Table Of ContentR E F R A M I N G
C I N E M A
A U T H O R S H I P
G E N R E
T O R Y
H I S
EDITED BY ARTHUR NOLLETTI, JR. AND DAVID DESSER
Reframing
Japanese
Cinema
Reframing
Japanese
Cinema
Authorship,
Genre,
History
Edited by
Arthur Nolletti, Jr.
and
David Desser
Indiana
University
Press
Bloomington
and
Indianapolis
© 1992 by Indiana University
Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be
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Manufactured in the United
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Library of Congress Catalog-
ing-in-Publication Data
Reframing Japanese cinema :
authorship, genre, history / ed
ited by
Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and Da
vid Desser.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical
references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-253-34108-6. —
ISBN 0-253-20723-1 (pbk.)
1. Motion pictures—Ja
pan. I. Nolletti, Arthur, date.
II. Desser, David.
PN1993.5.J3R44 1992
791.43'0952—dc20 91-33659
2 3 4 5 6 01 00 99 98 97
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Arthur Nolletti, Jr. Introduction ix
and David Desser
P A R T 1 ■ A U T H O R S H I P
Arthur Nolletti, Jr. Woman of the Mist and Gosho in the
1930s 3
Robert N. Cohen Why Does Oharu Faint? Mizoguchi’s
The Life of Oharu and Patriarchal
Discourse 33
David Desser I kirn: Narration as a Moral Act 56
Max Tessier Oshima Nagisa, or The Battered
Energy of Desire 69
Kathe Geist Narrative Strategies in Ozu’s Late
Films 91
Donald Richie The Inn Sequence from Ozu’s Late
Autumn 112
P A R T 2 ■ G E N R E
Lisa Spalding Period Films in the Prewar Era 131
VI Contents
David Desser Toward a Structural Analysis of the
Postwar Samurai Film 145
Keiko Iwai The Yakuza Film: An Introduction 165
McDonald
William B. Hauser Fires on the Plain: The Human Cost of
the Pacific War 193
Gregory Barrett Comic Targets and Comic Styles: An
Introduction to Japanese Film Comedy 210
P A R T 3 ■ H I S T O R Y
Komatsu Hiroshi Some Characteristics of Japanese
Cinema before World War I 229
J. L. Anderson Spoken Silents in the Japanese Cinema;
or, Talking to Pictures: Essaying the
Katsuben, Contexturalizing the Texts 259
Iwamoto Kenji Sound in the Early Japanese Talkies 311
David Bordwell A Cinema of Flourishes:
Japanese Decorative Classicism
of the Prewar Era 328
Selected Bibliography 347
Contributors 351
Index 354
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This anthology, like most critical studies, is first and foremost a communal
enterprise. It would be impossible to name all those who have participated in it
in some way or other, directly or indirectly. Yet the editors would be remiss not
to acknowledge those people and institutions without whom this book could
not have been realized. Our thanks to Allan Casebier for his astute reading of
the manuscript and, in particular, for the invaluable suggestions he made to
improve the introduction. Thanks, too, to the staff at Indiana University Press,
especially to Joan Catapano, for being an enormously helpful, sympathetic, and
expeditious editor. And special thanks to our fellow contributors, whose schol
arship and critical expertise were equaled only by their unwavering commitment
to the project.
David Desser would like to thank his colleagues and friends at the Unit for
Cinema Studies, University of Illinois: Edwin Jahiel, Director; Richard Leskosky,
Assistant Director; Lyn Petrie; and especially Debbie Drake. A special acknowl
edgment of the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study must also be
made. In Japan, David would like to thank Professor Hisakazu Kakeba and the
Faculty of Sociology at Kansai University for an invitation to spend a pleasant
summer in Osaka absorbing Japanese film and food. Also in Japan, he would like
to thank Mi-chan, Domen-kun, Chiharu-chan, and Senji Taniuchi. A special
thanks also to Victor Kobayashi, Dean of the Summer Session, University of
Hawaii at Manoa, for organizing “A Conference on Cinema as a Window on
Japanese Culture” in the summer of 1986, where this project found some of its
authors.
Arthur Nolletti, Jr. would like to thank a number of people for rendering
vital assistance. Ronnie Klein of the Framingham State College library staff
tracked down much-needed information. Tacey Miller and Sachiko Fuji Beck
most generously translated important research material from Japanese into En
glish. Kyoko Hirano helped obtain photographic stills, and as always shared her
vast knowledge of Japanese cinema. Arthur is also grateful to the following for
the often animated and invariably stimulating discussions he had with them:
Vili Acknowledgments
John Gillett, Kakehi Masanori, Victor Kobayashi, Sato Tadao, Shimizu Akira,
Tochigi Akira, Uegusa Keinosuke, his students at Farmingham State, and the
participants of the Gosho workshop at the University of Hawaii Summer Session
in June 1990 (an extra thanks to Victor Kobayashi for organizing this work
shop). Finally, Arthur is deeply indebted to Mitchell B. Fields, a superlative
friend and teacher; Arthur and Vera Nolletti, Sr., his parents; and, above all,
Diana, his wife, and Alexandra, his daughter. From beginning to end they pro
vided manifold support and encouragement, and made this book a part of their
lives.
The editors wish to express their thanks to the following sources for permis
sion to reprint articles:
Joseph Anderson’s “Spoken Silents in the Japanese Cinema; or, Talking to Pic
tures: Essaying the Katsuben> Contexturalizing the Texts” appeared in slightly
different form in Journal of Film and Video 40, 1 (Winter 1988).
David Desser’s “Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film” is a
revised version of an article that originally appeared in Quarterly Review of Film
Studies 8, 1 (Winter 1983).
Iwamoto Kenji’s article originally appeared in Japanese as “Talkie shoki no
hyogen” in Koza Nihon eiga (The Iwanami Japanese Cinema Series), Vol. 3
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1986).
Max Tessier’s article is a translation of “Nagisa Oshima, ou 1’énergie meurtrie du
désir,” which originally appeared in he Cinéma japonais au présent (Lherminier),
Winter 1979-80. Permission for translation and reprint rights were granted by
Editions des Quatre-Vents.
Stills for Gosho Heinosuke and Woman of the Mist reprinted by permission
of Kawakita Memorial Film Institute and Japan Society.
A note on name order and English titles: Name order appears in the Japanese
style, family name first and given name second. English titles used for Japanese
films represent the most common English-language usage, typically the release
title of the film, or the most frequently used translation title.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Since the 1950s, Japan has been a major force in international cinema. The
fact that Japan has also been the only non-Western nation to be, first, a leading
military power in the modern era and, second, a leading economic force in our
time, is not coincidental. For the motion picture has above all proven to be the
art of the twentieth century, the art of modern man, of scientific, technolo-
gized, dynamic Western man, and it has been Japan’s goal since the beginning of
the Meiji era (1868) to compete on every level with the West.
As has been the case throughout much of the long, dynamic history of
Japanese art and industry, the cinema entered Japan as a borrowing from else
where, in this case, the early French and American cinema. The Japanese were
fascinated by film on two levels: as an example of Western technology, and as a
priceless glimpse of these faraway but crucial cultures. Flistorians of the Japa
nese cinema report many instances of early film showings where the apparatus
itself, the projector, attracted as much interest as the images projected. Cinema
became very much a standard of value, associated as it was with the West, that
is, with the very latest in modern, scientific achievements.
But if Japan has proven a significant adapter, it is equally adept at originality,
so that cinema found its unique uses as well. As in France and the United States,
early filmmakers were attracted to the world around them, so that the common
place and the exotic in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo were quickly committed
to film. Film’s power as a documentary form also did not escape early Japanese
filmmakers, who turned their cameras to events of the day (often re-creating
these events, such as battles in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905). Most tellingly,
however, film was often paired with theater, not simply with theatrical sources
for film content (although that was common) but as part and parcel of a theatri
cal presentation. Thus, exterior locales of a Kabuki or a shimpa play (a revised,
“modernized” version of Kabuki) would be filmed beforehand and integrated
into the theatrical performance, with the actors frequently lip-synching the dia
logue from behind or beside the curtain on which the film was projected.
The theatrical model of film would have even more far-reaching effects,
