Titanic, etc.

[Aaron Gerow]

Both Joe:

>Still, I don't know that quantity and quality need to be seen as mutually
>exclusive.  For example, at the 1996 PIA Film Festival retrospective Sento
>Takenori, a producer whose name I think has come up a couple of times
>recently on the list, gave a "Front Line Producer's Talk" called,
>"Ryoo wa shitsu wo umu" ("Out of Quantity comes Quality," if I read this
>correctly).

and Mark:

>Does ramping up the quantity of production lead to a decline in quality? I
>believe that the answer is often no. 

have rightly questioned the assumption that quantity leads to a decline 
in quality.  Mark emphasizes the fact the studio system itself, the 
engine behind mass production, also helps in training and maintaining a 
skilled staff of film professionals, something that is hard to do 
otherwise.  While Joe doesn't give Sento's reasoning for saying that 
quality can come out of quantity (though I'd like to hear them), given 
Sento's position as a major producer of young directors' work, one can 
assume that producing more films will give more young talent a chance to 
direct as well as more opportunities to hone their work, even if also 
produces a lot of misses (and I'm afraid I found Furumaya Tomoyuki's 
"Kono mado wa kimi no mono" (This Window is Yours) to be a miss, though 
that's another matter).

What I do want to mention, however, is that there is a long history of 
discourse both in the film industry and among analysts criticizing the 
fact Japan's industry produces an inordinate number of films.  And what's 
interesting is that much of this discourse does not merely decry they 
supposed resulting lack of quality: it argues that overproduction is a 
symptom of the weakness of the Japanese industry, a product of it's 
structural problems.  The arguments have varied over time.  In the 
prewar, the argument was that the small number of theaters (Japan had 
fewer theaters per capita than most major film producing nations) 
concentrated largely in urban centers (often in the same location) led to 
cutthroat competition among theaters (and thus double and triple bills) 
and the ten or so major film companies.  Films had short releases and the 
number of prints made was small.  These were all factors seen to result 
in a number of feature films exceeding that of the US at the time.

Wartime regulations (to save film, etc.) cut down on this, reducing the 
number of film companies, the length of film programs, and eventually 
centralizing distribution.  The effects of this lingered after the war as 
double-bills did not return until about 1953.  But there was a massive 
boom in theater construction in the postwar which led to the second era 
of overproduction.  Now it was argued that not the scarcity but the 
excess of theaters led to cutthroat competition between theaters as they 
competed for audiences that, while large in absolute numbers, were not 
enough to fill the theaters there were.  When the upstart Toei succeeded 
with its double bills, audiences began to prefer that and the other 
studios started following suit--even though most most objected to it and 
actually worked to try to stop it.  They were being forced to make more 
movies than could possibly create a profit.  During the heyday of 
Japanese cinema, the late 1950s, most of the major studios were in fact 
in the red or close to it (Toei was the main exception).  Some analysts 
argued this would be the death of the industry and perhaps they were 
right.  Maybe overproduction and not just TV was a major factor in the 
decline of the Japanese film industry in the 1960s.

It should be underlined that production in quantity after about 1963 was 
mostly due to pink and adult films.  This was especially the case after 
about the early 1970s when most of the major studios gave up on double 
bills: only Nikkatsu kept with it and was a major factor in the fact that 
more than half the films made in the late 1970s were adult films.

What is interesting about current figures is that adult films are playing 
less a role (about 80 or 90 are still made a year, making up about a 
third of the total--still a big percentage, mind you, but less than in 
the past).  Perhaps one can say that non-adult independents are producing 
more than they did 10 or 15 years ago.  One reason might be for-video 
production, but perhaps people can think of other reasons.

A rather long and rambling account and one I stress is mostly a summary 
of discourse at the time (more research needs to be done to determine its 
accuracy).  But it does stress that quantity is not simply a sign of 
success or size of market, but relates to structural issues in the film 
industry that can be of as much concern as the issue of quality.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171