structuring of hana-bi

[Jasper Sharp]

>Still, it's an interesting question, whether the time of the narrative can
>ultimately be assembled in a coherent way, or whether there's something
>indeterminate about the chronology.  If I remember, Kitano does not provide
the usual cues that allow you to pick up flashbacks and other jumps in time
>(like a character suddenly looking thoughtfully into the distance, wavy
>fadeouts, harp music, someone saying "I remember that fateful day like it
>was yesterday...", and other variations), and simply cuts between them.

Kitano is hardly alone in this respect in Japan though is he? The most
obvious example I can think of is Seijun Suzuki, who similarly provides no
such transitional cues between scenes. For example, does Branded to Kill /
Koroshi no Rakuin ('68) have a determinate chronology to it? I've noticed
that the narrative of many Japanese films is structured in an entirely
different way to the Hollywood Syd Field template, with vast amounts of
screentime given away to flashbacks and unsignalled lurches between past and
present. I think it might be wrong to look at Kitano in this respect as
pioneering a new narrative style, but instead see him as building upon a
uniquely Japanese cinematic tradition which in the West, due to almost
non-existent distribution outside of the festival circuit we're generally
unfamiliar with. I guess the main reason Tarantino's Pulp Fiction met such
acclaim was because most of its target audience had never even heard of
Rashoman. 

Jasper Sharp