I'm kind of embarrassed to see my sensei kindly promote my dissertation chapter, while I was overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of course preparation... Thanks, Michael!<br><br>The ways in which the Soviet montage film theory and films were introduced to the Japanese film community around 1927-1931 are interesting, because the actual films came later (Pudovkin's The Storm Over Asia in October 1930, Eisenstein's The Old and the New, Dovzhenko's The Earth, Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, and Mikhail Kaufman's In Spring in 1931). I haven't looked at the censorship records of those films; it must be a fascinating research.
<br><br>Potemkin was imported but turned down by the Custom at the Yokohama bay (for this dual censorship, Makino san's book provide a great account). Kurahara Korehito's report to Kinema junpo in 1927 did mention Potemkin's use of non-professional actors, filtered photography in the ocean, and handling of the crowd at the Odessa steps briefly. But as Kurahara and Kobayashi Takiji were very close friends, Kobayashi must have got knowledge of Potemkin directly from Kurahara. A number of Japanese who lived abroad sent rather detailed (some really detailed, occasionally shot by shot) descriptions of Soviet montage films they saw in New York etc. to Kinema junpo and other film magazines prior to the above films' release in Japan; Iijima Tadashi translated an excerpt of the scenario of October for one of them. Shinkô eiga (not to be mistaken for the film studio established in the 1930s), the organ of Prokino edited by Murayama Tomoyoshi, published some movie stories (eiga monogatari, synopsis juxtaposed with still photographs) of Soviet montage films. But I don't recall any on Potemkin. I remember reading some people talking about it (probably the same ones Will mentioned) in film or literary journals, but I'd have to go back to my photocopie piles. Anyway, in my chapter, I argued that sort of "montage" style of contemporary proletarian literature, like a staccato enumeration of nouns and brief sentences, came from those descriptions and translations of the unavailable Soviet montage films (as well as from modernist literary movements form the mid 1920s like Shinkankakuha).
<br><br>As for the term "montage" (montaju in katakana), Iwasaki Akira is credited with first using it in his translation of Semyon Timoshenko's booklet on montage in 1928 (from German). This translation was eventually included in Sasaki's translation of Pudvkin as an appendix. Fukuro Ippei Will mentioned seems like the only translator of Russian. The National Film Center in Tokyo's exhibition on film history, which I saw a few years ago, but is it permanent??) included his books, posters he got from Russia, etc.
<br><br>Iwamoto Kenji's pioneering article, "Nihon ni okeru montâju riron no shôkai" [Introduction of the Montage Theory to Japanese Cinema], Hikaku bungaku nenshi 10 (1976), 67-85, as well as Yamamoto Kikuo's book Michael talked about, provides excellent bibliographical references on this topic. For the info. on the Soviet films shown in Japan, Yamada Kazuo, "Nihon de jôei sareta Sobieto eiga," in Bessatsu sekai eiga shiryô: Sobieto eiga no 40 nen (Tokyo: Sekai Eiga Shiryô Sha, 1959) is useful, while Yamada doesn't tell us the source of the info., making us leaf through Eiga kenetsu jiho and Kinema junpo.
<br><br>To add to Roger Macy's fascinating discovery of the 1929 Russian catalogue of the exhibition about Japanese cinema, Eisenstein's "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" was first published in it as "Afterword."
<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>Chika<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/25/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Raine</b> <<a href="mailto:mjraine@uchicago.edu" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
mjraine@uchicago.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">By mistake, I sent this reply to Markus instead of to the whole
list. I hope he (and Chika?) will respond (have already responded?) here
instead…</span></p><span>
<p><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Chika Kinoshita's dissertation has an excellent
discussion, extending the work of Iwamoto Kenji and Yamamoto Kikuo, of the
introduction of montage theory between 1928 and 1931, generating what she calls
a "culture of montage" in Japan. She argues that Tokunaga
Sunao's Taiyo no nai machi tries to find a literary equivalent to the
juxtaposition and simultaneity characteristic of the Soviet version of montage,
so a connection to The Factory Ship wouldn't be surprising. Much of the
discussion of Eisenstein and others took place in mainstream journals, not only
the Prokino texts. That's true of the US too: it's amazing where
translations of Eisenstein's essays turned up (Hound and Horn?!). It
seems the usual conduit for the translations was through German, which makes
sense. Yamamoto (Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikoku eiga no eikyo; for all its methodological
shortcomings I really like this book!) lists Kurahara Korehito's articles
in Kinema junpo (March and April 1927) as the first accounts of Potemkin and
other montage films. Though his general point is that a lot of
"montage" in Japanese films (flash frames, etc) comes from European
filmmaking practices, while the dominant "influence" on Japanese
film in general came from Hollywood. As Markus says, a worthy topic for further
study…</span></span><span style="color: black;"></span></p></span>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">I forgot to mention that it's interesting, and perhaps not
wholly surprising, that Eisenstein's essays were published during wartime,
and were still being advertised during the Pacific War. Not all writers on film
during wartime were nativist champions of cultural autochthony: people like
Ooya Soichi defended "Americanism" in the pursuit of a populist "People's
film" and there are clear narrative and technical borrowings (Stagecoach,
midair photography) from Hollywood films. Also, some of the writing on formal
aspects of film as essential to a medium committed to total mobilization seems
to me to share Eisenstein's "illiberal modernist"
understanding of the relation between screen and viewing subject. Speaking of
wartime film books … has anyone see the book on film performance (Eiga
engigaku dokuhon) with chapters by Itami, Kinugasa, Ozu and many others? Is it
as fascinating as it seems? Apparently Waseda has a copy. </span></p><span>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Michael</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> </span></p>
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<p><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">From:</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Mark Nornes
[mailto:<a href="mailto:amnornes@umich.edu" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">amnornes@umich.edu</a>] <br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, October 23, 2007 1:41 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: eisenstein & montage in prole cinema</span></p>
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<div><span><p>On Oct 23, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Anne McKnight wrote:</p>
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<p>But looking at the prole cinema materials that I have,
Eisenstein doesn't seem to feature much. I read of _Potemkin_ being banned by
the government, while essays and translations seem to focus on Pudovkin, and
the presentation of Soviet cinema by French scholars (whose work remains
untranslated in English to date). All this leads me to think that while people
hadn't perhaps seen _Potemkin_ in Japan, they both heard about it, and/or may
have seen it in Russia. Has anyone seen "story-plays" (eiga
monogatari) of _Potemkin_, for example? </p>
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<p><span>This is an interesting
question, and I'd love to see it researched by someone. Pudovkin does seem to
get all the glory when it comes to the Soviets. Sasaki Norio published a book
of his translations from Eisenstein (<i>Eiga no benshoho</i>) in 1931, and a
second collection was published in 1940 (believe it or not). Books of
Pudovkin's writings were published in 1930, 1935, and 1936, and all of those
got revised, updated versions published shortly thereafter. </span></p>
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<p>Some magazines were known for doing photospreads and
scenarios of Soviet films; however, the only one I've seen for Eisenstein was
Zensen in one of the Prokino journals. </p>
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<p><span>A couple things come to mind. </span></p>
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<p><span>First, this is late. In fact,
long after the Kobayashi book. The proletarian film journals don't really start
until 1927-28, and I don't recall them writing much of anything about
Eisenstein—or Soviet cinema in general. You can see them here, in my
reprint series: </span></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eiinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/filmprojournals.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/filmprojournals.html
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<p><span>The earliest book is from
Murayama in 1928 (Puroretarian eiga Nyumon; <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.bbx2322.0001.001" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.bbx2322.0001.001
</a>),
and that has almost nothing on Eisenstein. </span></p>
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<p>One place you might be able to find some things is the back
end of Puroretarian Eiga no Tenbo; look around page 247: </p>
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<p><a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=cjfs&cc=cjfs&idno=bbx2327.0001.001&q1=dlps&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=263" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=cjfs&cc=cjfs&idno=bbx2327.0001.001&q1=dlps&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=263</a></p>
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<p>Second, those first journals are mostly about screenwriting
because they didn't see production within their grasp. Pudovkin wrote some
fairly practical things about screenwriting, and I think the first book translated
was on that. This could explain the preponderance of his writings. </p>
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<p>Third, also because this is all happening late, the
criticism of Eisenstein and Vertov's formalism has probably started affecting
Japan. Formal experiments like Iwasaki's Asphalt Road were criticized, so it
would make sense that Eisenstein's films were overlooked in favor of Pudovkin's
more pedestrian style of montage. </p>
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<p>Fourth, this involves translation, and from a fairly unusual
language. You never know how personal predilection of the translator=gatekeeper
plays into this.</p>
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<p>Of the articles I've read on montage by Iwamoto and others,
I don't recall a discussion of this. But I have always wondered what was going
on. </p>
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<p>Markus</p>
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