Japanese film and the political right

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Mark, Peter, and Gavin for jumping onto this thread.

So much to comment on and do little time, so I guess I'll have to be 
brief.

Mark's historical recollections were enlightening.  Certainly we can 
ascribe much of the changes in political representation in Japanese film 
to a larger depoliticization of Japanese society.  But I do want to 
stress, as I think Peter also does, that political analysis of films 　is 
not something that just focuses on the outright political message a film 
makes.  If that was the case, we'd have little to talk about with 
contemporary film.  What we also should be doing is assuming that even 
the most apolitical film is engaging in politics by making and 
reinforcing (or in some cases questioning) assumptions about some of the 
issues Peter and others bring up: society, individual, family, gender, 
nation, economics, class, etc.  This, of course, is the realm of 
ideology--what is considered natural and common sense.

Peter lamented that much research on Japanese cinema has tended to ignore 
politics and I think he is right.  I wonder if it stems from an attitude 
that has tended to aestheticize Japanese cinema and thus render it 
apolitical (the Marxist Burch's convolutions in this regard to prewar 
film are interesting if not acrobatic).  I think we should all begin from 
the assumption that Kitano Takeshi, Iwai Shunji, Aoyama Shinji, Sento 
Naomi, Sabu, Shinozaki Makoto, Miike Takeshi, Yaguchi Shinobu, Koreeda 
Hirokazu, etc. are all political for better or for worse and begin to 
analyze what those politics are.

Part of the problem of the aesthetic depoliticization of Japanese cinema 
has been critical attitudes here.  The _Cinema 69_ group's efforts to 
form a cinema specific discourse was predicated largely on the effort to 
discuss film not as politics but only as film, thus bracketing out 
politics.  Hasumi, of course, has his own politics, but for critical 
attitudes towards film and politics, I still think it is interesting to 
see how Yamane and others vogorously defended _Pride_ as cinema while 
completely ignoring that it is politics (and that cinema IS politics).

Some comments about Peter's points:

>7.) Extended, often eerie silences seem to be endemic to many recent films 
>(Kitano's to mention only one). Does this have a political significance?

Some have spoken about how this reflects the inability of people in 
contemporary culture to communicate, to articulate discourse in a 
conversation with an other, and thus the fundamental lack of the Other in 
present-day Japanese culture.  I think this is true of some directors, 
but what do people think?

>8.) Just who is looking at recent Japanese cinema in Japan? How 
>representative is it of some wider zeitgeist? If it really is 
>marginalized, does a "political analysis" of it tell us much about what's 
>really going on? Should we be looking at tv instead?

This is always the problem with pop culture analysis.  Why look at a film 
with mediocre box office when it's Long Vacation that everyone's 
watching?  One solution is to emphasis pop culture as constituted by 
subcultures (the notion of subculture was originally a very political 
one, though it seems to have lost that valence in its use in Japanese pop 
culture analysis).  Another, in the same line, is to understand that 
zeitgeist is a mistaken concept: there is never one spirit for an age or 
culture, but always a set of conflicting time-lines, determinants, 
socio-political formations, etc.  This is especially true in a globalized 
context.

>9.) What about Mark Schilling's comment that the only  form left for 
>effective political comentary in Japanese cinema is satire--and that Japan 
>needs its own Tim Robbins of the silver screen? Personally, I would like 
>to see the enmergence of a new Japanese realism, starting with scripts 
>reflecting the actual idiom and rythms of contemporary speech and moving 
>on to the fielding of characters identifiable in real life. I believe J. 
>film took a disastrously wrong turn in the early seventies when it turned 
>heavily to manga for story ideas. Although we don't see this so much 
>anymore, there is still a stylized, two-dimensional quality to many film 
>characters, a lack of interiority which seems to date back to the manga 
>influence. Can we not say that the (apparently) apolitical void in whcih 
>so many films are set reflects a similar in the typical manga?
>Or am I being much too naive--about manga and/or contemporary cinema.

Actually, I think the long-take, long-shot style that has dominated 
independent cinema from the late 1980s has been an effort to create a 
certain realist alternative to both manga-based films and TV work.  It, 
however, seems to be on its last legs. We then need to ask what is the 
status of realism in the 1990s.  First, we can ask ourselves what it 
means that so many directors coming out of documentary are working in 
feature film: Koreeda, Sento and Suwa being the main three.  Is there a 
realism inherent in their work?  (I think Suwa is boldly asserting a 
realism, but Koreeda is not: he is more concerned with the individual 
memory of reality.  Sento, I think, is still working it out.)  Second, we 
can ask what the role is of manga in contemporary cinema.  I personally 
think _Shark Skin Man_, while funny, is less a sign of a new trend, than 
a last gasp in an old trend (little in that film is very new).  Talk to 
anyone in the manga industry and they'll tell you it's in decline: in 
readers, publication volume, money, etc.  Third, what is going on in 
terms of the criticial articulation of realism?  I was struck how the 
terms "real" and "realism" came up a lot in the _Nihonsei eiga no 
yomikata_ book, but with little definition or critical reflection.  There 
seems to be interest, but no one knows what it is.

With regard to Gavin's comments:

>What I am wondering,  then,  is whether the base ideology in those places 
>has 
>always remained the same, and instead the thing that has changed is the 
>rigidity of the constraint which prevented them from doing the unthinkable,  
>and giving vent to their gut feelings. 

I think this is partially true.  But what many are commenting is that the 
fact that what were considered taboo subjects can now be put out in the 
open reflects a larger change in society: i.e., it's OK to voice 
rightwing ideas because the feeling is the entire society is rightwing 
and won't create a backlash.  Peter cites Fujioka and Kobayashi as two 
central figures in "proving" that it's OK to be rightwing in the open and 
still sell millions of books among "ordinary" people.  Kobayashi is also 
cited as showing how the young in particular are turning to the right.

>Two film makers in particular Takeshi Miike, and Iwai Shunji seem very keen 
>on the idea that  there is an Asian Audience out there,is distinct to either 
>a Hollywood audience or a European arthouse crowd. (This is probably one 
>reason why Iwai's films don't go down so well in the West: he projects a 
>distorted "Occidentalist" image of it  for the consumption of an asian 
>audience, one that Westerners can't see themselves in.)
>
>I don't know then if Iwai's films are particularly pro-Japan, rather than 
>pro-Asia; and I am wondering how that distinction would fit into what Aaron 
>wrote?

The issue of Asia and the Asian Audience is crucial and I'm glad Gavin 
brought it up.  I'm a little more skeptical about recent trends: I 
definitely don't see Iwai as that Asian, although his popularity in Asia 
is undeniable.  We need to be very careful when we talk about Asia in 
contemporary Japan, because many conservative politicians have recently 
picked up pan-Asianism in their own way.  What are we supposed to make of 
the fact that the "young audience" for _Swallowtail Butterfly_ is also 
supposedly the same young audience for Kobayashi's _Sensoron_?  Do we 
make distinctions between Yamamoto Masashi's Asia and Iwai's?  Can we 
call a consumerist interest in Asia pro-Asia?  There's a lot going in 
here that needs to be sorted out!

Just some thoughts.

Aaron Gerow