Edward Yang (censored)

[Davis Darrel]

Evidently the list server does not want you to see the remainder of Edward Yang's remarks on violence at the Kyoto symposium on Jidai geki.  Twice truncated, I will try to weasel them through at this time.  Apologies for the inconvenience, and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all.

Yang:

.. . . Whats *shocking* to me is the coldbloodedness of killing in action genres like Jidaigeki or yakuza eiga, and this is a matter of character and style more than physical representations of violence.  While not ultra-violent, some of the characters in my films are chilling in their lack of human concern for others; still other characters, like the hero of TENCHU that I saw this afternoon, with Nakadai Tatsuya playing a compulsive assassin, are charismatic in their cruelty, nihilism, or whatever.  I had not laid eyes on this film since I saw it in its first run in the late 60s, and it brought back some surprisingly warm memories--these coming from Nakadai^s indiscriminate violence (as well as things from my own youth)--marking a certain carelessness, an easygoing acceptance of meaningless violence that is also part of Jidaigeki style.  As a filmmaker, I find this looseness irresistible, and very difficult to recreate in contemporary genres, although it seems to be coming back in films like those of Beat Takeshi and others.

	Overall, Jidaigeki is a historical genre which allows you to *get away with* comments on society that you might not otherwise.  You can do all kinds of wonderful things--ridicule, satire, gratuitous violence, blasphemy, whatever--in an historical narrative which lets you off a contemporary hook.  Thats another great thing about Jidaigeki films, their flexibility and freedom in spite of their generic constraints.

	Hasumi:
These are wonderful comments, and they are historically resonant as well.  *Nihilist heroes* in the Jidaigeki are well-known stock characters in which coldbloodedness and random violence serve as a strong social protest against coldblooded regimes.  But perhaps we should turn this around and see the style, the outlook, or the pose which Mr. Yang so well describes as the real *threat* to oppressive social cohesion.  The refusal of such cohesion is something which Jidaigeki can do with reckless abandon, along with certain other genres, and this is what makes it so important.

I am looking forward to seeing Mr. Yangs next film, as you all are.  But I certainly hope it will be a Jidai geki.  Let this be an appeal to the public, and the press, to make it possible for Edward Yang to make a Jidai geki!  I can hardly wait.

(end)

Darrell Davis
Kobe University of Commerce