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Uploaded 1 November 2000

The September 1917 Katsudo no sekai (Movie World), containing probably one of the first attempts at a broad factual overview of the Japanese film industry, is a valuable resource to those studying the early Japanese film industry. For instance, in the corner of one page, the journal summarises the average budget of a four-reel, four-thousand foot shinpa or kyuha film (shinpa, literally “new school,” were the films set in the contemporary era and often based on the “contemporary” stage genre of the same name, while kyuha were “old school” period dramas). [2] In itemising the expenditures of a typical movie that would take four days and ¥2270 to make (in the conversion rate of those days, about US$4500), Katsudo no sekai lists some numbers that must strike some as curious:

Negative film:      ¥360
Positive film:        ¥360
Location costs:    ¥200
Costume/Props:  ¥350
Script:                    ¥100
Filming rights:    ¥150
General costs:      ¥650
Miscellaneous:    ¥100

According to the magazine, “filming rights” (satsuei shoninryo) was the gratuity paid to the “author” when filming one of his or her works; “general costs” included studio salaries and other costs and were calculated by considering the proportion of four days of work out of the studio’s monthly costs. But it is the figures for the cost of film stock that stand out, and not simply because the price for the two accounted for 32% of the total budget: note that the amount for negative and positive stock is the same. While Katsudo no sekai’s numbers must be taken with a grain of salt (they, for instance, probably did not take into account the slight difference in cost between positive and negative film at the time[3] ), they seem to reflect a film industry that not only rarely re-shot a scene, but considered making only one positive print from a negative the norm. This assumption about prints is backed up by other sources[4] : up until the early 1920s, Japanese studios rarely made more than one or two prints of a film. If a film had more prints than that, like the five of Ikeru shikabane (The Living Corpse, 1918), [5]  it was treated as a sign of success, not regular practice, one worth noting in movie journalism.

This fact can strike almost anyone with a basic knowledge of early film industry practice outside of Japan as odd. The first movie producers elsewhere made their money less by renting than by selling prints, and thus the mass production of prints was essential to business. Even after film exchanges helped make rentals more central to industry commerce, multiple prints were a matter of course for an increasingly international business with prints traveling all over the country and the world. Theorists like Walter Benjamin in Germany and Gonda Yasunosuke in Japan focused on the technological potential of the moving pictures to fundamentally change conceptions of art (for instance, “aura” and “originality”). Why then did the Japanese film industry go against what seemed to be not only common business practice, but the capacity of the technology?

One print in the age of mechanical reproduction could potentially be an example of those “idiosyncrasies” that have served as fodder for studies of Japanese cinema both inside and outside Japan. The most famous “idiosyncrasy” is the benshi, that apparent anachronism whose existence well into the 1930s has, in the work of Noël Burch, Joseph Anderson, and others, been a marker of difference that guides explorations of the cultural contrasts between Japan and the West. While the ways scholars have used these idiosyncrasies vary, the tendency has been, for instance with Burch and Donald Richie, to have them represent the cultural uniqueness of Japan and its cinema rooted in cultural tradition. That trend, however, often obscures specific historic industrial factors as well as the precise conflicts over forming the modern nation – and thus “a culture”. In this paper, I would like to use the idiosyncrasy of one print in the age of mechanical reproduction to elaborate historical appropriations of mechanical reproduction in a specific context and thus explore the relations of industry and culture in a modernising Japan. In doing so, I will investigate the problem of one print less as a form of cultural resistance against modernity than as an articulation of cinema as event through an alternative, hybrid form of modernity that problematised the contemporary formation of the nation. This case can thus provide a fascinating example to those studying early cinema of not only the particular historical problems of structuring the nation and the modern in a non-Western context subject to the pressures of universalisation and globalism, but also of the varied, local articulations between industry and culture that shape cinematic experience. I will structure my discussion by considering how the three fields of economy, power, and culture offer various explanations for this seemingly aberrant practice.

Economy

One of the economic impetuses behind the development of technological means of reproduction was the capitalist pursuit of cost reduction, labour savings, and rational efficiency, conditions that in the motion picture world led not only to the mass production of prints, but to the creation of styles and forms of story-telling conducive to Fordist production. The Japanese film industry’s practice of one print in the 1910s seems to go against such modes of economic rationalism, a suspicion that is initially justified by a look at the numbers.

If we accept Katsudo no sekai‘s figures as reasonably accurate for the time, [6]  it is clear that film costs accounted for a major portion of the budget in the late 1910s. It would only take striking six more prints for a film’s budget to double. This was largely due to the fact that the price of film stock, which was a wholly imported product (and would remain so until Fuji began domestically producing 35mm film in the mid-1930s), rose dramatically after the start of World War I. It was also a reflection of the fact that, with an industry limited in production facilities (Tenkatsu, for instance, still did its filming on a rickety open-air stage) and without an established star system (with most being third-rate travelling players, actor salaries were relatively low), other elements in the budget were not costly. But while the rise of the price of film may help explain why prints were not mass produced, [7] it does not account for the practice of only one print: that existed from before the war.

Scarcity of film, which was occasionally lamented in the trade journals, could have also served to check the large production of prints, but as a cause it does not quite square with the contemporary volume of production. From the mid-1910s, most Japanese theatres changed their bills once a week or once every ten days, and showed programs averaging sixteen reels (about four hours long), composed of one foreign film, one shinpa or kyuha and several comedy or actuality shorts. [8] Although foreign movies were in the majority, Japanese studios still had to produce a considerable number of titles to keep up with the pace. In 1918, Nikkatsu’s Mukojima studio (specializing in shinpa films) was making four to five pictures a month and Nikkatsu’s Daishogun studio in Kyoto (for kyuha) about seven to eight, which for just one company amounts to about eleven to thirteen titles a month – most about 4000 feet in length. [9]  Amidst this flood of products, Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu took a variety of measures to save costs, ranging from rereleasing old films either as is or under new titles, or “remaking” films by using old footage and just adding a few newly shot scenes. One must wonder why it wouldn’t have been more cost efficient to organise distribution such that a few more prints at ¥360 a piece could substitute for producing an entirely new ¥2270 film.

Financial instability also seems not to have been a factor. Even though Nikkatsu would continue to be plagued by the debts it incurred in its inception, when four companies were merged in 1912 to form a “trust,” after the initial shock of the increase in film costs had passed, and the wartime economy began to boom, the companies after 1915 were reporting phenomenal profits: Nikkatsu in the first half of 1918 reporting a gross profit of ¥185,155.03 on inlays of 1,250,243.45 (14.8%),[10] and Tenkatsu a gross profit of ¥227,436.84 on an income of ¥292,431.13 (an amazing 77.8%!) for the same term. [11]  One could speculate that the preference of a new film over extra prints of an existing one was the product of a luxury mind-set brought on by excess profits, but given that Nikkatsu gained these profits in part by engaging in such notorious practices as cranking at eight frames per second or selling worn-out films to fairground dealers who would cut them up and peddle them one frame a piece to fans, these studios were not known for their largess.

One economic factor behind the low number of prints may lie in the structure of the exhibition circuit. Both Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu possessed large theatre chains, with Nikkatsu having about 247 and Tenkatsu 134 at the end of 1918, [12] but neither owned many of those theatres. Although each company had different ways of categorising its relationships with chain theatres, in general cinemas were divided between chokuei (directly operated), tokuyaku (special contract), and buai (percentage) houses. With chokuei, which need not have been directly owned, the studio had to pay all the costs, but in exchange could take in all the proceeds. Tokuyaku houses were owned by others, who contracted with the company to show only company-distributed films – in essence, this was a block-booking contract. The theatre owner paid a set amount each month for a guaranteed supply of films, but the studio had to bear the cost for at least the projectionist and one clerk (to make sure the company wasn’t being cheated), and sometimes the benshi and the projector. With buai theatres, the theatre owner usually bore all the costs (although companies would still send a clerk to check receipts) and simply paid a percentage to the movie company (50-50, 40-60, 60-40 were the usual options). Importantly, tokuyaku far outnumbered the other kinds of houses – accounting, for instance, for 146 of Nikkatsu’s 247 chain theatres (what Nikkatsu called kyodo and chintai houses) – but in this period provided the least income: only ¥136,217.750 (10.9%) of Nikkatsu’s total income of ¥1,250,243.450 in the first half of 1918, a figure less than half of the ¥345,370.115 in income Nikkatsu’s 65 buai houses generated. [13] Clearly chokuei houses, while being the fewest in number, brought in on average the most income for the company, with Nikkatsu’s 36 theatres in 1918 providing ¥684,777.610 (54.8%) in inlays, or ¥19021.6 per theatre for a six-month term. Whether chokuei houses were the most profitable is another matter, considering the company had to bear all the costs. The fact Japanese studios refrained from maintaining more than a few dozen chokuei houses until the late 1930s indicates that only the small number of central urban cinemas were profitable enough to be maintained as chokuei. This is possibly due to the reality that Japanese theatres in the silent era, while on average large, also maintained sizeable staffs sometimes numbering over seventy. Given these conditions, it is conceivable that the small number of prints was a factor of the fact that, the more prints were made, the more they had to run at theatres that were less profitable. Making a limited number of prints and concentrating them at their better grossing houses before sending them on to second-run theatres made good economic sense.

This, however, does not explain why the companies made only one or two prints. Nikkatsu, after all, had far more chokuei houses and chain theatres than that. The structure of the exhibition circuits thus provides only one element in why the number of prints was small, but it, like the other economic determinants mentioned here, does not sufficiently account for such an absolutely low number. For this, we have to combine the economic factors with a consideration of the power structure in the industry.

Power: exhibition over production

It is interesting to compare the average return between tokuyaku and buai theatres. Using the Nikkatsu numbers from above, the difference between the two is clear: an average of ¥933 per tokuyaku theatre versus 5313 per buai house. The gap is almost too wide to believe: given that the average tokuyaku rental rate was ¥300 a month, one would imagine a figure closer to 1800 for this six-month term. Perhaps theatres themselves deducted the salaries of those sent from the company before paying rentals. Nonetheless it is true that for Nikkatsu, buai income exceeded that from tokuyaku theatres for the first twelve years of its existence. The reasons are complex, but one has to do with the fact that buai houses were generally less powerful theatres in the countryside and so could not demand lower rental fees. [14] Conversely, companies could not exact more from tokuyaku theatres precisely because they did not have a dominant position at the bargaining table. Tokuyaku contracts involved block-booking, but they could be broken easily (for a penalty), and it seems many were: although Nikkatsu was formed in 1912 as a supposed monopoly, upstarts like Tenkatsu and later Kobayashi Shokai had little problem in acquiring theatres (albeit not always in the best places) because of the relative freedom of choice theatre owners had. [15] Allegiance of theatre owners to a company was thus weak: it was not uncommon for an owner of two or more theatres, like Ono Keiji who ran the Daiichi Kofu-kan and Daini Kofu-kan in Kofu, Yamanashi, to have each contract with a different company. [16]

The struggle for dominance between producers and exhibitors is certainly one of the central issues in early Western film history, but it remains a crucial framework for narrating the structural transformations in Japanese industry history even after World War II. In general, one can argue that in the Japanese film industry strong exhibitors dominated weak producers up until the 1950s. [17] The reasons for this are multi-fold. One is the fact, stressed by Naoki Sanjugo in his critiques of the industry in the 1920s, [18] that regardless of the amount of capital companies reported, they were actually capital-poor, a condition that made them vulnerable to the demands of the more monied exhibition interests. Second, there is the reality that, partially due to prolonged police regulation of theatre construction (which started from the Edo era – for kabuki theatres – and continued with varying degrees of restriction until World War II),there were far fewer theatres per capita than in other major film producing nations; the houses that did exist thus tended to be sizeable enterprises that could use that as leverage against the capital-weak producers. [19] Third, and most importantly, there is the reality that most of Japan’s early film producers were exhibitors who began making films simply in order to fill their programming. Although Yoshizawa Shoten was originally a supplier of photographic equipment, Yokota Shokai, M. Pathe, and Fukuhodo, while possibly obtaining their capital from elsewhere, were all at first exhibition companies; exhibitors, or those who started out as exhibitors, like Yokota Einosuke, Kobayashi Kisaburo, and Yamakawa Yoshitaro, continued to dominate later companies like Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu. The production studios themselves, more than being companies creating a product to sell on the market, or factories producing commodities for their sales outlets, the theatres, were like subcontractors hired by exhibitors to maintain film supply, a tendency that would colour the film industry until well into the 1930s. This relationship was reflected in at least two dimensions: the power of individual theatres and the loose structure of the film companies.

First, in the 1910s, it was quite common to see individual theatres, usually the flagship houses of a company, specifically order the production of films. This was not simply a case with theatres running rensageki, the “chain-drama” combination of scenes acted out on stage with those presented in film, which by definition could only be made for a theatre and its resident acting troupe. For instance, the tokuyaku Taishokan in Asakusa specifically ordered kyuha films from Tenkatsu’s Nippori studio; on average three films a month were made for that theatre. [20] Benshi in such cinemas were also known to write up or suggest film stories. Seemingly then, relations between producers and exhibitors were such that one 1200-seat theatre in the central location of Asakusa like the Taishokan – a theatre not even owned by the company – could dictate over half of what the Nippori studio produced.

This was possible in part because film companies in the 1910s were not centrally organised entities that dominated over the individuals in them. It might strike some as odd that Nikkatsu, which was formed by buying up Yoshizawa, Yokota, M. Pathe, and Fukuhodo, did not also as a result acquire the Asian rights to Kinemacolor, even though Fukuhodo had bought those rights and applied for a Japanese patent well before it agreed to the merger. One can speculate that this was only possible because Fukuhodo’s employees, whether legally or illegally, had power over the rights that the company itself did not. [21] Most other companies were like that. On the one hand, this character facilitated the kind of one-man businesses that were prominent in the industry until World War II; on the other, it often meant that companies had little central control over the powerful individuals within it, especially when they had strong ties to exhibitors. For better or for worse, the Japanese film industry was far from being a business run on modern accounting and centralised management principles: money was – and sometimes still is – handled in a donburi kanjo manner (where precise books are not kept and fooling with the figures is a persistent problem); fraud and cheating was not uncommon; and relationships with organised crime often influenced the status of individuals, theatres, and companies.

A good example of this kind of de-centralised, if not unorganised, company is Tenkatsu. [22] A year and a half after it was formed in March 1914, the company effectively subcontracted out its operations to Kobayashi and Yamakawa, two power-brokers who either owned or had influence over many central theatres (Kobayashi in Tokyo, Yamakawa in Osaka). The two resigned from Tenkatsu’s board but effectively ran the company from behind, being in charge of both production and exhibition. After a year, Kobayashi, always the maverick lone wolf, pulled out of the contract to start Kobayashi Shokai, but Yamakawa, more conservatively calculating, remained in Tenkatsu even after the contract ended, essentially ruling autonomously over the company’s Osaka operations. Although Tenkatsu had an Osaka branch office, which was located in the office of Kada Shokai, a company owned by Kada Kinzaburo, a powerful financial backer of Tenkatsu, there was a separate chokueibu (directly operated theatre office) which was located in Yamakawa’s home and was largely independent of the branch office. The branch office handled film rentals for tokuyaku and buai theatres west of Nagoya, but the chokueibu was in charge of the chokuei houses in the region – most of which were owned or operated by Yamakawa. Importantly, the Osaka studio was under the jurisdiction not of the branch office, but of the chokueibu. At first, the studio was on the grounds of the country villa of a relative of Yamamatsu Yujiro, a powerful Osaka exhibitor close to Yamakawa, before a new one was completed in January 1917. Even after that, the studio essentially concentrated on producing films for Yamakawa’s theatres, especially rensageki for the Rakutenchi. [23]

Given this example of how exhibitors exerted considerable control over production companies, it is less difficult to understand why only one or two prints of each film were being made. When a single theatre or its owner was powerful enough to order a film from a company, or to exert influence over production, the production of other prints that could be shown at other houses at the same time was out of the question. Even figures like Yamakawa or Kobayashi, who had control over several theatres, were not likely to demand more prints for their own theatres, first because both were involved with rensageki, itself a form that required only one print, and second, because the power of their individual theatres, and the hierarchy of exhibition, depended largely on location (Tokyo’s Asakusa being the prime spot) and status as a fukirikan (less a “first-run” than a “premiere” theatre) – that is, as a theatre which was the only one to show certain films first.

Culture

A consideration of the structure of power in the industry does much to help us understand the background of one print in the age of mechanical reproduction, but it should be clear that the realm of culture – the meanings attached to these practices – has already entered the picture. The power of certain exhibitors, for instance, was based not only on their economic strength or influence on production companies, but also in an audience practice of placing value upon seeing unique films first at fukirikan in special locations like Asakusa or Sennichimae. [24] While it is difficult, given the paucity of primary source materials that still limits research on early Japanese film history, to locate evidence to elaborate on these spectator attitudes, contemporary magazines do offer indications of the importance of the local fukiri house. The value of fukiri status, for instance, is evident from theatre ads that promoted film programs as not yet being shown anywhere else in Japan, while the importance of single theatres is apparent from trade journals, such as the early Kinema rekodo, that introduced less the recent films than the new bills showing at particular houses. Magazines would continue to print introductions to famous theatres into the 1920s, emphasising their atmosphere and unique programming. Sections in Kinema rekodo and other journals, usually supplied by local fans, reported in every issue on conditions in cities away from Tokyo, often lamenting the time it took films to reach their towns, while also emphasising, for better or for worse, local differences in programming, benshi, audiences, and theatre conditions.

This emphasis on the cinematic experience as local, as a form of event or performance, was more visibly associated with institutions such as the benshior rensageki, but I would argue it was also reinforced by the industrial practice of producing only one print of a film. Films in 1910s Japan retained some of their aura as unique objects, as originals that could be viewed anywhere only in a certain time and place. We, however, should take care when attempting to theorise this culturally.

It would not be hard to consider the practice of making only one print as part of an effort to appropriate cinema within pre-modern cultural traditions such as kabuki, joruri, or other performance or narrative traditions. This echoes Burch’s point, but other scholars like Anderson and Komatsu Hiroshi have also emphasised how the benshi, for instance, carried on traditions of verbal narration, in part, as with kowairo renditions of kyuha films, to perfect an illusion of kabuki theatre. [25] I hesitate, however, to call this practice “traditional” or “pre-modern.” While I believe this research tells us much about the textual relationship between benshi and film, or even between benshi and audience, it has to be contextualised within both larger industrial and exhibition practices and contemporary discourses on class and the nation. I would argue that, far from representing the traditional culture of the nation, the practice of one print represents a hybridity which renders problematic notions of culture and nation itself within the modern.

Consider first the critical discourses generated around the practice of making only one print. Kinema rekodo, from soon after the journal’s inception, was editorialising against the practice on basically two fronts: industrial and national. First, the problem of one print was cited within a discourse calling for modernisation of the industry. In several editorials, the practice was taken as an example of an industry that failed to rationally distinguish the roles of production, distribution, and exhibition, and instead allowed exhibition to rule over the rest. [26] That failure was in part related to differences in class. Showman-like exhibitors (note the frequent use of the epithets “kogyoshi” or “yashi” – the latter literally meaning “charlatan”) were seen as different in taste and world view from producers, not only catering to the lowest denominator, but also lacking the modern business acumen of the new industrialist. I have noted that this picture was not without foundation – people like Yamakawa did not exactly fit in high society – but to attack the practice of one print was to attack a wide range of industrial methods which were seen as crass, vulgar, and unfitting a rising industrialised nation, an assault that was not unrelated to contemporary criticisms of dirty and smelly theatres, bare-chested labourer spectators, or audience tastes as being those of children and nursemaids. [27] Eliminating the practice was then one part of a larger effort to not only institute a clear division of labour in the industry, introducing to Japan such new independent businesses as “renters” and distributors, but also reverse the existing power structure in light of modern commercial practice and capitalist society. The reformer Kaeriyama Norimasa’s model for the film business was the publishing industry, where publishers/studios would create the product that was distributed to the readers/spectators, leaving it such that “exhibitors are retail book stores”.[28]

The problem, however, was not simply industrial. The first mentions of the one print practice in Kinema rekodo go alongside discussions of foreign-made films featuring stories “set” in Japan. Criticising these works, the editors lamented an industry that, far from eyeing the international market by mass producing prints, could not even make more than one print for its home market. By their reasoning, prints had to be reproduced so that truer images of Japan could be sent abroad and understood. In a related argument, that meant, however, that Japanese films must abandon such practices as having the benshi bear narrative information, and adopt the international language of cinema already found in the globally successful films of Hollywood and Europe. Both the mass production of images and the adoption of a universal language were thus, in some ways paradoxically, seen as the means by which Japanese cinema could represent the nation – in effect become a national cinema expressing a national culture.

In the eyes of intellectual reformers, then, industry practices such as making only one print were representative, first, of a business culture that was economically unsound and socially vulgar, and second, of a form of local experience that did not further the interests of national or universal culture. Given this criticism, there is the temptation to term the persistence of these kinds of practices as then a sign of resistance against such class-based efforts to modernise the nation. One wonders, for instance, whether this situation is not similar to that in Québéc described by Germain Lacasse. Lacasse argues that the longevity of the lecturer (bonimenteur) in more plebeian venues was a sign of local resistance against both the dominant high culture that criticised them and the universal pretensions of cinema. [29] The situation in Japan in the 1910s does resemble that which Lacasse details in Québéc, to the extent that divisions between class-related cultures overlapped with the opposition between the local and the national/international spheres. However, there are crucial differences which make one hesitate to call the practice of one print a form of resistance. First, while reformers of a socially higher class did strongly criticise these localising practices, they were in the minority: it was the culture of the benshi narrating solely existing prints that was the dominant one in the Japanese film world (though one that would come under increasing pressure towards the end of the decade, not just from reformers, but from censorship officials). Second, I still think there is insufficient evidence that any of these practices like the benshi or making one print were operating specifically in opposition to other practices. Komatsu Hiroshi has brought forth evidence of audience discourse that defended such institutions as the onnagata against the attacks of reformers, in part by using nation-based reasoning (that is, that practices such as the onnagata are good for Japanese while those promoted by the reformers are good for Westerners). [30] But while he rightly notes that the presence of such discourses indicates a multiplicity of conceptions about cinema at the time, when he uses the term teiko (resistance, opposition) in describing these discourses, he does not relate them to any culture-wide hegemonic linking and thus does not show them to be anything more than cases of individual defence. It has yet to be sufficiently argued that the institutions themselves were, in conjunction with modes of reception, specifically operating in opposition to Western film cultural practices.

There are several reasons for arguing that such forms of opposition were unlikely. To begin with, non-Japanese films were still in the majority numerically and were not yet subject to any significant nationalist discourse rejecting their presence or influence (this would only become significant after 1920 in reaction to the Yellow Scare in the United States. A discourse resisting Western film culture would only coalesce in the 1930s in conjunction with the rise of militarism). The greater part of film programs were a mixture of Japanese and Western movies, and thus the latter could not be easily avoided by viewers. [31] This then cautions us about concluding that, because benshi working with a shinpa or kyuha film may have depended upon Japanese narrating traditions, the spectators were engaging in a cinematic experience rendered traditionally Japanese. While they might have expected the benshi to fill in for the image in a kyuha film, they were perfectly well enjoying another, possibly different kind of semiotic experience with the Western film that invariably played before or afterwards. No research has yet shown that there were discourses existing within reception that clearly demarcated these experiences and marked any as non- or anti-foreign.

The same is true with the issue of the modern. While it is certain that traditional stories, narrative structures, acting styles, and forms of verbal narration were being used by the films and the benshi that were narrating them, sometimes to the extent that kyuha films were being presented like traditional theatre, they were often being offered on the same bill with Charlie Chaplin or Pearl White; at a speed unlike that of kabuki; in a space darker than any kabuki hall; with benches in a building with, especially in Asakusa, a Western architectural style; and in amusement centres like Asakusa that featured not only neon, noise, and the mass, anonymous urban crowd, but also Asakasa Opera and other Westernised entertainments. In other words, the cinematic experience as a whole in Japan was still participating in some of the modern transformations of time, space, and perception that have been noted of film in Western nations – and which Gonda Yasunosuke claimed as early as 1914 in his writings on film in Japan. [32]

The fact that only one print was made does imply that film culture in 1910s Japan was less subject to the destruction of the aura of the art object, but it does not mean that this practice was either pre- or anti-modern. Rather, I would contend it was situated in a more complex temporality, mixing modern and pre-modern elements. This included an alternative or competing modern experience occasioned less by massification and Fordism than by the combinations made possible by new technologies and forms of transportation: the unique experience of spatial juxtapositions and mixtures occasioned by international commerce and the photographic image; the new flows and encounters concomitant with the urban crowd and mass transport; the hybridity that arises in a country rapidly transforming in an imperialist world system. Spectators who went to see early film stars like Onoe Matsunosuke or Tachibana Teijiro probably did enjoy the pseudo-theatricality of their kyuha and shinpa films, but they also were attracted to the mixtures of films, people, spaces, and, in some ways, temporalities of which these works were only a part.

The best way to understand this culture of combination is to recall that what disturbed reformers about contemporary Japanese cinema and its industry was not as much its non-cinematicity as its hybridity. The appellation jun’eiga (pure film) underlines their advocacy of non-mixture, one defined less as a modernist pursuit of cinematic essence, than a modern advocacy of rationalised divisions and orders. The prospect of cinema imitating theatre, of films being shown between theatrical acts (rensageki), of silent images being spoken for by a benshi, of male actors playing women, of Japanese films playing with Western ones, of a mechanical reproductive technology being used to make only one print – all these implied border crossings that upset the rational organisation of perception, experience, and meaning production. They were, however, precisely what many audiences in Japan in the 1910s preferred.

The practice of making one print provides an interesting focal point for analysing these issues. On the one hand, a one-print film, by not having a transcendental – national or transnational – character through reproduction (where it is the same in different places at the same time), becomes easier to mix and manipulate at the local level because it had no competing existence “elsewhere.” At the same time, it truly made that mixture an event because no other space could have that same component at that time. Advertising and modes of exhibition made audiences aware of the singularity of the event such that, even if one cannot prove how conscious spectators were of the lack of other prints, the combination of few prints with recognised local and regional differences in benshi style, program length, social mileu, programming, and other factors helped shape modes of reception that had unique and local dimensions.

On the other hand, the uniqueness of the text provided a check on the total chaos mixture could bring. It has been said that the practice of the benshi undermined text-based meaning because two benshi in different theatres showing the film at the same time could offer different meanings. That, however, was largely untrue because films were rarely subject to different readings at the same time. From week to week, a film’s meaning could shift, as it was combined with different benshi, different theatres, and different programs, but for any given time, its status was relatively secure in a unique local combination of reception factors. One print enabled a film to belong to a local space for a time as a singular entity, and thus while it helped local theatres provide unique mixtures, it managed that hybridity by making it more intimate and possibly more human.

Its localism, however, did not make the practice of one print sit well with those attempting to construct a national culture or cinema. Whether it represented a form of resistance to these nation builders is a matter worth pursuing, but in the least it represented the fact that Japanese popular entertainment culture had not been rendered national as of the 1910s. Yet just as the benshi, onnagata, rensageki, and canned theatre came under attack from reformist critics as well as government and educational elites, the practice of one print was subject to reform as industry practices changed in the 1920s. The fact that new studios like Shochiku and Taikatsu announced their intention to aim for the international market – an aim one must admit was never realised – signalled their desire to move away from one print culture and enter the realm of a national cinema operating through universal forms of signification and industrial rationality. It was at this time that companies actually began producing more than one print as a matter of regular business practice.

Yet just as the benshi took a long time to disappear (although the institution was subject to change and reform in the meantime), the number of prints would stay low until World War II as studios still persisted in opting for mass production of titles over mass production of prints. [33] This persistence of the local – of cultural and industrial hybridity – was probably one reason cinema would remain socially inferior in the eyes of government and cultural elites; its practices, after all, did not represent the nation well. And it also provides a background for why, after the Film Law in 1939, the attempt to construct a nationalist cinema was conjoined with an industrial reform aimed at reducing the number of titles and increasing the number of prints. [34] If one accepts that the material conditions for the formation of a cinema capable of serving a national “imagined community” include a centralised, top-down industrial structure; the availability of theatres for most of the populace; a large number of prints for each film; and a film language understandable not only by the national citizenry but by non-citizens (who then recognise those films as a product of that nation), I would argue that most of these conditions were only met in Japan during and after World War II. Only after this time was a Japanese national cinema finally mechanically reproduced.

Footnotes:

[1] A shorter version of this paper was delivered in English at the Society of Cinema Studies, Chicago, Illinois, on 10 March 2000. A Japanese version, “Fukusei gijutsu jidai no wan purinto,” was later given to the Nihon Eigashi Kenkyukai at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 25 April 2000. I would like to thank the participants of both sessions for their questions and comments.
[2] “Shin-kyuha eiga no satsuei nissu to satsuei hiyo,” Katsudo no sekai 2, no.9 (September 1917): 55
[3] The June 1917 Katsudo no sekai gives the price per foot as 8.5 sen for negative and 7.8 sen for positive: “Honpo ni okeru hirumu no yunyu to kako,” Katsudo no sekai 2, no.6 (June 1917): 32. Note that such numbers underline the fact that for a 4000 foot film, very little film was shot that was not used (4000 x 7.8 = 31200 sen or ¥312).
[4] For instance, Tanaka Jun’ichiro quotes the pioneer director Makino Shozo describing the practice in the days of Yokota Shokai (before 1912) in Nihon eiga hattatsushi vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1975), 176; and the editorial “Obei gekidan to Toyo no geki” laments the same practice in 1914: Kinema rekodo 2, no.9 (March 1914): 2-3
[5] “Mukojima satsueijo kenkyu,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.10 (October 1918): 29. The article does not mention whether the extra prints were made at the time of the film’s release or later, after the film’s success.
[6] Even Katsudo no sekai would give different numbers in 1918 in its more specific reviews of Nikkatsu (in October) and Tenkatsu (in December). They, however, still confirmed the fact that the cost of film stock accounted for a significant portion of the budget.
[7] The increase in price is one reason Tenkatsu, which was founded in order to produce films in Japan using Charles Urban’s Kinemacolor process, abandoned producing Kinemacolor pictures, since the process used twice as much film as a regular camera.
[8] In August 1918, Katsudo no sekai reported twelve-reel programs as the norm for high-class theatres, sixteen for lower ranking city and Japanese-film-centered cinemas, and phenomenal five to six hour programs (up to twenty-four reels!) as the fad in Osaka and the countryside. “Naigai katsudo josetsukan no bangumi,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.8 (August 1918): 30-31.
[9] See “Nikkatsu Kyoto satsueijo kenkyu” (34) and “Mukojima satsueijo kenkyu” (27) in Katsudo no sekai 3, no.10 (October 1918).
[10] Nikkatsu yonjunen-shi (Tokyo: Nikkatsu Kabushiki Kaisha, 1952).
[11] “Tenkatsu Kaisha no genjo,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918): 8.
[12] See “Nikkatsu no genjo,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.10 (October 1918):11; and “Tenkatsu Kaisha no enkaku,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918): 4.
[13] “Nikkatsu no genjo”, 11.
[14] One other reason is the fact that two of Nikkatsu’s top theatres, Tokyo’s Chiyoda-kan and Osaka’s Ashibe Kurabu, were buai houses. Thus not all buai theatres were less-powerful rural houses.
[15] Katsudo no sekai uses the case of Kobayashi , which was able to acquire some fifty theatres within a year of its inception, to illustrate the weakness of other producers and the mobility of theatres: “Eigyojo ni okeru josetsukan to kaisha to no kankei,” Katsudo no sekai 2, no.9 (September 1917): 68
[16] See “Zenkoku katsudo shashin josetsukan ichiranhyo,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.8 (August 1918): 84.
[17] This observation is echoed both by contemporary critics of the industry (for instance, Kinema rekodo‘s editorial “Kaku arubeki katsudokai,” Kinema rekodo 20 (February 1915): 2) and later historians (see Tanaka, 225). Imamura Kanae, following Shibata Yoshio, cites the post-World War II democratisation of stock holdings as one of the crucial factors enabling production to free itself economically of the demands of exhibitors: Imamura, Eiga sangyo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1960), 64; Shibata, Eiga no keizagaku (Toyohashi-shi: Eigakai Kenkyujo, 1954), 13.
[18] See, for instance, Naoki Sanjugo, “Nihon eiga oyobi eigakai,” in Naoki Sanjugo zenshu vol. 31 (Tokyo: Kaizosha, 1935), 208-216.
[19] This situation changed after World War II when inflation sparked a boom in the construction of theatres, which were now less regulated. The resulting surplus of theatres, putting suppliers in the better bargaining position, was another factor in enabling producers to finally dominate over exhibitors. See Imamura, 152.
[20] See “Tenkatsu Nippori kyuha satsueijo kenkyu,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918): 14.
[21] Technically, Nikkatsu did not end up with Kinemacolor because Fukuhodo had bought the rights secretly and did not reveal that to Nikkatsu. But that must mean that the rights were purchased not by the corporate entity “Fukuhodo” which was bought by Nikkatsu, but by the individuals who ended up using it later in Tenkatsu.
[22] For more on Tenkatsu, see Hiroshi Komatsu, “From natural colour to the pure motion picture drama: the meaning of Tenkatsu Company in the 1910s of Japanese film history,” Film History 7, no.1 (1995): 69-86.
[23] See “Tenkatsu Osaka satsueijo,” Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918): 20-23.
[24] This value was not just ascribed to Japanese films. The term “fukiri” was first attributed to imported films shown just after being unloaded from the boat and unpacked or unsealed (fukirareta). In general, there was usually only one print of foreign films as well.
[25] See J. L. Anderson, “Spoken silents in the Japanese cinema; or talking to pictures: essaying, the Katsuben, contexturalizing the texts,” in Arthur Noletti, Jr. and David Desser, eds, Re-framing Japanese Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 259-311; and Komatsu Hiroshi and Frances Loden, “Mastering the mute image: the role of the benshi in Japanese cinema,” Iris 22 (Autumn 1996): 33-52.
[26] See “Kaku aru beki katsudokai,” 2; and “Kaku aru beki katsudokai (shozen),” Kinema rekodo 21 (March 1915): 2.
[27] For more on the class issues involved in film reform in the 1910s, see my Ph.D. dissertation, “Writing a pure cinema: articulations of early Japanese film” (University of Iowa, 1996).
[28]Kaeriyama Norimasa, “Katsudo shashin no shakaiteki chii oyobi sekimu,” Kinema rekodo 41 (November 1916): 479
[29]See Germain Lecasse, “Du bonimenteur québécois comme pratique résistante,” Iris 22 (Autumn 1996): 53-66
[30] Komatsu Hiroshi, “Hisutoriogurafi to gainen no fukususei: Taikatsu o rekishikasuru tame ni,” Eigagaku 13 (1999): 2-11.
[31] In the mid-1910s, a small number of “high-class” urban theatres began offering foreign-film-only programs, partially in response to the desire of some audiences to avoid the vulgar Japanese fare. In this way, the manner by which Western films were shown at certain venues could serve as a marker of social divisions within Japan.
[32] Gonda, for instance, saw in film the end of art as “quiet, excellent, calm, rare, unique, or the non-practical” and the beginning of a beauty that is “mobile, stupendous, majestic, organised, and practical”: Gonda Yasunosuke, Katsudo shashin no genri oyobi oyo (Tokyo: Uchida Rokakuho, 1914), 453. For my analysis of his conception of film, see “Gonda Yasunosuke to kankyaku no eiga bunmei,” Media-shi kenkyu 10 (2000) (forthcoming).
[33] While Home Ministry censorship records show an average of five to ten prints for films in the 1930s, by the late 1930s, the industry as a whole was producing over five hundred titles a year, a figure that in some years made it the top producer in the world. This was not a source of pride for industry observers and government regulators, who considered the overproduction of such cheap films a sign of the backwardness of the industry.
[34] During the war, government officials used both the Film Law and their monopoly over film stock to consolidate the industry, reduce the number of films made, and increase the quantity of prints. The September 1941 agreement between regulators and the industry that merged the ten existing companies into three also stipulated a total production rate for the industry of six films a month, with thirty prints per film (doubling the then average figure)