Two bits from the paper

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Two bits of news from the morning paper:

1) Some may remember me reporting on a court case concerning the 
copyright issues related to the "quotation" without permission of images 
from a manga in another publication.  The case had to do with a book 
critical of Kobayashi Yoshinori's _Sensoron_ that used images from that 
manga.  The first trial ruled in favor of the defendant, judging that use 
of such images in an academic work was covered by the definition of 
permissible quotation.

Well, Kobayashi appealed and the appeals court recently gave a more 
complex decision.  They basically backed the first court's decision, but 
ruled that one quoted image from _Sensoron_ was in violation of copyright 
protection because it altered the image--i.e., it violated the integrety 
of the original work.

This morning's paper reported that Kobayashi has decided not to appeal 
the second ruling, which therefore means that under current legal 
precedent quotations of manga images in academic publications are 
permissable even without permission of the original copyright holder.  
(The implications of the second ruling on the problematic image are 
disturbing, however: what about cases of collage and other critical forms 
of "quotation"?).  As I mentioned the first time, I believe this ruling 
gives strong support to any of us publishing work that includes frame 
stills or video capture stills of Japanese moving images: we don't need 
to get permission for them.  Use of publicity stills (which are often 
copyrighted separately these days) is another matter.

2) The Mainichi also had a report on the effort to create film 
commissions here in Japan.  As those in the US especially know, one of 
the impetuses behind the revival of film after the 1970s was the 
formation across the country of various local film commissions that not 
only helped with location hunting, but smoothed negotiations with local 
police, governments, and unions, and sometimes offered economic 
incentives.  Many localities have benefited economically from the film 
productions thus brought to the region.  

Japan, however, is notoriously bad in its attitudes towards film location 
shooting.  One large reason there are no big car chase or big crowd 
scenes in Japanese film is because police are utterly uncooperative (as 
the paper stated, sometimes filmmakers then have to turn to the yakuza to 
clear the streets and get the crowd control.  Most filmmakers thus have 
to do street scenes illegally and on the sly--e.g., the Ikebukuro shots 
at the end of Sakamoto Junji's _The Goofball_).  One thing about Space 
Travelers that struck me as odd is that the bank they hold up is 
basically some office building (made up to look like a bank) in a 
suburban business park with no street traffic whatsoever.  I thought, who 
would ever build a big bank branch there?  Obviously, the filmmakers 
couldn't get permission to film a centrally located bank.

Looking at the US success, however, some localities in Japan like Osaka 
have begun to create film commissions to promote film making.  Finally, 
the government is starting to move and has created a "Study Group for 
Creating Film Commissions" headed by the critic Sato Tadao and including 
filmmakers (like Wakamatsu Koji), officials from the MITI, 
Transportation, and Foreign ministries, as well as local officials.  
While officials quoted in the article doubted regulations could be eased 
to facilitate big car chases in Shinjuku, they hope for some medium road. 
 So maybe we'll get car chases through Takadanobaba.

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
KineJapan list owner
For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to 
listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html