Eureka awards at Cannes

[Aaron Gerow]

I've found the stories by Greg and Mark on their experiences with 
expectations that the press should be an extension of the PR bureau quite 
interesting (partially because I've personally experienced this much less 
than they have), but I do wonder if we shouldn't make some distinctions 
before calling all Japanese film criticism/journalism mere PR.

My feeling is that much has to do with the mode of reporting and its 
place in the media.  Clearly, mass market journalism (Japanese daily 
newspapers and weekly magazines) and TV reporting are most subject to the 
PR, kisha club syndrome, if only because their words have the most effect 
in the field (and carry the most power for those who weild them).  But 
that does not mean that critical words are absent from these media.  The 
Mainichi, for instance, utterly panned the Morning Musume movie the other 
day (albeit, an easy target), Osugi can be quite critical on TV, etc.  
But I think one reason these reviews tend to have less leverage than 
those in the US, for instance (where critics can be powerful stars), has 
to do with the fact most readers have ceased to take these words very 
seriously.  (It's interesting that while US companies quote critics in 
their ads for a movie, Japanese companies mostly quote talento or 
"regular" people, not critics.)

In middle-market magazines like KineJun, you have an odd phenomenon.  The 
articles and "critiques" printed in the front of the magazine when the 
film comes out are PR-oriented (but sometimes informative in the case of 
a perceptive, though partial writer), but the reviews printed in the back 
usually a month a two after the film comes out (at a time when they have 
little effect) are often quite honest.  (KineJun also runs reader 
reviews, a tradition since it started.)  Its industry coverage can also 
be somewhat good (one article in the last issue, for example, savaged 
_Space Travellers_ for being the hideous movie it is), though a bit too 
bent towards the majors and the foreign film coverage.

It is in the small-market film press like _Eiga geijutsu_ and _Cahiers du 
Cinema Japon_, or non-film press like _Yuriika_, that one tends to find 
the most critical works, but even there you run into the problem of 
cliques.  The Eigei people (kind of left overs from the seventies) tend 
to like films by their friends while the francophile Cahiers people (when 
they report on Japanese film, which is not often) like the films by those 
who often appear in that journal (Kurosawa, Aoyama, etc.).

This is a problem with the film world in Japan in general.  Frankly, it 
is just too small and concentrated to make criticism easy.  Some of the 
Japanese critics I know confess that one reason they only write about 
foreign film is because they don't want to deal with the social pressures 
of criticizing Japanese film, where you can easily run into the director 
of a film you just panned at a bar in Shinjuku or at some party.  Maybe a 
lot or people don't take criticism well: I've seen some people stop 
talking to each other because of a few tough words in print.  It is hard 
being a critical Japanese film critic.

That does not excuse any of this.  I agree with Greg that Japanese film 
will only improve across the board if a critical community (including 
both the press and audiences) is formed.  But what is interesting is that 
this was also the ideal of KineJun when it started back in 1919.  And as 
I have mentioned before, Japanese film criticism has historically been 
fairly critical of the domestic product.  My question then is when and 
how this ideal began to break apart and film journalism really began to 
function as an extension of company PR.  Any ideas?

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171