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<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font face="Arial, sans-serif">No
one has said here anything on this year's Nippon Connection. I've
also been pretty tied up but let me try and say something on a couple
of films before I hit Il Cinema Ritrovato. I did already mention
before a couple of fiction films shared with FEFF.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm"><font face="Arial, sans-serif">The
outstanding documentary for me was </font><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>Shunga:
The Lost Japanese Erotica</i></font><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-style: normal">
by Hirata Junko. Its core format was a classic art documentary,
taking a historical narrative. But the examination of individual
works, closing up on details and relating that to the whole
composition and to context was more than well done. There were
suggestions that the idea came out of the exhibition at the British
Museum a few years back but the film seemed aimed at a wider
audience, particularly in Japan. Indeed the Japanese title is just
</span></font><font face="Arial Unicode MS"><font face="MS Mincho, monospace"><span style="font-style: normal">春の画</span></font><span style="font-style: normal">
</span></font><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-style: normal">,
and the narrative of the film was that shunga was hidden from modern
view in Japan – I wouldn't say that for the West that I know. So,
to counter that, we had on-camera voices, female and Japanese,
relating sympathetically to the sensations and emotions portrayed.</span></font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">The quality of the images was
outstanding and well worth seeing on a large screen. But what really
brought the film alive for me was the music. It would be an easy trap
to use various kinds of music with misleading connotations but,
instead we had an extended original composition by Hara Marihiko,
played on close-miked traditional instruments that seemed to really
respond to the art and the narrative.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">As part of promoting modern female
acceptance, there was the usual reference to Edo-era brides bringing
shunga as part of their trousseau. I could quibble and mention that
there was no reference to the power-difference, backed by age
difference in the genders portrayed , but that needs to be someone
else's film. It did look at some same-sex shunga.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">A documentary I was much less
comfortable with was 'The Making of a Japanese', by Ema Ryan
Yamazaki. One could only admire the dedication and patience in
following a Year 1 and a Year 6 class through a a year in their
primary school in western Tokyo. Her editing, and presumably her
original capture follow very much to the title that Yamazaki has
chosen. So, we see only situations and lessons that promote group
conformity. The teachers are shown as hard-worked without any
suggestion of the marking workload. The delivery of a highly defined
and even highly-scheduled curriculum and the mind-numbing repetition
are absences of Yamazaki's choice. But the primary objective of
primary education according to many educators – the teaching of how
to learn – is an absence in Japan that Yamazaki portrays without
even mentioning it.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">In the intro and Q&A afterwards,
Yamazaki repeated many times her claim that the trains would not run
on time in Japan without the teaching of social conformity that she
portrayed. It is a full century now from when Fascism was promoted as
'the trains are running on time in Italy'. I don't think Yamazaki's
claim is true. Nor do I think that the cause of German trains' recent
lack of punctuality is a lack of fascism. The 'English disease' is
something else.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">I brought up the contrast with the
films of Hani Susumu, where non-conformity was more tolerated and
children were shown to be encouraged in individual self-expression.
In contrast, the only 'art' I saw in Yamazaki's film was the communal
slaughter of 'Ode to Joy' as a lesson in machine-like social
conformity. I guess Hani and his co-authors were promoting ideas that
still were not very widespread but, if Yamazaki's portrayal is
broadly true, Hani's project failed. Bizarrely though, Yamazaki
considered the education shown by Hani as more authoritarian.</font></p>
<p class="ydpf64eca7cwestern" style="margin-top: 0.3cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">'The Making of a Japanese' won the
audience prize for documentaries at Nippon Connection.</font></p>
</div></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Roger<br></div></div></body></html>