Atsugi Taka

[Abe-Nornes]

I was waiting to see the post about Atsugi for a while now. When doing
research for my book on prewar/wartime documentary I tried meeting her
several times, but her health deteriorated over the past few years. It was
disappointing, because I have read so much of her writings that I feel like
I actually know her. Atsugi was a central member of Prokino in the early
30s and then Geijutsu Eigasha, PCL and Toho. 

In Prokino, she was confined to office work, despite her energy and
intelligence. This is early evidence of a pattern of marginalization that
New Left collectives were also guilty of. Screenwriting is one space within
the Japanese film world where patriarchy has allowed women to contribute,
and this is where Atsugi did much of her work. She is best known for her
work at Geijutsu Eigasha (GES) in the late 30s and early 40s. 

She did the scripts for Record of a Nursery (Aru hobo no kiroku, 1942) and 

1938 that one of the most prolific producers of large-scale documentary was
formed, Geijutsu Eigasha (GES). This was a company heavily populated by
former Prokino members. It was also a hot bed of theoretical criticism for
nonfiction filmmaking, since they published Bunka Eiga Kenkyu ("Study of
Culture Film"; it was renamed "Culture Film" ["Bunka Eiga"] when the
government forced the amalgamation of the press in 1941) which was edited
by Sasa Genju (the intellectual leader of Prokino). Atsugi wrote criticism
for this journal and did quite a bit of translation of foreign criticism
from English and Russian. Her most famous script was probably Record of a
Nursery ("Aru hobo no kiroku," 1942), which pointedly ignores the war going
on out there and shows instead the cooperative work between working mothers
and nursery school teachers to raise healthy, educated children. This film
was also the focal point for one of the debates over fictionality. In the
late stages of the war, she also wrote We are Working So So Hard
(Watashitachi ha konnna ni hataraite iru, 1945) which expresses an
undercurrent of desperation you rarely saw in war films. 

I spent an enormous amount of time going through her most notorious work,
her translation of Paul Rotha's Documentary Film. This sparked a lengthy,
vigorous debate about the nature of nonfiction work at the very moment the
government was attempting to regulate the industry and the terms of all
debate. Look for a forthcoming article about this in Cinema Journal.

Among feminists, Atsugi has a special place in postwar struggles thanks to
her leadership with Fujin Shinbun. This took her away from filmmaking, but
she still played an important part in the documentation of Prokino
(zadankai and the reproduction of their journals [see my other post]).
She's one of the first and most important women who has worked in the
Japanese film industry in roles other than actress. 

A selection of Atsugi's many writings:

Atsugi Taka. "Story-film no Yakugo ni Tsuite" ("On the Translation of
Story-film"), Bunka Eiga Kenkyu 3.4 (April 1940): 118-119.

Atsugi Taka. "Kiroku Eiga no Kyoko---Jijitsu wa Sono Mama 'Shinjitsu' de wa
Nai" ("Fiction in Documentary Film---Simple 'Actuality' is not 'Truth'"),
Nihon Eiga 5.2 (November 1940): 80-82.

Atsugi Taka. "Yakusha no Atogaki" ("Translator's Afterword"), in Rotha,
Paul. Dokyumentarii Eiga ("Documentary Film"), trans. Atsugi Taka (Tokyo:
Misuzu Shobo, 1960), 329-334.

Atsugi Taka. "Written on the Body: The Scenario of Aru hobo no kiroku"
("Karada de Kaita Aru hobo no kiroku no Shinario"), in Film Center 13 (8
March 1973): 4-5.

Atsugi Taka. "Deai to Wakare" ("Meeting and Parting"), Showa Shoki Sayoku
Eiga Zasshi Bekkan (Tokyo: Senki Fukkokubangyoai, 1981), 31-33. 

Atsugi Taka. Josei Dokyumentarisuto no Kaiso ("Reminiscences of a Female
Documentarist"), (Tokyo: Domesu Shuppan, 1991).

The last entry is her autobiography, which is pretty interesting. For those
in the US, it can be borrowed through interlibrary loan from the University
of Michigan. 

Markus