Japanese film and the political right

[Peter B. High]

Aaron wrote:
>...there are many intellectual 
> commentators who are arguing that this is is not only an exercise of 
> power threatening a fundamental undermining of parliamentary democracy, 
> but may signal a major turning point in postwar Japanese history where 
> the extreme political right is no longer taboo but now the governmental 
> norm.  It may be extreme rhetoric, but the words "the return of fascism" 
> are being spoken by even moderate commentators....
>  What I am wondering is how we should think of cinema in relation to 
this  turning point. ...Are some 
> Japanese filmmakers resisting this rightward trend in their own way?  
>Or, wittingly or unwittingly, backing it?  Just what is the place of 
politics 
> in contemporary Japanese cinema?
> 
> Any comments?

------------------------

I think Aaron is to be commended, first for his perspecacity in putting 
forward this extremely important issue and then for the context in which 
he sets it. As a fairly assimilated "participant" in Japanese culture (if 
not a direct participant in its political culture), I myself have been 
watching with concern the ever-darkening writing on the wall for the past 
ten years . 

Privately, I have also been puzzling myself about the the role an engaged 
foreigner can and should play as the "outsider within" ("uchinaru soto no 
hito"--a striking phrase coined half a decade ago by Asahi Shinbun for 
foreingers like myself ). I struggled particularly hard with the issue 
during my term as  a regular (Japanese language, evening edition) 
columnist for Asahi Shinbun from the late eighties through the early 
nineties, and finally came up with the following modest formulation. Our 
role should be to base ourselves in our natural sense of "iwakan" (lit. 
the sense of "incongruity") and from that position to provide our Japanese 
readers/listeners with a running parallel (or alternative) rendition of 
the salient cultural issues of the day. To do this effectively, one must 
abjure--or at least suppress--any suggestion of missionary zeal or 
preachiness. A hard task at times, but the foreign commentator who fails 
in this will invariably lose his readership and, with them, his "bully 
pulpit." 

Rather, the stance should be to struggle along with ordinary,
alert Japanese people toward a grasp of "what it's all about."  Our 
*iwakan* gives us, not only an alternative perspective, but the 
opportunity to infiltrate into the public discourse new images and 
metaphors . Rather than rendering from on high grand pronouncements and 
judgements, the technique should emphasize "paralleling" and 
"infiltrating". Instead of issuing radically alien theses, one should try 
to join the discourse *in situ* and to restate the issues in our own 
language, images, metaphors. Since we speak from the social margin. our 
perspective and our mode of phrasing will hopefully  serve to reinvigorate 
debate among the Japanese themselves. More directly, we can actually have 
some small impact on the trend of the debate by infiltrating fresh tools 
(metaphors, etc.) and leaving them there to be picked up by the principals 
(the Japanese) themselves.

This fairly lengthy prologue is just may way of acknowledging Aaron's 
perception that we seem to have suddenly lurched into a major crisis which 
may (or may not) mark a "major turning point in post-war Japanese 
history". In the last several weeks, I have found myself considering 
things in much the same semi-apocalyptic vein: "return to fascism," "far 
right-wing agenda," "death-knell of democracy." With the Diet drama still 
unfolding in such an alarming manner, I find an almost perverse pleasure 
in thundering these epithets. Still, at the same time, my *iwakan* warns 
me that such rhetoric, while partially-illuminating and certainly 
satisfying on an emotional level, may be doing us a disservice in terms of 
grasping a real and thus far more complex situation.

 An editorial in this morning's Asahi Shinbun chrystalized this intuition 
in a most telling manner and I think it appropriate to introduce it here.
Under the headline "Which Back Current Do We Choose?" the editorial goes 
on to elaborate the metaphor of two great waves which had long been in the 
building, colliding in the past several weeks over the Diet building. On 
the one hand is the wave representing the "rightwing agenda," inspired by 
the fear that "internationalization"--of information, finances culture, 
"national identity" (Nonaka's scary phrase)--has diluted the national 
essence, weakening the situation of the central government and the "unity" 
of the people. The new laws regarding the flag and anthem, along with the 
proposed rededication of Yasukuni Shrine, represent an effort to salvage 
the symbolic core of a traditional Japan which has long been eclipsed from 
view. The other laws, wire-tapping etc., are more direct efforts to 
strengthen the hand of the centreal government against the most salient 
anarchic ("criminal") elements threatening its leadership position. One 
might add that some of the ideological groundwork for this sudden lurch 
back to traditionalism and the control mentality has been carried out in 
recent years by such figures as Fujioka (of the "Society for Thinking 
About a New History Textbook"), the revisionist cartoonist Kobayashi 
Yoshinori and even perhaps such films as *Pride*.

But, as the editorial points out, there is a counterveiling "wave" 
emerging from another body of (recent) history. It rises from the surge of 
grassroots "citizen activism" (NGOs, NPOs, the ecology movement), a 
development which in recent years has been given solid legal footing 
through the passage of an assortment of national legislation. Now, more 
than ever in the past, individuals--or at least spontaneously formed 
groups of individual nationals--have the right to deal with the government 
on a level of rough parity: "The Public Release of Information Act is but 
one example of this trend. And, when one puts it alongside the Non-profit 
Organizations (NPO) Act passed last year, it seems more likely than ever 
that citizens will now be empowered to involve themselves in public 
administration and national politics, allowing them to build  national 
society as they see fit. The participatory rights of the public also 
appear to be strengthened by the trends toward regionalization and the 
repeal of central control over many features of regional life. These are 
all impiortant contributions to the extension of local resident's rights. 
Furthermore, it represents an effective backlash against the [traditional] 
meddling of the bureaucracy in the autonomy of the community."

The Asahi editorial ends with the warning that this second wave is no 
panacea and that, for the moment at least, it is facing a substantial 
challenge. In fact, the editorial ends with a rather depressing appraisal 
of the public's indifference to politics and its "sheepish" subordination 
to initiatives and regulations issued from on high.

In any case I think all of us living here in Japan have observed a new 
vigor over the past decade in voluntarism anmd grass-roots activism. Of 
course, as the Asahi article warns, it is still nascent and fumbling and 
this gives cause for worry. Still, we do need to be reminded of the 
reality of this "counter-wave" and to enter it into our speculations about 
how and where events are trending.

Since the above has already taken a lot of space--and precious time, I 
might add!--I will simply list some of my own untidy set of ideas about 
rrelating the "crisis" to Japanese cinema.

1.) Analyzing current Japanese cinema from a political perspective is both 
long-overdue and potentially fruitful. Special attention should be paid to 
the manner in which filmmakers acknowledge the presence (or absence, as is 
more likely the case) of  "society" in their fictional/ized worlds. What 
signifies community? What is the nature of the space (physical, mental, 
conceptual) dwelt in by individuals, groups, communities?  What is the 
role of "collective memory"--about the war, post-war developments?  What 
pronouncements are being made about "Japaneseness"? Perhaps som,ebody else 
can add to the list of topics.

2.) This time, at least, let's keep our analyses focused on the actual 
historical-political situation, rather than rambling off into trendy 
ruminations based in Euro-American theory. The focus meanwhile can be 
quite wide: individual films, new genres, articulately vocal individual 
film artists, film corporations.

3.) Lets try to incorporate--as much as possible--insights provided by 
Japanese viewers/analysts.

4.) Something I really would like to know more about is the "political 
content" of influential anime.

5.) It seems to me that one important line of thinking--one which emerged 
from the final symposium on documentary film at Yamagata Film Festival two 
years ago--has to do with the trend toward extremely individualized 
filmmaking (a reflection of atomization) reflected in themes and 
story-telling. Indirectly, we see a negative response to this in Nonaka's 
condemnation of "the loss of Japanese identity."

6.) The Welsh independent filmmaker John Williams, working here in Japan,  
published an excellent analysis of the WINGS OF THE GODS and the other war 
films made in 1995 as part of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. 
Its publishe din the Nagoya University Faculty for Languages and Cultures 
Journal (2 1/2 yrs. ago?). Although its not so easy toget, its worth 
circulating.

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?

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?

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.

Anyway, what do you think?

Peter B. High
Nagoya University