queries: Love Letter; Itami; databases

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Lee Makela for stepping into the _Love Letter_/Iwai debate.  I 
do feel, however, I have to comment on some of his remarks.

>Whereas Marie Suzuki and Aaron Gerow found it difficult to tune in to
>Hiroko's "Ogenki desuka?  Watashi wa genki desu!" cry to the mountain in
>Iwai's "Love Letter", I personally found the scene quite moving precisely
>because the wording was so vapid and mundane.  To me Iwai was pointing out
>the real inadequacies of verbalization among the young in Japan (in spoken
>Japanese even) to express the real and complex emotions underlying the words
>themselves.  The effect was, then, not so much to "valorize the status quo
>and the consumerist reduction of everything to the image" but to critique
>that impoverishment by bringing the audience to a realization of just how
>much more she was attempting to communicate through that most commonplace of
>opening gambits used when two friends meet after a time apart.  Clearly as
>well the phrase meets Iwai's criteria that much of his film work emphasises:
>placing the responsibility for interpretation squarely on the head and in
>the heart of the viewer, each of whom must read into the entire scene its
>essentially meaning.

This is a very interesting interpretation and one that should be pursued. 
 I would accept it if one could find more supporting evidence in the text 
which shows that the film is really "pointing out the real inadequacies 
of verbalization among the young in Japan" or that it is a "critique" of 
that impoverishment.  I look forward to Lee providing that.

At this point, however, I don't see it.  First, while it is clear that 
language is an issue in Iwai's films (especially _Swallowtail_), lack of 
communication is not.  For all the languages floating around 
_Swallowtail_, it is amazing how much people do succeed in communicating: 
Yen Towners especially seem to have no problem in relating and there 
always seems to be someone around to interpret if the words don't get 
across the first time.  I think this is a manifestation of one, the 
"in-group" consciousness through which Iwai's films have been articulated 
(i.e., "we" young people can understand it because "we" all know this 
language), and two, the film's complete failure in realistically 
depicting the postcolonial situation (which is echoed in how that film, 
for all its surface emphasis on the economy of the yen, completely elides 
the transnational economy that created Yen Town). 

_Love Letter_ is little different: none of the characters really seem to 
have any problem communicating with others.  This is most evident if you 
compare the film with two works that really do emphasize the young's 
inability to verbalize: Suwa Nobuhiro's _Duo_ and Aoyama Shinji's 
_Helpless_.  _Duo_ especially emphasizes the frustration of 
discommunication and the isolation it produces; _Helpless_ takes this to 
the extreme to boldly depict the utter alienation the inability to know 
the Other produces.  Suwa's characters also speak in trite and vapid 
phrases, but what I think Suwa does and what Iwai doesn't is locate those 
in a larger structure of loneliness and conflict.  This is most evident 
in his and Tamura Masaki's camera.  He just keeps filming his characters 
in long takes: when they don't communicate, he doesn't offer us, the 
audience, any "visual" communication through editing to supplant or fill 
that in.  All we see is emptiness, something which further emphasizes the 
void surrounding each of the characters.

Iwai, however, cuts incessantly, always offering the pretense of meaning 
even when his characters are saying nothing.  This is why I have to 
disagree with the last comment Lee made.  I in no way think Iwai places 
"the responsibility for interpretation squarely on the head and in the 
heart of the viewer."  As I said to my Meigaku class the other week, from 
the point of view of Bazin, the theorist who was really concerned with 
letting the spectator interpret on their own, Iwai is rather a director 
who is constantly obsessed with directing the viewer's gaze.  In this 
respect, he is closer to Spielberg (a master at manipulating spectator 
reading) than Renior (Bazin's favorite).  Where he differs from classical 
Hollywood montage (which you could say Spielberg epitomizes) is that what 
he forces the viewer to understand/read is not as much narrative as 
"stylishness" itself.  I recall once scene in _Swallowtail_ when the 
prostitute Reiko visits Suzukino (the reporter) to sell her story on 
Ageha.  She falls against the venetian blinds in the office, perhaps a 
sign of her disturbed mental state (she's an addict).  But Iwai can't let 
himself show this very short action in one shot: he cuts it into three or 
four.  This is exactly the kind of montage Bazin would hate: it's first a 
cheap way of showing her mental state, and it doesn't even go on to 
reflect an attitude towards reality that Eisensteinian montage did 
(reality as conflict; dialectics).  It's excess, pure and simple: style 
for the sake of style.  But what's worse is that it is an incessant, 
dictatorial style that forces us to go along with it.  

Just imagine _Love Letter_ shot in long shot, long take: only then would 
the vapidity of the character's dialogue really come through.

Iwai is too much of a technical perfectionist, coming out of the world of 
TV and commercials where spectators are not allowed to think on their 
own, to leave things up to the audience.  Yet at the same time, I don't 
think he is offering a "critique" with his forceful world view.  I really 
would like to hear more on why Lee thinks this is a "critique," but I 
think we have to be more careful with how we use the term.  "Critique" 
should properly indicate a political stance opposing a current situation, 
analyzing its problems in order to point to a solution.  I just don't see 
that stance in Iwai, even in _Swallowtail_ for all its surface talk about 
Japanese identity (as I have written elsewhere, I think this is a 
frighteningly reactionary film which does deserve pointed political 
critique).  Watching Iwai, I am more reminded of Jameson's definition of 
the postmodern as pastiche: a situation where parody or critique is 
impossible because there are no longer any meta-narrative positions from 
which to launch a critique.  I can't help but think Iwai is pastiche, not 
critique.  (For more on the lack of critique among young directors, see 
my other post on Kawase.)

Iwai needs to be discussed some more.  But I think all of this has to be 
accompanied with a rigorous, theoretical analysis of the texts themselves 
and their location in the contemporary historical conjuncture.

Aaron Gerow
YNU