Kameari and the end of meigaza

[Michael Raine]

I also haven't been reading the list for a while -- hope no-one minds if
these delayed responses. 

At 10:55 AM 2/22/99 +0900, you wrote:
>It's nice to see some discussion of the thorny issue of film vs. video.  
>I actually had that as the topic of my last day of my reception history 
>class at Meigaku and had given it as one of the the topics for the final 
>paper.  Especially with the papers, it was significant to see the number 
>of students who consider video to be a god-send: they don't have to pay 
>high admission prices, they don't have to all the way downtown, they can 
>watch it when they want to in the way they want to, etc.  Given that I 
>asked them to consider the topic from the viewpoint of reception, some 
>argued that the crowd in the theater acts as a form of repression of 
>reading, and that video, being more individual in mode of viewing, 

can't have been a Japanese film! At least, not at the Kameari meigaza -- I
was never in an audience of more than a dozen there.

>allowed for more freedom in constructing meaning (something aided by the 
>technology of fast-forward, etc.).  Those who defended film in the 
>theater did not do so from the angle of image quality, etc., but from the 
>public-nature of the experience, the communal meaning production that is 
>going on.  One student, who was caught up in the current boom in Indian 
>popular cinema (Indian films were some of the top box-office hits in 
>Tokyo last year in the single theater market), related a pertinent story 
>where she confessed that watching Indian popular films with an Indian 
>audience is one of the best film experiences she has had, but when she 
>watched the same film on video, it was about as boring as could be.  
>
>In class, I basically tried to tell them that I don't care about the 
>"film is better than video" argument.  From the reception angle, I just 
>wanted them to understand that watching a text on film and on video is 
>different, so different that we shouldn't really speak about the same 
>text.  Properly, when we are asked, "Have you seen the film X?", we 
>should answer, "No, but I have seen the video."  The fact our current 

why stop there? watching a film at the Kameari meigaza is not the same as
watching a film at a first run cinema in Yurakucho, is not the same as
watching a film at the ACT mini-theater, the Ooi Musashinokan (pre and post
renovation) etc. Also, as Christopher Zeeman has demonstrated, the myths
about "renaissance perspective" we've been hearing since the 60s are just
that: we see a different film depending on which seat we sit in. Not to
mention sound: DTS and SDDS may be hard to tell apart, but anyone can tell
it's not in stereo any more. The point is, most people speak of a film as a
single text not because "it" is always phenomenologically the same but
because there's no end to the distinctions one could make between their
receptions. Of course, film vs video has been a convenient punctuating mark
in the last couple of decades, though that may be changing: the New York
Times today had an article about new digital projection systems that
produce "film-like" images ("light valves" and "micro-mirrors"!). 

>discourse does not make this distinction is a representation of the fact 
>that the text and not reception has ideologically been structured in film 
>history to be the center of the film experience (no one in the 1910s, I 
>would think, would have equated a film seen with a benshi in the theater 
>with a video without that live benshi).

Well, yes -- but the issue is not confusing one with the other so much as
thinking about texts as types with various tokens. It may be ideological,
or at least have unforeseen consequences, but it's a distinction people
have been making since they first (?) differentiated the tale from the
teller's performance of it. Of course, film studies has recently moved
toward cultural studies of reception -- I'm trailing behind that bandwagon
so I can't complain! But it seems to me more important to connect specific
*types* of reception to specific explanations (not just cinemas so crowded
that people stood within 50cm of the screen to see _Arashi o yobu otoko_
but the culture of celebrity that absorbed Ishihara Yujiro; not just seeing
the same film with 6 other people in the Ginza Seiyu 40 years later, but
the contemporary decline of Japanese film exhibition) than to make absolute
distinctions between film and video. Unless we have a "text" -- some kind
of regularity that we think exerts a tendency on reading (this doesn't have
to be made of celluloid, of course) and that we can discuss with students
-- then what are we teaching? To get back to Japan; what is the relation
between Sawato Midori's impressive benshi performances and the history of
benshi exhibition that they (or we), perhaps, fetishize? 

>
>My original query, however, was focused on the issue of availability and 
>not just film vs. video.  The end of meigaza is forcing not only the 
>shift from film to video, but also a reshaping of the films that can be 
>seen.  This relates to the issues of distribution and canonization Markus 
>raised.  Especially in the heyday of meigaza, one could see most anything 
>at one time or another (conditions that, one could argue, prompted a 
>strong self-referentiality and intertextuality to film production).  But 
>can you say the same with video?  My students who favored video felt the 
>could "see anything," but those with experience in the matter (who read 
>up on the issue or who have worked in video stores) told the sorry fact 
>of restrictive practices and market limitations.  Mark may be able to get 
>Imamura Shohei in Tsutaya, but what about Uchida Tomu?  Kawashima Yuzo?  
>Kinugasa Teinosuke?  Not likely, because most of their films are not yet 
>out on video, and those that are are not always available for rental.  
>Not only the market, but canonization and business practices restrict 
>what is available on video.  

I agree that this is a much more important issue (precisely because it gets
us beyond media specificity!). It would certainly be nice if all Japanese
films were transferred to video. But that's not going to happen, not just
for economic reasons but because, quite apart from destruction by war and
earthquake, Japanese film companies haven't even kept negatives for many of
their postwar films. Also, they've failed to maintain a popular market for
most of their product and so have fallen back on hoarding it, restricting
the supply in order to raise the price for "mania." Having said that, is
film exhibition so superior? The lost films are still lost and there's a
trade-off between the number of films you could see in the cinema and the
attention you can pay to a video. And you more than anyone know that film
reception, and the propensity for intertextual reference, are not
determined simply by film viewing. Having a poor memory, I'd rather rent
Kawashima's _Sports-O_ and _O shimin shokun_ (a great satire on postwar
democratic-enlightenment, by the way) from Tsutaya Shinjuku than try to
remember when I saw it in the cinema, if I ever had.  

>
>Mark is right to point out the possibilities of satellite (or cable TV): 
>they do show titles that are not out on video, and some can actually do 
>interesting programming.  But this still raises the issue of availablity. 
> My main concern in raising these questions was not what will happen to 
>us dedicated film scholars, but what will happen to our students and to 
>less-dedicated film scholars.  Frankly, my students cannot afford to buy 
>the videos only availble for sale and not rental; getting satellite or 
>cable TV is also beyond their reach.  Students coming to Japan are also 
>not likely to fork out the 60,000 yen or so you need just to set up 
>satellite here.  I don't like the fact my students think they can see 
>anything on video, because they clearly have no conception there is 
>something else out there that is not on video.  I worry that the next 
>generation of film scholars will have just seen far fewer films and know 
>less about the historical contexts of the films they do study.

Of course, the next generation of film scholars will probably be studying
the historical context of the "trendy drama" or something
on video!
Seriously, it remains to be seen what film companies will do with their
film libraries. They're certainly not making much money for them now. I
imagine the next generation will have an easier time watching films -- on
cheaper satellite systems, on DVD, or something. I wonder if some company
will start digitizing films once they come out of copyright? Though
digitizing technology will have to get a lot cheaper before this margin of
a marginal market takes off. How is DVD doing in Japan? I'm still trying to
fathom why Shochiku started off with _Otoko wa tsurai yo_
 

>
>The problem is exacerbated by the fact that archives are not helpful at 
>all.  While some university libraries have video collections available to 
>students, none of the public film institutions do.  We all know the Film 
>Center is basically an institution dedicated to preservation and not to 
>aiding research.  The Kawasaki Shimin Museum has a video collection, but 
>not one you can stop, replay, and do basic analysis with.  Meigaza were 
>one of the few places you could actually see old films, but now they are 
>disappearing.  I worry about this not because of the film vs. video 
>issue, but because I think we are seeing a restriction in what we can see.

I agree completely on the need for research collections. But haven't most
universities started buying these films? The sale-only videos, for example.
At Meiji they had an AV centare on each campus with a reasonable
collection. The problem, of course, is films that have never been
transferred to video. That requires a more pro-active engagement from
archives -- the Film Center and even, who knows, the studios. 

>
>Aaron Gerow
>YNU