Historic studio goes down fighting

[Don Brown]

Apologies for possibly breaching copyright laws and the like, but I thought 
this article in today's Daily Yomiuri may be of interest.

Historic studio goes down fighting

Tim Large Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

In the annals of lost causes, the fight to save Shochiku Co.'s legendary 
Ofuna Studio may go down as one of the more noble, if quixotic, struggles. 
With only days remaining before the film factory in Kamakura, Kanagawa 
Prefecture, is scheduled to shut up shop for good, bringing to a close 63 
years of moviemaking history, it takes a special kind of romanticism to keep 
the banners flying.

Never mind that the actual sale of Ofuna is a done deed, with Kamakura 
Women's College having shelled out a reported 10.8 billion yen for the site 
months ago. Even as the countdown to the June handover enters its final 
phase, campaigners are hoping--almost certainly in vain--for a stay of 
execution.
The proposal on the table: Buy back Ofuna Studio. For this to work, it would 
take the kind of miracle that only happens in movies. For one thing, 
Shochiku's financial woes, which prompted the film
company to sell its most famous asset in the first place, remain as real as 
ever.

Mitsutoshi Sugisaki, a spokesman for "Save Ofuna Studio" movement, admitted 
the game was pretty much up. At a campaign meeting Tuesday night, it was 
made clear that Ofuna staff--about 100 in total--would likely be out of jobs 
by June 15, he said.

What is more, Shochiku confirmed Wednesday there are no plans at present to 
buy back the studio. Instead, the idea is to construct a new complex more 
suited to the digital age in Shinkiba, Tokyo.

All of which sounds depressingly final. In their bid to save Ofuna,
campaigners had hoped to cash in on the almost sacred aura of a studio known 
for fostering some of Japan's greatest directors: Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio 
Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Nagisa Oshima, to name but a few. At a time 
when Japan's beleaguered film industry is contemplating yet another year of 
lackluster sales and slumping attendance, Ofuna's status as a symbol of past 
greatness has special meaning.

"The closure of Ofuna studio is equivalent to snuffing out the Golden Age of 
Japanese cinema forever," said screen star Toru Emori in a faxed message to 
a recent rally organized by the Congress to Support and Cooperate with the 
Fight for Shochiku's Ofuna Studio. Other big names, including Keiko 
Matsuzaka, Kiichi Nakai, Tetsuya Takeda and Koji Yakusho sent similar 
proclamations of dismay.

When Shochiku, which remains one of the nation's three major production 
companies, first announced plans to wash its hands of the studio, director 
Masahiro Shinoda compared the Ofuna of old to a flourishing cherry blossom 
garden. "The cherry trees were uprooted," he said. "Many great people 
flocked to the studio, and then they were gone."

End of an era

In fairness, it was a defection that started back in the 1960s as the rise 
of television knocked the sawdust out of the movie industry. In 1958, cinema 
attendance stood at an all-time high of 1.1 billion. Last year, it had 
dwindled to a piddling 145 million, according to the Motion Picture 
Association of Japan.

If Shochiku wanted to survive, it had to make changes. The company scaled 
back production and threw into the soup a series of reforms aimed at 
streamlining operations.

Then came the first real act of sacrilege. In 1995, as part of its
restructuring efforts, Shochiku demolished four of its eight Ofuna studios, 
including Studios 5 and 6, which had been moved brick by brick from Kamata, 
Tokyo, when the film factory was first relocated there in 1936.

What went up instead? The 15 billion yen Disneyesque theme park, Kamakura 
Cinema World. The public stayed away in droves, and losses started accruing.

Adding insult to injury, Shochiku had not produced a single hit since the 
death of Kiyoshi Atsumi in 1996 put an end to the phenomenally successful 
Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It's Tough Being a Man) series. Even as the nation 
mourned the loss of lovable Tora-san, the company was staring down the 
barrel of bankruptcy.

The plot thickened in January 1998, when Shochiku President Toru Okuyama and 
his son, Kazuyoshi, a senior managing director, were overthrown in what was 
described as an internal coup d'etat. Sources at the time suggested that the 
coup was triggered by conflict between the Okuyama faction, which 
prioritized "quality" film production, and opponents who were more concerned 
with profitability.

It is impossible to know how Ofuna would have fared had the Okuyamas not 
been deposed, but the incident highlighted the identity crisis facing the 
industry as a whole. What is clear is that the idealism of the major 
studios--if it ever existed at all--had become a thing of the past.

In December 1998, the Kamakura Cinema World fiasco was finally put out of 
its misery. A year later, plans were announced to sell off Ofuna.

The Shochiku Labor Union charges the company with pursuing a course of 
ruthless "rationalization" in a bid to scapegoat Ofuna employees for 
management's mistakes. Worst of all, the union says, the sale of Ofuna 
reflects wider trends that threaten to suck the blood out of the entire 
industry.

According to this line of reasoning, saving the studio is about more than 
just safeguarding 100 jobs and preserving a slice of cinema history. It is 
about declaring that some things are more important than market forces. 
Whether Ofuna could ever be the breeding ground for talent it used to be is 
almost beside the point. According to campaigners, Japanese cinema is better 
off simply because it is there.

"For the time being, we've been pressing Shochiku (to buy back the studio), 
but the real fight has to do with Japanese film in general," Sugisaki said. 
"The big aim is to protect and revitalize the whole industry."

Judging by the popular support for the "Save Ofuna Studio" campaign, the 
issue has struck a nerve. Hundreds turned up for a recent demonstration in 
Ginza, Tokyo. Thousands more flocked to an open day at Ofuna itself.

They came to see the main studio where Ozu filmed such classics as Late 
Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953). They came to wander through the prop 
rooms and try on Tora-san's old hat. In Studio 4, they peered at a set for 
Yoji Yamada's Gakko IV, the last film slated to come out of Ofuna. Yamada, 
director of the Otoko wa Tsurai yo movies, has said he would do everything 
in his power to make the film a worthy swan song.

Talking to many of the film-lovers who turned up to pay their respects, it 
was clear most had resigned themselves to the studio's closure. The phrase 
on everybody's lips was "end of an era."

"There are so many memories connected with this place," said Masami 
Nakama,an elderly gentleman who came simply to say goodbye. "When it goes, 
I'm really going to miss it."




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