Japanese film and the political right

[Mark Schilling]

Peter High wrote:

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?

What I wrote was:

More than a straight-ahead political film -- say a leftist rebuttal to
Pride -- satire of the Kokkai e Iko type stands a better chance of getting
made and screened. Given the current public mood -- apathetic, but cynical
-- satire might be more effective as well. 

In other words, I didn't say that satire was the "only form," I only
suggested that it might be a more effective form.  Of course, some topics
lend themselves better to this approach than others. One can imagine a
satire on the unholy triangle of bureacracy, business and the guys with
missing pinky fingers more easily than one on comfort women. 

I think there is a need for films of all kinds on political themes.
But let's face it, though you may be able to make an excellent documentary
on the comfort women with little more than a grant and grit, if you want to
film a realistic drama on, say, the life of Emperor Showa for general
release, you're quickly going to hit some large brick walls. (Kurosawa
Akira once told me that he wanted to make a film on that very topic, but
was afraid the rightists would kill him, even if he took a positive view of
his subject). 

Even assuming that the walls are breachable, how many younger directors out
there want to make the effort? The generation of directors old enough to
remember the war and its aftermath grew up in a world where even ordinary
Japanese felt a duty to work for the sake of the country, where one's
political affiliation could literally be a matter of life or death, where
big issues of national direction and identity were at stake.

Younger directors, however, grew up in a comfortable, secure middle-class
society in which politics had become a power game played by men old enough
to be their grandfathers, in which most of the big issues their
contempories agonized over were  personal, not political. It's not
surprising that, instead of the destiny of Japan or the meaning of being
Japanese, the more socially conscious of them would focus on narrower
themes, on groups outside the mainstream: the plight of Asian workers in
Japan, the scams of Shibuya kogyaru. 

Yes, the zeitgeist is shifting in a direction that I find worrying, but
singing the Kimigayo at a graduation ceremony is not the same as sending
millions of young men to their deaths on Asian battlefields, with bands
playing and flags waving. The rightists may rant all they want for the
return of the Northern Territories, but how many flame-haired kids in
Shibuya would be willing to fight to win them back? If they could do it
from the safety of a game arcade, perhaps. Otherwise, no. 

Yes, I am being facetious, but I find the public hand-wringing over "a
revival of fascism" overblown. Sorry to disappoint the paranoid fantasists
out there, but the Japan of 1938 is not going to return any time soon, if
ever. 

May a thousand cinematic flowers bloom!

Mark Schilling