the return of the polical right

[GavinRees@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/13/99 1:06:09 PM, Aaron wrote:

<< I have already published articles on the 
nationalism of _Hana-bi_ and _Swallowtail Butterfly_ and there is the 
case of Toei's _Pride_. Can we separate the contemporary Japanese cinema 
we are watching from this clear rightward political turn?>>

This seems to me be both an important and fascinating question. However maybe 
it begs rather an obvious one. Is there really clear turning to the right?

It is certainly true that the boys who staff Monbusho, and the inner cadres 
of the LDP all now feel a new found freedom to voice right wing concerns, but 
I suspect that they may have been nagging at them all over the last 20 years. 
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 have not been in Japan as long as Mark Schilling and Aaron, and so I cant 
really tell how "the structure of feeling" about these things has changed, 
but my guess is that the apparent drift to the right in upper political 
circles is not necessarily something that goes all the way through Japanese 
society. Perhaps the plates are becoming displaced, and the crust is not 
moving in the same direction and pace as the strata below. Even the more 
traditional conservative types I know say that they think that now Japan 
faces real change, and that the lives of the young are becoming more outward 
looking than their own. What has suprised me about some of these 
conversations (even with fairly rampant emperor followers) is that they often 
go onto say that perhaps these changes are not so bad afterall. (This is all 
very anecdotal I know,  but I am interested in the idea that people may be 
beginning to see change as concievable again.)

I suspect that two interesting things to look at will be firstly how far 
conditions in the workplace change, and secondly how far Japan orientates 
itself as part of the Asian World, rather than the industrial world. The 
studio system seems to be on the ropes, and I suspect that all kinds of 
anarchasm in film production could be unleashed by the drift to digital 
film-making. Small teams, making cheaper films for specific audiences, and 
selling and marketing them around the world, (and perhaps even through a new 
network of small local festivals and clubs.)
 
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?

I tend to come into contact with either young arty people, or official 
traditional types. Does anybody have any ideas, or read anything interesting 
about how the housewives of Tokyo might be thinking?


Gavin Rees