Shunji Iwai and "Impovershed Language"

Lee A. Makela l.makela
Tue Jan 13 12:05:02 EST 1998


While it was never my intention to stir up a "debate", I  welcome Aaron
Gerow's thoughtful and provocative response to my comments on Shunji Iwai's
_Love Letter_.  I stand by my initial analysis, not so much because I think
Marie Suzuki is in error when she sees scriptwriting inadequacies in
Hiroko's "cry to the mountain" or to deny Aaron's assessment that the effect
is to "valorize the status quo and the consumerist reduction of everything
to the image", but rather both because I think Shunji Iwai's work is open to
multiple interpretations and because I, for one, see his successes as more
than merely a triumph of "style" over substance. 

First, let me agree with Aaron that Iwai seems very much a postmodern film
director and that his work can easily be seen as pastiche.  However, I would
contend that both parody and critique can be incorporated in that pastiche
-- and legitimately so since, although the postmodern position denies the
validity of meta-narrative, it does not deny the existence of
meta-narratives altogether (at least in the minds of those constructing
them, however erroniously) which can then be parodied and critiqued with
impunity.  In his music video "Knit Cap" for the Moonriders, for example,
Iwai includes as part of the pastiche, along with the expected music video
itself, not only a karaoke version illustrated by the storyboard for the
music video but also an extended parody of Ozu (complete with grainy
black-and-white opening titles that go on forever).

In _Love Letter_ Iwai provides the critique I suggested amidst the pastiche
of all the other currents he explores on the viewer's behalf by illustrating
concretely (in Aaron's definition) "a political stance opposing a current
situation, analyzing its problems in order to point to a solution" with
respect to the issue of "impoverished language".  Whereas Suwa Nobuhiro's
stance with respect to this issue in _Duo_ decries the use of trite and
vapid language as inhibiting effective communication, Iwai shows the power
of the non-verbal to "get the message across" even in the face of the most
mundane use of the spoken (or written) language.  The audience can "know"
(on the basis of what the film has shown us by that point) what Hiroko is
trying to say even when the words themselves fail to do so.  When members of
the audience are moved to tears as a result, Iwai has concretely
demonstrated his "solution":  a focus of the verbal as the only effective
means of communication conflates the written and spoken "language" with
"communication" and misses the fact that we communicate using far more than
words alone.

Another example from _Love Letter_ revolves around the letter Hiroko writes
her dead fiance.  It takes several scenes for the two parties involved to
straighten out the original miscommunication that occurs when Hiroko's
letter ends up in the hands of the young woman who shares the dead finance's
name; however, the audience catches on more quickly because we are shown
non-verbally and can enjoy the joke.

_Swallowtail_ illustrates this same crtitique in exactly the way Aaron
suggests -- words may fail in the babble of tongues (emphasised even more by
having the Chinese and European actors speaking Japanese while Japanese
carry on in Chinese) but meaningful communication does not.   _Undo_, too,
uses minimal language (I have successfully shown the video version to
American student audiences without subtitles several times without
complaint) but communicates a powerful message (however that might be
interpreted) nonetheless.

The "political problem" being addressed here is not new, not one resulting
from the inability of the young alone to escape the mundane.  Over the years
many have pointed to the Japanese language itself as "impoverished" -- if I
recall correctly even Edwin Reischauer at one point suggested the language
in all its cumbersome written complexities and verbal vagueness be abandoned
entirely in favor of English.  What Iwai reminds us of, however, is that
effective communication can be achieved through non-verbal means; perhaps
even, as a direct result of the effort that needs to be put into overcoming
these recognized "difficulties" within spoken and written Japanese, in the
final analysis providing contemporary Japanese with a distinct communication
advantage (in a _nihonjinron_ sort of way, reflecting Aaron's concern with
the Iwai's emergent ethnocentric self-confidence).  

[More in a later message about where Iwai places the responsibility for
interpreting his films.]
Lee A. Makela, Associate Professor
Department of History, Cleveland State University

l.makela at popmail.csuohio.edu
http://www.csuohio.edu/history/lam.html





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