (2): 135–149. Furuhata, Yuriko. 2013. Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Gill, Tom. 2015. “Review of Anne Allison Precarious Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 18 (1): 135–138. Hanich, Julian. 2018. The Audience Effect on the Collective Cinema Experience. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harootunian, Harry. 2000. “Japan’s Long Postwar: The Trick of Memory and the Ruse of History.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 99 (4): 715–739. Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Hori, Hikari. 2017. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926-1945. New York: Cornell University Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2016. “Pop-culture Diplomacy in Japan: Soft Power, Nation Branding and the Question of ‘International Cultural Exchange.’” International Journal of Cultural Policy 21 (4): 419–432. Jaeger, Hans-Martin. 2007. “‘Global Civil Society’ and the Political Depoliticization of Global Governance.” International Political Sociology 1 (3): 257–277. Kawaii, Yuko. 2014. “Japanese as Both a ‘Race’ and a ‘Non-Race’: The Politics of Jinshu and Minzoku and the Depoliticization of Japaneseness.” In Kowner, Rotem, and Demel, Walter (eds.) Race and Racism in Modern Japan. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Kelts, Roland. 2007. Japanamerica. New York: Palgrave. Marotti, William. 2006. “Political Aesthetics: Activism, Everyday life, and Art’s Object in 1960.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7 (4): 606–618. Mōri, Yoshitaka. 2015. “New Collectivism, Participation and Politics after the East Japan Great Earthquake.” World Art 5(1): 167–186. de Nardis, Fabio. 2017. “The Concept of De-Politicization and its Consequences.” The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies 10 (2): 340–356. Napier, Susan. 2005. “World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 3 (5). Niimi, Yuko. 2018. “What Affects Happiness Inequality? Evidence from Japan.” Journal of Happiness Studies 19 (2): 521–543 Orr, James J. 2001. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Oshio, Takashi, and Kobayashi, Miki. 2010. “Income Inequality, Perceived Happiness and Self-Rated Health: Evidence from Nationwide Surveys in Japan.” Social Science and Medicine 70 (9): 1358–1366. Otmazgin, Nissim Kadosh. 2013. Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia. Honolulu: Hawai’i Press. Pope, Chris G. 2017. Bringing back “Japan”: Prime Minister Abe’s Political Rhetoric in Critical Perspective. PhD diss. (unpublished), University of Sheffield. Press-Barnathan, Galia. 2016. “Thinking About the Role of Popular Culture in International Conflicts.” International Studies Review 19 (2): 166–184. Rand-Hendriksen, Kim. 2013. “Depoliticization and Public Participation: Extending Madsen.” Psychology and Society 5 (2): 58–61. Schattkowsky, Ralph, and Jaroz, Adam. 2017. The Process of Politicization: How Much Politics Does a Society Need? Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Watanabe, Yasushi, and McConnell, David L. 2008. Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Wood, Matthew, and Flinders, Matthew. 2014 “Rethinking Depoliticisation: Beyond the Governmental.” Policy and Politics 42 (2): 151–170.

Section A

Historical contexts

1

A question of form: dissent and the nouvelle vague Isolde Standish

[Mizoguchi’s] films – which tell us, in an alien tongue, stories that are completely foreign to our customs and way of life – do talk to us in a familiar language. What language? The only one to which a filmmaker should lay claim when all is said and done: the language of mise en scène – Rivette [1958] 1985, 264 trans. Liz Heron.

In 1966, the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (1930–) visited Japan. When asked his reasons for the visit, he stated that he wanted to interview Imamura Shōhei (1926–2006) and Hani Susumu (1928–) for Cahiers du Cinéma. When questioned further, he acceded to having seen Imamura’s 1961 film Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan) and Hani’s film of the same year, Bad Boys (Furyō shōnen). During his visit he participated in a round table discussion with members of what had become known as Japan’s nouvelle vague;1 the text from this event being published in 1966 in the film journal Eiga Geijutsu (Film Art). Included in the discussion were the film directors Ōshima Nagisa (1930–2013); Yoshida (Kijū) Yoshishige (1933–); and from the Nikkatsu Studio, Kurahama Koreyoshi (1927–2002). During the course of this discussion, the editor of the journal makes the observation that: “Of the people here from Japan’s nouvelle vague, there are many whose films are born based on concrete events of the times.” Godard in response argues that: “In my case, it is the exact opposite. The problem is the influence of pure form. In my case, I have been influenced by the form of American films.” He then goes on to illustrate the distinction between “form” and “content” with the following example: In the case of separating form from content, it is form [which is central]. For example, in order to make a film about communism, it will be a film that incorporates communist ideologies. However, in relation to form, we would not call it a communist film. This is because, the Soviets, Chinese and Hollywood filmmakers make films using the same techniques. (Film Art 1966, 26)

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In an interview, also published in 1966 in Kinema Junpō, he elaborates on this question when talking about the origins of the French nouvelle vague making the point that in the silent era, films were made that explored the free image: However, American films made after the introduction of the talkies, established a rigid system of narrative story telling. This, in a way, became a form of aesthetic imperialism. The Soviets, also under the influence of the Americans, began a similar process. It looked as if it was a political opposition, but in fact, it was the same thing. In the postwar period audiences became tired of this […] At this point the nouvelle vague began as a movement which made films based on the free image. (Best of Kinema Junpō [1966] 1994, 1644) In this conversation, Godard is making the point that to create films that would radically challenge existing mainstream cinematic modes of representation, filmmakers from the nouvelle vague must go beyond a radicalization of content and challenge the very forms through which that content is portrayed. This I think marks one of the principal convergences between Japanese avant-garde2 films of the 1960s and their French counterparts. While in the early 1960s, the French focused their opposition to mainstream French cinema on questions of form based on Hollywood norms – Godard’s Breathless (À bout de soufflé, 1960) and Francois Truffaut’s (1932–1984) Shoot the Pianist (Tirez sur le pianist, 1961) as two early examples – Ōshima and Yoshida sought to challenge mainstream Japanese genre films through a radical approach to form through a stylistic challenge to the Shōchiku “Ōfunastyle.” One of the consequences of this was the furore around the withdrawal by the studio of Ōshima’s 1960 production Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri). This was followed by Ōshima’s acrimonious departure from the studio and Yoshida’s slightly deferred departure. Within this context, the furore around the release of this film testifies to Ōshima’s efficacy in challenging established cinematic, studio conventions. However, in this chapter, I return to the observation made by the editor of Film Art to the effect that: “Of the people here from Japan’s nouvelle vague, there are many whose films are born based on concrete events of the times.” I would argue that the young filmmakers of the Japanese example working in the early 1960s also posed a threat to establishment norms through their challenge to “form,” which they then married to controversial topics of the day as in Night and Fog in Japan. Their French counterparts, according to de Baecque (2012), while innovative in terms of form, only really became political in terms of content with the increased hostilities in Algiers and the Vietnam War.3 Colin MacCabe reinforces this point when he states that the Vietnam War “was certainly the most obvious element in Godard’s radicalisation” (2004, 181). Geoffrey NowellSmith goes further when he states: “More than Hungary, Suez, or Algeria,

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 17 it was the American war in Vietnam which definitively radicalized the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s” (2008, 49). Thus, the aim of this chapter is to consider the question of “form” within international discourses sparked by the emergence of both the Japanese and French “new waves” in the early 1960s; discourses which have historically been framed within the auteur theory. In exploring this theme, I am specifically interested in the cinematic visualization of the unstable relationship between “fact” and historicity in the postwar era which Hayden White identifies in the “modernist event” (White 1996) or, as Terry Eagleton argues of historiography in the post–World War II era: “Everything in [the] post-Auschwitz [and Hiroshima] world is ambiguous and indeterminate […]” (2007, 103). In an early article published in the Cahiers du Cinéma in April 1957, the film critic André Bazin took up the question of context through a consideration of the relationship of the “artist” as auteur to society in his famed article, “On the Politique des Auteurs.” In this paper, he was attempting to modify the enthusiastic theorization of the “auteur” theory and the cult of the individual artist as proffered by the “Young Turks” (Godard, Truffaut, Claude Chabrol (1930–2010), Eric Rohmer (1920–2010), and Jacques Rivette (1928–2016)) of the French nouvelle vague by bringing back the notions of culture and society into the artistic process; and in so doing, acknowledging cinema as an art form that is both popular and industrial, in other words, a cultural artefact. The evolution of Western art towards greater personalization should definitely be considered a step forward, as a refinement of culture, but only as long as individualization remains only a final perfection and does not claim to define culture. At this point, we should remember the irrefutable commonplace we learnt at school: the individual transcends society, but society is also and above all within him. So there can be no definitive criticism of genius or talent which does not first take into consideration the social determinism, the historical combination of circumstances, and the technical background which to a large extent determine it. (Bazin [1957] 1985, 251 trans. Peter Graham, emphasis in the original) While Bazin was alluding to subtle processes that influence artistic output, Ōshima in an early essay published in a collected volume in 1963, makes explicit the connection between “events” and his filmmaking when he describes socio-political forces as an “underground stream of water.” As a director, the Anpo struggle flowed quietly like an underground stream of water gradually gathering force and growing wider as my first film A Town of Love and Hope [Ai to kibō no machi] quietly opened in

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Isolde Standish 1959. My second film, Cruel Story of Youth [Seishun zankoku monogatari], opened in June 1960 and reverberated with the tumultuous height of the Anpo struggle. The sound of ambulance sirens taking the injured to the police hospital near the hotel in Kagurazaka [Shinjuku] where I was writing the screenplay for my third film, The Sun’s Burial [Taiyō no hakaba], seemed to summon me and between the 15 and 19 June I would walk around the perimeter of the Diet building. In October, I made Night and Fog in Japan which directly took as its theme the Anpo struggle and the postwar student movements. This film was withdrawn from cinemas after four days and regardless of requests it was not screened. The result being, that largely because of this, I broke with Shōchiku and became an independent filmmaker in 1961. It can be said that my start as a film director and my subsequent fate accompanied that of the Anpo struggle (1963, 185–186).4

In other words, in the quoted passage Bazin acknowledges what I have argued elsewhere,5 that cinema is both constituted by, and constituting of, the society in which it is produced and consumed. However, we must also allow for the transnational nature of cinema, which, since film’s inception, has engaged in an historic process of transcultural cross-fertilization and it is this that also unites the young filmmakers of the early 1960s in both Japan and France. This is particularly evident as a consequence of what Hayden White describes as the “holcaustal events” of the increasingly globalized twentieth century, which he defines as "Two World Wars, the Great Depression, a growth in world population hitherto unimaginable, poverty and hunger on a scale never before experienced, pollution of the ecosphere by nuclear explosions and the indiscriminate disposal of contaminants, programs of genocide undertaken by societies utilizing scientific technology and rationalized procedures" (White 1996, 20). It was in relation to the trauma of these events in the context of the immediate postwar period of European cinema that Gilles Deleuze makes the distinction between “the movement-image” dominated by the controlling actions of the characters through space and the “time-image” which he states “make perceptible […] make visible, relationships to time which cannot be seen in the represented object and do not allow themselves to be reduced to the present” (Deleuze [1985] 2000, xii). As I have argued in Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, this shift in filmmaking practice and perception arose simultaneously in Japan post–World War II and post-Hiroshima and relates back to both questions of historical trauma as identified by Hayden White and transcultural influences. Both the French and the Japanese filmmakers of this first post–World War II generation sought to challenge established conventions of cinematic representations, and in so doing, assert the autonomy of the filmmaker as artist/auteur and through this process raise the status of cinema from that of

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 19 a purely “mass” industrial medium offering the audience a brief palliative to the troubles of contemporary life. However, keeping Bazin’s admonition above in mind, and as Ōshima’s statement above attests, one also needs to consider the socio-political climate in which they attempted to carry out this project; and in both examples I would suggest that they advocated dissent through political disengagement with the establishment left in politics. In the Japanese example, there are numerous instances in Ōshima’s written works in which he openly criticizes the Communist Party of Japan, despite his father’s allegiances to Marxism, which he also comments upon in his writings. Indeed his film, Night and Fog in Japan, is a bitter satire on the fissiparous nature of political opposition in Japan through the second half of the 1950s and the negative role played by the Communist Party of Japan in the university politics of this period. The film, withdrawn by a conservative studio and castigated by the political right, was also anathematized in reviews in Communist Party journals such as Akahata (Red Flag). In the French example, de Baecque argues that young directors of the nouvelle vague went as far as to adopt a right-wing stance; “given the personal ties connecting Francois Truffaut to the collaborationist and antiSemitic writer Lucien Rebatet, and Claude Chabrol to the leader of the National Front, Jean Marie LePen…” He goes on to make the point that: “These friendships did not constitute a politics for them but rather a provocation. To shock the sensibilities of self-righteous leftists [Jean Paul Sartre and his clique associated with the journal Les Temps Modernes], to scandalize – that was what the Young Turks of the French New Wave were going for” (de Baecque 2012, 104). Thus, I would argue that to be disengaged did not mean to be outside politics. After all, the young Japanese filmmakers of the early 1960s had come through the university system having experienced the turbulent times of campus revolts of the second half of the 1950s and the rise of the New Left. Therefore, I would argue that in both the Japanese and French examples, disengagement equalled dissent; a total rejection of the values the wartime generation sought to affirm. In the Japanese example, it was Anpo that represented the defining struggle; that is, opposition to the political system being solidified by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in its economic and military alliances with the USA. Equally, it is evident that these young filmmakers felt a disgust with the divisions in the establishment left of politics, which split in the early 1950s after criticism from the Cominform only to be confounded by Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, followed by the USSR’s return to a Staliniststyle intervention/invasion of Hungary. As such, these young Japanese filmmakers eschewed the independent Dokuritsu Pro film movement established by veteran left-leaning filmmakers such as Imai Tadashi (1912–1992) and Kamei Fumio (1908–1987) who grounded their techniques in “realist” conventions and their content in socio-political injustices of the day. Ōshima gives a scathing critique of their

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techniques in a review of the 1961 film based on the Matsukawa Incident of 1949 (Matsukawa jiken, Yamamoto Satsuo). In this “incident,” a train was derailed near the village of Matsukawa in Fukushima and three crew members died. Twenty people were arrested and charged, all of whom were leaders in the National Railway Workers Union. In 1961, the court found all of them not guilty and the families were ultimately awarded damages in 1970. The film was made in support of those charged. Ōshima uses this review to articulate his position regarding what he sees as film’s inability to impact directly on politics: Art cannot become a direct weapon of social reform through direct political outcomes, but merely a weapon of social reform through indirectly reforming people’s consciousness… A film (indeed all art), has to be a means of expression for the filmmaker, and arises from the symbiotic connection between the filmmaker’s subjectivity (shutai) and the topic [of the film]. When this is not the case, the film is a mere nonentity, there is no filmmaker and no topic, it is a mere enumeration of the exposition of the event. (Ōshima, 1964, 70–71) Politically committed filmmakers working under the independent Dokuritsu Pro umbrella and studio-based filmmakers, such as Kobayashi Masaki (1912–1998) in epic films such as The Human Condition (Ningen no jōken 1959–1961), and Ōba Hideo (1910–1997) with his three-part What is your Name? (Kimi no na wa 1953–1954), were attempting to express a semblance of the irrationality of the human condition in the wartime and post-defeat eras in narratives that are lucidly and rationally constructed according to realist conventions of “classical” cinema. As Yamamoto Naoki points out, Yoshida critiqued these techniques arguing that: These filmmakers maintained static positions by employing “cinematic” systems or techniques that prompted an audience to identify with a protagonist and accept the meaning of the film as it is. [Yoshida] contested how they expressed, through these techniques, the “grand narratives” of the community “Japan” that people were forced to share unconditionally. Yoshida thus sought to create a new type of film by disrupting these devices. (Yamamoto and Noonan 2010, 23 trans. Patrick Noonan) And this is the nub, while politically committed filmmakers were trying to express the new postwar reality and reach a semblance of understanding of the disconnected and disruptive past in old conventions, Yoshida, Ōshima and other filmmakers from the Japanese nouvelle vague generation went further in trying to achieve a unity between the irrationality and ambiguity of the “modernist events” being depicted and the “form” in which they are expressed.

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 21 Historically, in Japanese cinema, this quest for an alternative cinema, this engagement in the battle against the conservatism of the commercial studios, first emerged in the violent generational confrontations inserted into the narratives of the Nikkatsu Studio “sun tribe” (taiyōzoku) youth films based on the popular novels of Ishihara Shintarō. In these studies in alienation from 1956 – Season of the Sun (Taiyō no kisetsu, Furukawa Takumi (1917–2018)) and Crazed Fruit (Kurutta kajitsu, Nakahira Kō (1926–1978)) – the parent generation is virtually expunged from the narrative, becoming a structuring omission central to the plot. Thus, these films offered an antiestablishment thrill through the portrayal of youth living a luxury life. In an attempt to stave off boredom, their lives are filled with consumer commodities and they exist outside established social, primarily sexual, mores. Ōshima explains their initial appeal in the following terms before dismissing them, in a later work with a reference to their author Ishihara Shintarō, as little more than the outpouring of a “selfish and privileged young son” (wagamamana obocchan) (Ōshima [1975] 1978, 178). These films early on had a great appeal; this was because they had a strong radical tendency (keikōsei). What do I mean by a strong radical tendency? It was their intention and aim to do away with the techniques of the old Japanese cinema that appealed to a victimization consciousness (higaisha ishiki). In order to achieve this they utilised techniques that did not depict the environment, but only individuals’ desires and behaviour. Furthermore, in undertaking to depict individuals’ desires and behaviour, in other words a quasi-subjectivity, they adopted techniques that depicted a completely flourishing (zenmenkaika) and completely glorious (zenmenraisan) [scene]. This therefore amounted to a sever attack on the old victimisation consciousness and was the only answer to an emerging consciousness of a quasi-autonomy. (Ōshima, 1964, 201) In this quotation, Ōshima is alluding to what became one of the main challenges to form made by nouvelle vague films, a refusal to provide an explanation of an individual’s actions through a depiction of the past. As I have argued elsewhere, in Japanese mainstream historical films of the period, there was a strong convention to begin in medias res which emphasizes the a priori limitations that frustrate personal choice. This convention of beginning in an originary present and then merging into flashback of an individual’s reminiscences has two effects. First, it effaces the discontinuity of the narrative by presenting the plot as a unified whole; and secondly, it establishes a causal teleological progression that places an origin for the present in a determinate past rather than in an individual’s choice. In contrast, in for example Night and Fog in Japan the stylized flashbacks provide an historical parallel to the contemporary situation that only serves to enhance the querulous nature of the discussions and the impossibility of

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the factions ever reaching a shared understanding. The tensions between the factions and generations that ritual – the wedding ceremony celebration – was intended to paper-over are rendered palpable. Ōshima’s use of flashbacks in this film is radical, in that these sequences are neither unifying nor explanatory. In fact, they are disruptive of the narrative flow and thus diametrically opposed to the function of flashbacks in mainstream Japanese cinema of the time. This rejection of the “well made” film of the Shōchiku Ōfuna house-style with its over-defined motivation of characters, brings to the fore the impossibilities of our ever knowing the real motivation behind the actions of human beings who are complex, and whose psychological makeup is contradictory and unverifiable. In this context, commercial films that offer explanations must, by definition, be oversimplifications. The result of these and other stylistic challenges to form was to force a new way of looking at film – a self-reflexivity – that disrupts the cohesion of events. By contrast, in commercial, mainstream cinema, the apprehension of meaning is only possible through an emphasis on content. That is, narrativization at the expense of visual style; in other words, an emphasis on “content” through narrative over “form” – the story constantly telling the spectator the meaning of the images. The anti-narratives produced by filmmakers from the nouvelle vague offer the only prospect for an adequate representation of events in this post-Auschwitz/Hiroshima era as they force an evaluation of the content that ultimately defies a cohesive interpretation. Yoshida is perhaps the most articulate on this question of the relationship of the spectator to the image as he took up this question at a theoretical level in two early essays, published in Japan in 1971 in a collected volume, “Visual Anarchy” (Miru koto no anākizumu) and “What is Meant by Cinematic Methodology?” (Eiga no hōhōron to wa nanika). His position was later expounded on in his 1994 reappraisal of Ozu Yasujirō (1903–1963) under the title Ozu’s Anti-Cinema. As the titles “Visual Anarchy” and Ozu’s AntiCinema imply, Yoshida is arguing that human vision, in its physical sense, is not a regulated or structured faculty, but that our eyes rove through space alighting temporarily on objects or individuals. In short, influenced by French philosophy – phenomenology and existentialism – he argues that we do not see things in a totality, but that objects and actions present themselves to consciousness. Yoshida continues expanding this position to a discussion of the function of the camera: “Camera lenses seem to substitute for human eyes. However, in reality, they oppose each other. If the function of human eyes can be called ‘looking,’ the mechanism of the camera lenses can be [called] ‘the death of looking.’” Yoshida explains that, “when we look at the actual conditions of this world through the camera’s lens, we must deny the random movements of the human eye and restrain the eye’s constant movements to focus on one point. An image in motion pictures chooses one particular object from the unlimited space of the world, frames it, and excludes and ignores all other things as if they did not exist.” Equally, one of the primary functions of film editing is to determine duration. Unlike

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 23 a photograph or a painting which an individual may contemplate at leisure, the film spectator’s gaze is circumscribed by both editing and camera movement. To this effect Yoshida argues that cinema should be considered an “authoritative medium” (Yoshida 1998, 33–34, trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano). In these passages, Yoshida is arguing against a regulated viewing position which, as he suggests in his essay “What is Meant by Cinematic Methodology” was central to both the “classical” Hollywood continuity system of editing, and the Soviet montage school of cinema elaborated on by Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948). In opposition to these formal systems that contain and structure human perception, Yoshida emphasizes the image as a composition that, while presenting itself to the spectator, remains open to question. Yoshida and other young filmmakers of his generation therefore sought to establish a new relationship with the spectator through form and the image. This in effect was predicated on a position of “self-negation” (jiko hitei). As Yoshida states: Creating a work implies that the result is something that transcends myself and will push myself closer to the unknown. But for the audience on the receiving end it also transcends “a work they are being shown” and it will become something that they will create themselves. In this new relationship film no longer is a determined entity that the audience is being provided with, but a rational concept that enables a free dialogue and exchange between maker and the viewer. (2010, 15–16 trans. Patrick Noonan) This emphasis on the active participation of the spectator in creating meaning during the process of viewing militates against hegemonic interpretations, putting the responsibility back onto the individual spectator; viewing a film thereby becomes an intellectual act. Cinema should no longer be an act of “selling emotions… As long as film is buried within the emotional catharsis that is being exchanged between maker and viewer, the two will remain locked within their self-constructed walls and will not be able to break down their conservative attitudes” (Yoshida 2010, 16). Through this process of active participation in the construction of meaning and the concomitant “de-realization of the event,” as White points out, Jameson in another context, “concludes that the modernist de-realization of the event amounts to a rejection of the historicity of all events …” (White 1996, 26). The passive spectator who followed a unified narrative presented in a coherent form was to be succeeded by the active spectator who converts the narrative segments into a personalized understanding derived from their individual contexts – images are thereby presented to consciousness. Through this stylistic challenge to historiography in films like Night and Fog in Japan and Yoshida’s later revolutionary triptych – Eros + Massacre (Erosu purasu gyakusatsu, 1969), Heroic Purgatory (Rengoku eroika, 1970),

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and Coup d’état (Kaigenrei, 1973) – “the facts [become] a function of the meaning assigned to events, not some primitive data that determine what meanings an event can have” (White 1996, 21). The relationship of the individual spectator to the anomalous nature of the images, and by extension the event, becomes fundamental to the film, which cannot function without the spectator. As Colin MacCabe explains in the context of Godard’s film of 1965 A Married Woman (Une Femme mariée): “The fiction must not be unified by its form but present its elements to the audience to be analysed and recombined.” Similarly, André S. Labarthe elaborates on this point in his review of Alain Resnais’ enigmatic film Last Year in Marienbad (L’Année dernière à Marienbad, 1960): In short, the meaning of the film is no longer imposed on the spectator but has to be constructed by him from the basis provided by the elements of the film. As in everyday life…the meaning of events is only ever hypothesis… ([1961] 1992, 55 trans. Diana Matias) I would suggest that it was precisely this altered relationship of the spectator to the image that explains in part the hostile reactions of some audiences, and particularly studio management, to Ōshima’s Night and Fog in Japan, and was behind the 1968 dismissal of Suzuki Seijun (1923–2017) from Nikkatsu over his controversial film Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin, 1967). Ōshima developed these considerations further, that is, the relationship of the filmmaker to the commercial industry, filmmakers to image, and audience to film, in his opening chapter on Godard in his book Discovery of Contemporary Auteurs (Dōjidai sakka no hakken, 1978). In this chapter, Ōshima argues that one of the results to come out of the experimental Dziga Vertov group set up by Godard with the cameraman Jean-Pierre Gorin postMay 1968 was to question the relationship of spectator to film. Through an analysis of Godard’s earlier film Contempt (Le mépris, 1963), Ōshima suggests that Godard is expressing his “contempt” of the contemporary commercial cinema which, he argues, operates to “show” films to the “masses” thus placing the spectator in a passive “being shown” position. The capitalist logic of the industry being; “As the masses (taishū) exist to be shown films, films have to be made.” However, according to Ōshima’s analysis of Godard’s oeuvre produced during the Dziga Vertov group days, Godard reversed this position in the process of turning the fragments of the failed film, Until Victory (Jusqu’a la victoire) about life in the Palestinian camps in Jordan after the defeat in the “Six Day War” in 1967, into what would eventually be released as Here and Elsewhere (Ici et ailleurs) in 1974. In this context Ōshima asserts: “The masses do not exist merely to be shown films, they can also make films, in fact they must make films, we must be aware of this and we must make the masses aware of this” (1978, 15–16). He uses this analysis of the early footage of Until Victory to conclude that

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 25 In this filmmaking process, Godard became involved in their [the Palestinian’s] struggle (tōsō), we must imagine and consider the film’s question, that is, how this struggle is to be fought. In this case, the struggle replaces the film in importance and an audience beyond those involved is definitely not a necessary element. (1978, 13) In this analysis, echoing the Cahiers du cinéma critic Serge Daney, Ōshima is arguing that Godard, after the failure of the initial project, reconfigured the images. And that this reconfiguration, released as Here and Elsewhere, returned images and sounds to those from whom they were taken. I would suggest that Ōshima himself, who since his television period made critical documentaries based on Korean expat former soldiers’ experiences in postwar Japan (Forgotten Soldiers/Wasurerareta kōgun, 1963) and the plight of orphans in Seoul (Diary of Yunbogi/Yunbogi no niki, 1965), increasingly developed a loose, collaborative shooting style. Furthermore, from the late 1960s, he often employed non-actors or amateurs to play themselves as a bid to alter and redistribute power in terms of those who are filmed and those who narrate the image; this, I would suggest, is evident in films such as Death by Hanging (Kōshikei 1968), which attempts to give voice to Korean nationals living in Japan, and Boy (Shōnen 1969). The title role of the boy in the criminal family was taken by a young boy Ōshima found at an orphanage. This practice not only breaks with the star system but shifts the emphasis from performance to performer. We are no longer watching an actor perform a role but are watching an individual playing themselves. As the epithet by Jacques Rivette writing on Mizoguchi Kenji (1898–1956) that opens this chapter alludes, the filmic “form,” since cinema’s first inception, has been a transcultural phenomenon. It is clear from the amount of published works in France on Japanese filmmakers, and in Japan on French filmmakers that there was a dialogue that impacted on both theoretical ideas about filmmaking and on practices. The fact that both groups were concerned with a modernist project to forge a different relationship with the audience through cinematic “form” – a search for a new audience beyond the traditional circuits of a marketdriven studio system – provided common ground for these discourses. However, as Bazin argued in 1957, like all art forms, film is also a social artefact that stems from the socio-political and commercial contexts of its production. I would also argue that increasingly with economic globalization and the impact of the “holocaustal events” of the twentieth century in general, the relationship between form and content became a central issue for those filmmakers concerned with challenging conservative understandings of historicity as played out in mainstream cinema. In concluding, I argue that Ōshima, Yoshida, Godard, and other filmmakers from this first post–World War II generation were able to grasp their time as a generational sensibility because they were uncomfortable with what they perceived as the hypocrisies of mainstream society and the failures of

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the promises of postwar democracy. And to paraphrase de Baecque, being thus uncomfortable enabled them to capture the zeitgeist, while maintaining a critical distance that was necessary to appropriate its complex contemporaneousness, and it is this that constituted their politics.

Notes 1 Here I am using the term nouvelle vague in relation to the Japanese example to avoid confusion. However, Ōshima Nagisa and other filmmakers of the period were critical of the application of this label to their films as this was part of a publicity campaign orchestrated by the Shōchiku Studio. Elsewhere I have used the term avant-garde in reference to the Japanese example in order to more correctly mark this differentiation. 2 Here I am referring to the avant-garde as developed from Theodore Adorno’s theory of aesthetics by Peter Bürger (2016). 3 Exception should be made for Alain Resnais’ (1922–2014) early films such as Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard, 1955) and Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). 4 The anti-treaty renewal protests reached a height on the 15 and 16 June 1960 when an estimated 300,000 protestors gathered around the Diet buildings. 5 See my A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film.

Bibliography de Baecque, Antoine. 2012. Camera Historica: The Century in Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Bazin, André. [1957] 1985. “On the Politique des Auteurs.” In Hillier, Jim (ed.) Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s, Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, pp. 248–259. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bürger, Peter. [1974] 2016. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Shaw, Michael (Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. [1985] 2000. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Athlone Press. Eagleton, Terry. 2007. The Meaning of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eiga, Geijutsu. 1966. “Tokuhō Zadankai: J L Godāru.” Eiga Geijutsu 14 (226) (July): 1641–1645. Junpōsha, Kinema. [1966] 1994. “Godāru Kantoku no Nihon no Tōkakan.” In Best of Kinema Junpō. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. MacCabe, Colin. 2004. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70. London: Bloomsbury. Labarthe, André S ([1961] 1986). ‘Marienbad Year Zero.’ In Hillier, Jim (ed.) Cahiers du Cinéma: the 1960s New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2008. Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s. New York and London: Continuum. Ōshima 1978 Ōshima, Nagisa. 1978. Dōidai sakka no hakken. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō. Ōshima 1978 Ōshima, Nagisa. [1975] 1978. Taikenteki sengo eizōron. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun-sha. Ōshima 1964 Ōshima, Nagisa. [1963] 1964. Sengo Eiga: Hakai to Sōzō. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō.

A Question of and the nouvelle vague 27 Rivette, Jacques. [1958] 1985. “Mizoguchi Viewed from Here.” In Hillier, Jim (ed.) Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s, Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, pp. 264–265. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. White, Hayden. 1996. “The Modernist Event.” In Sobchack, Vivian (ed.) The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event, pp. 17–38. New York and London: Routledge. Yamamoto, Naoki. 2010. “Yoshida Kijū’s Early Days: Critiquing ‘Phlegmatic’ Postwar Japan.” In Stegewerns, Dick (ed.), Noonan, Patrick (Trans.) Yoshida Kijū: 50 Years of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Postwar Japan, pp. 20–31. Oslo: Norwegian Film Institute. Yoshida, Kijū. 1998. Ozu’s Anti-Cinema.Miyao, Daisuke, and Hirano, Kyoko (Trans.). Ann Arbor: Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Yoshida, Kijū. 2010. “My Film Theory: The Logic of Self Negation.” In Stegewerns, Dick (ed.) Yoshida Kijū: 50 Years of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Postwar Japan, pp. 15–18. Oslo: Norwegian Film Institute.

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Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films Katsuyuki Hidaka

Politicization and depoliticization are often used metaphorically in films that are seemingly far from political issues. This chapter examines a number of such films based upon a real incident in pre-war Japan. The Abe Sada incident is one of the most shocking crimes in modern Japanese history. In May 1936, sex worker Abe Sada, who doted on her lover, erotically asphyxiated and killed him by strangling, then cut off his penis, and carried it with her. The story has become a national sensation in Japan, acquiring mythic status, and has been repeatedly interpreted by filmmakers, playwrights, artists, novelists, and even philosophers. Although the Abe Sada incident is well known due to Ōshima Nagisa’s legendary film In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda, 1976), several other films and plays about the episode have been almost forgotten. However, it is noteworthy that numerous prestigious postwar filmmakers and playwrights have negotiated the socio-political meaning of the Abe Sada incident and often highly evaluated the bizarre crime of Abe Sada in their works, from unauthorized and gendered perspectives. There have been four “Abe Sada booms” over the years: immediately after the incident, immediately after the war, during the 1970s, and during the late 1990s. In these booms, various media forms, such as films, literature, theatre, and newspapers, have covered the topic. Moreover, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some filmmakers and playwrights critically reviewed modern and contemporary Japanese stories and politics by comparing this incident with the 26 February incident (Niniroku jiken), an attempted military coup d’état that happened only three months before the Abe Sada incident. Therefore, Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses in the mid-1970s should be interpreted with careful consideration of the artistic trends of the time. This chapter focuses on representative films from the 1960s to the 2010s (with a particularly careful examination of the works in the 1960s and the 1970s) and explores why and how the incident has been repeatedly represented. This chapter will also examine how the Abe Sada incident was linked to the 26 February incident. Simultaneously, the relationship between the films, theatre, novels, and critical discourses of the respective eras will be discussed. Through narrative and sociocultural analysis, the transformation

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 29 of representations will be clarified, and Ōshima’s achievements will be examined in a wider perspective. This investigation is significant because it will symbolically reveal the long process of depoliticization, particularly through the development of neoliberalism in the “long postwar” of Japanese society and media narratives. As will be shown, sexual love and sex acts are often used as ambiguous symbols holding political and apolitical meanings in these films, depending on their narrative contexts in each era. Therefore, this is a useful opportunity to trace film representations of one historical moment temporally, showing how each “boom” era had differing processes of politicization and depoliticization in cinema.

Immediately after the Abe Sada incident As mentioned, there have been four “Abe Sada booms.” The first began immediately after the Abe Sada incident. On 18 May 1936, after strangling Kichizō at the climax of sexual excitement, Abe Sada wrote “Sada and Kichizō, alone together” on Kichizō’s thigh with his blood, and took his penis, which she had cut off. Sada then escaped, carrying the penis around with her. When she was arrested by police three days later, the major newspapers issued extra supplements that reported on her arrest. Because extras were only issued during that same year for the 26 February incident (which had occurred three months earlier), and when the Japan–Germany Anti-Comintern Pact was signed in November, this illustrates how the Abe Sada incident gripped society’s attention. The trials began in November 1936, six months after the arrest. Numerous people lined up to listen to the trials and sentencing and gathered for the judgement in December. The Yomiuri Shimbun report was titled “Incredible Sada Mania! The Public Spends Sleepless Night in the Snow for Today’s Judgment” (21 December 1936). What should be noted is the lack of reporting on the incident, trial, and judgement of Sada’s crime. The media appear to have hesitated to treat such an unusual crime in the same manner as another murder. Most newspaper articles handled this incident as gossip or scandal while maintaining a level of sympathy for Sada and showing a clear tendency to approach it as a “comic” or “comical” event. For example, the issue of Yomiuri Shimbun on the date of the court’s judgement mentioned, “the sort of agreeable trial not seen before, with even the presiding judge smiling.” Such an empathetic stance on Abe Sada shown by the media reports immediately after the incident is important in considering the films that later adapted this incident.

After the Second World War After serving her sentence of six years in prison, Abe Sada was released in 1941, during the Second World War. The second Abe Sada boom came

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following the war. At first, the boom began with Sada’s crime being covered frequently in gossip magazines called kasutori magazines, which primarily discussed prostitution and crime. Additionally, several biographies of Abe Sada were published (Fuyuki 1947; Kimura 1947) and Sada herself published an autobiography in 1948 (Abe 1948). As will be discussed, films and theatre performances of Abe Sada’s story appeared towards the late 1960s, but literary persons and novelists became interested in Abe Sada immediately following the war. Curiously, they all had a high opinion of Sada and, most interestingly, the highly celebrated novelist Sakaguchi Ango, particularly known for his influential essay “Discourse on Decadence” (Darakuron, 1946), interviewed Abe Sada. Sakaguchi interviewed Sada in the December 1947 issue of the magazine Conversation (Zadan) in which he praised Sada throughout. Sakaguchi interpreted Sada’s crime as a jovial event that provided a kind of relief to the people at the time. At the start of the conversation, Sakaguchi tells Sada, “the incident left an impression in the people’s minds in a bright sense, and I don’t think anyone thought that you were bad at that time … I think the incident has provided people with some sort of relief” (Sakaguchi 1947). Later, Sada says, “If I said that I don’t regret what I did back then, it would probably look very bad.” Sakaguchi replies, “I don’t think so. I don’t think that way one bit” (Sakaguchi 1947). This conversation demonstrates his empathetic understanding of Sada’s crime and shows Sakaguchi encouraging Sada to trust that the public would not condemn her for saying that she had no regrets. Another curious point is that, immediately after the war, another celebrated novelist, Oda Sakunosuke, wrote the short story “Woman” based on Abe Sada (Oda 1947). In this short novel, Oda writes humorously about Sada in her teenage years. The novel ends with Sada, at age 18, deciding to become a geisha, and does not mention the later incident. Thus, the novel freshly illustrates Sada’s adolescence and ends in a way that makes her life after adolescence open to interpretation. As such, it reinforces the point that Oda, like Sakaguchi, considered Sada positively. This shows that progressive novelists tried to interpret Sada’s actions as a symbol of freedom and democracy, in line with the social momentum for such after the war. From the late 1960s to the 1970s Although Abe Sada had been ubiquitous in the media immediately after the war, with time, media coverage dwindled. However, in the late 1960s, the media and artists started to focus on Abe Sada, thereby giving rise to the third Abe Sada boom in the 1970s. The 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses, directed by Ōshima Nagisa, is a product of the third Abe Sada boom.

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 31 The 1969 film Love and Crime (Meiji Taisho Showa ryoki onna hanzaishi), directed by Ishii Teruo, is one of the first films focusing on the Abe Sada incident. This movie depicts five different uncommon crimes occurring from the Meiji era in an anthology format. The Abe Sada incident is one of the episodes. This film revolves around the story of a male protagonist, a doctor, who explores the nature of women by discussing the numerous crimes they have committed in the past. The interesting point of the story is why the protagonist is looking for the nature of women. The doctor’s wife commits suicide after having an affair, with her lover’s semen still inside her. At the beginning of the film, the protagonist contemplates searching for the reason behind his wife’s infidelity and suicide while performing her autopsy. The work explores the boldness and mystery of a woman’s behaviour through the eyes of a male protagonist; it seems to reflect a certain mood Japanese society at the time in 1969. In Japan, women have become politicized through participation in political movements, particularly during the campaign against the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty in the early 1960s. As women raised their political consciousness, questions and conflicts about the fixation of gender roles, such as housewives and mothers, began to surface (Amano and Fukuda, 2006). The student movement represented by Zenkyoto reached its peak in 1968 and helped begin the Women’s Liberation movement. The Women's Liberation movement first drew wide social attention in Japan when a demonstration only by women was held on International Anti-war Day in October 1970. Japan’s first Women’s Liberation festival was held in Tokyo in the next month. What is important here is that many of the women who participated in these had experienced the student movement as university students (Inoue, Nagao and Funabashi 2006, 134). Most leaders in this student movement were male. Even in the Zenkyoto movement, which appealed to the most radical for the breaking of the established order, the majority who ventured onto the street demonstration were male students, while the female students who were made to engage in meal making on the campus insisted that “the woman is not a slave of the man” (Amano and Fukuda 2006). Thus, the women’s liberation movement in Japan aimed to overcome differences between men and women. The concept of this film reflects the astonishment and confusion of many Japanese men towards women at the time when the latter began to assert themselves by breaking away from persistent feudal ideals of obedience. An important detail in this film is a scene where the protagonist interviews the real Abe Sada. As Sada had been avoiding media attention, it was a rare event for her to agree to an interview. When the protagonist asks, “You really liked Kichizō, didn’t you?” Sada replies, “Of course. As humans, we love once in a lifetime.” In the monologue that follows, the protagonist asks, “Abnormal – is it not the opposite of normal? What is abnormal?” From the perspective of the male protagonist, these words may be related to the complex emotions of men towards those women who began to assert

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themselves through the Women’s Liberation movement. Male fear is shown when their vested interests in politics are threatened by women’s perceived invasion of their political sphere. Therefore, it can be said that this film is a political film from a male perspective in the age of the “Season of Politics.” It shows an understanding of women’s politicization; however, it also conceals men’s politics, implying a kind of misogyny. Looking into important films in the 1970s, we must first mention the 1973 film The World of Geisha (Yojōhan fusuma no urahari), also known as A Man and a Woman Behind the Fusuma Screen, directed by Kumashiro Tatsumi. This film is based on a novel written by Nagai Kafu. Instead of borrowing directly from Abe Sada’s life, the story is set in 1918, nearly 20 years before the Abe Sada incident. The film depicts an outcast at the time of the 1918 Rice Riots, which were riots around the country over a rapid increase in rice prices that led to the collapse of the cabinet. The importance of this film is its many similarities with films that came later, such as A Woman Called Sada Abe (Jitsuroku Abe Sada, 1975) and In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which depict the Abe Sada incident. The World of Geisha juxtaposes sexual acts and militarism consciously and repeatedly. The film repeatedly depicts the sexual acts of the protagonist, a man, with a woman in a closed room; from time to time, scenes of military training are inserted between sequences, thereby showing a stark contrast: juxtaposing militarism (having a masculine and hard image) with sexual acts that carry a soft image. The film also shows the contrast between the private and the public sphere. The World of Geisha explores the political problems at the time in a more straightforward manner than A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. As will be discussed, no matter how provocative their subjects are, A Woman Called Sada Abe and, particularly, In the Realm of the Senses, explore political problems only subtly. Meanwhile, Kumashiro, the director of The World of Geisha, argues that, “sex is the biggest link to destroying a regime” (Kumashiro and Shindō 1973, 27); therefore, his film provides a clear connection between sex and politics. Because The World of Geisha is not based on the actual Abe Sada story, there is no scene where a woman strangles a man. Despite this, the film has a long and important sequence involving strangulation as a theme. This scene links sexual pleasure to politics and shows the audience that these two subjects are ambiguous. As the landlord of a brothel states, man’s greatest sexual pleasure comes from being strangled by a woman. A guest tells the landlord to try and strangle himself, and the hesitant landlord hangs himself by tying a rope to the ceiling. The next scene shows a white and black still photo of men hanging themselves, accompanied by a subtitle “March, Taisho 9 – The Korean Independence Movement is suppressed (Banzai incident).” Taisho 9 is 1920. When the landlord begins to struggle and takes off the rope, another black and white still photo is displayed continuously, with the subtitles “Taisho 6 – March Revolution in Russia” and “Taisho 6 – November Revolution in Russia.”

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 33 There are commonalities between the juxtaposition of a political affair and a strangling in this film and the contrasting depiction of the 26 February incident and Abe Sada who strangled her lover in the later films, A Woman Called Abe Sada and In the Realm of Senses. The reason for taking political cases and depicting strangling in contrast in the pornographic films was probably because strangling has a pluralistic and meta-meaning. According to Durkheim, self-strangulation as a potential suicide is considered the ultimate anti-social action that an individual can take (Durkheim 2002). Strangulation, then, plays at the borders between pleasure and pain and life and death. However, it also exists between social belonging and the placing of humans outside society. Therefore, the juxtaposition of political cases and strangulation can be interpreted as symbolically depicting the politics of anti-politics. Although such a representation is political, it also, inevitably, has a depoliticized character. Therefore, these representations are ambiguous. Considering that The World of Geisha was produced for Nikkatsu studio’s roman poruno genre, the focus of this film on political events, such as the Russian Revolution and the Korean Independence Movement of 50 years before seems odd. However, in November 1973, when the film was released, the “Season of Politics” from the student movement in the late 1960s was still reverberating. In 1972, the year before the film was released, the mountain base incident of the Japanese Red Army and the Asama Mountain Lodge incident shook Japan. In the mountain base incident, the leaders of the Japanese Red Army asked the other members to abolish their worldly desires completely, and the 12 members who did not follow were “executed” by lynching. For example, the leaders “executed” a female member who tried to apply lipstick secretly. The Asama Mountain Lodge incident occurred after the same members took hostages to the mountain lodge in Nagano Prefecture. The violent extremism of the Japanese Red Army is an important incident that reduced the heat of the youthful student movement and triggered the decline of student movements in Japan. Following these incidents, many Japanese, particularly the young, were troubled and simultaneously struggled to understand the differences between student movement ideals and violent extremism. The World of Geisha, which juxtaposes sexual pleasure, violence, and politics repeatedly, cannot be discussed without considering the political conditions of that particular time when there was a shift towards the end of the “Season of Politics.” Director Kumashiro mentioned that it would be good if this film can “show, without talking about reason, how the Taisho democracy took a rapid downturn during the Showa era” (Kumashiro and Shindō 1973, 25). Kumashiro may have tried to relate the violent demise of the “Season of Politics” in the 1970s with the end of the Taisho democracy. As such, this film focuses on the ambiguous nature of physical violence and sexual pleasure in the act of strangling, and critically summarizes the “Season of Politics.” This is the reason this chapter cites this film as a

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pioneering achievement targeting sexual and political problems that are also seen in A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses, both of which depict Abe. The 1975 film A Woman Called Sada Abe, directed by Tanaka Noboru, is the first film that faithfully reproduced the Abe Sada incident. As with The World of Geisha, the social momentum during the early 1970s, when people sought closure regarding the climax and demise of the “Season of Politics,” seems to be the main reason behind the making of this film. Subsequently, more films tackled the subject of Abe Sada. Examples of these films are Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, which was released immediately after A Woman Called Sada Abe, and the Art Theatre Guild’s (ATG) unrealized planned film on the topic (Awazu, Ii and Hosaka 1976); ATG also produced multiple Japanese new wave films that tackled political topics. The release of these films resulted in a sort of “Abe Sada Renaissance.” The importance of A Woman Called Sada Abe lies in its juxtaposition of the Abe Sada incident with representations of the militaristic society of the time, similar to other films that followed it. The best example of the prevailing militaristic conditions at the time is the 26 February incident, the attempted military coup d’état that occurred three months before the Abe Sada incident. In contrast with The World of Geisha that explicitly incorporated the Russian Revolution and Korean Independence Movement, A Woman Called Sada Abe only implicitly depicts the 26 February incident. However, this film undoubtedly builds on the plot while being strongly conscious of the 26 February incident and society of the time. Occasionally, the film inserts scenes of military marches while showing a sex scene between Sada and Kichizō from beginning to end. Watching from a room as the military marches on, Sada says softly, “The light from the outside bothers me.” Then she asks the inn maid to “Please shut the window. Kichi-san’s scent will escape.” This scene intentionally presents the contrast between Sada and Kichizō’s intense sexual love and militarism, between sex and politics, and between the private and the public. Similar to In the Realm of the Senses, which will be discussed, this film is among the first based on phallocentric values in depicting Abe Sada. Indeed, this film does not necessarily beautify Sada while it captures her life with Kichizō realistically. Instead, it reduces her to a woman that merely desires a man and his penis. For example, Sada, and not Kichizō, is the one who always initiates their sex, as illustrated in the scene where she prefers to shut herself in a locked room to have sex, away from the outside world (Tokyo, where the military marches on). This scene is a creative way of portraying a woman who takes away the authority of a man, thereby demonstrating the zeal of the women. However, the film does not give Sada any significant attention or character development other than being a woman who seeks Kichizō and his body. This film may have framed the story so that Sada was given existential significance, as a symbol of an effective, actionable force for

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 35 anti-nationalism and anti-militarism. On the contrary, attention must be given to how the filmmakers appraise Sada as having no actions and behaviours other than a sexual obsession with a man. Luce Irigaray criticized Western metaphysics as being unaware of the differences and diversity among women, and the masculine economy, which excludes women and lacks women. According to Irigaray, if men think that women are merely castrated versions of themselves, it leads to the idea that there is no choice but to complement women’s “holes” through their desire to plug their holes with penis (Irigaray 1986, 49). Thus, it can be argued that male-centric biases lie behind the narrative of A Woman Called Sada Abe. In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which was released a year after A Woman Called Sada Abe, is not a commercial genre film like those produced for Nikkatsu studio’s roman porno genre. Rather, the film was made by the prestigious director Ōshima Nagisa with French funding. It was controversial upon its release, and a related book sparked an obscenity trial. Ōshima’s intent, and thereby the main topic of this film is clear. He stated: “My films are always about sex” (Ōshima 1976, 133). Ōshima also aimed to eliminate the taboo concerning sexual expression and appreciation in Japan and thus to “substantially obscure obscenity” (Ōshima 1976, 140). Compared with Nikkatsu studio’s roman porno genre film A Woman Called Sada Abe, In the Realm of the Senses is an art film that remains popular even today. The film’s structure, however, is not significantly different from A Woman Called Sada Abe. Perhaps, In the Realm of the Senses may be even richer in its phallocentric worldview compared with A Woman Called Sada Abe. Ōshima wrote, “to me, at least, a film is the visualisation of the director’s desires” (Ōshima 1976, 132). Although In the Realm of the Senses is bolder than Ōshima’s other films, it also tackles sex more straightforwardly and does not obscure its phallocentric worldview. In Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, the character of Sada was played by an almost unknown actress, Matsuda Eiko. Rather than using a suppressed realistic expression, the film emphasized Sada’s sexual love and desire to control Kichizō and more clearly expressed the image of a lusty woman. Moreover, as Isolde Standish has argued, throughout the film, the story is seen from Sada’s desire and viewpoint (Standish 2006, 262). Standish was referring not only to Sada having sex but also peeping out to watch Kichizō having sex with his wife. Standish argued that, because Sada’s desire in In the Realm of the Senses “is structured to overvalue the penis as the sole source of her pleasure” (Standish 2006, 262), the film cannot escape the phallocentric ideological position. There is no doubt that the film is consistent in its stance of empathizing with contemporary feminism and the politicization of women by evaluating Sada. Conversely, it seems difficult to deny that this film is based on a phallocentric value that satisfies the male perspective (both the creators and the audience), in that it restricts the potential scope of Sada’s characterization to sexual desire and devotion to men. This film incorporates

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anti-politics thematically in that it prioritizes the private domain of sexual love over the public political domain, but simultaneously, by asserting the superiority of privacy, it also has a depoliticized character. It is ironic that most progressive intellectuals, such as Ōshima, became desperately apolitical when he tried to remain political following the “Season of Politics.” The words of Ōshima himself indicate he consciously crafted Sada’s representation in this film. Explaining Sada, Ōshima said, “a woman who is unable to see anything else than a man is truly remarkable” (Itsuki, Takenaka and Ōshima 1976, 112). These words were spoken from a male standpoint placing a high premium on a woman who gives her whole life blindly to sexual love for a man. It seems that Ōshima’s words exposed that the film was created based on a phallocentric worldview. Similarly to A Woman Called Sada Abe, In the Realm of the Senses implicitly depicts the 26 February incident, captures the public and the private, and juxtaposes nationalism with sexual love while positively highlighting Sada’s boldness. Compared to A Woman Called Sada Abe, which intentionally contrasts the privacy of Sada and Kichizō in a closed room with the public and outside world, In the Realm of the Senses begins and ends with the representation of the space of sexual love, that is, the closed room that Sada and Kichizō share. Indeed, the sudden insertion of scenes where the military marches near the room that the two share in the middle of the film provides contrast. As such, in films produced during the “Abe Sada Renaissance” of the 1970s, the Abe Sada incident was compared and contrasted with political problems, as well as with the militarism and nationalism represented by the 26 February incident that occurred around the same time. The 26 February incident on film We must also note that many films about the 26 February incident were made after the war. The late 1960s saw the release of two films, namely, Rebellion of Japan (Utage, Gosho Heinosuke, 1967) and Assassination Right or Wrong (Nihon ansatsu hiroku, Nakajima Sadao 1969). Although these films alluded to but fundamentally did not touch on the Abe Sada incident, they share similarities with films about Abe Sada, such as A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. Rebellion of Japan was directed by Gosho Heinosuke, who etched his name in film history by producing Japan’s first sound film, The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyobo) in 1931. Despite using the 26 February incident as its theme, Rebellion of Japan does not criticize or romanticize the actions of the young officers who attempted the coup d’état. The main theme of the film concerns the officers’ private affection towards their wives and lovers, rather than the social revolution instigated by the coup. In the sense that this film compares the public and the private lives of these officers, we can identify a common characteristic with the two Abe Sada films that emphasize the sexual love between Sada and Kichizō.

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 37 Meanwhile, Assassination Right or Wrong, directed by Nakajima Sadao, is an omnibus film that incorporates the Sakuradamon Incident, the League of Blood Incident and the 26 February incidents as its themes. The Sakuradamon Incident was the assassination of Japanese Chief Minister Ii Naosuke (1860) by a ronin (a masterless samurai), just outside Edo Castle. The League of Blood Incident was the 1932 assassination plot in which extremists targeted dozens of wealthy businessmen and liberal politicians. Curiously, Assassination Right or Wrong compares the defiant attitude of the young officers with the senior officers and Emperor Hirohito and launches a tremendous criticism against the senior officers and Hirohito, who showed no empathy to those who caused the incident. Such a depiction is closely related to the conditions at the time when the student movement, mainly represented by the Zenkyoto movement, reached its peak in 1969. Director Nakajima stated: “I want to compare the feelings of pre-war terrorists with those of the students in 1970” (Nakajima 1969). His statement is evidence that this film reflected the conditions facing the student movement. Assassination Right or Wrong empathizes with the pre-war young officers who attempted a coup seeking world reformation through the “Showa Restoration.” It superimposes their feelings with those of postwar university students who projected the various contradictions of postwar society onto the student movement in the form of anti-power and anti-state sentiments. Therefore, the brunt of the criticism in the film is directed towards the conservative senior officers and the emperor. Even though Assassination Right or Wrong is not concerned with the Abe Sada incident, it has similarities to A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. In contrast to the latter two films that depicted Abe Sada and the February 26 incident contrarily, Assassination Right or Wrong illustrated the young officers who were part of the 26 February incident, senior officers, and Emperor Hirohito in different ways. Each of these films cast a critical eye on nationalism and authoritarianism and place value on private and personal human life. However, we must be careful in emphasizing the common points between the films based on the 26 February incident and those based on Abe Sada. Between the late 1960s, when Rebellion of Japan and Assassination Right or Wrong were released, and the early 1970s, when The World of Geisha and A Woman Called Sada Abe were released, there is a gap that cannot be overlooked despite its relatively short time difference. This is because, during this time, Japanese society witnessed the climax and demise of the “Season of Politics.” As previously mentioned, around 1968 Japan’s student movement advanced in a way that was not inferior to more mature movements in Western countries. However, the unfolding of violence in the Asama Mountain Lodge incident, before the eyes of Japan in 1972, triggered the rapid decline of student movements. Moreover, in 1970, the country had witnessed a shocking incident where a prestigious novelist, Mishima Yukio, demanded the Self-Defence Forces rally behind constitutional reform and then committed suicide by hara-kiri.

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The impact of Mishima’s actions on popular engagement at that time was enormous. Because of his extraordinary behaviour, many Japanese people rejected it as an inexplicable mystery or anachronistic foolery. Murakami Haruki characterized the case in his novel, A Wild Sheep Chase (Hitsuji o meguru boken, 1982), as a matter of no great importance. However, Osawa Masachi, a sociologist, argued that Murakami’s depiction paradoxically shows that it is a matter of paramount importance for the Japanese (Osawa 2019, 16). According to Osawa, the Mishima incident had such a huge impact that we Japanese of the twenty-first century still do not accept it (Murakami 1982, 3). This reaction may be a kind of self-defence by popular sentiment, rejecting political things. Thus, the extremely political Mishima incident has, ironically, accelerated the depoliticization of Japanese society and its political apathy and hatred. In the 1970s, not a single film was made based on the 26 February incident, perhaps because films associated with political revolution and the theme of violence were socially avoided by those who supported and opposed the regime alike. Although there was sympathy for the anti-regime sentiment of the young officers and others from the 26 February incident during the 1960s, this was lost in the 1970s. Moreover, as people witnessed the demise of the “Season of Politics” in the 1970s, they got tired of the excessive seriousness of political matters and felt discomfort in the public space, and began to pursue non-political, private, and personal freedom. Filmmakers of the 1970s, therefore, competed in juxtaposing the 26 February incident with Abe Sada and, then, highly evaluated the bizarre crime of Abe Sada. Abe Sada and the 1970s The demise of the “Season of Politics” in the 1970s led to the rapid advancement of consumer ideology and individualism. In Japan at that time, “me-ism” became a buzzword symbolizing self-interest and egocentrism. Turning away from the public politics of the 1960s and immersing in consumption and self-interest became a dominant trend. Considering the values of these times, Abe Sada’s act of cutting and carrying the penis of the man she loves is also open to another interpretation. The act may be considered an extreme form of sexual love, and the penis’s consumption, and fulfilment of self-ownership desires. Unlike the 26 February incident, the Abe Sada incident was not used as a theme for films in the 1960s. However, the fact that it was the theme for multiple films in the 1970s must be related to the advancement towards a consumer society. Additionally, a masochistic connotation from the phallocentric standpoint plays an important role in the narratives of A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. As both films are based on the story told by Sada during her trial, the films detail the moment that Kichizō dies in the middle of his orgasm while being strangled during sex. In these films,

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 39 Sada playfully strangles Kichizō while having sex on the day before the murder. The following day, before the two go to bed, Kichizō asks, “You’re going to strangle me again, aren’t you?” and then tells her to strangle him all the way to the end, rather than stopping in the middle. In reality, both films detail how Sada strangles Kichizō towards the climax of the sex and, despite hesitating for a moment, she proceeds to strangle him to the end before noticing that he is dead. In these films, Kichizō’s attitude towards Sada can be interpreted as masochistic in a way that is closely related to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of masochism. Deleuze criticized thinking about sadism and masochism symmetrically, as in the past, and claimed that masochism is not related to sadism and is itself a unique concept. Deleuze stated that masochism cannot be reduced to a simple confrontational relationship, such as pain and sexual pleasure, but is a stance that considers how people on the receiving end of suffering use it strategically (Deleuze 1989). According to Deleuze, a male masochist is an educator who cultivates tyrannical women, persuades a woman to inflict pain on him, and directs her in a manner that establishes a contractual relationship. In other words, the masochist is not a victim who suffers violence unilaterally but, rather, a clever human being who explores the position of his pleasure quite consciously while exploiting others and defining that position. According to Deleuze, a masochist seeks the possibility to change reality through high-level disavowal. Disavowal should perhaps be understood as the point of departure of an operation that consists neither in negating nor even destroying, but rather in radically contesting the validity of that which is; it suspends belief in and neutralizes the given in such a way that a new horizon opens up beyond the given and in place of it (Deleuze 1989, 31). Both A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses can be interpreted as narratives that make Kichizō appear like a Deleuzian masochist. They depict his relationship with Sada metaphorically. As Kichizō accepts being strangled by Sada and tells her to strangle him until the end if she were to strangle him at all, he is placing his reality in a state of “suspension,” as he puts his fate in Sada’s hands. This state of “suspension” is a metaphor for the possibility of escaping reality, taking a leap and opening a “new horizon.” Specifically, the narrative of In the Realm of the Senses is supported by Deleuzian masochism. This is because the last twenty minutes of In the Realm of the Senses focuses not on Sada but on the expressions and lines of Kichizō as if to depict Kichizō as the protagonist of the story. Politicization and depoliticization exist in multiple forms here. Sada’s innocence is secured by showing that she did not kill Kichizō unilaterally, but more importantly, Kichizō settled his own fate. There is a subtle ambiguity here. This film is anti-political in that Kichizō turned his back on politics in the era of the 26 February incident, and entrusted his destiny to strangling. However, it is apolitical in that it also shows the rejection of the public domain through a preference for private and individual freedom.

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In the Realm of the Senses, portrays Kichizō’s careful education of Sada well. For example, in the latter half of the film, Kichizō trains Sada to slap his cheeks and directs her repeatedly for several days to strangle him. However, this is different from the facts of the trial records. The trial records do not indicate that Kichizō instructed Sada to slap him. Moreover, Sada only strangled Kichizō for two days, namely, the day before his death and the day of his death. Furthermore, although the trial records state that Kichizō’s death was almost an accident, the film portrays in detail, as mentioned, how Kichizō trains Sada carefully and leaves his fate in her hands. As the film approaches its latter half, there is an increase in shots capturing Kichizō’s facial expressions; the moment of his death is also a shot of Kichizō’s face from above, without showing Sada strangling him. This shot is an abstract, fantastical image that reflects the face of Kichizō upside down and showing it from directly above, portraying him as quietly taking his last breath without struggling or suffering. The scene in which Kichizō binds a contractual relationship with Sada and that suggests that he obtains the eternity of death and pure love from a “hanging state,” from a masochistic standpoint, must have been convenient for progressive intellectuals of the time, like Ōshima Nagisa. Due to the excessive violence displayed by the “Season of Politics” in the 1960s, as evident in the mountain base incident, Asama Mountain Lodge incident and hara-kiri incident of Mishima Yukio, people began to abhor the idea of physical violence for the sake of politics, militarism, and nationalism. Therefore, the trend shifted to obtaining personal satisfaction through sexual love and freedom. The masochistic representations of Kichizō in the Abe Sada films subtly reflect the socio-cultural climate of those days. Additionally, despite the drawback of falling into a phallocentric worldview, the makers of these films held a progressive stance that shows empathy towards the Women’s Liberation movement and the feminist movement that emerged at the time, by positively highlighting the passion and actions of Sada. Considering this, it would be easier to understand why there was an “Abe Sada Renaissance” in the world of films in the 1970s. Abe Sada on stage We must not forget that the “Abe Sada Renaissance” in the 1970s not only occurred in the film world but also in theatre. However, the concepts that some theatrical people used to represent the Abe Sada incident are more advanced than those depicted by filmmakers. A representative example is the play Sada Abe’s Dog (Abe Sada no inu, 1975) by Satō Makoto, an underground theatre playwright. Similar to A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses, which were made around the same time, Sada Abe’s Dog shows a sharp contrast between the 26 February incident and the Abe Sada incident. Sada Abe’s Dog is an imaginary tale that follows a young man who returns home from wandering around Paris, being obsessed with

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 41 suicidal thoughts, and who carries around a pistol wrapped in a cloth. It also tells the story of Sada, who murders Kichizō and carries around his penis wrapped in a cloth. This play is a mysterious avant-garde piece, where the wrappings used by the two characters are accidentally switched. It examines whether or not Abe Sada, who obtains a pistol, has the power to overturn the political system. It is worthy of special mention that Satō’s Sada Abe’s Dog does not positively appraise Sada and Kichizō as Ōshima’s and Tanaka’s films do. As suggested by its title, Sada Abe’s Dog figuratively portrays Kichizō as a “dog” that is obedient to Sada and criticizes such a masochistic fetish as a kind of obedience and powerlessness to Imperial fascism. Similarly, this play depicts Sada as a femme fatale seeking a man that is obedient like a “dog,” and who locks herself up in her personal space (Ikeuchi 2006). As Satō himself describes the pre-war militarism as “masochist” (Satō and Senda 1983, 276), his intent in this play, with respect to both militarism in the public space and intense sexual love in the personal space, is to criticize pre-war Japanese people as immersed in masochism and lacking activity and effectiveness. The potential of masochism, which had been identified by the filmmakers discussed above, was denied by the men and women of the theatre of that period. Abe Sada on film in the late 1990s Similar to the Abe Sada boom of the 1970s in film and theatre, the fourth Abe Sada boom came in the later 1990s with the production of two films. Lost Paradise (Shitsurakuen, 1997) and Sada (Sada: Gesaku Abe Sada no shogai, 1998) were responsible for this boom. Specifically, Lost Paradise was based on Watanabe Junichi’s bestseller novel, which sold three million copies. It was the most popular film of 1997, excluding anime, and became a social phenomenon. Unlike the Abe Sada films in the 1970s, these two films did not contrast the Abe Sada incident with the 26 February incident and, in fact, focused on passionate sexual love alone. Lost Paradise is not based on the Abe Sada incident. This film tells the tale of a contemporary middle-aged editor of a series of Showa history, including the Abe Sada incident, who has an affair with a married woman despite having a wife and children. The story sees the two lovers fall deeply in love and commit suicide together. In the original novel, as the two characters fall deeply in love through their affair, they repeatedly speak about the incident between Sada and Kichizō and decide to pursue their ultimate love by committing suicide. Unlike the original novel, the two lovers do not repeatedly discuss the Abe Sada incident in the film. However, repeated interviews with Watanabe, the writer of the original novel, made it clear that Lost Paradise was written with the Abe Sada incident as its foundation; therefore, people accepted this work by linking both the novel and the film with Abe Sada.

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The fact that this film and the novel were such exceptional mega-hits, becoming a social phenomenon is, I argue, because their content was closely related to the social conditions of Japan towards the end of the 1990s. The conditions related to the fact that, despite the time being near the end of the twentieth century, Japan remained a management and corporate-centred society, failing to achieve the sort of individualism and individual liberation seen in Western countries. Simultaneously, as shown by the low divorce rate (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2018, 1) among Japanese people, they were unable to love freely or achieve sexual love freely. Watanabe stated the following in explaining his motivation for writing: Today’s society is too strictly systematised and there is no room to breathe, and it is not glossy. In particular, the salary men are so bound by corporate ethics and are unable to speak from their heart, without even a bit of wildness … In a society where sexless marriages rule the roost and male–female relationships are nothing more than a light love affair, I dared to write about a heavy love affair. Although the Abe Sada incident took place at a heavy and gloomy time when Japan was swallowed by the wave of totalitarianism, I feel that such a time was not too different from the sense of blockage that is covering Japan now, as we face the end of the century. What we really need now may be a today’s Abe Sada. (Watanabe 1997, 169) This film was a big hit, but there was little critical attention. In fact, general magazines linked this film with “adultery” and “adult love affairs” numerous times. In these magazines, female intellectuals, who had kept quiet at the time of A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses, often discussed the significance and possibilities of female sexuality and affairs by referring to the protagonist’s way of life. The film’s success could be understood in terms of the lack of progress towards individualistic freedoms within Japanese society, despite arriving at the end of the twentieth century. There was also a lack of admiration for freedom of sexual love among contemporary Japanese people, who lost a sense of primitive sexual love, facing the rapid advancement of a consumerist society (Watanabe 1997). The incident between Sada and Kichizō, which took place before the war, was reintroduced as an idealized symbol for contemporary Japanese people. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that Lost Paradise has none of the political connotations of A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. People accepted the Abe Sada incident at the end of the twentieth century without associating it with the 26 February incident, possibly because the “Season of Politics” of the 1960s was already in the past, and Japanese society had distanced itself from political narratives. This demonstrates how Japanese society became depoliticized. Sada, directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko, who is well-known for films like House (Hausu, 1977) and The Girl Who Leapt through Time (Toki o kakeru

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 43 shōjo, 1983), is a direct portrayal of the Abe Sada incident and has more screen time relating to the 26 February incident than A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses do. However, Sada does not contrast Abe Sada to the 26 February incident, depoliticizing the portrayal of the 26 February incident and depicting it in harmony with the Abe Sada incident. Strangely, the film is similar to Lost Paradise. Both films shun political elements and represent pure love alone. For example, there is a slightly absurd scene in this film where Sada and Kichizō walk happily down the street at night, when the military marches and passes by them, and one of the soldiers jumps out of the formation to salute the two from behind while smiling. The last scene of the film shows the back of an old woman, apparently Sada, reminiscing at the beach. The film ends with a fantastical scene showing a military marching across the beach. The main theme of Sada is the pure love between Sada and Kichizō. The military march is deprived of militarist and nationalist elements, becoming only an accessory to colour, providing a harmonious view for love between the two characters. Abe Sada and the twenty-first century The sort of Abe Sada boom seen in the film industry during the twentieth century has yet to appear in the twenty-first century. Although several works reference Abe Sada, there has been no serious critical evaluation of her. Simultaneously, there have been no films concerning the 26 February incident in the twenty-first century. Sada’s Love (Jōnen: Sada no ai, 2008) symbolizes Japan in the twenty-first century. It begins with an absurd scene in which Kichizō is made to wear a military uniform and is executed by the young officers of the 26 February incident. However, Kichizō continues to live even after his death while Sada, living with the headmaster of a high school who is her patron, engages in sexual intercourse with Kichizō from time to time, thereby giving rise to an unrealistic narrative. I hesitate to critically interpret the narrative of Sada’s Love in the same manner as I did in A Woman Called Sada Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. This is because the representations in Sada’s Love of Sada and Kichizō and the 26 February incident consist of miscellaneous collages that do not necessarily seem meaningful; when examined as a whole, this film may not seem like anything more than a parody. The most important reason behind postmodern narratives with slightly bad taste may be because now, in the twenty-first century, the “Season of Politics” may truly be in the past and we have come to a depoliticized era. In today’s Japan, which has seen the prolongation of the Abe Shinzō administration and entry into a more depoliticized era, the semantic struggle of discussing Abe Sada and the 26 February incident, and producing a political narrative through that, is losing its relevance. Furthermore, in twenty-first-century Japan, the sort of intense sexual love seen between Abe Sada and Kichizō may be appealing only as a parody or comedy and may not be what people long for. According to statistics from

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The Japan Society of Sexual Sciences (2002, 167), approximately 40 percent of married couples in 2000 responded that sex happens “several times per year” or “not at all for one year.” In the 2012 survey, this figure grew by 1.8-fold to 73 percent (The Japan Society of Sexual Sciences 2014). This means that Japan is the most sexless country among developed nations. The dilution of sex and changes in spousal relationships have been indicated as reasons for this (The Japan Society of Sexual Sciences 2002, 171), but the extramarital affair boom that came after the social phenomenon of Lost Paradise during the 1990s now seem to be outdated. Having entered the twenty-first century, the reality is that depoliticization is advancing along with desexualization, and this may be depriving the iconic meaning not only from the 26 February incident but also the Abe Sada incident. In the 1970s, excessive political events, such as the Mishima incident and the Asama Mountain Lodge incident, contributed to ending the “Season of Politics.” At that time, progressive film directors such as Ōshima and Tanaka were interested in Abe Sada because Sada and Kichizō’s indulgence in sexual love in the pre-war 26 February incident era was, they considered, a metaphoric antithesis of the violence of politics. In these films, Sada and Kichizō, who turned their back on the public domain, were depicted as embodying antipolitical politics prioritizing the private domain. However, this was also inextricably linked with depoliticization. Ironically, the emphasis on individual freedom and private territory in the anti-politics of these films has a curious similarity with neoliberal thinking represented by the 1980s’ Nakasone government in that it fervently promoted the privatization of companies. In the Abe Sada films of the third Abe Sada boom in the late 1990s, even the antipolitical politics were stripped, and Abe Sada was used as a mere symbol of sexual love. Then, in the twenty-first-century second-rate films, Abe Sada and the 26 February incident, both of which had been linked to politics, are only used as narrative elements of parody and comedy. The transformation of the Abe Sada films from the 1970s to the present overlaps with the long depoliticization process in the “long postwar” period that includes the end of the “Season of Politics” and the development of neoliberalism represented by the Nakasone administration in the 1980s and the Abe administration in the twenty-first century. The history of Abe Sada films demonstrates how tragic it is for the Japanese that trying to acquire individual freedom and private domain as in the West, by breaking from the feudal and pre-modern past, coincided with developing neoliberalism, which also respects the private domain.

Bibliography Abe, Sada. 1948. Abe Sada shuki. Tokyo: Shinbashi Shobō. Amano, Masako, and Fukuda, Ajio (eds). 2006. Kesshu Kessha no Nihonshi. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha.

Negotiating sex, the bizarre, and politics: the Abe Sada incident in films 45 Awazu, Kiyoshi, Ii, Taro, and Hosaka, Kunio. 1976. Showa 11 nen no onna. Tokyo: Tabata Shoten. Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty. New York: Zone Books. Durkheim, Emiles. 2002. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. New York: Routledge. Fuyuki, Ken. 1947. Aiyoku ni nakinureru onna. Tokyo: Kokusai Shobō Ikeuchi, Yasuko. 2006. “Angura engeki ni okeru masukyurinitei no pafomansu.” Ritsumeikan Gengo Bunka Kenkyu 84: 239–255. Inoue, Teruko, Nagao, Yoko, and Funabashi, Kuniko. 2006. “Wuman ribu no shisō to undō.” Wako Daigaku Sogo Bunka Kenkyujyo Nenpo 2006, pp. 134–158. Irigaray, Luce. 1986. The Sex Which Is Not One. Isaka: Cornell University Press. Itsuki, Hiroyuki, Takenaka, Ro, and Ōshima, Nagisa. 1976. “Ai no korīda de Ōshima ga egako to shita mono wa nanika.” Kinema Junpō 678: 106–114. The Japan Society of Sexual Sciences. 2002. Karada to Kimochi. Tokyo: Sangokan. The Japan Society of Sexual Sciences. 2014. “2012 nen chukonen sekushuaritei chosa.” Journal of the Japan Society of Sexual Sciences 32: 67–116. Kimura, Ichiro. 1947. Osada iro zange. Tokyo: Ishigami Shoten. Kumashiro, Tatsumi, and Shindō, Kaneto. 1973. “Taidan Kumashiro Tatsumi and Shindō Kaneto.” Shinario 29 (12): 20–27 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. 2018. Specified Report of Vital Statistics. Murakami, Harumi. 1982. Hitsuji o meguru boken. Tokyo: Kodansha. Nakajima, Sadao. 1969. “Nihon ansatsu hiroku no satsuei hajimaru.” Asahi Shimbun 4 September, p. 8. Oda, Sakunosuke. 1947. Yofu. Tokyo: Fusetsusha. Osawa, Masachi. 2019. Mishima Yukio hutatsu no nazo. Tokyo: Shueisha. Ōshima 1976 Ōshima, Nagisa. 1976. Ai no korīda. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō. Sakaguchi, Ango. 1946. “Darakuron.” Shincho 43 (4): 22–55. Sakaguchi, Ango. 1947. “Abe Sada, Sakaguchi Ango taidan.” Zadan 1: 30–34. Satō, Makoto, and Senda, Akihiko. 1983. Gekiteki runesansu. Tokyo: Riburo Poto. Standish, Isolde. 2006. A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film. London: Continuum Watanabe, Jun’ichi. 1997. “Abe Sada to Shitsurakuen.” Bungei Shunju 75 (4): 162–169.

Filmography 1969 Assassination Right or Wrong (Nihon ansatsu hiroku), 1969. Director: Nakajima Sadao, Tōei. 1983 The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki o kakeru shōjo), 1983. Director: Obayashi Nobuhiko, Tōei. 1977 House (Hausu), 1977. Director: Obayashi Nobuhiko, Tōhō. 1976 In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda), 1976. Director: Ōshima Nagisa, Argos Films. 1969 Love and Crime (Meiji Taisho Showa ryoki onna hanzaishi), 1969. Director: Ishii Teruo, Tōei. 1997 Lost Paradise (Shitsurakuen), 1997. Director: Morita Yoshimitsu, Tōei. 1931 The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyobo), 1931. Director: Gosho Heinosuke, Shōchiku. 1967 Rebellion of Japan (Utage), 1967. Director: Gosho Heinosuke, Shōchiku.

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1998 Sada (Sada: Gesaku Abe Sada no shogai), 1998. Director: Obayashi Nobuhiko, Shōchiku. 2008 Sada’s Love (Johnen: Sada no ai), 2008. Director: Mochizuki Rokuro, Tōei. 1975 A Woman Called Sada Abe (Jitsuroku Abe Sada), 1975. Director: Tanaka Noboru, Nikkatsu. 1973 The World of Geisha (Yojōhan fusuma no urahari) aka A Man and a Woman Behind the Fusuma Screen), 1973. Director: Kumashiro Tatsumi, Nikkatsu.

3

The four lives of Matsugorō the Lawless: agency, constraint, and what is “worthy” of film censorship in trans-war Japan Iris Haukamp From the several incinerators in the courtyard out back, black smoke billowed up twenty-four hours a day, consuming unpublishable manuscripts and great loops of celluloid slashed from films – Tsuchiya Hitoshi, cited in High 2003, 99–100.

A young boy rides joyfully on a smiling man’s shoulders, keeping hold of his hair as the man struts through an old-fashioned Japanese town, beaming into the camera. Close behind them walks a woman, smiling at their antics underneath a bright sky. This lovely three-shot sequence from Inagaki Hiroshi’s (1905–1980) film The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (Muhōmatsu no isshō, 1943) seems to depict a young family, knit as tightly as the framing of the shot. But the situation of the people shown in the frame, as well as the production of “one of the finest and most moving films produced during the war years” (Jacoby 2008, 89) is more complicated. The story, set in the Meiji (1868–1912) and early Taishō (1912–1926) eras, depicts the life of rickshaw puller Tomishima Matsugorō, who helps little Yoshioka Toshio, son of an Imperial Army Captain, after an accident. He becomes involved in the Yoshioka family, and after the husband’s sudden death of an illness, his widow Yoshiko asks Matsugorō to help her raise her son and encourage the masculine qualities viewed as desirable in a young boy at the time. The rickshaw puller changes from a brawler, gambler, and drinker to a caring “surrogate father” to the boy, as well as a reliable companion to the widow, devoting himself selflessly to their wellbeing. The hero’s charismatic appeal has inspired theatre plays, music, manga, TV productions, and tourism attraction in Kitakyūshū’s Kokura City, where the film is set. It was also remade three times in a remarkably short period. The first adaptation of Iwashita Shunsaku’s (1906–1980) novel The Tale of Tomishima Matsugorō (Tomishima Matsugorō den, 1939) came to the screen in 1943. In 1958, Inagaki directed it again to great success, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in the same year. Two more remakes followed in quick succession; in 1963, directed by Murayama Shinji (1922–2021) and in 1965 by Misumi Kenji (1921–1975). All were based on the original 1943 script by Itami Mansaku (1900–1946)1 and featured major

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stars playing Matsugorō: Bandō Tsumasaburo (1901–1953), Mifune Toshiro (1920–1997), Mikuni Rentarō (1923–2013), and Katsu Shintarō (1931–1997). But these are not the four lives of Matsugorō that I am concerned with in this chapter. Instead, I shall focus on the first cinematic Matsugorō, who came to life on the silver screen in the midst of wartime mass mobilization on the road to defeat and reappeared under American occupation (1945–1952). The story of this film provides insight into the impact of political state-censorship on the text in a spiral-like dynamic of construction, deletion, and reconstruction.2 Matsugorō’s 1943 incarnation is now commonly mentioned as one of the rare examples of a Japanese film that was mutilated twice, once by the wartime censors in the Home Ministry (Naimushō) and then again by their occupation period successors at the General Headquarters. The film appears to have been condemned to become shorter and shorter during its life. The wartime censors cut an entire reel, 10 minutes and 43 seconds, from the film, resulting in a running time of 99 minutes, and three more scenes were deleted for the re-release in 1949. The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (hereafter: Muhōmatsu) survived, albeit in its stunted form of 78 minutes. In the 1990s, two of the scenes deleted by the censors within the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (hereafter GHQ) were discovered in the belongings of Miyagawa Kazuo (1908–1999), the film’s cinematographer, and Kadokawa Entertainment released a restored version of 83 minutes in 2007. Rather than the actual material cut in 1949, this footage had been used for test purposes during the original production, and therefore it has no soundtrack (Ōta 1994, 9). The fragments’ silence within a film with a noticeably sophisticated use of sound lends an eerie atmosphere to these “ghost” scenes. Together with existing drafts of the script, they allow us to trace the story of censorship that reshaped the material in 1943 and 1949. In 1958 Inagaki decided to make the film again, this time as the script had intended, resulting in a running time of 103 minutes. The use of Agfacolor film stock and the new TōhōScope widescreen format perhaps exaggerates the impression of postwar-recovery optimism, and it sets the film apart stylistically from the 1943 black-and-white version. Still, as the film was made by the same director with the intention of undoing the censors’ work, it shows what Muhōmatsu could have looked like in 1943 if left to the scriptwriter and director. However, a comparison of the script, the film as released in 1943, its onceagain censored 1949 version, and Inagaki’s remake is also not what I have in mind regarding Matsugorō’s four lives. The film text went through at least four incarnations until 1949, and these shed light on the workings of censorship on overt as well as invisible levels in the lifecycle of the film. The overt aspect of top-down censorship, such as the cutting out of offensive scenes, lends itself to the topic of the politicization of film by varying regimes. The “internalized pre-censor,” however, who anticipated the state-censor’s actions and, himself, acted accordingly while creating the

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text, has largely remained invisible, especially in the story of Muhōmatsu. Yet, adding this distinct political angle and thinking about the film’s politicization and depoliticization by various actors, shows censorship as anything but straightforward and total. Neither overt nor invisible censorship could entirely determine the meaning brought to the film; surrounding texts, such as Itami’s own writing, have to be taken into consideration as well. Muhōmatsu shows the lack of consensus among the censors, the change in what is allowed to be said and when, the complex reading position of the audiences, and how filmmakers stepped in and out of positions of resistance and compliance. When the new Film Law was enacted on 1 October 1939, Article 1 declared its aim “to advance the qualitative improvement of films and to plan the wholesome development of [the] motion picture business, in order to contribute to the progress of national culture” (Salomon 2011, 106). Film, once regarded as entertainment at best and a “bad influence … on the general population” (Greater Japanese Film Association 1935, cited in Salomon 2011) at worst, had suddenly – rhetorically at least – become an active means for government policies, instead of a potentially harmful element to be curbed. The active politicization of film was not new, for instance the Proletarian Film League (Purokino, c. 1927–1934) had used film as a means to spread their messages before their dissolution under police pressure (Nornes 2003, 19–47). This use of the persuasive power of film for nongovernmental, and in particular, leftist goals was also advocated by the documentary film movement, as Hori shows in relation to filmmaker Atsugi Taka’s 1938 translation of Paul Rotha’s book Documentary Film (2017, 114–132). Rotha specifically uses the term “propaganda” for the spreading of socialist critique and reform through documentary films (Hori 2017, 129). Many Japanese filmmakers and critics were in agreement with film’s political role in this sense of the term. On the other hand, when it came to the topdown, state-mandated propaganda, there were also a number of positive responses, including several from former Purokino filmmakers, to the seemingly positive role taken on by the state in financially supporting filmmaking through promotional frameworks, awards, or exemptions from fees. Article 25, which made the screening of culture films (bunka eiga) compulsory, seemed to offer Purokino ex-members a chance to revive their careers, serving “public enlightenment” and the “needs of the nation” (High 2003, 124). Director Yoshimura Kōzaburō (1911–2000) recalls that in his mind, “the social position of film people has never been higher than it was in the middle of the war. We young directors were all infected by national policy fever and strutted about as if we were the purveyors of public enlightenment” (cited in High 2003, 74). Yet, state-mandated propaganda and promotion of films always brings with it positive as well as negative consequences: cinema’s societal function to propagate desired values, at the same time, re-enforced propaganda’s companion, censorship. As what furthered culture, and the very definition of national culture itself, was

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prescribed by the state, alternative visions or criticisms had no place in this environment. The authorities openly declared their state-mandated propaganda as “the cultivation of cultural values and attitudes that would be held so deeply they would appear innate and not imposed” (Kushner 2006, 25). Considering this kind of propaganda as “a deliberate attempt to shape perceptions to achieve a response that furthers a desired action” (Jowett and O’Donnell 1986, 16), the censoring of undesired actions and attitudes can be seen as its counterpart. Some of those immediately confronted with this new politicization of the media remember its negative effects on their professional and personal choices. Leftist film critic Iwasaki Akira, the author of “Cinema as a method of propaganda and agitation” (1929), was arrested in 1940 for openly opposing the 1939 Film Law. After his release from prison – in bad physical condition – he struggled with what was permissible to say and what was not: “At that time, in my heart I always said to myself, if I go this far it will be okay, if I write it this way it will be inside the bounds of safety; I had this kind of self-regulation and vigilance. My pen communicated it, and my writing started veiling the most fundamental things” (Iwasaki, cited in Nornes 2003, 128). This “veiling” points towards a conscious denial of counterhegemonic political agency. Censorship, therefore, by seemingly depoliticizing discourses and deleting politically contentious elements – for our purposes: in films – is just as politicizing as the more obvious case of propaganda. However, what the story of Muhōmatsu brings to the fore is that the politics and policies involved in censorship are not straightforward and unified at all; they comprise external and internal processes, and the grounds for censoring texts are contingent and contested. This effect can be closely observed in Muhōmatsu, as it was developed and altered between 1941, when Itami began working on the script, and 1949, when it was released in a very different political environment. Following an overview of the production history and its politically charged context, I will first trace the cuts made in 1943 and in 1949, in order to understand the thoroughness of the state censors’ physical interventions in the material. I will then go back to 1941 and 1942 when Itami was struggling with and eventually published his second draft of the script, following a first round of pre-production censorship (Itami 1961 [1942b]). Examining the differences between the 1943 release version of the film text and Itami’s second draft of the script reveals another level of changes that is not due to post-production censorship. This sheds light on the subtler ways that films could be rendered conform to the ideology of the period, ways that left no visible scars on the material. It is by now a truism that Japanese wartime censorship was rather overt, indicated for instance by the infamous fuseji (redaction marks), Xs or Os replacing unwanted characters in texts (see Abel 2012), as opposed to the occupation authorities’ covert shaping of the media in order to avoid discord between their activities and their stated

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aim of promoting free speech and democracy: “The occupation censors required Japanese film producers to rework and smooth over deletions to keep the flow of the narrative consistent, whereas the prewar [sic] Japanese censors did not care how inconsistent the film looked after being cut and patched, despite the protests of the filmmakers” (Hirano 1992, 46). Here, the different dynamics of censorship regimes become visible, and we will see an example of such “rough censoring” in 1943. But still, subtlety and smoothness were demanded by the studios, audiences, and filmmakers adhering to professional standards, and so this occurred at the scriptwriting stage and therefore allowed – or condemned – the censored writer to make the film flow according to good filmmaking practices. Hirano further argues that there was no need for the pre-occupation censors to disguise their work because of Japan’s long-standing tradition and hence implicit social acceptance of censorship (Hirano 1992, 45–46). Together with an increase in pressure and eventual significant tightening of censorship around the time of Muhōmatsu’s inception, this “tradition” impacted on the film before the censor even saw the script. “Matsugorō’s four lives” therefore denote Itami’s political and personal considerations prewriting, the pre-production interventions and re-shapings by censors and writer, the mutilations of the completed film in 1943, and then again in 1949. At the same time, instances of creativity and commentary which cannot be considered anything but political in the context of mass mobilization measures, and an audience well versed in dealing with and deciphering redaction marks and continuous commentaries by censors and writers, bring to the foreground the issue of individual agencies vis-a-vis these processes.

Production background Iwashita’s novel Tomishima Matsugorō den was published in the October 1939 issue of the literary magazine Kyūshū Bungaku (Kyushu Literature). It drew the attention of critics and was republished in 1940 and also entered – albeit unsuccessfully – for the prestigious Naoki Sanjūgo Award. Given the novel’s popularity and the Japanese film industry’s predilection for literature adaptations (see McDonald 2000), it is not surprising that various film companies toyed with the idea of turning the material into a film. Inagaki had had to give up his plan to make the film at Nikkatsu Studios, however, due to the lack of a suitable star, and the Shinkō and Tōhō Studios did not follow through with the idea either (Ōta 1997, 7).3 Itami, a prominent scriptwriter and director of mainly jidaigeki (period films), had joined the Nikkatsu Studios in February 1941. His bad health – he suffered from tuberculosis – and a downturn in the critical reception of his work from 1937 had led to his withdrawal from directing in 1938. Still, he remained involved in the film world by reviewing and suggesting revisions of scripts by young scriptwriters in the foremost film journal at the time, Nippon Eiga (Kitsnik 2018). Tomishima Matsugorō was suggested to him by

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Nikkatsu’s new studio head Soga Masabumi4 (1906–1987) as his comeback as writer and director (Itami 1961 [1941a], 248). The writing process of A Good Guy (Ii yatsu), as the script was titled initially, proved lengthy. Itami was fastidious, refining and revising his drafts several times, and – apart from his frail health impeding his work – three conditions put additional pressure on him and the project. The project gave him the chance to regain his reputation and secure a livelihood within an industry under pressure. He was also apprehensive regarding the critical reception of his script and initially refused to have a draft version published in a journal as was usual, despite several requests (Itami 1961 [1942b]). In his column, he had often voiced harsh critiques on the work of others, and it appears as if he feared retribution. Finally, Article 9 of the 1939 Film Law had made the pre-production censorship of scripts compulsory, and the censors’ interventions necessitated redrafting and resubmissions. Getting a project from the planning stage to its eventual release became increasingly difficult, not only due to purely ideological issues. Worsening international relations and the resulting embargoes began impeding the supply of raw film material. Nitrate was being used for film stock and explosives alike, and the times called for the latter. From 1940, censorship was controlled by the Cabinet Information Bureau,5 and on 16 August 1940, Kawazura Ryūzō, the head of the new Bureau’s Section Five and responsible for allocating film stock, called company executives to his office to explain that film stock would no longer be available for civilian purposes. Taken together with the chief of the Army Press Section Yahagi Nakao’s (1895–1949) coinciding statement that “films are bullets” and none could be wasted, it was clear to the film world that they were being coerced into putting their work completely into the service of the war effort (High 2003, 315; Ōta 1995). In order to rationalize the use of resources and to increase control, the government planned to consolidate the ten existing feature companies into just two; eventually, through manoeuvring and negotiations, three feature film companies emerged out of the restructuring: Tōhō, Shōchiku, and the new Dai Nippon Eiga (Greater Japan Film, Daiei), formed through a merger of Daitō, Shinkō, and Nikkatsu’s production section on 27 January 1942, the same month in which Itami’s draft for Muhōmatsu was published in the Eiga Hyōron (Itami 1961 [1942b]). Each company was limited to producing only two films per month, as compared to the bigger studios’ previous output of about 30 features (High 2003, 315–318). In 1935, Japan had produced 470 films, and the 87 productions made in 1942 demonstrate the bleak situation (High 2003, 315–318). These significant, unnerving changes provide part of the background for Itami as he was working on the script. He and Inagaki automatically became members of Daiei on its establishment, and Soga kept supporting the project in his new position as a board director at Daiei (Ōta 1997, 7). Yet, Itami eventually would not direct the film. His tuberculosis – which led to his

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death a few years later on 21 September 1946 – flared up again during this period, and the double role of directing and guiding the film through the censorship process fell to Inagaki. According to the recollections of former censor Toba Yukinobu (1916–1992), the civilian bureaucrats of the Cabinet Information Bureau were split into two groups, whose rather different perspectives resulted in infighting about Muhōmatsu: He characterizes the “old guard” with their Police Bureau backgrounds (keisatsu batake shusshin) as inherently conservative, whereas many within the younger group of recent University of Tokyo graduates admired the film’s artistry. Muhōmatsu was “some sort of Guadalcanal of film censorship,” illustrating the fact that even among the professionals, opinions on what was worthy of censorship were divided (Toba 1961, 26). Resistance also came from within Daiei itself. The newly founded “Greater Japan Film” company specialized in producing jidaigeki (period films) as well as national policy films (kokusaku eiga) that underlined the wartime rhetoric, bullets in the “great world war of ideologies” (High 2003, 319; Salomon 2011, 172–173).6 Apart from the fact that, as Ōta points out, Muhōmatsu was an abnormality in being neither a heroic tale nor a premodern sword film (1997, 3), those responsible at Daiei harboured reservations regarding the film’s content and its anticipated failure in passing preproduction censorship. In Ōta’s interpretation, there was already too much at stake financially for those involved, including Itami, and Inagaki decided to intervene in the film in order for it to make it to the screens (Ōta 1997, 3). Filming began in February 1943 and finished in late August. But what was the issue with this heart-warming story of a simple, goodhearted man who devotedly and unconditionally helps a soldier’s widow and young son? Inagaki stated that, at the time, he wished to do his best for the war effort, and it appeared to him that a warm film about human kindness could provide comfort and support public morale during increasingly hard times (cited in Ōta 1997, 4). Furthermore, selfless service to others and, by extension, to the community seems to integrate flawlessly into the wartime rhetoric of national mobilization (kokka sōdōin). While the ideology of the family state (kazoku kokka) stressed the family as its smallest unit, according to Standish, in cultural representation women were side-lined and replaced by men – idealized father figures – in their roles as nurturers (2005, 82). This channelling of patriotic sentiments through idealized masculinity can be observed in the paternal officer figures in films such as Burning Sky (Moyuru ōzora, Abe Yutaka, 1940), or Yamamoto Kajirō’s The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay (Hawaii maree oki kaisen, 1942), and Colonel Kato’s Falcon Squadron (Katō hayabusa sentōtai, 1944), who guide their young charges into becoming fully-fledged pilots or through battle. The dictum also applies to Matsugorō taking on the father role to little Toshio and seemingly recompleting the smallest unit of the state. And his change from a drinking, brawling, and gambling ruffian to this loving fatherly figure surely would

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have appealed to the authorities on their quest to instil adequate “public manners and morality” (fūzō) in a society at war?

Wartime deletions However, Matsugorō’s brawling and gambling was one of the first issues that concerned the pre-production censor, and that Itami reworked in his drafts. Given that 1940 had seen another tightening of regulations, asking for “wholesome entertainment films for the nation” (kenzen kokumin goraku eiga) and forbidding, for instance; the depiction of personal happiness as a goal, the lower classes, a wealthy lifestyle, and drinking alcohol in cafés (Makino 2003, 495), these problems could have been foreseen, but apparently this did not deter Itami from this first attempt at “slipping through” his low-class, alcohol-loving protagonist. The nearly 11 minutes (10:43 min) later cut from the completed film were also all due to violations of standards for “public manners and morality” (Ōta 1994, 7, 9). Four pieces fell victim to the scissors before the film’s release on 28 October 1943. Yet, the concern about public morality this time had nothing to do with roughhousing, but with the relationship between Matsugorō and Yoshioka Yoshiko (Sonoi Keiko, 1913–1945), the widow of Captain of the Imperial Army Yoshioka Kotarō (Nagata Yasushi, 1907–1972). Bridging the class difference between the officer’s widow and the rickshaw puller would have upset the rigid social order, threatening the precarious balance needed to control home-front behaviour, of which officer’s wives such as Yoshiko were supposed to be models (Makino 2003, 506). And not only was it impossible for an uncultivated downtown-dweller to express his love for such a woman, but also the idea that a soldier could die (at the increasingly dangerous front) and be replaced by such a man had to remain unthinkable in order to retain the fighting spirit. In Inagaki’s account of events – which once more demonstrates the nature of statecensorship as far from monolithic – one censor personally liked the film but could not allow the scenes that touched upon Matsugorō’s feelings for Yoshiko. Because the removal of this motif would have destroyed what was special about the film, the censor recommended waiting until the end of war and releasing it then. Inagaki eventually decided to “voluntarily” censor it so that it could be released (Ōta 1997, 5). Contrary to the impression of Matsugorō’s selfless devotion, the film when it was scrutinized by the postproduction censors contained four scenes in which his romantic feelings towards Yoshiko becomes obvious and that therefore were cut: The intellectually disabled help at the teahouse, Bon-san (Komai Akaru), is playing a board-game with Matsugorō when Yoshiko arrives to ask for help: Toshio (the older Toshio was played by Kawamura Kamon, 1918–1999) and his private school friends plan to fight with 55their “rivals” from public school during the night’s celebrations of the surrender of Tsingtao to the Japanese forces (7 November 1914). Worried, she asks

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Matsugorō to look after her son. The following nine seconds were deleted: After she leaves, Bon-san laughs and points, alluding to the rickshaw man being in love with her; Matsugorō sends him flying with a punch on the head. Further on in the film, Toshio prepares to leave for the prestigious Number Five Senior High School (Daigo kōtōgakkō, one of the forerunners of Kyūshū University) in Kumamoto. He feels embarrassed by the rickshaw puller still calling him by the affectionate name “Bon bon” (kid) of his childhood. Yoshiko asks the man to address her son as “Yoshioka san” from now on. Matsugorō incredulously asks: “Just like a stranger?” The issue of class comes to the foreground and Matsugorō, increasingly lonely, starts drinking heavily again. The affecting scene takes place in the local pub, where his friends advise him to find a bride. He glances at a poster above the bar; the painted woman advertising sake bears some resemblance to Yoshiko. Stating that, “I won’t have to feed this beauty,” he asks the barman for the poster. His statement and asking for the poster were edited out, and the scene ends with a cut from his glancing to an eye-line shot of a close-up on the poster.7 Ironically, the next scene begins with the widow arriving at his house, and so the ellipsis (2 min. 37 seconds) created by the censor’s action in effect still establishes a relationship between him looking longingly at the woman on the poster, and the woman approaching his house. The next cut eliminated the most footage: Almost eight minutes were deleted after Matsugorō plays the giant “Gion drum” at the local festival. Toshio has returned from school with his teacher (Togami Jōtarō, 1916–1980), who is interested in hearing the famous local style of playing these special drums. On learning that nobody knows the proper style anymore, both the teacher and Toshio look disappointed. Once again, Matsugorō comes to the rescue: Climbing onto the float holding the drum, he begins drumming and explaining the various styles. Cuts between the man’s increasingly passionate drumming, his now-naked torso dripping with sweat, and the admiring onlookers serve to reinstate momentarily Matsugorō’s pride, masculinity and status, damaged by Toshio’s rejection, his own drinking and social transformation. The editing creates a powerful sequence by mixing in shots of waves crashing against rocks, the cheering crowd and the sun, and various close-ups on a smiling Matsugorō. Quick pans, tilts, and changes of camera angles contribute to the dynamic appeal of the sequence that ends in a superimposition of the silhouettes of several rickshaw men running towards the camera. This cathartic scene celebrates Matsugorō’s and, in extension, traditional working-class masculinity in the changing circumstances of Japan’s rapid modernization.8 However, the following scene, initiated by the rickshaws, develops into a strange, seemingly unrelated montage sequence of artful double and triple superimpositions of flowers, dancing children, balloons, and scenes from the past, such as Matsugorō taking part in a race to humour Toshio, or the train that took the boy away to school. A cut to a snowy landscape is followed by a cut to a scene inside a house, where the town elders tell Yoshiko that

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Matsugorō left money to her son in a savings book. This is how we learn of his death. The rapid change of mood is disturbing and is an effect of censorship rather than a gaffe in scriptwriting. As Abel points out concerning acoustic continuity from the festival scene to the montage sequence: The suddenness of the incongruous sound cutting at this one moment in a film otherwise remarkable for its fluid use of sound technologies was the point that draws attention to an otherwise seamless narrative. This irksome jump signals something wrong to contemporary critics. And indeed, it marks the place in the film where the love scene had been cut. (2012, 214) The “love scene” was the most dangerous moment as the film went through censorship, threatening all efforts to end in failure: One evening, a few days after the festival, Matsugorō comes to the Yoshioka house. It is obvious that he has come to tell Yoshiko something significant, but he hesitates, his facial expression revealing his tortured state. Yoshiko finally cajoles him into speaking and, kneeling before a portrait of her deceased husband, he bursts out, “I am lonely … I will go away so that I don’t have to see you anymore.” On her attempt to understand what he is trying to say he shouts: “I have impure thoughts! I’m sorry….” He runs off, leaving a distressed Yoshiko behind (Itami 1961 [1942b], 322). In the following sequence we see him run through Kokura, arrive at his house, and later – time’s passing signified by close-ups on turning rickshaw wheels – slowly pulling his cart through the deserted town, and getting drunk again. The poster of his “fictional” Yoshiko appears two times in this sequence. Finally, a drunk, dishevelled Matsugorō stumbles through the snow and eventually falls down to die of a heart attack, induced by his excessive drinking, just like his father, as he had predicted to his friends in the pub. After this cut of 7 minutes and 50 seconds (Ōta 1994, 6) the film resumes with the aforementioned montage sequence and the discussion about his estate. Toba remembers that the head of his team blurted out that the “love scene” accounted to “night stalking” and that the love of a rickshaw man for a soldier’s widow was scandalous: “I definitely won’t pass such an unpatriotic film!” (1961, 26). The film passed, but the scene had to go. The resulting lack of cause and effect with regard to Matsugorō’s sudden death severely damaged the film as a whole. Finally, a very subtle inference into the montage sequence demonstrates how unthinkable the idea of an attraction between the uncultivated rickshaw puller and the widow of an officer of the imperial army had to remain: The shooting script indicates three close-up shots of Yoshiko (Ōta, 1994, 5). These shots, amounting to seven seconds, were carefully removed from the complex composition of double- and triple exposures, certainly not an easy task. Although the cuttings were done more or less artfully, the rigorous deletions rendered the narrative shallow, even confusing. Still, in 1949

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Muhōmatsu was seen as fit for a re-release, but only after more cuttings deleted even more of its substance.

Postwar cuttings After 15 August 1945, the situation changed, drastically in some respects, not that much in others. Following Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces, film continued to be considered an essential means for education and for changing people’s attitudes and actions. Hence, despite the reinstitution of freedom of speech, in their pursuit of democratization, the “occupation government exercised control over the media by means of propaganda and censorship” (Hirano 1992, 35). Scripts and completed films had to be presented to the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE), which could “suggest” alterations to make the work conform to the occupation objectives (Hirano 1992, 47). The military censors of the Pictorial and Broadcasting Division (PPB) within the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) examined the final film as well, deciding on whether it was fit for release.9 In many ways, “the Occupation censorship was even more exasperating than Japanese military censorship had been because it insisted that all traces of censorship be concealed. This meant that articles had to be rewritten in full, rather than merely submitting XXs for the offending phrases” (Keene 1984, 967). And furthermore, as Hirano points out, competition over authority invariably led to disagreement between the two sections (1992, 47), which complicated the situation for filmmakers trying to pursue their careers. In a film-loving country such as Japan, film was also an important means for the instalment of a semblance of normal life. New films were being produced and censored – in fact, filmmaking stopped only very briefly, with directors such as Yamamoto Kajirō learning about the dropping of the atomic bombs while on location – under strict guidelines regarding their content (see Hirano 1992). “Old” films were inspected with a view towards their re-release: 236 feature films produced after the Manchurian Incident of 1931 were banned from exhibition, due to militarist, nationalist, or feudalist motifs. When it was announced that Muhōmatsu would come back to the screens on 7 March 1949, “pulling the strings of love and tears of thousands of people and following their fervent wishes,” the advertisement contained the label shinpan (new version) (Yomiuri 1949).10 In fact, from 1946 the control of content even increased due to the perceived postwar communist threat. The already large number of civilian and military American censors (amongst which were numerous Americans of Japanese descent) was bolstered through the employment of local Japanese, whose knowledge of the language and cultural details was crucial (Yamamoto 2013, 129–193). The “new version” of Muhōmatsu was in fact a “newly censored” version, with three scenes that were considered harmful to the occupation authorities’ re-education efforts deleted. Interestingly, the scenes of gambling that Itami had to remove at the scriptwriting

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stage would have led to problems in 1949 as well, as “antisocial activities,” if not portrayed in an explicitly moralistic manner, were as unacceptable to the occupation censors as they had been to the wartime bureaucrats (Yamamoto 2013, 74–77). What was evaluated entirely differently in 1943 and in 1949, however, was the use of history. Both the film and the novel are set in the early twentieth century. References to actual historical events lend the story a realist touch, but during the Meiji Period, Japan not only industrialized at a high speed, it also emerged as a military force to be reckoned with before the Western powers’ surprised eyes. The rapid acquisition of colonies, the victories in the first Sino-Japanese war, (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese war (1904–1905), as well as being on the winning side of the first World War (1914–1919), led to Japan being recognized as one of the great international powers. But when GHQ examined Muhōmatsu, these previous military successes and the associated nationalist sentiments became an issue. Eight minutes were cut, including a lantern procession and fireworks in celebration of Japan winning the RussoJapanese War (30 seconds). This scene was found in Miyagawa’s collection and reinserted into the film: Cuts and dissolves between fireworks, banners proclaiming the “great victory,” newspaper clippings about the “triumphal return” of army and navy troops, and long shots of the celebrating town give the scene a veneer of verisimilitude, reminiscent of similar techniques used in full-blown kokusaku eiga, such as The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay, that chronicles the run-up towards the attack on Pearl Harbour. The second recovered scene (three minutes) was also deleted due to militarist undertones and takes place later in the film, when Toshio is about to fight the public-school boys. Somewhat poignantly, this cut immediately follows the wartime deletion of Bon-san pointing out Matsugorō’s attraction to the widow. The fall of Tsingtao is being celebrated in a big procession; geisha playing the shamisen, people dancing and wearing masks, and the schoolboys carrying paper lanterns. They sing old military songs that, by the time of the scene’s temporal setting had been transformed into high school “dormitory songs.” “The Bloodshed of River Amur” (Amūrugawa no ryūketsu ya, 1901) for instance deals with the Russian military’s attack on Chinese settlers in 1900, resulting in the death of thousands (Paine 1996, 213), and had been utilized during the RussoJapanese War to discredit Russia. As Ōta points out, under the occupation, “war songs,” but also general scenes of singing were suppressed in films in order to prevent mass stirrings of militarist sentiments (1994, 10–13; Hirano 1992, 49). He goes on to argue that these cuttings were overzealous, as that war had ended over 40 years ago and the victorious mood represented in the scenes was directed against the Soviet Union, not the United States (Ōta 1994, 10–13). However, the wartime regime had used depictions of the past to stress Japan’s greatness and this scene tapped into this representational convention. Clearly, the depiction of Japan’s past military successes was to be avoided in 1949.

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The third and longest cut can only be restored through reference to the scripts. Young Toshio (Sawamura Akio aka Nagato Hiroyuki, 1934–2011) was asked to sing the song “Green Leaf Flute” (Aoba no fue) for a school recital. Scared, he needs Matsugorō’s encouragement to prepare for the big day by stepping up on the family’s dining table and practising the song. The eventual performance is successful; Yoshiko, hiding her proud tears and a cheering Matsugorō sit next to each other in the audience. The iconic shot of all three returning home, Toshio riding on Matsugorō’s shoulders, occurs at the end of this entirely deleted scene. “Green Leaf Flute” was another song arranged in the Meiji Period for elementary schools. The scene was cut because of the song’s “feudal” nature (Ōta 1997, 9). Dealing with the death of Taira no Atsumori (1169–1184) during the Battle of Ichinotani (Ichinotani kassen) in the Genpei Wars (1180–1185), the song, in fact, tells a sad tale of regret and the tragedy of war, but its association with Japan’s feudal age and samurai heroism led to its deletion. The deletion of this scene brings up the issue of continuity in a double sense: Firstly, the cutting here is exceedingly crude. The cut occurs in the middle of a shot of Matsugorō sitting down, cutting his movement in half, and contradicting the usual accounts of the invisibility of occupation censorship as opposed to the wartime censors’ carelessness. In light of the previously mentioned subtle cutting of Matsugorō’s memories of Yoshiko from the montage scene, this distinction, at least in the case of Muhōmatsu seems less clear-cut. This also supports Abel’s argument regarding wartime censorship that “continuity was foremost in the film censor’s mind. The censor’s fear of destroying continuity can be seen as the fear of making censorship known” (2014, 213). And indeed, turning to continuity’s second meaning, the supposed breaks between pre-war, war, and postwar appear less solid: In order to pick up the cultural and ideological nuances of “Green Leaf Flute” that most people would not have thought about twice, the postwar censors had to be trained in “censor-like” thinking, an ability that was only made possible by the long history of censorship and its sibling, state-mandated propaganda, in Japan.

Traditions of censorship It is this tradition that impacted on the film beyond the cuttings. As Kushner argues concerning the general populace’s cooperation in the war effort despite personal hardships: “propaganda has existed in Japan for centuries, but only with the advent of modern media did appeal to an instantaneous mass audience become possible” (2006, 7). Film came onto the government’s radar only about twelve years after it had been introduced to Japan. In 1908, the Metropolitan Police Department banned a film on the French Revolution, The Reign of Louis XVI (Le Régne de Louis XVI, 1905) (Sharp 2011, xxi). The film was nevertheless exhibited, with “antimonarchist” sentiments “removed” by changing the title and the film narrator’s

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lines (Hirano 1992, 13), but from here onwards the authorities scrutinized – and intervened into – film texts. Throughout Japan’s rise to global power, governmental control of film increased, eventually culminating at the high point of the Asia-Pacific War. With the resulting reduction of overall output, there was little room for “mistakes.” The question of how to make a film that would pass the censors influenced the filmmakers’ moral, artistic, and intellectual decisions and positions. The knowledge of what topics were acceptable was available to them because of the long backstory of manoeuvring governmental guidelines and regulations. How to deal with them was a matter of personal choice. Fu has summarized the possible positions of “Passivity, resistance and collaboration” in such circumstances as too compartmentalizing; people’s responses are more complex and often ambiguous (1993). As Itami wrote in the context of Muhōmatsu, “since I’ve been involved in this profession, the spirit of the age changed drastically several times” (Itami, 1961 [1941], 249). The question then was how to interact with these changes on a personal as well as professional level. When Itami started writing his script, he was well aware that it was not “the best material for the spirit of the times” (1961 [1941], 249). A rough, uneducated man who eventually drinks himself to death was an undesirable protagonist, also harking back to the state’s longstanding concern about “public decorum.” And romantic love blossoming between the two protagonists was inconceivable under wartime conditions. As Abel demonstrates with regard to fiction books, peaks in censorship, in other words crack-downs on undesirable content, were invariably followed by a sharp drop, not necessarily because of laxness or willing cooperation, but because the preceding pressure had acted to “kill” ideas (2014, 12). Following this argument and Iwasaki’s recollections, writers had a constant “internal censor” in their minds, who prevented certain ideas from surfacing.

Censorship’s ghostly traces Most scholarship on censorship concentrates on what is lost. But censorship does not necessarily always entail deletion; motifs could also enter a film because of – not despite – the system. A scene in the middle of Muhōmatsu draws attention: While Matsugorō is having a snack of rakkyo (pickled scallion) at home, Toshio is intrigued by the scars on the man’s legs and starts pushing into them, asking if it hurts. Matsugorō denies, “even if it really hurt, I wouldn’t cry like you would.” Toshio insists that even Matsugorō must have cried as a child, “all children cry.” “Well, I did cry sometimes, but I was no cry-baby like you.” After cajoling a reluctant Toshio into eating rakkyo, so “you’ll become strong like me,” he goes on to tell a story of the one time he could not stop crying as a child. A fade-toblack initiates the ensuing flashback scene. The film contains two more flashbacks, the first one at the beginning where Matsugorō recounts a

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dispute with a police kendo instructor, and the second one is Captain Yoshioka’s memory of how he saw Matsugorō for the first time. The first two flashback scenes are stylistically congruous with the rest of the film, starting from the simple cut between present, past, and back to present, while the third scene showing Matsugorō’s childhood experience is not. The first marker of this scene standing out is the fade-to-black instead of the usual cuts or dissolves. Secondly, the talk turning towards the past is initiated by the sound of a flute, steadily gaining in volume. The music stops in the middle of the flashback sequence but – after a section with dialogue-only soundtrack – returns and merges into an eerie, orchestral piece. The story is about young Matsu running away from home and his cruel stepmother to find his father who is working in the mountains. At the orchestral music’s onset, the visuals turn very peculiar. Matsu is walking through a desolate landscape of barren, crooked trees, and the image cuts between the lonely little boy and his point-of-view shots of trees, which – in tandem with the music – appear increasingly uncanny. The pronounced blurry-edge iris photography, low-angle tracking shots of dark, crooked branches, close-ups on the boy turning around uncomfortably and a dynamic down-up tilt shot of a tree are finally surpassed by a shot of a white, ghostly appearance of indefinite shape floating and moving towards Matsu. The visuals, eerie as they are, fulfil Itami’s instructions in the script: “The ghost can be as grotesque as possible, but I would like it to be extremely beautiful in terms of photography” (Itami 1961 [1942b], 299). When Matsu finally sees his father’s hut, the visuals switch back to “normal.” Once father and son are reunited, Matsu relieves his fear in a crying fit, his wailing providing a sound bridge back into the present. This scene is conspicuous not necessarily because it sits oddly within the narrative, but for visual and acoustic reasons. Indeed, it was not supposed to be part of the film before an early round of pre-production censorship, the ghost of which literally appears in the finished product. As Itami wrote about his “scenario troubles” in late 1941, he was asked to remove a scene in a gambling den out of concern for public morals, “and I will have to invent another side plot” (1961 [1941], 252). When the second draft was published in Eiga Hyōron in January 1942, he had found a solution: “I added an episode about Matsugorō’s childhood that was not present in the first draft. In the end, I do not think that the script became worse because of it” (1961 [1942a], 254). The script did not become worse, indeed, as we sympathize even more with Matsugorō, who was once a scared child with a difficult family background, and begin to understand his affection towards Toshio, having to grow up without a father altogether. Yet, this add-in, required by the censorship process, draws attention to itself through the stylistic and aesthetic inconsistencies with the rest of the film and carries a second, non-diegetic layer of meaning. Albeit not as consciously political as Brecht’s alienation effect that jolts the audience out of the illusion of the film as a self-contained

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world to spur them into political action, it still disturbs the experience. By making us wonder about its purpose, it brings into focus the politicization of the (visual) media by the government and their shaping by the censors according to what is deemed “worthy” to be seen or to be deleted.

Subtle and not-so-subtle hints of love In Itami’s second draft, the reciprocal feelings of love between Yoshiko and Matsugorō come through subtly, but clearly; not only in the aforementioned cut-out scenes but also in elements that never made it into the film. For instance, after Matsugorō confessed his “impure thoughts” and ran off, Yoshiko starts sobbing violently (Itami 1961 [1942b], 322). In the 1943 release version’s final scene, the town boss (kaoyaku), Yūki Jūzō11 (Tsukigata Ryūnosuke, 1902–1970), holds up two savings books for Yoshiko to see, one in the name of Tomishima Matsugorō and one for Yoshioka Toshio. The scene ends with Yūki, sitting formally in the middle of the frame declaring that, “He was a rare, wonderful man” (mezurashii kippu no ii hito datta naa). This is followed by a brief shot of Matsugorō’s deserted home, before the film ends. We have only met Yūki once before, at the beginning of the film, acting as a mediator after Matsugorō started a free-for-all brawl in a theatre. The final verdict on the charismatic protagonist – of whom we do not even know how and why he died – being given by a relatively unrelated character leaves a stale aftertaste. This lack of closure, however, does not reflect the scriptwriter’s skills but the political environment. Several lines from the script were deleted by the preproduction censors. The last and therefore most impactful words being given to a male “official” relates well to the militarist discourse of the time. And as with the montage sequence, “Yoshiko” was almost deleted from the scene: In the script, the two savings books are inscribed with “Yoshioka Yoshiko” and “Yoshioka Toshio,” which changes the meaning significantly. On seeing this, she cries out “We never did anything for him!” Following Yūki’s statement about Matsugorō’s superior character, the script’s final three (deleted) lines are dedicated to Yoshiko: “The widow slips behind the folding screen, where Matsugorō’s ashes are kept. She exclaims, 'Matsugorō san!' and her unstoppable wailing comes drifting from behind the screen” (Itami 1961 [1942b], 325). Her feelings for him thus constitute our last impression, which would have made for a very different viewing experience. But was “love” really absent from the film as it was released? Abel points out that “the high point of imperial censorship saw more indexes of banned books circulated, more essays on censorship published, more works of erotic and proletarian fiction produced, and more redaction marks printed than at any other time” (Abel 2012, 3). Some writers wrote in favour of the system, some pushed back by writing about censorship, making the system visible. The fact that the impact of censorship is openly

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mentioned in published articles, such as Itami’s writings on the film, is not as remarkable as it seems, as the state’s control over intellectual output was performed, commented on, and played with quite overtly. In the case of Muhōmatsu, not only had the script been published a year before the eventual release, but so had been Iwashita’s novel in 1939; journalists attended previews prior to the cuttings (Abel 2012, 213–214; Ōta 1996, 6). And Tsumura Hideo (1907–1985), writing his film critiques under the pseudonym “Q,” mentions that the confession scene, as well as the last part, was removed by the censors (Tsumura 1943). Furthermore, audiences and writers had since been trained to read and write between the lines or between interrelated texts. In his articles, Itami in fact indicates romantic love as a motif in both novel and film: Concerning the intrinsic quality of the material he worked with, he “thought that it depicts ‘the beauty and sadness of people born with great potential but not once blessed with the chance of polishing them.’ Sometimes I also felt the beauty of … emptying the self and serving others.” But in November 1941, he had “come to the interpretation that Tomishima Matsugorō den is nothing else than a strange love [story]. It is incredible that I hadn’t understood such a simple thing until now.” He goes on to explicate how the novel works to make one forget that it is, in effect, a love story (Itami 1961 [1941a], 250–251). Therefore, to express this love, he added in the episode with Bon-san, but “it did not work out as hoped” (Itami 1961 [1941a], 251). Eventually, it was deleted from the film. The beauty of emptying the self and serving others serves the war effort, the love story does not. Without alluding to censorship, Itami lists the two interpretations of what the story pretends to be and what it is. Informed film-aficionados could certainly read the second interpretation, and they also could read the novel, which pulls a very transparent veil over the state of affairs between Yoshiko and Matsugorō (Iwashita 1981). Furthermore, Itami made a significant change to Matsugorō’s lines in the infamous “love scene.” Iwashita has him say, “Mrs Yoshioka, I’m terribly lonely. Mrs Yoshioka, I’m….” (Iwashita 1981 [1939], 82). However, in the film script, he tells her that he will go away and that he has “impure thoughts” (ore no kokoro wa kitanai, lit. “my heart is soiled”) (Itami 1961 [1942b], 319). Here, Matsugorō’s confession of his love is stronger, and it also carries a moral judgement. Furthermore, it seems to echo the notion of lust that had been visibly deleted – replaced by fuseji – by the censors from Iwashita’s novel (1981 [1939], 43). It is, in short, a rather paradoxical and inherently political message. Matsugorō condemns himself for his attraction to Yoshiko, and thus confirms public morals that prohibit such a relation. However, if we empathize with the character and his suffering (and hers), it simultaneously condemns the very system that causes their pain. Muhōmatsu set a new box-office record for 1943; it was rated the best film of the year by the Eiga Hyōron critics (Daiei 1951), and revived in 1949, a success that is perhaps due to its humanist appeal. As Standish shows, the

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wartime regime was not opposed to the depiction of individualism, “as long as it was directed towards the goals of the nation-state,” as for instance with the “goal-orientated hero” whose upward social mobility only becomes possible within and simultaneously bolsters the militarist context of his army training and exploits (2005, 179). But Matsugorō is denied individual fulfilment due to oppressive social structures; his lack of education and low social status go hand in hand. Itami’s comment that the protagonist was never given the chance to fulfil his potential is translated into the dialogue of an early scene in the film. Captain Yoshioka is impressed by Matsugorō’s capability and character and laughingly tells him: Yoshioka:

If you were recruited by the army, you would be a colonel, for sure. Matsugorō: You are wrong. Yoshioka: I am wrong? Why? Matsugorō: I would be a general. Yoshioka: You are right, and I am wrong. The implicit statement that the rickshaw puller never had a chance criticizes impenetrable social hierarchies early on in the film, albeit in a joking manner; yet the lingering question of personal happiness and fulfilment hinges on the notion of family. And while Matsugorō instilling masculine virtues into the young boy and potential soldier does serve the wartime “family state” (kazoku kokka), a humanist undercurrent of individual happiness and affection drives the narrative and drama. Individual fulfilment and the serving of the state is almost realized in Matsugorō and young Toshio’s relationship, until the man is asked to use the formal “Yoshioka san” as a form of address, reopening the class gap. The forbidden notion of romantic love between individuals that, as Standish traces, was reintroduced only after the end of war (2005, 210–211), however, remains. The reinstitution of humanist notions in terms of the individual, rather than the institution being at the centre of the narrative, as well as of romantic love, according to Desser, was due to yet another legacy: The problems of the individual vis-à-vis society had been explored already in the prewar period by the leftist, socially conscious but short-lived wave of “tendency films” (keikō eiga), following in the tradition of shingeki (new theatre) that inspired by European Naturalist theatre pushed a theatrical revolution in terms of styles and concerns from the Meiji period onwards (1988, 21–23). Muhōmatsu seems to hark back to these concepts about the individual, which explains not only the nostalgic affection it evoked in 1943 and 1949, but also, following Desser’s argument, it linking easily with the “callow” notion of hyūmanizumu that became a buzzword in the postwar film world (Standish 2005, 211). The film carried the idea of individual fulfilment, love and family through all interferences. The remaining material, after all the deletions and changes of regime, still contains Matsugorō's love. The

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contested poster of the woman resembling Yoshiko flutters in the wind in the final shot of Matsugorō's deserted home, although only clearly visible by pausing the video, a technical option that was not available to the film's original audiences. Still, in terms of the material comprising what remains of the film, the dream of Yoshiko is still part of it. And what the audience could see are several shots of Matsugorō, Yoshiko, and Toshio together in the frame. While Matsugorō tends to be closer to the boy in terms of blocking, the proliferation of three-shots nevertheless suggests them as a unit, in other words, we see the potential family from the iconic shot that started this discussion of interference, agency, and possible readings of texts.

Conclusion For Itami, his awareness of Muhōmatsu not being “the best material for the spirit of the times” (1961 [1941], 249) determined his approach to the text. Consequently, “wartime censorship” comprised processes that were in motion well before the script was presented to the censors. At the same time, I question Abel’s interpretation that, with Muhōmatsu, “the censor had an ally in the screenwriter” because Itami wrote about how he “internalised some of the modes of the censor” in order to write a viable script with a fluid continuity (2012, 213). While an unbroken continuity could have been produced by such a script, it was in fact disturbed by the very – publicized – knowledge of the process of internalized and imposed censorship. Itami internalized or complied with some aspects and wrote against others, but the point is that, through his acts of writing, he was not an ally. Once film content was no longer governed by censorship and propaganda but by profit, it is not surprising that Inagaki wished to remake the successful film. Furthermore, he and Itami had been long-time friends and colleagues, and Ōta speculates that he acted due to a feeling of betrayal of Itami’s trust in him realizing his last film, into which he had poured all his remaining energy (1997, 3; Itami 1961 [1942a], 254). The 1958 version is very close to the script, with a few divergences, two of which are worth mentioning in more detail: The protagonists’ attraction to each other is made more obvious. Matsugorō’s friends in the tea house comment on the fact that he seems to like Yoshiko, and later her brother and sister-in-law come to bully her into re-marrying. Her refusal, saying that she wants to be there for Toshio, is followed by a sequence of her kneeling in front of her husband’s picture as if to apologize; Matsugorō witnesses all from the garden. Finally, in the cathartic taiko scene, Matsugorō becomes an object of her desire and visual consumption through shot-reverse shots between her, standing in the crowd, and Matsugorō’s body (Shutsū and Nagata 2008, 1156). Inagaki made the once-forbidden love plain to see and sympathetic. Before the premiere, he had commented on his wish to remedy the wartime editing-out of Matsugorō’s feelings for Yoshiko, but the fact that the cuts by

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GHQ remain unspoken in 1958 sharply calls to mind the continuous, invisible layer of state control (Asahi 1958; Mainichi 1958). Yet, seemingly similarly in reaction to the contemporary situation, Inagaki decided to delete an element. The GHQ-censored section of the victory celebrations after the Russo Japanese War contained a montage of newspaper clippings, which is missing from the 1958 film (Abel 2012, 214). This section is also much shorter in 1958 than it was in 1943 (16 versus 30 seconds), resulting in a less historically grounded, “real” feel. Here, it is interesting to note that one of the first two Japanese feature films made in the new widescreen format was Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War (Meiji tennō to nichiro daisensō, Watanabe Kunio, 1957) (Sharp 2018). Not only did it break box-office records,12 it also hastened the development of studio-branded wide-screen formats, such as TōhōScope, which Inagaki used for his new Muhōmatsu. Shin-Tōhō’s president Ōkura Mitsugu specifically devised Emperor Meiji, which traces the road towards and the victorious outcome of the Russo-Japanese War, as a means to reclaim “ethnic pride” and the “spirit of unity” that was lost in the defeat (Iwamoto 2009, 42). Unsurprisingly, and in light of the previously mentioned tradition of using nostalgic emotions about the past for nationalist purposes, there was much critical concern about the film reflecting or triggering the return of nationalist and militarist sentiments (Iwamoto 2009, 42). And indeed, concerning the mainly older audiences, one critic writing for the Kinema Junpō noted that, “they have lived through several wars and, barring the recent defeat, experienced each and every one as a victory. Among all the wars Japan fought, the Russo-Japanese War most symbolically expresses Japanese victory with its climactic land and naval battles and thrilling conclusions” (cited in Iwamoto 2009, 35). By avoiding lengthy, documentary-style references in his new Muhōmatsu, Inagaki depoliticized the scene. At the same time, this can be considered a very political act, perhaps born out of his personal experiences of the use of and interferences into film through varying ideological regimes. The story of Muhōmatsu and those concerned with shaping it in accordance or resistance to items “worthy” of censorship in Japan’s transwar period demonstrates that politicization, regardless of film laws and idealized top-down hierarchies of state-control, was a convoluted process. The politicized effects of censorship by the wartime government and the occupation authorities on the film can be observed in terms of decisions on what was deemed worthy of being censored – love or military exploits, for instance – as well as regarding the “look and feel” of the film after censorship. The instances of “rough” cutting in 1943 draw attention to the process, while the American insistence on smoothness almost but incompletely erased censorship. Perhaps contrary to expectations, the wartime censors’ interventions appear rather sensible with regard to them bolstering the regime’s ideology, whereas the deletions under the occupation sometimes appear overzealous, an end in themselves rather than rationally related to “civil

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education.” Muhōmatsu came to bear the traces of both, but it also shows the invisible aspect of wartime censorship as it impacted the writer to make the film flow regardless. The compliance and resistance on various stages of the production process, as well as the “overcoming” of censorship by subversion, comments, and writing and reading between the lines, however, reveals politicization as a project that is highly context-dependent, always in process, and always incomplete.

Notes 1 The script for Murayama’s version was written by Itō Daisuke, but is strongly influenced by Itami’s work (Fujita 1984, 187). 2 I would like to thank Jennifer Coates, Eyal Ben-Ari, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions, which gave this chapter much-needed focus. 3 This paragraph is based on a recorded interview with Inagaki in 1982, as cited in Ōta (1996, 7–12). As Ōta’s articles have no page numbers, I numbered each article separately, starting with page 1. 4 His first name is usually rendered as “Masashi,” but I am using the reading “Masabumi” as given in Daiei (1951, n.p.). 5 On the previous structure of state involvement in the film industry by the police, the Home Ministry, and various other agents see Kasza (1988, 54–71; 232–249) as well as Makino’s exhaustive history of Japanese film censorship up until 1945 (2003). 6 Recently, Hori has rightly questioned the use in scholarship of the term kokusaku eiga as encompassing all films produced in wartime Japan, because it ignores the possibilities of diverse readings by the different actors involved (2017, 6–10): Not all wartime productions fell under the genre of state-promoted and often-state sponsored films overtly supporting the war-time rhetoric, and even if a director intended to produce such a work, it might have been understood very differently by censors or audiences, for instance. Here, however, I am referring explicitly to the large number of highly-awarded films produced by Daiei that obviously satisfied the officials, whether or not the audiences subscribed to the messages or stayed away from such films intentionally, to name two extremes. 7 The script even indicates a brief dissolve from the poster to a shot of Yoshiko (Itami 1961 [1942b], 319). 8 When Inagaki’s 1958 remake was shown in the United States, this scene offered third-generation American-Japanese a new possible vision of identity as well (Ahlgren 2018, 12). 9 See also Takemae’s study of the organization of GHQ’s special staff sections (2002, 147–197). 10 There is reason to assume that the re-release of the beloved film was related to the third anniversary of Itami’s death (e.g., Yomiuri 1949). It was also shown again on the occasion of Bando Tsumasaburō’s death in July 1953 (Yomiuri 1953). 11 He is introduced as a “famous oyabun from the Kansai area, who came here years ago for the coastal defence construction works.” 12 According to the Japan Trade Guide, its net profit of 452,909,000 yen was “a new high in the history of the Japanese motion picture market” (1958, 130).

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Bibliography Abel, Jonathan E. 2012. Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ahlgren, Angela K. 2018. Drumming Asian America: Taiko, Performance, and Cultural Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Asahi Shinbunsha. 1958. “Muhōmatsu no isshō futatabi eigaka.” Asahi Shinbun 24 January. Daiei Kabushikigaisha (ed). 1951. Daiei jūnenshi 1942-51. Tokyo: Daiei Kabushikigaisha. Desser, David. 1988. Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fu, Poshek. 1993. Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fujita, Motohiko. 1984. Eiga sakka Itami Mansaku. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. High, Peter B. 2003. The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years” War, 1931-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hirano, Kyoto. 1992. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952. Washington: Smithsonian. Hori, Hikari. 2017. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan 1926-1945. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Itami, Mansaku. 1961 [1941]. “Muhōmatsu no isshō ni tsuite.” In Shiga, Naoya (ed.) Itami Mansaku zenshū, Vol. 2, pp. 248–252. Tōkyō: Chikuma Shobō. [original publication as “Shinario ku: Muhōmatsu no isshō ni suite.” Eiga Junpō, 21.12.1941]. Itami, Mansaku. 1961 [1942a]. “Muhōmatsu no isshō yodan.” In Shiga, Naoya (ed.) Itami Mansaku zenshū, Vol. 2, 253–254. Tōkyō: Chikuma Shobō. [original publication in Eiga Hyōron, January 1942]. Itami, Mansaku. 1961[1942b]. “Muhōmatsu no isshō.” In Shiga, Naoya (ed.) Itami Mansaku zenshū, Vol. 3, pp. 275–325. Tōkyō: Chikuma Shobō. [original publication in Eiga Hyōron, January 1942]. Iwashita, Shunsuke. 1981[1939]. Tomishima Matsugorō den. Tokyo: Chūō Bunka. Iwamoto, Kenji. 2009. “Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War: Nostalgia and Restoration in Ōkura Mitsugu’s ‘Emperor Film.’” Translated by Dariko Kuroda-Baskett. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 21: 33–49. Jacoby, Alexander. 2008. A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. Japan Trade Guide Publishing Company. 1958. Japan Trade Guide with a Comprehensive Mercantile Directory. Tokyo. Jiji Press. Jowett, Garth S., and O’Donnell, Victoria. 1986. Propaganda and Persuasion. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kasza, Gregory James. 1988. The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keene, Donald. 1984. Dawn to the West. New York: Henry Holt. Kitsnik, Lauri. 2018. “The Bedridden Script Doctor: Itami Mansaku’s Scenario Reviews.” Japanese Studies 38 (2): 153–167. Kushner, Barak. 2006. The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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Mainichi Shinbunsha. 1958. “Shinsaku Muhōmatsu no isshō de Inagaki kantoku ga shinkzu kurabe.” Mainichi Shinbun 22 April. Makino, Mamoru. 2003. Nihon eiga kenetsu shi. Tokyo: Pandora. McDonald, Keiko. 2000. From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Films. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. Nornes, Mark. 2003. The Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ōta 1994 Ōta, Yoneo. 1994. “Eiga Muhōmatsu no isshō saisei (1): Eiga kenetsu to sono fukugen kenshō.” Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku Kiyō 17: 1–13. Ōta 1995 Ōta, Yoneo. 1995. “Eiga Muhōmatsu no isshō saisei (2): eiga hō to eiga tōsei no jidai.” Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku Kiyō 18: 1–13. Ōta 1996 Ōta, Yoneo. 1996. “Eiga Muhōmatsu no isshō saisei (3): senjika no eigajintachi.” Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku Kiyō 19: 1–12. Ōta 1997 Ōta, Yoneo. 1997. “Eiga Muhōmatsu no isshō saisei (4): shiryō kikikaki: Inagaki Hiroshi ga kataru: Muhōmatsu no isshō.” Ōsaka Geijutsu Daigaku Kiyō 20: 1–12. Paine, Sarah C. M. 1996. Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier. London: M. E. Sharpe. Rotha, Paul. 1935. Documentary Film. New York: W. W. Norton. Salomon, Harald. 2011. Views of the Dark Valley: Japanese Cinema and the Culture of Nationalism, 1937-1945. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Sharp, Jasper. 2011. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Sharp, Jasper. 2018. “Five Masterpieces of Japanese Widescreen... and How They Use the Frame.” BFI Film Forever 22 March. https://www.bfi.org.uk/newsopinion/news-bfi/lists/five-japanese-widescreen. Accessed 10 November 2018. Shutsū, Akio, and Nagata, Tetsurō. 2008. Nihon gekieiga somokuroku: Meiji 32-nen kara Shōwa 20-nen made. Tokyo: Nichigai Asoshietsu. Standish, Isolde. 2005. A New History of Japanese Cinema. London: Continuum. Takemae, Eiji. 2002. The Allied Occupation of Japan. New York: Continuum. Toba, Yukinobu. 1961. “Kenetsu jidai.” Kinema Junpō Bessatsu: Nihon Eiga Sakuhin Taikan 7. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha: 26. Tsumura, Hideo. 1943. “Shin eiga hyō: Muhōmatsu no isshō.” Asahi Shinbun 28 October. Yamamoto, Taketoshi. 2013. GHQ no kenetsu, chōhō, senden kōsaku. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yomiuri Shinbunsha. 1949. “Muhōmatsu no isshō.” Yomiuri Shinbun 7 March. Yomiuri Shinbunsha. 1953. “Muhōmatsu no isshō.” Yomiuri Shinbun 27 July.

Filmography Burning Sky (Moyuru ōzora). 1940. Directed by Abe Yutaka. Japan: Tōhō. Colonel Kato’s Falcon Squadron (Katō hayabusa sentōtai). 1944. Directed by Yamamoto Kajirō. Japan: Tōhō. Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War (Meiji tennō to nichiro daisensō). 1957. Directed by Watanabe Kunio. Japan: Shin-Tōhō. The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (Muhōmatsu no isshō). 1943. Directed by Inagaki Hiroshi. Japan: Daiei.

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The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (aka Rickshaw Man; Muhōmatsu no isshō). 1958. Directed by Inagaki Hiroshi. Japan: Tōhō. The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (Muhōmatsu no isshō). 1963. Directed by Murayama Shinji. Japan: Tōei. The Life of Matsugorō the Lawless (Muhōmatsu no isshō). 1965. Directed by Misumi Kenji. Japan: Daiei. The Reign of Louis XVI (Le Règne de Louis XVI). 1905. Director unknown. France. The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay (Hawai maree oki kaisen). 1942. Directed by Yamamoto Kajirō. Japan: Tōhō.

4

Tarzan and Japan: racial portraits of a nation in Boy Kenya Deanna T. Nardy

Representations of blackness in Japanese visual media illuminate how the circulation of stereotypes in popular culture can depoliticize processes of identity construction within texts. For instance, scholars account for the “darky” iconography of American minstrel shows that appear in Japanese children’s comics leading up to World War II as artists choosing to represent certain bodies as black in order to justify the subjugation of peoples in the South Pacific (see Russell 1991b; Cheng Chua 2010; Mason and Lee 2012). The U.S. Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) has also affected the re­ presentation of racial stereotypes in Japanese media, and scholars such as John G. Russell call attention to the hyper-sexual, criminal, and infantile stereotypes of black people in Japanese postwar media, and how these ste­ reotypes provide an imagined homogenous Japanese self with distance from these Others in the homeland (Russell 1991a; see also Hughes 2003). Moreover, by concentrating on the circulation of racialized Jamaican cul­ tural forms in Japan, Marvin D. Sterling identifies three discursive vehicles through which blackness has travelled globally – what he terms the “colonial modern,” “postcolonial modern,” and “global modern” modalities – thereby indicating the political stakes of dealing in the “black” market (see Sterling 2011). William H. Bridges, too, analyses blackness in a transnational context in his dissertation chapter on the reception history of Little Black Sambo (Chibikuro sambo), ultimately raising provocative questions regarding reading blackness in translation (2012). Diverse as this scholarship may be, an underlying theme remains unchanged: racialized stereotyped objects are intimately tied to the racialized stereotyping subject’s search for identity. Extant literature also, either explicitly or implicitly, advances a triangular formation of racial positionings – “white,” “black,” and “Japanese.” This last category, with its ambiguity as a term referring to nationality, even as it tries to find purchase on the terms of Western pseudo-scientific discourses on “race,” is often left unexplained in terms of its formation and implica­ tions. Cultural theorist Michael Pickering explains the relationship between the formation of nationalism and the logic of race through the ideological counter concepts “primitivism” and “modernity,” and their functions in managing “historical time and the rhetoric of belonging and fate” (2001, xii).

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While Pickering’s usage of primitivism and modernity as poles on a racia­ lized scale for determining national belonging and fate resonates with the texts I analyse in this chapter, it accounts for these processes only for the Anglo-European subject. Instead, cultural anthropologist Yasuko Takezawa’s framework allows for an understanding of race that does not assume Anglo-European production. Takezawa conceptualizes “race” in the lowercase as something that “does not exist in human society across time and space,” but manifests in particular contexts where the privileged strive to reproduce the social hierarchy that places them on top through natur­ alizing the differences of those whom they deem Other (2005, 8). In other words, when differences are naturalized, race is born. Race thus functions like stereotypes functions, since stereotypes, as cultural anthropologists aver, conceal the socio-historical contexts that spawn them (see Takezawa 2005; Pickering 2001); they project a tale into the past of “having-alwaysbeen.” Takezawa’s schema allows us to see more fully how race is con­ structed within a text by removing the cognitive blind spots incurred when thinking of subjects as a priori racial categories. This chapter will analyse an example of race formation in popular Japanese media by following the trajectory of a singular pop culture icon, Tarzan, and his incarnation as a character named Wataru in the 1951 pic­ ture book Boy Kenya (Shōnen Keniya) by Yamakawa Sōji (1908–1992). Using a transcultural approach to draw the historical nexus that birthed Tarzan, I demonstrate how the image of Tarzan transforms in Yamakawa’s Boy Kenya after Japan’s total defeat in World War II from the image of Tarzan depicted in Yamakawa’s prewar work, The Boy King (Shōnen Ōsha, 1931). As an artist that drew through the Tarzan lens pre- and postwar, Yamakawa’s work offers the opportunity to uncover adjustments to Japanese self-perceptions in the wake of defeat, as represented in popular visual media. Throughout Boy Kenya, Yamakawa both conjures and con­ ceals race, which in turn creates an idealized concept of racial nationality. As the American Tarzan, a literal symbol of whiteness, transforms into the white-passing, yet very Japanese hero of Boy Kenya, the social reordering that ensues provides a clear illustration of how historical power dynamics affect stereotypes and representation. Moreover, the very battle for the face of heroism – be it white or Japanese (or both) – reveals the parallel between the imaginary Africa indispensable to the creation of white identity in the Tarzan series, and the imaginary Africa necessary to Japanese identity construction in Yamakawa’s work. I use the metaphor of a blackboard, its surface negative by nature, existing only to be written on, to show how the Tarzan story, in all of its forms, necessitates an Africa that remains unresponsive to history. The choice to focus on Tarzan stems from the sheer magnitude of its influence and popularity as a cultural form, as well as the intensity with which it permeated Japanese popular culture. Honing in on Yamakawa, a successful cartoonist drawing for a nationwide audience, provides us with

Tarzan and Japan 73 the opportunity to see how certain political ideologies embedded in the Western Tarzan text are neutralized or highlighted in a transcultural con­ text: we can see what was deemed problematic and what was not in Yamakawa’s adaptations, as well as what became problematic after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Additionally, that negotiations on nationality, race, and historical narrativizing occur within a visual work ostensibly marketed for young boys forces us to challenge the assumption that ideologies cannot work through texts for children. This argument, as Bridges points out, has been used to deny the appropriateness of children’s literature and art as objects of (international) scrutiny in Japan (2012). The stakes for a culture that values cuteness to the extent that even the military is cute-ified (see Fukuura and Ben-Ari, this volume) reveal how discourses on race and blackness become depoliticized through recourse to the concepts of “child,” “child-like innocence,” and, for adults, “nostalgia.”

The birth of Tarzan: colonial mission and pop culture The Japanese archipelago first encountered Africa in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese Jesuits brought Mozambicans. Japanese artists captured their impressions of these foreigners in nanban, or “Southern Barbarian,” folding screens. Originally a Chinese term indicating South Asians, Japanese adopted nanban to refer to European “barbarians” who landed in the southern shores of Japan. Depictions of black people in nanban folding screens from this period clearly show a racial hierarchy: black Africans wrapped in crude clothing open umbrellas, carry luggage, and pull horses, while white people wearing fine clothing stand idle (Fujita 2005, 21–25). Japan’s access to information on Africa was largely limited to translations of Western sources until the second half of the nineteenth century, although historian Fujita Midori provides two exceptions. Four Japanese men did accompany Portuguese Jesuits as part of the Tenshō kenō shisetsu, or Tenshō Embassy, in 1582, and recorded their impressions of Portuguese-controlled Angola and Mozambique, and Japanese people living near Dejima wrote on the black slaves of the Dutch anchored there. Yet the dominant engagement was conducted through translations of Anglo-European source materials which overwhelmingly presented Africa as backwards to justify the TransAtlantic Slave Trade that funded Western empire (Fujita 2005, 242). While this image of an uncivilized Africa dominated Western literature, it was by no means widespread in Japan. Only elite government officials, powerful businessmen, or those residing in specific places such as Dejima were privy to “knowledge” on Africa. Fujita offers the example of govern­ ment officials sent to Madagascar to ascertain its suitability for colonization (142–148), and historian Aoki Sumio tells of how OSK, a shipping company based in Osaka, sought to add ports in Africa to its trading route (38–49). However, it was only during the Meiji period that the public at large could learn about Africa through popularly circulated media, like textbooks in the

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new compulsory education system and recently established newspapers. The original Tarzan novel also made a timely appearance in the last year of the Meiji era — a period that overlaps with Europe and America’s scramble for Africa. To understand how racialized power dynamics wrought by European colonialism transferred between Western cultures and Japan, the following section surveys the historical events and figures that formed Japan’s image of Africa, which will in turn reveal how Tarzan’s conception, growth, and success as a pop culture phenomenon became possible. Though many people made a name for themselves through their ventures and ad­ ventures in Africa, due to its limited scope this chapter will only touch on those most famous in Japan as well as in America and Europe. Japanese Christians translated the works of the deeply religious David Livingstone throughout the Meiji period. Morimoto Kōkichi and Arishima Takeo’s The Biography of Livingstone, for instance, was considered the highest standard of literature on Africa when it was published in 1901 (Fujita 2005, 237–240). Minami Yōichirō, a Meiji master of boys’ adventure novels, also wrote a widely read biography of Livingstone (Aoki 2000, 46). As evidenced by the sheer number of reprints of his biography, Livingstone’s fame as a Christianizing father of Africa continued well into the Shōwa era. The work of Henry Morton Stanley, too, proved popular in Japan. Fujita argues that, unlike Livingston’s methodical tone, Stanley’s imperial flair was more in tune with Japan’s own imperialistic desires after its victory over Russia in 1905 (2005, 226–236). As such, Stanley’s story enjoyed multiple publications in Japan (Aoki 2000, 18–22; 46–47), and he even became the subject of two movies: Sutanrē no Afurika tanken (With Stanley in Africa, 1922), and Sutanrē tanken-ki (Stanley and Livingstone, 1939/1940) (Fujita 2005, 236). His term “The Dark Continent” continues to this day to shadow discourse on Africa. Lastly, the (in)famous entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes too received popular attention in Japan, as his exploits in the diamond industry became the subject of legends. Compounding the popularity of these figures is the fact that their biographies were often used as English language ma­ terial in Japanese schools (Aoki 2000, 46–47). Fujita and Aoki concur that literature on Livingstone, Stanley, and Rhodes paint Africa as a place where savages, uncivilized peoples, and cannibals roam—a prime location for the steady march of white civilization. Since measures against “undesirable aliens” in the European colonies restricted Japanese entry into Africa (Aoki 2000, 9), the image of the civilizing agent was overwhelmingly white. As we will see, Yamakawa appropriates this imagined relationship between whiteness and the right to civilize for his Japanese characters, though the nature of his appropriation ultimately opens up room for ambivalent readings of whiteness. The advent of film helped spread this particular imagining of Africa, and no filmmakers promulgated this image worldwide more than Martin and Osa Johnson. Japan’s foremost movie magazine, Kinema Junpō (The Movie Times), lavished the Johnsons’ films with high praise, with Simba: King of

Tarzan and Japan 75 the Beasts (Zamba, 1929), and Congorilla (1932) receiving particularly fa­ vourable reviews (Fujita 2005, 256–260). American film scholar Thomas Doherty reminds us that, though often described as documentarists, the Johnsons captured their disdain for African people alongside their reverence for Africa’s wildlife (1999, 246–251). The same can be said for Africa Speaks! (1931), a movie that falsely advertised itself as the first talkie filmed in Africa, Ingagi (1930), a film whose main allure was the intimation of sexual union between gorilla and African woman, and Trader Horn (1931), a film supposedly based on the eyewitness account of a man who discovered a white goddess in the jungle: all reached blockbuster status in Japan (Fujita 2005, 256–260). Though less explicitly Christian and imperialistic in tone than the missionaries and government-sponsored explorers that came be­ fore, the Johnsons’ documentaries, Africa Speaks!, and the like reiterate the dichotomy of civilized versus savage and present the inferiority of black Africans as natural. It is in these crossroads between colonial expedition and film that we find the beginnings of Tarzan. Few icons have endured as well as Tarzan. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes received its first screen adaptation in the 1918 film Tarzan the Ape Man, which was released in Japan as Ruijin Tāzan only a year later on 14 June 1919; the sequel, The Romance of Tarzan (Tāzan no Romansu), followed six days later. Between 1921 and 1950, 32 Tarzan films (including rereleases) were screened in Japan, roughly one per year (Fujita 2005, 283–284). Though many actors donned the loincloth of Tarzan, the most iconic was undoubtedly Johnny Weissmuller. A five-time Olympic gold medallist and swimming champion, Weissmuller starred in 12 Tarzan films, ultimately bequeathing the character his famous lines “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” as well as his classic yell. Doherty writes, “Smooth shaven, muscular, ala­ baster, the ‘Adonis swimming champion’ Johnny Weissmuller is a Greek statue come to life, a true Olympian… In publicity portraits, Tarzan raises his right arm upward, palm outward, like the ancient Romans, like the Nazis” (1999, 256). Just as the name Tarzan means “white skin,” and indeed, even “Weissmuller” contains the German word for “white,” Doherty identifies Weissmuller’s whiteness as Tarzan’s prime characteristic. In direct contrast to Tarzan’s idealized whiteness is Fujita’s description of the image of Africa that Tarzan brought to a Japanese audience. She writes, “the more Tarzan thrived in Japan, the more he engrained in the hearts of Japanese people the image that Africans were savage cannibals, and Africa was the place where they ran rampant” (2005, 286). Thus, in the American context, it is possible to view Tarzan as an ex­ tension into popular arts of the racialist thinking that justified real-life ex­ ploitation of the African continent. That Burroughs, an American author, imagined Tarzan as a member of British nobility and made his defining characteristic his whiteness implies a vested interest in presenting this idealized whiteness as something common to American and British people. The next section will explore how this imagining of whiteness circumscribed

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by American and British citizenship took root and transformed in the Japanese context, consequently revealing the willingness of a Japanese market to imagine itself on the side of whiteness.

Swinging to Japan: Tarzan’s reception and reproduction Tarzan’s popularity in Japan rivalled its popularity in America. Kinema Junpō’s opening issue, published 11 July 1919, grants its first two inaugural reviews to Tarzan the Ape Man and Romance of Tarzan. A close reading of these reviews reveals that they maintain the dichotomy of white people belonging to “civilized” and “human society,” with black Africans be­ longing to neither (Anon. 1919, 3).1 Though now obscured by Johnny Weissmuller’s legacy, it is worth noting that Elmo Lincoln starred in these early black-and-white Tarzan films. Perusing the pages of Kinema Junpō, the name Elmo Lincoln sticks out in other instances not related to the Tarzan franchise. For example, Lincoln starred in a series bearing his name, Elmo the Mighty (Kyōryoku Erumo, 1919) and Elmo the Fearless (Erumo Zokuhan, 1921), running nearly concurrently with Tarzan, and Kinema Junpō de­ scribes the latter especially as a success. Although these films are now considered lost, we can imagine that Elmo Lincoln’s star power and ap­ pearance in these two contemporaneous series reciprocally built up Tarzan’s popularity in Japan. Kinema Junpō provides another insight into Tarzan’s status in Japan: in a summary of a now lost 1921 movie titled The Woman Untamed published in issue 53 on 11 January 1921, even though the English title does not reference Tarzan, the Japanese title becomes Onna Tarzan, or Woman Tarzan (Anon. 1921, 6).2 This signals that as early as January 1921, the word “Tarzan” had become so ubiquitous that it could serve as a point of reference for a general jungle setting to Japanese audiences. Before long, Japanese audiences began creating Tarzan in their own image, with Japanese Tarzan films appearing as early as 1935 and at least five in existence by 1939 (Fujita 2005, 285). Tarzan also found robust life in novels, most notably in Minami Yōichirō’s hexalogy Baruba (Barūba). Published from 1948 to 1951, Baruba presents its main character of the same name as “another Tarzan,” a half-Japanese and half-American whose white body is beautiful like a Greek god’s, and whose Japanese dagger is noble like those wielded by the samurai of old (Futagami, 1988, 18). Fujita points out that in Baruba, although the protagonist can communicate with and have friendly relations with animals, he is unable to communicate with black Africans, their presence rendered unavoidably antagonistic (2005, 286–288). Indeed, the text draws an equivalence between “whiteness” and “Japaneseness” through Baruba’s mixed Japanese and American racial background, and further equates both with the concepts of “civilization” and “humanity” at the onset of the story. At first, the reader cannot name the creature wrapped in black fur; it is only after Baruba sheds the literal blackness surrounding him to reveal white skin that the text recognizes Baruba as

Tarzan and Japan 77 human (Futagami, 1988, 15). The significance of Baruba’s opening battle against a lion is also telling: described as a “lump” or “crystallization” of a “black power” (kuroi chikara no katamari), the lion is ultimately subdued by white human strength. The text’s attempts to draw racial equivalence between Japanese and Americans requires a racial homogeneity within the national categories of “Japanese” and “American” that consequently expels blackness as unassimilable. The “god of manga” himself, Tezuka Osamu, too, dabbled in Tarzan lore. In a series of short comics written in 1948, Tezuka spins the Tarzan story three distinct ways. Jungle Haunts (Janguru makyō) tells the story of a movie production company that travels to Africa in order to shoot a Tarzan film, but ends up meeting a 3,000-year-old yet apparently young white woman, the supposed inheritor of a great African civilization. The Secret Base of Shari River (Sharigawa no himitsu kichi) features a white woman travelling to Africa to meet her brother, who she believed had died in the jungle long ago. When another explorer sees this wild man, he exclaims “It’s Tarzan! Just like in the movies!” (Tezuka [1948] 1995, 134–135). In The People with Tails (Yūbijin), the recycled characters go in search of Tarzan’s ancestors who turn out to be, predictably, people with tails. Of interest to us is the centring of film production in the first story as a pretence for continued white presence in Africa, and the unchallenged appropriateness of a white woman being the inheritor of an African civilization. Moreover, both Jungle Haunts and The People with Tails make explicit allusions to the Tarzan films, thereby creating an intertextual universe for its readers, the result of which depoliticizes the primitive depictions of native Africans within the pages. In other words, Japanese audiences – who had already been exposed to translations of Livingstone and Stanley and Rhodes – were able to associate without difficulty the “non-fiction” documentation of European Christian missionaries with expeditionary cinema and jungle adventure films, the latter of which Tarzan is an example par excellence. Both early non-fiction writ­ ings and later popular novels and films on Africa are heavily steeped in values of white supremacy. In Japanese versions of Tarzan, this high eva­ luation of whiteness appeared in different forms. For some works such as Minami’s Baruba, the value of whiteness is reinforced by the clear interest on the Japanese side in claiming a proximity between whiteness and Japaneseness. Yet for many Japanese appropriations of Tarzan, such as Tezuka’s manga series, it was not necessary to question Japan’s place in this AngloEuropean versus African schema, and the template of white explorers in Africa was replicated wholesale. This is not necessarily due to any perceived racial anxiety experienced by Japanese authors; perhaps having a foreign hero in itself simply added to the story’s entertainment value for a Japanese audience. Whatever the reason may be, the result is clear and two-fold: early Japanese appropriations of Tarzan contain no antagonisms against white Anglo-Europeans and a tacit acceptance of black African inferiority. This

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differs from, for example, other prewar works such as The Adventures of Dankichi (Bōken Dankichi, Shimada Keizō, 1933) and The Adventures of Tāchan (Bōken Tāchan, Ōshiro Noboru, 1934), where Japan’s own genre of imperialism thinly veiled as boys’ adventure often placed its explicitly Japanese heroes as benevolent competitors vying for the right to colonize against malevolent white westerners (see Cheng Chua, 2010). Yamakawa’s Tarzan in The Boy King challenges this template by calling into question black inferiority, though the position of whiteness will remain largely untouched. However, Yamakawa’s postwar Tarzan significantly readdresses both issues. The next section argues that the harrowing event of unconditional surrender raised the spectre of losing national identity within Boy Kenya, and this spectre could not be adequately laid to rest without a reorganization of the racial hierarchy. This textual linking between na­ tionality and race becomes theoretically possible using Takezawa’s “race” as a process of categorizing and naturalizing difference. Ultimately, the geo­ political relationships between America, Europe, and Africa that Tarzan pushes to the background through its internal, children’s literature logics of “good guy defeats bad guy” (kanzen chо̄aku) resurface as political elements in Yamakawa’s quest to define “Japanese-ness” as separate from the America that laid waste to his home country, distinct from the Germany whose evil Japan becomes so closely associated with, unlike the cruel colonial Europeans, but still close enough to whiteness to cash in on the political capital gained from holding a white card, i.e. the right to civilize.

Reimagining Tarzan: Yamakawa Sōji and heroic defeat Born in Fukushima prefecture in 1908, Yamakawa and his family moved to Tokyo when he was two years old. At 15, he began art classes at a night school while apprenticing at a platemaking shop. At the age of 22, Yamakawa quit his job and, along with his brother, founded the Yamakawa Fine Arts Company (Yamakawa Bijutsusha) and the Sōji Motion Pictures Company (Sōji Eigasha). Though Yamakawa began his art career making decorative paddles and portraits, he entered the world of children’s illus­ tration with his first commissions for kamishibai (lit: paper drama). Yamakawa’s kamishibai Boy Tiger (Shōnen Tiger, 1932), a remake of sorts of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (thought to have been translated into Japanese as early as 1913), was so popular that it was said to have surpassed The Golden Bat (Ōgon Batto, 1931), likely the most well-known kamishibai in Japan (Mitani and Nakamura 2008). Yamakawa soon became a regular artist for the top boys’ magazine Boy’s Club (Shōnen Kurabu). According to his biographers, Yamakawa likely emulated Boy’s Club artist Suzuki Gyosui, the main illustrator for Minami Yōichirō’s best seller Roaring Jungle (Hoeru Mitsurin), which Boy’s Club began serializing in 1933 (Mitani and Nakamura, 2008, 34). Remembering that Minami Yōichirō authored a biography of David Livingstone and the

Tarzan and Japan 79 Baruba series mentioned earlier, it should cause little surprise that Fuijta describes the African characters in Roaring Jungle as “the laziest of the lazy” (namakemono ni suginai) (2005, 290). Moreover, Fujita notes that the fact that lions are referred to as zamba, instead of the Swahili word simba, shows how the novel was influenced by the Japanese releases of the Johnsons’ movies, since simba was also translated as zamba there too. Fights between animals that inhabit different ecosystems and unnatural acts such as ele­ phant riding further evidence the extent to which Western documentaries and expeditionary films influenced the imagining of Africa in Japanese boys’ novels and comics. It was in this milieu that Yamakawa was most likely exposed to the contemporaneous conceptions of Africa and the adventure stories that set themselves there. As for Yamakawa’s exposure to Tarzan specifically, he explicitly stated that, “I was about 12 when I first saw the silent movie Tarzan the Ape Man, and it made such an impression on me. I have been chasing that ever since” (quoted in Mitani and Keiko, 2008, 37). This is evident in his two works The Boy King (Shōnen Ōsha) and Boy Kenya (Shōnen Keniya). Although The Boy King was completed after the war, because Yamakawa began it as a kamishibai in 1931, I will roughly cate­ gorize it as prewar. On the other hand, Boy Kenya’s serialization in Sangyō Keizai newspaper began exactly one month after the San Francisco treaty was signed in September 1951, situating it precisely as postwar and postOccupation. An examination of how race and nationality impact the Japanese Tarzans in these works reveals Yamakawa’s process of reckoning with Japanese identity after defeat. The story of The Boy King unfolds in the “inner regions” (okuchi) of the Congo, a land described as belonging to “the dark continent” (ankoku tairiku) where “civilized man” has yet to tread (Yamakawa [1931] 1977, Vol. 1, 4). There, the Makimura couple and their infant son Shingo thrive carrying out God’s work. An alumnus of Oberlin College in America, the Makimura father preaches Christianity to the “child-like natives” (gaki no yō na dojin), teaches them the written word, and as the resident doctor heals their physical wounds while the wife provides organ accompaniment for her husband’s sermons (Yamakawa [1931] 1977, Vol. 1, 9). Like the jungle stories prevalent in American film culture, the Christian-ness of the actors in Africa and the piousness of their mission neutralize the initial act of inva­ sion. This ultimately aligns Japanese missionaries with their white AngloAmerican counterparts, thus carving out a shared space for identifying with the civilizing mission. The text reinforces this alliance between Japanese and white Anglo-Americans through the Makimura patriarch’s American edu­ cation and membership in an American science society. It is interesting to note that the Makimuras’ presence in Africa is rationalized vis-a-vis their Western connections; this differs significantly from the Japanese family in Boy Kenya which establishes itself in Africa with no connection to any other country. This strongly insinuates a prewar desire on Yamakawa’s part to portray Japan as a nation on the same level as Western nations, a desire that

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tellingly morphs into a postwar need to differentiate Japan from the West, thereby implying a superiority rather than an equivalency. The Boy King explicitly alludes to the original Tarzan novels in many ways. The child Shingo, for example, “loses” his parents to a terrifying encounter with a lion (his father, as revealed near the end, survives), and is raised by gorillas in the jungle. Shingo’s realization that he is not the same as other animals occurs because of a chance glimpse of his reflection in the waters of a lake, as is the trigger for the original Tarzan. Shingo thinks himself more beautiful than any other creature of the jungle, and like Weissmuller’s comparison to a Greek statue, the text posits Shingo’s mus­ cular body as “beautiful like a sculpture’s” (Yamakawa [1931] 1977, Vol. 1, 50). Shingo’s chimpanzee friend also bears the name Cheetah, like the American Tarzan’s monkey companion. These explicit parallels function similarly to the Makimuras’ Western-ness and Christian-ness – by demon­ strating an interchangeability between the original Tarzan’s discovery of his own whiteness (and thus his humanity), with Shingo’s discovery of his humanity and beauty, Yamakawa implicitly links Shingo’s Japanese-ness with the original Tarzan’s whiteness, thereby affirming a racial equivalency between the two. In a break from the American Tarzan story, however, Shingo crosses paths with Zanbaro, one of the many black Africans who Shingo’s parents had taken under their benevolent wings before their untimely end. The duo embarks on adventure after adventure together, and Shingo learns his first human words from Zanbaro. Though Zanbaro can be considered an in­ termediate body in the splintered communication between father and son rather than a source of knowledge himself – since all Zanbaro knows, he learned from Shingo’s father – Yamakawa’s introduction of a nonantagonistic black African character represents a significant development in his Tarzan adaptation. Zanbaro’s educational usefulness quickly expires though, since fluency in animal language supersedes fluency in human language, thus centralizing Shingo in the very animal-driven plot. Zanbaro is further rendered educationally obsolete with the introduction of Suiko. Suiko comes to Africa from California as part of an expedition led by Makimura’s American science colleagues. Suiko teaches Shingo and Zanbaro mathematics, and even though Zanbaro must be around ten years older than both children, their knowledge quickly supersedes his. Here we see the formation of a racial hierarchy on a different axis than previous Tarzan iterations: whereas before the inferiority of black Africans would be established through their base character, as a friend, Zanbaro cannot be marginalized in that way. Instead, he is placed below Japanese children through his lacking mental faculties. Zanbaro’s infantilization in turn sets the stage for the Japanese children’s potential for heroism by emphasizing their intelligence and alacrity. Though “good” and “bad” minor characters frequently make appear­ ances throughout the story, the line between good and evil is drawn

Tarzan and Japan 81 primarily between Japanese male characters. “Amenhottep The Mysterious” (kaijin Amenhottepu), a powerful ally who is revealed to be Shingo’s father, has spent the last 15 years developing advanced technology in order to analyze the miraculous properties of a green stone that possesses the power to cure any disease. Makimura funds his scientific project with the riches of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhottep, whose ruins he discovered while stranded in the jungle. Makimura eventually bequeaths these Egyptian ri­ ches to Shingo at the end of the story, believing that the treasures belong to “the people of the world” (Yamakawa [1931] 1977, Vol. 3, 38–41). In con­ trast, “Ūra The Evil Sorcerer” (majin Ūra) is a Japanese man bent on per­ sonal financial gain: he clashes endlessly with Amenhottep in his attempts to sell the green stone for profit. Though extremely common in children’s lit­ erature in general, Yamakawa’s use of a binary structure of characterization accomplishes another purpose beyond the simplification of moral issues: the good versus bad dichotomy further elides perceived differences between Japanese and white characters, since the morality of the characters de­ termines where they fall on the dichotomy. It is worth noting, however, that though the text presents Makimura as the obvious heroic adult male figure, this interpretation rests on the assumption that the native Africans have never had any claim to the treasures he guards, and that the riches of Africa, whether medicinal or physical, belong to everyone. In other words, not only is Makimura’s close resemblance to white Christianizing colonists and economic opportunists reinforced through this typical kanzenchо̄aku (“good triumphs over evil”) narrative structure, but underlying it is a tacit under­ standing of black Africans as non-players. Indeed, even the ancient Egyptian riches Makimura utilizes for his research belong to a defunct civilization. This binary structure is mirrored in the characterization of the male Japanese children: Shingo has a moral counterpart in the young boy Fumio. Where Shingo fearlessly saves Suiko, Fumio cowers in the face of danger. In fact, it is only in Shingo’s absence that Suiko shows any self-determination: generally fainting before the fight even begins, Suiko’s heroic actions when Shingo is not present reinforce Fumio’s heroic deficiencies. Furthermore, whereas Shingo befriends Zanbaro, Fumio, whose name literally means “man of letters,” posits himself as a man of civilization and holds Zanbaro in contempt. In a striking separation from previous Tarzan characteriza­ tions, The Boy King requires friendship with an African character for its heroism. Though Zanbaro is only one humanized African character among cannibals, superstitious followers, and drum-crazed natives, his presence symbolizes the potential for civilization to take root. In this sense, black bodies become possible sites of heroic exhibition on the part of white and Japanese characters; they are necessary for heroism to take place but dis­ qualified from acting on themselves. Yamakawa does present one aspect where Shingo and Zanbaro are comparable, and that is physical strength. The text often uses the phrase “herculean strength” (kingōriki) to describe both characters, but here again Suiko plays the deciding role in determining

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the true hero of the story. Though Zanbaro rescues Suiko multiple times, during these moments – where arrows whiz by and thunderous rivers threaten to take her under – Suiko bemoans that if only Shingo were there, he would have saved her more gently (Yamakawa [1931] 1977, Vol. 2, 139, 155). The qualities of a hero are laid out: brave, strong, unprejudiced towards black Africans, and gentile towards girls. Just as Zanbaro’s body provides the site for Shingo to perform the third quality, Suiko’s female-ness acts as a springboard off which the male characters either hit the mark on heroism or fall short. And though none of these characteristics explicitly necessitate being white, the intertextual linking between Shingo and the American Tarzan inextricably intertwines seemingly racially neutral words like “brave” and “strong” with “white.” Finally, like Minami and Tezuka’s Tarzan adaptations, The Boy King does not problematize whiteness. Boy Kenya offers a different brand of heroism. First serialized in Sangyō Keizai newspaper from October 1951 to October 1955, Boy Kenya gained such widespread readership that the newspaper was informally dubbed the “Kenya newspaper” (Mitani and Nakamura 2008, 72). In 1953, the story was published as a picture book and broadcast as a radio drama. The fol­ lowing year, it was adapted into a black-and-white film, and in 1961 enjoyed renewed popularity as a television drama that ran concurrently with a slightly edited manga edition in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday. The story was adapted into an animated film in 1984 directed by the acclaimed Ōbayashi Nobuhiko and lives on to this day in the name of Japan’s first international NGO, the Shōnen Keniya Friendship Association. Boy Kenya opens in November 1941 in Kenya, “the land of wild animals” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 1, 2). Murakami sells cotton in Nairobi, where he lives with his wife and ten-year old son, Wataru. The text immediately positions Murakami as a representative of Japan vying for more in the game of economic expansion, explaining his presence as a factor of “Japan’s ad­ vance into Africa being negligible compared to its expansion in the Southern Seas and South America” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 1, 2). On a trip into Kenya’s interior, Murakami and Wataru are abandoned by native guides, who fear punishment after hearing that Japan has declared war on America and become separated. Wataru wanders before befriending Zega, an old Masai chief. Though at first Zega has no need for the help of a child, upon learning that Wataru is Japanese, he exclaims, “Japanese people are kind, and treat even us natives honestly … you must be brave too,” and, “Japanese people really are great” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 1, 29). Japanese people treat the natives kindly, the implicit understanding being “more kindly than other colonials.” Hidden in Zega’s characterization of Japanese people are the beginnings of a schism between Japanese and white Anglo-Europeans that the text will only continue to enforce. It is significant that this splitting between white colonials and Japanese people occurs along a moral axis, specifically according to how they treat native Africans. Though Yamakawa necessitated kindness towards “good” Africans as a

Tarzan and Japan 83 quality of heroism in The Boy King as well, he did not limit this trait to one nationality, as he does here. While Zega reflects an idealized image of Japan back at Wataru, and by extension, the reader, the introductions of white characters provide a sym­ bolic shortcut showing readers how they are to understand what roles England, Germany, and America play on this African stage. A young girl named Kate reflects a reckless and inept, but ultimately benevolent England, while a Nazi serves as an evil incarnate Germany. In an incredible display of historical revisionism, Yamakawa has Murakami work under the diabolical Nazi without knowing what the German is plotting, which just so happens to be an atomic bomb. This fundamentally reorganizes national narratives of guilt and culpability. Japan, represented by Murakami, is unaware that it is cooperating with evil, the youth and female gender of Kate rewrite England not as an enemy, but as a somewhat needy friend, and the trans­ ference of responsibility for the atomic bomb from America to Germany allows the appearance of an American tourist in the story to end without incident, ultimately eliminating the need for a heroic and (in light of how World War II ended) unrealistic defeat by Wataru (Japan). By staging this mini drama in Africa with World War II as a backdrop, Yamakawa em­ phasizes the guilelessness of the Japanese characters through their lack of awareness concerning the war, and Zega’s continued uplifting of Japanese characters. In fact, when news of Japan’s defeat reaches Wataru through an American and English tourist, the text again positions Zega as a spokes­ person for Japanese imperialist ideology: “There is no way Japan, a country full of strong boys like Wataru, could lose!” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 9, 54–55). Even the American argues for Japan’s exceptionalism: “But Japan fought until the very end. Italy joined the Allied Forces halfway through, and even though Germany broke, Japan still fought against the world. It can’t be helped that it lost.” The Englishman continues, “Atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan lost.” For the readers, whom the text has primed for three-hundred pages to think of the German Nazi’s atomic bomb as the pinnacle of evil intent, the idea of two bombs being used against Japan is unthinkable. The inevitability of Japanese defeat against two atomic bombs is thus emphasized, as is the bravery of Japan for taking on the world. Moreover, even though the American and Englishman may seem kind enough, their (national) characters cannot but be viewed with suspicion by the readers. This is especially true when considering that Yamakawa does provide an example of morally uncompromised white people for contrast in the form of a group of German scientists that the Nazi took hostage. When held at gunpoint, the main scientist heroically declares, “Rather than murder tens of thousands of innocent women and children with this bomb to win a war, I choose to die here” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 6, 51). It is hard to read this as anything but a direct criticism of America, though the displacement onto Germany allows it to pass without

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forcing Japanese readers – newly freed from the Occupation – to ruminate on their very real subordinate position to America. In the end, the actionfilled series of adventures finishes with Murakami, Wataru, and Kate anti­ climactically returning to Nairobi. Wataru and his father can defeat the inimical German with much huzzah because Germany lost in real-life, and the scapegoating of the country conveniently displaces Japanese culpability in the war. Meanwhile, confrontation against Britain or America is strate­ gically sidestepped through the feminization and youth of England’s re­ presentative, Kate, and by America’s relative absence from the story as a whole. The two adult male tourists mentioned earlier only appear after the war has ended, thus leaving their characterization in the ambivalent zone of “former enemy.” Sidestepping this confrontation allows the fantasy of the story to hold together, since any attempt to have Japan take on America or Britain in the narrative would undoubtedly recall the real-life ending of merely six years before. Boy Kenya differs from The Boy King in significant ways. While the roles of hero and villain in The Boy King comprise Japanese characters differ­ entiated by motive (the desire to save people versus the desire for profit), Boy Kenya draws the line of heroism along nationality. The Japanese characters are presented as undisputedly good people, while the plotting German, the colonial Englishman, and the atomic bomb wielding American represent varying degrees of compromised goodness. The text provides only two kinds of morally unscathed white characters: murdered German hos­ tages, as mentioned earlier, and white females in the form of Kate. Indeed, it is Kate’s youth and femininity that cancels out any complicity in wrong­ doing. Though she is also responsible for the deaths of native Africans throughout the text, the cuteness with which she bumbles through battles elicits pity and humour, rather than horror. When combined with her whiteness, the characteristic that makes her worthy of worship to native Africans, Kate becomes less of a character and more of a treasure to be protected. In other words, while masculine whiteness symbolizes a threat to Japanese male heroism, feminine whiteness is a site of exhibition for Japanese male heroism. The necessity of the heroine’s whiteness is further revealed when con­ sidering why the character that becomes Kate in Boy Kenya could not re­ main as Suiko, as in the earlier The Boy King. By replacing the Japanese Suiko with the English Kate, Boy Kenya creates a more masculine image of Japanese identity by erasing the feminine Japanese ideal from existence. Wataru’s mother could perhaps serve as the Japanese feminine type except that, though alive for all 13 volumes of Boy Kenya, she makes fewer ap­ pearances than Shingo’s mother, who dies within the first 30 pages of The Boy King. Thus, Suiko’s transformation into Kate allows the Japanese ideal to be masculine by default while also ensuring Wataru’s consistent proxi­ mity to a “good” whiteness, that is, the supposedly innocent whiteness of a young girl. Wataru is Kate’s saviour and hero, worthy of her attention, but

Tarzan and Japan 85 also different from a white Tarzan, because unlike the male English, American, and German characters, the Japanese have done nothing wrong; Zega can vouch for this. Finally, though Makimura and Shingo find equivalents in Murakami and Wataru, the two father-son pairs represent different types heroism. Though Yamakawa often describes Shingo as “burning with justice” (seigi ni moeru) and a protector of the weak, and casts his father Makimura as a proactive hero, Murakami and Wataru fall into reactive roles. Murakami remains unaware of what he is doing for threequarters of the story, and Wataru often acts only in response to threats. To a certain extent then, Boy Kenya can be seen as an exercise in exorcism. Postwar, active heroism could be interpreted as aggression, which might not bode well for a Japan that many have argued tried to fashion itself as the perfect victim after the war (see Dower 1999; Orr 2001). This could explain why a postwar Tarzan ceases to move of his own accord in Yamakawa’s world. Yamakawa also shrinks the scope of the space where Japanese-ness can be found. Whereas the Japanese characters in The Boy King are inter­ national, living and studying abroad and collaborating with other peoples for the greater good of the world, the Japanese characters in Boy Kenya belong only to Japan. In befriending the old Masai Zega, Yamakawa portrays Japan as a victim two-fold: once as a victim of the atomic bombings, and another as a victim of the colonial government in Kenya. Indeed, Wataru and Murakami must hide from any Englishmen for fear of being captured, and the fate of the Murakami wife back in Nairobi haunts both father and son for the duration of the story as they wonder if the English have imprisoned her. Moreover, when the narrative begins in 1941, Murakami’s shock that Japan has engaged in warfare reveals a careful omission of Japanese aggression in Manchuria and other parts of Southeast Asia that occurred beforehand. Unaware of when the war ends or begins, only that because of it their lives have changed forever, Murakami and Wataru represent a Japan where men and boys try their best to live with the limited power they have. Yamakawa cements this idea of Japanese people being bystanders to their own history when Zega cries out, “It was war that brought misfortune upon such a kind child!” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 9, 58).

Blackboard, white chalk: national fantasies on an African stage In the Western context, Tarzan’s idealized whiteness is drawn upon an ahistorical African blackboard; in Boy Kenya, Yamakawa uses the same never-progressing image of Africa to uphold not white identity, but a Japanese national identity. Consider the following excerpts, two of the many static characterizations of Africa that can be seen in Boy Kenya: “Though it is unknown which part of Africa this is, it is clearly a place far removed from the rest of the world,” “This is a land completely unconnected to civilization, and even in this era where modern civilization has entered the African continent, a civilized person still has not visited this place,” (Yamakawa

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[1951] 1953, Vol. 4, 54; Vol. 6, 94–95). This African image does not stray far from that seen in American and European narratives. In fact, for the final example, the text provides this description as a response to why certain “tribes” are cannibals: because civilized peoples have not yet come. The cure for African savagery, then, is the presence of civilized peoples, a colourcoded word in a long-standing narrative promulgated since the days of Livingstone. The necessity of an unchanging Africa in Boy Kenya becomes clear when later versions of the story reveal the irreconcilability of this image with at­ tempts at political correctness. For example, in 1961 the magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday began printing a remake of Boy Kenya, and the cognitive dissonance at work is apparent in a side margin (aori) where the editors of the magazine felt the need to add a disclaimer: “Boy Kenya takes place in Africa, which used to be known as the Dark World. But now independent countries are being born one after the other and Africa is a new land” (Vol. 23, 104). Comments like these reveal that the Africa of Boy Kenya is quickly becoming an untenable fantasy. Assertions of African independence in a boys’ adventure magazine also carry an air of inauthenticity, for they clash with the “darky” iconography used to portray the Africans, a por­ trayal that – since the prewar days of Boy’s Club – have only been used to represent creatures not suited to self-determination.3 On a page where Wataru sends black bodies flying by ploughing through them while atop a giant snake, the following commentary lies in the margins: “Until 17 years ago, there were only four independent countries on this vast continent. All other countries continued to suffer under the control of Europe.” The dis­ parity between historically based descriptions of Africa in editorial com­ ments like these, and the ahistorical Africa of the Weekly Shōnen Sunday version of Boy Kenya is clear. This type of dissonance permeates the ma­ gazine in general: articles with topics such as Livingstone “lighting up the dark continent” (1961, Vol. 43, 40–41), and short stories with sensationalist titles like “A Blood-soaked Battle with a Lion!” often appear in proximity to puzzles on identifying African ethnic groups and articles on the Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila (1961, Vol. 29, 20–21).4 This inclusion of educational learning activities and news on African achievement inevitably works to retroactively excuse the more sensationalized and stereotypical portrayals of Africa by insinuating that the stereotypes depict how Africa used to be and so are not inaccurate. Wataru’s heroism falls apart the more Africa becomes historically rooted, and this is most clearly demonstrated diegetically through Yamakawa’s anachronistic introduction of the Mau Mau. The Mau Mau conflict broke out in 1952, during Boy Kenya’s serialization but after the period in which the actual narrative takes place. Native Kenyans had experienced a frictionfilled relationship with the English over matters of land and political re­ presentation since Kenya was made a protectorate in 1895.5 This came to a head when the English government marked off the most fertile farmland as

Tarzan and Japan 87 the White Highlands, displacing the agricultural Kikuyu people, Kenya’s largest ethnic group. The English preferentially relocated the most powerful Kikuyu households and left all other native matters to these largely Christian-educated Kikuyu families. These families consolidated their rela­ tively new power over their fellow Kikuyu by aggregating land and wealth, thereby breeding resentment among Kikuyu outside the purview of these families. Eventually, disenfranchised, landless Kikuyu, joined by a few dis­ illusioned educated Kikuyu, rose against the loyalist Kikuyu and the English government. Loosely terming these rebels the Mau Mau, the English con­ fiscated tens of thousands of cows and hundreds of thousands of sheep from those suspected of Mau Mau involvement, hung 1,090 Mau Mau in group trials, murdered 12,000 in extrajudicial killings, and incarcerated 70,000 Kikuyu men (Anderson 2005, 254, 313). Setting the matter of accuracy of representation aside, we will analyse how the Mau Mau’s appearance affect the Japanese characters’ potential for heroism to demonstrate how Yamakawa’s heroic quality of “being kind to native Africans” comes against an inconvenient, geopolitical limitations. Yamakawa primes the readers for the Mau Mau with an interesting in­ teraction between Zega and Africans he observes deforesting land to reclaim it as farmland. Mistaking their efforts for a noble way to deal with their original land being seized by the colonial government, Zega praises the Africans for working hard even though white people “snatched up our land for themselves,” and even “banned our long spears.” The labouring African quickly corrects him. “What are you saying? We work from sun-up to sundown for about 70 yen a day! … This land used to be ours, but now, the white people have taken it for themselves… If we tried [to reclaim all the forestland], we’d be punished. This Uganda, neighbouring Kenya too, are England’s land now.” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 11, 57–59) This is first time in all 13 volumes where the text provides an unambiguous criticism of colonial policy. The Mau Mau, the African continues, are “black people who are fighting white people to give us our land back,” a positive appraisal considering the immediate context. However, when an actual Mau Mau member appears, all the major characters are unanimous in their op­ position to the Mau Mau’s tactics, which include killing every last white person, even “innocent” (tsumi no nai) ones like Kate. The father Murakami, while calling the Mau Mau’s anti-colonial movement “noble,” in the end sa­ botages their plan to blow up a train on the basis that it would kill innocent English people. When it comes to the colonial policies themselves, Murakami and Wataru also adopt ambivalent attitudes: while returning to Nairobi by train, though used to riding in the whites only section, after “gaining antidiscrimination awareness,” Wataru decides to ride in the back with Zega (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 13, 62–63).

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Murakami makes the same decision at another point in the narrative. Of course, Zega and other black Africans do not have the luxury of choosing, but the Japanese characters positioning themselves this way reveals a desire on Yamakawa’s part to not only portray Japanese as sympathetic to the suffering of blacks at the hand of anti-black dis­ crimination perpetrated by the English, but also a desire to have the act of sympathy itself stand in place of real action. Truly, is it not odd that Murakami and Wataru – who have no qualms standing in the way of the Nazi and other unscrupulous figures – simply and literally take a seat when faced with English injustice? The Mau Mau’s presence allows this ambiguous position to be (mostly) convincing within the narrative, as Yamakawa equates opposing English colonialism with siding with the indiscriminately cruel Mau Mau. Thus, while Murakami and Wataru are able to solve the problems right in front of them – such as protecting Kate and stopping the German’s bomb – they do not significantly challenge the colonialists that ban Zega’s symbol of “noble savagery,” his spear, and force him to ride in the back of the train, nor do they reach any satisfying resolution for dealing with the Mau Mau. More telling than the lack of a resounding victory is the odd silence that envelopes Wataru during the only time in the series where Africans besides Zega are given a voice. After talking to the working Africans described earlier, Zega asks Wataru the rhetorical question, “Hey, Wataru, this wide Africa is ours you know. It’s ours, and yet us natives have no land. Is that really okay?” The text only says that Wataru was “silent, and thought” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, 59). Rather than providing Wataru an opportunity to flex his heroism, the presence of the Mau Mau – and the rare African voice it brings – apparently represents a conundrum for the protagonists and reveals the limits of Yamakawa’s imagination when it comes to seeing Africans as active agents. However, what Yamakawa achieves when Africa is successfully silenced and negated – as it is when Boy Kenya is its most Tarzan-esque – is the distancing of Japan from any collusion in World War II and the Fifteen Years War of 1931–1945. This ahistorical Africa allows Yamakawa to paint a picture of racial innocence for Japanese. A look at Takezawa’s theory of race, which moves beyond the simple white-yellow-red-black Western paradigm of what Takezawa calls “Race” in the uppercase, will help eluci­ date this process of racializing national identity. To recapitulate, when differences are naturalized, “race” is born, and this understanding allows Takezawa to claim that burakumin, immigrants, or migrants could be considered races depending on the context (2005, 8–13). The Venn diagram pictured in Figure 4.1 elucidates how the Japanese “race” is formed in Boy Kenya using Takezawa’s framework. The large circles contain within them qualities that Yamakawa appears to find ne­ cessary for a character to be considered a hero: they must be male, civilized, and unprejudiced towards black people. Note that a “civilized

Tarzan and Japan 89

Figure 4.1 Venn diagram illustrating the heroic qualities a character may possess, who possesses them, and how they intersect to form a Japanese hero.

person,” or bunmeijin, can be American, English, or Japanese; the appella­ tion is applied to all three types of characters throughout the story. The category of “civilized,” then, spans two races: “white” and “Japanese.” This does not differ significantly from Yamakawa’s portrayal of Japanese in The Boy King, where the Makimura family’s Christian mission directly put them in concert with white Anglo-European missionaries. However, unlike The Boy King, and indeed, unlike previous iterations of Tarzan across the Japanese popular culture board, Yamakawa teases out a difference between whites and Japanese people through the quality of prejudice. Bigotry against black people disqualifies all white characters from heroism with the im­ portant exception of Kate. However, her female gender allows her not to become a threat to Murakami and Wataru as the true heroes of the story, as Yamakawa often writes her as the classic damsel in distress, her body the site of heroic exhibition for the Japanese characters. Zega, despite his wisdom and physical prowess, is similarly unable to threaten Wataru’s place as the hero because his blackness – the quality that allows the Japanese characters to shine in the unprejudiced category – simultaneously disqualifies Zega from heroism. In this case, blackness designates an absence of civilization, and an inability to act upon oneself or self-determine, as evinced by Zega’s

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Figure 4.2 Cover image of Boy Kenya.

powerlessness to choose to sit in the black section of a train and therefore perform compassion. A striking possibility thus comes into being: nationality as race. Murakami and Wataru not only identify as and are identified as Japanese, but the de­ scriptor Japanese itself is presented as sufficient proof of internal integrity. Unlike Makimura and Shingo, who differentiate themselves from their Japanese peers through their personal choices, Murakami and Wataru’s goodness is, as Takezawa would say, naturalized and attached to their Japanese bodies. This

Tarzan and Japan 91 virtue is most prominently displayed through their friendship with Zega, who repeatedly extols the Japanese protagonists’ divergence from whiteness. As often as the text distinguishes Murakami and Wataru from the wicked whiteness of the West, however, it paradoxically clings to the very same whiteness from which it claims to be so distinct through Wataru’s friendship with Kate. Any evil aspect of whiteness, such as prejudice against blacks and a propensity for vio­ lence, is nullified in Kate through her femaleness. This allows Wataru to claim proximity to a whiteness that cannot corrupt Japanese integrity but instead enables Wataru to be the surrogate for white male heroic acts like those per­ formed by the original Tarzan (Figure 4.2). This makes Suiko’s transformation into Kate narratively necessary. The benefits Kate’s whiteness provides extends to her referring to Wataru and Murakami as having white skin, which allows both father and son to enjoy being visually (mis)taken for white, not just by Kate but by native Africans and others throughout the story. What Wataru and Murakami gain from being white-passing is the coveted right to call themselves civilized. Thus, “Japanese” emerges at the centre of the Venn diagram to des­ ignate a non-white “race” with the “white” quality of civilization, a non-black “race” with the appropriate sympathy for blacks, and a heroic race with all the qualities of typical masculinity.

Conclusion By blurring the lines between nationality and race, Yamakawa grants his Japanese characters the opportunity to have what whiteness had claimed as its inherent quality since the colonial era: civilization. Native Africans call the Japanese and English characters alike “civilized” (bunmeijin) while holistically denying the epithet to the African hero of the story, Zega. The text even suggests that Zega ages differently from civilized people: “He is probably around 70 … but has the energy and power of a 40-year-old civilized man” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 1, 58). This suggests that ul­ timate heroism for Wataru and Murakami depend on three conditions: being civilized (unlike black Africans), non-discriminatory towards blacks (unlike Anglo-Europeans), and male. The state of being civilized conflates with an idealized whiteness, demonstrating the Japanese characters closeness to it. This blurring of racial and national characteristics allows Yamakawa to conveniently manoeuvre Wataru and Murakami’s moral position without sacrificing the coherency of the narrative; the Japanese characters are whiteskinned and heroic when they are saving Kate and fighting savages, but they are shielded by their Japanese-ness to exclude themselves from the “white people” Zega so often claims to hate. With a name literally meaning “to cross over,” Wataru can be civilized – white in the Tarzan discourse – and Japanese, thereby bridging the concepts of nationality and race. The desirability of whiteness evinced by Yamakawa’s works may be an echo of Japanese sentiment to separate from Asia. Fukuzawa Yukichi first introduced to Japan the Anglo-American concept of race in the 1869 essay

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“Pocket Almanac of the World,” which reiterated the notion that physical features inextricably link to internal capacities and difference (Yoshimura 2007, 115–118). This worldview lent itself well to visual representation, where white Westerners stereotyped Japanese characters as buck-toothed and sliteyed. Manga theorist Yoshimura Kazuma argues that Japanese comic artists began drawing other Asian ethnicities using those same stereotypes but drew themselves in the image of whiteness (Yoshimura 2007, 115–118). This reading of racial representation coincides with Oguma Eiji’s historical chronology of Japanese self-perception, which reveals a Japan that presented itself as multi-ethnic to justify the annexation of Taiwan and Korea during the prewar era but began to favour a homogenous national identity after the war (2002). In the turn from leader of Asia to non-Asian, then, Japan went from drawing itself with yellow chalk to white chalk. Yamakawa does the same in the transition from The Boy King to Boy Kenya, where Japanese characters shrink from global players fighting to leave a positive mark on history to Japanese characters wholly unrelated to history. Thus, Boy Kenya flips the Western racial script by placing black Africans (Zega) and whites (Kate) in a revolving door for second and third place, but indisputably placing Japanese on top. Narrative fiction form, as well as Wataru’s identity as a child, depoliticize the racial and national man­ oeuvring within the text, presenting a racial hierarchy built on morality and white supremacist assumptions as a natural conclusion to be drawn from individual characters’ positioning in the story. By both personalizing the total experience of war through a Japanese father and son and depersona­ lizing the war through the usage of an African landscape, Yamakawa adeptly politicizes and problematizes masculine whiteness, while depoliti­ cizing masculine Japanese-ness. As a result, Wataru’s portrayal as a right­ eous hero unable to change the bigger picture seamlessly moves to encompass a portrayal of Japan as a righteous hero that sometimes cannot help the circumstances around it. The transformation from Shingo to Wataru is no doubt a reflection of Japan’s transformation from prewar superpower and to the postwar overpowered, and the need to no longer justify actions, but to justify character. It is this naturalization of difference, this fixing of moral and intellectual superiority to the moniker “Japanese” that allows Murakami to say without any hint of irony, “Just because Japan started a war doesn’t mean that all Japanese like war” (Yamakawa [1951] 1953, Vol. 6, 32).

Acknowledgements This chapter would not have been possible without the resources available at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, as well as the enthusiasm and kindness of the staff at the research reference room.

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Notes 1 “Tа̄zan: Tarzan of the Apes,” Kinema Junpō, 11 July 1919, 3; “Tа̄zan: Romance of Tarzan,” Kinema Junpō, 11 July 1919, 3. 2 “Onna Tа̄zan: The Woman Untamed,” Kinema Junpō, 11 July 1919, 6. 3 To be clear, the 1961 remake was not drawn by Yamakawa, who had his own unique style that did not explicitly borrow from American minstrel legacy, but by the artist Ishikawa Kyūta. It might prove fruitful to ask ourselves the significance of a non-stereotyped image being re-presented along darky iconographic lines in the 1960s. 4 “Kuroi janguru ni ai no hikari wo...[Shining A Light of Love in the Dark Jungle]” 1961. Weekly Shōnen Sunday, Vol. 43, 40–41. “Dachō to kyōsō [Foot Race with an Ostrich].” 1961. Weekly Shōnen Sunday, Vol. 29, 20–21. 5 A full analysis of the Mau Mau movement can be found in David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005).

Bibliography Anderson, David. 2005. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. London: Phoenix Books. Aoki, Sumio. 2000. Nihonjin no afurika ‘hakken’ [The Japanese ‘Discovery’ of Africa]. Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha. Bridges, William H. 2012. Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature. PhD diss. (unpublished), Princeton University. Cheng Chua, Karl Ian Uy. 2010. Gaijin: Cultural Representations through Manga, 1930’s–1950’s. PhD diss. (unpublished), Hitotsubashi University. Doherty, Thomas. 1999. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930–1934. New York: Columbia University Press. Dower, John. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Fujita, Midori. 2005. Afurika hakken – nihon ni okeru afurikazō no hensen [Discovering Africa: Changes in the Image of Africa in Japan]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Futagami, Hirokazu (ed.) [1948] 1988. Minami Yōichirō・Ikeda Nobumasa Shōnen Shōsetsu Taikei Dairokkan [Collection of Boys’ Novels Vol. 6: Minami Yōichirō・Ikeda Nobumasa]. Tokyo: Sanichi shobō. Hughes, Sherick A. 2003. “The Convenient Scapegoating of Blacks in Postwar Japan: Shaping the Black Experience Abroad.” Journal of Black Studies 33 (3): 335–353. Iwamoto, Kenji, and Mamoru, Makino (eds.) 1993. Fukkokuban Kinema Junpō Daikki Zoukangō-146gō Zenyonki [Reprint of ‘The Movie Times’ Vol. 1 of 4: no. 1 – no. 146]. Tokyo: Yushidō shoten. Mason, Michele, and Lee, Helen. 2012. Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Mitani, Kaoru, and Nakamura, Keiko. 2008. Yamakawa Sōji – ‘Shōnen Ōsha’‘Shōnen Keniya’ no emonogatari sakka [Yamakawa Sōji – Author of The Picture Books ‘Boy King’ and ‘Boy Kenya’]. Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha. Oguma, Eiji. 2002. A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-images. Translated by David Askew. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

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Orr, James Joseph. 2001. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Pickering, Michael. 2001. Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation. New York: Palgrave. Russell, John G. 1991a. “Narratives of Denial: Racial Chauvinism and the Black Other in Japan.” Japan Quarterly 38: 416–448. Russell, John G. 1991b. “Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture.” Cultural Anthropology 6: 3–25. Sterling, Marvin D. 2011. “Toward an Analysis of Global Blackness: Race, Representation, and Jamaican Culture in Japan.” In Takezawa, Yasuko (ed.) Racial Representations in Asia, pp. 56–161. Kyoto; Melbourne: Kyoto University Press, Trans Pacific Press. Takezawa, Yasuko. 2005. “Transcending the Western Paradigm of Race.” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 16: 5–30. Takezawa, Yasuko. 2015. “Translating and Transforming ‘Race’: Early Meiji Period Textbooks.” Japanese Studies 35: 5–21. Tezuka, Osamu. [1948] 1995. Sharigawa no himitsu kichi [The Secret Base of Shari River]. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. Yamakawa, Sōji. [1951] 1953. Shōnen Keniya [Boy Kenya]. Tokyo: Sankei jidōbunko. Yamakawa, Sōji. Shōnen Ōsha [Boy King]. [1931] 1977. Tokyo: Shueisha. Yoshimura, Kazuma. 2007. “Kindai nihon manga no karada” [“Bodies in Modern Japanese Manga”]. In Satoshi, Kinsui (ed.)Yakuwarigo kenkyū no chihei [The Ground Level of Role Language Research], pp. 109–121. Tokyo, Kuroshio shuppan.

Section B

Critique, contestation, and resistance

5

Down in the dumps: Tokyo wastelands and marginalized groups in Japanese film and anime Alisa Freedman

In the most cheerful scene of Iwai Shunji’s melodrama Swallowtail Butterfly (Suwarōteiru, 1996b), immigrants from various countries and speaking different languages scavenge in the pleasantly named “Blue Skies” (Aozora) garbage dump, a large field heaped with the refuse of excess consumer culture lying in the shadows of the city, a fictionalized futuristic Tokyo called “Yentown.” To upbeat strains of the “Love Theme of Swallowtail Butterfly” (Ai no uta), the breakout hit by film star Chara, they search for treasures under bright sunlight, discovering a piano and experiencing happiness, and a sense of belonging not enjoyed else­ where in the city that outright rejects their presence. Filmed with a shaky hand-held video camera to create a sense of immediacy and with fast-paced editing characteristic of music videos, this sequence is an interlude in an otherwise bleak story filled with stylized violence. It furthers the film’s message that money, the resource that enables political agency and social acceptance, really causes sorrow and death. At key moments when danger is imminent, the immigrant “family” returns to Blue Skies to find comfort in each other’s company, make music, and commit petty crimes. Blue Skies is contrasted with urban places where depoliticization, decadence, and pain are visually apparent, like the Yentown Club and Dope Alley. Blue Skies is also the place where gangs ruthlessly dispose of corpses and where the main characters hold memorial services. This scene, along with others that will be explained later, exemplifies how garbage dumps have been used in many Japanese films as both settings and metaphors for “discarded people,” who are cast out of the urban middle-class mainstream because they cannot “fit in” due to their personal backgrounds, economic situa­ tions, emotional states, or their inability to find care anywhere else. These same characters do not have the resources or rights to better their own situations or reform larger society. Although drawing attention to pro­ blems viewers might otherwise overlook, films like Swallowtail Butterfly stop short of calling for change; despite their humanistic intentions, they ultimately support rather than overturn the status quo. This chapter addresses this volume’s theme of depoliticization by showing how films, meant primarily to entertain rather than to edify or educate,

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empathetically portray people cast out of the urban mainstream, but, by as­ sociating marginalized people with garbage dumps, they ultimately undercut any clear political statements they might aspire to make. The association of urban refugees with urban refuse raises questions: Why, in these films, can marginalized people only find happiness and togetherness at dumps in the modern city? Is it this a way of sanitizing negative aspects of urban society so that viewers remain optimistic about the city’s ability to provide for different populations? What are the implications of these aestheticized depictions on real pollution, poverty, and prejudice? The answers can be found in three wellknown, critically acclaimed examples from different time periods: Kurosawa Akira’s Dodes’kaden (1970), the aforementioned Swallowtail Butterfly, and Kon Satoshi’s Tokyo Godfathers (Tokyo goddofāzāzu, 2003). In these films, Tokyo – the political, financial, and cultural capital of Japan – can be read as a metonym for the nation. Therefore, it is essential to account for these films’ historical contexts as well as their narratives to fully understand their depictions of poverty and alienation. I have chosen these films and feature anime because they show changes in Japan’s political landscape, use creative techniques for depicting Tokyo modernity, and represent major cinematic trends. These films emphasize the necessity for individuals to take responsibility for their own actions and are thereby different from films about cities destroyed by monsters, war, and nuclear cataclysm (e.g., the Godzilla series, tokusatsu special effects televi­ sion series, dystopic anime, and accounts of the 11 March 2011 triple dis­ aster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown) that place blame elsewhere. They are distinct from documentaries and more overtly politically films about pollution that are meant to encourage action, such as Muddy River (Doro no kawa, Oguri Kōhei, dir., 1981). Through close reading of scenes that take place in illegal dumping sites, I argue that these films ex­ emplify how popular culture depoliticizes pressing social issues making them instead into problems of personal accountability. As Greg Kennedy states in Ontology of Trash, a philosophical exploration of trash as being, “If we look at trash from the right angle, we start to see something more than a dirty collection…Images of ourselves begin to emerge, uncanny images we could not otherwise behold except through this outside medium. By virtue of its sheer volume, trash now offers us the single greatest means for observing ourselves” (Kennedy 2007, x). Borrowing from this insight and from theories of Roland Barthes, I argue for a semiotic reading of trash; how trash – by nature, things emptied of their former use value – achieves a different cultural value through representation. Garbage dumps disclose the “mythologies” underlying capitalist society, especially the desire for belonging and possession, in ways different from advertise­ ments of new goods (Barthes 1972): they reveal what is repressed in the daily workings of the city. Garbage dumps, as heaps of things discarded and useless to society, contrast to sites of production and productive political engagement. When they want political action, people picket city hall, rather

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than retreat into garbage dumps. Trash, as disposed waste, is inherently different from “ruins,” the traces urban development and other historical processes leave behind (see, for example, Tong 2013). For example, a film set on the Hashima (Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island), an abandoned island of industrial ruins, portrays a different sense of being apart from Japanese society than one set in a dump in the centre of Tokyo. Reading trash dis­ closes how urban development impacts people differently according to their socioeconomic class and where they live in the city, among other variables. I explore how trash is also a metaphor: the equation of two dissimilar things to create an emotional or intellectual response. Metaphors provide new perspectives on familiar things but tend to make concepts more abstract rather than emphasizing their concrete realities. As we will see in these three films, fictionalization of garbage dumps, while premised on historical facts about change in Tokyo, foregrounds the resilience of the human spirit rather than expounds the necessity of human and environmental survival, another means of depoliticization. To better understand visual use of garbage, I will briefly overview a few ways that waste (mis)management has impacted Tokyo’s social landscape.1 Then I will analyze filmic depictions that present a positive view of this destructive reality. I explicate example scenes and metaphors to better un­ derstand films’ underlying ideologies and historical contexts. To better un­ derstand why Kurosawa, Iwai, and Kon made these films, I contextualize Swallowtail Butterfly, Dodes’kaden, and Tokyo Godfathers within these directors’ careers and the cinematic movements they represent, while ac­ counting for the larger social forces in which they were shot and screened. Fictional film reveals how people make themselves at home in the city; yet it also represents the limits of popular culture as media meant primarily for entertainment rather than pedagogical or political use.

Tokyo garbage dumping: dirty facts behind metaphors Landfills and dumping sites of industrial and household waste visualize the by-products of Tokyo urban growth, industrialization, mass production, and mass consumption; their postwar history lies in the background of this chapter’s three films. Waste management campaigns during the war col­ lected materials for possible use at the battlefront and monitored homeland conservation (Tompkins 2018). In the 1950s, as Tokyo rebuilt and re­ covered, waste management campaigns strove to improve public health, as evidenced in the Public Cleansing Act (Seisō-hō) of 1954. Municipal rather than prefectural or national governments were responsible for garbage collection. Garbage was collected from Tokyo residences by carts, loaded into vessels at designated stations or directly onto trucks, and taken to in­ cinerator sites and landfills (Ministry of the Environment 2014, 4). The sight (and smell) of garbage trucks on newly constructed highways became an iconic image of high-growth era Tokyo. Landfills became the subject of

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public discussion, such as Tokyo Landfill No. 14 in Tokyo Bay, Kōtō Ward, nicknamed “Dream Island” (Yume no shima) in 1947. The landfill was identified as a potential site for Haneda Airport as early as 1939. When the Allied Occupation government scrapped the airport idea, the area became a public beach, closed in 1950. On Dream Island, garbage was not incinerated, leading to the release of toxic gases, among other health hazards. Dream Island had later incarnations and dumping sites (see, for example, Yoritomo 1990, 329; Siniawer 2018a).2 The Japanese Ministry of the Environment (2014, 5) estimates that the amount of waste generated in Japan increased five times in the 20 years between 1955 and 1975. During the construction boom around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, there was a dramatic proliferation of industrial waste, construction waste, and the rise of pollution and dis­ eases. (Minamata Disease was first reported in 1956.) Construction com­ panies were responsible for managing their own waste; abuse led to regulatory laws, such as the Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control (Kankyō kihon-hō, 1967, replaced in 1993) and the Nature Conservation Law (Shizen kankyō hozen-hō, 1972). Household waste increased with rising consumer spending, falling prices of appliances, and the opening of super­ markets and convenience stores, among other factors (Ministry of the Environment, 5). As Eiko Maruko Siniawer (2018a) described, in the early 1970s, “garbage was not just a material reality that demanded the attention of urban infrastructure development, but also a symbol of the many desires of middle-class life: the convenience of disposable goods, the comforts fuelled by energy consumption, the purchase of electric appliances, the preservation of natural resources, and more.” At times when people cus­ tomarily did major housecleaning, garbage pick-up sites would overflow, even to the extent of blocking traffic and becoming a safety hazard. Before greater public and legal attention to reduction, recycling, and reuse in the 1990s, the general policy toward waste seemed to be mass collection, mass transport, and mass disposal. Several regulatory plans and laws were enacted starting in the mid-1960s, especially after the Sixty-Fourth Diet Meeting in 1970, nicknamed the “Pollution Session” (Kōgai kokkai). Reforms included the Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law (Haikibutsu no shori oyobi seisō ni kansuru horitsu, 1970, amended several times between 1974 and 2001) that distinguished between industrial and municipal waste and who was responsible for each. By 1971, 72 percent of Tokyo solid waste was being taken by truck for disposal in landfills in Tokyo Bay, causing odours and traffic, in addition to health problems, water pollution, fires, flooding, and instability of reclaimed land. Ashes from the aging trash furnaces, only able to burn 27 percent of the city’s waste, were transported to these same landfills (McKean 1981, 102). Most landfills were in Tokyo’s Kōtō and Edogawa Wards, areas less affluent than neigh­ bourhoods that produced the most household waste. Laura Hein (2005, 205) notes that in 1971 only 10 wards had incinerators. These and other factors

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led Tokyo Governor Minobe Ryōkichi to declare a “war on garbage” (gomi no sensō) in September 1971 and to propose the construction of incinerators in all 23 wards, to spread responsibility of disposal throughout the city (Siniawer 2018a; McKean 1981; Hein 2005). However, the problem of illegal dumping of industrial and municipal garbage persisted (Ministry of the Environment 2014, 9). Tokyo metropolitan government’s “Tokyo Pollution Photography Contest” (Tokyo no kōgai shashin kongūru), held annually between 1970 and 1974, represents the extent of public and political acknowledgement of the waste problem and the need to document it. Winning entries por­ tray people tolerating, but not clearing, garbage in spaces integral to Tokyo daily life. For example, a photo from 1970 shows industrial waste piled on Shinagawa Prefectural beaches of Tokyo Bay, people strolling through or sitting on rubble, trash incinerator towers looming in the background. In an April 1972 photograph, people sit on park benches under cherry blossoms, ignoring mountains of trash in front of them. In a 1973 entry, two women weave through the hundreds of discarded bi­ cycles rusting in front of Kamata Station. The contest was one of many awareness campaigns (others included “Tokyo Slim,” 1989–1991) and can be seen as part of a larger movement to solve the problem (Ministry of the Environment 2014, 11). Yet photographic documentation not used as a step toward reform can be viewed as a passive, even depoliticized, acceptance of harmful realities. Residential garbage sorting began in the late 1970s in Shizuoka and Hiroshima Prefectures and spread nationwide in the 1980s. Local govern­ ments and city districts provide detailed guides (often numbering more than 20 pages and available in different languages) about strict sorting policies; illustrated explanation signs are hung near garbage pick-up sites. Household garbage is divided into five general categories, further broken down into more detailed groups: combustibles, non-combustibles, recyclables, PET bottles, and oversized items larger than 30 centimetres (sodai gomi). Since 1991, oversized items must be collected by reservation and fees by municipally endorsed collection centres (sodai gomi uketsuke sentā) or recycling shops, businesses once a fixture of Tokyo neighbourhoods, as featured in Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Bright Future (Akarui mirai, 2005). Alternative recycling solu­ tions have included “paper exchange trucks” (chirikami kōkan). Properly sorting trash is considered part of responsible citizenship. Historically, neighbourhood volunteers have checked garbage and issued notices to of­ fenders. Reprimands for poor sorting are often the only times non-Japanese residents receive foreign language notices from their relators. Since the 1970s, most of the city’s sorted trash has been burned, with dangerous dioxin levels persisting into the 1990s; the world’s tallest incinerator chimney is the Toshima Incineration Plant, built in 1999. Several recycling laws (e.g., Basic Act for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society, Junkangata shakai keisei suishin kihon hō, 2000) were promulgated in the 1990s and 2000s, and

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greater attention has been paid to disaster waste disposal, thanks in part to activist movements and technological advancements.3 While industrial and construction waste are depicted in Dodes’kaden and Swallowtail Butterfly, Tokyo Godfathers is filled with poorly sorted house­ hold waste. The different kinds of refuse reflect the social and political contexts of 1971, 1996, and 2005 Tokyo, respectively. However, the films do not realistically capture waste but instead turn it into potent metaphor. Rather than tolerating waste, as the people in Tokyo Pollution Photography Contest entries do, the characters engage with dumping sites, and the films’ humanistic yet depoliticized messages rely on garbage.

Example 1: Dodes’kaden – humanity affirmed through the rubble of imagination Kurosawa Akira (1910–1998) filmed Dodes’kaden (1970) one year after Minobe declared a “war on garbage” and at a time of increased effort to document waste. Rubble of construction debris and broken household items pours out the top and sides of the screen. In Dodes’kaden – his first colour film and the most colourful of all his 31 films – Kurosawa used colour symbolically, coding the characters and reflecting their emotional and physical states. But he depicts rubble more realistically in dull grey, tinged with brown; this shading makes the piles appear more expansive. Air pol­ lution is not shown, and the clear sky is instead a canvas for surreal back­ drops (Figure 5.1). Kurosawa, accustomed to long production schedules, shot Dodes’kaden in only 28 days, mostly in an outdoor dump (Okamoto 2002; Prince 2009; Richie 1996, 184–185; Yoshimoto 2000, 335). As discussed in detail by Stephen Prince (2009) and Donald Richie (1996, 192), Kurosawa was facing a troubled point in his career, which impacted upon the budget for Dodes’kaden and gave rise to the innovative mise-en-scène. In 1969, Twentieth Century Fox fired him from directing the Japanese scenes for Tora! Tora! Tora! for being over budget and beyond deadlines and on grounds of mental illness, an accusation Kurosawa denied. In the late 1960s, the Japanese film industry was suffering financial losses and having trouble attracting audiences, in part due to the rise of television, which led studios to reduce costs or close. In response, Kurosawa formed the “Club of Four Knights” (Yonki no kai) production company with fellow auteurs Kinoshita Keisuke, Ichikawa Kon, and Kobayashi Masaki; Dodes’kaden was their first and last film. In 2000, Ichikawa, then the only living knight, directed their script Dora-heita (Richie 2001, 165). Kurosawa attempted suicide in 1971. Do’deskaden, an omnibus film that combines slice-of-life episodes and surrealistic dream sequences, was based on The Town Without Seasons (Kisetsu no nai machi, 1962), by author Yamamoto Shūgorō whose fiction formed the basis of the Kurosawa films Sanjurō (Tsubaki Sanjurō, 1962) and Red Beard (Akahige, 1965) (Richie 1996, 185). The book is a collection of

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Figure 5.1 The character Roku-chan moves his “trolley” through the rubble in Kurosawa Akira’s Dodes’kaden ( 1970).

stories set in an unnamed shantytown separated from the rest of the city by a filthy river that people on both sides dare not cross. As Yoshimoto writes, the title refers to the shantytown’s existence as an imaginary space to city residents, outside their daily life (Yoshimoto 2000, 336). In Dodes’kaden, the shantytown is bordered instead by rubble, and the viewer is taken there by Roku-chan, a mentally impaired youth who meti­ culously drives an imaginary trolley. While the rush of modern vehicles is heard in the city, Roku-chan voices the sound his trolley makes as it tra­ verses the landscapes: the refrain “dodes’kaden” was created by Yamamoto (Richie 1996, 185) and gives the film its title. This either implies that “real” transportation would not service the shantytown or that the shantytown is as make-believe as Roku-chan’s trolley. Roku-chan’s trolley runs five times in the film: through sun, rain, starry night, and day, and against the back­ ground of a surrealistic orange sky. The repeated sequence propels the narrative and links the villagers of the shantytown together. Kurosawa compassionately and humorously depicts shantytown residents as people, from day labourers to low-level businessmen, who have been left out of Japan’s high economic growth of the 1960s; as a contrast, the outside city flourishes, exemplified by its well-stocked restaurants and shiny cars. All characters, except the most abusive, work, either in the city or at home, or

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have caretaking responsibilities. Work is equated to individual worth. Thus the film manifests the theme Donald Richie (2001, 166–167) found common to all of Kurosawa’s films, regardless of their different genres or settings in either historical or twentieth-century Japan: the need for the individual to take responsibility for his own actions within his destructive society. Characters include two drunk day labourers (Masuo and Hatsu) dressed in red and yellow, who swap wives, also colour coded accordingly; Ryo who tends to his pregnant wife’s five children, none of them his own; blind man Hei who cannot forgive his wife for her adultery; Katsuko, a waif tirelessly making bright paper flowers for sale and tolerating her abusive uncle; Mr. Shima, a dandy with a tic and his demanding wife; gossiping women by the communal water faucet; and an unnamed homeless man and his son living in a rusted car and dreaming of constructing a house of their own. The only person who interacts with Roku-chan, and thereby perhaps the mostly closely connected with the city, is the shantytown “elder” Tanaba who makes leather goods, an occupation associated with the burakumin, or outcast caste. The shantytown residents all cope with personal trauma. A few voice dissatisfactions with job loss and the exhaustion of piecemeal la­ bour, while others silently suffer emotional and physical abuse, issues Japanese social mores dictate as best dealt with privately, even to disastrous repercussions. All residents seem to take their poverty as a matter of fact and do not try to leave the shantytown. Their shacks are simple but well maintained, many with bright exteriors. A symbol of decay within the shantytown is the withered tree with no branches or leaves that only Hei’s wife touches. Stories progress by one character passing by another or gazing out at the shanty­ town through doors and windows, reiterating the significance of home. The technique of juxtaposition emphasizes the film’s themes; shantytown re­ sidents live in dignity in a harsh environment. They do not actively call for political or social change; instead they accept their separation from main­ stream society, furthering the film’s depoliticizing message. Their goal is perseverance (ganbaru), a value of Japanese society: to try to better the si­ tuation for oneself and one’s community by being resilient and taking re­ sponsibility for one’s own actions. The beggar boy and his father are the two characters most important to understanding the pathos of this message of perseverance, the relationship between imagination and reality in the shantytown, and the toxicity of garbage, here food waste. Their stripped-out car contrasts with the new automobiles outside the sushi restaurant where the son last begs, perhaps alluding to burnt cars as metonymy for war wreckage in 1940s Japanese film and literature. Through surrealist fantasy sequences, they find comfort in “building” their dream house, from outside gate to swimming pool, which Richie notes is the actual pool at the Akasaka Palace State Guest House (Geihinkan) (Richie 1996, 194). Their discussions about architecture (Japanese and Western) and the emotional qualities of building materials

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juxtapose to the shantytown. The personalities of the father and son are distinguished by their colour preferences for their dream house: while the father prefers garish colours, his son favours more practical white. In a dramatic turning point in the film, they contract food poisoning by eating sashimi the boy received from a sushi shop. The father shows off his knowledge about not cooking raw fish, disregarding the sushi chef’s advice, thus making his pride, rather than the rancid fish, the cause of their demise. As their suffering worsens, the progression of their fear and illness shows on their ghostly faces through sickly hues, contrasting to the dramatic orange of the sky. The father, who lives in dreams, is unable to face reality and ask for help; he turns to Tabata after it is already too late. Tanaba, whose wise words explain the motives of the characters, declares the father to be shy and wretched rather than proud. The son dies as their dream house in a grassy meadow is finished. Most other stories in the film are resolved, often without happy endings. The film draws to a close with the last run of Roku-chan’s trolley for the day. The film finishes just as it opened: with a focus on children’s drawings of trolleys in Roku-chan and his mother’s home and tempura shop, where reflections of “actual” trolleys can be seen, and their sounds heard. The drawings, mostly done by Kurosawa, further the metaphorical possibility of mobility, rather than its real potential, while lightening the film’s mood. Kurosawa’s use of rubble is also more symbolic than realistic; this pre­ cludes its political impact. Dodes’kaden is not a film about economic poverty but a commentary on the human spirit, its strength, and its failings. Roger Ebert (1975) equates Kurosawa’s setting to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby. Kurosawa shows mainstream viewers the “humanity” of the shantytown residents, thus raising awareness of their existence. He uses non-threatening means (here, metaphor) to make people confront distasteful social issues, but his artful individualization of poverty, its association with garbage, and universalization of notions of perseverance muddies calls for political action. Dodes’kaden’s metaphorical setting is different than more realistic views of Tokyo in Kurosawa’s One Wonderful Sunday (Subarashiki nichiyōbi, 1947), in which a young couple with little money to spend go on a date in the city, experiencing aspects of destruction, reconstruction, class divides, and hope; they dream of starting a family, opening a café, and leading a comfortable middle-class life. It differs from black markets as places where crime, loss, and survival are enacted in Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi, 1948, which included symbolism of a stag­ nant pond at a time when films could not show war wreckage) and Stray Dog (Nora inu, 1949). In Dodes’kaden, metaphor encourages viewers to in­ tellectually reflect on the human condition, thus removing them from feel­ ings of guilt or discomfort about real social problems. The same can be said about Iwai’s Swallowtail Butterfly, filmed 25 years later.

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Example 2: Swallowtail Butterfly – a garbage dump is the only place immigrants feel at home in “Yentown” In Swallowtail Butterfly, writer and director Iwai Shunji (b. 1963) stylishly presents crimes – illegal dumping, gang violence, counterfeiting, human trafficking, drugs, scandal newspapers, police brutality, and more – using cutting-edge techniques, including digital video (see, for example, Schilling 1999, 70–71). As in the case of Dodes’kaden, juxtaposition is integral to the narrative: symbols, settings, and characters are repeated twice, the second time with more negative associations to teach the evils of money. Rapid camera movements and freeze frames, shadows and bright light further thematic contrasts. Iwai divides Swallowtail Butterfly into two halves to emphasize character changes, a strategy he later used in All About Lili Chou Chou (Riri Shushu no subete, 2002) (Figure 5.2). Iwai began his career directing music videos, music television programs, and television dramas, media that influenced Swallowtail Butterfly, replete with coincidences, chance meetings, and visual refrains found in Japanese television dramas and musical interludes, like the one at Blue Skies garbag dump described above. A departure from traditional studio productions, film sponsors include Pony Canyon (also a music distributor) and Fuji Television. Iwai assembled the Yentown Band and used film sequences as their official music videos. The songs from their concept album Montage (Montāju) topped the Oricon charts, as “Love Theme of Swallowtail Butterfly,” created in collaboration with Kobayashi Takeshi of the band Mr. Children, sold around 809,000 single CDs in 1996 (Sony Music 1996; Mūshikku amigo. n.d.). Songs were a reason for the film’s commercial success, as was its all-star cast, especially singer Chara, who plays the Chinese prostitute-singer Glico. (The previous year, Chara starred in Iwai’s Picnic.) Music also serves as a

Figure 5.2 Yentown in Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly – a sprawl of factories, warehouses, ports, and other sites of production and cheap labour.

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metaphor and plot device: characters’ fates are sealed at the Yentown Club, and headphone cords and cassette tapes cause key narrative turning points. Details convey larger messages, like hats emblazoned with the word “guilt” and repeated use of the yen symbol (¥), as in the Yentown Band name.4 Swallowtail Butterfly is “the story of Yentowns in Yentown.” It is set in the unspecified near future when the yen is the world’s strongest currency, and immigrants from many countries are flocking to Tokyo, with the goal of working hard to return to their home countries rich. They become a fungible labour pool, unable to find stable employment and facing discrimination in Japan, which is, in many ways, legally closed to foreigners. As explained in the opening sequence, “Yentown” (円都) is both how immigrants refer to the city and how the Japanese population refers to the immigrants (円盗), a homophone for “yen thieves.” More empathetically portrayed than the Japanese population, the immigrants are not passive victims and instead actively commit crimes. All characters are criminals, whose efforts to get money cause unhappi­ ness, even death. Glico (her name a sexual innuendo based on a candy commercial jingle: “salarymen grow up sucking on Glico”) came from Shanghai with her two brothers. One brother was brutally killed in a hitand-run car accident, while the other, unbeknownst to Glico, is a powerful gang leader. Because immigrants die anonymous deaths, Glico had a swallowtail butterfly tattooed on her chest, giving the film its title. Glico takes a teenaged girl (unstated if she is Chinese or Japanese, played by Itō Ayumi, later cast in All About Lili Chou Chou) under her wing and names her “Ageha,” or “caterpillar.” The film is Ageha’s coming-of-age story, or how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The film begins with Ageha’s mo­ ther’s corpse being dumped at Blue Skies. Ageha soon gets power over a gang of boys who imitate the gang led by Glico’s brother, and she acts as a translator for other characters. Ageha is the only character able to speak Japanese, English, and Chinese, the three languages intentionally mixed in the film, sometimes within the same sentence; her voiceovers (often in English) explain the story and add empathy. Multiple languages and national backgrounds are the source of misunderstanding rather than multiculturalism. Japanese actors speak English and Chinese; foreign actors speak Japanese. Chinese characters are played by Japanese actors (other examples include Eguchi Yosuke as Glico’s brother Ryo Ranki and Mikami Hiroshi as Feihong, who opens the Yentown Club out of his love for Glico). The Japanese characters, especially the police, have trouble communicating. The Yentown Band includes an American who describes himself as a “third-culture kid” (term for children raised in countries other than their citizenship) and who says he cannot speak English because of failings in the Japanese school system. Many characters bemoan that they have no country to call home. Music producers tell Glico she needs to become Japanese because foreign singers do not sell well in Japan. The Yentown Club is required to have a Japanese owner.

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As the place where immigrant criminals (especially male and female hustlers, contract killers, and prostitutes) form a community and commit crimes, the Blue Skies garbage dump, with a name reminiscent of the aozora black markets im­ mediately after World War II, is visually contrasted to the rest of the city. For example, the opening sequence, filmed in grainy black and white and repeated later in the film as part of Iwai’s characteristic “doubling,” provides an aerial view of Yentown, shown not as an alluring urban skyline but as a sprawl of factories, warehouses, ports, and other sites of production and cheap labour. Yentown looks retrograde rather than futuristic. The opening sequence is im­ mediately followed by sunrise over Blue Skies, as gang trucks, looking similar to trucks transporting garbage to landfills and incinerators, stop to dump the corpse of Ageha’s mother. Blue Skies lies in the shadow of a major city centre, resem­ bling the Shinjuku commercial and business district, its tall buildings seen in the distance. Iwai seems to be borrowing the filmic and literary technique of setting outcast areas in proximity to mainstream urban nodes like Toxitown in Murakami Ryū’s 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies (Koinrokkā beibīzu). That many immigrants live outside of Shinjuku where cheap housing and work can be found is also an economic reality. Shots of the city include places where people are bought and sold, treated ruthlessly, die anonymous deaths, and “Dope Alley,” which seems inspired by that Kurosawa’s High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku, 1963). Blue Skies residents include Feihong, the Chinese assassin Ran (played by Japanese actor Watabe Atsuro), and Iranian con-artist Nihat (Abrahama Levin). The joyful “Love Theme of Swallowtail Butterfly” contrasts to music bought and sold as commodity in the city, as the case of the song “My Way” sung at the Yentown Club and coded on the cassette tape (no spoilers). In Blue Skies, money is mass-produced through counterfeiting and then literally defaced, losing its use value and becoming as worthless as garbage. In the surrounding city, the value of money is expounded through billboards with slogans like “All or Nothin,” and Glico’s tagline as a popstar is “Time = Money.” At Blue Skies, residents cut the face of Fukuzawa Yukichi out of 10,000-yen bills; Nihat acknowledges (perhaps ironically) that Fukuzawa advocated equality among people, here an equal chance to get money. In bleaker second half of the film, residents leave Blue Skies, moving into the city or returning to their home countries, with money illegally obtained from cashchanging machines. Ageha explains in a voiceover, “We struck gold, but it was paper gold…just saw some face staring back at me. We waged our dream on a wagon of paper gold and said good-bye to Aozora” (Iwai 1996b). The film ends at Blue Skies with the death of the dreams of the main immigrant characters. The film closes as it had opened: with a body iden­ tification, the final and most dramatic of the film’s many pairings. (Other pairings include butterfly tattoos, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s face, car accidents, Dope Alley scenes, boxing, counterfeiting, “My Way,” and police brutality.) Feihong’s death is another of the many instances of dramatic irony caused by money: while trying to pay for a taxi ride during a shootout, he is caught by police, who blame him for the counterfeiting scam at Blue Skies and beat

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him to death; the song “My Way” plays as he dies. At the police station, Ageha identifies Feihong’s country as “Yentown.” At the subsequent memorial service, she initiates the burning of money, the source of the community’s misery and part of a Chinese funeral ritual, the camera cap­ turing bills blowing into the sky. Ageha’s voiceover from the opening se­ quence is repeated, turning the film into a parable. The film remains grounded in a historical moment in Japan while becoming a tale of general human nature. No solutions to any of the depicted problems are offered. The same is true of Tokyo Godfathers, a morality tale with underdog characters, garbage heaps, and religious overtones, and a lesson of the healing power of family and money.

Example 3: Tokyo Godfathers – homeless characters teach the value of “home” Late Kon Satoshi's (1963–2010) third feature anime pairs homelessness and household waste to reaffirm the family as the main unit of care and convey the message that money can solve problems. The basic storyline is similar to John Ford’s Three Godfathers (1948), in which American Wild West bandits adopt a baby left in the desert, and is loosely based on Peter B. Kyne’s 1913 novel Three Godfathers, in which the rescuers are bank robbers (for addi­ tional differences, see Plou 2016, 106–109). Kon’s film, opening in a church and set between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, might also reference the Biblical Magi Three Wise Men (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3 On Christmas Eve, Gin, Hana, and Miyuki discover a baby in an illegal dumping site in Kon Satoshi’s Tokyo Godfathers ( 2003).

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The “godfathers” are Gin, an alcoholic former bicycle shop owner who abandoned his wife, daughter, and business while in his 30s because of his drinking and debts. Hana, a middle-aged transgender woman prone to tears and rage, quit work after causing an uproar at the bar where she used to sing and has been homeless since her husband’s death; her haiku written onsc­ reen convey themes of the film. Teenaged runaway Miyuki left home six months earlier after stabbing her father and is scared to return. On Christmas Eve, while scavenging an illegal dumping site in Shinjuku for volumes of the Collected Literary Works for Children (Kodomo no bungaku zenshū) and viciously fighting with each other, the three find an abandoned baby, crying amidst bags of garbage, books, furniture, and other household waste. Hana names the baby “Kiyoko” (literally, “pure child”), referencing Christmas Eve, which she deems the “purest of nights.” Throughout the film, Hana remarks that Kiyoko is a “gift from God” and “God’s messenger” because she brings the characters together and takes then on a journey full of coincidences that encourage them to reunite with their families. Their hunt would not be possible in the digital age, making the time of the film ambiguous, although the homeless problem, skyline, and transportation vehicles date from 2003. In this melodrama with aspects of detective and action genres, the characters wander through snowy Tokyo, finding clues that lead them to the baby’s parents. They primarily seek Kiyoko’s mother, for the film equates women with tradi­ tional caregiving roles. Many women they meet are mothers or desire children of their own, while others are brides and nurses; however, the men are less able to care for other people, let alone for themselves. While on their quest, Hana, Miyuki, and Gin discuss reasons for their homelessness and learn to better communicate. They encounter people who help them to take responsibility for their actions and to experience miracles and forgiveness. They meet other women named “Kiyoko,” including Gin’s own daughter, now a hospital nurse engaged to a doctor her father’s age. Symbolism of Christianity, family, return, and reconciliation abounds. The opening shot of Tokyo Godfathers shows baby Jesus nestled in a manger, immediately followed by children dressed as the Three Wise Men, in a nativity play. These images are part of a Christmas Eve church service with a sermon expounding the emotional strain experienced by people with no place to call home (ibasho ga nai ningen-tachi), which Gin and Hana attend in order to join the soup line after. Angels decorate billboards, appear in dreams and visions, are in the names of bars and cats, and are referenced in newspaper articles. Media headlines foreshadow events, and, as common in other Kon anime, billboards contain clues and allude to other anime. Although too young to talk, Baby Kiyoko miraculously speaks: “Kaeritai,” or “I want to go home.” Action film music, baby cries, and street traffic are background noise. Tokyo buildings are seen from many angles, from the ground up and the top down, close-up in the opening credits and dancing in the closing credits to a version Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9,

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which is customarily played at Christmas time in Japan. Towers (e.g., Tokyo Tower and Angel Tower drag queen bar) are visual motifs, but none appear to be trash incinerators. Different kinds of living quarters are profiled, in­ cluding the neighbourhoods of poor foreigners (here, Latin Americans), middle-class suburban homes, urban houses being destroyed, and blue-tarp villages of the homeless in the shadow of skyscrapers. All residences are surrounded by garbage. Garbage is found at every residence shown in the film, with the possible exception of Miyuki’s house, which is shown in the least detail. The amount and kinds of waste reveal the mental states of the residents and their fi­ nancial situations. For example, poorly disposed trash, both in garbage bags and discarded appliances, line the exteriors of the foreigners’ shabby homes; used needles are found on their street. Trash helps create suspense, for it makes the neighbourhood seem scarier. It perhaps unintentionally insin­ uates that foreigners are dirty and unable to properly sort refuse according to Japanese guidelines. The interiors of the tiny blue-tarp shelters of the homeless are packed with garbage scavenged from the city. Garbage is all that remains of the home of the couple the “godfathers” first presume are Kiyoko’s parents. The depressed “mother,” with the ironic name Sachiko (“happy child”), worked at a hostess bar to earn money to pay off her es­ tranged husband’s debt. Since their separation, her unemployed husband lives in a dishevelled studio apartment strewn with trash. Trash might be part of a moral commentary about the kinds of parents whom the film deems to be fit caregivers. The homeless trio are good “parents” because they use trash wisely to care for the baby. Scavenging functions as a me­ taphor for being “thrown away” and “found” and as a narrative device for finding clues to the identity and location of Kiyoko’s parents. Practical baby care items, from parenting magazines to diapers, are found through scavenging. People they help give gifts of money. Homeless people are called trash and treated like rubbish. Hana insults Gin by saying he is “kuzu,” among other words for “waste.” Adolescent male youth name their brutal beating and robbery of the homeless “year-end housecleaning” (nenmatsu no ōsōji). They kill an elderly homeless man, who is “cleared away” by an ambulance, and Gin, left lying severely hurt on a garbage heap, is rescued by a drag queen dressed like an angel. The scene dramatizes real instances of roving youth gangs violently attacking urban homeless populations, sometimes called “homeless hunting” (hōmuresukari), such as that in Osaka in February 2003 and Kawasaki in December 2003 (“Gangs of Teens Attack Homeless Men”; Onishi 2003). In a poignant scene of discrimination, passengers on a crowded commuter train hold their noses to protect against the offensive smell of unwashed homeless people, but nobody seems offended by garbage lying around the city. Tokyo Godfathers both dramatizes and depoliticizes the historical reality of Japan’s increasing homelessness. According to Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare surveys, in 2003, the year of the film, 25,269 people

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were reported homeless in fifteen cities nationwide, sleeping in parks, under bridges, in stations, by riverbanks, and in other city places where homeless people commonly take shelter. The largest concentrations were in Osaka (6,603) and Tokyo (5,927). The definition of “homeless” in Japan at the time did not include seeking shelter in inexpensive public accommodations, such as Internet cafés and hostels. If those living long term in unstable tem­ porary housing, whose numbers are difficult to quantify, are taken into account, thousands more people may have been excluded from surveys (Freedman 2011). Tokyo Godfathers includes homeless people from different generations; in every case, their reason for being homeless is emotional rather than financial or due to discrimination. They have loving families but choose not to live with them. This theme is reiterated in the Christmas Eve sermon, which addresses homeless people’s emotional needs rather than their financial poverty. As the film shows, state aid is limited and is difficult to obtain for people without permanent homes, for addresses are needed on applications for assistance. This is apparent when Hana cannot pay her hospital bill. The homeless trio do not fear the police or having their shelter forcibly removed by “cleanup” campaigns; they are most scared of facing the consequences of their own actions. The use of personal emotions diverts from overt political messages about larger society. After a dramatic car chase and rescue scene, the film ends happily on the first day of the new year for the characters who have acted benevolently. The “immoral” characters are left to deal the unhappiness they have caused others. Hana, Gin, and Miyuki all reunite with their families, who have been awaiting their return. Kiyoko’s real mother and father ask Hana and Gin to be her “godfathers,” also becoming a way the two can stay together despite their changed circumstances. The viewer is certain that the characters will no longer be homeless and poor. Money is obtained through acts of kindness or luck. Like Swallowtail Butterfly, Tokyo Godfathers uses the face of Fukuzawa Yukichi on 10,000 yen bills to ex­ press the characters’ plight. Here, he frowns when money is paid for hospital bills but smiles when Gin and his daughter reunite. Tokyo Godfathers does not propose solutions for homelessness, waste manage­ ment, and the need to provide care for people outside the family system. Instead, homelessness seems less of a far-reaching problem and more of a milestone in an individual’s life. Had garbage not been dumped in Tokyo, the characters, baby included, would not have found their way home.

Conclusion: depoliticized garbage Several other Japanese films and anime use trash to form human connections and comment on the alienation of urban life. For example, in Tokyo Trash Baby (Tokyo gomi onna, Hiroki Ryūichi, 2000), a lonely young woman col­ lects her neighbour’s garbage in her apartment; the film shows that you can learn more about someone from their trash than from their social media and other self-presentations because it is more unfiltered. In Chobits (Chobittsu,

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manga by Clamp, 2001–2002, anime by Madhouse, producer of Tokyo Godfathers, 2002), a male student finds a broken female android lying on a heap of garbage bags and teaches her many things, imparting the fantasy of finding things you desire in the trash. Miyazaki Hayao’s anime make state­ ments about pollution and waste of consumer society, as exemplified by Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, 2001) and Ponyo (Gake no ue no Ponyo, 2008). Part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Franchise, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s (manga by Hikokubo Masahiro and Satō Masashi 2009–2015 and television anime by Ono Katsumi, 2008–2012, among other media platforms) depicts characters living in a garbage dump, building decks out of discarded cards; the series teaches acceptance and teamwork.5 The documentary film Tokyo Waka (John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson 2012) offers crows’ perspectives of Tokyo garbage. “Hedora’s Mountain” (Hedorā no yama, 1994 and rerun in 2013, lyrics and music by Hayashi Tetsuji, sung by Hosokawa Takashi, animation by Nishiuchi Toshio) is part of NHK national broadcasting’s Everybody Sings (Minna no uta) five-minute program begun in 1961 of children’s songs about topical but noncontroversial issues. Released in support of the 1993 amended Basic Environmental Law, Hedora, a monster that lives in the mountains, comes to the city to eat urban garbage and grows larger. After sanitation workers clean up garbage, he deflates. The word “hedoro” means sludge or chemical ooze and forms part of the name of Godzilla’s rival Hedora (Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, Gojira tai Hedora, Banno Yoshimitsu, 1971). Pokémon characters referencing trash include Garbador (in Japanese, Dasutodasu, Generation Five). In Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018), dogs exiled to “Trash Island,” a dump outside Megasaki, Japan, band together to rescue their compatriots and fight for their rights. Cultural visions of illegal dumping in Dodes’kaden, Swallowtail Butterfly, and Tokyo Godfathers make apparent the industrial and consumer excess produced in three decades of Tokyo growth. The kinds of waste shown onscreen have changed, as fewer images of industrial waste are seen in Tokyo after the 1990s. The characters – precarious labourers in high-growth-era Tokyo, immigrants in the 1990s, and homeless in the early 2000s – exemplify people who, for economic and political reasons or because of their personal backgrounds and identities, are marginalized from middle-class Tokyo life. Yet they suffer as much from their pride as they do their poverty. They use garbage dumps as sites for communities and families rather than as ganglands or illicit meeting places. In many cases, discoveries in garbage dumps help the characters find a sense of “home” in the city. The films include least one child or adolescent character who has been “abandoned,” “scavenged,” or otherwise found themselves to be a member of the community. Social problems, such as homelessness, achieve new meanings and emotional impact when associated with children, who are usually believed to be more innocent and vulnerable than adults. Childhood is the stage of life when one should be sheltered and protected, rather than forced to endure hardships. In mainstream society, homelessness is often attributed to personal failing, but it is not so easy to blame homeless children for their own situations.

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Only in Tokyo Godfathers is economic need alleviated, but for the isolated case of the characters and not for the larger groups they represent. The persistence of individuals in toxic environments imparts a larger lesson for Japanese society. Characters living on the fringes of society are used to illuminate and instruct mainstream values. Yet although socially aware and environmentally conscious, these films turn pollution, poverty, under­ employment, prejudice, and homelessness into individuals’ experiences rather than problems demanding political responses that implicate all of society. As analyzed previously, Kurosawa, Iwai, and Kon employ metaphors in this effort. Another means is through the theme of family. These three films exemplify a dominant strand of Japanese culture that promotes the family as the social unit responsible for care (see Freedman 2011). They ultimately convey an optimistic view of the Japanese city as a place that supports the family or provides al­ ternative communities to replicate it. They promote awareness of real suffering that many urban residents otherwise tend to overlook, but in emphasizing the resilience of the human spirit, a notable cause, they inspire affect rather than activism. As works meant to entertain and inspire, they stir viewers’ emotions but do not incite then to try to solve the problems described. These films remain outside of politics because they are not controversial, which is also a reason for their endurance. Illegal dumping grounds, like the people who inhabit or use them, are seen as just a part of urban society that cannot be helped.

Notes 1 For detailed accounts of the waste in Japan, see, for example, Rebecca Tompkins (2018), Eiko Maruko Siniawer (2018b), and Brett L. Walker (2011). 2 Dream Island will be the site of archery events for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Games. 3 For a helpful English guide to Japanese environmental laws and technologies up through the time of these three films, see Ministry of the Environment (2014). 4 Iwai also features garbage dumps in Picnic and a factory full of debris in All About Lily Chou Chou. 5 I thank Alex Owen for this example.

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State in Japanese Wartime Waste Campaigns, 1937–1945.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 53: 27–46. Tong, Lam. 2013. Abandoned Futures. Darlington, England: Carpet Bombing Cultures. Walker, Brett L. 2011. Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yamamoto Shūgorō. 1962. Kisetsu no nai machi (The Town Without Seasons). Tokyo: Bungei shunjūsha. Yoritomo, Katsumi. 1990. “Tokyo’s Serious Waste Problem.” Japan Quarterly 37 (3) (July–September): 328–333. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. 2000. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Cinema at the edge of the world: visions of precarity in the films of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi Lindsay Nelson

Introduction Aoyama Shinji’s epic three-and-a-half-hour film Eureka (Yurīka, 2000) opens with one of the main characters, a young girl named Kozue, staring out at the ocean. Her voiceover warns that a tidal wave is coming to wash us all away. Later in the film we see Kozue slowly, deliberately walking into the ocean. She has arrived there after a long journey with her brother and a bus driver, the three of them the only survivors of a bus jacking incident. The characters have, in a sense, travelled as far as they can go – the ocean is a final barrier, and it also seems to represent a powerful force that pulls at all of them. The fact that Japan is an island country comes through strongly in many works of Japanese cinema of the 1990s and 2000s, often in storylines that see characters venturing to the ocean and staring out into oblivion (this happens in multiple Kurosawa Kiyoshi films like Pulse [Kairo, 2001], Cure [Kyua, 1997], and Journey to the Shore [Kishibe no tabi, 2015]). Sometimes char­ acters actually venture into the ocean, either as an act of cleansing or in a futile attempt to escape desperate circumstances (The Light Shines Only There [Soko nomi nite hikari kagayaku, Oh Mipo, 2014]). Sometimes they are trying to commit suicide (Our Escape [Bokura no bōmei, Uchida Nobuteru, 2017], and sometimes they seem to be taking in the vastness of the world and the smallness of their own place in it (Maborosi [Maboroshi no hikari, Koreeda Hirokazu, 1995]). Often these characters are both literally and figuratively trapped – stuck in a cycle of poverty or abuse, they’re also hemmed in by the oceanic borders that surround their home. In the scenes where they venture to the ocean, they seem to be perched on the edge of the world, unable to move forward without drowning. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in Japan has also likely heard the phrase “Japan is an island country” (Nihon wa shimaguni) in a variety of contexts. It’s a key tenet of nihonjinron, the pseudoscientific philosophy which argues that, among other things, Japan’s island-ness re­ sulted in a culture that developed in complete isolation, making Japanese culture much “more unique” than other cultures (Dale 1987). (In June 2020,

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 119 Deputy Prime Minister Asō Tarō faced criticism for claiming that Japan’s low rate of COVID-19 infections was due to the country’s “higher cultural standard” [mindo], a statement arguably based in nihonjinron-style thinking [Yoshii 2020].) “Japan is an island” is also a convenient contemporary ex­ cuse for why certain policies (immigration, different corporate and educa­ tional structures) are effective in other countries but not in Japan. There’s an interesting tone to this argument (which I’ve heard from both elderly and very young people) – a certain pride in Japan’s perceived cultural unique­ ness, but also a bit of sadness at having been so cut off from the rest of the world. (Nihonjinron often glosses over Japan’s long history of interaction with China, Korea, Europe, and eventually the United States.) In the 2010s, it isn’t so much physical geography that “traps” people within Japan, it’s economic hardship and the impossibility of imagining a life beyond the shores of Japan. As portrayed in certain works of Japanese cinema from the 2010s, the lives of Japan’s contingent and working-class labourers are precarious in multiple ways: they are literally living at the edge of the only world they know, often eking out a living in remote areas near the sea, and they are constantly dancing on the edge of homelessness or financial or mental collapse. The imagery of people literally perched at the edge of the world, sometimes diving into it, reinforces the idea of being trapped and unable to move within society. It’s also important to note that depicting precarious lives as anything other than individual tragedies – insinuating, for example, that the Japanese government and institutional policies are partly to blame – is seen by some as a risky move. Controversial subjects like rape and child abuse have been depicted openly in Japanese film for some time, but films that overtly cri­ tique the Japanese government run the risk of being labelled “anti-Japanese” (or simply controversial), which can make it more difficult to work with the domestic entities that help to secure a film’s international distribution (Koreeda 2018b;Blair 2015). This has been a more frequent topic of dis­ cussion since the 2018 release of the film Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2018a), which won the top prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival but has been criticized by some for depicting Japan in a ne­ gative light (Mainichi 2018). Koreeda himself has turned down invitations from various government entities, arguing that filmmakers should keep a clear distance from government authority (Mainichi 2018). (He has also argued that a film is “not a vehicle to accuse, or to relay a specific message” and calls films made for the explicit purpose of praising/criticizing something “propaganda” [Thompson 2018].) In discussing the “framing” of precarity in contemporary Japanese cinema, then, it’s also important to discuss what often gets left out of the frame – namely, the connection between individual poverty or precarity and government policy, as well as any direct criticism of politicians or institutions of authority. And yet in choosing to realistically depict the individual implications of government policy – the bleak and frequently hopeless lives of those trapped

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in a precarious existence – Kumakiri’s films also offer a kind of shadow critique, avoiding the overt politicization that comes with criticizing Japanese government policies and systemic inequalities, but still shedding light on messy, unresolved narratives of precarity that offer no easy answers, solutions, or triumphs. The borders of the cinematic and narrative frame may be narrow, and the narratives may avoid any overt condemnation of government policy, but telling realistic stories of lives ground down by economic and spiritual hardship, and avoiding arcs of redemption or a clear sense that things will improve, points a finger towards a larger picture of systemic inequality and governmental indifference. This chapter will examine the depiction of “lives on the edge” in two Japanese films from the 2010s, both directed by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi: My Man (Watashi no otoko, 2014) and Sketches of Kaitan City (Kaitanshi jokei, 2010). Both of these films feature characters with limited support networks who struggle to get by in a remote part of Japan. The brutal, icy landscape in which they live mirrors their spiritual and economic struggles. In examining the way these films “frame” their narratives, I examine the ways that poverty and precarity are perceived in Japan today, and how the cinematic frame illustrates the physical and emotional realities of precarious lives. I examine what images these films focus on, how they convey the reality of precarious lives, and what is included/excluded via the films’ narrative and aesthetic choices. I also explore the more delicate questions that are often left out of the cinematic frame (intentionally or not), the question of whether these choices result in an overtly politicized or depoliticized film, and what this means for how viewers perceive poverty and precarity in Japan going forward.

Framing the new face of poverty in Japan Though exact definitions vary, the precariat (precarious proletariat) are generally defined as those engaged in “employment that is uncertain, un­ predictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg 2009, 2). Pierre Bourdieu did not coin the term, but the idea of the precariat as a social class owes much to his work in studies like The Weight of the World, in which he and other researchers examine the unique “social suf­ fering” experienced by labourers living in a permanent state of economic and social precarity (Bourdieu et al. 2000). More recently, Guy Standing has defined the precariat as a distinct social class and a direct product of 1980sera neoliberal economic policies that sought to transfer labour insecurity from the corporation to the worker, promoting “labour flexibility” while “systematically making employees more insecure” (Standing 2011, 6). According to Standing, although exact numbers are hard to come by, at least a quarter of the world’s population may now be counted among the precariat, meaning that they are in employment which is irregular, informal, and generally offers low salaries and limited benefits (24).

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 121 In addition to suffering from economic insecurity, the precariat may also be suffering from a lack of institutional, familial, and community support. The same neoliberal policies that transferred insecurity onto workers and away from corporations have also privatized and shrunk social welfare programs. Additionally, living on contingent labour makes starting a family and forming strong community bonds more difficult, since workers may need to move frequently and have difficulty planning beyond the next month’s pay check. The isolation felt by members of the precariat is simultaneously a re­ cognition of human beings’ inherent dependence on one another. Writing of the precarious existence created by war and violence, Judith Butler (2009) defines precariousness as a condition in which one’s life is always “in the hands of the other” (14). Precariousness “implies exposure both to those we know and to those we do not know,” and it forces us into relations that are “not necessarily relations of love or even of care, but constitute ob­ ligations toward others … who may or may not bear traits of familiarity to an established sense of who ‘we’ are” (14). As Alexy (2020) and Allison (2013) have noted, in Japan the phrase muen shakai (relationless society or a society without bonds) became a buzzword in 2010, describing the perceived breakdown of the bonds of family, neighbours, friends, and co-workers that used to hold society together. Alexy argues that the weakening of these types of bonds could be seen as a direct result of neoliberal ideologies, which privilege “self-responsibility” but also diminish the power of support net­ works (158).1 Though precarity has placed them eternally “in the hands of the other,” it has also often isolated them. In Japan, to live a precarious existence is to live on an island, to be in the world but disconnected from it, dependent on other islands for survival but also wary of being dependent on them. In this context, nihon wa shimaguni takes on a new meaning: a nation of isolated islands, rather than one island where people are isolated together. This kind of precarious existence has become a reality for more and more people in Japan in the last 30 years. Guy Standing cites Japan as an example of a country in which the ranks of the precariat have steadily grown in the form of “freeters,” (furītā, permanent part-timers who are not housewives or students) and former salarymen who have been “restructured” into tem­ porary dispatch (haken) work (2011, 9). In Precarious Japan, Anne Allison (2013) examines the ways that poverty has both spread and evolved in Japan in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Homelessness, for example, was once a realm of elderly men, but now it increasingly affects young people and women, many of whom belong to the ranks of “working poor,” meaning that they have jobs but do not earn enough money to afford basic necessities. They may be “internet cafe refugees” (netto cafe nanmin), meaning that they take advantage of Japan’s many cafes where a few thousand yen will get you a cubicle with a chair for the night, sometimes with a shower.2 Roman Rosenbaum (2015) notes that beyond economic poverty, Japan has also seen a rise in emotional and social poverty, with

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more and more people lacking the familial and community support net­ works that might have gotten them through temporary economic difficulties. A shift towards neoliberal ideals of “personal responsibility” (jiko sekinin) means that “many young freeters appear to blame themselves for ending up in such precarious social positions” and feel that they should simply “grin and bear their lot” as their parents’ generation did (8). While Japanese films and television (the former more than the latter) have not shied away from depicting the reality of poverty in Japan, they have tended to do so in a way that frames those stories as tragedies (both in­ dividual and national) that are unrelated to government policy. The NHK documentary Working Poor I and II, for example, profiles a divorced mother of two who struggles to get by on a 900 yen per hour job, but makes no mention of the fact that her minimum-wage salary is so low and that she has limited legal recourse when it comes to getting her ex-husband to pay child support or alimony (Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nihon hōsō kyōkai) 2006). In November 2014, the popular weekly magazine Spa! listed the “seven deadly sins” that are causing new types of poverty in Japan, which included “job changes that result in a sharp reduction in earnings” and “the burden of caring for one’s elderly parents.” There was no mention, though, of a lack of government support or regulation as a factor (Schreiber 2014). These kinds of portrayals are in line with neoliberal principles that place responsibility for survival and happiness on the individual rather than in­ stitutions, essentially arguing that both success and failure are entirely the product of one’s individual choices and habits. As Wendy Hui Kyong Chun notes, “Neoliberal subjects are constantly encouraged to change their habits – rather than society and institutions – in order to become happier, more productive people” (Chun 2016, xi). Depicting poverty and economic hard­ ship as individual tragedies, as well as avoiding potentially divisive political topics in mainstream media, is hardly new in Japan, but it has raised more concerns since 2016, when UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye expressed “deep and genuine concern” about declining media independence. Shortly after Kaye’s report was issued, Reporters Without Borders lowered Japan’s press freedom ranking from 61st to 72nd out of 180 nations (Fackler 2016). The Abe administration’s crackdown on journalism that criticizes gov­ ernment policy and politicians has been widely reported in English-language press (Adelstein 2016; Fackler 2016; McCurry 2017), but media framing of poverty and suffering as a problem of psychology, bad parenting, or “bad choices” constitutes another form of media censorship, or at least a gross distortion of reality. As Andrea G. Arai (2016) argues, from the recessionary 1990s onward Japan enacted a series of neoliberal reforms that moved all manner of burdens away from government and community and onto the individual, promoting a narrative of “self-responsibility” (jiko sekinin) that was starkly at odds with the narrative of “dependence” (amae) popularized by the likes of Doi Takeo in the 1970s and 1980s. Replacing Doi was the

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 123 work of Kawai Hayao, who emphasized individualism and the idea that everyone has “their own story” of success or failure. When people, especially young people, struggled to thrive within this new system (sometimes by bullying others, lashing out violently, or refusing to go to school), the media put the focus on the “strangeness” of children and young people, essentially blaming them (or their mothers) for lacking a strong sense of values or a willingness to work hard. This was especially clear in the case of “Youth A,” the shocking incident in which a seemingly “normal” 14-year-old junior high school student decapitated a classmate and left his severed head on the steps of their school with a note in its mouth. With the help of Kawai, the school and the Japanese media successfully framed the incident as a story of how the young man’s parents had put too much pressure on him, how his “de­ pendency” had resulted in psychological problems, and how the entire fa­ mily had struggled because of a lack of community ties. It seems more likely, according to the young man’s defence attorney, that the family was one of many struggling to survive amid the upheavals of Japan’s neoliberal reforms (Arai 2016). With regard to the increasing number of young people who become “freeter” instead of permanent, full-time employees (seishain), this focus on “strange children” has frequently manifested in the form of blaming children for the problems that their parents’ generation created: claiming that they fear committing to a long-term job, that they simply don’t want to work hard, or that they lack character. In reality, as David Slater (2010) and others have revealed in their field work with working-class young people in Tokyo, full-time jobs with good salaries are becoming harder and harder to obtain for even graduates of elite universities, let alone those who can’t afford to go to university (Slater 2010). In her conversations with university students in Tokyo, Arai reveals similar realities: students are wary of committing to a company simply because it could go under at any time, and years of being fed an ethos of “self-responsibility” means that they see more long-term benefit in investing in themselves and their abilities, not in a company (Arai 2016). Yuasa Makoto, founder of the Reverse Poverty Network, argues that poverty in Japan today is a form of war being waged by government against citizens. By making it more and more difficult to live above the poverty line, Yuasa argues that Japan is making “refugees” of its own citizens, forcing them into a situation where they feel like outcasts in their own country (Allison 2013, 51–52). Additionally, a shift towards neoliberal notions of personal re­ sponsibility and privatization of social welfare initiatives means that those who are in dire financial straits are made to feel guilty for seeking help and are blamed for their financial problems, which are framed not as the product of harsh economic policies but of bad or irresponsible choices on the part of the individual. These people’s lives are not “grievable” (Butler 2009). Theirs are lives that “cannot be lost, and cannot be destroyed, because they already in­ habit a lost and destroyed zone; they are, ontologically, and from the start,

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already lost and destroyed” (Butler 2009, xix). And while the Japanese news media has not shied away from reporting on poverty and precarity, the focus on individual stories rather than systemic failures means that some of the key causes of that poverty and precarity are left out of the frame. Japanese arthouse and documentary cinema of the last 20 years has also not shied away from depicting this “new poverty,” frequently through family dramas and dark, gritty stories of the urban underclass. Examples include Oh Mipo’s The Light Shines Only There (Soko nomi nite hikari kagayaku, 2014), which focuses on manual labourers and sex workers in Otaru, Hokkaido; Shoji Hiroshi’s Ken and Kazu (Ken to Kazu, 2015), the story of two low-level gangsters struggling to get by in a Tokyo suburb; Uchida Nobuteru’s Our Escape (Bokura no bōmei, 2016), about a sex worker and a homeless man who run away together to live in a tent on the beach; and Take Masaharu’s 100 Yen Love (Hyakuen no koi, 2014), about a down-and-out young woman who takes up boxing as a way to deal with I realized that depression and abuse. These films are frequently grim, violent, and usually depict the lives of their impoverished characters in a realistic and sympathetic (but not “inspirational”) manner. For the most part, though, they have also avoided a direct critique of government po­ licies and the elimination and drastic reduction of resources that could alleviate this type of poverty. In examining what parts of stories of poverty are included and what parts are left out, it’s important to remember that there are limits to how much the totality of tragic or disturbing events can be comprehended through art. John Whittier Treat writes of how artists who survived Hiroshima often struggled not only to comprehend what they had wit­ nessed but to put “atrocity into words” (Treat 1995, 25–28). Witnesswriters could relay facts and figures and describe in graphic detail what they had seen, but it still didn’t seem to convey the real horror of what had occurred, as when the Japanese character in Alan Resnais’ 1959 film Hiroshima mon Amour repeatedly tells his French lover “You saw nothing” when she describes visiting Hiroshima hospitals after the bombing, driving home “the impossibility of reconciling the disparate experiences of suf­ fering into a unified whole” (Lippit 2005, 112). In the same way that stories of wartime trauma often focus on the day-to-day lives of a small number of people rather than trying to convey the massive scale of a tragedy, twentyfirst-century Japanese stories of poverty often narrow their frames to in­ dividuals. And yet, as mentioned previously, focusing on individual lives and relationships instead of larger, systemic problems can in itself be a kind of shadow critique, a way of politicizing a film without appearing overtly political. In choosing to make their frame of focus smaller, then, Japanese films that feature stories of precarity can both acknowledge the limits of art in comprehending tragedy and purposefully choose to focus on individual suffering as a way to more quietly critique the larger world in which those individuals exist.

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 125 Looking at the way that precarious lives are depicted in contemporary Japanese cinema, I return again to the question of the literal and figurative frame. When the cinematic medium depicts poverty and precarity in Japan, what does it focus on, and how does it use structure, sound, and cinema­ tography to convey the emotional and physical realities of precarious lives? What is included, and what is left out, and how do those choices impact perceptions of poverty and precarity among viewers? Two films by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi, My Man and Sketches of Kaitan City, examine “new poverty” in remote towns in Hokkaido. In these films, marginalized char­ acters feel even more marginalized – living in isolated areas under very harsh weather conditions, they are cut off from the (admittedly shrinking) eco­ nomic opportunities offered by larger cities like Tokyo. As depicted by Kumakiri, they are frequently dancing on the edge, both literally and fig­ uratively: they are in a constant state of economic, societal, and emotional uncertainty, and they are frequently filmed at the edge of the sea, looking out onto a world that might offer better possibilities that seem far out of reach. The choices in visual framing reinforce the precariousness of the characters’ lives but also illustrate the (not always healthy or helpful) bonds that they cling to as they literally stand on the edges of cliffs and ice, their lives hanging eternally in the balance. They exist within a claustrophobically small cinematic and narrative frame, their visual worlds reduced to pre­ carious edges and the worlds of their stories reduced to tiny, fractured, fragile communities where ties can rarely be relied upon.

Sketches of Kaitan City: together and alone on a cliff Sketches of Kaitan City is a collection of five vignettes taken from a 1991 Satō Yasushi short story collection. Each “sketch” focuses on a person or family in the fictional “Kaitan City,” which is based on Satō’s hometown of Hakodate. As with Oh Mipo’s much grittier and more down-to-earth depiction of the popular tourist destination of Hakodate in The Light Shines Only There (also based on a Satō novel), Kumakiri imagines Kaitan City as a place of grey skies, endless snow and slush, and very little light – the only time we see the sun shining is in characters’ flashbacks to their youth and in a key scene near the end of the film. There’s an elderly woman who refuses to move out of her home to make room for a new shopping centre, a small business owner who abuses his wife (who in turn abuses their son), a young man who left Kaitan City for Tokyo long ago but is back for business, a brother and sister whose lives are upended when the shipbuilding company that employs them both shuts down, and the op­ erator of the local planetarium who feels alienated from both his wife and son. The five stories are very loosely connected through chance encounters between characters, though the film brings many of them together at the end to watch the New Year’s sunrise from the top of Kaitan City’s highest peak.

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The film opens with a child in a schoolroom wiping away condensation on a window to reveal a harsh winter skyline and a distant image of the sea. Within the frame of the film we are confined in an even smaller frame – the school window, indicating the narrowness of this child’s world, and indeed the world of all the characters in the film. At the same time, several of the characters have professions or hobbies that allow them to get tantalizingly close to something beyond the limits of Kaitan City. The shipbuilder has been building giant ships for years. We see him gleefully running along the length of a new boat as it is launched in a well-attended ceremony. Ironically, his job is to create the kinds of massive vessels that could carry him far away from Kaitan City, and from Japan, but early in the film he learns that his dock will be shut down and all the workers laid off. Dejected in the apartment he shares with his sister; he folds his dismissal notice into an origami boat. Later his sister finds him near the docks, building a makeshift raft out of planks and tires, as if he were planning an escape. He finally commits suicide by literally throwing himself off the edge of his world – he jumps off a cliff into the sea, perhaps trying to escape the confines of his life even in death. The planetarium worker also daily finds himself in a situation where he presents images of distant universes to (mostly uninterested) children, save for the one young boy who stays in the planetarium for hours, watching the presentation again and again. The planetarium worker’s wife berates him for “always looking at fake stars,” perhaps sneering at the idea that he could ever have a life beyond Kaitan City. For the boy, an interest in astronomy is a way to momentarily escape the abuse he’s dealing with at home. Both of them are trapped, but dreams of escape keep them going. With the exception of the small business owner (who definitely seems to be heading towards financial trouble, even if he’s not there yet), all of the characters in Kaitan City are struggling economically. The older woman gets by selling pickled vegetables at the local market, the shipbuilder and his sister have few prospects after the closing of the dock, the planetarium worker wants his wife to quit working in a “snack” bar but probably realizes that they need the money, and the young man visiting from Tokyo puts on the airs of an urbanite but is berated by the bar staff for trying to hide his rural roots. What really unites all of the characters, though, is emotional poverty – the sense that they all live in a “relationless society” and have no space of refuge to call their own. Even the ones who have families feel distant from them – the young man visiting from Tokyo is estranged from his father, the planetarium worker is ignored by his wife and son, and the boy is abused by his parents. The shipbuilder has his sister, but apparently this isn’t enough to tether him to the world, perhaps because his work-based community is gone. Ironically, the character who seems most comfortable and content with her lot is the older woman, who has only a cat for com­ pany. The final shot of the film is a closeup of her hand on the cat’s fur, the only real moment of comfortable physical intimacy in the entire film.

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 127 Before that final shot, there is a moment when several of the characters – the brother and sister, the small business owner and his son, and the planetarium worker and his wife and son – all take a cable car up to the top of a mountain to watch the New Year’s sunrise. The tensions of before are momentarily forgotten as they drink beer and slowly watch the sun light up the view beneath them, illuminating the small city spread out against the vastness of the ocean (Figure 6.1). As in the film Eureka, which ends with two of the characters on top of the highest peak in Kyushu, we get a sense that the characters in Kaitan City are all balanced precariously on the edge of the world. There is also the sense, through the film’s structure, that the characters are both connected and isolated from one another – they are physically in the same space, and in some cases their lives are superficially linked through work or chance encounters, but even in this moment when they’re all in the same space, they remain islands, unaware of each other. As imagined by director Kumakiri and cinematographer Kondō Ryuto, the world of Kaitan City is one in which people are desperate for human contact but don’t know how to reach out for it, and when they do connect, it’s often through violence or a need for money. On the streetcar on the way to watch the sunset, various characters sit next to each other and don’t speak, or look at other people as if they have something to say but don’t. The camera lingers on their faces staring at others but not speaking. On the way down, the shipbuilder’s sister looks alarmed when he says he’ll walk instead of taking the cable car, and we see her repeatedly looking back at him as she follows the line of people, not wanting to be separated from him. Hours later, she sits alone in the gift shop, frozen in place, perhaps knowing that her brother is not coming back. He, it seems, is the only one who managed to achieve the escape

Figure 6.1 Characters in Sketches of Kaitan City watch the sunrise from the top of a cliff. Copyright Broadway Inc., Japan 2010.

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that so many of the other characters dream of, choosing to jump off the cliff instead of forever dangling on the edge of it. The shot of many of the characters standing on top of a cliff and watching the sunrise is one of the only shots in the film (with the exception of the flashbacks) to show bright sunlight and beautiful scenery, and by extension present an image of hope. In the darkness, we see the city below lit up like a thousand tiny stars, not so different from the stars that the planetarium operator and the businessman’s son stare at all the time. Then the sun slowly rises, bathing everyone in a soft glow. Grim as the stories in Kaitan are, this shot, especially when paired with the film’s final image of the older woman lovingly cradling her cat, does seem to offer the faintest glimmer of hope (like the bittersweet image of sunlight in The Light Shines Only There, which suggests that hope exists, just always out of reach). These people are eter­ nally perched on the edge of a cliff, and one of them won’t make it out alive, but if the potential for some kind of connection (with humans or animals) is there, maybe there’s a chance for a life beyond basic survival.

My Man: desperation at the edge of the world If Kaitan City is a bleak story of social and physical isolation and economic hardship, My Man tells a downright disturbing story of the sexual re­ lationship between a loner with a past and the teenage girl he adopted as a child. Also set in a remote, snow-covered town in Hokkaido, My Man de­ picts a different kind of desperation brought on by social and economic hardship. In this case, the man and his adopted daughter have opted to forge a new kind of “family” in the wake of past tragedies that left them both traumatized and alone, but what they create is destructive and dangerous. Not only balancing precariously at the edge of the world – this time in the form of ice floes that surround the town – they are also both constantly balancing on the edge of sanity. Based on a 2008 novel by Sakuraba Kazuki, My Man opens with a small child, Hana, washing up on a debris-filled beach. The small island of Okushiri, off the coast of Hokkaido, has been devastated by a tsunami (Okushiri was in fact hit by a tsunami in 1993, but in My Man the images of debris, earthquake aftershocks, and survivors in temporary shelters are more likely to make viewers recall news images from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami). Jungo, a distant relative of Hana’s, arrives at the shelter and claims Hana, despite the protests of the older Yoshio, a family friend. In “adopting” Hana, Jungo seems determined to create a family of his own after an unhappy childhood. When the film jumps ahead 10 years later Hana is a self-assured teenager with an odd manner, shockingly blunt in one moment and free-spirited and easily distracted in the next. It immediately becomes clear that she and Jungo have a sexual relation­ ship, and while Jungo is obviously in the wrong as the adult, the film por­ trays Hana as an aggressor who is quite sure of what she wants and will do

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anything to keep it. When Yoshio becomes suspicious and suggests that Hana leave town to live with other relatives, she reacts violently, pushing him out to sea on an iceberg after an extended scene in which the two of them confront each other on unstable ice floes. To protect their union, Hana and Jungo escape to Tokyo, but violence and ruin follow them. Like Sketches of Kaitan City, My Man depicts Hana and Jungo’s remote Hokkaido town as a place of grey skies and drab colours where it’s eternally winter. The only bright colour is red – the sheets of a hotel bed where Jungo takes his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Hana’s bright red scarf, and later, the blood of a man that Jungo murders to avoid being separated from Hana. Hana is frequently filmed staring out at the sea, at one point flapping her arms like a bird, at one point calling the seashore “the end of the world.” Where the characters in Kaitan may have all been individual islands, though, Hana and Jungo have created an island of two, alienating and pushing away everyone else in their lives in order to protect their particular notion of “family.” Hana and Jungo’s life is a balancing act. Their lives are precarious in the sense that the nature of their relationship (and the violence they engage in to preserve it) could be discovered at any moment, and in the sense that they live, as Hana puts it, at “the end of the world,” in a tiny town at the edge of the sea with few prospects. This is illustrated in a key scene in the middle of the film in which Hana is chased by Yoshio out onto the ice floes that surround the town (Figure 6.2). Yoshio has just learned that Jungo has been having sex with Hana, and Yoshio plans to send her to another town to live with relatives until she graduates high school. Hana at first refuses to speak to him and runs out onto the ice floes. Yoshio follows her, and there is an overhead shot of the two of them, tiny black specks in a vast expanse of shifting white ice, that underlines their powerlessness. As Yoshio continues

Figure 6.2 Hana and Jungo balance on ice floes. Copyright Happinet 2014.

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to chase Hana, the two of them literally balance on unstable ice floes, wobbling back and forth as they run across the ice. When Hana finally confronts Yoshio, screaming at him that she will never be parted from Jungo, she kicks the ice floe that he is standing on until it begins to float out to sea. When he calls out for help, she shouts, “Swim. Like I did.” She then jumps into the water and swims back to shore, and the significance of a strange moment that opens the film – a shot of a fully clothed Hana climbing onto the shore from the ice-cold ocean, an enigmatic smile on her face – becomes clear. In the ice floes scene’s stark images of tiny figures in a sea of white, one of them literally willing to balance on ice (and push someone else into the ocean) in order to protect a relationship that is the centre of her world, we see the desperation that a precarious life (in this case caused primarily by family trauma but exacerbated by economic hardship) can inspire. Hana and Jungo are an island unto themselves. They are surrounded by threats – beyond the ice floes is an ice-cold ocean of nothingness, and closer are neighbours and friends who would separate them. Though their existence is uncertain and threatening, it also defines them – when they move to Tokyo everything falls apart. Against a backdrop of noisy trains, summer cicadas, heat, and a junk-filled apartment (contrasting starkly with their clean, carefully decorated apartment in Hokkaido), Jungo falls into alcoholism while Hana transforms into a self-assured, calculating woman who even­ tually leaves Jungo to his own destructive tendencies. Tellingly, in a later scene in their apartment in Tokyo when Jungo murders a man who threa­ tens to expose Hana’s crime, we again hear the sound of waves, ice floes shifting, and whales, taking us back to that moment when Hana killed to protect her union with Jungo. At the end of the film, while Hana is on a date, the film cuts once more to an image of Hana and Jungo standing in the snow and staring out at the ocean. Even in Tokyo, with Hana having moved beyond Jungo and into adulthood, Hana and Jungo’s world is still an island perched on the edge of the world, eternally precarious. By leaving that landscape behind, they have, in a sense, abandoned the fragile ties of shared trauma and isolation that held them together.

Conclusion: framing and (de)politicizing precarity In Sketches of Kaitan City, we see the ways that economic and emotional poverty create a sense of isolation among the sufferers, even though their situations are actually rather similar, and they might, if they reached out to each other, find themselves not quite as alone as they think. Each character in a series of isolated but loosely connected vignettes is both cut off from and loosely tied to the other characters – the film’s overall structure (and the choice to film so many of the characters alone and occasionally looking towards others but not speaking) drives home its narrative themes. In My Man, by contrast, trauma leads the main characters to reject offers of

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 131 community support in favour of building their own two-person world, a toxic inversion of the bonds that can be forged in the wake of disaster. Both films point towards new possibilities for a precarious world in which the world itself – community bonds, social and familial connections, spaces of refuge – are gone or seemingly inaccessible, a world in which the only hope for survival is to give oneself completely into the hands of the other. In the case of Kaitan, this is a bridge too far, and the characters mostly remain in their isolated islands, near to each other but separated by a deep divide. In My Man, Hana and Jungo essentially vow to live and die for each other, but in the process, they destroy the lives of others to protect their own island of two. Both films raise questions about exactly what new sorts of bonds, both positive and negative, will emerge in a precarious future, one in which human connection is both the only thing that will save humanity but may also, in the wake of trauma and violence, be what destroys it. Almost all of these films’ characters actively reject (or are incapable of forming and sus­ taining) bonds of family and friendship. The characters in Kaitan are mostly estranged from friends and family – the older woman’s closest bond is with her cat, and even the shipbuilder, who seems close with his sister, ultimately severs that bond when he commits suicide. In My Man, Hana and Jungo, both traumatized by loss and violence, reject the bonds that others offer to form a destructive and isolating union. These characters’ relations and lack thereof reveal “the thrall in which our relations with others hold us … in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as autonomous and in control” (Butler 2006, 23). Beaten down by precarity, many of these char­ acters seek to avoid being “gripped and undone” by relationships, but in doing so, perhaps they only expose the fundamental relationality of human existence. “We’re all undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something” (Butler 2006, 23). Visually, both of these films frame their characters balanced on the edge of the world, tiny figures in a sea of unforgiving ice (or perched on top of a high cliff, looking down on beauty that seems both close and impossible to reach). The camera focuses on their dreams of a life beyond the icy shores of Hokkaido: the shipbuilder building his real and toy boats, Hana flapping her arms like a bird while looking out to sea, the visitor from Tokyo looking back on his hometown as he leaves, knowing that he has moved on but that in a sense he is still tied to the place. The repetition of certain images and sounds (boats, staring out to sea, balancing on ice floes, and the eerie sound of whales and ice cracking off the coast) drives home the reality of their precarious existence. And yet for all that Kumakiri’s films present a harshly realistic portrayal of contemporary poverty in Japan, they mostly refrain from engaging in any overt critiques of government or social policy. This is, of course, a valid narrative choice (and in the case of Kaitan, true to the novel on which it is based). As previously mentioned, the decision to focus on individual

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suffering, to portray a precarious existence as bleak and devoid of easy solutions, can in itself be a political act. But it also points to a larger trend in contemporary Japanese cinema of making films that are, at least on the surface, mostly depoliticized, even though the topics they openly depict – rape, incest, violence, child or domestic abuse, suicide, homelessness, ex­ treme poverty – are likely to inspire controversy. According to filmmaker Koreeda Hirokazu, many filmmakers are wary of openly critiquing the government and government policy in their films. Koreeda spoke openly about this issue at a Shoplifters post-screening Q&A session at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, where he essentially argued that films that openly criticize the Japanese government will often be seen as too “risky” by the domestic entities responsible for negotiating international distribution, leading many filmmakers to self-censor their content (and leading to a fairly homogeneous range of Japanese films being accepted for screening at in­ ternational film festivals) (Koreeda 2018b). Yatabe Yoshi, programming director for the Tokyo International Film Festival, said that, “even if there is no direct pressure from the government, producers may censor themselves by avoiding tackling difficult issues such as Fukushima” (Blair 2015). Others, though, argue that the Abe government’s tendencies towards lim­ iting free speech have inspired some independent filmmakers to make more political films (Blair 2015). In this context, Kumakiri’s films strike an in­ teresting balance – they depoliticize by not specifically mentioning politics or government policy, but they politicize by realistically depicting the in­ dividual consequences of those government policies, and by refusing the tendency to offer positive or hopeful closure to their characters’ stories. The film Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2008) also focuses on the chaotic upheavals experienced by a Japanese family in the face of job lay­ offs, inability to find permanent work, and deep-seated uncertainties about the meaning of their lives. (It also, like the two films under discussion here, features a climactic moment that takes place near the ocean, with two characters who have, yet again, gone as far as they can go without actually escaping the boundaries of Japan.) Commenting on the film, Andrea G. Arai writes: The world of recession is one in which these mostly silent sacrifices of adults and children – women as mothers, men as workers and fathers, and children as educational labourers – no longer add up to the lifetimes of the past… As Tokyo Sonata director Kurosawa depicts, the language of recession is not a language anyone can rely on. When characters in Tokyo Sonata call out for help, there is no one around to respond, as if language itself has lost its ability to represent and connect. (Arai 2016, 151) Like Tokyo Sonata, Sketches of Kaitan City and My Man also present characters who have no one (and no institution) to turn to when they need

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 133 help, who are awash in the language of precarity, a language that “has lost its ability to represent and connect.” These films ultimately present grimly realistic portraits of individuals struggling to survive on the margins, their struggles exacerbated by government policies that, while not clearly invoked in the films, hover at the edges of the story. The characters’ lives may be eternally in the hands of the other, but if they fall off the unstable precipice that is their world, there may be no one to catch them. Hope and connection remain just beyond the frame.

Notes 1 Alexy also notes that this weakening of certain kinds of relations is not entirely negative: “Older residents of Osaka, for instance, welcomed the absence of ties that had been “too close”: nosy or controlling neighbours and family members with demanding requests (Kavedžija 2018)” (Alexy 2020, 158). 2 Allison’s methodology in Precarious Japan has been criticized (see Gill 2015), but I believe her arguments about an increase in precarious working conditions, the narrative of “self-responsibility,” and a growing sense of isolation/estrangement from friends and family in Japan are sound and supported by relevant data. Based on my own experiences working at the University of Tokyo and Meiji University, I can also say that I have been struck by the number of students who have re­ sponded with “self-responsibility” talking points whenever they are presented with fictional or non-fictional representations of people living in poverty in Japan (they tend to immediately blame those people for their “bad choices”). 3 The “relationship” between the much older Jungo and the much younger Hana is disturbing, not least because of the film’s choice to depict Hana as aggressive and in control (the actress, Nikaido Fumi, was nineteen when My Man was released, though she could pass for 14 or 15 in the film). Some reviewers have called the sex scenes between Jungo and Hana “sensual,” which I also find troubling. In de­ scribing Hana as sexually assertive and in control, I do not mean to imply that her “relationship” with the adult Jungo was in any way equal, only that the film itself portrays it in this way (rather than portraying Jungo as a sexual abuser and Hana as a victim).

Bibliography Adelstein, Jake. 2016. “How Japan Came to Rank Worse than Tanzania on Press Freedom.” The Los Angeles Times 20 April. https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/ la-fg-japan-press-freedom-20160420-story.html Alexy, Allison. 2020. Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham: Duke University Press. Arai, Andrea G. 2016. The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Blair, Gavin J. 2015. “Cannes: Japan’s Entertainment Sector Faces Censorship.” The Hollywood Reporter 14 May 14. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ cannes-japans-entertainment-sector-faces-795554 Bourdieu, Pierre, Balazs, Gabrielle, Beaud, Stephane, Bonvin, Francois, Broccolichi, Sylvain, Champagne, Patrick, Christin, Rosine, et al. [1999] 2000. The Weight of

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the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Translated by Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst (translation editor). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Butler, Judith. [2004] 2006. Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyung. 2016. Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dale, Peter. 1987. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. London: Croom Helm. Fackler, Martin. 2016. “The Silencing of Japan’s Free Press.” The Economist 27 May. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/27/the-silencing-of-japans-free-press-shinzo-abemedia/ Gill, Tom. 2015. “Precarious Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 18 (1): 135–138. Oxford Academic. Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nihon hōsō kyōkai). 2006. “Working Poor I & II” (“Waakingu pua I, II”). https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7b3wq Kalleberg, Arne L. 2009. “Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition.” American Sociological Review 74 (1): 1–22. Kavedžija, Iza. 2018. “Of Manners and Hedgehogs: Building Closeness by Maintaining Distance.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 29: 146–157. Kazuyoshi, Kumakiri. (dir). 2010. Sketches of Kaitan City (Kaitanshi jokei). Tokyo, Japan: Cinema Iris. DVD. Kazuyoshi, Kumakiri. (dir). 2014. My Man (Watashi no otoko). Tokyo: Nikkatsu. DVD. Koreeda, Hirokazu. (dir). 1995. Maborosi (Maboroshi no Hikari). Tokyo: TV Man Union. DVD. Koreeda, Hirokazu. (dir). 2018a. Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku). Tokyo: Fuji Television Network. Streaming. Koreeda, Hirokazu. 2018b. “Post-Screening Question and Answer Session at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Tokyo.” 6 June. Kurosawa Kiyoshi. (dir). 1997. Cure (Kyua). Tokyo: Daiei Film. Streaming. Kuroasawa, Kiyoshi. (dir). 2015. Journey to the Shore (Kishibe no tabi). Tokyo: Amuse. Streaming. Kurosawa, Kiyoshi. 2000. Pulse (Kairo). Tokyo: Tōhō. Streaming. Kurosawa, Kiyoshi. (dir). 2008. Tokyo Sonata. Tokyo: Django Film. DVD. Lippit, Akira. 2005. Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mainichi, Shinbun. 2018. “‘Anti-Japan’ criticism hits film director, researchers who keep gov’t at arm’s length.” Mainichi Shinbun 30 July. https://mainichi.jp/english/ articles/20180730/p2a/00m/0na/008000c McCurry, Justin. 2017. “Japan accused of eroding press freedom by U.N. special rapporteur.” The Guardian 13 June. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ jun/13/japan-accused-of-eroding-press-freedom-by-un-special-rapporteur Oh, Mipo. (dir). 2014. The Light Shines Only There (Soko nomi nite hikari kagayaku). Tokyo: The Light Shines Only There Production Committee. DVD. Rosenbaum, Roman. 2015. “Towards an Introduction: Japan’s Literature of Precarity.” In Iwata-Weickgenannt, Kristina, and Rosenbaum, Roman (eds.) Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature. New York: Routledge.

Visions of Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 135 Schreiber, Mark. 2014. “Poverty takes on a new look in today’s Japan.” The Japan Times 6 December. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/06/national/medianational/poverty-takes-new-look-todays-japan/#.W2Jjkn59h3k Shoji, Hiroshi. (dir). 2015. Ken and Kazu (Ken to Kazu). Tokyo: Uzumasa. Slater, David H. 2010. “The Making of Japan’s New Working Class: ‘Freeters’ and the Progression from Middle School to the Labour Market.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 8:1 (1). https://apjjf.org/-David-H.-Slater/3279/article.html Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Take, Masaharu. (dir). 2014. 100 Yen Love (Hyakuen no koi). Tokyo: Spotted Productions. Streaming. Thompson, Nevin. 2018. “Japan’s Hirokazu Kore’eda Wins Big at Cannes. Here’s a Short Selection of his Films.” Global Voices 9 June. https://globalvoices.org/2018/ 06/09/japans-hirokazu-koreeda-wins-big-at-cannes/ Treat, John Whittier. 1995. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Uchida, Nobuteru. (dir). 2017. Our Escape (Bokura no bōmei). Tokyo: NOBU Production. Feature film. Yoshii, Masato. 2020. “Aso san ‘mindo’tte ittai nan desu ka? Rekisho wo tadotte mietekita mono.” Mainichi shinbun 17 June. https://mainichi.jp/articles/20200616/ k00/00m/010/297000c

7

How to remember 3.11? Post-Fukushima documentary and the politics of Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy (2011--2013) Ran Ma

Introduction The Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy (Tōhoku kiroku eiga sanbusaku), codirected by Hamaguchi Ryūsuke and Sakai Kō, consists of four documentary features, namely Sound of Waves (Nami no oto, 2011), Voices from the Waves Shinchimachi (Nami no koe Shinchimachi, 2013), Voices from the Waves Kesennuma (Nami no koe Kesennuma, 2013), and Storytellers (Utau hito, 2013).1 Northeastern Japan (i.e., the Tōhoku area) was struck by the Triple Disaster of earthquake (the Great East Japan Earthquake), tsunami, and nuclear leak on 11 March 2011 – now known as “3.11.” With the support and sponsorship from cultural bodies such as the Japan Arts Fund, Sendai Mediatheque (in coordination with their founding of Centre for Remembering 3.11 in May 2011), and Tokyo University of the Arts, Hamaguchi and Sakai were able to travel to the tsunami-stricken areas as early as April 2011 to start filming. Under such apocalyptic circumstances where homes and hometowns are destroyed, lives lost, and people’s life trajectories and psyche irreversibly changed by the catastrophe and its consequences, a burning question that has been pressing if not haunting lots of art practitioners – artists and filmmakers alike – concerns what art can do in the aftermath of 3.11 apropos its role within “a wider social, economic, and political context” (Mōri 2015, 170). A crucial question posed in this chapter concerns how we could use the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy to better rethink the politics of artmaking and filmmaking in a post-Fukushima society. Under a heuristic category that I propose as the “Post-Fukushima Documentary,” this chapter first draws attention to a wide spectrum of documentary-making praxes that have emerged in conjunction with the discourses of remembering and therefore, forgetting, apropos of the triple disaster in post-3.11 Japan. I particularly look at how some of the independent documentary works by Japanese filmmakers, characterized with their cinéma verité style and “on-the-scene” aesthetics,2 have potentially contested the archiving efforts initiated by, for instance, the public broadcaster NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Japan Broadcasting Corporation). The intention is not to

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suggest a simplistic, binary view in opposing the multi-scalar institutional, transmedia efforts instantiated by NHK’s practices, against those of independent documentarists. Binarism as such can hardly accommodate the diversity of 3.11-related documentary practices in terms of style and the choice of subjects. And the “NHK-versus-independent documentary” model will be further complicated if we take into account the rhizomatic network and platforms of producing and circulating these media contents and film works, although I cannot elaborate on the latter point in this chapter.3 Arguably, as part of its work of archiving, NHK’s 3.11-related “testimony” videos, in threading together interviews with the disaster survivors and witnesses, have been edited and processed in such a uniform manner in reinforcing a pre-established ideological framework about post-disaster resilience and reconstruction. This chapter highlights how the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy has exemplified an alternative mode of filmmaking that intervenes in the common documentary practices around 3.11. French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s discussions on politics and aesthetics help me to elucidate how I approach the interrelations between politicization and depoliticization. For Rancière, politics concerns the “distribution of the sensible,” regarding how the “conditions of sense perception” may be disrupted and reconfigured (Panagia and Deranty 2014, 96). As the philosopher illuminates, politics revolves around “what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time” (Rancière 2011, 13). That is, politics occurs in the form of a dispute within the settled, hierarchical order and perceptual arrangements wherein subjects are only assigned “given roles, possibilities, and competences,” a situation considered to be “consensus” (Rancière, Carnevale, and Kelsey 2007, 263). With Rancière, I argue that the debate of de/politicization would remain superficial if it cannot be connected with an understanding of politics as a dynamic process wherein “the conditions of possibility of discourses on politics” are constantly questioned (Baumbach 2010, 58). Politicization and depoliticization should not be viewed in static antagonism, and a scenario of (de)politicization may deviate from the Rancièrian “politics” given how it may still be “conditioned by a framework of consensus and inclusion that attempts to neutralize the radical dimension of political equality”(Baumbach 2010, 58). Crucially, the politics of the aesthetic act shall be understood as “permanent guerrilla war” (Rancière, Carnevale, and Kelsey 2007, 266) in disrupting the “conventional forms of looking, of hearing, of perceiving,” and a dispute as such is conceptualized as “dissensus” (Panagia and Deranty 2014, 103). In the context of this study, I argue, the question of politicization or political engagement shall be reframed as an issue of aesthetic intervention. And our focus shall be shifted onto how the ways that filmmaking/image-making have been correlated to the “mode of appearance,” regarding who can say and hear what, where, and when (see Demos 2013), and concerning how the dividing line between

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the visible and invisible, between the audible and noise, is constantly drawn and redrawn. To be more specific, my survey of Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy revolves around a two-fold question. On the one hand, it examines the mode of content and the mode of expression or stylistic choice regarding how Hamaguchi and Sakai have reinvented and transformed the conventional interview through the cinematic mechanism of storytelling. I argue that another critical issue underpins political agency. However, my focus is not on the filmmakers’ role in political mobilization and activism per se; rather, I turn to how the documentaries contribute to reconfiguring the sensible fabrics, so that previously invisible and marginalized subjects, together with their sensibilities and feelings, may emerge to take part in the field of aesthetics.

Departing from post-Fukushima documentary Responding to the sense of urgency when confronted with the overwhelming experience of the triple disaster, image-makers (filmmakers and artists) of diverse backgrounds from within Japan and beyond have set out to grapple with the wide-ranging subject matters surrounding 3.11. They have started highly diversified documentary filmmaking projects that I will examine through the heuristic of “Post-Fukushima Documentary” (shortened to PFD). These works engage multi-layered discourses that have been generated and delimited by the triple catastrophe and its aftermath, which are understandably interlaced with various socio-political, economic, ecological, and humanist persuasions that have come to frame the “evidence” intended by the filmmakers and/or production entities and render them plausible. According to film scholar Fujiki Hideaki, these 3.11 documentaries “have constituted a tendentious yet contested terrain for the imagination” in relation to nuclear catastrophe (2017, 91), connected with entangled issues such as neoliberal post-crisis management, and biopolitical control and surveillance in present-day Japanese society. Despite the different ideological underpinnings characterizing these PFD image-works, I believe a study of their political potentialities entails a rethinking of the “commonly accepted denomination ‘3.11’” which for sociologist Christophe Thouny underlines a consensual discourse about “Fukushima Japan.” For Thouny, the consensual logic aims to “cancel the eventfulness of the catastrophe, its possibilities for change and opening, by reinscribing it inside a well-known postwar narrative of reconstruction and development and circumscribing its effects to a limited and closed time and place” (2017, 2) wherein “the eventfulness 3.11” is reduced to “well-known tropes of victimization, resilience, and national reconstruction” (2017, 3). He has thus indicated that to achieve a critique of 3.11, we need to consider how the catastrophe disrupts the teleological narration of postwar Japan, in revealing “its unresolved tensions and contradictions,” and how the

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site-specific disaster has in fact made visible “the interconnectedness of our present reality and the continuity between places and events on a global scale” (2017, 6). To categorize and comb through a whole body of PFD works, with new films still being made, is beyond the focus of this chapter. For the sake of the discussions to follow, one could possibly depart from the disparate, sometimes overlapping institutional layouts (or the lack thereof) in producing, circulating, and exhibiting PFD works according to three strands: television documentaries (made by both public and private broadcasters) as well as image projects associated with the government-corporate power (see Fujiki 2017); artist works (e.g., the video works by contemporary art collective “Chim↑Pom”); and independent film productions.4 Noticeably, most Japanese independent documentaries mentioned in this chapter, including the Trilogy, have been circulated in arthouse theatres and on the domestic and international film festival network.5 On the other, while artists’ videos have been predominantly circulated and exhibited at museums and art galleries, TV documentaries and statecorporate sponsored film projects are also circulated and/or streamed online through the official sites, as well as via diverse video-sharing and (paid) streaming service platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video. Approaching the PFD, for example, Fujiki mentioned Living in Fukushima: A Story of Decontamination and Reconstruction (Fukushima ni ikiru: Josen to fukkō no monogatari, 2013), a documentary sponsored by the Ministry of Environment and the Prefectural Government of Fukushima and produced by Japan’s United Nations University. More blatantly promotional, if not propogandist efforts from the Japanese state might be a film like 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake, Self-Defence Forces’ Disaster Relief: Memories of the Bond (3.11 Higashi nihon daishinsai, Jieitai saigai haken: Kizuna no kioku, 2012), which can be accessed on Netflix as well as Amazon Prime Video (Japan). Along the unfolding timeline of the 3.11 triple disaster, the documentary chronicled how the Japan Self-Defence Forces (Jieitai or JSDF), with its air, maritime, and ground operations, had collectively dedicated themselves to the relief efforts in Tōhoku. Despite the leitmotif of “bond,” which seems to also suggest the JSDF’s bonding with the (Tōhoku) people, the documentary has chosen to privilege the point of view of the JSDF in solely foregrounding interviews with the (all-male) JSDF officers, members, and officials from the Bōeishō (Ministry of Defence), with “talking heads” segments supported by footage about their well-organized, passionate relief operations. With no specific director but only the names of the narrator (also a male voice actor) and the producer’s indicated, this documentary does not hide the fact that it resulted from the collaboration between the Ministry of Defence, Sōgō Bakuryō Kanbu (Joint Staff Office, JSO), Japan Ground Self-Defence Force, Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force, and Japan Air Self-Defence Force.

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NHK’s 3.11 archives NHK launched their “Great East Japan Earthquake Archives” (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai Ākaibusu, hereafter “3.11 Archives”) online from 1 March 2012 (with an English page from 2016), with part of the web contents regularly broadcast on TV at the time of writing. The “Archives” has been organized with an aim to not only keep a “record” (kiroku) of the unprecedented disaster, but to maintain the 3.11-related “memories” (kioku) for future generations to come, so that it can help to “preserve and spread vital knowledge about how people fought to survive” and contribute to “future disaster prevention”(Irie, Higashiyama, and Mimori 2018). Mainly consisting of short videos, images, and sound recordings, the “Archives” has been categorized under themes such as “Records of the Earthquake” (Shinsai no kiroku), “Toward the Reconstruction” (Fukkō ni mukate) and “Learning from the Lessons” (Kyōgun o ikasu) and so forth.6 For instance, the sidebar of “Testimonies of That Day” (Anohi no shogen, hereafter “shogen” videos) offers a compilation of five or six-minute-long online videos in which each witness gives an account of how they responded to and survived the disaster, which are supplemented with full transcripts (as online text) and details of the interview (e.g., location map and the date of interview). For examples we can turn to one of the Kesennuma episodes (a coastal disaster-stricken area that was also visited by the Trilogy crew), in which a female commentator describes Mr Satō’s heroic action of rescuing a woman who was being carried away by flood waters in the tsunami on 11 March (interview conducted on 21 September 2011). In this video, Satō is brought back to the scene, sharing with the camera how, while floating in a plastic trunk in the tsunami waves, he spotted a woman struggling in the water and decided to save her. This short sequence intercuts between Satō’s accounts and a page of coloured photo reportage from the local newspaper that miraculously captured the moment of his rescue. It is intriguing how the online version of the testimonial video, despite its short duration, has been divided into three “chapters,” each of which has been given a caption underlining the progression of Satō’s courageous act. Other testimonial videos within the online “Archives” also share similar narrative structure and stylistic preferences. NHK’s digital archiving with the “3.11 Archives” can be juxtaposed with other similar archiving practices by the same institution. For instance, around 2015, NHK hired professional archivists to organize an “Earthquake News Report Archive” (Shinsai hōdō ākaibu). Reading through the insider report explicating the process of building up and curating the “Report Archive” (see Irie, Higashiyama, and Mimori 2018), one could also gain insights into NHK’s systematic approach in sorting out its archival items and objects for the “3.11 Archives” where a strikingly similar mode of categorization is followed.

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NHK’s “shogen” videos are edited in such a professional fashion to meet the technological specificities and content standards for TV broadcasting and to cater to mainstream audiences and customers from within Japan. One may also appreciate the fact that the “Archives” has persistently amassed and continuously presented testimonies collected from people of various backgrounds and from different places across Tōhoku and from outside the area. It is not my intention here to simply defy NHK’s affective labour dedicated to its imagined community, or to refute the truth value of the testimonies presented in, for instance, any specific “shogen” video. My concerns are how the testimonies and interviews have been assembled and presented, for which purposes, and how it may relate to a critique of 3.11 as suggested by Thouny. If we understand archive not as “a value-free site of document collection” but rather as “the site of contestation of power, memory, and identity” (Schwartz and Cook 2002, 6), it is important to ask what has been “remembered” and therefore also “forgotten” when the testimonies have been selected and translated into such lucid and accessible archival items. Arguably, NHK’s work of archiving is in fact about how to “tame” the overwhelming materials related to Fukushima and 3.11, in constructing and maintaining a consensual discursive space. To understand such a consensual space around 3.11, Fujiki proposes that we may grasp the public sphere in post-Fukushima Japan as one that “pressures the residents not to voice contrary opinions for fear spoiling the friendly atmosphere and popular groundswell towards reconstruction,” wherein the government and mass media have tended to espouse the discourses of “safety and human bonds” (kizuna) in tandem with policies of neoliberalist socialengineering (2017, 93). Returning to the “3.11 Archives,” in terms of the choice of subjects, controversial issues such as the government’s and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company)’s crisis management in dealing with (the aftermath of) the triple disaster, are hardly tackled. Experiences with the catastrophe, despite their diversity and irrationality, are preserved as “testimonies” and processed as “lessons” (kyōgun) to be learnt for the future. Accordingly, what has been foregrounded in the “Archives” is the rational idea of “disaster prevention” (bōsai). In terms of the documentary style, one may pay attention to how the omnipresent voiceover and its solemn tone have prescribed how the videos guide the viewers to engage with the survivors’ stories. Most importantly, the “Archives” is organized in such a way as to underscore the teleological time in narrating post-Fukushima Japan. For example, the videos have neatly interwoven the memories (narrated by the voiceover and the interviewees) together with the post-disaster realities (the “now-ness” of the disaster-stricken areas) within certain pre-established discursive frameworks about solidarity, resilience, and the “cruel optimism” of believing in overcoming the disaster (see Berlant 2006).

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As sharply pointed out by cultural critic Fujita Naoya, NHK’s 3.11-related documentaries have “avoided the obscenity (waisetsusa) of the ‘reality’” and instead present audiences with neatly constructed documentaries, by appealing to them “with themes like reconstruction and sorrow” (Fujita 2016, 88–89). It is worth looking at how NHK deals with the irrational and traumatic dimensions of 3.11 experiences by turning to one of its TV Specials, Together with the Deceased from the Earthquake (Shinsai de no nakihito to, 2013). In the documentary, all protagonists gave accounts of their unexplainable experiences of “reunifying” with their loved ones who had already died or gone missing in the 2011 disaster. As the Special’s director Sano Hiroki explained, the documentary team was at first quite confused by these supernatural, uncanny accounts that they collected during their fieldwork. According Sano, these stories about wishful “reunification,” however poignant, are disturbing in nature, given that no account could be scientifically “authenticated” or supported. “Whereas there have been lots of reports on realities that the eyes could see, shall we also report on those realities that the eyes cannot verify?” asked the director. Concerned with ethical issues, the programme-makers selected four central pieces of narrative and manoeuvred to frame them as the psychological symptoms of people who suffer tremendous trauma. Avoiding terms such as “ghost” or “illusion,” the production team managed to integrate these stories with a discourse of “painful experiences of miserable people” (see Sano 2014), thus calling for attention to the 3.11 survivors’ mental health. For Fujita, “obscenity” (waisetsusa) is not used negatively to refer to specific object or practice, but connotes the spectatorial engagement with the unimaginable, overwhelming, yet spectacular images of/about 3.11, which also implies ethical issues in the practices of looking (he gave the example of how people may find pleasure and beauty in the post-destruction landscape that was made possible by the disaster). Also, he uses “waisetsusa” to interrogate, amidst the abundance of 3.11 images, whether imagination and reality (genjitsu), fiction and non-fiction can be clearly demarcated, and how documentary-making can resist the allure of “waisetsusa” while engaging with the spectacle of 3.11 (2016, 88–89). Arguably, what has been excluded, repressed, and marginalized in the NHK “3.11 Archives” are exactly the messy, irrational, sometimes subversive aspects of the catastrophe, and the temporal disjunctures they have provoked and made perceptible. From such a viewpoint, the phantasmal “reunification” with the deceased in the previously mentioned NHK special has exactly pinpointed the thrust of the disparate temporalities, and understandably, they need to be contained and assimilated into the consensual discourse about the teleological time.

“On the Scene” at Fukushima In this study, I foreground independent documentaries that feature interviews with the survivors and victims in Tōhoku: compared with the NHK

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“shogen” videos, not only an all-knowing and neutral narrator’s voice is absent, but also the filmmaker’s intervention has been foregrounded, though to different degrees. Although the independent documentarists under examination have also demonstrated their archival impulses in collecting and preserving “testimonies” for today’s Japanese society as well as for the future generations to come, what is at stake here concerns how they have achieved this, both in terms of the mode of content and the mode of expression, and also how it may relate to a critique of 3.11, in possibly disrupting consensual understanding about the triple catastrophe. Matsubayashi Yoju’s Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape (Soma kanka daiichibu: ubawareta tochi no kioku, 2011, hereafter Landscape) is a good example.7 In Landscape, Matsubayashi rushed to Fukushima right after the triple disaster took place, and turned his camera to the survivors and the “lost landscape” he saw at Minami-Soma, the tsunami-stricken city only 20 kilometres from TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (known as “Daiichi”). Nevertheless, his observational segments were complicated, and also complemented by the filmmaker’s self-positioning within the text. Landscape opens with how the filmmaker, upon realizing the occurrence of a massive earthquake in the afternoon of 11 March 2011, started to record the moment of the earthquake at his Tokyo apartment (see Mori et al. 2012). In early April 2011, armed with his digital video camera, Matsubayashi travelled on his friend’s truck to deliver relief goods to Minami-Soma. The crippled plant was by then notorious in global news due to its impending meltdown and potential explosion. The filmmaker observed how groups of local evacuees at Minami-Soma were coping with their postdisaster collective lives at a temporary evacuation centre (the classrooms at a local high school), after their home areas were declared part of the nuclear disaster zone and they were forbidden to enter unless otherwise permitted. In the latter half of the documentary, the government began to tightly control the disaster zone from late April 2011. With media at home and abroad putting more focus on reporting on Fukushima and related issues, Matsubayashi again returned to the evacuees. Landscape is in itself typical among the PFD independent works regarding how the digital video cameras (DV), together with other digital filming technologies, have enabled and facilitated the filmmakers’ timely, spontaneous action and intervention as they ventured into the forbidden zones at Fukushima (and similar cordoned-off areas) right after the triple disaster took place. Matsubayashi’s aesthetic practice is not unique among his peers – together they have experimented with a different modus operandi that tries to redistribute who and what may become visible and what can be heard in the post-Fukushima socio-political sphere, so that the catastrophe can be seen in a new light.8 In Landscape, Matsubayashi and his camera explored the “lost landscape” without elaborate pre-planning regarding what he would actually approach, survey, and record, given the

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unimaginable magnitude of the catastrophe and the spontaneity of the documentary project itself. Importantly, he seemed to share a sense of urgency and responsibility in documenting how the devastating, traumatic impact of the disaster was being experienced, felt, and understood by the survivors at the Tōhoku area in real time and on location. For instance, upon arriving at Minami-Soma, the filmmaker encountered a middle-aged city councilwoman (an evacuee herself) named Tanaka. It was because of this encounter that Matsubayashi decided to stay longer for this documentary project. He was able to follow Tanaka on patrol around their old neighbourhood, now designated part of the disaster zone. Devastated by the tsunami, this area had almost all its residents evacuated due to the Daiichi nuclear plant’s unpredictable situation at the time. Walking around the ghost town–like area, Matsubayashi’s movement images are sometimes unstable and discontinuous as the filmmaker tried to follow his guide navigating through the abandoned neighbourhood. During their visit, Tanaka occasionally described to him what she remembered about “that day,” and from time to time exchanged opinions with the filmmaker. Whereas the patrol was already part of Tanaka’s post-disaster routine before the arrival of the JSDF, Matsubayashi needed to respond to what he saw and experienced “right here” and “right now,” therefore his DV camera constituted part of the filmmaker’s response mechanism and apparatus of exploration. Audiences can see his DV’s viewfinder being constantly adjusted and switched and understand the contingency as indicative of the profilmic realities on the scene. In the context of Chinese independent documentaries, Luke Robinson has examined the theory of xianchang (the Chinese term roughly equivalent with “on the scene” or “on the spot”), considering it “a product of the contingent ‘now’ of shooting live, inflected by the particular interpretations of individual filmmakers at a given moment, and structured by the conditions of production under which they worked” (2013, 101). I am not suggesting that Robinson’s thesis on xianchang could be directly applied to the study of observational and verité documentaries in PFD. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to see how the “on the scene” observations in Landscape are characterized with images of instability in capturing the profilmic reality in a somewhat unexpected, less controllable way, which foregrounds “the contingency of liveness as an experience bounded in time as well as in space” (Robinson 2013, 80). Hence these images, however mediated, are at the same time in themselves evidence of the “here and now” under the precarious conditions of the triple disaster; in being “in-the-now” these images have also loosened their relations with the past and become less certain about the future. In Landscape, an authoritative, illuminating voiceover is absent, whereas the evacuees’ opinions and discussions are documented and presented in juxtaposition with the filmmaker’s own thoughts of guilt, confusion, and vulnerability, mainly conveyed through intertitles. Landscape registered a certain degree of urgency in circulating imaginaries of post-3.11 Fukushima,

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as opposed to what was offered by NHK’s polished “shogen” shorts, or other TV and Internet news. It is telling that, with its self-reflexive form, Landscape did not seek to impose the truth about Minami-Soma or about the evacuees upon the audiences, but left it to the latter to decide how to respond to the images and voices, which constitutes a crucial layer of its politics concerning an active yet indeterminate spectatorship, a point that I shall return to later.

Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy: beyond the annihilated landscape On the surface, works in the Trilogy appear to be nothing more than assemblages of interviews with people – mostly with the survivors – that the duo of filmmakers encountered during their trips along the Sanriku coast.9 Storytellers (Utau hito) is slightly different from the other three films in that it is about how the filmmakers followed Ono Kazuko, the founder of Miyagi Association of Folklore (Miyagi minwa no kai), to meet with veteran storytellers across Miyagi and invite them to share their folk stories in front of the camera; therefore, their sharing is not directly about 3.11 experiences. I will return to Storytellers briefly in the ending section. On the one hand, it is tempting to consider how the four films are structured as a series of “road movies” across the Tōhoku coastal areas (see Iwasaki 2013). In Sound of Waves, the first film of the trilogy, for instance, what sutures the interview sequences across various locales are shots taken from within and in front of the filmmakers’ moving vehicle, upon which the animated map of their travelling route and the names of places they visited are superimposed. On the other, despite their itinerant nature, works in the Trilogy have refrained from staring too closely at the monstrous landscape across the disaster-stricken areas, the disturbing, spectacular nature of which has been discussed by Fujita Naoya in terms of “obscenity” as illustrated earlier. Unlike many filmmakers including Matsubayashi, the directors of the Trilogy showed less interest in proffering first-hand, newsworthy reportage of Tōhoku’s annihilated landscape and the worrying conditions faced by most evacuees and survivors. As Hamaguchi and Sakai have insightfully pondered, at a time when various types of “information” (jōhō) and images about the 3.11 disasters, including (moving) images captured by mobile phones and those broadcast on television, had become overwhelmingly abundant, and when various digital platforms had made the sharing and circulation of such images increasingly easy and more convenient, for what purposes is a documentary on 3.11 needed? (Fujii et al. 2015; see Katarogu (Log of Talks), 2014). I would also add, if audiences or distant observers still desire to “see” more of post-disaster Fukushima and Tōhoku, what would those images look like? Upon arriving at the scene, Hamaguchi was overwhelmed by the ruined landscape, to the extent that he was not sure where to position his camera

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and which direction it should be turned – a feeling also shared by Sakai. Hamaguchi explained that as the “landscape” became indistinguishable from the debris, they should turn to the local residents in order to re-experience the “characteristic landscape” (koyūteki fūkei) (Fujii et al. 2015, 169–171). For instance, Hamaguchi explains in his narration for Sound of Waves, “Places devastated by a tsunami won’t always be prepared by the next. People who live through them and pass the story down are vital. Without them, it’s like having no images of the devastation, and instead having an empty landscape.” Intriguingly, in the opening part of Sound of Waves, Hamaguchi also explains the title of the work – the “sound” (oto) of tsunami. He describes what can be heard when the tsunami is about to strike at a short interval after the earthquake. Literal description as it seems, the filmmaker hints at the differentiated sensational experiences about/of the disaster, and specifically the gaps between the visible and the invisible (the audible). Hence I suggest that the documentaries in the Trilogy have been titled with “sound,” “voice,” and “storyteller” not simply because the filmmakers are interested in discovering issues about narration in the documentary genre per se. Rather, Hamaguchi and Sakai have paid attention to the very organizational form of the sensible, which (re)defines who can say and hear what, where, and when (see Demos 2013).

Towards a modern political cinema Sound of Waves opens with an eight-minute-long take of a picture story show (kamishibai) performed by an old lady who later introduces herself. The lady recounts the story of a girl called Yocchan, who survived the massive tsunami in 1933 that destructively swept the Sanriku coast including her village called Taro, the locale where the interview was taking place. Rich in details, the tale describes how Yocchan, upon witnessing the aftermath of the tsunami after being brought to meet her injured family, reacted to the disaster dramatically. The story ends with the girl yelling out her curse, “Ocean, I hate you!”10 In the interview sequence that follows, Tabata Yoshi, the ageing kamishibai performer, and her younger sister, Azuma Kinu – both at their 80s, introduce themselves to the camera, talking about how the historical tsunami disasters in 1896 and 1933 affected their family members and hometown (furusato). This opening interview sequence, which intercuts between medium close-ups and the over-the-shoulder shots of the two ladies, is characteristic of the dominant style of other works in the Trilogy including Storytellers. In Sound of Waves, Hamaguchi and Sakai interviewed six groups of eleven local residents as they were driving south along the tsunami-stricken Sanriku coastal areas across Taro, Kesennuma, Minamisanrikucho, Ishinomaki, Higashi-Matsushima, and Shinchimachi. Most of the interviewees are family members (couples), colleagues, and friends so they shared similar memories about their homes and the disaster. There are

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two exceptions wherein Hamaguchi and Sakai respectively appeared onscreen for one-to-one interview(s), when the interviewees are not paired with their families or friends. I argue that the Trilogy does not depart from the premise that the political subjects and their alliances are already there, only waiting to be seen and to be represented, even though the interviews featured in the Trilogy were designed in such a way as to correspond with already-existing types of bonding and solidarity at the local level. We can approach this representation through the work of Gilles Deleuze, who theorized modern political cinema within a Euro-centred context as a reflection upon the end of World War II, the Nazi concentration camps, and Stalinism. For Deleuze, one of the problematics that modern political cinema is confronted with is that “the people no longer exist, or not yet … the people are missing” (Deleuze 1989, 216; emphasis original). This does not mean that there are no people in modern political cinema. Rather, what is missing “is the sense of the organic formation of the collective, a process that is presented as identical to the teleological unfolding (or progressive linear movement) of history, and more concretely the history of the revolution” (Maimon 2010, 86). The Deleuzian perspective is relevant to our discussions on the politics of PFD and specifically the Trilogy, because it sheds light on the issue of political subjectivization in the aftermath of the triple catastrophe, by emphasizing the precarious conditions of political agency, which essentially relates to the sensible and conceptual arrangements around political part-taking. Apropos modern political cinema, the role of artists and filmmakers alike has been redefined. Their task is no longer to represent the people as unified, but to address a people “who do not yet exist or whose existence is precisely what is at stake” (Maimon 2010, 86). To accomplish this, it is necessary to foreground the “inventing” of a people by means of “fabulation,” which could be grasped as a form of narration or storytelling that “affirms ‘fiction as a power and not as a model’” (Deleuze 1989, 152). For Deleuze, fabulation can be achieved through the speech act of “double-becoming,” wherein “the author takes a step towards his characters, but the characters take a step towards the author” (1989, 222), and thus it becomes difficult to differentiate the auteur’s speech from that of diverse characters and narrators, with the boundaries between both becoming ambiguous. Throughout this process, importantly, the filmmaker “does not give a voice to the people in the sense that he doesn’t speak for them,” but creates the space to allow the people to take the stage and speak (see Frangville 2016, 114; emphasis original).

The position of the camera(s) and the fictional timeline To better grasp the dynamics of fabulation, I want to look at the mechanism of “listening” and “talking” in the interview-oriented Trilogy, for which

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I will mainly use Sound of Waves as my example. On the one hand, I turn to kiku – meaning listening, interviewing, inquiring, and learning, which lays more emphasis on the interlocutors’ efforts to listen and to elicit personal accounts. Another aspect concerns kataru – meaning speaking and telling. At the same time, I will examine the interview’s mode of expression, which concerns the camerawork and editing. I also explore how the interviews have constituted an apparatus of sorts producing and circulating feelings and affectivity. This is not only about how the interviewer and interviewee has expressed themselves emotionally and reacted bodily when they are recalling what took place apropos 3.11. Inspired by Sara Ahmed in her examination of the cultural politics of emotion (2014), I also look at how the interview sequence has constructed scenarios wherein emotions are triggered, felt, and circulated through intersubjective connections, which further correlates with the invention of a becoming community. Shedding light on their design of the camerawork for the interview, Hamaguchi illustrates: The method that we call interview seems to make whatever the concerned party (tōjisha) is talking about sound like truth, which is not the case in reality. Yet we simply forget about such presumptions. On such occasions, if we intercut the frontal shots of two people as they are dialoguing with each other, amazingly, we could create a fictional timeline. Even with a little bit of knowledge about (how) the camera (works), people know that with the presence of the camera(s), it is not possible to show two people facing each other and talking [without disclosing the presence of the cameras]. So, the situation in which we see nothing other than two people facing each other and talking is where the fictional moving-image and experiences have been achieved. It is very important to depart from the interview, the primary technique of documentary, and to create something fictional through the camera position. That camera position has provided us with whatever we want. (Fujii et al. 2015, 171–72, emphasis mine) The actual length of each interview is on average 2 to 3 hours. Both filmmakers would then work out a screenplay of sorts developed from the transcribed text of the interviews, based upon which they would rearrange and restructure the sequences through further editing work, mainly via techniques of classical narrative cinema such as shot/reverse shot and eyeline matching. As a result, a finalized interview is usually around 30 minutes (see Ito et al. 2016, 77–78). The creation of a “fictional timeline” is associated with continuity editing. I propose, instead of simply considering this a stylistic preference, that the “fictional timeline” could be examined in terms of the Rancièrian “distribution of the sensible.” In a different context explaining the politics of aesthetics, Rancière considers “fiction” as “a way of changing existing modes of sensory presentations and forms of enunciation;

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of varying frames, scales and rhythms; and of building new relationships between reality and appearance, the individual and the collective” (2010, 141). That is, fiction comprises the sphere of sensible distribution, the very site of aesthetic intervention. Regarding the Trilogy, I do not think that the most important aspect concerns the contents of the testimonies per se, and to which extent they could be testified as factual and authentic. The “fictional timeline” helps to reframe the mode and context of storytelling and build up new relationships between the interviewees and the camera, and between the individual and the collective. Hamaguchi once argued that for their interviewees, the timespace created by the interviews separates the latter from everyday life, so that they are also to some extent “performing” (to be) themselves in front of the camera, wherein the “fiction” is born. For both filmmakers, the interviewee’s “performance” enabled her or him to be temporarily liberated from their assigned role and identity as “survivor” or “victim” (Ito et al. 2016, 81–82). For the interviewee, it is through and throughout the process of remembrance/performance in front of the camera that the multiple temporalities of the self/selves emerge: as the interviewee tries to “associate this present self with the everyday of the (pre-3.11) past” in a gesture of remembering (Fujii et al. 2015, 173), she or he also needs to re-orient this self toward the prospect of revitalization and reconstruction, given that this self as an image presented to the camera is also being delivered to its future as a preserved document.

Interviewing, listening, talking Hamaguchi and Sakai were fully aware of the fact that as outsiders who visited Tōhoku without knowing much about the area (since neither of them are originally from the region), while at the same time being overwhelmed by the post-disaster images and information about Fukushima and 3.11, their own position was rather “weak” (Sakai, quoted in Fujii et al. 2015, 175). The interview in Trilogy is always staged as an ongoing dialogue either between two people (sometimes one of the filmmakers), or within a group of interlocutors from the local area. In the setting of a collective, nevertheless, any one interviewee can become another’s intercessor, through initiating topics, exchanging ideas, posing questions, and recalling past events together. Noticeably, on occasions that the filmmaker himself must join the conversation, he did not necessarily monopolize the right to lead the talk or ask questions. In his interview with Shoji Yoshiyaki, a 60-year-old councilman of Ishinomaki city for instance, Sakai is shown asking why Mr Shoji would still want to continue living at his home in “a tsunami prone region” that may expect future disastrous happenings. Instead of offering a direct answer, Mr Shoji asked Sakai about his hometown and the natural disasters taking place at Sakai’s home village. Sakai was also given the chance to recall his own memories about a hometown located

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elsewhere, interlaced with Shoji’s narrative about the past, present, and the future of Ishinomaki. The dynamics of double-becoming should be specifically examined in the light of the previously discussed “fictional timeline.” We can take the sequence featuring the couple from Higashi-Matsushima – husband Abe Jun and wife Abe Shimako as an example. Although a long shot preceding the interview shows that Hamaguchi was sitting by their side when the shooting was being set up, the over 30-minute-long sequence smoothly intercuts between medium close-up shots and over-the-shoulder shots of the Abes. In recalling how they struggled to escape from the tsunami and cope with its devastating effects, the husband and wife complement, confirm, and elicit each other’s accounts, or stories. As such, the process in which their memories of 3.11 are retold also demonstrates how narratives are reworked and edited “on the scene” and on the site (of the interview) via the couple’s collective storytelling. Furthermore, it is necessary to emphasize how, because the Abes understood well that while they were facing and talking to each other, they were simultaneously facing the cameras and talking to an audience (the filmmakers included), so in their narratives, the way in which they address each other constantly switches between the second person point of view, namely “you,” the free indirect style of the third-person, namely “my husband,” or “my wife,” and the first person plural “we.” In their dialogue, through playing the role of an intercessor for each other, the Abes were able to share thoughts and feelings that they had no previous chance to confide or confirm earlier on. More importantly, they are also given fresh eyes to re-examine what they had experienced together on “that day,” as if they were observing themselves retelling the stories from the point of view of a listener/spectator. So far as the continuity editing has rendered the interviews and talks smooth and comprehensible, I don’t think either Hamaguchi or Sakai had designed and envisioned their formal experimentation as a strategy to interpellate the audience as passive subjects. For example, shots wherein the interviewees confirm with the filmmakers that they are looking in the right direction (at the cameras) remind the viewers of the filming strategy in a self-reflexive manner. I want to emphasize that the “fictional timeline” has helped to realign the interconnections between the filmmakers, the interviewees, and the spectators. For instance, in one of the over-the-shoulder shots taken from the viewpoint of Mrs. Abe, a viewer sees her husband attentively describing how at the moment when the tsunami was only minutes away from their house, he spotted his wife on the veranda and managed to grab her in time to keep her safe. Here we see Mr. Abe reaching out his arm to his wife as if to act out this memory of rescue. An over-theshoulder shot taken from behind the husband follows, wherein one sees his wife following his actions with her eyes, and responding warmly by suddenly pointing out, “You have a good, solid arm (…it made me feel safe).” The sequence then continues from the wife’s point-of-view shot directed towards

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the man, in which Mr. Abe is seen calmly continuing his story, without offering any direct response to the gentle compliments by his wife. The audience is invited to participate in the scenario of affectivity and encouraged to mobilize their own knowledge and imagination to make sense of the bonding. In these ways, storytelling configures a space of/for “collective enunciation” by not only recruiting multiple interlocutors/interviewees to participate, but also by generating and circulating their stories inter-textually and trans-medially. We can return to the sequence with the two old ladies as an example. The picture show that opens the film has in a striking way offered historical, vernacular references to 3.11, associating collective experiences about past calamities with those of the present. Tabata Yoshi’s accounts and her sister’s reflections and memories overlap and merge with the tale about Yocchan featured in her picture story show. Meanwhile, their talk of past events does not fixate upon 3.11 but jumps in between historical occurrences in 1896 and 1933. The interwoven strands of narration have challenged us to reconsider how the boundaries between the actual traumatic happenings, personal accounts and memories built upon them, as well as cultural representations and imaginations inspired by them could become contingent and blurry. The tale of this little girl, Yocchan, has relayed and reworked generations of knowledge and memories about earthquakes and tsunami. Evidencing the archival efforts on the local residents’ part to bear witness to and pass down their knowledge about historical catastrophes and happenings, the transmedia storytelling is highly reflexive of the practice of PFD filmmaking. As such, it is understandable that in Storytellers, the last instalment of the Trilogy, the filmmakers would follow an interviewer/listener to meet a group of folklore-tellers, to collect folk stories from them, and to document their storytelling (see Hamaguchi, Nohara, and Takahashi 2015, 35–36). Moreover, Hamaguchi explains that the Trilogy does not simply deal with post-3.11 Tōhoku. For him, it is a documentary series that was created and threaded together in order to listen to the “womb” that has given birth to the multiple “voices” of people whose lives are interwoven with “the histories of small or large, different communities and their interconnections” (Hamaguchi, Nohara, and Takahashi 2015, 31). It echoes Thouny’s call for a rethinking of 3.11, in shifting away from the “logic of containment” which tends to confine the problematics of Fukushima to a “us-them” logic and “self-contained spaces” (2017, 5).

Talking bodies Finally, I want to switch the focus onto how Hamaguchi and Sakai emphasize the significance of body, in the Deleuzian sense, regarding the part it plays in remembering 3.11. Deleuze has considered how the body is defined by its affective capacity in relation to thought and image, and he suggests

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In their 21-episode online broadcast interestingly named “Katarogu” (Log of Talking, 2011–2013) hosted by Hamaguchi and Sakai,11 the filmmakers and their guests discussed their research on location when preparing for and filming the Trilogy, including what the bodies of their filming subjects set them to think. Both filmmakers talked about the affective flow, or the “bodily force” they sensed when their cameras were turning to the talking bodies of the “victims” or “survivors.” They described how they captured the moment when the filming subjects seemed to retreat to their memories and flashbacks, manifesting how the body “contains the before and the after.”12 To connect with Deleuzian thinking, I find Rodowick’s discussion useful regarding how “the body is a spatial sign of time that passes. It is never in the present because time passes: the body registers and accumulates its past experiences; it anticipates the future either reactively as repetition of the same, or affirmatively as the anticipation of new potentialities and transformative forces” (Rodowick 1997, 168). It is tempting to consider the Trilogy a documentation of the “talking bodies” – instead of considering “bodies” merely in terms of human bodies, I suggest that they are the assemblages of personal accounts, memories, and affects that could force us to think. Moreover, what has drawn my attention is how the survivor’s own body may constitute an archive – an archive of testimonies, memories, as well as of affect, the full expression of which is yet to be articulated and understood. On the one hand, as indicated above, the filmmakers have come to sense the bodily forces that were pulling them away from the filming subjects as something integral to grasping the ethical issues of documentary filmmaking, especially for 3.11 related projects (also see note 16). On the other hand, it is not surprising to learn that Hamaguchi and Sakai were impressed by what a folktale-teller from Tōhoku had told them, concerning how, even if the area were destroyed by the tsunami, the stories inside his body cannot be taken away.

Coda In this chapter, with the heuristic of Post-Fukushima Documentary, I have highlighted how strands of independent documentary filmmaking have proffered critical insights into post-3.11 Japanese society. Specifically, I have demonstrated how Hamaguchi and Sakai’s intervention has contributed to disturb the officially-sponsored teleological, linear narrative about post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. Exploring how Hamaguchi and Sakai have modified the

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mode of expression in restructuring interviews with witnesses and survivors as well as with folktale-tellers at the Tōhoku area, we can see how they have made visible a people and a community experiencing the conditions of precarity at the level of everyday life on various fronts, and also within the multi-layered sociopolitical sphere where their roles seem to be predetermined and prescribed. The Trilogy filmmakers have demonstrated how the stories and tales (as told or acted out), gestures, and bodies are inter-connected with each other in affective ways, so that the personal could connect with the collective, and vice versa. In breaking away from the given hierarchy of interviewer-interviewee, and the dichotomy of the personal and the political, the staged interview redistributes the identities of the subjects, filmmakers, and the spectators. The mechanisms of interview thus help to shake off the audience’s pre-established assumptions about similarly themed documentary works, such as the NHK special, or even observational documentary works widely seen among the independent productions. Importantly, as the spectators engage with the performativity, contingency and affectivity of listening and telling, they are pressed to adjust and reframe their own interpretative framework, which opens up possibilities to not only remember, but to re-imagine a new collectivity that is to come. This, I believe, has constituted the very politics of the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy.

Acknowledgements This project would not be possible without the collective research project “3.11 Igo no diskuru/post-3.11 discours” (2016–2017) hosted by Prof. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). I am deeply thankful to Jennifer Coates for organizing the international symposium on “Cinema and Social Change in Japan” at Kyoto University on 20–22 October 2017, and all the participants in this symposium. Special thanks go to Hamaguchi Ryūsuke, Sakai Kō, and Matsubayashi Yoju for their timely help providing me the screeners. I am also grateful for the doctoral student Pan Qin at Nagoya University, for her help in transcribing and editing some of the Japanese materials. A different version of this essay has been published as a chapter as “Kioku to shintai o norikoeru – Tōhoku dokyumentarī sanbusaku to Posuto Fukushima Dokyumentarī” (Going beyond memory and body – Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy and Post-Fukushima Documentary) in Posuto San Ichichi Media Gensetsu Saiko (Rethinking the Post 3.11 Media Discourse) 283–302. (Tokyo: Hosei daigaku shuppan kyoku, 2019).

Notes 1 Although there are four films in the trilogy, “Voices from the Waves” is composed of two episodes respectively shot at Shinchimachi and Kasennuma. In line with the filmmakers’ use of “sanbusaku” namely “trilogy,” I also refer to the four films as a “trilogy.”

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2 My use of “on the scene” or “xianchang” aesthetics relates to the discussions of Chinese independent cinema. Film scholar Zhang Zhen associates xianchang (“on the scene” or “on the spot” in Chinese) with the ‘quasi documentary and hyper realist aesthetic’ that characterizes the Urban Generation Chinese independent cinema, emphasizing how the xianchang aesthetics has been facilitated by the development of video technology, capturing “the contemporary spirit (dangxiaxing) of the Urban Generation in general and the ‘amateur cinema’ in particular” (Zhang 2007, 18–9). In his study of Chinese independent documentaries, Luke Robinson has examined the theory of xianchang, which I shall turn to in the following. 3 Though not further pursued in this chapter, it is necessary to point out how the NHK Archives project has shed light on the wide-ranging 3.11-centred archiving efforts orchestrated and practised by various institutions and organizations nationwide and outside of Japan, and their online and/or offline engagements. For archiving work on visual materials, one may turn to Sendai Mediatheque’s “Center for Remembering 3.11,” Google’s visual archive of “Mirai no kioku” (https://www.miraikioku.com/), and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival’s “3.11 Documentary Film Archive” (http://www.yidff311docs.jp/), just to name a few. 4 For instance, Mōri Yoshitaka suggests that given how the triple disaster “had a great impact on artists’ mindsets about art, society and politics” there has been renewed interest among individual artists and artist collectives in conveying social and political messages in a more explicit manner. Nevertheless, he also stresses that “The catastrophic East Japan Great Earthquake and the following Fukushima nuclear plant incidents in 2011 played a crucial role in shaping a dominant, pessimistic image of the future” (Mōri 2015, 167; 184). 5 “Independent film” is used here as an analytical perspective. According to Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Japanese cinema since the 1990s can be approached in terms of a condition of “post-studio,” with independent filmmakers becoming the “major players” (2012, 14). It also echoes Aaron Gerow’s earlier view that into the twentieth-first century, the assumed differences and even contestations between “major and independent, dominant and alternative” in Japanese cinema, when examined from the perspectives of “industry, style, and politics,” are getting more ambiguous and untenable (2002, 12). 6 In its online English version, there are three categories used to classify the archive, namely, “Immediately after the Earthquake,” “Testimonies of the Disaster,” and “Aerial Views of Disaster Area.” For more, refer to the official site, https://www9.nhk.or.jp/archives/311shogen/en/. 7 In 2013, Matsubayashi accomplished his second documentary feature shot at Fukushima, The Horse of Fukushima (Matsuri no uma), by shifting attention to the horses that experienced and suffered from the disaster at Minami-Soma’s “disaster zone.” 8 One may also refer to the documentary feature 3.11, in which Matsubayashi also participated and co-directed with Mori Tatsuya, Watai Takeharu, and Yasuoka Takaharu; all four filmmakers rushed to Fukushima two weeks after the earthquake occurred. For more refer to the film’s official site at http://docs311.jp/ eng.html. 9 The Sanriku Coast is the coastal region on the Pacific Ocean, which extends from Southern Aomori prefecture to Iwate prefecture, and northern Miyagi prefecture; historically this area suffered several major earthquakes and tsunami. 10 The English text related to the documentaries is transcribed from the English subtitled version of the Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy.

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11 Organized/hosted by Sendai Mediatheque, Hamaguchi and Sakai had been video-podcasting an online programme titled “Katarogu” (which refers to a “log” of “talks” as in Japanese the word for “talk,” “kataru”) that consists of altogether 21 episodes recorded between 2013 and 2014. In their talks, Hamaguchi and Sakai, together with Sendai Mediatheque, recorded and mapped out the production progress and process of the Trilogy. They also invited guest speakers from diverse backgrounds to participate their talks. The full programme is currently available at their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCk5yCddl1t_7Jh3yUIzUHRg and some of my discussions are inspired by and quote from their Katarogu talks. 12 In the first episode of their Katarogu talks titled “What is the Project of the Sound of Waves?” (namino oto purojekuto to wa), Hamaguchi mentioned, “How shall I put this … there were moments when I was considering whether I should capture certain things in my film or not … like when someone was talking to me, suddenly this person would … probably it should not be called a flashback since I’m not sure whether I could go this far to label this situation as such … am not sure whether it was because there is something having entered this person’s body, or, probably this person’s body was rejecting anything, there would be this moment when the act of ‘karari’ (talking) did not go well, or maybe this is a somewhat inappropriate moment. I guess if you don’t get close to each other, you won’t witness such moments” (Katarogu (Log of Talks), 2014).

Bibliography 2018 “Remembering 3.11: Great East Japan Earthquake Archive.” n.d. NHK. https://www9.nhk.or.jp/archives/311shogen/en/. Accessed 12 December 2018. Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Baumbach, Nico. 2010. “Jacques Rancière and the Fictional Capacity of Documentary.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 8 (1): 57–72. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17400300903529356. Berlant, Lauren. 2006. “Cruel Optimism.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 17 (3): 20–36. Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Demos, T. J. 2013. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Frangville, Vanessa. 2016. “Pema Tseden’s The Search: The Making of a Minor Cinema.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10 (2): 106–120. Fujii, Hikari, Sakai, Kō, Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, and Shimizu, Kento. 2015. “Kamera ichi to shinko, arui wa kyoki” (The Postion of the Camera and Belief, or Madness). In Kai, Kenji, and Himeno, Kimi (eds.) Sō ki no hō soku (Methods of Remembrance), pp. 148–189. Sendai: Sendaimediatē ku & Akaaka. Fujiki, Hideaki. 2017. “Problematizing Life: Documentary Films on the 3.11 Nuclear Catastrophe.” In Geilhorn, Barbara, and Iwata-Weickgennant, Kristina (eds.) Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster. London; New York: Routledge. Fujita, Naoya. 2016. “Shinsai dokyumentari no waisetsusa ni tsuite” (Regarding the Obscenity of Earthquake Documentaries). In 21 Seiki o ikinobiru tame no

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dokyumentari (Documentaries for Surviving the 21 Century), pp. 86–89. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha. Gerow, Aaron. 2002. “From Independence to Detachment in Recent Japanese Film/Cong Dulizouxiang Chouxiang: Dangdai Riben Dianying.” In Focus on Japan: Independent Cinema, pp. 6–12. Hong Kong: Hong Kong International Film Festival. Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, Nohara, Tadashi, and Takahashi, Tomoyuki. 2015. Kamera no mae de enjiru: Eiga hapi awa tekisuto shusei (To Perform in Front of the Camera: A Compilation of the Texts for Happy Hour). Tokyo: Sayusha. Irie, Sayaka, Higashiyama, Ichiro, and Mimori, Noboru. 2018. “Saigai hōdō shiryō no ākaibuka to katsuyō no kokoromi (Attempts to Archive and Utilize the News Report on Disaster).” The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research 68 (April): 2–15. Ito, Seiko, Sakai Kō, Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke and Serizawa, Takashi. 2016. “Tōhōku Kiroku Eiga Sanbusaku: ‘Namino Oto,’ ‘Namino Koe,’ ‘Utauhito’” (Tōhōku Documentary Trilogy: Sound of Waves, Voices from the Waves, Storytellers). In Teraoka, Yuji (ed.) 21 Seiki o ikinobiru tame no dokyumentari (Documentaries for Surviving the 21 Century), pp. 76–85. Tokyo: Kinema Junpoosha. Iwasaki, Takiwasa. 2013. “‘Tōhōku’o ido suru kiroku eiga ‘Rodo Mubi’ Sakai Kō & Hamaguchi Ryūsuke ‘Tōhōku Kiroku Eiga Sanbusaku’” (Documentary Film That Moves through ‘Tōhōku’ ‘Road Movie’ Sakai Ko & Hamaguchi Ryūsuke Tōhōku Documentary Trilogy). NeoNeo. http://webneo.org/archives/10038. Katarogu (Log of Talks). 2014. Production Team of Tōhōku Trilogy the Centre for Remembering 3.11. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk5yCddl1t_ 7Jh3yUIzUHRg. Maeda, Daisuke. 2018. “First Leg of 2020 Olympic Torch Relay to Start in Fukushima.” The Asahi Shimbun. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201807120040.html. Maimon, Vered. 2010. “Towards a New Image of Politics: Chris Marker’s Staring Back.” Oxford Art Journal 33 (1): 83–101. Mori, Tatsuya, Watai, Takeharu, Matsubayashi, Yoju, and Yasuoka, Takaharu. 2012. 3.11 o toru (Filming 3.11). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Mōri, Yoshitaka. 2015. “New Collectivism, Participation and Politics after the East Japan Great Earthquake.” World Art 5 (1): 167–186. Panagia, Davide. 2014. “‘Partage Du Sensible’: The Distribution of The Sensible.” In Deranty, Jean-Philippe (ed.) Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts, pp. 95–130. Routledge. Rancière, Jacques, Carnevale, Fulvia, and Kelsey, John. 2007. “Art of the Possible: Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey in Conversation with Jacques Rancière.” Artforum 45 (7): 256–270. Rancière, Jacques. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Steven Corcoran. London; New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Rancière, Jacques. 2011. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Robinson, Luke. 2013. Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Rodowick, David Norman. 1997. Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Sano, Hiroki (NHK). 2014. “Hisaichi de zokushutsu suru ‘Nakunata hazu no kazoku to no ‘Saikai’’ (About the Repeated Cases of ‘Reunion’ with the Deceased Families in the Disaster-Stricken Area). PRESIDENT Online. https://president.jp/ articles/-/13405. Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. 2002. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2 (1–2): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1 007/BF02435628. Thouny, Christophe. 2017. “Planetary Atmospheres of Fukushima: Introduction.” In Thouny, Christophe, and Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro (eds.) Planetary Atmospheres and Urban Society After Fukushima, pp. 1–18. Singapore: Springer Singapore. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. 2012. Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. https://doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824835941. 001.0001. Zhang, Zhen. 2007. “Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” Zhang, Zhen. In , pp. 1–33. (ed.) The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twentieth‐First Century. Durham: Duke University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.annemergmed.2012.11.003

Filmography Kasuya, Fumio. 2012. 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake, Self-Defence Forces’ Disaster Relief: Memories of the Bond (3.11 Higashi nihon daishinsai, Jieitai saikai haken: Kizuna no kioku). Qtec. Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, and Sakai, Kō. 2011. Sound of Waves (Nami No Oto). Japan: silent voice LLP. Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, and Sakai, Kō. 2013. Voices from the Waves Shinchimachi (Nami No Koe Shinchimachi). Japan: silent voice LLP. Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, and Sakai, Kō. 2013. Voices from the Waves Kesennuma (Nami No Koe Kesennuma). Japan: silent voice LLP. Hamaguchi, Ryūsuke, and Sakai, Kō. 2013. Storytellers (Utau Hito). Japan: silent voice LLP. Matsubayashi, Yoju. 2011. Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape(Soma Kanka Daiichibu: Ubawareta Tochi No Kioku). Japan: Tofoo Films. Matsubayashi, Yoju. 2013. The Horse of Fukushima (Matsuri No Uma). Japan: Tofoo Films.

Section C

Creating the political subject through media

8

The Japanese self-defence forces and cinematic productions: resonance and reverberation in the normalization of organized state violence Atsuko Fukuura and Eyal Ben-Ari

Introduction From Hollywood to Bollywood one finds a surfeit of commercial cinematic productions centred on the armed forces. And, in turn, militaries around the world use a plethora of films and videos (and other means) to recruit potential troops, assure publics of their necessity and the quality and commitment of their troops, or portray the varied humanitarian and goodwill activities they perform. In this chapter our aim is twofold. First, we examine how Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) appear in, and often cooperate in the production of, full-length movies, television series, entertaining documentaries, and anime. Second, we suggest how these cinematic productions are related to other forms of popular culture aimed at normalizing Japan’s military, that is, turning it into an institution that is “just like” the armed forces of other countries. Our analysis then, examines how cinematic productions are related to one of the central political debates in contemporary Japan: the role and acceptance of the military and the process of militarization. In this sense, as we show, these productions work both to explicitly bring up for debate the necessity of armed forces, and to depoliticize them through turning cinematic imagery into aesthetically pleasing and entertaining products. Before embarking on our analysis, however, it is important to explain that cinematic creations about any military are potentially different from those focusing on other public institutions since the armed forces are uniquely positioned as bearers of the potential or actual use of organized (and hopefully legitimate) state violence (Boene 1990). It is this close association with destructive force that makes any movie or anime series featuring armed forces potentially both problematic and fascinating. Sociologically, the wider question this situation raises is one of how contemporary militaries manage their relation to organized state-mandated violence through popular culture. Specifically, this question involves analyzing how states and their armed forces have moved into the realm of popular culture to try

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to “deal with” – order, manipulate, explain, control – public representations centred on their potential use of military force. In a previous essay, Ben-Ari (2019), followed Frühstück’s (2007, 2014), in dealing with the general category of official popular cultural products that the JSDF utilizes for its purposes. In this chapter, we focus specifically on official and commercial cinematic productions. At the same time, because of the country’s historical and political position the JSDF’s relation to violence is especially problematic (Ben-Ari 2015a, 2015b). Japan’s defeat in the Second World War was blamed on “the generals” and the word “military” became synonymous with subjugation, destruction, and disaster (Gruhl 2017). This connotation was intensified by the effects of the atomic bomb, which turned the Japanese people into victims of both America’s actions and the wartime military regime (Berry and Sawada 2016). As a result, when the postwar constitution was promulgated it included Article 9 barring Japan from possessing offensive military capability (hence the name Self-Defence Forces) (Creighton 2011). In addition, for a long time a strong anti-militaristic ethos was promulgated by social movements devoted to world peace and good will. This ethos, in turn, was often intensified by the continued strong resistance of Japan’s Asian neighbours to signs of what they saw as remilitarization. Yet despite these rather unfavourable circumstances, since the end of the Cold War Japan has seen significant changes in its security posture and the institutional and legal frameworks devoted to defence (Oros 2017). In fact, Japan has seen a host of new security innovations such as laws allowing export of weapons or the establishment of a National Security Council (Liff 2018). And in effect, the country possesses a very substantial military establishment that perceives enemy invasion as its primary threat and considers the combat leader the dominant military professional (Eldridge 2017; Hughes 2013). The JSDF is modelled on the U.S. military with three services (Ground, Air and Maritime forces), the latest military technology, and all of the organizational accompaniments common to armed forces (territorial divisions, brigades, and training methods) (Military Balance 2018; Patalino 2015). In addition, especially since the triple disaster of 2011, public opinion polls show that it enjoys an increasingly supportive public attitude (Midford 2017). At the same time, current public debates underscore that normalizing the JSDF – turning it into a military force like the one possessed by other “normal” democracies – is still problematic. First, changes to Article 9 of the constitution are still not backed by a majority of Japanese citizens; and second there is a lack of consensus about such questions as whether the expansion of the JSDF’s budget and roles are justified. What kind of conditions legitimate the deployment of forces abroad? Or what justifies the use of the violent means at its disposal? Against this background it is clear that processes related to the normalization of the JSDF are connected both to questions faced by all of the military establishments in the industrial

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democracies and to difficulties posed by Japan’s peculiar changing historical context. In other words, while every industrial democracy has to deal with the fact that its armed forces wield destructive power, Japan’s historical legacy and current political debates make this especially problematic. Accordingly, our argument is twofold. First, we contend that to deal with its challenging situation the JSDF purposely transmits a variety of – not always coherent or consistent – messages centred on its relation to violence (Ben-Ari 2015a). These include “traditional” ideas such as the JSDF’s necessity as an armed force and the willingness of its members to sacrifice their lives in defence of the country, as well as other notions such as distancing from the legacies of the Imperial Army of Second World War, its contributing to humanitarian work and community outreach, cultivating the “human” face of the troops, and an aestheticization and softening of its violent potential. In this respect, any particular film or video often simultaneously transmits multiple messages (Hall 1980) in the following three ways: some productions are deliberately designed to accord with JSDF and state aims; others are interpreted by fans as messages of acceptance or (more rarely) dissent from these ideas; and some movies and anime appear to contain certain messages but have been created with other aims – primarily entertainment value for commercial success. Second, we use two acoustic metaphors to argue that cinematic productions resonate and reverberate with other forms of popular culture in the process of normalizing the JSDF. Resonance refers to the increase of intensity of a sound by the sympathetic vibration with other bodies, while reverberation is not simply a re-echoing of sound but a multiple reflection or prolongation within a certain space after its initial source has stopped. Accordingly, we show the complex social processes by which cinematic productions both increase the intensity of the messages about a normalizing JSDF and reflect these messages in ways particular to each specific genre of production. Thus, full-length movies, anime films, and documentaries, respectively, resonate and reverberate with the normalization of the JSDF in different ways. Third, we contend that the political role of cinematic productions in regard to the JSDF do not fit neatly into a dichotomy of critical (or oppositional) versus conservative (or supportive) views. Rather, we demonstrate how they encompass a variety of modes by which critical voices are downplayed or made explicit, political issues related to the necessity of Japan possessing armed forces are brought up for debate or shoved aside, or how the violent potential of the JSDF is aestheticized and spectacularized, shown to be used for the good of the country, demonstrated as subservient to civilian leaders or just a background for entertaining stories to unfold. We then go on to investigate the power of the JSDF – through awarding or withholding cooperation – not only in directly producing works but in negotiating favourable portrayals in movies and anime produced by commercial companies.

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Three notes for clarification: first, empirically, our focus is on the postwar period and not the way cinema is related to the Second World War unless it is related to the JSDF (see Desser 2016; Berry and Sawada 2016; Standish 2005). Second, the various productions we examine are intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive as our aim is to develop an overall analytical frame of multiple forms of cinematic production. Thus, as our goal is to chart wider trends, we have decided to touch upon a number of films, television series, and anime rather than providing an in-depth analysis of one or two productions. Third, we do not join the extended normative arguments scholars are sometimes compelled to engage in regarding the existence and actions of the JSDF as good or bad, nor do we subscribe to a linear move of the country towards the right of the political spectrum (Gerow 2006). Our aim rather is to develop a series of insights into the ways film and video are related to today’s JSDF and how these bear upon the highly political issue of the place of the military and militarism in contemporary Japan.

Documentaries Perhaps the most obvious case of cinematic productions in which the JSDF cooperate and make an appearance are documentary films and videos. These films and videos are means by which the JSDF (like any public bureaucracy or business concern) manages its public relations so as to project good images of itself. And indeed, these products are variously initiated, produced or managed by the public relations office of the JSDF that today comprises about a thousand soldiers and civilians. Unsurprisingly, it is these productions that are most explicitly constructed to fit the official perspective of the JSDF. Documentaries include both serious films depicting defence issues, joint exercises with the U.S. Army, and the lives of soldiers, as well as more entertaining films such as parachute and helicopter performances, concerts of military bands, or “ninja” performances by members of the force. Often the films and videos combine serious and pleasurable themes that, at once, appeal to potential recruits and explain the way the JSDF answers the security challenges of the country. For example, one series comprises more than tens of videos about the live fire exercise that the Ground JSDF have held annually at the foot of Mt. Fuji (Ben-Ari 2011; Ben-Ari and Frühstück 2003; Grisafi 2014). These films present the power of the JSDF through such scenes as tanks and armed personnel carriers firing live weapons or soldiers parachuting out of giant helicopters and are accompanied by commentaries about the latest equipment it can deploy. Here the violence of the military is presented as part of a spectacle, a powerful display of kinetic visuals, dynamic action, and the accompanying sounds of guns shooting and vehicles moving. While segments of these videos are often screened during news programs (on the day the exercises take place), longer footage of these

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manoeuvres can be easily downloaded from official and unofficial websites to be consumed at the discretion of viewers. Indeed, some YouTube videos of the live-fire show at the foot of Mt. Fuji have been viewed by more than a million people.1 Here the JSDF’s potential for using organized violence is transformed into something that can be viewed and (perhaps) enjoyed in the “safe” conditions of the home (Handelman 1998, 395). Mann (1987) calls such state-produced and marketed representations of (actual or enacted) firefights part of “spectator sport” militarism. Hence, the production, dissemination, and consumption of glossy, high-quality videos is one way that the JSDF normalizes its military capabilities. Along similar lines, the websites of the Ground, Air, and Maritime services of the JSDF include multiple links to beautiful YouTube presentations of equipment and activities including not only strictly military themes but also reports of humanitarian missions and of contributions to local communities. These documentary films, in turn, are linked to Facebook and Twitter for further dissemination. A few years ago, to smarten the appeal of these websites, the JSDF asked a pop idol from the singing group AKB48 in to be a brand ambassador as part of a new recruitment campaign (Jain 2014; http://cm-model.info/231). This idol appears in a short video and talks about the importance of Japan having a self-defence capability. This video is an example of how the JSDF has employed and integrated star personas from popular culture into documentaries aimed at creating understandings of its necessity as an armed force to face contemporary threats such as China and North Korea, various terror organizations, and piracy. The video featuring the pop idol is but one iteration of a long series that began four decades ago when the JSDF started copying the strategies of large government offices and business corporations who used popular cultural products (idols, manga characters, anime types) to promote images of themselves (Kinsella 2000). In the early 1980s for example, the JSDF hired Dentsu (one of the largest advertising agencies in the world) to produce a cartoon comic series called “Prince Pickles” with the lead character and his female counter part “Princess Parsley” becoming mascots for the forces (Frühstück 2010). As Frühstück (2014), explains, since the 1990s the military public relations apparatus continued to appeal to a youthful audience that was (and is) largely ignorant about the circumstances of the Constitution’s Article 9 limiting the country’s use of armed force, and the U.S.-Japan alliance. We add that documentaries and other kinds of cinematic productions produced by or with the collaboration of Japan’s military in a sense preexpose viewers to major elements of (potential) violence but in ways that are presentable, palatable and (for the JSDF) hopefully persuasive. We have some evidence of the effect of these videos from two sources. The first are interviews and conversations we have had with JSDF Public Relations officers who have told us that in the wake of campaigns there are often slight increases in the interest shown by the public (mainly through visits to

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military museums, letters written to the JSDF and attendance at open-days in camps). The second, more anecdotal source are members of the JSDF whom we have talked, who have reported that they first became interested in the organization in the wake of seeing television programs featuring the JSDF.

Feature films The JSDF appears in many full-length fictionalized movies. Possibly the most famous are the Godzilla movies that began production in the 1950s. In these early films, the JSDF was actually quite ineffective when pitted against the monster, and its artillery shells and machine-gun bullets often seemed to annoy Godzilla.2 Among critics, the original 1954 Godzilla (Gojira, Honda Ishirō) is often taken as a metaphor for the horror Japan felt at suffering the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945. It is an apt metaphor because Godzilla can be seen as both the product of nuclear radiation and as embodying the destructive force of war, and especially the urban damage it brings about. It is against the background of the military’s role in the war that one should understand the ineffectiveness of the JSDF, indeed only goading the monster to more devastation. The heroes in these early movies by contrast are scientists and children, both evoking many of the anti-war themes of the time as they appeared in Atom Boy (1952) and Hi no Tori (1956). However, over the years these emphases began to change and by the 1970s other themes began to emerge and take on significance. The series produced by Tōhō Films about alien invasions began with the 1957 film Earth Defence Force, released in the United States as The Mysterians (Chikyū bōeigun, Honda Ishirō and Tsuburaya Eiji). This movie is interesting because the JSDF is embedded within a global structure of defence against enemies that are aliens, that is, non-humans. These depictions can be read as combining a self-protective posture (that is not offenseoriented), participation in a coalition of democracies, and fighting what are considered by earth’s population as legitimate enemies against which it is fully justifiable to use armed violence. However, the irony is that the aliens turn out to be peace loving. By the 1970s, depictions of the JSDF were changing rapidly. In the 1977 film Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū senkan Yamato: Gekijōban, Matsumoto Leiji; a remake was released in 2010 as Supēsu batorishippu Yamato, Yamazaki Takashi) that was based on an anime series, a starship is on a desperate mission to save the planet. Here the enemies are a race of blondhaired aliens who use nuclear attacks to bomb Earth into submission. The starship, constructed inside the battleship Yamato of the Second World War, represents the only saviour of earth’s people, who are all living underground because the surface of the earth is radioactive in the wake of the aliens’ nuclear bombs. The battleship and its escorts destroy a major part of

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the aliens’ flotilla (with the aid of an alien weapon), and the aliens finally give up their plans to take over Earth. In this film, in the naming of the starship Yamato and identifying it with the Imperial Navy of the Second World War (much less vilified than the Imperial Army) we already see greater pride in Japan’s military taking its rightful place in the defence of Japan and indeed of all of the globe. Mizuno (2007) further suggests that besides the narrative of Yamato saving the human race from annihilation, the apocalyptic idea of a crusade against evil is very much a mark of the Cold War era and thus can be read as a Cold War text. Time Slip (also known as G. I Samurai/ Sengoku jieitai, Saitō Kōsei) was produced in 1979; a remake came out many years later in 2005 (Samurai Commando: Mission 1549/ Sengoku jieitai 1549, Tezuka Masaaki), and then a television series in 2006 (Sengoku jieitai Sekigahara no tatakai, Nippon TV, 31 January 2006–7 February 2006). It tells the story of a unit of JSDF combat soldiers transported back in time through a scientific anomaly creating black holes. The unit finds itself travelling back in time 460 years earlier to the age of the Warring States (c. 1467–1600) when rival clans battled to become the country’s military leaders. One officer sees this as the perfect opportunity to realize his dream of becoming Japan’s ruler and allies himself with one group of samurai. As the days pass members of the unit are killed and by the movie’s end there are only two survivors. The film can be seen as an allegory of the uselessness of military ambitions along with a message about the fighting spirit of members of the JSDF. In the 2006 remake, the unit manages to make it back to the present after having gone through numerous violent encounters during the Warring States period. By the 2000s the country had changed and so had depictions of the JSDF in feature-films. The epitome of this development can be seen in the movie Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Gojira, Anno Hideaki) that was released in 2016 and was the 31st Godzilla movie. The film is very much about politics, leadership, changing generational attitudes, and the JSDF. Godzilla here is woken by a nuclear meltdown and as he transforms into a monster destroying Tokyo, top decision-makers seem paralyzed by endless meetings. With the U.S. forces wanting to meddle but not intervening, it is the JSDF who win the day. The film was immensely successful; it was acclaimed by Japanese critics and won many Japan Academy prizes. It was also commercially successful, as the highest grossing film of 2016 and highest grossing Godzilla film in history. Indeed, this success can be interpreted as an indicator of how a different portrait of JSDF personnel, centred on their courage and decisive action, has now been accepted in Japan. Moreover, from our perspective, the movie directly addresses the proposed limitations on the JSDF because the key to handling the monster lies in the deployment of new weaponry. Moreover, the country’s military turn out to be not only effective but are heroic in their efforts, and this was noted in the popular press.3

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Related themes appear in some Hollywood productions. Take the movie Battleship, in which the JSDF appears as part of a multinational naval task force exercising off Hawaii that encounters and overcomes a hostile alien sea fleet. The film includes an actual Maritime JSDF ship (the JS Atago) as part of a flotilla of allies. In addition, the Air JSDF also makes a brief appearance in the movie Independence Day, again as part of a coalition of countries. The main themes here combine an emphasis on Japan’s active military collaboration in matters of collective security and of the country being “just like” any other industrial democracy in possessing a necessary military. Glenn Hook suggests that one can view the process of linkage of the JSDF to American forces as part of a security alliance as an expression of the “denationalization” of the Japanese military (Hook 1998). Thus, in the guise of being appendages of the American military, the JSDF can create (in tandem with other strategies) an impression of its indispensability and legitimacy while signalling that the major actors in the defence of the area are the U.S. Armed Forces (Ben-Ari and Frühstück 2003). The movies in which the JSDF appears as part of coalitions – led by the Americans – signal its importance for national security, its role in the wider defence of the area, and its close relation to the hegemonic power of the world. The JSDF participates or cooperates in most of these films. Noriko Sudō (2013) who has charted out relations between the JSDF and the cinema industry explains that while from 1960–1970 JSDF cooperation and the appearance of the JSDF in films was part of the government’s cultural policy to improve its public image, the 1970s and 1980s were a period marked by an implicit taboo on media depictions of the country’s military. However, during the 1990s, after a half-century had passed since the war, and after the JSDF began to be deployed abroad and media reports about its activities flooded the country, things changed again. Change in JSDF representation has intensified since the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2011 and the close security cooperation of Japan with the United States. It was during this period that the JSDF worked together with the producers of such films as Aimless AEGIS (Bōkoku no ījisu). Sudō reports that the JSDF’s public relations department asked the producers to revise one scene and that the producers complied (2013, 137). In addition, public relations efforts continued with an emphasis on “softening” the image of the country’s military in such movies as For the Sky: Wings and Saving Lives (Sora e: Sukui no tsubasa resukyū uingusu), that turned out to be a box-office failure. The JSDF however has continued to actively cooperate in other productions such as the movie S: The Last Policeman – Recovery of our Future (S Saigo no kekkan: Dakkan Recovery of Our Future, Hirano Shunichi, 2015), a sequel to the TV drama S: The Last Policeman (S - Saigo no kekkan, Hirano Shunichi and Ishii Yasuharu, January 2014–March 2014), which in turn was originally a manga (Komori Yoichi and Todo Yutaka, 2009–2016). It featured the Air Self-Defence Force providing helicopter transport to various police special forces. Here the emphasis is very much on extending the

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services of the JSDF to civilian missions as part of community outreach and depictions of its members as daring and valiant.

Television dramas Television dramas centred on the JSDF produced with the acquiescence and sometimes direct help of the Japanese military are a more recent form of cinematic production than documentary movies. One example is the cooperation of the Air Service of the JSDF service in the production of a TV drama called Public Affairs Office in the Sky (Soratobu Kōhōshitsu, TBS Television, 2013) set in the public relations section of the Air Staff Office. This 11-episode series is based on the novel Soratobu Kōhō by Arikawa Hiro published in 2012. The series tells the story of the director for an informative TV program and a former fighter pilot who is reassigned to the public relations office after being involved in an accident. In the different episodes, public relations efforts and reporting about the Air JSDF are discussed in complex ways. As Jain (2014) commenting on the series explains, Japanese now attach the same degree of romance and glamour to their armed forces as people do anywhere in the world. Here the main themes portrayed entail the JSDF as “chic” and the reports in the program introduce the JSDF as a force saving lives. In all of these productions, the cooperation of the JSDF and its monitoring of their contents is a clear case of the military’s direct influence on how cinematic productions create positive images of the forces. As such, such relations underscore the power the Japanese military has by the very act of extending (or withholding) its cooperation; a power over the kinds of portrayals of soldiers and officers, and the actions that they undertake. In this sense, these cinematic productions are all “political” but they are so not in the critical sense of the word, but as a move by a state actor to enter the realm of popular culture and intervene in its productions to further a very certain view of the military as normal, that is, like the armed forces of other industrial democracies. Here again, while anecdotal evidence from numerous conversations with enlisted personnel and officers point to the fact that this cooperation is viewed positively, the fact that such films as Godzilla Resurgence or television series like Public Affairs Office in the Sky have been so popular also attests to the acceptance by wide swathes of the public of a very positive image of Japan’s contemporary military.

Anime By far the most numerous cinematic productions and those that have the greatest dissemination and consumption rates are anime, whether they are official productions (the distinct minority) or commercial brands. In anime again we seen how cooperation with the JSDF bears on content and

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imagery. The Bo-Emon animation released by the Ministry of Defence for instance, began appearing on the Ministry of Defence website in 2015.4 The 18-minute video stars a talking bird explaining the importance of security and the JSDF to three children whose father flies an F-16 fighter jet. The bird describes the JSDF as a force meant to deter aggression and provide for global stability, rather than invade other nations. Information about the JSDF is thus made accessible and fun to youngsters. The cartoon ends with a scene showing the father scrambling in his F-15 to intercept two unmarked aircraft that bear an unmistakable resemblance to the Su35, an advanced Russian-made interceptor that China is keen to purchase. This cartoon is not unlike the manga published in 2005 when the annual Defence White Paper was issued (Frühstück 2014), which centred on a young girl and her loveable bear. A few years later pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia led to the dispatch of Maritime JSDF ships area and the establishment of a Japanese base in Djibouti. Accordingly, JSDF published a manga pamphlet entitled “Understanding Through Manga: The Somalia Pirate Problem” to clarify that as piracy had become an international issue, Japan was contributing to the international community (Frühstück 2007b). In these cases the use of cute cartoon animals serves to soften the image of the JSDF, make them more approachable, and therefore hopefully enabling viewers to better understand the messages that the JSDF and Ministry of Defence are trying to convey. More widely, the use of such friendly figures is very commonplace among both commercial and governmental bodies thereby making their appearance in defence-related productions much more acceptable as normal practice. The JSDF is, however, much more visible in numerous commercial anime and probably the most popular is the series Gate (Gēto: Jieitai kano chi nite kaku tatakaeri, Kyōgoku Takahiko, 2015-2016). Based on a web fantasy novel and written by a former member of the JSDF (Yanai Takumi, 2010–2015), it tells the story of the JSDF travelling through a portal to another world, taking down monsters, teaming up with “cute” girls, and creating the image that joining the JSDF would be a great experience. Specifically, the series centres on an otaku member of the JSDF (a term translated as “geek” but having many meanings also centred on individuals who are interested in anime) who journeys with the military into a fantasy world that has suddenly connected itself to our own through a mysterious gate. Clearly, the anime transmits a pro-military orientation and the JSDF are depicted as heroes defending the country from otherworldly invaders. Some JSDF members have praised it for being realistic in its treatment of actual weapons and operations. In this sense, like the early Godzilla movies, the JSDF defend Japan against non-human enemies but unlike these monster movies they are portrayed as strong and successful. This is yet another indicator of how depictions of the JSDF in cinematic (and other popular cultural) productions have changed in the past few decades. One indicator of

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the popularity of Gate is that a list of over 200,000 fans saw the production and rated it very highly.5 Other anime series illustrate these themes further. In Zipang (Jipangu, Furuhashi Kazuhiro, 2004–2005) also based on a manga (Kawaguchi Kaiji, 2000–2009), a modern maritime JSDF Aegis destroyer equipped with the latest missiles travels back to the Battle of Midway (4–7 June 1942). Yet despite the weapons at their disposal, the ship’s crew has completely internalized the postwar ethos of the JSDF and are thus hesitant to join the Imperial Navy ships of the period. The series presents characters with very diverse opinions and through the narrative question of whether the JSDF sailors should save the lives of members of the Imperial Navy and change history, or stay neutral, explores the nature of defence and offense and the boundaries of action of the JSDF. In this sense the series depicts the highly politicized debate about the existence and use of the JSDF from multiple perspectives. While not driven by the agenda of one political camp or another, it nevertheless is political in tabling issues and making them explicit. In the series Yukikaze (Sentō yōsei yukikaze, Ōkura Masahiko, 2002–2004), based on a science-fiction novel (Sentō yōsei yukikaze, Kambayashi Chōhei, 1984), the JSDF maintain an aircraft carrier (named Admiral 56 in reference to the legendary Isoroku Yamamoto) and are part of a United Nations – mandated Earth Defence Force combatting an alien invasion. The narrative initially focuses on one pilot as his reconnaissance plane is attacked by an unidentified machine, before switching focus to another fighter pilot who flies the only aircraft with a hyperintelligent AI system known as Yukikaze. Yukikaze is capable of bringing down alien craft with frightening efficiency. The emphasis of the series is not only on the country’s protection (echoing the pride in the Imperial Navy) but of being part of something wider – earth’s defence. The choice of the Imperial Navy, moreover, is important, since this service was much less identified than the Imperial Army with the atrocities carried out by the Japanese forces in World War Two. Hence, the emphasis on the Imperial maritime forces serves to distance the JSDF from the dark past of Japanese militarism. The wider meaning of heroism and defence is also found in a host of other anime such as in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (Kidō Senshi Gandamu, Tomino Yoshiyuki, 1981–1982) when the JSDF is asked by the U.S. military to join the Human Reform League and the Advanced European Union. In Patlabor: The Movie (Kidō keisatsu patoreibā za mūbī), the JSDF has a gigantic Mecha (human-like warrior robot) in Japan that cooperates at times with the police force and in the manga Highschool of the Dead (Gakuen mokushiroku haisukuru obu za deddo, Satō Daisuke, 2006–2013) and its subsequent animated television series (Gakuen mokushiroku haisukuru obu za deddo, Araki Tetsurō, July 2010–September 2010), Japan’s ground forces secure power plants and set up blockades to hold off the zombies. In 2003, the air component of the JSDF created an anime series called Stratos 4 (Sutoratosu fō, Mori Takeshi, January 2003–March 2003) in which a group

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of pilots are deployed to a space comet blaster as part of the “United Countries.” And finally, the many anime that the JSDF appears in include Gasaraki (Gasaraki, Takahashi Ryōsuke, October 1998–March 1999), Library War (Toshokan sensō, Hamana Takayuki, April 2008–June 2008), Blue Gender (Burū jendā, Abe Masashi and Takahashi Ryōsuke, October 1999–March 2000), Rescue Wings (Yomigaeru sora, Sakurabi Katsushi, January 2006–March 2006), Area 88 (Eria hachi jū hachi, Toriumi Hisayuki, February 1985-August 1986), and the Macross franchise (Makurosu, various artists, 1982–). In most of these cases, as Yamamura (2018) explains, there has been a great deal of cooperation between the JSDF and the producers of anime. Such collaboration with civilian institutions is, to be sure, found in a variety of fields where anime companies cooperate with various localities, governments and other organizations. But what is particular to the collaboration with the JSDF is the emphasis on turning the military and military matters into “fantasy” productions to be consumed by large fan bases. Yamamura (2018) further persuasively argues that this collaboration is indicative of the move towards the JSDF as a product to be consumed – one driven by the market – rather than an indicator of a drift to the right driven by politics. This kind of argument does not, however, imply that these productions carry no political implications. Being part of mainstream popular culture, these productions depoliticize the potential of the JSDF as bearers of state mandated organized violence by distancing it from open public debate.

Productions in context: resonances and reverberations We now take a step back to examine the interrelationship between cinematic productions and other kinds of popular cultural products. We use two acoustic metaphors to grasp how cinematic productions resonate and reverberate with other forms of normalizing work that involve the JSDF. Resonance refers to the increase of intensity of a sound by the sympathetic vibration with other bodies – from our perspective, a process by which the original production is amplified and sometimes reinforced through multiple renderings. Reverberation does not mean simply repeating the original sound (whatever its intensity), but rather many reflections within a certain space after its initial source has stopped – from our point of view, a process of being prolonged by appearing in different genres. Full-length movies, anime, and documentaries, respectively, resonate and reverberate with the normalization of the JSDF in different ways. An example of resonance of a media production about the JSDF can be found in the websites created and maintained by the Ministry of Defence and by the different services of the force. These sites offer video clips and games with the same anime characters that are commercially available. These are examples of resonance, since every visit to clips on the websites increases the exposure to the “original” production. Hence, this is of

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resonance since the versions on the website are the very same ones, the same texts, as the primary one. Another case are video clips of the spectacular live-fire exercises held at the foot of Mt. Fuji that can be viewed on, or downloaded from, the same websites. Indeed, as we showed, some YouTube videos of the live-fire show at the foot of Mt. Fuji have been viewed by more than a million people. However, it is reverberation (referring to the interplay of one genre with another) that better allows us to understand the power of cinematic productions and no less important, the power of the Japanese state and its military forces to create very particular images of the JSDF. Japan’s Ministry of Defence and JSDF are using the image Gundam to promote a new technological development. The Gundam refers to a special military suit called Advanced Combat Information Equipment System, first produced in in 2007. Dubbed “Gundam” by one of the head administrators at the Ministry, it was soon echoed in the manga and anime productions that have been a part of Japan’s popular culture for decades. In this manner the anime character of Gundam appears as a signifier of a technological innovation rather than being linked to the martial power wielded by Japan or its militarization. Again, however, the most frequent examples belong to the commercial world. A simple example is the interplay of the manga and anime characters appearing in the Gate series with recruitment posters. The JSDF utilizes the popularity of the anime series to create aesthetically pleasing posters that appear in neighbourhoods or city streets. The choice of Gate is not surprising given its popularity and the fact that over four million of its volumes have been sold since it was first published. Hence, the “original” characters continue to appear not (only) as manga or anime but in posters aimed a pool of potential future members of the JSDF: members who will contribute to the power the forces can wield. This is a form of reverberation since the posters cite or quote the original appearance of the characters in a different genre. Indeed, in 2018 the author of the original Gate received a letter of appreciation from the JSDF’s Tokyo Provincial Cooperation Office for collaborating with the forces in the recruitment posters (and postcards). And, to further exemplify the resonance of his text, this author started to participate and appear in local JSDF garrison festivals where he held “handshaking” events as the originator of Gate. Here the handshaking has a dual aspect: for anime fans it is a chance to meet the dramatist of a popular series while for the JSDF this is an opportunity for public relations. Another such example is found in the city of Oarai (in Ibaraki Prefecture) that has adopted a Ground JSDF tank as symbol to attract visitors. The city took on this mechanical “mascot” after it was used as the setting for the Girls und Panzer anime series. Indeed, to take Girls und Panzer (Gāruzu ando pantsā, Mizushima Tsutomu, June 2012–March 2014) as one example, the “cutification” of girls driving Nazi tanks can certainly be read in tandem with the notion of distancing form WW2 connotations.

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Here again the fame of an anime series is used as a resource to create a concrete material symbol that can be displayed in a central plaza in the municipal territory. In such examples, the recruitment of popular culture is a move within the ties linking the Japanese military to producers, disseminators, and consumers in a way that supports and cultivates a certain image or vision of the JSDF and its actions. Reverberation can be seen in other examples. Take the anime series Combined Fleet Girls Collection (Kantai korekushon) that re-envisions Second World War battleships as cute young girls clad in revealing uniforms. The young ladies live together on a naval base, where teen dramas play out amidst sorties against undersea invaders. Or look at Strike Witches (Sutoraiku witchīzu) in which teenage girls appear with Second World War plane engines strapped to their legs fighting aliens. While set in the period of the war, this series nevertheless reverberates with very similar kinds of anime produced about the period after Second World War. As Mizono (2007) explains while based on an ostensible past, such productions deal with a fantasy of postwar Japan where the pacifist constitution renounces war. They deal with complex desires for peace, the right to fight to defend the nation and thus to determine the nation’s own course. Accordingly, while set in the period of the war, this series nevertheless reverberates with very similar kinds of anime produced about the period after Second World War. Hence, these kinds of series in which the Japanese military appear in fantastical contemporary circumstances link cute and the military and is something unique to Japan. To be sure, militaries around the world seek to portray themselves as cool, sexy, and dangerous but if, as Ashcraft (2015) explains, one looks at the tradition of painting pin-ups on aircraft, these are not cheesecake pin-ups but anime girls appearing as mini-skirted characters with magical powers. The underlying theme is the same. Military hardware is unthreatening, fun, and above all cute.6 This emphasis, as we shall presently see, is echoed in other forms of popular culture in which the key characters are gendered female, coded childlike and unapologetically sexualized (Ben-Ari 2019). Accordingly, as Kendall (2012) explains, Kisarazu city’s aviation festival presented a new AH-1S Cobra helicopter to be used in “(defensive) tankbusting operations” that involved a “moe style” and a red-haired female character. According to him, the term “moe” is hard to define but is used to describe a feeling of passion and burning usually for something like a pretty young girl that men desire. As Kendall goes on to describe, during the festival the helicopter quickly stole the show, with hundreds taking photos and sharing videos of it on the Internet. A related set of examples are provided by Sugawa-Shimada (2018). She shows how figures of young girls appearing in anime not only romanticize war memories but reverberate out through various media platforms including JSDF bases, museums and events produced with the cooperation of the navy. In all of these productions, as she explains, war

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related themes – the core of violence – are rendered as light entertainment and thus popularize Japan’s militarization and, we add, normalize the JSDF. Like Yamamura (2018) she persuasively argues that the sites where these different genres are experienced are sites of consumption whereby the JSDF are commodified and consumed like other popular cultural products. And while she does not make this point explicitly, we would add that they are key sites for the depoliticization of the JSDF and Japan’s security policies. Japan’s military, in turn, has for decades promoted its own manga characters and sold its own dolls, curry, or cookies during open days in camps or in some canteens. What is significant during the past two decades or so, however, is that it has cooperated much more than in the past with commercial enterprises focused on profit. What is important about these reverberations is not only the merchandizing or the borrowing across genres that the JSDF is involved in. These processes very often take place in the wake of blockbuster movies or successful runs of anime stories. Rather what should be emphasized is that these examples are all centred on the normalization of the JSDF. The reverberations between genres then exemplify not just the privatization of the public relations efforts of the JSDF but the mutual interests served by these reverberations. The promotion and reverberation between the different images and genres, in turn should caution us against too cognitive a bias in our analysis. Apart from being designed to carry or articulate certain themes, such cinematic productions (like many popular cultural products) are intentionally intended to evoke emotional reactions or sentiments that “move” (motivate and resonate) people (Ben-Ari 2019). Thus while entertaining, and often commercially successful, the messages that these reverberating genres and products carry are all centred on the interests of the JSDF. They are thus examples of the potential transformational capacity of people’s opinions and image of the military through cinematic (and other) productions. That there is very little dissent should not be interpreted as some kind of “dumb” acceptance of conforming subjects as consumers of popular culture.

Conclusion Given the problematic place of organized military state violence in Japan, the main difficulty faced by the JSDF has been how to “normalize” its existence and actions within a context that is deeply politicized. In this chapter we explored how the JSDF uses a variety of cinematic productions to face just this difficulty. As we have shown, the forces not only legitimize and justify their necessity through these productions but convey multiple messages about the missions that the JSDF carries out such as aiding during natural disasters or helping local communities. Cinematic productions, as part of a larger family of popular cultural products, normalize the JSDF (like any military) by appealing to individuals as consumers. Such productions, in other words, work through entertaining movies, riveting

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documentation of displays of fire-power, or soft, colourful “friendly” anime characters explaining Japan’s defence needs. Indeed, as we saw, there need be no clear distinction between individuals as consumers or political subjects since they may view movies or anime, television series or documentaries in various modes simultaneously. Thus the fact that they enjoy portrayals of members of the JSDF as entertainment does not preclude support of the forces and of militarization. While a deeper analysis is beyond the confines of this chapter, it should be pointed out that support for the JSDF and militarization may be an outcome of rational decisions on the part of citizens. Indeed, the majority of Japan’s population has solidly and consistently supported the use of armed force for the protection of the country, for self-defence, at least since the 1979s (Midford 2017). Politically then, the impressive range of such products centred on war and militaries that saturate Japan work to “prepare” wide publics for both the perceived necessity of the JSDF and the use of organized state violence. Accordingly, the normalization we refer to lies in the fact that many Japanese citizens, and especially younger people who consume so many popular cultural products are exposed in different ways to the JSDF and the composite messages it transmits. By composite we mean not only reflecting the view of right-wing politicians, or realist military and defence experts but also messages about the legitimacy of debating the use of the JSDF. What we have shown is that to understand the potential power of such products as cinematic productions we need to take into account how they resonate and reverberate outside their original sources. In this respect, of course, the Japanese JSDF is not the only military institution that employs popular culture to reach and influence civilians (Naftali 2014). Nevertheless, its uniqueness lies in the particular way in which it utilizes genres of popular culture – such as anime – for its goals. Indeed, the wide consumption of anime and manga within contemporary Japan provides an important reminder of the unique popular cultural heritage of each country and how its military forces use that cultural heritage. We argue that the appeal of such productions – as of popular culture in general – lies in their mass accessibility and their potential to influence different publics’ attitudes towards the armed forces. Indeed, it is perhaps because these products and productions are so routine, and saturate the worlds of popular culture, that they work so well in normalizing the JSDF. This point is significant because it underscores the way that cinematic productions – whether they be intentionally created to transmit messages about government policy or designed as popular cultural products, as “mere” entertainment – may have the same effects. It is for this reason that the support or cooperation of the JSDF of the Ministry of Defence should be seen as an indicator of the power these institutions wield in the realm of producing cinematic productions. Thus processes of normalization – be it turning the country’s armed potentials into “natural” phenomena or justifying debates about revisions of the constitution – are always political activities.

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Notes 1 One example can be found in http://www.mod.go.jp/gJSDF/english/firepower.html. 2 For example, the following article emphasizes the cute incapability of the onscreen defence force: https://news.vice.com/article/the-japanese-military-isgetting-offensively-cute. 3 See articles such as “Japan’s Military are the Heroes in new Shin Godzilla Film,” CNet “News” 2017. https://www.cnet.com/news/japans-military-are-the-heroes-innew-shin-godzilla-film/. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wfyEr5vq7k and http://www.mod.go.jp/e/ publ/movies/bo-emon.html. 5 See: https://myanimelist.net/anime/28907/Gate__Jieitai_Kanochi_nite_Kaku_ Tatakaeri/stats. 6 Other examples can be found in: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/02/26/japanself-defense-forces-show-off-their-feminine-side-with-2014-calendar/ and http:// en.rocketnews24.com/2012/04/03/japan-self-defense-force-recruitment-posterskill-with-cute/.

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Eldridge, Robert. 2017. “Organization and Structure of the Contemporary Ground Self-Defence Force.” In Eldridge, Robert, and Midford, Paul (eds.) The Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force, pp. 19–55. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Frühstück, Sabine. 2007a. Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frühstück, Sabine. 2007b. “AMPO in Crisis? US Military’s Manga Offers Upbeat Take on US-Japan Relations.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 45: 3–10. Frühstück, Sabine. 2010. “’To Protect Japan’s Peace We Need Guns and Rockets:’ The Military Uses of Popular Culture in Current-day Japan.” The Asia-Pacific Journal. Frühstück, Sabine. 2014. ‘A “Dynamic Joint Defence Force”? An Introduction to Japanese Strategic Thinking.’ The Asia-Pacific Journal. Accessed 14 June 2019. https://apjjf.org/‐Sabine‐Fruhstuck/4308/article.html Gerow, Aaron. 2006. “Fantasies of War and Nation in Recent Japanese Cinema.” The Asia-Pacific Journal (Japan Focus) 4 (2): 1–11. Grisafi, John. 2014. “Japan Self-Defence Force Uses Anime, Technology to Draw More Recruits.” Penn Asian Review. Accessed 25 June 2015. http:// pennasianreviewonline.blogspot.jp/2014/09/japan-self-defense-force-uses-anime.html Gruhl, Werner. 2017. Imperial Japan’s World War Two: 1931-1945. London: Routledge. Hall, S. 1980. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., and Willis, P. (eds.) Culture, Media, Language—Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. London: Routledge. Handelman, Don. 1998. Models and Mirrors: Towards and Anthropology of Public Events. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Hook, Glenn D. 1998. “Japan and the ASEAN Regional Forum: Bilateralism, Multilateralism or Supplementalism.” Japanstudien 10: 159–188. Hughes, Christopher W. 2013. “Japan, Ballistic Missile Defence and Remilitarization.” Sapce Policy 30: 1–7. Jain, Amit. 2014. “Japanese Armed Forces Get Image Makeover.” PR Week. 28 November. Accessed 6 June 2015. http://www.prweek.com/article/1324203/ japanese-armed-forces-image-makeover Kendall, Philip. 2012. “Japan’s Armed Forces Show their Playful Side: Moe-Style Attack Helicopter Wows Crowd.” Rocket News 24. Accessed 26 February 2015. http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/10/19/japans-armed-forces-show-their-playfulside-moe-style-attack-helicopter-wows-crowds/ Kinsella, Sharon. 2000. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. London: Curzon. Liff, Adam P. 2018. “Japan’s National Security Council: Policy Coordination and Political Power.” Japanese Studies 38 (2): 253–279. Mann, Michael. 1987. “The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism.” New Left Review 162: 35–51. Midford, Paul. 2017. “The GJSDF’s Quest for Public Acceptance and the “Allergy” Myth.” In Eldridge, Robert, and Midford, Paul (eds.) The Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force, pp. 297–346. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Military Balance. 2018. The Military Balance. London: IISS. Mizuno, Hiromi 2007 “When Pacifist Japan Fights: Historicizing Desire in Anime.” Mechademia 2: 104–123.

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Naftali, Orna. 2014. “Marketing War and the Military to Children and Youth in China: Little Red Soldiers in the Digital Age.” China Information 28 (1): 3–25. Oros, Andrew L. 2017. Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Patalino, Alessio. 2015. Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy. New York: Bloomsbury. Sugawa-Shimada, Akiko. 2018. “Playing with Militarism in/with Arpeggio and Kantai Collection: Effects of Shōjo Images in War-related Contents Tourism in Japan.” Journal of War and Culture Studies 12: 1–14. Standish, Isolde. 2005. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema. London: Curzon. Sudō, Noriko. 2013. Ware Kyou-mo Ozora ni ari. Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten. Yamamura, Takayoshi. 2018. “Cooperation Between Anime Producers and the Japan Self-Defence Force: Creating Fantasy and/or Propaganda.” Journal of War and Culture Studies 12: 1–16.

9

Politicizing the audience? Film fans’ experiences of cinema in the 1960s Jennifer Coates

The potential politicizing effects of a film or media text are often inferred from the political personae or directly expressed intentions of those involved in its making, from the presence of a political auteur-director to the massmedia friendly apolitical self-identifications of certain stars. Yet such expressions and influences must be understood as part of the star personae of these individuals – elements in the well-crafted public-facing characterizations on the basis of which films and merchandise are advertised to potential viewers. Instead of assessing the politicizing potential of a media text using the recorded opinions and behaviours of its creators, in this chapter I would like to propose a different approach. Analyzing ethnographic material that deals with film viewers’ memories of cinema cultures, I explore the possibilities and limitations of politicizing an audience through cinema. For the purposes of this chapter, the term “politicized” characterizes the viewer’s sense of the stimulation or generation of political awareness and activity. While the viewers quoted here often attribute the beginnings of their political awareness to a particular cinematic encounter or moment, it is not possible to determine whether the viewer sought confirmation of an already-forming or established political awareness or stance in the cinema narratives and personae of the era remembered, or whether engagement with those narratives and personae triggered political awareness and even activism. Being “politicized” may be understood to mean that an individual is not political by their own volition, however the ethnographic examples and analysis which follow are not offered with the intention of making this claim. Whether research participants were politically aware before finding a cinematic narrative perceived to confirm their political stance, or whether the cinematic experience generated that political awareness out of a previous apolitical or depoliticized state is beyond the bounds of what we can ascertain in an ethnographic encounter. Instead, I am interested in exploring how talking about cinema becomes a way of describing political stances and charting developing political awareness. At the same time, we can see how narratives about cinema engagement are also used to explain and contextualize feelings of depoliticization or being dissuaded from a political action or stance.

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As we suggested in the introduction to this volume, politicization and depoliticization are not only communicated by what people say, but also by what they do. The politicization of the cinema audience can take many forms, and in turn, the cinema theatre itself can be used as a refuge from politicized spaces when understood as a depoliticized space. The same audience can contain viewers who interpret a film’s content through a politicized lens, and members who have come to the cinema specifically to seek out a space where they perceive politics to be absent. Drawing from a larger project on memories of cinema-going between 1945 and 1968, this chapter investigates the degree of politicization or depoliticization that audiences felt themselves to have experienced through the cinema during this period of rapid social change and political upheaval in the 1960s. During the “watershed events between 1960 and 1972 – such as the 1960 Anpo (U.S.-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty) protests, the beginning of the Zenkyoto student movement (1968–1971), and the subsequent breakdown of the New Left in 1972” (Shigematsu 2012, 33), cinema culture in Japan was in sharp decline from its peak production and attendance year in 1958. Nonetheless, the cinema was still a major part of the everyday lives of many people caught up in these “watershed events,” and at the same time, the cinema screen also reflected a version of these events back to the generation who lived through them. This chapter explores film fans’ memories of this era, in order to understand how cinema culture and film theatres are remembered in relation to an individual’s sense of their own politicization or depoliticization. In most cases these are not clear-cut memories of historical fact, but rather complicated accounts that evoke a sense of depoliticization along with a nostalgia for the time when the person was, or felt, politicized. Over four years of fieldwork, I conducted a long form questionnaire survey with 84 responses, a series of formal and informal interviews, and participant observation at four sites in Kyoto and Osaka specializing in screening and discussing postwar and Shōwa era (1926–1989) films. Archival research, including analysis of material from the popular press of the period, contextualizes the memories shared by interviewees and questionnaire respondents. These diverse examples of politicization and depoliticization performed and experienced at and through the cinema are linked together through a single field site, the Kinugasa eiga kai (Kinugasa Film Club). The first part of this chapter explores the politicized state of the cinema audience at the end of the 1950s through a case study focused on one politically inclined film-viewing group in the northwest region of Kyoto, which was the first iteration of the group now known as the Kinugasa eiga kai. Moving on to the memories of those individual audience members, the second part of this chapter analyzes conflicting discourses on politicization and depoliticization at the cinema as told to me by Kinugasa eiga kai members. The social form of film club or film circle (eiga sākuru, or eisa) is the micro context that links

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these periods together. At an eisa, screening and viewing activities are carried out in a collective context that can, potentially, lead to politicization. By taking a longer historical view of a micro site such as an eisa, I believe that we can also see how cinema itself can become a discursive object through which a person can explore, rationalize, and explain their own degree of politicization to others and to themselves.

Film organizations and political ideologies in postwar Japan Organized film viewing, cinema-going, and ticket-buying groups were a major feature of the early postwar cinema landscape in Japan. A number of these organizations were affiliated with studios, theatres, workplaces, businesses, educational establishments, and political groups. Cinema-related organizations also developed cross-organizational links with one another, federating into large scale bodies with significant social and political potential. The close associations between cinema viewership, education, and political and personal development articulated by these organizations makes them an ideal starting point for investigating the political impacts and potentials of cinema culture. In 1958, a special section of Kinema Junpō (Film Record, or The Movie Times) was devoted to the topic of organized cinema audience groups. Critics Okada Susumu, Hatano Kanji, and Uryū Tadao recalled their own participation in organized cinema clubs of various types, dating back to the 1920s. In his account of his workplace film circle, Okada noted that one of the most important aspects of the organization, for the members that he spoke with, was the opportunity to hear other people’s impressions of the films screened at the organization ([1958] 1994, 743–744). “Like all film fans, I think about film. I talk about film. That’s why audiences make opportunities to gather together. This is where audiences’ ideas and independent expression are born” (Okada [1958] 1994, 744). Okada posited his workplace film circle as a space where new ideas emerged and were developed in conversation with others. While not explicitly political, the development of new ideas within the film circle organization is nonetheless connected to the major reforms enacted on the Japanese body politic after 1945. Okada argued that the film circles of the late 1950s, “were born from the liberation of film audiences’ expression immediately after the war” ([1958] 1994, 744). Okada also noted an economic imperative for the creation of workplace film circles that was consistent across the film study groups and clubs discussed within this special section of Kinema Junpō. “A popular slogan for many film circles today is ‘Making good films cheap’” (yoi eiga o yasuku) (Okada [1958] 1994, 744). This same goal was reiterated, and more politically aligned, in the contributions of Hatano Kanji and Uryū Tadao, who connected the affordable provision of “good” films with an attempt to educate, and even politicize, working class and impoverished groups within the wider Japanese public.

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The often-poverty-stricken viewers of the organizations discussed in Hatano’s article were students who formed film research groups (eiken) in order to invite film previews and filmmakers to university campuses ([1958] 1994, 744–746). Yet based on his experience in two or three university eiken, Hatano warned that it was “easy for eiken to become elitist” ([1958] 1994, 746). While the majority of eiken aimed to renounce the capitalist ideals and practices common within filmmaking, Hatano argued that many eiken themselves, “became flavoured with the most prevalent film capitalism” by selling discounted cinema tickets, and hosting large recruitment drives at the beginning of the academic year to capture new students and grow the organization ([1958] 1994, 746). Instead of practicing these highcapitalist activities Hatano argued, eiken should focus on the personal development (often bordering on political development) of the student body. “We shouldn’t stop only at selling cinema tickets, but taking film as a key, students should undergo self-reformation, or self-reinvention (jikokaizō) by enjoying good films amongst themselves” (Hatano [1958] 1994, 746). Closing the special section on eiga sākuru, which he shortened to eisa, critic Uryū Tadao reflected on the development of film circles within the film world, as well as in schools, universities, and workplaces around the country. Uryū noted that film study groups, clubs, and circles had been popular since the late 1920s and into the 1930s ([1958] 1994, 747). After the war, he argued, film viewing organizations took a new political turn and focused on educating the public about democracy. Recalling his own experience of high school eisa in the wartime years, Uryū argued that the postwar reform of the school system introduced high school eisa to political issues through a focus on the “social elements of film” (Uryū [1958] 1994, 747). “In the early years of the postwar, the emphasis on political and social elements of the eisa was strong… American films were borrowed and shown, and taught viewers about democracy” (Uryū [1958] 1994Uryū 1994, 747). Against a socio-political background of severe poverty and rapid social change, eisa were sites of education as well as entertainment. The Tokyo Film Circle Convention (Tokyo eiga sākuru kyōgikai, shortened to Tokyo eisakyō) was formed in 1948, with the goal of making “good” films available to watch cheaply, raising the taste and education level of working people who participated, and using circle activity to encourage the creation of democratic films. They also aimed to support the activities of democratic cultural groups, and to “protect” Japanese culture (Uryū [1958] 1994Uryū 1994, 748). The labour union circles, film theatre friendship groups (eigakan no tomo no kai) and study groups within the Tokyo eisakyō all clearly prioritized social and political concerns among their aims. As we will see in the first case study analyzed in this chapter, this focus on raising public awareness of social and political issues was not confined to Tokyo but appeared in the manifestoes and advertising materials of eisa and other film organizations in Kyoto and Osaka as well as other areas.

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Uryū argued that the protracted series of strikes which took place at the Tokyo Tōhō studios from 1947 until 1948 was a major influence on the politicization of many of the film circles that formed around Japan in this period.1 The number of film “friendship” groups (tomo no kai) and study or research groups (kenkyūkai) was still increasing in 1958 and showed “no sign of stopping” ([1958] 1994, 748). Borrowing the politicized language of protest, many film viewing organizations had adopted the slogan, “Support the development of good films, boycott worthless films” (yoi eiga o sodate, kudaranai eiga wa boikotto suru) (Uryū [1958] 1994Uryū 1994, 748). By the late 1950s, the number of eiken were also steadily increasing, and those formed at Kyoto University and Tokyo University had begun to produce film industry professionals such as directors and film critics, as well as publishing their own journals (Uryū [1958] 1994Uryū 1994, 747). In this way, the professional film industry and non-professional film organizations overlapped and influenced one another, as political concerns from within the film industry were carried over into wider society through affiliated and associated film organizations. Film organizations produced the film industry professionals of the future, who brought these political concerns back into the film industry. Uryū made a distinction between eiken (film research groups), eiga kanshōkai (film viewing meetings), eiga sākuru (film circles), shokuiki sākuru (workplace circles), film theatre friendship groups (eigakan no tomo no kai), and other organizations created to bring film to groups of viewers, and host discussions about those films. Collectivizing these varieties of film organizations under the term eisa, Uryū argued that because these organizations brought together people of various genders, ages, employments, ideologies, and feelings, “not investigating the nature of these organizations and circles would really be a waste” (Uryū [1958] 1994Uryū 1994, 749). In the spirit of Uryū’s call for a deeper investigation into film viewing organizations and their activities, the next section of this chapter explores the foundation and development of an unusual film circle whose activities span the late 1950s to the present day.

Kyoto Kiroku Eiga o Miru Kai: Kyoto society for viewing documentary cinema During participant observation at a monthly film circle in Kyoto, I was introduced to the unique history of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai (Kyoto Society for Viewing Documentary Cinema), a film organizationturned-filmmaking collective that had made the documentary film Nishijin (Matsumoto 1961). Kinugasa eiga kai was the third incarnation of that film organization, after both the original Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai and its successor had folded due to lack of funds and internal issues in the 1960s and 1970s. The contemporary Kinugasa eiga kai met on the third Saturday of every month near the Kinugasa campus of Ritsumeikan University,

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though the group had no affiliation with the school. Between 10 and 30 members from an overall membership of 150 met to view two or three films on video or DVD, selected by a rotating zacho or meeting leader, and followed by a discussion session of one or two hours, with beer and snacks offered at 100 yen each, subsidized by the group’s 500-yen participation fee. After I had attended the screening club for six months, the three organizers of Kinugasa eiga kai introduced me to Asai Eiichi (1933–), coorganizer of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai and producer of Nishijin. The three founding members of the Kinugasa film circle and Asai san described how this previous incarnation of the Kinugasa eiga kai had engaged with the political environment of late 1950s and 1960s Kyoto. In beginning with the history of the organization, before analyzing selected memories shared by individual members, I want to emphasize the structural processes of politicization across the history of a group or organization, which in turn affects the politicization, or depoliticization, of members of that group. By tracing the political roots of the Kinugasa eiga kai, we can better understand the context of the politicized and depoliticized attitudes of its founders, members, and infrequent attendees. In 1953, when he was 20 years old, Asai Eiichi met and formed a friendship with Fujiki Shoji at an old coffee shop near Kawaramachi in central Kyoto. Fujiki was a 41-year-old theatre group organizer whose theatre circle had just ousted him from the organization (possibly for being too politically focused) (Morishita 2009). Fujiki wanted to continue the artistic and political organizing he had been developing within the theatre group and Asai wanted an education in documentary film. Together they formed the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai, which ran from April 1955 to March 1962 (Asai 1961, 21). Monthly screenings were held at the Yasaka Hall in Kyoto, Gion Kaikan, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, and other city locations. In a conversation in late 2016, Asai recollected that the primary motivating factor in the organization’s initial programming choices was to enable people to “see films that can’t be seen within the frame of commercial cinema” (shōgyō eiga no waku) (personal communication, 28 November 2016). Documentary films by the Scottish John Grierson and American Robert Flaherty were screened at the organization’s meetings, Japanese directors were invited to discuss their own films, and solo exhibitions would often be arranged, showing work by Matsumoto Toshio, Wada Tsutomu, and Tsuchimoto Noriaki. At the same time however, Asai recalled the early years of the organization as “an era of politics” (seiji no jidai) when popular interest in investigative journalism and social issues was growing (personal communication, 28 November 2016). Activities soon expanded to include the bulk buying of cinema theatre tickets for distribution among the membership. This practice had the effect of packing commercial theatres for selected screenings, and so the operation quickly became political. As Fujiki and Asai had leftist political leanings and

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an interest in grassroots organizing, members’ cinema theatre attendance was channelled toward leftist films, particularly those focused on labour issues. In this way the organization became a commercial tool, supporting the public screening of films with political themes in agreement with the outlook of the organizers. This in itself was not unusual – many film clubs deliberately mobilized their membership to support particular projects, directors, or studios. In fact the organizations affiliated with studios and commercial publications were developed to do just that, providing the studio or publishing house with a base of ticket-buyers who could be directed towards certain screenings to financially support the business and its projects. Yet Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai was less focused on controlling members’ consumer habits than engaging their political consciousness. At the time, labour issues in the Nishijin textile-producing area of northwest Kyoto were the subject of much discussion in the popular press, which described skilled workers struggling in poor conditions to make the elaborate woven and embroidered materials for expensive kimono and accoutrements. The combined symptoms of the labourers were collectivized as “Horikawa disease,” which took its name from the hospital which treated the workers. The Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai decided to make a film to bring Horikawa disease to public attention, much as later documentaries would do for the “Minamata incident,” in which Chisso Corporation was found to be leaking methylmercury into the water surrounding the Minamata plant in Kumamoto prefecture from 1932 until 1968, causing severe neurological damage to residents (George 2001). Asai recalled becoming aware of the occupational injuries suffered by the weavers that were treated at Horikawa hospital, in part because the hospital had both organization members and members of the Communist Party within its workforce (personal communication, 28 November 2016). Asai remembers the discussion of the late 1950s focusing on this health issue as exemplary of a wider social problem (shakai mondai) evident in late 1950s Japan (personal communication, 28 November 2016), as the discourses of equality and human rights that had characterized the early postwar years gave way to an acknowledgement that Japan was still very unequal. Labour rights, poverty, illness, and class division combined to make the story of the weavers highly appealing to the leftist politics of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai. The core membership decided to make a film to bring Horikawa disease and the suffering of the weavers to public attention. This would appear to be the first instance of an experimental movie made by a film circle in Japan (Satō 2013, 41; Morishita 2009). The increase in political awareness across Japan at that time may have contributed to a sense of urgency in relation to intervening on behalf of marginalized and oppressed people such as the Nishijin weavers, while the political expressions of outspoken filmmakers such as Ōshima (see Standish in this volume) may have suggested filmmaking as the appropriate vehicle for this intervention. Political tensions had been building in Kyoto since the end of the

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Allied Occupation of Japan, influenced and sometimes fortified by news of political activism in Tokyo and around the country. Political foci were variously local, national, and international. For example, on 7 November 1951 a large student rally at Kyoto university celebrated the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, after which students stoned the house of a Diet member who had supported extending the U.S.-Japan Security treaty popularly known as the Anpo treaty. Shortly thereafter, 1000 Kyoto university students met the emperor of Japan on his visit to the city with placards, shouting slogans, demands, and insults (Desser 1988, 32). Events in Tokyo also registered with Kyoto political activists, such as the 1952 “Bloody May Day” in which 20,000 unionists tried to storm the plaza in front of the Imperial Palace and 1,200 were arrested. In November 1955, as Asai and Fujiki formed the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai, protestors at Tachikawa Air Base clashed with police in a highly mediatized confrontation, while by 1959 protesters were swarming the Diet compound. As the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai began to plan their documentary film, the “First Haneda Incident” occurred in January 1960, in which the All-Japan League of Student Self-Government (Zen nihon gakusei jichikai sō rengō, also known as Zengakuren) attempted to stop Prime Minister Kishi Nobosuke boarding a plane to the United States. On 26 April 1960, The Association for Criticizing the Security Treaty (Ampo hihan no kai) staged coordinated protests across Japan, and by 15 June 1960 the protest movement had a martyr in the form of student Kanba Michiko, who was killed during an Anpo demonstration, creating significant popular sympathy for Zengakuren (Desser 1988, 36). As political activist groups were forming and building their agendas throughout the 1950s and 1960s, film fans were also organizing. As detailed above, the majority of film organizations were formed around a workplace, school, university, dedicated film publication, or around a trade union (Satō 2013, 41). The motivations of these groups were largely to watch good films cheaply, discuss and critique, create club publications such as magazines, and interact with filmmakers. Many organizations also aimed at enriching audience members’ lives through enhancing their awareness of film as an art (Satō 2013, 42), particularly those with leftist aspirations, which were also often those organizations formed around labour unions. According to Satō, the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai was unique in three key ways. First, it was relatively autonomous from existing organizations such as trade unions and political parties. Secondly, it pursued independent screening arrangements, using public hall spaces rather than hiring cinema theatres as was more common for organized film clubs. Third, its activities were diverse – films chosen for public screening included experimental cinema, animation, silent films, feature films, and concerts of contemporary music. From 1957, when other film clubs’ activities were curtailed by the Environment and Health Act, which restricted the discounted bulk buying of cinema theatre tickets, film club activity in Japan began to decline. Yet

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the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai went from strength to strength, and soon expanded its activities to filmmaking. Satō argues that the success of the club’s activities also depended on the personalities of Fujiki and Asai, as well as Kyoto city’s particular affinity for politicized arts groups (2013, 42). Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai emphasized a qualitative change in group members’ consciousness as their primary goal, rather than financial gain, political influence, or increasing membership (Satō 2013, 42). Documentary films were selected as the main focus of the club’s activities because the genre was relatively difficult to see in mainstream cinemas, as smaller independent documentaries in particular were often considered unprofitable. Furthermore, Fujiki and Asai invited film directors and producers to screenings to discuss their films. At the time, a thriving audio-visual education movement was underway in elementary and junior high schools nationwide. This movement included screenings of documentary films but was mostly limited to schools and their pupils. The Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai was similar to the audio-visual education movement in terms of assembling a screening programme of documentary film for public education. Fujiki and Asai received support from local educators, and the film circle was seen by some as something of an extension of education practices (Satō 2013, 42). The film club’s similarities to existing screening and education practices, and key differences from other film clubs, groups, and circles, ensured its success, at least until group activities expanded to filmmaking. While it is impossible to cite one single motivation for the film club’s move into filmmaking, the 3 August 1958 screening of Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones, 1950), accompanied by a lecture from Hanada Kiyoteru (also known as Hanada Seiki) may have inspired the group to think about the representation of underclasses and oppressed groups (Satō 2013, 49). Satō quotes a group member, Takahashi Akira, who claimed that the meeting had inspired him to think more deeply about social issues (Satō 2013, 50). For this reason, Satō characterizes the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai as something in between a consumption-focused union-type organization and an organization for public education and enlightenment (2013, 51). At the same time, a number of the film club’s members were employees of the Horikawa Hospital near Nishijin, which treated the weavers’ chronic work-related pain, and local doctors, nurses, and administrators urged the group to make a documentary on the workers’ condition (Wada-Marciano 2014, 379). Matsumoto Toshio, who was approached by Asai to direct the film club’s project, recalled that making a film upon request from a particular group was not unusual in the late 1950s (Wada-Marciano 2014, 379). Matsumoto remembered that, “Documentaries up until then were mostly made with the backing of a labour union or Communist Party organization. If you thought of doing something different from that, you had to create a completely different support structure because there was no foundation for making such

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films or showing them” (Gerow 2015). In this respect, the commission from the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai can be understood as a novel approach to documentary filmmaking. Matsumoto remembered that, “they were leftwing, but still not what you call a political organization. I think they were the first to try to cultivate new spectators and make the kind of films they wanted to see on their own” (Gerow 2015). Matsumoto and Asai have recorded slightly different memories of the project planning. While Matsumoto recalled bringing the subject of the Nishijin weavers to the group (Gerow 2015), Asai presented the topic as emerging from the contacts, experiences, and political interests of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai members (personal communication, 28 November 2016). Nonetheless, producer and director agreed to focus on the subject of the weaving industry in Nishijin, bringing onboard poet Sekine Hiroshi (1920–1994) as a co-writer, Akira Miyoshi (1933–2013) as composer, and cinematographer Miyajima Yoshio (1909–1998). Asai remembers Miyajima agreeing to cooperate without compensation (personal communication, 28 November 2016). Nishijin textile companies were approached to sponsor the film, and Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai members sold micro shares of 80 yen (approximately $5 in today’s U.S. dollars) to local people to help fund the film (Wada-Marciano, 2014, 379). A filmmaking association was founded from within the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai membership, with some members directly participating in the production. Morishita infers from contemporary newspaper reports that expenses totalled around 2.5 million yen, with an estimated deficit of 700,000 yen (2009). Nishijin won the short-documentary award at the Venice Film Festival in 1961, but it was to bankrupt its producers and collapse the whole organization. The high cost of production and marketing overran the organization’s funds, and despite the Venice award the film was not a commercial success. Furthermore, several in Nishijin’s textile industry were angered by the depiction of industry personnel, and the depiction of rampant exploitation of the weavers. Industry personnel applied significant pressure to the filmmaking association to reedit the film with added footage, releasing a sanitized parallel version, Orimono no machi, Nishijin (The Weaving Town of Nishijin, 1961) (Wada-Marciano, 2014, 380). Finally, a fire at the offices wiped out the remaining membership cards and members’ dues, and the organization folded, to be reborn again in in June 1964 as Shi dokyumentari shinema (See documentary cinema), or Shidofu for short. The core members of Shidofu would go on to create the Kinugasa eiga kai. Morishita notes that the stated goal of Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai was to observe recordings of everyday life (2009), and this is clearly connected to the attempt to resurrect a leftist Japanese selfhood and find a new direction for the movement underway at the time. In fact, Morishita records that a junior high school teacher who watched the film at the time argued that, “Nishijin is a microcosm of Japan itself” (2009). We can understand the

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organization’s effort to make a documentary film as an attempt to record a something of the members’ political concerns for postwar Japan, as symbolized by the weavers’ struggles. As Janet Staiger observes, “historical circumstances sometimes create ‘interpretative communities’ or cultural groups such as fans who produce their own conventionalized modes of reception” (2000, 23). In this case, the historical circumstances of the late 1950s and early 1960s gave rise to an active and politically engaged mode of reception that culminated in an attempt at production. Yet as we will see, film fans today recall a much more ambivalent relation between their cinema consumption and politicization than the Kyoto eiga o miru kai members may have hoped for when they began their filmmaking project.

Japanese cinema in the politicized 1960s Attendance at the cinema was falling sharply in the 1960s, from a peak of 1,127,452,000 in 1958 to 313,398,000 in 1968 (Motion Picture Producer’s Association of Japan). The number of cinema theatres was also decreasing, from a peak of 7457 in 1960 to 3814 in 1968 (Motion Picture Producer’s Association of Japan). The majority of the films available in theatres were made in Japan; in 1968, 494 Japanese films were screened, and 249 imported films. At the same time, the average admission fee increased every year, reaching 262 yen in 1968, up from 236 the previous year, compared to 72 yen in 1960 (Motion Picture Producer’s Association of Japan). Studio management had perhaps hoped that the political mood of the 1960s could present a solution to the downturn in cinema attendance. At Shōchiku and Nikkatsu studios, young directors perceived to be radical and politically outspoken, such as Ōshima Nagisa, Imamura Shōhei, and Suzuki Seijun, were quickly promoted and grouped together for marketing purposes. While there was a degree of cross-influence between Japanese filmmakers of the era and their French counterparts (see Standish, this volume), the young directors objected to the hijacking of their voices for the studios’ commercial purposes, and by 1968 Ōshima, Imamura, and Suzuki and many contemporaries had left the studios or been fired, moving into television, documentary, and independent filmmaking. These young directors could not be said to constitute a cohesive movement, political or otherwise, yet their films were influenced by the socio-political and historical circumstances of the 1960s. Ōshima recalled the impact of the Anpo struggles on his films as early as 1959, writing that the mood of the movement “flowed quietly like an underground stream of water gradually gathering force and growing wider as my first film A Town of Love and Hope [Ai to kibō no machi] quietly opened in 1959” (1963, 185, trans. Standish, this volume). The political mood of the decade to come is woven into his subsequent filmmaking. As Oguma Eiji suggests, the larger number of those involved in the political demonstrations and activism of the 1960s divided their time between politics, music, and theatre (Oguma, Ken’ichi, and Takahashi 2009, 93). I

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would suggest that the activities of this group included cinema attendance, not only at those cinemas directly connected to political theatre such as the Art Theatre Guild’s Sasori-za in Shinjuku, but also at the declining number of mainstream film theatres showing the work of politicized filmmakers such as Ōshima alongside genre films and pure entertainment features (though these categories should not be understood as mutually exclusive). The memories of the cinema audience can shed light on the role of cinema-going, as well as film content, in forming the political imaginaries of this group of partially involved and sometimes even disinterested occasional participants in 1968 activism.

An ethno-history of the politicized cinema audience While a number of participants in my study remember travelling to Tokyo during the 1960s to take part in demonstrations and protests, the majority encountered the political activities of the 1960s in the Kansai region. Many were too young to remember the Kyoto University student rallies of November 1951 that celebrated the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and ended in students stoning the house of a Diet member (Desser 1988, 32). Yet a number were attracted to the university for its radical political atmosphere when they enrolled during the 1960s. The activism in and around Kyoto University was not always conducive to maintaining a love of cinema, both in terms of viewership and filmmaking. As Beheiren and Zenkyoto (The All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees) membership increased in 1968, a number of participants in my research project recalled becoming caught up in activities they wished to avoid. In applying discourse analysis to viewer-produced letters, questionnaires, and interviews, my study was modelled on key works in the field of audience and reception studies (Radway 1984; Ang 1996; Stacey 1994; 2002). I borrow Annette Kuhn’s terminology in calling the project an ethno-history – that is, a study of an historical period conducted through ethnographic methods and involving memory work, with all the implications for factual accuracy and consistency that entails. In this sense the following ethnographic material and analysis is presented as suggestive of a historical mood and a variety of remembered responses to the events of the politicized 1960s, rather than a factual historical record. Nonetheless the memories of audience members of the era suggest the impact of cinema culture on the political imaginaries of many in the period.

Political cinemas, politicized audiences? In interviews and questionnaire surveys, I repeatedly encountered discussions about 1960s activism, and what these memories, as well as the movement itself, mean for today’s citizens of Japan. These memories and arguments are rich and complex, and there is little consensus between groups who consider the movement a positive, negative, or inconsequential

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impact on their lives, and on the political future of Japan. I group the discourses roughly into three distinct areas of sentiment expressed by three relatively distinct groups of research participants. The first group, just under one third of the total number of research participants, identified as politicized audience members who found some reflection of their feelings and aspirations for the protest cultures of the 1960s in the popular cinema of the time. These participants recalled casting popular film stars and characters as role models for their activist conduct and outlook. The second group, by far the largest number of participants, remembered the activist movements of the sixties as disruptive to their enjoyment of popular entertainments such as the cinema, and appreciated the film theatre as a space away from everyday concerns, including politics. In the most extreme cases, members of this group even situated 1960s political activism as directly impeding their own creative ambitions to make films and remembered the activism of the 1960s as detrimental to their career aspirations. Similarly, the last group did not participate at all in political activism in the 1960s, but instead recalled the era with a wistful sense of longing. These research participants were generally the youngest in the study, and often cited their age or their geographical location as the main reason for their non-involvement the political activities. Instead, they imagined the cinema as communicating the mood of the era from a distance, allowing them a vicarious experience of activities they remember having wished to join. The majority of participants in my study explicitly connected their film viewing experiences to their memories of contemporary political issues. As most were born in the early 1940s, the most frequent political reference point was the end of Japan’s Fifteen Year War and World War II, followed by the American-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). Most of the survey participants who were children in this era were still actively engaged in contextualizing and understanding their memories of the period through cinema at the time of our interviews (2014–2018). The same generation were teenagers and students during the political protests of the 1960s, and their memories and opinions of these movements were similarly framed in relation to cinema, as well as explicitly connected to issues of war and occupation. Many viewers actively sought out political meanings and inferences in popular film texts, yet their own expressions of their feelings about, and involvement in 1960s activism was often conflicted. Some film fans wished to be closer to the political action, while others strove to avoid it. All used the cinema as both space and discursive mode to associate or distance themselves from political activism. In the ethnographic vignettes that follow, we can see how the cinema features in these shifting stances.

Cinematic role models for political action Born in 1943, Hashimoto san was 18 in 1960 and 25 in 1968. He participated in the 1960 Anpo demonstrations, as well as the anti-Vietnam war protests

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that followed, and in 1968 demonstrations around the country. While film scholars today may think of the independent and left-associated filmmakers such as Ōshima Nagisa and Matsumoto Toshio in relation to protest movements and cinema, Hashimoto san drew his inspiration from a different genre – the yakuza film. He recalls the heroes of the genre as displaying a particular characteristic that he expressed as “Gaman ni gaman” – continuing to endure with self-control. In this respect Takakura Ken and other stars of the yakuza genre were the model for his engagement with demo and protest culture (Hashimoto 2016). Yakuza heroes embodied the spirit of never saying; “It can’t be done” (yaranai to ikenai) for Hashimoto san and his fellow activists. “We tried to imagine we were the same” (Hashimoto 2016). In 1968, film critic Akiyama Kiyoshi argued that, “yakuza films express the consciousness of our present times” (Akiyama 1968, 64). More than simply reflecting the feelings of the era however, he suggested that the genre was able to “somehow give comfort to the viewer’s heart” (Akiyama 1968, 64). Hashimoto san recalled the affect of Takakura and other yakuza stars as hopeful, demonstrating both the possibility of being able to endure physical challenges, injustice, and violence, and at the same time the positive results that such endurance could yield in dismantling inequalities and holding corrupt powers to account. Critics at the time also suggested that the appeal of the yakuza genre film for students and young activists may have been similar to the appeal of activism itself, in that both appeared to offer an opportunity to organize collectively and socialize within a group structure. For example, film critic Hojo Nobuhiko argued that supporters of the yakuza genre film within the cinema audience might have felt themselves to be included in the “camaraderie” of the ensemble cast for the finite period they spent in the cinema (Hojo 1970, 50). Yet Hashimoto san’s identification of Takakura Ken as a particularly significant role model for himself and his activist friends is an interesting counter to such dominant understandings of the importance of the yakuza genre for student activists. While fellow students, film critics, and scholars of the era often focused on the group aspect of the yakuza gumi, emphasizing the collective nature of political activism, Takakura’s most famous yakuza characters are principled loners who despise both the police and prison guards and the organized ranks of the yakuza hierarchy. In the popular Abashiri Prison series (Abashiri bangaichi, 1965–1968), for example, Takakura’s character repeatedly avoids group alliances, preferring to make single lateral bonds with men of his own age to challenge the yakuza hierarchy, rather than join the ranks of the brotherhood. It should be noted that by the start of the Abashiri bangaichi series Takakura had appeared in more than 100 films and had a well-developed and nuanced public image not entirely reflected in his role within this single series. Furthermore, Takakura was claimed as a role model by both left wing and right-wing critics, fans, and audience members. As Hashimoto identifies as politically left wing, his

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adoration of a yakuza idol might be surprising given the popular association of the yakuza with the political left. However Takakura’s nuanced public persona appears to have been sufficiently flexible to allow for both right and left identified viewers to seek political resonance in his onscreen characters. If Takakura’s yakuza characters offered the opposite of the group camaraderie identified as attractive to viewers by critics such as Hojo, his image appealed in other significant ways. Isolde Standish has suggested that the “powerful masculinity” performed by Takakura and other young male characters of the Abashiri Prison series provided both aspiration and outlet for contemporary male audiences in their performance of a type of masculinity “predicated on physical strength and stoicism” (2000, 160). Standish argues that Takakura’s protagonist “closes the gap between the ideological image of masculinity and social experience, thus offering a vicarious solution to the eternal consequences lived by most men” (2000, 161). It is possible that Takakura offered a model for young viewers that did not champion collective activism, but rather demonstrated a way to maintain an ideologically constructed and valorized independent masculinity in spite of the social demands of the activist era. Audiences such as Hashimoto san looked to yakuza film stars not only for a model for how to conceptualize their behaviour as activists, but also for a more generalized value system in the 1960s and 1970s. Writing for Kinema Junpō in 1970, Hojo Nobuhiko argued that yakuza film not only reflected “the very human desire to live a proper life” (seijitsuna ningentekina kanbō) but that “people often look to such fiction to tie themselves to something and build a life” (1970, 50). In 2016, Hashimoto san and his friends continued to insist on the importance of showing the political protests of the 1960s on screen, in both retrospective film programmes and in new film texts. This group agreed on the potential of cinema to foster political change, and often expressed anti-war and anti-nuclear sentiment, in particular, in relation to key films by directors like Kinoshita Keisuke, Shindō Kaneto, and Kobayashi Masaki. Many study participants expressed the wish that these films could be shown to younger Japanese viewers, as a means of ensuring the continuation of political attitudes including challenging government decision-making perceived to endanger everyday people. On the other hand, when members of this group participated in a screening of Ōshima Nagisa’s Death by Hanging (Koshikei, 1968) at Kinugasa eiga kai, followed by The Ceremony (Gishiki, 1971), they declared themselves bored. The screening and discussion leader for that month (zacho) who had selected the films expressed feeling regret at her choices as early as 30 minutes into the first film. “I felt ‘enough already!’” (mo ii yo!). She recalled the films having made a great impression on her in her activist youth, when she saw Death by Hanging screened on a white sheet hung up in the local park. In the wealthy corner of north west Kyoto that hosted the monthly film screening and discussion however, she expressed dismay at Ōshima’s didactic tone, and wondered at how his films had inspired her as a young woman.

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Cinema as escape, demos as disruption While a number of participants in my study reported drawing political inspiration from popular cinema, film viewership and creative production was conversely a means for some to escape or excuse themselves from political movements. For example, both Hashimoto san and Takeda san’s accounts of cinema going in their teenage and later student years include complaints about the 1960s student movement as an inconvenience. Like Imamura Shōhei’s protagonist in The Insect Woman (Nippon konchūki, 1964), political demonstrations inconvenienced their personal mobility. Takeda san, also born in 1943, remained concerned with the political situation of postwar Japan, and often noted parallels in fiction film with contemporary social issues. Watching Mizoguchi Kenji’s Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari, 1954) for example, he discerned a critique of contemporary militarism in the film’s historical narrative. However, his personal cinema-related experiences positioned him in opposition to the student movements, rather than inspiring him to join in demonstrations. Having failed the entrance exam to his parent’s choice of university in Tokyo, Takeda san moved to Kyoto and studied to enter the university several years after graduating from high school. As a relatively mature undergraduate student, he devoted most of his time to the amateur filmmaking club within the university. After a year as a junior member, he graduated to a level of membership that allowed him to make his own short film. In the same year however, the student film club closed due to insufficient funds, and their room at the university campus was occupied by the student movement. He graduated in April 1968 and entered company life, steering clear of the student movement in particular, and activism more generally. Takeda san associated the student movement with the disruption of his planned film, and subsequently his career. Instead of becoming a filmmaker, he joined a famous advertising company, working in the production section making internal information films for private companies. While he sympathized with the political attitudes of leftist auteurs, he continued to view grassroots activism and protest as a nuisance rather than an effective political strategy. He felt he suffered further misfortune a few years later when the film-viewing group he had joined was forced to close in 1970 after only three years. “[The group] continued from 1967 to 1970, but as the 70’s were still the era of Zenkyoto, it also broke down mid-way” (Takeda 2016). At a loss, he set up a film-viewing club within the advertising company instead and was surprised to find that the dedicated attendees were the politicized members of the labour union. “In the end, the directors didn’t come at all!” While blaming the student movement, and Zenkyoto specifically, for obstructing his filmmaking plans, Takeda san nonetheless continued to think about film, and film related organizing, from a politicized perspective. Perhaps due to his experience with the labour union at his company, when he tried again to establish a film-viewing club after retiring, he insisted on a

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horizontal organizational structure without hierarchy. The Kinugasa film viewing club, which ran from 2012 to 2018, had a rotating meeting leader who chose films and organized screening notes, changing each month, as well as a subsidized bar for discussion sessions. While Takeda san’s memories of filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s are rhetorically organized as a device to distance himself from the student movement, his broadly leftist politics are evident in his conception of the ideal group structure as a horizontal one.

“Film allows you to experience things you can’t experience in reality” While we might understand Takeda san’s relationship to the political action of the 1960s, mediated through cinema discourse, as ambivalent, the third distinct group perceptible among participants in the study regarded the era with a sense of longing (akogare). Over 10 percent of questionnaire survey respondents noted that their first experience of going to the cinema involved seeing newsreel footage of public protests, from the Anpo demonstrations of 1960 onwards. These respondents were generally the youngest in the study, born between 1945 and 1955. The average age of a first cinema visit was 6 years old, and a number of respondents in this category recall visiting the film theatre from the age of 4 or 5 and learning about Anpo and the student movement from newsreel films. One interviewee from this cohort, Matsuda san, explained that he treasured the opportunity to experience new things through film, particularly things “outside my own personal experience” (jibun no jitaiken to wa dekinai). Amongst the younger group of study participants, this was a common attitude towards the political movements of the older generation. People born in the 1950s often expressed regret that they had been too young in the 1960s to participate in the activism and protest movements that shaped the decade. Of course, many of these study participants had been children or young teenagers, and observed the demonstrations and public protests around them, even if they did not directly participate. For those living outside the urban centres where much protest activity was focused, television, newspapers, and radio, as well as conversations at home and at school brought key moments and issues from the protest movements into their everyday lives. In these ways, members of the generations who identify as “left out” of the 1960s protest movements nonetheless have strong memories of the protests themselves. For Kobayashi san, another research participant born in 1955, cinema offered a window into the kinds of social hierarchies and inequalities which motivated his political attitudes. In Kurosawa Akira’s films, for example, Kobayashi san noted, “The social situation of lower-class people is really, well, realistically portrayed” (Kobayashi 2016). This realism gave him a sense of transcending time and place; “that era is really like another country [chigatta kuni], that Japan has really been replaced by time, it’s impossible to understand

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what it was like before” (Kobayashi 2016). Yet his interest was focused most intensely on the experiences and ideas of everyday people living unremarkable lives during periods of social and political turmoil. He looked to cinema for a way to understand the hopes, dreams, and fears of people undergoing historical experiences. By feeling the suffering of everyday people in previous decades, Kobayashi san argued that today’s Japanese citizens could be persuaded of the value of everlasting pacifism. “Of course, it’s not an easy thing to talk about, but the construction of Japanese people’s consciousness, and also social consciousness, and the human view of life are really connected to cinema I think” (Kobayashi 2016). A significant number of study participants shared Kobayashi san’s view of cinema as a means of both educating oneself and feeling historical moments, with a view to improving or expanding one’s personal ethics in relation to war and social inequality, in particular. Kishida san, born in 1956, similarly understood cinema as a social justice motivator and exposer of state violence. Watching documentaries on the Minamata water poisoning incident, and fiction films portraying the treatment of burakumin in Japan, he felt a strong sense of the urgency of social injustice. In the questionnaire distributed in the first stage of the study, participants were asked “Do you think that watching a film has ever changed your way of thinking?” Like most respondents, Kishida san believed that film could change one’s way of thinking through feeling. “Well, when you get a strong feeling, your own, well, your thinking becomes elevated by the film, it changes … when I watch a film like that I think ‘So there is also that way of thinking’” (Kishida 2016). In the 1960s, film critics such as Akiyama argued that the yakuza film was popular because it created a sense of community among viewers, and “gave comfort” to their hearts. I noted above that as yakuza films dominated the theatres of late 1960s and 1970s Japan, this observation may hold for cinema-going more widely rather than yakuza genre film specifically. Indeed, it seems that many participants in this study associated film viewing with developing modes of co-feeling, whether with other viewers or with film protagonists. At the same time, many participants placed a high value on the role that film played in expanding their consciousness, making them aware of new possibilities. Film viewers who value community, equality, and the search for new and better future models of sociality may have been predisposed to think about their relation to cinema as connected to leftist politics, whether they participated in, avoided, or felt left out of the protests and activities of the 1960s.

Conclusion Rather than assuming a politicized audience from seemingly political film content, or the political expressions of filmmakers, directors, and stars, this chapter has explored the relation of film to political attitudes in 1960s Japan through an ethno-historical approach that blends memory work,

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questionnaire surveys, interviews, participant observation, and archival research. The results have been varied, demonstrating a range of responses to the question of cinema’s relation to politics across a wide variety of demographics, from the activist film fan group to the apolitical or decisively depoliticized individual. I have attempted here to give some sense of the depth of the memories of cinema culture that were shared with me during my study, and to convey a sense of my research participants remembering their own engagements with Japan’s turbulent 1960s as a period in which they stepped in and out of conflicted feelings of politicization and depoliticization. In framing these memories around the Kinugasa eiga kai, and particularly the activist filmmaking project of its predecessor the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai, I aim to demonstrate the persistence of structural or organizational memory in film fan’s relation to the political culture of the 1960s. It is noteworthy that the very public failure of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai’s efforts does not seem to have damped the political enthusiasms of a number of the members of its successor group, the Kinugasa eiga kai. And yet, the same members willingly offer memories of their senses of depoliticization that would seem to contradict their ongoing political commitments, today largely focused on pacifism and social justice. The political efficacy of a film text, star persona, or cinema organization is closely tied to the political atmosphere of the time, yet not in any predictable way – for every audience member inspired by the harmony of politicized film content and organized action outside the cinema, there will be another who regrets the disturbance which distracts for them film. Nonetheless, talking about cinema, and memories of film-going, can give us an emotive insight into the political culture of a period, and provide a discursive object through which film fans can relate their recollections and feelings of the era.

Note 1 After a successful strike by Tōhō employees in March 1946 to improve working conditions, second and third strike attempts became entrenched, culminating in a six-month occupation of the studio from April 1948 (Coates 2016, 51–52).

Bibliography Akiyama, Kiyoshi. 1968. “Yakuza eiga wa sara ni manfukukan o ataeyo: eiga shūkan to narutakiizumu.” Eiga Geijutsu 16 (5) (1 May): 64–65. Ang, Ien. 1996. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences. London: Palgrave. Asai, Eiichi. 1961. “Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai no rekishi” (A History of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai). Eiga Hyōron (Film Criticism) 18 (10): 21–30. Coates, Jennifer. 2016. Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Desser, David. 1988. Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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1958 “Eiga to sākuru: Nihon eiga o zenshinsaseru chikara,” Okada Susumu, Hatano Kanji, Uryū Tadao, Kinema Junpō 218, 15 November 1958, reprinted in Best of Kinema Junpō. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 743–749. George, Timothy S. 2001. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Boston: Harvard University Asia Centre. Gerow, Aaron. 2015. “Documentarists of Japan #9: Matsumoto Toshio.” Documentary Box. Interview and translation by Aaron Gerow. http:// www.yidff.jp/docbox/9/box9-2-e.html Hashimoto, Y., Interviewed by Jennifer Coates and Nozomi Matsuyama. Kyoto, public café, November 24, 2016. Hatano, Kanji. [1958] 1994. “Daigaku eiken to eigabunka” (University film study and film culture). Kinema Junpō 218, November 15, reprinted in Best of Kinema Junpō. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 744–746. Hojo, Nobuhiko. 1970. “Yakuza eiga no kōryoku.” Kinema Junpō 517 (1 March): 50–51. Kishida, T., Interviewed by Jennifer Coates and Nozomi Matsuyama. Kyoto, domestic address, October 23, 2016. Kitamura, Hiroshi. 2010. Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press. Kobayashi, T. 2016. Interviewed by Jennifer Coates, Kyoto, Kyoto University, August 14, 2016. Kuhn, Annette. 2002. Dreaming of Fred and Ginger: Cinema and Cultural Memory. New York: New York University Press. Matsumoto, Toshio. 1961. Nishijin (aka The Weavers of Nishijin; Nishijin). Kyoto: Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai. Morishita, Akihiko. 2009. “Eizō bunka no soshutsu: Kyoto kiroku o miru kai no katsudō o furikaeru. Dai nibu: Mitai eiga o tsukuru: senki ni okeru ‘Nishijin’ no jishu seisaku.” (Creation of New Culture: Activities of “Kiroku-eiga wo miru kai,” Kyoto Part 2: Making films: independent production of “Nishijin” in the late period). Kobe geijutsu kōka daigaku kiyō geijutsu kōgaku (Kobe University of Design Report). http://kiyou.kobe-du.ac.jp/08/thesis/05-01.html. Accessed 24 September 2018. Motion Picture Producers’ Association of Japan. 2018. Statistics. http:// www.eiren.org/statistics_e/index.html Oguma, Eiji, Uzuoka, Ken'ichi, and Takahashi, Naoki. 2009. 1968. Tokyo: Shinyōsha. Okada, Susumu. [1958] 1994. “Kankyaku wa soshiki suru” (The audience is organized). Kinema Junpō 218, November 15, reprinted in Best of Kinema Junpō. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 743–744. Ōshima 1964 Ōshima, Nagisa. [1963] 1964. Sengo Eiga: Hakai to Sōzō.Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō. Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Satō, Yō. 2013. “‘Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai’ ni tsuite sono zenshi” (An essay on Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai). Engeki Eizōgaku (2013): 41–55. Shigematsu, Setsu. 2012. Scream from the Shadows: The Woman’s Liberation Movement in Japan, London: University of Minnesota Press.

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Stacey, Jackie. 1994. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London; New York: Routledge. Staiger, Janet. 2000. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. New York; London: New York University Press. Standish, Isolde. 2000. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the ‘Tragic Hero’. London: Curzon. Takeda, T., Interviewed by Jennifer Coates. Kyoto, domestic address, November 18, 2016. Uryū, Tadao. [1958] 1994. “Nihon eigakai ni okeru eiga sākuru no ayumi” (The development of film circles within the film world). Kinema Junpō 218, November 15, reprinted in Best of Kinema Junpō. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 746–747. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. 2014. “Reading Nishijin (1961) as Cinematic Memory.” In Miyao, Daisuke (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, pp. 363–382. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10 Fading away from the screen: cinematic responses to queer ageing in contemporary Japanese cinema Yutaka Kubo

As I waited in the movie theatre for Lee Sang-il’s Rage (Ikari, 2016) to begin, my heart was literally pounding with the pure excitement that I was about to see two popular actors, Tsumabuki Satoshi and Ayano Gō, play everyday gay characters on the screen. Although I had never read Yoshida Shuichi’s novel on which Rage was based, seeing a story about a gay couple as one of the arcs in the mainstream film at the cinema complex meant a lot to me. Every touch and every conversation they exchange, the way their bodies occupy the widescreen, and the depth and intensity of intimacy that their relationship reaches brought me a sheer joy that was soon to be replaced by indescribable sorrow. Towards the end of Rage, this gay couple is forever separated by the death of Ayano’s character Naoto while the film ironically shows the couple’s past in the flashback imagining a future together. Devastated by this plotline that terminated any possibilities for this gay couple to secure their future together, I wept so hard that I was determined to know what kind of forces existed behind this stereotypically tragic representation that excluded homosexuality from the screen. As observed by Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981, 1987), Hollywood has had a long history of linking representations of homosexuality with death. In the 1980s and 1990s, a widespread of HIV/AIDS ironically blurred deaths of queer people both in representation and in reality, as a large number of members of LGBTQ communities died of AIDS in real life. Japan also saw its own AIDS crisis in the same decades, and one of the earliest films in which an AIDS patient appeared was Koreeda Hirokazu’s 1994 documentary August Without Him (Kare no inai hachigatsu ga). In this documentary, Hirata Yutaka, a Japanese gay man who contracted AIDS in 1991, shares his frustration about the title of his forthcoming book from Shūeisha—I Want To Live a Little Longer (Ato sukoshi ikite mitai).1 Hirata’s health was in fact severely failing at the time of filming in December 1993, but even so, Hirata expresses his disappointment: “You know, I want to live a whole lot longer. It’s not just a little longer. I want to live; I want to live a lot more.” The title of the book may suggest how the publisher aimed to make Hirata living with AIDS sound tragic as a marketing strategy based on an assumption that AIDS

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patients could not have long lives. While the fatality rate of HIV/AIDS carriers has significantly dropped since the late 1990s (Nagayasu 22 November 2017) and HIV/AIDS is no longer considered fatal in 2021 if proper treatment is received, it is possible that socio-cultural memories of the AIDS crisis enforced by Hollywood’s conventions of linking homosexuality with death still seem to strongly affect the imagination of Japanese filmmakers when depicting lives of queer characters, especially in terms of their ageing process. This chapter aims to examine the politics of cinematic responses to queer ageing in the contemporary Japanese film industry from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s. The proliferation of films and television dramas with queer characters since the mid-2010s seems to demonstrate the media and sponsoring companies’ quick reactions to the political and commercial values of the so-called LGBT boom. According to sociologist Ishida Hitoshi, the budding of the LGBT boom in Japan could be seen by the early 2010s (2019, 13). Following the legalization of same-sex marriage in all the states of the United States, the issuing of same-sex partnership certificates first implemented by Shibuya-ward and Setagaya-ward in 2015 precipitated this LGBT boom to the level that it has now become a set of economical interests called the LGBT market (LGBT shijō). As illustrated by featured articled by business magazines such as Shūkan Diamond (2012) and Shūkan Toyō Keizai (2012) on how businesses specifically targeting “LGBT” would become greatly profitable, the Japanese film and television industry also started to invest in this market. Inclusion of queer characters in mainstream films and television dramas is no doubt part of this financial investment, appealing to sexual minorities craving visibility of their own; the exploitation of queer characters on the screen is a politically charged strategy not only for making profits but also for controlling desirable images of queer characters. Considering the Japanese film industry’s inclination towards the financial and political values of the LGBT boom, this chapter will argue that cinematic imagination allowing viewers to envisage the ageing process of sexual minorities appears extremely limited albeit this increased visibility. In Declining to Decline, the ground-breaking work on ageing and ageism, age critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette writes that “whatever happens in the body, human beings are aged by culture first of all” (1997, 3). Her remark provides an important platform for applying the concept of ageing to the examination of cinematic responses to queer ageing in contemporary Japanese cinema by taking into account the influences of kirakira seishun eiga (bright youth films), a film sub-genre coined by the film magazine Kinema Junpō (2017). Usually adapted from shōjo manga or bestseller young adult novels, kirakira seishun eiga is generally the body of coming-of-age or youth films that typically centers on the temporality of adolescence and uses the storytelling of romance and growth to appeal to a wider range of audiences. This genre in many cases places a heterosexual romance between a young heroine and a male protagonist at the core of their narratives,

Fading away from the screen 203 suggesting its reliance on the audiences’ internalization of heteronormative ideology in triggering melodramatic effects. Examining the genre’s focus on the specific temporality of the life course provides us an insight into how the way in which the Japanese film industry responds to queer ageing is under the strong influences of this genre’s obsession with youth. According to a study by Janet Z. Giele and Glen H. Elder, Jr., in “Life Course Research: Development of a Field,” the “life course refers to a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time” (1998, 22). While this definition sounds applicable to anyone’s life, it seems accurate to conclude that “a sequence of socially defined events and roles” also has heteronormative connotations. In the case of kirakira seishun eiga, most films offer a happy ending where characters are expected to follow this life course, but some try to evoke the emotions of audiences by disturbing the life-course narrative in the form of premature deaths of heroines or male protagonists. In order to bring this chapter to the intersection of queer film studies and ageing studies, the body of the latter films provides a useful ground for comparison with films with young queer characters. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. One is to examine the power of authorship in the midst of the AIDS crisis in telling coming-of-age stories that a wider range of queer audiences can identify with. The sexual orientation of the filmmaker should not be necessarily put into question in making films that sexual minorities find relatable as their own stories. But, in the context of the Japanese film industry where the presence of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer filmmakers remains very low, it is important to pay attention to stories about sexual minorities or same-sex intimacies and desires told by sexual minorities. In order to do so, we will first set our analysis back to the 1990s and the early 2000s. The other purpose of this chapter is to explore how the popularity of the kirakira seishun eiga genre affects the narratives about the ageing experiences of sexual minorities outside the heteronormative life course, which I will refer to as “queer ageing” throughout this chapter, employing Linda Hess’ definition of this term. According to Hess, queer aging “refer[s] to narratives that negotiate aging at odds with and in resistance to the norms that shape aging within chrononormative culture” (2019, 11). Using this term, this chapter posits that the genre’s subcategory dealing with premature deaths may leave no room for same-sex desires and intimacies. In examining these topics, this chapter will first analyze three films by Hashiguchi Ryōsuke, one of the few openly gay filmmakers working in Japan today: A Touch of Fever (Hatachi no binetsu, 1993), Like Grains of Sand (Nagisa no shindobatto, 1995), and Hush! (Hasshu! 2001). The first two films in the 1990s focused on the experiences of teenagers, and Hashiguchi shifted to exploring the possibility of alternative family form in the early 2000s. Hashiguchi visualizes experiences of queer ageing from youth to adulthood while leaving a possibility for a broader spectatorship. As if

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reflecting social discourses on ageing within LGBTQ communities, representations of queer ageing arrived at the first peak in 2005. The year 2005 was also when the Japanese film industry began to invest in coming-of-age films or youth films later categorized as the origin of the kirakira seishun eiga genre. It is my contention that, despite possibly the unintended consequence of commercial and financial considerations, the genre has firmly formed the style that contributes to excluding non-heteronormative desires while gradually having become one of the most profitable commodities from 2005 to 2019. This exclusion is nothing but a political decision of the film industry, political in the way that the industry depoliticizes the representations of queer characters by avoiding the full responsibility to provide any representations or narratives of queer ageing in mainstream cinema.

Revisiting Hashiguchi Ryōsuke: ageing from youth to early 30s Flipping through the pages of Japanese film magazines or browsing through the flyers of upcoming films at a cinema complex, some queer audiences may ask, “Where are our stories?” Unlike the cases of independent filmmaking by sexual minorities in the United States that have developed since the 1960s, watching a number of queer-themed films in Japan remains virtually difficult in cinema complex theatres. Access to arthouse cinemas where imported queer films by queer filmmakers are often shown is limited only to those living in major cities as well. In this situation, films by queer filmmakers become important texts for sexual minorities of every generation not just for enjoyment and identification but also for finding a role model. This section of this chapter focuses on three films by Hashiguchi Ryōsuke and analyzes the way in which his films deal with the specific flow of temporality from youth into adulthood. The significance of focusing on Hashiguchi and his films lies in his queer authorship as one of the few openly gay filmmakers who has continued to maintain his presence in the mainstream Japanese film industry. Moreover, the temporal development from youth to adulthood matters to the audiences of LGBTQ communities for two reasons. One is a matter of identification, in that Hashiguchi’s first three films offer audiences the chance to see themselves within the characters. The other is the possibility of queering the heteronormative life course by offering a role model of alternative family form (Gallop 2019). Just as preceding queer filmmakers and artists who expressed their creative imagination with small-gauge filmmaking, Hashiguchi found 8 mm filmmaking a useful means to come to terms with his own sexuality. Inspired by his own experience of coming out at the age of 22, his 8 mm short film A Secret Evening (Yūbe no himitsu), which reveals the male protagonist’s affection towards his male friend, won the grand prize at the 12th Pia Film Festival in 1989 (2002, 152). The Pia Film Festival scholarship funded Hashiguchi to make his first feature A Touch of Fever in 1993, a coming-of-age film centering on a 19-year-old college student

Fading away from the screen 205 Tatsuru (Hakamada Yoshihiko) who works at a gay bar and occasionally sleeps with male clients for money. Tatsuru is just an everyday college-aged youth who seems to find no necessity to fix his sexuality, alternatively expressed in the way that he struggles in between the temporality of adolescence and that of adulthood. Instead of just focusing on his experiences concerning his sexuality, the film observes the complexity of pain and confusion that he feels as he gradually develops the relationship with the people around him, especially his younger co-worker Shinichiro (Endō Masashi), a high school boy who has intimate feelings for Tatsuru. Comparing the film to other earlier gay-themed films of the 1990s such as Matsuoka Jōji’s Twinkle (Kirakira hikaru, 1992) and Nakajima Takehiro’s Okoge (1992), film critic Ishihara Ikuko has pointed out that A Touch of Fever is the first Japanese film to show gay youths on the screen with a vivid expression of pain and confusion (1993, 81). The narrative about the protagonist coming to terms with his sexuality in A Touch of Fever suggests Hashiguchi’s political decision as an openly gay filmmaker. In an interview with Muto Kiichi, he says: By depicting the relationship between the public and gays more directly, I intended to expand the world one step wider than A Secret Evening. I thought it would be meaningless if I closed the film so narrowly that only gay people would watch—it was at least necessary to expand the movie’s front-door. (1993, 79) His words here may elicit his frustration evoked by the strong homophobia he experienced from the producer and prospective actors before the production of A Touch of Fever (Shimamori 2001, 82). Yet at the same time, it suggests his realization of the necessity of including possibilities for a broader spectatorship for A Touch of Fever as a way to make the film more potentially successful commercially. Aiming for a broader spectatorship may be related to the commercializing of queerness during the gay boom of the 1990s that emphasized “a sanitized version of gay culture” (Vincent et al. 1997, 162). But, the film in fact managed to cross boundaries and open up the world of gay men to others. The coming-of-age story of the protagonist functioned as a political statement that his experiences were just like those that straight people would experience too. Although this dependence on universality might have included a dangerous aspect, as a result, the film became such a hit that he was funded to make his next film Like Grains of Sand. Hashiguchi’s first two features invite us to examine the significance of the particular temporality that Hashiguchi employs in his narrative structure. His second feature Like Grains of Sand centers on one summer experienced by a group of 17-year-old high school students. The film’s protagonist Itō Shūji (Okada Yoshinori) secretly has feelings for his best friend Yoshida Hiroyuki (Kusano Kōta). The story revolves around a rumor revealing that

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Shūji is gay, but since Hiroyuki does not reject Shūji as a friend, the film’s focus is not to depict the sorrowful fate of a young gay boy but the dilemmas, irritations, pains, and a kind of arrogance that any teenager may experience. In an essay titled, “Restarting 17 years old” (17 sai no sai sutāto) in his Encountering You on the Infinite Wasteland (Mugen no kōya de kimi to deau hi), Hashiguchi reveals that locating the protagonist at the age of 17 years old was crucial because it was the same age when Hashiguchi “found himself strongly attracted to a person of the same-sex and learned that he was different from others” (2004, 28–29). A Touch of Fever functioned as a sort of coming out, but even after that, Hashiguchi continued to feel that he had something stuck inside him, and this something was his 17-year-old self at a loss as to how to enter the real world (Hashiguchi 2004, 32–33). Therefore Shūji’s character is in a way an embodiment of his 17-year-old self to whom Hashiguchi had failed to give a body. Hashiguchi shares his conflict that, “[he] could not stop thinking that [his] own time would not exist unless [his 17-year-old self] (or the time of [his] own past) started to move forward again” (2004, 33). As Shimamori Michiko points out in an interview with Hashiguchi, his first two films are mostly filled with young actors compared to his other films (2001, 79). But the reason for Hashiguchi’s particular attachment to youth should be clear by now. For Hashiguchi, filmmaking was a means to come to terms with his own sexuality and to restart the clock of his youthful 17-year-old self that he left in the past. For gay audiences just like me who saw this film on a VHS tape while growing up, seeing a gay teenager through the TV monitor meant a great deal. After confronting his own past with the first two films, Hashiguchi moved on to portray “things that [his]-thirty-something-self feels and a future” (2002, 153), which became his new project Hush! (2001). Based on Hashiguchi’s interview with a Dutch gay couple who had a child with a female friend, the film revolves around the experiences of a gay couple, Katsuhiro (Tanabe Seiichi) and Naoya (Takahashi Kazuya), and their bonding with Asako (Kataoka Reiko), who wishes to have a child with Katsuhiro. Contrasting with the representation of teenagers in the first two films, Hush! centers on people in their early thirties. In order to establish an authentic sense of the temporality of adulthood, Hashiguchi found it necessary to cast actors and actresses in their 30s with some life experiences in order to depict the reality of those in their 30s who have jobs and are independent (Kinema Junpō2001, 34). Sociologist Kawaguchi Kazuya points out that the beginning of this film is filled with a sense of resignation. Katsuhiro, Naoya, and Asako all “cannot imagine what they expect in their future, meaning that they cannot picture the life course from growth, love, marriage, raising children, ageing, and to death; the film begins with an encounter between three people who are living the temporality of now-ness” (Kawaguchi 2003, 79). Katsuhiro and Naoya have come to terms with their own sexuality and seem somewhat

Fading away from the screen 207 ready to live the rest of their lives as gay-identified men. This is an attitude often shared by those gay men who lived through the gay boom of 1990s Japan (Ogura, 2009). Yet, they are also uncertain about their future because there seems to be nothing that holds them together by legal means. This becomes especially clear when Naoya discovers that Katsuhiro is willing to accept Asako’s request to be a sperm donor. Why does this make Naoya feel insecure? Naoya’s insecurity relates to an assumption that sexual minorities are excluded from the typical life course. From the opening of the film that shows Naoya having spent a night with a man who does not care to have coffee together in the morning, Naoya is determined to lead a life as a gay, meaning that he seems to have given up any possibilities to seek anything intimate in his life. However, meeting Katsuhiro who stays for a cup of coffee in the morning is a miracle to Naoya, who starts to have a little hope for easing his sense of isolation and loneliness. Yet, Asako’s request to Katsuhiro for reproduction disturbs Naoya’s relationship with Katsuhiro because he knows that Katsuhiro finds values in the idea of family. His frustration and anger towards Katsuhiro’s seemingly careless agreement with Asako imply his fear of losing Katsuhiro, a figure with whom he could imagine a future together, as well as his envy for what he possibly cannot obtain without the presence of Katsuhiro. Instead of fulfilling Naoya’s fear, Hush! offers something more hopeful by seeking out the possibility of queer kinship by refiguring the idea of family. As mentioned earlier, the film’s protagonists seem to have had already given up on forming any intimate relationship with anyone. Yet, as Naoya moves into Katsuhiro’s apartment and his belongings share the same living environment as those of Katsuhiro, the audiences start to feel that these two gay men may be successfully making an alternative form of family. Some may argue that such an alternation is nothing new if the idea of the family remains between two people, Naoya and Katsuhiro. Hashiguchi, however, subverts the normative form of the family by providing “a possibility of mobility from two to three,” as Kawaguchi argues is as the strength and uniqueness of the film (2003, 91). At the end of the film, the characters sit around a dining table, and Asako gives a syringe to Naoya as she has previously done to Katsuhiro. This makes them all laugh, but this ending is filled with hope that the characters, whose sexualities are considered non-normative in the early 2000s and will remain so even in 2021, are going to found a new, alternative form of family, escaping the confinement of now-ness and moving forward to future together. While the focus on youth in A Touch of Fever and Grains of the Sand was a necessary process for Hashiguchi to come to terms with his own past and to move forward, focusing on the experiences of gay men and a straight woman in their early 30s in Hush! is closely linked with social problems at the time of the early 2000s. To be precise, Hush! treats the characters’ uncertainty about the future in comedic ways. As film critic Satō Tadao also points out, these

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comedic elements are particularly important for Hush! to deal with discrimination, prejudice, and differences among people (2001, 36). And it is when these differences are recognized and when obstacles for surviving in heteronormative society are overcome that laughter occurs, making the solidarity between Naoya, Katsuhiro, and Asako stronger and stronger. Revisiting Hashiguchi’s first three films has allowed us to examine the meanings of filmmaking to a queer filmmaker and the significance of his authorship not only to sexual minorities but also heterosexual audiences. Despite the very unsettling timing of the AIDS crisis that shadowed and minimized the cinematic hopes for imagining a future, Hashiguchi’s films presented a possibility of living from youth into adulthood. For some gay men who have felt pain in dealing with a traditional value of the family system, Hush! succeeded in showing means of survival and ageing through embodying an alternative role model of kinship.

Discourses on ageing within the LGBTQ community In terms of ageing and queerness in the representation of aged characters, a film adaptation of the novel Lily Festival (Yuri sai, 1999) by Momotani Hōko gives another interesting insight that helps us look into the discourses on ageing within the LGBTQ community in 2000s Japan. Directed by Hamano Sachi, the film Lily Festival (2001) is set in an apartment where seven women aged between 69-years-old and 91-years-old live together. The story starts to develop with the death of one resident whose room is soon rented by an aged man whose intrusion highlights the film’s “interplay of ageing and female sexuality” (Kawaguchi 2005, 220). One of the film’s most appealing plotlines involves lesbianism between two female residents, which is a part of the reason why this film was screened at the 2004 Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival where it garnered good reviews. Kawaguchi shares an interesting remark made by Hamano at the post-screening talk show: While the film has been invited to women film festivals and lesbian/gay film festivals overseas many times, there have been cases at institutions or organizations run by Japanese government where the screening of the films has been impeded because it deals with the sexuality of the aged. (2005, 223) Kawaguchi concludes that such a treatment is a reflection of the public viewing the topic of the sexuality of the aged as taboo. Yet, what does this tell us about the public or the film industry’s view towards ageing, especially when it involves queer elements? As developed countries had already started to see an increasing population of the elderly around 1990, Japan was no exception. Japan’s population ratio of people over 65 years old reached one-fourth of the entire population

Fading away from the screen 209 in 2015. According to sociologist Ogura Yasutsugu, discussions on queer ageing started to appear around 2001. For instance, in 2001, the magazine Queer Japan held a special issue titled “Dreaming about Old Age” (Yume miru rōgo), suggesting an increasing interest in ageing in gay communities. Analyzing the background of this trend, Ogura concludes “an intention to carry out a life as a gay spreads and is shared particularly in the generation of people around 40 years old who obtained gay identity through the 1990s gay movement” (2009, 170). In 2002, a panel talk titled, “Thinking About the Institution To Support Partnerships,” took place at Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Parade as one of the earliest public discussions on same-sex partnership (Kazama et al. 2018, 170). Three years later, there was a symposium on ageing titled “Our Aging: Getting Old Outside of Marriage System” at the 2005 Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Parade, where three panellists in their 50s discussed the issue (Ogura 2009, 168–169). In the midst of rising discourses on ageing among LGBTQ communities, Inudo Isshin’s House of Himiko (Mezon do Himiko) was released in August 2005. The film’s central focus is rather on the reconciliation between the protagonist Saori (played by Shibasaki Koh) and her gay father Himiko (Tanaka Min) who left her and her mother when she was a child. The film’s narrative develops mostly inside a kind of a nursing home for older gay men, seemingly utopian yet not free from the discrimination and homophobia of the outside world. But it does not make this space exclude those who do not belong there as it functions as a place of intergenerational gathering. One good example is a comedic sequence in which older gay men and young college-aged gay men have some recreation time together. In the special issue of Queer Japan mentioned earlier, critic Fushimi Noriaki proposes intergenerational interactions as one of the most important resources to revitalize a person in old age (2001, 42). In that aspect, House of Himiko succeeds in showing what Fushimi finds important. In Agewise, Gullette writes that “[w]hatever happens in the body, and even if nothing happens in the body, aging is a narrative” (2011, 5). Through this intergenerational communication, the film also lets audiences imagine and witness the temporal continuity of bodily ageing from young to old. This contrast between the young and old makes us aware of the vulnerability of the aged body as one of the residents falls unconscious in the latter half of the film. By contrasting the images of the young with those of the old, it may be possible to read the aged bodies as a mode of resistance to an unseen future, as Jane Gallop (2015) has suggested. House of Himiko therefore is a crucial text that not only exemplifies a possibly extended form of a queer community but also illustrates common experiences of ageing regardless of gender and sexuality, thus possibly appealing to a wide range of audiences. Media representations and narratives of queer ageing can be found in manga as well. Two years after the release of House of Himiko, Yoshinaga Fumi started a manga series called What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Kinō nani tabeta?). Ever since its first episode in the December 2007 issue of Morning,

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it has become part of a genre of comics focused on food and eating, depicting the life of a gay couple, Shirō and Kenji, living together. The reason why this particular manga is worth examining is its depiction of ageing, as characters actually grow older as the series develops. Shirō, who was 43 years old in volume 1, has turned 57 as of February 2021; Kenji has matured from 41 years old to 55 years old. Yoshinaga does not hesitate to show her readers the bodily changes in her characters caused by ageing as it happens in reality. For example, Shirō needs regular exercise to stay in shape, Kenji goes through a transformation from longer hair to shorter as his hair grows thinner, or Shirō refuses to wear reading glasses because he believes they are a sign of accepting inevitable ageing. In addition to their own ageing process, Shirō and Kenji both face the problems that aged parents go through as well. In the process of confronting them, the couple gradually starts to discuss life plans for their shared future. Just as these examples of films and manga show, representations and narratives of queer ageing were present even before the rise of the LGBT boom in mid-2010s Japan. Though shown very limitedly at art theatres and film festivals from 2012 to 2014, Take Masaharu’s EDEN (2012) is another case that treats isolation and pain caused by old age and shows the warmth and generosity of individuals who take care of each other at difficult times of life such as sickness and death. Contrary to a sort of communal kinship seen in EDEN, Tsukikawa Shō’s Satō Family’s Breakfast, Suzuki Family’s Dinner (Satō ke no chōshoku, Suzuki ke no yūshoku), originally made in 2013 for NHK BS and later screened at the 2015 Taiwan International Queer Film Festival, offers a critical insight into how queer couples try to refigure the normativity of a family through the eyes of the teenage protagonist Takumi (Yamazaki Kento). Takumi starts to question his sexuality and identity as a son of two lesbians upon meeting his neighbor, a girl named Sora (Kobayashi Ryōko) who is raised by a couple formed by a gay man and a bisexual man. Using the conventions of the home drama genre, this film develops around middle-aged sexual minorities as parents who experience confrontations with their children regarding questions about biological lineage, the family as a system, and the meaning of affection. Some may argue that the film maintains the institutional power of the family. While such an argument has validity to some extent, what is more important to note about this film is that it offers future possibilities outside the marital system that provide a platform for sexual minorities to age by queering the heteronormative life course. Although EDEN and Satō Family’s Breakfast, Suzuki Family’s Dinner have not been paid enough scholarly attention or reached a wide range of audiences, they are significant texts in a political sense in that they offer audiences glimpses into how sexual minorities age and survive in the society without any lawful protection or ample equal rights. They show how queer characters have survived by forming a community of their own or by adjusting to an existing system in an alternative way. Yet, more importantly, they also demonstrate the

Fading away from the screen 211 moments when things are not quite working under the circumstances of the society in which they live, in order to pursue their journey. Films before the emergence of the LGBT boom illustrate such hardship and struggle. Then, what kind of life choices do films during the current LGBT boom offer?

Fading away from the screen After Shibuya-ward and Setagaya-ward started to issue same-sex partnership certificates in 2015, 104 districts in total provide same-sex partnership schemes as of April 2021.2 These partnerships do not have as much legal protection as marriage between a man and a woman, but they have become a means for some sexual minorities to make visible their presence in society.3 For example, when Nakano-ward began its same-sex partnership scheme in September 2018, the first recognized couple were two middle-aged lesbians, 58-year-old Ōe Chizuka and 55-year-old Ogawa Yōko, who have been running the support community LOUD for lesbian and bisexual women (Mori 2018). Looking back on their relationship of 25 years, the couple expresses dissatisfaction about inequality based on sexual orientation. The couple also reveals that it might have been better if the first couple to register a same-sex partnership in Nakano-ward was younger, but that it would also be good for society if everyday middle-aged women registered publicly because it would let people know that sexual minorities exist anywhere (Mori 2018). Their decision is for the sake of their own relationship, but it was also political in the sense that it critiques a lack of rights and protections that should be guaranteed by the government to support the living environment for sexual minorities. Their decision reflects how the personal becomes a political matter. How has the Japanese media responded to the increasing visibility of older sexual minorities in reality? In one sense, an increase in queer characters who are middle-aged or older queer characters parallels social changes in Japan, which has had one of the largest ageing societies in the world since the 1990s. Issues of mid-life crisis, retirement, divorce in the later years, and dementia, to give some examples, have been repeated in recent films: Ending Note: Death of a Japanese Salesman (Endingu nōto, Sunada Asami, 2011), A Loving Husband (Koisaika Miyamoto, Yukawa Kazuhiko, 2017), Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2018), and most notably Yamada Yoji’s What a Wonderful Family! series (Kazoku wa tsurai yo, 2016–). Unlike Hamano’s Lily Festival, issues of sexuality of middle- or old-aged queer characters are virtually absent from these films. Contrasting with the increasing visibility of older sexual minorities in reality, the representation of queer characters in commercial cinema tends towards stories of younger characters in the midst of the current LGBT boom. Ishikawa Junichi’s April Fools (Eipuriru Fūruzu, 2015), for instance, uses a homoerotic depiction of the relationship between young male university students as a plot twist. More examples include adaptations of

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shōjomanga (Bitter Sweet [Nigakute amai], Kusano Shōgo, 2016) and of Boys’ Love manga (No Touching At All [Dōshitemo furetaku nai], Amano Chihiro, 2014; I Hear the Sunspot [Hidamari ga kikoeru], Kamijō Daisuke, 2017) that have become means for filmmakers to visually narrate same-sex love or intimacy based on already established narratives. Furthermore, representations of erotic relationship and more socially serious problems that sexual minorities encounter have found their places in independent cinema (Broken Pieces [Koppa mijin], Tajiri Yuji, 2014; Starting Over, Nishihara Takashi, 2014; Flowers of Kalanchoe [Karankoe no hana], Nakagawa Shun, 2018) and student films (Like Spring [Haru mitaida], Shigaya Daisuke, 2017) rather than commercial films. A variety of attempts have been made in promoting the visibility of sexual minorities through the screen, but they lack the possibility of ageing into the middle- or older age. Let us now return to Lee Sang-il’s Rage in order to evaluate its use of flashback, confining the gay couple’s hopeful future only within a past temporality. After their first encounter while cruising for sex, Yūma (Tsumabuki Satoshi) and Naoto (Ayano Gō) deepen their intimate relationship. When Yūma’s mother passes away after fighting cancer, the couple visits the grave, which has a great view of an ocean. As the story progresses, Naoto suddenly disappears from Yūma’s apartment, and it is later revealed that Naoto was raised in an orphanage and had a serious illness that took his life without being anyone noticing. Learning that Naoto did not betray him by leaving and instead died alone, Yūma bursts into tears of despair. And this is when a memorial flashback of one early evening conversation between the couple takes place. In this flashback, looking out the window, Naoto says that it would be nice to die if he could rest in peace in the same grave as Yūma’s mother. “You asked me if I wanted to sleep in the same grave together before, didn’t you?” Naoto continues, “Even if not together, next to each other is still nice.” The camera frames his face shining with the amber color of the sunset in a close-up. This is the only time in the film where Naoto, who was dying day by day, looks forward to the future with someone he loves. Even though the fate of this gay couple is controlled by the original novel by Yoshida Shūichi, the couple is torn apart due to the death of one partner. The confinement of queer intimacy or same-sex desires in past tense seen in Rage is a played-out way of storytelling as illustrated, for example, by Kinoshita Keisuke’s Farewell to Dreams (Yūyakegumo, 1956). In The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Judith Butler discusses queer melancholy as follows: “When the prohibition against homosexuality is culturally pervasive, then the “loss” of homosexual love is precipitated through a prohibition which is repeated and ritualized through the culture”(1997, 140). Employing Butler’s observation, it becomes clear that the flashback has functioned historically as the result of “the prohibition against homosexuality” pervasive throughout the Japanese film industry for many decades. It is only within the confinement of flashbacks or past temporality that queers could imagine their lives as they continue to age.

Fading away from the screen 213 In the 2010s, Rage’s attempt to depict homosexuality is politically significant in a way that it promotes the visibility of sexual minorities, but at the same time its flashback ends up being another example that enforces “the ‘loss’ of homosexual love.” Thus, it is extremely important not to ignore the structure that Rage employs because of how well it was received in terms of box office gross. In today’s film industry, if films make more than 1 billion yen (c. 9,282,377 USD), they are considered successful; Rage is the only commercial film with gay characters in leading roles that grossed more than 1 billion yen for the past 10 years. Therefore it becomes problematic that a film such as Rage, which reached a wide audience through the network of cinema complex theatres, fades any possibilities that allow sexual minorities to imagine a future where they can age longer – a “whole lot longer,” as was Hirata’s desire, rather than just a “little longer,” as he was restricted to.

The rise of kirakira seishun eiga The kirakira seishun eiga genre refers to the body of coming-of-age or youth films that typically center on a heterosexual romance or personal growth experienced by the protagonists and heroines. Its origin goes back to the year 2005 with the release of Ai Yazawa’s manga-based NANA (Ōtani Kentarō). Following the success of NANA, the Japanese film industry gradually found commercial values in films based on shōjo comics and romance novels and continued to make two to three films per year until 2009. While there was a significant drop in 2011 probably due to the socio-economic influences of the Great East Japan earthquake, at least four films per year were made from 2010 to 2013. Former chief editor of Kinema Junpō Sekiguchi Yuko points out that the Japanese film industry in 2014 began to invest in the kirakira seishun eiga genre much more than previous years: 6 films were made in 2014, nine in 2015, 12 in 2016, 14 in 2017, and at least 19 in 2018. The gross of each film is usually small, but if the original works on which films are based already have a solid fandom, the films tend to make enormous financial contributions. For example, Hashimoto Kojiro’s 2015 Orange, starring Yamazaki Kento and Tsuchiya Tao and based on Takano Ichigo’s bestseller manga, made 3.2 billion yen (c. 30,182,722 USD); Tsukikawa Shō’s 2017 I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (Kimi no suizō wo tabetai), starring Kitamura Takumi and Hamabe Minami and based on Sumino Yoru’s bestseller novel, grossed 3.5 billion yen (c. 32,690,210 USD). The former ranked ninth in 2016 box office records for Japanese films, and the latter fifth in 2017. Since its beginning in 2005, the kirakira seishun eiga genre has become a crucial money-making genre in today’s Japanese film industry. As mentioned previously, the primary characteristic of this particular genre is an accomplishment of a heterosexual romance. Though some films such as MARS (Yakumo Saiji, 2016) have used queer-baiting to lure audiences, this genre usually tends to exclude same-sex desires. Even so, by

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employing young actors and actresses already popular among the young audiences in television dramas and fashion magazines and using conventions of coming-of-age storytelling, the genre leaves room for queer youths to identify with characters at similar ages trying to overcome obstacles to accomplish their goals. Such a possibility of identification is emphasized in the way that Hiroki Ryūichi, one of the most prolific filmmakers of this genre, places a value on the process of emotional growth achieved through the fulfillment of young characters’ efforts (Aida 2017, 26). The achievement of emotional growth during the specific temporality of adolescence becomes the pathway for moving forward future adulthood. Because the popularity of kirakira seishun eiga parallels the LGBT boom, it is nothing surprising if a gay teen film using conventions of this genre surfaces. For instance, Oda Manabu’s Simon & Tada Takashi (2018) is a science-fiction youth road movie with a queer youth as the protagonist which tries to integrate the genre’s conventions in telling a story about high school boy Simon (Sakamoto Kazuki) helping his classmate Tada Takashi (Suga Kentarō) find the mysterious woman he likes. The film’s premise is that Simon has fallen in love with Tada. Therefore, it is heart-breaking to see Simon struggling between his friendship and romantic feelings for Tada, but the film maintains its comedic tone throughout. Just as an essential plot theme of kirakira seishun eiga is to show characters grow by overcoming struggles, Simon & Tada Takashi also shows Simon growing up through a journey and finally having the courage to tell Tada his feelings. In this sense, this film follows the convention of kirakira seishun eiga with a slight differentiation. One can argue that this film adapts the current politicization of sexual minorities to the popular genre focused on youth. Some queer youths may find the film as their story, but it is hard to say whether Simon & Tada Takashi successfully queers the kirakira seishun eiga conventions because of the plot where Tada rejects Simon’s romantic desires. It is true that their friendship will last, but what about an accomplishment of romance? Although some may argue that any kirakira seishun eiga films potentially attract queer youths, we maintain the view that the genre must first dismantle the heteronormative ideology internalized within its conventions in order to truly construct a story that queer youths can identify with. In order to show why the dismantling is necessary, we need to examine the structure of the genre’s subcategory that deals with premature deaths of heroines. In those films of this subcategory, the heroine is diagnosed with some fatal disease that limits her life span. In the end, the heroine must die, and the male protagonist mourns her absence. Tsukikawa Shō’s She Shines under the Moon (Kimi was tsukiyo ni hikari kagayaku, 2019), based on Sano Tetsuya’s novel, tells a story about a short romance between two high school students, Mamizu (Nagano Mei) and Takuya (Kitamura Takumi). When Takuya visits Mamizu at the hospital as a representative of the classroom, he finds out that Mamizu is diagnosed with a mysterious fatal disease called “hakkō-byō” that makes the sickening

Fading away from the screen 215 body glow when one’s time is close to running out. It is said that nobody survives until adulthood, and Mamizu’s life span is supposed to have already ended a year ago. Takuya breaks Mamizu’s snowdome by accident, and in order to apologize for that, he agrees to carry out wishes on Mamizu’s bucket list for her. On one hand, the more wishes he fulfills for her, the more she learns the joy of life, and the more they start to be drawn to each other. On the other hand, they cannot escape from the fear of death. Towards the end of the film, she remarks that meeting Takuya has made her want to live a lot longer, but audiences already know that it is impossible because the film had already shown her absence through her name engraved on a tomb from the opening sequences. The narrative treatment of the premature death exemplified by this film or Tsukikawa’s I Want to Eat Your Pancreas suggests that emotional effects are evoked when the imagination of the typical life course is disturbed by death. To give an example from She Shines under the Moon, Mamizu’s father pours forth his sadness when confronting the fact of Mamizu’s severely failing health: “I’ve always thought that she’ll become an adult just like other girls and get married someday.” This is such an emotionally charged moment, but at the same time, it suggests that this careful rendering of sorrow is based on a presupposition that the majority of audiences share the heteronormative expectation of the life course. Queer audiences, especially those in old age, may be able to share this affective experience because the framework of premature deaths resonates with the limited imagination of ageing due to the social stigma of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. A tricky element characteristic of this subcategory is what happens after the death of the heroine. The male protagonist is allowed to mourn the loss publicly and is privileged to do so as seen in I Want to Eat Your Pancreas where the protagonist asks for permission to cry. His public mourning is visualized in a careful close-up dedicated to capturing his bodily reactions to a great sorrow that can no longer be contained. The protagonist of She Shines under the Moon is also given a chance to express his emotional connection with the deceased heroine as the audiences learn that he has become a medical student aiming to find a cure for the fatal disease. In both cases, male protagonists can mourn over and make terms with the loss and absence of the heroines. In other words, heterosexual relationships are in a way given a chance to publicly age through the loss and absence. I believe that this is when the structure of the narrative concerning male mourning over the death of the heroine in the kirakira seishun eiga genre starts to exclude same-sex intimacy. Does the kirakira seishun eiga genre have a place for a loss of same-sex intimacy? Despite the increasing visibility of sexual minorities in media, not only people in middle or old age but also queer youths continue to struggle in today’s heteronormative society, as demonstrated by the case of a law school student struggling with same-sex attraction at Hitotsubashi University in 2015, who committed suicide after being outed by his friend. In “At the

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Basis of Difficulties in Lives of LGBT+,” Suzuki Ken, a professor at Meiji University, shares comments left in an examination paper by one of his students: “A sense of emptiness and loneliness overwhelms me whenever I think about the fact that I will not be able to experience life events such as marriage and childbirth. If I come out, it may rather ease me. But I am afraid of being treated coldly by people around by doing so”(2019, 47). The student continues to express their fear of being discriminated against, as well as of not being able to find ways to lead a happy life in the future. The student’s words suggest that queer youths are still exhausted in Japan’s homophobic and heteronormative society. In the circumstance like this, establishing an intimate same-sex relationship in public remains challenging, and even more importantly publicly mourning over a loss of same-sex intimacy is far more difficult, similar to the impossibility that Judith Butler (2000) describes as “publicly ungrievable losses” in Antigone’s Claims: Kinship Between Life and Death. Thus, while the kirakira seishun eiga genre targets a wide range of audiences by offering stories of youth, on one hand, its obsession with heteronormative romance imaginatively followed by the “normal” life course on the other hand fails to care for queer youths struggling with their own sexuality and with searching for ways to survive. Despite individual filmmakers’ intentions, it is likely that this genre at the present stage of development prevents queer youths from finding their future images.

Conclusion In order to understand the industrial forces that manifested the exclusion of homosexuality in Rage, considering the politics of the representation of ageing representation in the contemporary Japanese film industry was, by all means, a necessary task. This task first required the examination of how Hashiguchi Ryōsuke introduced stories of queer youths ageing into adulthood to Japanese audiences in the days of HIV/AIDS and offered an alternative life course plan for a queer family in the early 2000s. Hashiguchi’s decision to tell stories about homosexuality and same-sex attraction/desires was personal as well as political. The 2000s turned out to be the decade of increasing discourses on ageing in LGBTQ communities; middle- or oldaged queer characters found their places on the screen and other visual cultures, though characteristics such as loneliness and anxiety still permeated them. Even so, the ageing representation of queer characters had diversity to some extent until the emergence of the LGBT boom that made LGBTQ themes one of the most profitable and competitive markets. The LGBT boom spurred the media to include more queer characters in mainstream cinema, on television, and other visual cultures; the visibility of sexual minorities, though mostly gay men, increased remarkably in the late 2010s. This proliferation is nothing but the result of extremely political outputs. The media sees the inclusion of sexual minorities as a requirement

Fading away from the screen 217 not only to prove how sensitive they are to the politicization of discussions on equal rights for sexual minorities in reality, but also to lure their targeted viewers by controlling the socially acceptable images of sexual minorities. Although I agree with an opinion that values the importance of this visibility, I find the strategy employed for the latter purpose especially problematic in terms of the lesser visibility of aged queer characters and a lack of role models for ageing free from the heteronormative life course. The more visible sexual minorities in middle- or old age appear in reality, fighting for equal rights, the more we notice how rarely we see queer characters relatable to their age in mainstream cinema. The lack of role models for queer ageing as such has indescribable influences on life choices made by queer youths. The invisibility of older queer characters on the screen matters more to the future of the young than to that of the old who have somehow thrived to find their own ways of survival, though many have struggled with the anxiety of financial independence and loneliness as they reached their old age. It matters a lot because of the popularity of the kirakira seishun eiga genre and other youth films, whose heteronormative storytelling strictly tends to exclude same-sex desires and intimacies, overlooking any possibility that its targeted audiences may include queer youths. Although the mainstream cinema has begun to contain younger queer characters than older ones as a result of its commercial strategy geared towards the younger audience demographic, with the lack of role models of queer ageing and the absence of their places in the film genre on youth, it does not at this point of development ensure the future of queer youths both in representation and in reality. The study of queer Japanese film studies must expand to include more insights into the contemporary Japanese film industry’s responses to ageing discourses of sexual minorities and how they are reflected in visual media representations. The politicization of sexual minorities has been exploited in the mainstream cinema simply as a commodity, and ironically, discourses of queer ageing have been depoliticized, fading away from the screen. This chapter is a partial outcome of the JSPS KAKENHI Grant (20K12898).

Notes 1 Despite his decision to publicly announce his sickness, the name Hirata Yutaka was his pseudonym, for he was afraid that his family and the people who knew him might be subject to discrimination and prejudice (Hirata 1993, 8). 2 The LGBT boom in Japan was strongly influenced by the legalization of same-sex marriage in all the U.S. states in 2015. Following this legalization, Shibuya-ku and Setagaya-ward in Tokyo became the first two wards issuing the same-sex partnership. As of April 2021, there are 104 districts that provide same-sex partnership certificates, and more than 1,050 couples have registered. 3 In February 2019, 13 couples of sexual minorities, aged from the 20s to 50s living in different prefectures, filed a lawsuit against the supreme court that argued it is illegal not to allow marriage for same-sex couples.

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Bibliography Aida, Toji. 2017. “Interview with Director Hiroki Ryūichi.” Kinema Junpō (1737): 26–27. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Butler, Judith. 2000. Antigone’s Claims: Kinship between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press. Kindle edition. Fushimi, Noriaki. 2001. “Atorakushon to shiteno gei norōgo.” Queer Japan 5, pp. 38–43. Tokyo: Keiso Shobō. Gallop, Jane. 2015. “The View from Queer Theory.” Age, Culture, Humanities 2: 323–328. Gallop, Jane. 2019. Sexuality, Disability and Aging: Queer Temporalities of the Phallus. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Giele, Janet Z., and Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1998. “Life Course Research: Development of a Field.” In Giele, J. Z., and Elder, G. H., Jr. (eds.) Methods of Life Course Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, pp. 5–27. London: SAGE Publications. Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 1997. Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2011. Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Hashiguchi, Ryōsuke. 2004. Mugen no koya de kimi to deau hi. Tokyo: Jōhō Sentā Shuppankyoku. Hess, Linda M. 2019. Queer Aging in North American Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hirata, Masato. 2017. “Interview with Director Miki Takahiro.” Kinema Junpō 1737: 28–29. Hirata, Yutaka. 1993. Ato sukoshi ikite mitai (I Want To Live a Little Longer). Tokyo: Shūeisha. Ishida, Hitoshi. 2019. Hajimete manabu LGBT: Kiso kara torendo made (Introduction to LGBT). Tokyo: Natsumesha. Ishihara, Ikuko. 1993. “Shizentai de bakusareta jun na namami tachi.” Kinema Junpō 1928: 80–81. Kaku, Takuto. 2017. “Kirakira shita seishun wo omoidashite.” Kinema Junpō 1737: 19. Kato, Naoki. 2017. “Hokori ha moteta. Dō oiru noka. Rōru moderu naki rōgo.” AERA. June 12: 28–29. Kawaguchi, Kazuya. 2003. Queer Studies. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kawaguchi, Kazuya. 2005. “Yuri Matsuri.” In Maro, Izumo (ed.)Niji no kanata ni: lezubian gei kuia eiga o yomu, pp. 220–223. Tokyo: Pandora. Kazama, Takashi et al. 2018. Kyōyo no tame no sekushuaritīzu sutadīzu (Sexuality Studies for Education). Kyoto: Houritsu Bunkasha. Kinema, Junpōsha. 2001. “Interview with Hashiguchi Ryosuke: Itsumo kokorogake te iruno ha fuhenteki na monogatari o tsukuru koto.” Kinema Junpō 1346: 34–35. Mori, Shunsuke. 2018. “Nakano-ku ga dōsei pātonāshippu seido o kaishi. Kōsai 25 nen no kappuru ga kataru sono imi.” BuzzFeed News, 6 September. https:// www.buzzfeed.com/jp/shunsukemori/nakano-partnership. Accessed 29 April 2021.

Fading away from the screen 219 Muto, Kīchi. 1993. “Interview with Hashiguchi Ryosuke: Gei no sekai no maguchi o hirogete egaki takatta.” Kinema Junpō 1928: 78–79. Nagayasu, Shibun. 2017. “Kōreika ga susumu HIV yōseisha no genjitsu” (The Reality of HIV Positive in Aged Population). BuzzFeed Japan, 22 November. https:// www.buzzfeed.com/jp/shibunnagayasu/oldhivpositive. Accessed 29 April 2021. Ogura, Yasutsugu. 2009. “‘Gei no eijingu’ to iu firudo no toikake.” In Osamu, Seki, and Tetsuyuki, Shida (eds.) Chōhatsu suru sekushuaritī, pp. 168–191. Tokyo: Shinsensha. Russo, Vitto. 1987. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harper & Row. Satō, Tadao. 2001. “Ningen no ikikata no tayo sa to jiyu sa.” Kinema Junpō 1346: 36. Sekiguchi, Yuko. 2017. “Hitto no riyu to atarashii tobira.” Kinema Junpō 1737: 30–33. Shimamori, Michiko. 2001. “Hashiguchi Ryōsuke: Itsumo onaji uta o utai tsudukete iru.” Kōkoku Hihyo 249: 76–85. Suzuki, Ken. 2019. “At the Basis of Difficulties in Lives of LGBT+.” Over 1. Tokyo: Over Magazine. Vincent, Keith et al. 1997. Gay Studies. Tokyo: Seidosha.

Index

Abe Sada 6, 7, 28–46 Abe Shinzō administration 43 AIDS 201–202, 203, 208, 215, 216 All-Japan League of Student SelfGovernment (Zen nihon gakusei jichikai sō rengō, Zengakuren) 187 Anpo (U.S.-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty) 17–18, 19, 31, 190 Arai, Andrea 122, 123, 132 Art Theatre Guild (ATG) 34 Asama Mountain Lodge incident 33, 37, 40, 44 Asia Pacific War 2, 4, 60 Assassination Right or Wrong (Nihon ansatsu hiroku) 36–37 auteur 18, 24, 102, 147, 180, 195; and André Bazin 17; auteur theory 17 Beheiren 191 Boy Kenya (Shōnen Keniya) 71–92 The Boy King (Shōnen Ōsha) 78–82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 92 The Ceremony (Gishiki) 194 Chobits (Chobittsu) 113 circle (sākuru) 182–188; eisa (eiga sākuru) 181–184 communism: communist film 15; communist ideology 15; communist threat 57; Communist Party of Japan 19, 186, 187 community 21, 53, 104, 108, 109, 113, 121, 122, 123, 126, 131, 141, 148, 153, 163, 169, 170, 197, 208, 209, 211 Constitution of Japan, 1947 Constitution 1, 37, 162, 174, 176 Crazed Fruit (Kurutta kajitsu) 21

Darakuron (Discourse on Decadence) 30 Death by Hanging (Koshikei) 194 Deleuze, Gilles 18, 39, 147, 151 depoliticization, depoliticizing 1–8, 10, 28–29, 33, 36, 38, 39, 42–44, 49–50, 66, 71, 73, 77, 92, 98–99, 101–102, 104, 111–112, 130, 137, 204, 217 Diet 18, 187, 191; “Pollution Session” 100 divorce 122, 211; divorce rate 42 Dodes’kaden 8, 98, 99, 102–105, 106, 113 Dokuritsu Pro– independent film movement 19–20 Durkheim, Emile 33 ethnography 10, 180, 192; ethno-history 191, 197 extramarital affair 44 framing 2, 47, 119, 120, 122, 125, 130, 198 Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape (Soma kanka daiichibu: ubawareta tochi no kioku) 143–145 garbage, trash, rubbish (gomi) 98–102, 104–106, 108–113; “war on garbage” 101–102 Girl Who Leapt through Time (Toki o kakeru shōjo) 42 Godard, Jean-Luc 15, 16, 17, 24, 25 Gosho, Heinosuke 36 Hanada Kiyoteru (also known as Hanada Seiki) 188 hara-kiri 37, 40 High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) 108 Hirohito (emperor) 37

Index 221 Hiroki Ryūichi 112 HIV 201, 202, 216 House (Hausu) 42 Hush! (Hasshu!) 203, 206–208 Ichikawa, Kon 102 Ii, Naosuke 37 Imamura Shōhei 15, 190, 195 In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda) 37–40, 42–43 The Insect Woman (Nippon konchūki) 195 International Anti-war Day 31 Irigaray, Luce 35 Ishihara, Shintarō 21 Ishii, Teruo 31 Iwai, Shunji 8, 97, 99, 105–108, 114 Iwasaki, Akira 50, 60 Japan–Germany Anti-Comintern Pact 29 Japanese Red Army 33 Japanese Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) 6, 37, 139, 144, 161–177 jiko sekinin (self-responsibility) 121–123, 133 Judith Butler 121, 123–124, 131, 212, 216 kasutori magazines 30 Kinoshita, Keisuke 102, 194, 212 Kishi Nobosuke, prime minister 187 Kobayashi, Masaki 102, 194 Kon, Satoshi 8, 98, 99, 102, 109–112, 114 Korean Independence Movement (Banzai incident) 32 Koreeda Hirokazu 118, 199, 132, 201 Kumakiri Kazuyoshi 8, 118–133 Kumashiro, Tatsumi 32–33 Kurosawa Akira 8, 98, 99, 101–105, 108, 114, 196 Kurosawa Kiyoshi 119, 132 Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai (Kyoto Society for Viewing Documentary Cinema) 184–189, 198 League of Blood Incident 37 Liberal Democratic Party of Japan 19 The Life of Matsu the Lawless (Muhōmatsu no isshō) 5, 7, 47–67 The Light Shines Only There (Soko nomi nite hikari kagayaku) 118, 124–125, 128

Like Grains of Sand (Nagisa no shindobatto) 203, 205–206 Lost Paradise (Shitsurakuen) 41–44 Love and Crime (Meiji Taisho Showa ryoki onna hanzaishi) 31 masochism 39, 41 Matsuda, Eiko 35 Matsumoto Toshio 184–185, 188–189, 193 “me-ism” 38 military 1, 6, 9, 28, 34–36, 43, 59, 73, 161–162, 164–165, 167–176; antimilitarism 35; militarism 32–34, 40–41, 43, 57–58, 62, 64, 66, 164–165, 167–176, 195; militarize 1, 58; military alliance 19; military censorship 57 Minamata Incident, Minamata Disease 100, 186, 197 Mishima, Yukio 37 Mizoguchi Kenji 15, 25, 195 mountain base incident of the Japanese Red Army 33, 40 Murakami, Haruki 38 Murakami, Ryū 108 My Man (Watashi no otoko) 8, 120, 125, 128–130, 131, 132 Nakajima, Sadao 37, 38, 40, 44 Nakasone administration 44 national identity 72–73, 78, 79, 83–85, 88, 91–92, 168 national policy 49; national policy film (kokusaku eiga) 53 National Security Council 162 nationalism 5, 57, 66, 72; national mobilization 53; nationalistic politics 3 Neighbour’s Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyobo) 36 neoliberal policies 120–121; neoliberal ideology 121–122, 123; neoliberal reforms 122–123; neoliberalism 4, 138, 141 New Left 19, 181 Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri) 7, 16, 18–19, 21, 23–24 Nihon wa shimaguni (Japan is an island country) 118–119, 121 nihonjinron 118–119 Nikkatsu 15, 21, 24, 33, 35, 51–52, 190 1918 Rice Riots 32 Nishijin (film) 184–185, 189; Nishijin (area) 186, 188–189

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Index

Obayashi, Nobuhiko 42, 82 Occupation of Japan 1, 4, 6, 48, 50–51, 57–58, 59, 66–67, 71, 79, 84, 100, 186, 192; General Headquarters (GHQ) 48, 58, 66 Oda, Sakunosuke 30 Oh Mipo 118, 124–125 Osawa, Masachi 38 Ōshima Nagisa 7, 15–17, 19–22, 24–25, 28–29, 30, 34–36, 40–41, 44, 190–191, 193–194 phallocentrism 34–36, 38, 40 politicization 1–3, 5, 10, 28–29, 32, 35, 39, 44, 48–50, 62, 66–67, 92, 137, 171, 175, 180–182, 184–185, 190, 198, 214, 217 precarity 6, 8, 113, 118–122, 124–125, 129–130; precariat 120–121, 130–133 Prokino (Purokino, Proletarian Filmmakers’ League) 49 race 71–73, 77, 88; and masculinity 91; racialized depictions 71, 88; racial stereotype 71 Rebellion of Japan (Utage) 36–37 Red Beard (Akahige) 102 roman poruno 33, 35 ronin (a masterless samurai) 37 Russian Revolution 33–34 Sada (Sada: Gesaku Abe Sada no shogai) 41–43 Sada Abe’s Dog (Abe Sada no inu) 40–41 Sada’s Love (Jōnen: Sada no ai) 43–44 sadism 39 Sakaguchi, Ango 30 Sakuradamon Incident 37 San Francisco Peace Treaty 79 Sanjurō (Tsubaki Sanjurō) 102 Satō, Makoto 40 “Season of Politics” 32–34, 36–38, 40, 42–44 Season of the Sun (Taiyō no kisetsu) 21 Second World War 29, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 174; World War II 2, 4, 5, 17, 18, 25, 71, 72, 73, 83, 88, 192 sexless 42, 44 sexual love 29, 34–36, 38, 40–44 Shoplifters (Manbiki Kazoku) 119, 132 Simon & Tada Takashi 214 Sketches of Kaitan City (Kaitanshi jokei) 120, 125–128, 129, 130–131

stereotype, stereotyping 71–72, 86, 92 strangulation 32–33 student movement 18, 31, 33, 37, 181, 183, 187, 191, 193, 195–196 Swallowtail Butterfly (Suwarōteiru) 8, 97–99, 102, 105–108, 112–114 Taiyōzoku youth subculture 21 Takakura Ken 193–194 Tanaka, Noboru 34, 44 Tarzan 71–92 Tōhoku Documentary Trilogy (Tōhoku kiroku eiga sanbusaku) 136–153 Tokyo Godfathers (Tokyo goddofāzāzu) 8, 98, 99, 102, 109–112, 114 Tokyo Sonata 132 Tokyo Trash Baby (Tokyo gomi onna) 112 A Touch of Fever (Hatachi no binetsu) 203–206, 208 A Town of Love and Hope (Ai to kibō no machi) 17, 181, 187, 190, 192, 196 The Town Without Seasons (Kisetsu no nai machi) 102 transnational 1, 4–5, 18, 71 26 February incident (Niniroku jiken) 28, 29, 33–34, 36–44 Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) 195 Vietnam war 16–17; anti-Vietnam war protests 192 Watanabe, Junichi 41–42 Wild Sheep Chase (Hitsuji o meguru boken) 38 Woman Called Sada Abe (Jitsuroku Abe Sada) 32, 34–36, 37–39, 40–44 Women’s Liberation festival 31; Women’s Liberation movement 31–32, 40 World of Geisha (Yojōhan fusuma no urahari), (A Man and a Woman Behind the Fusuma Screen) 32–34 yakuza 193 Yamamoto Shūgorō 102 Yomiuri Shimbun 29 Yoshida, (Kijū) Yoshishige 15, 16, 20, 22–23, 25 Zenkyoto (The All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees) 31, 37, 191