Imamura

[Abe-Nornes]

Aaron wrote:

>Yomota Inuhiko then asked whether we should not reconsider Imamura in 
>light of the kind of "Yamato" orientalism (or exoticism) evident in 
>_Kamigami_.  Perhaps all of his "insect women" are the product of an 
>urban Japanese desire for preternatural, god-like mother figure (which 
>can be as offensive an image as that in _Kamigami_ if you are one of 
>those women)?  I wonder if we cannot also consider the 1960s turn towards 
>the rural on the part of the left (Ogawa is a major case) as another side 
>of this kind of domestic orientalism/exoticism.

This is _really_ complicated, and is something I've started thinking about
as I begin a major project on Ogawa. 

The easy answer is that it's a subversion of cultural codes that
historically serve the most conservative forces. Thus, the "insect women"
of Imamura radically rewrite the tradition of "military mothers" Peter High
uncovers in Imperial Screen. Instead of paragons of purity, they are earthy
and bound to their family by incest. 

Aaron points to the more difficult answer in his paranthetical to Ogawa.
When my path crossed with Ogawa in the late 1980s and up to his death, I
was reading a lot of texts on nihonjinron, which was a popular topic in
area studies at the time. Ogawa confused me because he was spouting all
sorts of things that seemed to align his project with the right. And the
films certainly have a bizarre tension between idealizing and even
mystifying the rural while thoroughly historicizing and demystifying it.
[Imamura uses pigs and garbage for high comedy, while Ogawa makes a
documentary on the garbage hauling jobs farmers are forced to take to
survive.]  There's plenty to unpack:

---the relationship of the left to the rural, from the turn of the century
on. It's not a new thing.
---the left they found in the rural (Ogawa Pro borrowed its Magino house
from Kimura Michio, a radical farmer poet and one of the few Japanese to be
officially invited to China during the cultural revolution; the general
invitation was issued by a cultural movement in Yamagata that loved their
films)
---At some point, Ogawa was into people like Yanagita Kunio; what's going
on there?
---Ogawa is different because he and his collective actually lived in the
rural areas, far longer than any other filmmakers who boast along the same
lines. 

But are there other leftist filmmakers that have the same kind of
idealization of the rural besides Ogawa and Imamura? Most of them seem
pretty cosmopolitan. I'd be interested in hearing other examples...

______________________
This reminds me of an aside: I followed the discussion of Joss' problems
trying to show "Does the Emperor Have Responsibility for the War?" Asako
came down pretty hard on the conservatism of the hinterlands, as did some
others. Isn't this also a kind of cosmopolitan prejudice? After all, the
most extreme reactions to leftist films in recent memory have occurred in
Tokyo, no? And the rural Yamagata festival (where Asako programmed the tape
Joss showed) has never been scared off from controversial films. 

I would really like to hear more about the film culture in rural areas from
people who live in them (Joss?). Unfortunately, our discussion of Japanese
cinema has historically been Kanto/Kansai centric. The reception context in
the study of Japanese film is wide open!

By the way there are many very interesting _local_ histories of Japanese
cinema. Has anyone read any?

Sorry for the sprawl.

Markus