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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I'm grateful for Kirsten for raising the issue the
'reception' of Edward Fowler's 'Piss and Run ..' and would like to wrangle on
this.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Whilst Fowler does indeed produce convincing detail on how
we westerners 'missed' the flag in Ozu's <EM>Nagaya shinshiroku</EM>, 1947; in
legal, or logical terms, he is not producing new evidence of 'our' oversight of
the flag - until Fowler saw it, no one else did. As such, if none of 'us'
saw it, the evidence can be re-marshalled to argue that no one saw it that
way.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>As prosecutor, he paints a plausible scenario on how Ozu
might have been motivated, but no evidence at all on Ozu or anyone else actually
seeing it that way. It is merely implied that, as the auteur, he had the
opportunity. But in fact, to have the opportunity either, he alone saw it
and put it past the film company clandestinely, or, as Fowler and others imply,
many Japanese saw it but were content to be complicit in it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>But surely the bar has been set far too low
here.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Ozu could not have dreamed of what lay ahead of him.
But he would surely have been acutely aware of his contemporary
difficulties. His country was occupied by a country that, at home, was
still intensely anti-Japanese. The arguments in the American press about
Japanese anti-Americanism were still ahead, but, I suggest, the sensitivities
that underlay them would have been readily apparent, as would the extent of both
formal and informal influence of SCAP upon Japanese polity. Ozu, as an
experienced, middle-aged director, could not have failed to appreciate, if he
had indeed 'seen' it, that only once would someone have to whisper 'flag'
to an American whilst showing the picture and the 'cover' was blown. (And
it would only need one Korean to whisper to one Frenchman and ...) Imagine
Ozu, or perhaps more importantly, Kido or his like, imagining Fowler's figure 36
and the headline of your choice splashed across every newspaper. Imagine
the Americans seeing copies of Soviet and other foreign newspapers with this
splash. If Ozu had done a number on Shochiku and very likely lengthened
and deepened the occupation, seppuku wouldn't have remotely expiated and a
rather obscure director would have been mainly known, beside by a few
scholars, for one infantine gesture.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Perhaps I'm over-influenced by my own errors. I was
one of a score of people, of varied gender and age, who were connected with a
charity that implicitly approved a poster that showed a little girl's hand
clutching a finger. Others saw it differently and, once they had, we all
did. Ten thousand posters were pulped and, hopefully, you will never see
it. But I would reject any prosecutor's argument that, for all that
destruction of evidence, 'it would have been obvious' to us at the
time.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>But Bob Buscher is absolutely right to look for evidence
that supposedly subversive images were received in such a way. In the case
of the futon, the subversive reading is so implausibly suicidal - and would have
been readily perceived as such at the time - that the rule of parsimony
requires some proper evidence of reception.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Happy, as ever, to be proved wrong, or at least on the
disproven side of an argument.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Roger</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=kcather@mail.utexas.edu href="mailto:kcather@mail.utexas.edu">Kirsten
Cather</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
href="mailto:KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu">KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, September 03, 2010 5:32
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Question about kissing and
Audience studies of the Occupation</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Hi Sarah -
<DIV>I don't know if you already located a source on this question about
kissing & censorship, but I just happened
<DIV>to come across an article by Iwasaki Akira - "From MacArthur to Yujiro"
(Makkaasaa kara Yujiro made) from</DIV>
<DIV>Eiga hyōron in August 1958 that has a couple of sections on kissing and
its censorship from Taisho to the Occupation period.</DIV>
<DIV>(I have a pdf and would happy to forward it your way if you contact me
off-list)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>While on the topic of censorship, I thought I'd also chime in on the
question Rob Buscher recently raised:</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Aug 27, 2010, at 2:18 PM, Rob Buscher wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" class=hmmessage> to
what extent the politically subversive messages snuck past the censors
actually affected the viewing population at that time (i.e. to what extent
did they pick up on these messages, and did they affect the way audience
members perceived the US occupation). <BR><BR>While I have enough
historical documentation to back up many of the claims that I would like to
make, I cannot seem to find any studies that have been conducted on audience
perception from that time period, which would more definitively prove my
argument. Does someone on the list know of any audience studies conducted in
the 1940s or 1950s? Japanese or English sources are
fine. <BR><BR>Thanks in advance,<BR><BR>Rob Buscher<BR>MA Japanese Film
Studies Candidate SOAS</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><SPAN
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<DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>I have always been very skeptical of these kinds of claims because it
assumes</DIV>
<DIV>the censors were denser than the audiences, certainly a possibility, but
not necessarily true</DIV>
<DIV>and nearly impossible to substantiate. How to get around this is tricky,
but a great example of one that does is</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>Edward Fowler's really wonderful account of Ozu's skirting the Occupation
censors in</DIV></DIV>
<DIV>"Piss and Run: Or How Ozu does a Number on SCAP" in Washburn and
Cavanaugh's "Word and Image."</DIV>
<DIV>Basically, he uses very convincing close textual readings to suggest that
the subversive message would have been </DIV>
<DIV>obvious to the contemporary Japanese audience and, even more
interestingly, cites misreadings by later US film critics (Richie and
Bordwell) to</DIV>
<DIV>consider how the Occup. censors might have misinterpreted or not even
seen those subversive moments of the film.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Kirsten</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12px">Kirsten Cather</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12px">Assistant Professor, Department of Asian
Studies</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12px">1 University Station, G9300</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12px">Austin, TX 78712</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12px">WCH 5.104B; <A
href="mailto:kcather@mail.utexas.edu">kcather@mail.utexas.edu</A>;
512.471.0031 (office)</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Jul 16, 2010, at 9:53 PM, Mark Nornes wrote:</DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV
style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space">
<DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>I don't recall if the issue is covered in the detail you
require, and it's not at hand at the moment, but the first stop shopping for
anything on censorship is Makino Mamoru's "History of Japanese Film
Censorship." (Harvard has it in your area.) Aside from its detailed history,
many of the regulations are reprinted in its 500 some pages.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Markus</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 24px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold"
class=Apple-style-span>日本映画検閱史 /</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV>
<H1 class=title>Nihon eiga kenʼetsushi</H1>
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0>
<TBODY>
<TR id=bib-author-row>
<TH>Author:</TH>
<TD id=bib-author-cell><SPAN lang=ja class=vernacular>牧野守,
1930-</SPAN> <SPAN lang=ja class=vernacular>牧野守著.</SPAN> ; <A
title="Search for more by this author"
href="http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3A%22Makino%2C+Mamoru%2C%22&qt=hot_author">Mamoru
Makino</A></TD></TR>
<TR id=bib-publisher-row>
<TH>Publisher:</TH>
<TD id=bib-publisher-cell><SPAN lang=ja class=vernacular>パンドラ :
発売現代書館,</SPAN> Tōkyō : Pandora : Hatsubai Gendai Shokan,
2003.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<DIV><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" class=hmmessage><BR>
<HR id=stopSpelling>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:11:32 -0400<BR>From:<SPAN
class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN><A
href="mailto:sfred@bu.edu">sfred@bu.edu</A><BR>To:<SPAN
class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN><A
href="mailto:KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu">KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu</A><BR>Subject:
Question about kissing<BR><BR>I was just editing something I wrote and
started to wonder whether it is true. I was suggesting that kissing
in Japanese cinema in the early 1930s would have been the object of
censorship. That is a rather vague way that I have put it but is it
true in either the sense that 1.) depiction of a kiss would have triggered
some attention and potential censorship based 2.) there were actual
guidelines about kissing that the censors followed?
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>I am aware of the censorship categories at the time and have looked
at a lot of print media censorship primary materials in both political and
fuzoku categories. But not much about cinema (or kissing in
particular). Is there some better research on this out there?
I think I based my statement on anecdotal materials from people I
know, and I don't think those individuals are really old or reliable
enough to base this claim on!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for any direction you might send me in! I don't have
easy access to a Japanese language library at the moment either.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Sarah </DIV><BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN
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class=ecxApple-style-span>
<DIV>Sarah Frederick</DIV>
<DIV>Associate Professor of Japanese</DIV>
<DIV>Dept. Modern Languages </DIV>
<DIV> and Comparative Literature</DIV>
<DIV>Boston University</DIV>
<DIV>718 Commonwealth Avenue</DIV>
<DIV>402C</DIV>
<DIV>Boston, MA 02215</DIV>
<DIV>617-358-4654</DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:sfred@bu.edu">sfred@bu.edu</A></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV></SPAN><BR
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