Japanese film and the political right

[Aaron Gerow]

This thread has turned into a pretty good one, but to keep it going I 
wonder if I could push it into some new directions. 

Much of the discussion has focused on the relationship between Japanese 
cinema and Asia, a central issue to be sure when considering the question 
of nationalism in contemporary Japan.  The films that are most 
interesting from a political dimension tend to deal with this issue.  But 
what of other issues?

Clearly, two of the central political issues that concern Japanese today 
are the young (and attendant questions of education and pop culture) and 
women.  How have Japanese films dealt with these issues, both consciously 
and unconsciously?

There have been a spate of films recently dealing with Japanese youth, 
but what are they saying about those yong people?  The dominant media 
image of young people these days are of crazed "kireru" kids who, caught 
in a virtual reality, don't recognize the humanity of anyone outside 
their small circle of friends; who have no sense of place or direction in 
a world where familial and social ties have fallen apart (and it is this 
image that, through Kobayashi Yoshinori and others, that has given 
impetus to such rightwing political moves as the flag and anthem issue: 
revive the state and the youth will regain some direction).  How has 
cinema helped create or contest this image?  If today's youth are 
apathetic, what has cinema done to create or affect this?  Or is cinema 
no longer the media of youth?

Next, there are certainly many recent films featuring women experiencing 
some kind of crisis (_Maboroshi_, _Okaeri_, _Berlin_, _Duo_, _Tenshi ni 
misuterareta yoru_, _Shady Grove_, etc. are just some examples), but what 
kind of image of women is being created?  Is social crisis being 
reflected on the psychology of the female subject?  I still wonder about 
the cultural attitudes of and towards women: while we certainly can read 
many signs of discontent among young women, major polls still only 
register less than 30% of Japanese women who think they've experienced 
discrimation or some kind of unfairness on the job or in hiring!  (Polls 
like this, if questionable in themselves, still make me wonder if we 
shouldn't hesitate about throwing out the Marxist notion of false 
consciousness.)  Has _Shomuni_ convinced women that the work world can be 
cool place where you can assert your power?  What do we make of the 
persisting critical popularity of soft porn?  Are there films criticially 
investigating gender issues?  Finally, there have been a couple of young 
women directors to emerge in recent years, but when some like Sento Naomi 
resolutely refuse to associate themselves with anything feminist, can we 
say this trend has any significance for gender politics whatsoever?

Any comments?