<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18939"></HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Thanks for your interest and response,
Michael.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>My objections still run along the same line :</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>- Painting Ozu as being in character to make such a
statement is no evidence that he actually saw it that way.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>- As for his supposed PR defence strategy, it presupposes
that he was a personality for the western media whose denial would have some
credibility. But he had neither a name nor an address for them (nor the
English) and the hacks would have knocked on Shochiku's door. And even if
he or Shochiku had Max Clifford on hand for a successful coup, he'd still never
work for Shochiku or any other studio again. Your hypothetical Ozu would
have realised that all too well. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>- To be repetitive, the scenarios remove Shochiku from the
equation who would be the dominant personality. The hypothetical number
would be dropped on Shochiku and the only thing they needed Ozu for was a bit of
prestige, which would immediately evaporate in the alleged gambit. They
would also feel betrayed and released from any loyalty to such an Ozu. The real
Ozu, working in the studio system, would see that instinctively.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>- nor do I see Ozu as a habitual subverter of
previous censorship regimes, however original his approach.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>So, I still stick with my concluding sentence below about
the application of the rule of parsimony.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Roger</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mekerpan@verizon.net href="mailto:mekerpan@verizon.net">Michael
Kerpan</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> Saturday, September 04, 2010 6:43
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Audience studies of the
Occupation</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top>I think, having lived so long under strict censorship by
wartime government officials, Ozu had mastered Aesopian discourse.
Perhaps he could not resist testing his skills against the new
occupation censors.<BR><BR>The key requirement for this kind of actvity
is "deniability", the ability to say with a straight face -- "how could
you imagine that is what I intended to do?"<BR><BR>--- On <B>Sat,
9/4/10, Roger Macy <I><macyroger@yahoo.co.uk></I></B> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><BR>From:
Roger Macy <macyroger@yahoo.co.uk><BR>Subject: Re: Audience
studies of the Occupation<BR>To:
KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu<BR>Date: Saturday, September 4,
2010, 11:27 AM<BR><BR>
<DIV id=yiv1438085205>
<STYLE></STYLE>
<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></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>