Alexander Jacoby,
A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day.
Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, California, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1933330 53 2
US$22.95 (pb)
398pp
Aaron Gerow,
A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan.
Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2008
ISBN: 9 781929280 52 0
US$22.00 (pb)
130pp
The English-language literature on Japanese cinema has in recent years benefited from the arrival of a new generation of scholars with bilingual (if not multilingual) skills. These scholars include Japanese men and women with American doctorates in film studies who now work in American universities, such as Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Daisuke Miyao, and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano; and American and English film scholars with fluency and literacy in the Japanese language, following long residence there, such as Mark Nornes, Aaron Gerow and Alexander Jacoby. These young scholars are not only conversant with the academic debates in cultural studies and cinema studies; they are also assiduous researchers of Japanese archives, and have unearthed a wealth of material hitherto unavailable to film scholars outside Japan. As a result, they have often been led to question the pronouncements and interpretations of the older generation of film scholars who did not speak or read Japanese and did not value Japanese film theory or criticism.
Both books under discussion here should find a place in the private libraries of all film fans and film scholars. However, they are very different. Jacoby’s book is a survey book, a comprehensive guide to Japanese (live-action) film directors from the silent period to the present day. It lists many past and present directors unknown or little known in the West. Because the literature on Japanese film has tended to concentrate attention on a few great masters, this is a very useful book, providing full filmographies for each director, with a concise summary of their careers, major films, central concerns, strengths and weaknesses. In the appendices, Jacoby also provides a glossary of Japanese terms, notes on the major Japanese film production companies and periods of Japanese history, a select bibliography and an index of names. Because it is written in plain English, eschewing academic jargon and detailed formal analysis, his book is accessible to a non-specialist readership and could be marketed as a coffee-table book. Gerow’s book, on the other hand, is an academic monograph on one silent film classic, which documents and analyses the conditions of its production, exhibition, promotion and reception, and concludes with a textual analysis of the film. As the silent film under discussion is not in wide circulation, this monograph has a more limited market, restricted to Japanese Studies specialists and film scholars; but, as the film has exerted a fascination on those privileged to view it, and incited some very intelligent film critics and theorists to extol its virtues and offer interpretations of it, the book should find a small but appreciative niche market.
A Page of Madness (Japan 1926) has been acclaimed as an avant-garde masterpiece, well ahead of its time, equal if not superior to the European avant-garde, an example of non-narrative “pure cinema”, eschewing benshi narration and inter-titles, a personal masterpiece coming from nowhere, independently produced by its director Kinugasa from a script by the novelist Kawabata Yasunari (who was to become famous late in his life as the first Japanese to win a Nobel Prize in Literature). Through painstaking research in the Japanese archives, Gerow demonstrates that the facts belie the myths surrounding the film, that the truth is more complicated. We learn that many hands contributed to the film. Kawabata merely provided an outline of the script, which was worked on by several other writers, including a Shochiku (commercial company) scriptwriter.
Shochiku also provided financial support, and the free use of their Kyoto studio facilities. The film was shot by Sugiyama Kohei, who worked in the commercial film industry. The actors, though unpaid, were experienced commercial stage and screen actors, specializing in melodrama. A synopsis of the film’s storyline was published in the daily press and weekly film journals prior to exhibition, so viewers were told the story before viewing the film, and in addition screenings were accompanied by a live narration, performed by a star benshi, so audiences could follow the storyline and were not mystified. The film was well publicized in advance of its release, and it was exhibited at elite venues, theatres specializing in foreign films, not independent outlets. The original film was longer than the version that Kinugasa released late in his life; it included some inter-titles and a more detailed sub-plot. So the film we see today is a cut version, an incomplete version.
Gerow also provides information on the intellectual milieu out of which the film emerged. In literary and artistic circles in the 20s in Japan, there was much interest in a whole range of European avant-garde movements – German expressionism, French Impressionism, Dada, and Futurism. Caligari (Germany 1920), released in Japan in 1922, made a powerful impression and the French Impressionist filmmakers were popular in these circles. In 1926, Soviet cinema was yet unseen in Japan. In any case, Kawabata and his fellow Neo-Impressionist writers and poets were formally experimental modernists, but not politically avant-garde, Gerow notes. Young Japanese film critics espoused a “pure cinema” aesthetic and castigated the commercial Japanese cinema for its reliance on theatrical and literary conventions. One such critic, Iwasaki Akira, a graduate in German literature and a fan of German Expressionist cinema, especially welcomed this film, and Gerow includes a translation of his review of the film in the appendices.
When he comes to examine the text, Gerow argues that the now extant version of the film in the absence of the original remains fascinating for its contradictions and for its capacity to generate multiple readings. He pronounces it to be “a divided if not a multiple text”, one “produced and marketed on the borderline between independent and studio structures, … between the artistic avant-garde and commercial narrative cinema” (p. 65).
Kinugasa was originally a popular performer in Japanese melodrama (shinpa style), who started his career in the traveling theatre before joining the Nikkatsu film studio. Because he specialized in women’s roles, he became redundant as a performer when the studios finally began employing women to portray women in the early 20s. He moved into direction and worked steadily in the commercial industry for the next 45 years. Many of his prewar films have been lost, so it is difficult to make critical generalizations about his oeuvre. However, it appears that soon after making A Page of Madness (Japan 1926) and one other experimental melodrama (Crossroads [Japan 1928]), he was producing conventional Kyoto studio fare, specializing in romantic melodramas with period settings (vide Gate of Hell [Japan 1953]). On the basis of the films that I have been able to view, I am inclined to concur with Jacoby’s verdict on his work – that it was uneven and mostly undistinguished.
Aaron Gerow now teaches at Yale, but he previously taught film at Yokohama University and reviewed film releases for the Yokohama press. He has recently written a BFI monograph on Kitano Takeshi, and has been conducting intensive research on Taisho-era film culture for his forthcoming book (for University of California Press). Alexander Jacoby also worked as a film reviewer in Japan (for the Japan Times, where Donald Richie was formerly the main film reviewer) and is now pursuing academic research in England. He is a contributor to Senses of Cinema and Sight & Sound. They both contributed chapters to the Routledge publication, Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, edited by Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer (2007).
Freda Freiberg,
Australia.
Created on: Thursday, 10 December 2009