Query: Kamei Fumio

[A.M. Nornes]

You've picked one of the most interesting filmmakers in Japanese film to
write about. Your problem will be writing around the through the things that
have already been written about him.

The first people to give Kamei any treatment were Richie and Anderson in
_The Japanese Film: Art and Industry_. This is an important passage in the
book, because the cold war politics the writers embraced at the time comes
out in force. It's almost comical from today's perspective, except that it
probably contributed to the way subsequent historians overlooked Kamei. I'm
sure they would like to rewrite those sections now.

The wartime films are covered very nicely in Peter High's upcoming book,
_The Imperial Screen_. You can read that immediately if you can read the
original Japanese version. (Any idea when the English book will be released
Peter?) There is less extensive discussion of his wartime work in
_Japan/America Film Wars_.

Kyoko Hirano has an excellent history of _The Japanese Tragedy's_ censorship
in _Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo_.

In Japanese, Kamei published something like an autobiography. It's actually
a pastiche of various articles he wrote over the years. If you search hard,
you can find articles he wrote that are not in the book (mostly in the late
1930s).  _Eiga to Ongaku_ (which is available in reprints) has one of his
scripts. He participated in a number of zadankai as well. There's also a
biography of him in Japanese that's very informative.

I wrote about Kamei in my dissertation, _Forest of Pressure_ (USC). There
are a close-analyses of _Fighting Soldiers_ and _Japanese Tragedy,_ and less
involved looks at _Shanghai_ and _Kobayashi Issa_. Aside from the fact that
he's one of the most amazing documentary filmmakers in film history---no
kidding---I was particularly interested in the clever way he used the
reigning codes of nonfiction war cinema to subvert them from within. And how
the frequent postwar criticism of _Japanese Tragedy_, that it is as loudly
propagandistic as the war film, misses the way that loudness is expressive
of liberation.

However, from now on we'll have to account for his last effort of the war
period: _Seiku_. Although you won't find this in any filmography of Kamei,
he wrote the script while working for Dentsu at the end of the war. I knew
about this film when I did the dissertation, but there was an embargo until
it was released publicly. The Film Center showed it about a year or two ago,
so my book manuscript deals with it. The embargo was put in place because
the film threatens Kamei's rep as the one and only filmmaker to truly resist
the war (unless you think Iwasaki's Prokino shorts makes him a filmmaker and
not a historian). _Seiku_ is a truly awful, out-and-out propaganda piece for
the factory that made the planes for the kamikaze. No subversive moments
here to relieve the mind-numbing nationalism. A great "fascist" film...
very, very bad.

Has anyone out there seen it? Virtually the only person I've been able to
discuss this with is Yomota Inuhiko, and he's willing to forgive Kamei. He
only did the script, and it was at the very end of the war after he was
released from prison. In fact, the film was never shown publicly because the
war ended too soon (lucky Kamei). I tend to think that it reveals that Kamei
was not so different than the rest of his colleagues, and that it sheds a
new light on the subversiveness of his earlier films. To varying degrees,
Kamei asserted both during and after the war that he was trying to Do Art,
not necessarily make anti-war films. This left everyone watching Kamei's
films over the years perplexed. With the spin _Seiku_ gives his filmography,
these comments now make more sense.

The research I'm waiting for will deal with Kamei's postwar work, his role
in the Toho labor actions, his feature films, his postwar documentaries. The
most difficult part of this will be figuring out his relationship to the
communist party. I've heard various rumors to the effect that the position
he took in his anti-nuke film, _Sekai wa kyofu_, went against JCP policy.
Around this time or shortly thereafter, he might actually have been purged
from the party. Since the JCP and labor unions were the main means of
support for independent documentary before the emergence of the New Left and
the student movement, this would help explain the mysterious way Kamei's
career peters out at the end. Such a pity for such a great filmmaker.

Markus

PS: _Shanghai_ and _Japanese Tragedy_ are available at the National Archives
in Washington. _Fighting Soldiers'_ English version is in Italy (see
_Japan/America Film Wars_ for the source address). _Shanghai_ and _Fighting
Soldiers_ are sold on video tape here in Japan, as are his feature films.
For the postwar documentaries, try Document Film (Yamagata Film Festival
would have the address). This was Kamei's production company and is
currently run by his son-in-law. I'm pretty sure that the Kawasaki City
Museum has quite a few of the films available for research purposes, and
they have been collecting paper materials on the postwar independent cinema
so they might have interesting things to read as well.