Kawase and "Suzaku"

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

In the flurry at the end of the year, Birgit Kellner sent in a very good 
post on Kawase Naomi which deserved discussion but was probably lost 
because everyone, as was the case with me, was busy.  To remind people, 
here it is again:

>I've just watched a WOWOW-documentary on recent Japanese cinema,
>produced in the wake of all the awards recently won by Japanese films at
>festivals abroad. Kawase Naomi's "suzaku" was featured quite
>prominently, and Kawase herself briefly explained her approach to
>filmmaking. As my Japanese is only maamaa, I thought I'd ask the
>Kawase-experts on this list whether my following impression is correct:
>For Kawase, films and media are a reality only to be mistrusted. The
>only trustworthy type of reality, that which possesses a hundred percent
>of reliability, is what happens right before one's eyes. It is this
>immediate and trustworthy reality which she wants to transform into and
>relate through films. 

>I must confess that I have not seen "Suzaku" yet, nor have I read any
>in-depth reviews of Kawase's work. But if the above impression is indeed
>correct, it seems to me quite naive and even self-contradictory. For in
>the end, Kawase would end up producing exactly that reality which she
>herself dismisses as unreliable and (so is my understanding) false - or
>not?

>Any comments, hints etc. appreciated (as always), 

I did not see the documentary (though it's not a surprise WOWOW would 
feature Kawase since it did produce _Suzaku_), so I can't talk about it 
or what Kawase specifically said there.  Bur Birgit raised some extremely 
important issues which I would like to pursue.

First, I think Kawase's attitude is not unusual.  It seems that among 
many young filmmakers these days, you either find a totally addictive 
fascination with media (Iwai Shunji) or a distrust of it that leads to 
the adoption of styles which, if not necessarily documentary, are 
prominent in their effort to maintain a distance from the subject and 
reduce the intervention between camera and characters.  I think the 
still-prominent use of long shot, long take photography (evident in 
_Suzaku_ as well) is a manifestation of this latter attitude.  (And 
perhaps the move away from that--without falling into the MTV pit like 
Iwai--is a possible reflection of a new attitude towards mediated 
reality, but that's another post.)

At least in experimental film circles, Kawase was part of a trend in the 
early 1990s of especially young women filmmakers trying to record and 
confirm their self-identity though the recorded image.  For many in the 
Tama Art University crowd, this usually involved the avant-garde 
exploration of their own naked body.  Some of those filmmakers spoke of 
the need to preserve their body on film before it grew old, but there was 
also the apparent need to try to articulate one's own body oneself, as 
well as to assert one's freedom through the flaunting of sexuality.  In 
the case of many other student filmmakers like Kawase, the choice was 
personal documentary: use 8mm to record one's life and one's family, 
often in a "search for one's self" (which is usually tied to a search for 
family origins, especially fathers (Kawase) and mothers).

This trend in filmmaking is important, especially since it is evident on 
an international scale, with personal documentary becoming a dominant 
force these days.  But what was always the problem with the Japanese 
example, and what Birgit perceptively points out, is that much of it was 
based on a wholly uncritical conception of the image and the constructed 
nature of reality.  Most of you familiar with personal documentary in the 
US (Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Sadie Benning) know that the search for 
self is always tied to a questioning of subjectivity and the media images 
we always use (and which the filmmaker is using) to construct the self.  
This kind of criticality is rarely evident in the work of young Japanese 
filmmakers, Kawase included.  (I personally think much of this has to do 
with the lack of media/film education in the art schools these people go 
to: they learn production, but with film studies in such poor shape in 
Japan, they don't learn the critical tools to question their own media 
constructions.)

All this leads to a very naive notion of reality and how film can capture 
it.  Frankly, it might not be good to talk too deeply about what Kawase 
says.  I've always had the impression that she just films what she likes 
and then tries (not always successfully) to theorize it after the fact.  
Her debt to former Ogawa Productions people (Fuseya Hiroo, Tamura Masaki, 
Fukuda Katsuhiko) has also made her feel the need to side with what she 
may percieve as Ogawa's commitment to filming reality (though we can 
question what Ogawa defines as "reality" after seeing such films as 
_Magino Village -- A Tale_).  

But the fact Kawase is not engaging in a critique of reality is not 
simply due to some "intuitive" style or theoretical naivety.  I think it 
must also be pointed out that Naomi is in no way the kind of political 
filmmaker Hammer and the American women filmmakers are, not having the 
radical focus which would lead her to pursue the socially constructed 
nature of reality.  Her world view is marvellously gentle and more 
outward looking than her often solipcistic contemporaries, but she 
exhibits a strong, often conservative nostalgia for rural community (a 
nostaliga which, one might add, is often based on a realization of its 
breakdown) and for the spirit of natural things.  Some of her comments 
about nature also reveal a very uncritical attitude towards how "nature" 
has been used to construct the Japanese national imaginary, and thus 
little self-reflection over how her own work is being used to create 
"Japan" for foreign spectators.

Also, despite being one of the few successful women filmmakers in 
Japanese film history, she is not a feminist and has no interest in those 
issues.  Maybe this getting into the realm of the personal, but this is 
the public image Naomi herself is constructing.  The biggest 
manifestation of that is the fact that we can no longer call her "Kawase 
Naomi."  Naomi married her producer Sento Takanori and, in big headlines 
in the sports papers, proclaimed that she would now call herself "Sento 
Naomi."  My New Year's card from Naomi was signed "Sento Naomi" and it 
lists her new film as being directed by "Sento Naomi."  (Last year's _The 
Weald_ ("Somaudo monogatari") will be the last film to bear "Kawase" in 
the credits--it will be released this year.)  Even Bitters End, her 
distributor, has confirmed (much to their own consternation) that her 
public name is now "Sento Naomi".  This despite the fact that she has 
finally made a name for herself at home and abroad as Kawase: changing 
people's memories at home will be hard enough, changing it abroad will be 
very difficult.

It may be career suicide, it may not.  It is also her decision.  But 
especially in the domestic political climate, where women are struggling 
to get the government to change the law which REQUIRES them to take the 
name of their husband as their legal name (unless their husband takes 
theirs--in rare cases), not even choosing to use Kawase as her career 
name (which many women end up doing) is a very reactionary political 
statement--especially when made so publicly.  It reveals a very 
conservative conception of personal and family relations as well as again 
signals a wholly uncritical attitude about how the self (and its reality) 
is constructed in the media and in society.

I write all this not because I want to put Naomi down.  Again, she's an 
extremely talented filmmaker who deserves our support.  I like her films 
and that's why I have programmed them in the past.  I also think that 
despite Naomi's conservatism, her films and those of her contemporaries 
still represent certain breakdowns and fissures in contemporary Japan 
which, by being revealed, are important critical statements themselves.  
But it is too often the case, and Naomi is no exception, that 
conservative solutions are sought for such problems, mostly without any 
critical self-reflection on those solutions and what they mean.  Naomi 
and many in her generation in Japan evince a basically uncritical 
attitude about themselves, their reality, and their political society.  
I'm still hoping for the arrival of new young filmmakers who are more 
aware of the complexities of the reality that surrounds them and that 
their camera creates.

Aaron Gerow
YNU