Chakushin ari (One Missed Call, Japan, 2003)

Don't take the call!

Genres are, by their nature, formulaic however new examples of the genre need to be different otherwise audiences, having seen it all before, will ‘turn off’. One Missed Call is a Ringu rip-off, instead of video tapes and a week to live, the hapless victims receive a mobile phone call – uncannily from themselves – from a day or two in the future were they get to hear their last words. Then someone else in that person’s ‘contacts’ receives a call.

There is very little difference from Ringu, and other examples of J-horror: the emphasis on school girls; the useless cops; the slightly older man who tries to help; disturbing young children; long hair witches-ghosts; brilliant set pieces… And that’s why One Last Call is worth watching, for despite it’s overlong near-two hour length, there are many genuinely chilling moments. J-horror directors relish placing something uncanny in the mise en scene without drawing attention to it. So a routine search of an abandoned flat suddenly becomes creepy as you think, ‘Are those fingers sticking out of that cupboard on the wall?’ You look ‘closer’ to realise the bloody witch is in there.

Directed by the incredibly prolific Takeshi Miike (80 films in under 20 years), One Last Call is a worthy entrant to the J-horror cycle. Wonderfully composed shots – how the hell does he do that when directing four films a year?! – and a genuinely scary finale offers a satisfyingly cold-sweaty experience.

Equinox Flower (Japan 1958)

Setsuko – Hirayama's daughter

Returning to Ozu again is like tasting the first glass of wine of an evening – the promise of a warm embrace and something soothing and reliable, but also something with body as well as subtle flavours. The schedule of my Ozu watching is fairly random and determined to some extent by what turns up in my rental deliveries from Sofa Cinema/LoveFilm. I do sometimes wonder what it must be like to be able, like David Bordwell, to know all the films so well that you can make references to several other titles and simple comparisons. 

Bordwell’s book, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (bfi 1988), is available on free download from the website of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan (along with a new introduction to the electronic edition). It’s a whopping 400+mbs of pdf and I haven’t managed to read it yet (it’s difficult to read long documents on screen, but I don’t want to waste paper printing it out). I’ve also got the original articles on Ozu by Bordwell and Thompson and Edward Brannigan, published in Screen back in 1976. Brannigan writes specifically about Ozu’s use of space in Equinox Flower and all three are engaged in a mode of analysis that is concerned primarily with contrasting the narrative structure and compositional and editing strategies adopted by Ozu with those of classical Hollywood. Part of their aim is to demonstrate the seemingly contradictory proposition that Ozu was a ‘modernist’ director. I confess my admiration for these guys and I’m sure that if I could find the time to read all of the material carefully it would be very rewarding.

However, my own approach to viewing Ozu is slightly different. I am certainly interested in his style and in the way that he can grab audiences without any of the usual ‘attractions’. But I’m slightly wary of the ways in which generalisations about Ozu’s work are freely circulated. Certainly the films have similar settings, similar characters and themes, but they aren’t all the same – there are interesting variations. My random viewing means that Equinox Flower follows The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice and the two films are worth comparing.

Both films feature the social issue of arranged marriages and the concerns of young women to break free of tradition. In Equinox Flower, the narrative offers three young women, all of whom are ‘rebelling’ and all who find themselves dealing with a patriarchal figure played by Saburi Shin, the same male lead as in Flavour (who Bordwell refers to as the “James Stewart of Japanese Cinema during the war years”). The difference here is that Saburi (Hirayama) is a more solidly middle-class character and rules his household more forcefully. Instead of the scheming and rather silly wife of Flavour, he finds himself married to a woman who is quiet and unassuming. She is however, played by the magnificent Tanaka Kinuyo and it is no surprise that she wins all the battles with little sign of effort (but plenty of steely determination under the polite smile).

The key to the film is, I think, that Hirayama is actually a rather easy-going man who finds himself trapped by a sense of needing to maintain his own position within the family. This feeling is intensified by the ‘male bonding’ that the film emphasises. In fact, this film seems to be a counterweight to Flavour in which there are several scenes of wives together. Here the husbands meet as a group of high school friends, now all at the time in life when they have marriageable daughters. There is banter about marriage and a sense that men must remain in charge. At home, Hirayama treats his wife much as a servant, but is quite charming and friendly towards the daughters of his friends – only his own daughter suffers. Ozu himself has described the film as a comedy (see the website below) and there are several very funny scenes. But it’s really a comedy-melodrama in which Ozu appears to have it both ways, seemingly on the side of the daughter and of the father (with mother quietly winning all the battles). Overall it’s a delightful film.

In terms of style, this is Ozu’s first film in colour and he seems to have been quite playful in using reds and patterns of block colour and sometimes grids or patterns of lines at right angles. The ‘pillow shots’ are beautifully composed and make use of colour in terms of forests and landscapes/waterscapes as well as buildings (and a washing line as in Ohayo!). The big difference, which may be a consequence of camera mobility and lighting, is that there are none of the moving camera shots of Flavour and the locations are less crowded and full of life – the office, a nightclub, the home, a spa etc. Equinox Flower is a more ‘internal’ film. The title refers to an autumn flower, a red amyryllis, higanbana, that springs up all over Japan – plenty of images on flickr etc..  

Here is a key scene in which Hirayama returns home having been tricked into giving his blessing for his daughter’s marriage. His wife is delighted by his change of heart, but he is bemused and resentful.

There is another clip and a selection of stills on the marvellous (but still partly under construction) website at http://www.a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/films/equinoxflower.htm

A good essay on the film is on Senses of Cinema.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Japan 2006)

 

Makoto at home (eating a 'pudding').

 I first saw this film advertised as a DVD release in Sight & Sound, the main highbrow film magazine in the UK. It’s unusual to see an anime advertised in this way (although DVD distributors have got more savvy recently). My first thoughts were that the film must have a reputation on the par with the Studio Ghibli output and I rented it on this basis. I now realise that this is a well known property in Japan and you can read the history on Wikipedia, which also carries some useful links. Beware, however, if you do go to Wikipedia that there is a full synopsis/spoiler that could ruin your enjoyment – I found the film’s narrative development to be quite surprising and I’m certainly glad I didn’t know what would happen.

The ‘property’ was originally created by the veteran Japanese science fiction writer Tsutsui Yasutaka in 1967 and it is interesting that he should choose a teenage girl has his protagonist. A manga ’prelude’ based on the original, but updated, was published in Kadokawa Shoten’s Shōnen Ace magazine and then bound into a novel in May-June 2006 and the anime released in July of that year. The anime version proved to be a sleeper hit in Japan and has finally surfaced in the UK and US on DVD after occasional (and generally well-received) festival screenings.

The appearance of this story in a shōnen manga series strikes me as odd because shōnen implies a readership of adolescent boys – the equivalent for girls is shōjo manga. This probably just shows that I have an awful lot to learn about manga!

Makoto is the tomboyish 17 year-old at a Tokyo high school (the narrow streets and river walk suggest the ‘old town’ part of the city, but it looks like a spacious school with large grounds). She has a younger sister and two male friends at school with whom she plays baseball after classes. She also has an aunt – a youngish woman of indeterminate age who works as a picture restorer for art galleries. Makoto calls her ‘Aunt Witch’ and this appears to be appropriate when she is unfazed by Makoto’s revelation of her ability to time-leap.

In many ways, this anime strikes me as the perfect teen movie. I found it at once beautiful to look at and intriguing, but I confess also at first quite difficult to follow. Partly this was because of the jumping backwards and revisiting scenes that takes place in most time-slip stories, but also because I do find teen fiction difficult as I simply can’t intuit the language and the nuances of teen communication. (I was watching the Japanese version with English subs.) When I realised the full import of what was happening, I found the narrative to be engrossing and deceptively multi-layered. I’m sure that I didn’t get all of it and there were the usual mysteries. As some of the anime fan-bloggers have admitted there could be a few more ‘answers’ – but holding back some information makes for a more effective cult narrative.

It is partly science fiction, largely a teen movie/high school film, a ‘coming-of-age’ story (without a sexual relationship) and a sensitive romance element which I found affecting. Surely this must be a shōnen with a sizeable shōjo audience?

I was most taken by the drawn backgrounds (see still above) which are beautifully realised and reminded me of Miyazaki’s work. The action was sometimes very slow (I wondered if my DVD player had paused) and this allowed the eye to wander around the very detailed mise en scène (e.g in Auntie Witch’s apartment with its books and woodblock prints). By contrast, I found the characters to be all drawn as tall and thin with barely any body shape. The combination of richly detailed background and stylised characters gives the film a quite distinctive look. The music too, was at times similar to that in Miyazaki’s films. There are some songs as well, but I feel inadequate in analysing the use of music in anime. The narrative of course speeds up for the action sequences which I found original and effective. Having the hero literally run and leap in order to travel in time worked well in terms of the story.

There is an excellent review on AnimeNewsNetwork.com from which I learned that the Miyazaki references are understandable since the film was made by a Studio Ghibli refugee, Hosoda Mamoru, with other collaborators who also have Studio Ghibli experience. ‘Line artist’ Sadamoto Yoshiyuki is also very experienced. The Anime News Network Review emphasises the attractiveness of the central characters as more than simply generic characters, quoting the almost Buster Keaton-like antics of Makoto who begins her time travelling in order to put right some of her ‘accidents’. This review finds the final third of the narrative less successful – this was the part that gripped me most. Perhaps this is the distinction between those audiences with genre knowledge and outsiders like me?

I would heartily recommend this film and it would give students based outside Japan, not only an interesting narrative/genre case study, but also an insight into aspects of Japanese culture that still remain mysterious in the West. (The main one being the representation, as the Anime News Network review suggests, of the “wistful buoyancy that only the Japanese seem to be able to associate with high school”, when in reality, the Japanese education system seems to put so much stress on results for seemingly middle-class students like Makoto.)  

Watch the opening here (I’d urge you to buy it, but if you can’t there are more YouTube clips available):

The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (Japan 1952)

In the pachinko parlour: Setsuko, Mokichi and Non-Chan

The more I see of the films of Ozu Yasujiro, the more I enjoy them and the more differentiated they become. This film, made just before Tokyo Story and scripted by Ozu with his usual writing partner Noda Kôgo, has the usual focus on family arrangements and personal relationships, but its tone is unusual. For long periods it seems quite bitchy and cynical and then becomes quite sweet and sentimental. The train trip is here, the bar and the visit to a spa, but also other aspects of the leisure time of the middle classes – dress shops, baseball, cycle-racing, kabuki, pachinko parlours and even Tokyo Airport and a tracking shot of a couple walking through the streets. There is more sense of the social life of a Japanese city in this film than in all the other Ozu films that I have seen.

The family is middle-class. The wife, Taeko, is very definitely ‘leisured’ and has at least two maids. She lives in a large Tokyo house with two floors (though Ozu carefully avoids actually showing us stairs – I’m not sure why). Her husband, Mokichi, who she thinks of as ‘Dull-san’ or a ‘relaxed turtle’, is from a lower middle-class background. He was a corporal in the Imperial Army and has done well in his (office) job at an engineering company. A sudden trip to Uruguay becomes a plot point in the last third of the film. Taeko is bored and constantly lies to her husband in order to spend time with her girlfriends at the club or going away to a spa. The lying is pointless, since she is a very bad liar and anyhow, Mokichi would probably raise no objection if she told him straight.

Both husband and wife are acting as mentors. Taeko takes her niece Setsuko under her wing and Mokichi agrees to be a guarantor for a young man, Non-chan who is seeking employment. The two younger characters represent the rapidly modernising Japan and Taeko is taken aback to discover that her niece has no intention of agreeing to an arranged marriage (which of course she went through – and ended up with Mokichi). The young man meanwhile is tempting Mokichi into spending time in pachinko parlours and baseball.

Taeko and her girlfriends gossip much like suburban wives in a 1950s Hollywood comedy-melodrama. The tone then changes a little with the resistance shown by Setsuko to an arranged date. An intriguing sequence this, set in a kabuki theatre – we never see the stage, but hear the actors – as we watch Taeko and her friends searching for Setsuko who has ‘escaped’. She ends up with her uncle and Non-Chan. Mokichi is quite sensible and when he realises that she simply won’t accept the arrangement, he leaves her slurping noodles with Non-Chan. I won’t spoil what happens in the end, but it’s an interesting resolution to the narrative.

The film’s title refers to the kind of meal that Mokichi really enjoys – poor people’s food, simple but subtle with the clash of flavours producing something pleasing. It becomes an important plot point and Mokichi suggests it’s a metaphor for marriage with the different flavours of men and women. Taeko comments on the smell of pickles on her hands which Mokichi refers to as the smell of a ‘working woman’s hands’.

Great movie!

A short history of Japanese film studios

Japan offers the film student an alternative ’studio history’ to that of Hollywood. There are striking parallels and some major differences in the development of ’studio majors’ from the 1920s onwards. Three of the oldest Japanese studios Shochiku, Nikkatsu and Toho have been around since at least the 1930s and are still active today. Toei arrived a little later, as did Daiei, which was eventually incorporated in the assets of a relatively new player, Kadokawa, a publishing house founded in the 1950s (cf Warner Bros and Time-Life getting together in Hollywood).

Like the Hollywood studios, some of the Japanese majors have at different times attempted to run fully integrated film operations with producing studios, distribution companies and exhibition chains. One slight difference has been that live action venues, especially kabuki theatres have remained in their portfolios – but another similarity is an interest in theme parks and studio tours etc.

The first Japanese studio system reached its peak in the 1930s having had to recover from the earthquake in 1923 which destroyed much of central Tokyo and in which film prints and facilities were lost. But from the late 1930s until the early 1950s, the Japanese film industry was effectively controlled/restricted first by the Japanese military authorities who forced through a ‘realignment’ of studios via mergers and then by the Allied Occupation Forces from 1945-52 who vetted script ideas and discouraged production of jedaigeki (‘period’ films which might promote traditional/non-democratic values). During the 1930s the Japanese film industry had become the world’s biggest and it regained this position in the 1960s, only to lose it again with the impact of video in the late 1970s.

The Japanese studio system saw stars and writer/director units contracted to the major studios much as in Hollywood. There seems to have been a more visible form of apprenticeship system with new directors having a mentor or ‘old master’ who helped them get established. Aspects of this can be found discussed in books about Kurosawa and the other major directors. Kurosawa is also interesting in terms of his move towards a form of independent production under the umbrella of Toho in the 1950s. The japanese majors tended to own or lease studio facilities in both Tokyo and Kyoto. Tokyo was the base for gendaigeki (‘contemporary’ films) and the old capital of Kyoto became the centre for jedaigeki. Kyoto still has studio facilities used for film and television production of period dramas. During the studio period, double bills would often include one film from the company’s Tokyo studio and one from their Kyoto studio.

During the 1950s, the major studios came to be associated with specific genres and approaches to retaining audiences. Animation became important in Japan after 1945 and some studios developed specific animation divisions or acquired independent animation companies.

Brief background on the best-known studio brands

Some studio websites are only available in Japanese. If there are studio brands that I have missed out or if any of this material is incorrect, please leave a comment!

Daiei was originally formed as a subsidiary of Shochiku in the mid-1930s but came into its own as part of the Japanese wartime ‘consolidation’ of the industry into three companies. After the war, in which Daiei had been a compliant provider of propaganda pictures, the studio faced several problems – no theatre chain or ‘acceptable’ back catalogue and a general restriction on jedaigeki imposed by the Occupation authorities which hit Daiei’s Kyoto studio hard. Two of Daiei’s innovations in the 1950s, however, proved successful. The gamble on sending a film to the Venice Film Festival paid off with Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1951) and Mizoguchi’s The Life of O’Haru (1952). This was sustained by the export success of Gates of Hell in 1954 with its colour photography. Daiei then became the first Japanese studio to consistently use colour. The studio declined during the 1960s and shut its doors in 1971 before the assets were finally bought by Kadokawa in 2002. (See Greg Shoemaker’s ‘History of Daiei‘.)

Kadokawa Pictures is part of a new form of Japanese media conglomerate. Kadokawa Shoten, founded in 1954, is a major Japanese publishing house responsible for manga, magazines and popular literature. Kadokawa Group has expanded the firm’s interest into television, video games and both live action and anime filmed entertainment. Kadokawa Pictures USA sells English language versions of the company’s products in the US. In Japan, the company owns Asmik Ace and other film-related businesses and in 2002 took over the assets of the Daiei studio. Kadokawa owns a cinema chain and also acts as a distributor of foreign films in Japan as well as for its own products. Kadowkawa made an impact in Europe and eventually North America through films such as Ringu and Dark Water, both based on books published by Kadokawa Shoten and produced by Asmik Ace. 

Nikkatsu is Japan’s oldest major film studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally “Japan Cinematograph Company” and it was founded in 1912 when several production companies and theatre chains consolidated under a trust. Nikkatsu lost out in the 1940s when wartime controls forced a damaging merger. The studio did not make films again until 1954 after which there was a concentration on modern action films such as the yakuza films of Suzuki Seijun as well as the more varied output of Ichikawa Kon and Imamura Shohei. The company has made, and continues to make films in numerous genres. However, for most of the 1970s and 1980s, they strictly produced what they termed roman porn films in order to make ends meet. Unlike “pinku eiga“, Nikkatsu’s films were produced with relatively high budgets and production values, as well as featuring mainstream actresses, many of whom also starred in network television and nationally released film dramas. Today Nikkatsu is a vertically integrated operation with film and TV production, distribution (including satellite) and a small theatrical exhibition chain. 

PCL Photo Chemical Laboratory was an early film production company that was bought in 1936 by Kobayashi Ichizo to form the production base for what would become the Toho group.

Toho (from Wikipedia) Toho was founded by the Hankyu Railway in 1932 as the Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company. It managed much of the kabuki in Tokyo and, among other properties, the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater and the Imperial Garden Theater in Tokyo; Toho and Shochiku enjoyed a duopoly over theatres in Tokyo for many years. Toho had a long (and often difficult) relationship with Kurosawa Akira over many years from the 1940s-60s. As well as the popular Kurosawa films, Toho is also a known brand in Europe and the US because of its science fiction and ‘monster’ pictures from the mid 1950s onwards and its distribution of Miyazaki Hayao’s work for Studio Ghibli.

The ‘TohoScope’ logo (for the anamorphic system used by the company from the early 1960s is a fondly remembered image for many film fans.

Toho-Towa is a distribution company, founded in 1928 with a focus on importing the best of international cinema. It is now a subsidiary company of Toho.

Tōei (from Wikipedia) is a Japanese film and television production and distribution corporation. Based in Tokyo, Tōei owns and operates thirty-four (34) cinema houses across Japan, a modest vertically-integrated studio system by the standards of the 1930s Hollywood. The name Tōei is derived from “Tōkyō Eiga Haikyū” (Tōkyō Film Distribution Company, the company’s former name). Tōkyō-Yokohama Films, incorporated 1938, had previously erected its facilities immediately east of the Tōkyū Tōkyō-Yokohama Line; they managed the Tōkyū Shibuya Yokohama studio system prior to V-J Day. From 1945 through the Tōei merger, Tōkyō-Yokohama Films leased from the Daiei Motion Picture Company a second studio in Kyoto. Through the merger, they gained the combined talents and experience of actors Chiezō Kataoka, Utaemon Ichikawa, Rionosuke Tsukigata, Ryutaro Otomo, Kinnosuke Nakamura, Chiyonosuke Azuma, Shirunosuke Toshin, Hashizo Okawa and Satomi Oka. On October 1, 1950, the Tōkyō Film Distribution Company was incorporated; in 1951 the company purchased Ōizumi Films.

Toei Animation is a leading animation company and part of the Toei Company.

Shintoho began as a Toho subsidiary in the late 1940s and then sought to develop an independence that in the 1950s saw it successful with war pictures and action adventures for ‘ultra-conservative’ audiences. Its independence ended in 1961 when the studio went bankrupt and the assets reverted to Toho. 

Shochiku Formed in 1895 by Takejirō Otani and his brother as a Kabuki production company, Shochiku grew fast, expanding its business to many other Japanese theatrical entertainments, like Noh and Bunraku. The company began making films in 1921 and was the first film studio to abandon the use of female impersonators and sought to model itself and its films after Hollywood standards, bringing such things as the star system and the sound stage to Japan. Today, Shochiku is considered to be the oldest continuously-operating film studio in Japan. Shochiku is associated with the ‘lower middle-class’ dramas of Ozu Yasujiro and other films for a family audience in the 1950s.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture – cinema entry

A Work of Love?!

Book Review by Leung Wing-Fai

Jasper Sharp (2008) Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Surrey: Fab Press

ISBN 978-1-903254 54 7 Paperback 416 pp

 

Even before opening the package that was Jasper Sharp’s Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, the weight makes the reader think that it is a more serious book than the tagline ‘Steamy, Subversive, Exotic & Bizarre!’ suggests. Despite Sharp’s admission that it is impossible to access many of the historical titles, the book seems as complete and encyclopaedic as it could be and I doubt that there is another bilingual list of Japanese sex films and relevant references quite like the appendices (that occupy over 60 pages). All of this, the writer tells us, is to explain what Japanese pink cinema ‘is’. The simple definition of pink cinema is softcore sex films, though pinku eiga is much more as Sharp’s passion will certainly convince and repay readers who persevere till the end.

In a strange kind of way, I find the non-pink bits more interesting as Sharp successfully narrates the social and cultural contexts for the development of Japanese soft porn. He also situates the pink industry alongside the mainstream and never loses sight of the parallel but intertwining larger film world in Japan and abroad. Indeed, many mainstream Japanese directors had cut their teeth or worked extensively in the pinku eiga industry: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, 1997, Pulse, 2001) Hideo Nakata (Ringu, 1998) and Yoishi Sai (All Under the Moon, 1993). Indeed, the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Film went to The Departures directed by Yojiro Takita who made the Molester Train series (1982-1984) among other pink titles. I am nevertheless not convinced of the writer’s inclusion of Nagisa Oshima whose main contribution to the debate is his controversial In the Realm of the Senses, 1976 (based on a ‘true crime’ story that had also sprung several pink films including Noboru Tanaka’s more conventional A Woman Called Abe Sada 1975). The inclusion of Oshima leads to another age-old debate of the art/sex film divide as many films of the early Japanese New Wave of the 1960s challenge sexual taboos given the more open social and moral attitudes of the time. I think this fluidity between experimental, New Wave, avant-garde, independent and sex films in Japan is certainly worth a critical evaluation. The cross-over of these strands in the industry is also something quite culturally unique that Behind the Pink Curtain serves to highlight.

A discussion of censorship has to be part of the history of sex film though Sharp never commits to some of the cultural issues that this raises. Sharp also comments on the wider feminist debates around pornography but remains neutral. Undeniably, pink movies are full of contradictions: the obsessive and repetitive depictions of rapes and tortures (the author describes these in length in chapter 12) are clearly part of the male fantasy element of soft porn. Equally there is no shortage of female audiences for such scenes. The author begins to acknowledge this unlikely section of consumers of porn towards the end of the book. I often find strong feminist messages in Japanese sexploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s (think Sex and Fury and Female Convict Scorpion series). Given most directors and writers of these films are male (a few female filmmakers do exist, as the author points out), the parallel feminist and sexist elements in many of these Japanese productions should enrich the existing debates about pornography.

Sharp’s admiration for key cult figures such as Koji Wakamatsu (who crossed the divides of avant-garde, pink and politics) and Masao Adachi (porn director turned Red Army revolutionary who spent 26 years in Palestine) is evident, devoting a chapter to each. On the other hand, I think Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno is worthy of a more detailed treatment than the slightly slim chapters 9 and 10. Roman Porno was launched by the flagging studio in 1971 and eventually generated 850 titles in 17 years. Other studios also jumped on the band wagon and produced a number of titles that might be grouped under the genre. The brand was loosely based on the French concept of roman pornographique or erotic fiction in the tradition of Marquis de Sade, The Story of O etc. The productions were more widely distributed, arty and influential than the old fashioned pink, almost edging soft porn towards respectability.

The later chapters see the author contemplate the decline of the whole softcore sex film market that was partly the result of competition from AV/Adult Video in the 1990s, younger generation of yet more experimental sex film directors (most notably Hisayasu Sato, The Bedroom 1992), gay porn, and the unlikely international film festival hit The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (Mitsuru Meike 2004).

Such a comprehensive history also inevitably leaves the reader feeling unfulfilled (sic.) as few films are available in the west or in Japan for that matter. The writer encourages us to think of the meanings of these films that majority of critics and scholars tend to dismiss but there are only so many pages of description of film ‘narratives’ one can read without losing the point altogether. After all, do we really need to know the finer plot of Apartment Wife Bondage and Sex Documents: Serial Rapists?

The comprehensive Behind the Pink Curtain demonstrates that the book is clearly a work of love for Jasper Sharp. Whether ‘the complete history’ of Japanese sex cinema or any other cinemas can ever be written and contained in one single volume is a moot point. Such a painstaking exercise is a timely reminder of the complexity of exploring the history of film production, mainstream or otherwise, past and present, in any given country. For that, we should salute this brave attempt.

Leung Wing-Fai is the co-editor with Leon Hunt of  East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film

Flowing (Nagareru, Japan 1956)

A music lesson in the geisha house. The maid standing in the background is played by the marvelous Tanaka Kinuyo

Flowing is a Naruse Mikio film – a Toho melodrama from the mid-1950s set in the world of the geisha houses of Tokyo. It’s an ensemble piece with many familiar faces amongst the women including Tanaka Kinuyo, Takamine Hideko and Sugimura Haruko. The title at first appears to refer to the river which flows through the Tokyo district in which the geisha house is located, but quickly we realise that the river shots are just one of Naruse’s equivalent of those cutaways to views of the city or the streets that Ozu was so fond of. Instead, ‘flowing’ probably refers to the ‘flow’ of daily life in the geisha house.

Although the narratives are different, this film has a similar setting to Mizoguchi’s Uwasa no onna (1954). I wondered in reviewing that film who the audience was for these ‘quality pictures’ that are in essence similar to modern soaps or drama series. I wish there had been a ‘Reception Studies’ culture in Japanese universities in the 1950s. I can only assume that a female and possibly middle-class and middle-aged audience was the target. Because this is Naruse rather than Mizoguchi, the story does not have the same melodrama overdrive and is much closer to that sense of “accepting the problems that life brings”. So, although there are small triumphs along the way, we leave the geisha house at the end much as we found it at the beginning – but in between we learn plenty about the daily life of the house, something about the lives of the women and their relationships and an awful lot about the economics of the business and why it is failing. 1956 saw changes in the laws on prostitution in Japan which changed the position of the geisha house profoundly. The likely fate of the house in the film is to become a ‘hotel’ or a restaurant – it is a respectable house, but perhaps it will eventually become a brothel.

In no way is this hard work as the direction is masterly and the performances are superb. This is a Masters of Cinema DVD so it includes is a useful separate discussion of the film by two American critic-fans.

Hadaka no shima (The Naked Island, Japan, 1960)

A Sisyphean task

Although this film (inevitably) reminds me of others it also seems unique. There’s no dialogue, there are a few songs and plenty of sound, and nothing happens until 28 minutes into the film. By that I mean, there’s no sense of a narrative ‘problem’ until then. This happening? A bucket of water is dropped. And it’s not a ‘narrative problem’ in the normal sense; the ‘disruption’ is the characters’ whole existence. But dropping the water  is a ‘big deal’ as it has to be carried up a hill (above) having been transported from another island:

The Naked Island can be regarded as an oblique representation of hibakusha cinema in the endless toiling of a seemingly inutile, barren land: a bittersweet, poetic elegy for Shindo’s dying ancestral vocation on a rural, isolated island. (Aquarello, 2006)

It reminded me most of Terra trema (Italy, 1948), a neo realist film portraying existence on an inhospitable island. Unlike the neo realist films, Shindo Kaneto directs in a highly stylised fashion with a beautifully composed Cinemascope and monochrome mise en scene. This stylisation seemed to me to be slightly ‘at odds’ with the, at times, brutal life portrayed. It seemed that the film was celebrating the ‘close to hostile nature’ life of the protagonists; however, it isn’t quite that simple.