<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><DIV>Hi,</DIV>
<DIV>People do "misremember" what they saw or did not see, or when.</DIV>
<DIV>However, the film could have been shown at the Russian embassy. It would have come through the diplomatic "bag" and evaded customs.</DIV>
<DIV>Cheers,</DIV>
<DIV>Sybil Thornton</DIV>
<DIV>Arizona State University<BR><BR>--- On <B>Fri, 1/14/11, mccaskem@georgetown.edu <I><mccaskem@georgetown.edu></I></B> wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><BR>From: mccaskem@georgetown.edu <mccaskem@georgetown.edu><BR>Subject: "Potemkin" in Japan<BR>To: KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu<BR>Date: Friday, January 14, 2011, 4:38 AM<BR><BR>
<DIV class=plainMail>It seems to be a fact that the 1925 Eisenstein film "Battleship Potemkin," <BR>presumably in the form of reels in cans brought off a ship, was denied clearance <BR>by the Yokohama Customs in the later 1920s, apparently because it was <BR>(obviously) a "revolutionary" film.<BR><BR>But Kurosawa says in his autobiography that he saw it in Japan ca. 1926.<BR><BR>I know that foreign goods and people also had to go through Japanese Customs <BR>in Kobe, and likely in other major Japanese port cities as well, and the record <BR>only says that the film was barred in Yokohama.<BR><BR>The 1928 V.I. Pudovkin film "Storm Over Asia," according to imdb.com, was <BR>released in Japan in 1930. One would think it would be more "sensitive" than <BR>"Potemkin," since it's about revolution in East Asia, while "Potemkin" is set during <BR>the Russo-Japanese War, and in one intertitle near the start of the film a Russian <BR>sailor says that Russian
POWs are fed better by the Japanese than Russian sailors <BR>are on the Battleship Potemkin.<BR><BR>Kurosawa says that he saw "storm over Asia" in Tokyo ca. 1930.<BR><BR>There were multiple ports of entry at the time, and Kurosawa was a member of <BR>"Proletarian" groups that would have had an interest in seeing Soviet films in any <BR>case, by one means or another.<BR><BR>I also once read an essay by or about Uchida Hyakken, indicating that back then <BR>some Japanese in literary and artistic circles were interested in the concept and <BR>technique of "montage," as developed by Eisenstein in "Potemkin." I'd have to go <BR>find the physical book to track this essay down, but it does seem as if <BR>"Potemkin" was somehow available for viewing in Japan in the later 1920s.<BR><BR>Textbook-type Japanese histories say that "Potemkin" was not seen in Japan <BR>until decades later, but is this really correct?<BR><BR>One would think that Kurosawa, of all
people, would have known whether or not <BR>he actually saw the film "Potemkin" in Japan as a young man, and he definitely <BR>said and wrote that