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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Anne, alas, I've only got a question on your question 1.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Is there anything in the context that would say the film in question is definitely Japanese, or the reverse ??</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Roger<br></div><div><br></div>
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On Sunday, 28 August 2022 at 23:49:51 BST, Anne McKnight via KineJapan <kinejapan@mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
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<div><div id="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><div>Hi everyone~<div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">As some of you know, I have been working on a translation project involving Kurosawa Akira’s <u class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">taidans</u> and essays. I’ve run into a couple of references that have stumped me—one on a silent film narrated by Tokugawa Musei, and one on a debate he, apparently, got into with a JCP member at some unspecified time.</div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">I would be curious if either of these items ring any bells…IDs or larger contexts.</div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">a) here is the passage in a Kurosawa essay (or, more precisely, his daughter’s ventriloquization of his voice from memoirs, conversations, ephemera, etc.). Does this sound vaguely familiar? It is always possible it is a mis-remembered account, of course…though the gothic and perhaps Expressionist scent is strong...</div><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: medium; padding: 0px;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><p style="text-indent:0.5in;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Garamond, serif;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657" lang="EN-US">Musei-san, like other <i class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">benshi</i>, was in charge of coordinating the accompaniment as well as the narration of the film. For instance, this is how one film went. A drunken guy approaches the sumptuous house of a wealthy man, carrying another man, and asks if the rich man will let the man on his back [?] spend the night, and leaves him. Musei doesn’t say a peep during that part, no accompaniment whatsoever. As time passes, the man keeps not waking up, and just as the rich man waves his hands [?] to revive the man he thinks is sleeping, Musei suddenly lets out a scream—kyaaa~~: the tragic cry of the man who discovers that the body lying underfoot belongs to his own son. Then the accompaniment suddenly begins, and the scene switches over to a lively carnival. Musei’s staging was incredibly skillful. I learned a lot from these productions, and spectators were really trained to watch films by Musei-san’s way of looking at things. For movie fans, Musei-san played the role of a guide. That’s just the kind of ideal movie theatre I want to create. (This is kind of long and I think the English description can suffice.)</span></p></div></blockquote><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">b) Kurosawa (him, actually, this time) makes reference to some sort of debate he got into with a JCP person. The essay is 1993, so it could have been at any point in the middle or late 20th century, though for obvious reasons, probably closer to the 50s-70s than the 1993 date of this essay. This one almost sounds like it might be related to JCP debates after people abandoned socialist realism—people like Abe Kobo or Hanada Kiyoteru. Does this “dispute” seem familiar to anyone, from film, art, or general debates about art and politics?</div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; border-color: currentcolor; border-style: none; border-width: medium; padding: 0px;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Garamond, serif;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657" lang="EN-US">At one
time in Tokyo, the Japanese Communist Party had a lot of clout, and there was a
split between artists and <a class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">artisans</a></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Garamond, serif;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657" lang="EN-US">. There was one person who insisted that he was an
artist, not an artisan, and I butted heads with him many times. In my view, the
very idea that you could skip over the craft of being an artisan to just
declare yourself an artist is ridiculous.</span></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Garamond, serif;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657" lang="EN-US"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></span></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><font class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657" face="Garamond, serif"><span style="font-size:14.666666984558105px;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">一時、東京でも共産党が牛耳ってた時代があるけれども、そのときに、アルティストとアルチザン、つまり芸術家と職人というのでね、「俺は</span></font></div><span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;font-size:14.666666984558105px;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">アルティストだ、</span><span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;font-size:14.666666984558105px;" class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">アルチザンじゃない」という人がいて、僕はすごくやり合ったんです。職人を突き抜けて芸術になるんであって、職人ではない芸術家なんてないんだ、と。</span></blockquote><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">If anything occurs to you, by way of intuitions or resemblances, I would love to hear about it. Thanks for any leads!</div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"><br class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657"></div><div class="ydp6e401646yiv4576213657">Anne</div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>KineJapan mailing list<br><a href="mailto:KineJapan@mailman.yale.edu" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">KineJapan@mailman.yale.edu</a><br><a href="https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan</a><br></div>
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