Japanese film and the political right

[Michael Badzik]

Peter B. High wrote:

>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 perhaps this is a result of the hollowing out of the Japanese filmgoing 
audience in the seventies, with the audience becoming much younger, and 
its older members much more likely to be male. The sort of audience 
usually offered up cute animals and cartoon characters for its younger 
members, nudity and guns for the older ones, and neither one thought to 
need a lot of character development. Manga or not, the stories were 
destined to become less complex in this scenario.

Aaron responded to another point in Peter's message with:

>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.

And I think its time that we begin to consider that there are also writers 
and producers who have a lot to do with the politics of movies. After all, 
would _Pride_ have the political slant it has if it were not for the
politics 
of the man who funded it?

And finally, Lori Hitchcock noted:

>but many of these women actually left Japan for Hong Kong (a trend that 
>has been waning since the handover, but which doesn't appear to have 
>died), citing their interest in Hong Kong movies as a starting point. 
Many 
>of these women left well-paying jobs in Japan for low-paying ones in 
>Hong Kong, based on the higher degree of job satisfaction in HK; some of 
>them have observed that, whereas average women in Japan cannot hope 
>for much advancement in a company, in Hong Kong, corporate success is 
>based on ability, rather than gender or tenure ...

For what it's worth, I'll add that this is something that is not specific
to 
Asia; there are quite a few young Japanese women who have come here to 
California by themselves for the very same reasons. There was even an 
article about this trend in the Daily Yomiuri.

Michael Badzik
mike at vena.com