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The Modernization of Japanese Film hiroshi komatsu From the mid-1930s, when sound film began to replace silent cinema in Japan, the Japanese studios modelled themselves on the Hollywood system. This was true not only of the institutions, but also of the form of the films produced, which were based around the unfolding of a narrative where all techniques were in the service of telling a story and eliciting particular emotions. This system dominated Japanese film production in the postwar period, but it was not monolithic or indestructible. Mizoguchi’s films can be seen as deviations, and Kurosawa’s Rashomon (Daiei, 1950) provided a decisive break. It did not simply portray the ‘truth’ of the narrative, but, by presenting multiple, conflicting views of the same event, made many interpretations possible and demanded active reading by the audience. Rashomon was the first film to introduce the concept of the modern into Japanese cinema. Modernization first appeared in a change in the subjectmatter tackled by film-makers. For example, Nikkatsu’s Taiyo no kisetsu (‘Season of the sun’, Takumi Furukawa, 1956), adapted from the novel of Shintaro Ishihara, approached the subject of the anger of modern youth by directly depicting the rebellion of juveniles against the older generation. The film was not innovative in terms of film form, but by using the classical narrative mode drew attention to the challenge to tradition represented by new morals and behaviour. In the same year, Nikkatsu adapted Ishihara’s new novel Kurutta kajitsu (‘Crazed fruit’, Ko Nakahira, 1956). This represented an attempt to establish the ‘angry youth’ film as a genre, after the model of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel without a Cause and Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika. There was a bourgeois idealism inherent in the literature of Ishihara which was mirrored in these adaptations of his work. The films lacked any dimension of class-consciousness but represented rebellious youth in an imaginary world. This tendency towards a lack of realism of setting was to constitute an important element of Nikkatsu’s youth films and action films for years to come. In the 1950s, then, Nikkatsu tried to modernize Japanese cinema by establishing a new genre, aimed at and focusing on the younger generation. However, despite the popular success of many of these films the genre rarely produced anything other than standardized B movies of little lasting interest. This had much to do with the restrictions placed on film-makers by the studios. The genre did not attract eminent established directors, nor produce artists of its own. The one exception was Seijun Suzuki, who began his directing career making action films for 714

Nikkatsu. He made a series of these films between 1956 and 1963 which were classed as B movies, but which stood out from those made by other genre specialists of the time. He ornamented the stereotyped story-lines of the genre with deliberately artificial images, and he pushed the most standard action film beyond the ordinary through the use of attractive shot composition and unique mise-en-sce`ne. After 1964, promoted from low-budget B films, he turned his hand to adapting literature for the screen, but he continued to develop the style he had established on his action movies. Gradually Suzuki decreased the importance of a rational and logical story in his films. For example, in the gangster film Koroshi no rakuin (‘The brand of killing’, Nikkatsu, 1967), the plot, which generic conventions dictate should be clear, was transformed into a labyrinth. The increasing complexity and difficulty of his films finally led to his dismissal from Nikkatsu in 1968. While Nikkatsu’s youth films were set in imaginary bourgeois circumstances, Shohei Imamura, working in the same company, developed a very different milieu for his films. After working as the assistant director to Yasujiro Ozu at Shochiku, Imamura moved to Nikkatsu to work with Yuzo Kawashima. Since his de´but film in 1958 Imamura’s concern had been with the world left behind by the development of Japanese bourgeois society, and the energetic people living in that world. His films were fundamentally different from the Nikkatsu action films, as they were not dependent on the method of realism. They included caricature-like depictions of strange people, blended with ethnographic and sociological concerns, and humour inherited from Kawashima. Many of his films from this period bore more resemblance to films made by independent companies than the output of a major studio like Nikkatsu. After Nippon konchuki (‘Insect woman’, Nikkatsu, 1963) Imamura’s concerns gravitated towards issues of sex, and his films examined the sexual impulse that he believed existed at the root of all people. Kiriro Urayama directed realistic films with a social message at Nikkatsu. He had been the assistant director to Imamura before making his first film in 1962, and he went on to work mostly in the youth film genre. However, films like Kyupora no aru machi (‘The street with the cupola’, Nikkatsu, 1962) and Hiko shojo (‘The bad girl’, Nikkatsu, 1963) were different from the stereotyped Nikkatsu films of the genre, as they contained political elements. By the late 1960s, both Imamura and Urayama had developed a metaphysical quality in their films. Urayama’s last film at Nikkatsu, Watashi ga suteta onna (‘The girl I abandoned’, 1969) concentrated on the subjective experiences of a man

the modernization of japanese film

who had abandoned a girl. However, this highly reflective film, which included some hallucinatory shots, was thought too abstract by the Nikkatsu executives. The film companies did not like to see their directors bring such experimental elements to their work. Directors were required to follow the norms of the genre and remain within the limits and rules laid down by their companies. Directors with a desire to experiment had to fight continually with the conservatism of the executives of their companies, and many found it an impossible task. Imamura realized that he could not make the films he wanted to at a major studio. After making Akai satsui (‘Intentions of murder’) in 1963 he left Nikkatsu to found his own independent production company. During the 1950s most independent companies had been organized by groups with socialist sympathies. Directors like Tadashi Imai and Satsuo Yamamoto produced films with a political message. The independent sector, then, was not interested in the development of film form and could not be considered avant-garde. However, in the 1960s the situation changed. New independent companies began to be established to produce films that could not be made at the major studios but that were primarily concerned with extending the boundaries of Japanese film and not just with political messages from a specific party. Out of such newly founded independent companies, the so-called New Wave was born.

crisis in the studios There were six major film companies in Japan in 1960: Nikkatsu, Daiei, Toho, Toei, Shochiku, and Shin Toho. Shin Toho produced only sensationalist films for which there

proved to be a limited market, and it went bankrupt in 1961, leaving five major studios throughout most of the 1960s. From the late 1950s the bulk of Nikkatsu output had been genre staples such as the youth film and action film. The classics of Japanese cinema of the 1950s had been produced by Daiei: Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu monogatari (1953), Chikamatsu monogatari (‘The crucified lovers’, 1954), Naruse’s Inazuma (‘Lightning’, 1952), Kinugasa’s Jigokumon (‘Gate of hell’, 1953), and Kozaburo Yoshimura’s Yoru no kawa (‘Night river’, 1956). The company had trained young directors like Yasuzo Masumura, and had let Kon Ichikawa develop his talent on a series of literary adaptations such as Enjo (‘Flame of torment’, 1958), Nobi (‘Fires of the plain’, 1959), and Ototo (‘Younger brother’, 1960) in order to fill the vacancy left in the field of artistic film by the death of Kenji Mizoguchi in 1956. The Toei Company laid stress on the production of widescreen films after 1957. Its policy of attracting large audiences (especially men) to its entertainment jidaigeki (period drama) had been extremely successful, and by 1960 Toei had become the most profitable film company in Japan. The company relied on the regular and rapid production of standard and stereotypical genre films for this success, and so their widescreen jidaigeki were not of the highest artistic quality. Toei also produced highly artistic films by the masters of the pre-war era, like Daisuke Ito, Tomotaka Tasaka, and Tomu Uchida, but the company did not provide a place for young talent with innovative ideas. The same was true of Toho, where the directors of the pre-war era, like Mikio Naruse and Shiro Toyoda, were able A scene from Kuratta kajitsu (‘Crazed Fruit’, 1956), Ko Nakahira’s film of affairs and revenge that attempted to popularize the youth genre in the Japanese film industry

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Akira Kurosawa (1910– )

In 1951 Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon (1950) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, thereby opening the doors of the western art circuit to Japanese cinema. Rashomon consists of four different versions of the same event, the attack on a nobleman by a bandit, and despite its Japanese setting is conceptualized around a very occidental theme; the relativity of truth. This combination of Japanese and western influences is a feature of Kurosawa’s film-making, and has contributed to his continuing popularity in the West. The dynamism of Kurosawa’s method of story-telling through images has always gone hand in hand with a humanist treatment of his subjects. A fascination with social problems and human nature forms the constellation of Kurosawa’s universe, and provides the link between his violent feudal epics and modern-day dramas. Kurosawa displays an unparalleled directorial power to create dense fictional worlds; a skill already evident in his first film Sugata Sanshiro (1943). The story composition of his films, which proceed toward their climaxes through a combination of realist description and occasional moments of romanticism, attains its classical completeness in films such as Norainu (‘Stray Dog’, 1949). This classical form is constituted by occidental style—a mélange of European and Hollywood modes. Many of the cinematic forms in Kurosawa’s films have been based on westernstyle montage. Even when he employs Japanese classical performing arts like Noh and kabuki, they are articulated in the occidental mode, as in Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi (‘They who step on the tiger’s trail’, 1945) and Throne of Blood (Kumonosujo, 1957), an adaptation of the story of Macbeth. A concern with non-Japanese themes is evident in Kurosawa’s adaptations of western literary sources, including Dostoevsky, Gorky, and Shakespeare. However, Kurosawa sought more than the intellectual world view of European literature. He also developed film as an entertainment form. He was deeply influenced by Hollywood movies, particularly those of John Ford. That which Ford expressed through the Western appeared in the form of jidaigeki (period films) in Kurosawa’s films; Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954), Kakushitoride no sanakunin (The Hidden Fortress, 1958), Yojimbo (1961), and Tsubai Sanjuro (Sanjuro, 1962). The samurai films Yojimbo and Seven Samurai in turn inspired Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven (1960); evidence of the cross-fertilization between Kurosawa, American genre movies, and the European art circuit. Humanity lies at the centre of Kurosawa’s themes, an approach which has formed the basis of his world view since his early works. It appears most clearly in Ikiru (1952), which was partly inspired by Goethe’s Faust, and also in Red Beard (Akahige, 1965). While this concept of humanity is meant to be universal, it came to seem some-

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The Seven Samurai (1954)

what anachronistic as a film theme in the agitated social situation of the late 1960s, when new Japanese directors were making innovative works, and numerous foreign films made by the new generation were imported into Japan. Kurosawa’s film art came to be regarded as oldfashioned in this period. He appeared to reach a creative impasse; Dodeskaden (1970) reveals this perplexity in its form, and his artistic problems may have contributed to his attempted suicide in December 1971. However, with Dersu Uzala, made in the USSR in 1975, Kurosawa overcame these problems and developed his style further, in the form of the epic. Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) were made on a massive scale in terms of length, theme, and spectacle, and remain among Kurosawa’s most impressive work. He then turned to more personal visions, as seen in Yume (‘Dream’, 1990) and Madadayo (1993), an approach which had not been seen in his previous films. HIROSHI KOMATSU Select Filmography Sugata Sanshiro (1943); Norainu (Stray Dog) (1949); Rashomon (1950); Ikiru (1952); Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) (1954); Kumonosujo (Throne of Blood) (1957); Kakushitoride no sanakunin (The Hidden Fortress) (1958); Yojimbo (1961); Tsubai Sanjuro (Sanjuro) (1962); Akahige (Red Beard) (1965); Dodeskaden (1970); Dersu Uzala (1975); Kagemusha (1980); Ran (1985); Yume (Dream) (1990); Madadayo (1993) Bibliography Desser, David (1983), The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Richie, Donald (1984), The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

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to develop their careers, but young directors found that they were highly restricted by the limitation of the studio. Eventually prominent new talents only emerged from the two oldest of the large companies: Nikkatsu and Shochiku. Together with several young directors working in the independent companies, they were to constitute the Japanese New Wave in the 1960s. At Nikkatsu young film-makers who had developed their talents within the company (like Seijun Suzuki, Shohei Imamura, and Kirio Urayama) were leaving to further their artistic visions. A similar thing was happening at Shochiku. Shochiku was a very conservative company and they regulated and protected even the tone of their films. Yasujiru Ozu continued to make a film each year for the company, but apart from him only Keisuke Kinoshita had been given any kind of autonomy. Even he was not immune to interference from above. When he directed his rather bold film Narayama bushi-ko (‘Ballad of Narayama’, 1958), Shiro Kido, the principal of the company, criticized its violent content and objected to the adaptation of the story. The conservatism of Shochiku prevented them from exploiting the rise of new genres like the action film which Nikkatsu and other companies were successfully producing. This policy precipitated the decline of Shochiku’s fortunes at the box-office. As profits fell the company began to lose its place as one of Japan’s major studios. Under pressure, Shochiku launched a new policy in 1960: while continuing to maintain the production of their traditional films, the company gave young directors the opportunity to make the films they wanted with a new degree of freedom. This strategy was aimed at capturing the attention of the young audience who had not been drawn to the company’s products before. Thus the so called Shochiku New Wave directors Nagisa Oshima, Yoshishige Yoshida, and Masahiro Shinoda emerged on to the stage of Japanese film. Oshima’s Seishun zankoku monogatari (‘A story of cruelty of youth’, Shochiku, 1960) depicted young people’s selfdestruction with a harsh reality that had been absent from previous youth films. Produced in the middle of the campaign against the Japan–USA Security Treaty, political messages were woven into the drama. However, unlike the leftist party-political films of the independent companies, Oshima’s message was directed toward the audience’s own identity and independence, and it is this which gives the film its avant-garde edge. In Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan, Shochiku, 1960), which deliberately echoed the title of Resnais’s 1955 film on concentration camps, Nuit et brouillard, political discussion was central to the film, reaching beyond the scope sanctioned by Shochiku’s production policy. Oshima was forced to leave the studio and from this point worked outside the mainstream by founding his own production company.

Yoshishige Yoshida’s Rokudenashi (‘Good-for-nothing’, 1960) was in many ways similar to Oshima’s Seishun zankoku monogatari. Rokudenashi takes as its subject the crimes of four students, and in it Yoshida tried to achieve a new type of drama by deconstructing the traditional ideology of Shochiku. His next film Chi wa kawaiteru (‘Dry blood’, 1960) was also a crime film, but with an element of social concern evident in an attempt to deconstruct and examine the old moral order. Like Oshima and Yoshida’s films, Masahiro Shinoda’s Kawaita mizuumi (‘Dry lake’, 1960) also had college students as the protagonists. These three new Shochiku directors revealed the violent reality of the modern society in which they lived, through films focusing on the lives and behaviour of people of their own generation. This New Wave at Shochiku lasted a very short period because its central figure, Oshima, left the company shortly after making Night and Fog in Japan. In spite of this, Yoshida and Shinoda remained at Shochiku until the mid-1960s and both made interesting films within the limits of the company’s policy. Some New Wave directors appeared from outside the major companies. Susumu Hani had been working in the 1950s at Iwanami Eiga, the film-production section of a publishing company which made science and education films, and so his method of direction was completely different from that of those who studied film-making in the mainstream film companies. In 1961 he made his first feature Furyo shonen (‘Bad boys’), using the mixed styles of documentary and fiction. In this film, which was based around the lives of boys in a reformatory, Hani did not use professional actors but improvised scenes with boys who had experience of such institutions. In his subsequent films Hani continued to use a documentary method of shooting which came to be seen as an alternative form of fiction film. It influenced other filmmakers, for example Shohei Imamura, who used a similar method in Ningen johatsu (‘A man vanishes’, 1967). Hiroshi Teshigahara was another influential film-maker who emerged from the independent sector. As in the case of Susumu Hani, Teshigahara’s success lay in the unique film form he was able to develop from his position outside the major film companies. Like Hani he had made documentaries in the 1950s, which were the point of departure for his feature films. From his first feature, Otoshi ana (‘The pitfall’, 1962), he devoted himself to adaptations of Kobo Abe’s literature. The visualization of existentialist stories was his main concern throughout the 1960s, Susa no onna (‘Woman in the dunes’, 1964) being the most successful work among these adaptations. The creative films of the New Wave occurred at a time when mainstream Japanese film production was in crisis. In 1953 television broadcasting had begun in Japan, and the spread of television ownership had started to affect cinema attendances. The number of cinema-goers 717

Nagisa Oshima (1932– )

Social critic, political agitator, and now a well-known television personality, Nagisa Oshima has always pursued a cultural strategy of which film-making is only a part. At the same time, Oshima’s cinema itself does not remain within the domain of classical film art. In his best films he shows as interest beyond the illusionism designed for telling a fictional story. This attitude pushed him into the foreground of the Japanese avant-garde in the 1960s, and made him one of the most influential film-makers in Japanese history. His first film Ai to kibo no machi (‘A town of love and hope’, 1959) was made at the Shochiku studio, and ought to have reflected the totally conformist ideology of that company. However, the completed film departed from the formula, and ended with the despair of a lower-class boy, quite contrary to the ‘hope’ in the title of the film. Oshima was not interested in producing the traditional film laid down by company policy, and it was not easy for him to remain at the studio and still make films which matched his ideals and ambitions. However, he made three films at Shochiku in 1960 that were closely connected to the contemporary political movement and its breakdown. He also made political statements outside his films, and, central though it is for him, cinema must be thought of as only one of his methods of expression. Oshima’s work is radically different from the official post-war political cinema that used only mediocre film form to present a particular party’s policy. Oshima not only took a radically anti-Stalinist new left political stance, but his film form was also revolutionary. For example, the total number of shots in Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan, 1960) is less than fifty. Constituted by long takes and panning, and structured around an intense, lengthy political discussion, with complex flashbacks re-presenting the memories of characters, this was an avant-garde film that defied the entertainment demands made by the studio. It employed methods never before seen in Japanese cinema, and proved immensely influential on other young film-makers. Oshima’s films are responses to actual events, changes, and problems in Japanese society, and so each film inevitably holds a close connection with the time in which it was made. This can be seen in terms of form as well as content. Oshima does not cling to a consistency in film form, but uses and develops avant-garde techniques appropriate to the moment and the subject. Unlike Nihon no yoru to kiri, Hakuchu no torima (Violence at High Noon, 1966) is constituted by many shots. Even in the same year different subjects receive radically different treatments, as between Death by Hanging (Koshikei, 1968) and Kaette kita yopparai (Three Resurrected Drunkards, 1968). Oshima was always sensitive to phenomena that were controversial and contemporary. Etsuraku (The Pleasures of the flesh, 1965) and Hakuchu no torima comment on the

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Japanese pornographic film (known as the ‘pink film’), particularly the works of Koji Wakamatsu. Politics and sex are the most important themes for Oshima, and he directly challenged the system of film censorship that concealed sex and permitted violence by daring to make the hard core Ai no corrida (In the Realm of the Senses, 1976). He also challenged the institutional form of cinema by commenting on the so-called experimental and underground cinema in The Man Who Left his Will on Film (Tokyo senso sengo hiwa, 1970) and Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobo nikki, 1969). After completing the masterpiece Gishiki (The Ceremony, 1971) Oshima realized that his political message was losing its impact. He made one more film, Natsu no imoto (Dear Summer Sister, 1972) and broke up his independent company. Since 1976 he has been making films in collaboration with foreign companies, and has moved away from a direct cinematic involvement with the actualities of modern Japan. In films such as Ai no borei (Empire of Passion, 1977), Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Senjo no Merry Christmas, 1982), and Max mon amour (1986), any political involvement or challenge to avant-garde film-making has virtually disappeared. In contemporary Japan, Oshima has become extremely famous for his activities as a commentator and a television personality, a fame that has come to overshadow his cinematic achievements. HIROSHI KOMATSU Select Filmography Ai to kibo no machi (1959); Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan) (1960); Etsuraku (1965); Hakuchu no torima (1966); Koshikei (Death by Hanging) (1968); Kaette kita yopparai (1968); Shinjuku dorobo nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief) (1969); Tokyo senso sengo hiwa (The Man Who Left his Will on Film) (1970); Gishiki (The Ceremony) (1971); Natsu no imoto (Dear Summer Sister) (1972); Ai no corrida (In the Realm of the Senses) (1976); Ai no borei (Empire of Passion) (1977); Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, (1982); Max mon amour (Max my Love) (1986). Bibliography Oshima, Nagisa (1992), Cinema, Censorship, and the State.

The Ceremony (Gishiki, 1971)

the modernization of japanese film

continued to increase to 1958, but thereafter gradually declined. The film companies tried to recapture audiences by producing films in colour and films featuring established stars. In 1957 the Toei production company shifted production practices to the manufacture of widescreen film, and the other major studios followed soon after. In 1962 Daiei produced the first Japanese 70 mm. film Shaka (‘The life of the Buddha’, directed by Kenji Misumi), which appealed to the audience’s desire to see dramatic spectacle on a large screen. Although the technology was new, there was a strong tradition of spectacles of this kind in Japanese cinema, and so there was a ready-made audience for these productions. For example, every summer the major companies released a ghost film, and in December, a new version of the dramatic story of the loyal forty-seven Ronin. Following the huge box-office success of Gojira (‘Godzilla’, Ishiro Honda) in 1954 Toho released many monster and science-fiction films every year. The production policies of big film producers exploited the custom for Japanese people to enjoy something individual and special in each season. From 1969 Shochiku produced the series Otoko wa tsuraiyo (‘Tora-san’, Yoji Yamada) for seasonal viewing. The policy of recycling a specific spectacle in a series of films had been a part of Japanese cinema since the silent years. These repeating spectacles had constituted an important part of Japanese film-making that co-existed with, but never crossed with, the creation of art cinema. The yearly repetition of a dramatic spectacle generally assured large box-office receipts. The plot of each film in a cycle was almost identical, but their popularity ensured that they were used as a last resort by the big companies to defend cinema audiences from erosion by television. The monster film, the ghost film, and the Tora-san series were made specifically to be the spectacles of particular seasons. However, from the early 1960s when television audiences began to surpass those of the cinema, the five major companies each developed their own genre specialities. The yakuza (gangster) film genre from Toei, sold on the sensationalism of violence, is one of the most prominent examples. From the late 1960s and into the 1970s yakuza films were made continually. At Toho, monster films as well as wordy war films were made as seasonal spectacles, and for their regular programme Toho emphasized youth films and comedies. Shochiku also stressed the comedy, from which films like the Tora-san series were born. Nikkatsu and Daiei, however, could not penetrate such genre lines and their fortunes declined as a result.

sex and violence In 1971 Daiei went bankrupt and Nikkatsu took the dramatic step of turning to the production of soft-core pornography, called roman poruno. Sex films had been made

in Japan by independent companies since around 1963 under the name of pink film. At that time there had been some sex films which had drawn praise from mainstream critics, and the line between pornography and mainstream cinema was not rigid. For example, some of the sex films of Koji Wakamatsu had certain avant-garde elements and a political edge, and his work had been evaluated highly from early on. The works of Tetsuji Takechi were the most famous sex films before Nikkatsu launched the roman poruno. Takechi’s films, unlike pink films, were released through mainstream companies and screened in ordinary theatres. Takechi’s sex films Hakujitsu mu (‘Daydream’, 1964) and Kokeimu (‘Scarlet daydream’, 1964) are regarded as having artistic value, particularly in the use of hallucinatory sequences. After November 1971 most films produced by Nikkatsu were sex films, resulting in the unique phenomenon of a major studio turning exclusively to the production of pornography. However, while the roman poruno was part of the sex film genre it was essentially narrative cinema with many sex scenes and different from the explicit pornography of the so-called blue films. In early roman porunos, directors like Tatsumi Kumashiro, Toru Murakawa, and Toshiya Fujita developed interesting films, and the genre soon became a place where young directors could learn the mise-en-sce`ne of narrative film-making. Some of the directors who would later constitute the core of Japanese cinema learnt their craft from the roman poruno. In the 1970s, with Daiei bankrupt, Nikkatsu making the roman poruno, and the three other major companies only manufacturing stereotyped genre films, there was little scope for the production of high-quality art cinema in Japan. Collaboration with the Arts Theatre Guild (ATG) provided the only opening for directors interested in this area. ATG had been founded with the aim of importing quality foreign films, both classic and modern, into Japan. In 1968 ATG began to produce films in collaboration with other independent companies. This provided a home for the directors of the New Wave who had been forced to leave the major companies, and ATG helped realize the further development of the work of Shohei Imamura, Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, and Yoshishige Yoshida. The company did not only help the New Wave directors of the 1960s, but also provided opportunities for younger film-makers like the television director Akio Jissoji, and the poet Shuji Terayama. However, the golden age of ATG did not last more than ten years, and by the late 1970s it was no longer the centre of creative Japanese cinema. The degeneration of quality Japanese cinema became conspicuous in the late 1970s. In 1975 the yearly boxoffice profits of imported foreign films surpassed those of Japanese films. In this period the entrance fees at cinemas in Japan were the highest in the world and the numbers 719

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1960–1995

Kazoku geemu (‘Family Game’, 1983), Yoshimitsu Morita’s ironic dissection of the traditional family film genre

who would risk paying high prices to see Japanese films were steadily decreasing. Toei was still producing yakuza films and Nikkatsu was still making roman poruno, production policies which assumed (and ensured) that the primary audience was male. About half of the cinemas that showed Japanese films were never entered by women. Toei produced programmes for children as their seasonal spectacle in summer and winter, and so during the holidays the film theatres filled with children and their parents. This gave rise to the strange phenomenon of busy family seasons, sandwiched between times when films of sex and violence were shown to exclusively male audiences. In the 1970s the major film companies seemed to have lost the ability to develop new talent for their products. This period did see the appearance of some talented directors like Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Mitsuo Yanagimachi, but these came from outside the major companies. In common with the New Wave of the 1960s, these young directors took violence as their point of departure. The depiction of violence seemed to open the way to new creative forms, sidestepping the stereotyped films of traditional of Japanese cinema. However, the shocking effectiveness of depictions of violence was lost by the 1980s. In the late 1970s a new development added an edge to Japanese cinema. Young people in their teens and twenties began to make films with 8 mm. or 16 mm. cameras and exhibit them to general audiences. Among these amateur film-makers were some who would go on to give fresh power to the impoverished national cinema. The directors 720

Kazuki Omori, Nobuhiko Obayashi, and Sogo Ishii came from an amateur film-making background. Ishii’s dynamic direction and his quasi-surrealistic stories had a character new to Japanese art cinema. The violent elements of his films are comical and it is in this that he can be distinguished from the other film-makers of the time who could not sever their links to the New Wave of the 1960s.

new developments The significant Japanese films of the 1980s, however, were characterized by an absence of violence. Kohei Oguri adopted black and white and standard screen size for his de´but film Doro no kawa (‘Muddy river’, 1981), which was set in the 1950s. The nostalgia towards old film form resembled Kei Kumai’s Shinobu gawa (‘The long darkness’, Toho, 1972). However, Oguri’s method has more realism than Kumai’s, and represents through poetic qualities the beautiful moments which Japanese people living in a modern society too often forget. Yoshimitsu Morita made a film using the traditional Japanese cinema theme of the family. In Kazoku geemu (‘Family game’, 1983) his ironic handling of the traditional family film genre and television drama showed that there are new possibilities to be found in the theme of the ordinary. The family film genre of Shochiku and the films of Yasujiro Ozu examined the attractiveness of images from daily life, a theme revived in the 1980s. Very subtle movements of the mind are seized in the description of daily life in Taifu kurabu (‘The Typhoon Club’, Shinzi Somai, 1985) and Uhoho tankentai (‘An unstable family’, Kichitaro Negishi, 1987). Com-

the modernization of japanese film

pared to these movies, Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Senjo no merii kurisumasu, 1982), which depicted the realistic situation of men living by violence, seemed rather anachronistic. In 1984 the actor Juzo Itami made his first film as a director, Ososhiki (‘The funeral’). This film, based around an event frequently depicted in Japanese cinema, comically described people’s behaviour at a funeral. Itami’s startingpoint lay in the concept of the manual. In modern Japanese society a manual is indispensable when embarking on anything new. If a new computer is bought the manual must be consulted first, and from Itami’s ironic viewpoint, people cannot even conduct a funeral ceremony without the appropriate manual. The popular comedian Takeshi Kitano made his de´but as the director of Sono otoko kyobo ni tsuki (‘Beware the brutal man’, 1989). From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, some TV stars and novelists made their own films as directors. Most of these films were amateurish and had no sense of film art, with the exception of the films of Takeshi Kitano. Since the mid-1980s, many of the major companies’ films had depended on manga (Japanese comics) as their story sources. By adapting the story of manga printed in weekly magazines, a certain measure of box-office profit is assured because of the already tremendous popularity of the story-line and characters. The power of manga is becoming nearly as influential as literature in Japanese cinema. However, there has yet to be a truly cinematic work based on a manga story. Animated films have been made in Japan since the silent years. As early as the mid-1910s some excellent animated films were completed, including Noburo Ofuji’s experimental series Chiyogami Anime. After the war Toei emphasized the production of feature-length animated films. Many animated films have been made for television in Japan, the majority for children. However, the situation changed in the 1980s, with feature-length animation for a broader audience being produced. One of the most important directors of this animation is Hayao Miyazaki, whose works, such as Tonari no Totoro (‘Totoro, the neighbourhood ghost’, 1988), constitute a definitive example of contemporary Japanese art. Until the 1970s cinema was in close collaboration with television. All the major companies were making television films in parallel with their theatrical releases. In

the 1980s the situation became more complicated on account of the diffusion of video. The film companies were the suppliers of films for television and the video market, but the more films the studios supply, the more the audiences are drawn away from the cinemas. Within a few months of its theatrical release, a film can be seen on the small screen, either on broadcast television or on videocassette. The videocassette extends the life and reputation of film classics, but the cheap rental fee of videos caused a decrease in the number of cinema patrons. The circulation of pornographic videos also struck a blow to the production of roman poruno. From the late 1980s Nikkatsu’s box-office profits were diminishing each year, and in 1993 Nikkatsu, the oldest film company in Japan, went bankrupt. In recent years several different genres have competed for popularity at the box-office. In the late 1980s, for example, films with animals in the leading roles enjoyed great success. Audiences also gathered to see the animation films of Hayao Miyazaki. Films that are made for a broad spectrum of the public, as well as films for children, are considered secure profitable subjects for the studios. It is true that some part of Japanese cinema has become infantile, but in order to attract audiences the film companies have been forced to produce such films. They made films using popular TV personalities to attract teenagers, the reverse of thirty years before, when people went to film theatres to see the actors who could not be seen on the television. The condition of Japanese cinema in the 1990s is still unhealthy, with cinema attendances low. There is a danger that theatrical Japanese cinema may disappear altogether. The Tora-san series and animated films for families are still a guaranteed source of profit, but the situation has become so difficult that film can no longer be produced with the creative freedom enjoyed by directors of the New Wave. Bibliography Anderson, Joseph L., and Richie, Donald (1982), The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Desser, David (1988), Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. Nolletti, Arthur, Jr., and Desser, David (eds.) (1992), Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre and History. Sato, Tadao, et al. (eds.) (1986), Koza Nihon Eiga, vols. vi and vii. Tanaka, Junichiro (1976), Nihon Eiga Hattatsu Shi, vols. iv and v.

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