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<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial">The Meiji Era through the </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Dark</span><span style="font-family: Arial"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Valley</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> at NFAJ</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">Dear KineJapaners,</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">As reported before, the </span><span style="font-family:Arial">National</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial">Film</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Center</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> has now become the National Film Archive of Japan -
NFAJ. The signage inside and out at Takarachō has been changed, including the
directions in the metro station, The <a href="http://www.nfaj.go.jp/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">website</a>
now has its own domain, which links to the <a href="http://kinbiopac.momat.go.jp/mylimedio/search/search-input.do?mode=comp&nqid=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">library
catalogue</a>, which is, for now, still under the wing of Momat.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">Some things don’t change so fast though.
There are still worryingly few staff to administer research, conservation and
curation for a major national film archive; there are still continuing
programmes of films at wonderfully low prices; and there are still no more than
two screenings each day in the cinema. Refreshing for those increasingly
blasted by trailers at the likes of the BFI, all films still start on the dot
after precisely fifteen seconds of silent darkness.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">After a shorter opening programme, the
first major retrospective inaugurating the NFAJ is ‘<a href="http://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/meiji-201804/#section1-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Meiji Period
in Films</a>’. 2018 is the 150<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the deposition of
the Shogunate but, since the Emperor Meiji came to the throne the previous
year, one can justify the squeezing in of some civil war dramas. As the <a href="http://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/meiji-201804/#section1-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">introductory
text</a> states, it’s partly an opportunity to show some films rarely shown.
All the films I saw were NFAJ prints, with their original ‘NFC’ logos.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">Of particular interest to me this last
week has been a strand of films made in the late 30s and earlier 40s, which I
have never had the opportunity to see. As they are all to get their second
screening in the next week or so, I’m flagging them up, should someone care to
read on, with the proviso that anyone who caught the tonnage of dialogue that
passed through this non-linguist’s ears might have heard quite different films.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">Actually, only one of the six films was mostly
set after the Meiji restoration, and three were set during the events leading
up to it. But what interested me was how history was being redeployed and
re-narrated during this modern era.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">The one that was set almost completely in
the Meiji era was <i>Hiwa Norumanton Gō-jiken: Kamen no butō</i>, - perhaps
‘Normanton Incident Special: Masked Dance - made in 1943 by SASAKI Keisuke. One
might reasonably think that the story of criminally racist arrogance by the
British in the actual events of 1881 was bad enough not to need embellishment,
but embellished it was. The surviving Indian cabin boy becomes Chinese, all the
better to show the Japanese supporting him against the racism of the British. In
a long opening section, which introduces life in a western-embracing Meiji era,
a young lawyer leads the push-back.<span> </span>For
the 1943 filmmakers, this allows the copious display of long-vanished elaborate
dresses and ball-gowns, whilst also showing disapproval of them. The British
white-wash at the end is emphasized, and becomes here a vehicle to show that
the lawyer, and his firebrand friend, are on the right side of history. Their
expressions of resentment dissolve into a hate-the-enemy coda which depicts the
1940s military destruction of British-occupied urban areas.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">As one might expect in a 1943 Japanese
film, the casting of the westerners’ roles was decidedly mixed. Some of these
actors, by the evidence of these films, had something of a living depicting
wicked foreigners. But earlier in the film, I seem to recall, there were street
scenes of a western circus coming into town. The point here was that the
foreign vagrants were unfairly disrupting the living of honest, hard-working
families, particularly a widow and her two performing children. The brash
circus was very convincing, fronted by a blonde with bare limbs and shoulders,
straight out of </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Hollywood</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> casting. I’d love to know more about where they got
these players from. Come to think of it, the people of all classes in the
street scenes of 1881 were unrealistically well-clad - presumably all the
better to depict the ‘nakedness’ of the westerner.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><i><span style="font-family:Arial">Seiki no gasshō-ai kuni kōshinkyoku</span></i><span style="font-family:Arial"> - <i>Century Chorus - Patriotic March</i>, 1938,<i> </i>was
a biopic of the musician <span class="ydpdf2fc46fc2">SETOGUCHI Tōkichi. Since he lived on to
1941, his life, by definition, covered far more than the Meiji period, although
there is a substantial section set in that era. As a naval b</span>andsman with
composing ambitions, we eventually see him get his sea-legs. To the sound and
back-drop of active gunnery in rough seas, he composes his <i>Battleship March</i>
with full notation. To those wary of over-exposure to <span class="ydpdf2fc46fc2"><i>Gunkan-kōshinkyoku</i></span>,
I’d say there are many films of the period that employ the tune far more
blatantly. In the sound-track, we first get it in fragments and, indeed, much
of the sound-track uses a backdrop of silence to illustrate the sounds that
Setoguchi hears and imagines. After his naval retirement send-off, to the
unavoidable accompaniment, we see Setoguchi entering civilian life, and hear
his new world - that of Taishō modernism. Setoguchi’s reception during his
Western tour in this era is off the menu in this film. He seems, if I got it
right, to be living above a record store. This long episode, of a
fish-out-of-water, I found highly imaginative. But the authors had their own
reason. Taishō becomes Shōwa and a new generation enters military service. <span> </span>They are finally able to report to his bedside
that his music is back in fashion, and he’s big - in </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Italy</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> and </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Germany</span><span style="font-family:Arial">. We hear <span class="ydpdf2fc46fc2"><i>Gunkan-kōshinkyoku</i></span><i>
</i>again, which the visuals cut to be an accompaniment of a march-past of
Hitler. Taishō modernism gets to be shown here as a historical mistake that has
been corrected.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">More exposure of <span class="ydpdf2fc46fc2"><i>Gunkan-kōshinkyoku</i></span>
could be heard in another ‘naval’ film in the same programme, <i>Sugino Heisō-chō
no tsuma</i> - perhaps <i>The Widow of the Honoured Heiso Sugino</i>, 1940.
Only three of five reels survive. We follow a widow of a casualty of the Russo-Japanese
war as she struggles to bring up three sons. The arithmetic of that makes this
film also a Taishō drama, but set rurally. I didn’t ascertain exactly which
reels survive, but we seemed to get the end, even though I didn’t spot the
‘end’ character. Perhaps at the beginning of that reel, there is an
extraordinarily beautiful and evocative scene. An elegiac, long-phrase
accompanied song, different from any gidayū I have heard, accompanies a slow
sweep over landscape of considerable beauty. The camera eventually pans down on
a memorial visit to the father’s grave. After the rituals are completed, the
family walk back down the road. The three sons are in naval uniform, the mother
in formal attire. The mood lightens, the pace quickens and the four of them are
marching proudly ahead - to <span class="ydpdf2fc46fc2"><i>Gunkan-kōshinkyoku</i>. This, I
thought I was being told, was how honourable people had spent their Taishō era
- preparing for the next joyful march to war.</span></span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">There was a fine restoration drama, <i>Ishin
no kyoku </i>- <i>Melody of Restoration</i>, made by USHIHARA Kiyohiko in 1942.
It was the prestige commencing drama of the new conglomerate Daiei company with
an all-star cast and staff. To me, it had something of the feel of 1950s epics.
That might be partly due to the different feel of the grand scenes of marching armies
that punctuated long interior dramatic scenes, seemingly made by different
units. The excellent acting was well photographed. There had clearly been a
move away from the placing of characters in ensemble scenes of many 1930s films
to a style more familiar to modern eyes, of easily readable characters in the
foreground. The print was also in very good condition (it does not appear to
have been preserved via the ‘captured films’), apart from a few minutes of
cyclical lightening, probably at the beginning of the penultimate reel, which
was starting to give me a headache before it abated.<span> </span>Made in </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Kyoto</span><span style="font-family:Arial">, it seemed to me that several scenes were shot in </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Nijō</span><span style="font-family: Arial"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Castle</span><span style="font-family:Arial">’s interior. The music was mostly, if not all
diegetic.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial">The two other tales of restoration were filled
by the derring-do of the then familiar character of Kurama Tengu, the legendary
man of the people, who had been appearing in films since 1928. His July 1941
outing, directed by SUGANUMA Kanji, <i>Satsuma no misshi</i> - Envoy of Satsuma
- is a hate-the-French vehicle, elaborating an attempt at that time by French agents
to arm the Shogunate. Redeploying Kurama Tengu, along with his popular star, ARASHI
Kanjurō (‘Arakan’), who had played this role since its film debut, was a
well-trodden propaganda move. It recalled for me the deployment of long-playing
heroic character, Maxim, in the first 1941 U.S.S.R. ‘Fighting Film’, <i>Meeting
with Maxim</i>, </span><i><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-language:KN">Vstrecha s Maksimon</span></i><span style="font-family:Arial">. Who better to gain quick approval of a patriotic hating of the enemy
than an already well-established popular hero? This is shown most obviously in <i>Satsuma
no misshi</i> in a sequence where the resentful face of Arakan gets step
closing-ups, montaged with step close-ups of the tricolor on the French ship
that was bringing the armaments.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Arial">There are overwhelming reasons why neither could have
been a direct influence on the other, and there is also a very important
difference in their contexts. The U.S.S.R. had then been invaded, whilst </span><span style="font-family:Arial">Japan</span><span style="font-family:Arial"> was not at war with </span><span style="font-family:Arial">France</span><span style="font-family:Arial">, and would not be so for most of the war. It’s also
worth noting that this anti-Gallican piece appeared just as those, I think, of
more liberal complexion, were extolling all things French in journals like <i>Eiga
Hyōron</i>. I’ll go further: I’d say the scriptwriter of <i>Satsuma no misshi</i>,
MARUNE Santarō, here under the pseudonym, </span><span class="ydpdf2fc46fsname"><span style="font-family:SimSun;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA" lang="JA">来栖重兵衛</span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">, had the same idea as me that interest in <span> </span>the French was a proxy for a wished-for
opposition. And it’s not just the French who are selling the country, but their
Japanese collaborators, shown in extended scenes of wine-drinking, rather than
cheese-eating. Despite photography by MIYAGAWA Kazuo, it looked cheaply made
with unconvincing sound. The print, a bit flecked, appears on the L.o.C. lists
of captured films.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA">Kurama Tengu’s
next outing the following year, still with Arakan, was under the script and
direction of ITŌ Daisuke. This was easily the best-preserved print of the set
and looked as if it had never been through a projector before (although
ja.wikipedia refers to a 2010 NFC screening). In fact, it was the best
preserved print I’ve ever seen, with sparklingly clear images and sharp sound
throughout. As you might expect for a film by Itō, there’s a spectacular
sword-fight, this one being set in a multi-floored, brick-built warehouse and
filmed by a camera that roamed vertically and horizontally. As in Suganuma’s
film, there are nice flashes of light on Kurama’s sword-blade, but in this film
we see it on the revolver, and even, flamboyantly, on the point of a pin. That
pin, belonging to a blinded woman, has strong connotations in the plot.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA">Every
suspense-and-rescue trope, and then some, is thrown at the final denouement.
The British, and probably others, are linked orally to the nefarious arms
dealers, but the over-whelming direction of hate in this film is something so
deplorable that it should require far more contextualisation than that given.
The arms-dealers are called ‘Jacob’ and have grotesque false noses and habits.
Such gratuitous promotion of anti-semitism, during the very maelstrom of the
Holocaust, surely needs to be overtly acknowledged and commented on at any
screening. The film was projected and billed with its original title, <i>Kurama
Tengu: Kogane Tengu - Kurama Tengu - Golden Hell</i>. I seem not to be the only
one who sees that trope of avarice as part-and-parcel of the anti-semitism,
since, at some point, the film’s title in Itō filmographies got changed to <i>Kurama
Tengu: </i></span><i><span style="font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-language:JA">Yokohama</span></i><i><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA"> ni arawaru - Kurama Tengu
Appears in </span></i><i><span style="font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-language:JA">Yokohama</span></i><i><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA">.</span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA"> The film does not appear in
any list of captured films and, at this point, I know nothing of its history of
preservation.</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA">Roger</span></p>
<p class="ydpdf2fc46fMsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char;mso-layout-grid-align:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:JA">macyroger@yahoo.co.uk</span></p>
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