<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, Sans-Serif|1;font-size:12pt"><div style="RIGHT: auto">Dear KineJapaners,</div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt; RIGHT: auto" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; RIGHT: auto">Looking at the recent festival reports at ‘<A href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/festival-reports/festival-reports-7/">Senses of Cinema</A> ’, I read Daniel Fairfax’s report from Pordenone, as I was only there for two days this year, going on to cover Yamagata.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In the penultimate paragraph, Fairfax reports on “the emotional climax of the festival”, a benshi performance by Ichiro Kataoka.<SPAN style="RIGHT: auto; mso-spacerun: yes"> Needless to say, </SPAN>I was very sad to miss it<VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR>.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p style="RIGHT: auto"></o:p></SPAN></div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">Fairfax duly records that the performance was in untranslated Japanese but enthuses rapturously, “guided as I was by the benshi’s mellifluous vocal intonations. In the end, I could only weep for this lost art,”.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">For me, that calls up the point that a major driver of demand for benshi in Japan was to translate foreign language <U>into</U> an understandable language.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There have been a number of benshi performances outside Japan in recent years but, with the honourable exception of a performance at the Barbican by Tomoko Komura, in London, these seem to have been in Japanese.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Clearly, there are Japanese-speakers abroad who could appreciate a Japanese benshi performance just as they might, say, appreciate a performance of rakugo.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But at Pordenone, the Japanese-speaking audience would have been, I think, singular.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So the rest of them were assuredly appreciating art but were they really hearing
the art that was lost?<o:p></o:p></SPAN></div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">There’s no definitive answer to this, of course, but I would be interested to hear some other opinions or reports.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I think it’s worth, at the minimum, keeping in focus<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>the target-language function of benshi performance.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This need not prevent a benshi performance being appreciated as art.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The Barbican performance was sold out <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>and a repeat was scheduled.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This run into problems with the rights for the Matsuda material that was being used, and had to be cancelled.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">Incidentally, there’s my own report from Yamagata in the same issue, although this only glances at Japanese film through Hara-san.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I’d be interested in hearing of other reports from there, also.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></div>
<div style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">Roger<o:p></o:p></SPAN></div>
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