Daiei Symposium

[Aaron Gerow]

I hope some of you were able to make it to the Daiei Symposium.

Itakura Fumiaki started things off with a genre study of Daiei's 
hahamono, interestingly focusing not on repeated narrative patterns, but 
on the genre's constitution in discourse and on Daiei's conscious policy 
of promoting the genre.

Shimura Miyoko talked about Daiei's kaidan films in the context of the 
history of Japanese horror or ghost films, arguing in particular about 
how Daiei in the late 1960s was successfully able to enter the market 
after the waning of the kaiju film, take advantage of the yokai boom, and 
produce a successful series of kaidan films for children, likes of which 
have not been seen in theaters since.

Saito Ayakao talked about Wakao Ayako in relation to Masumura Yasuzo's 
films. In her conception of Wakao's change as a star, the pre-1961 Wakao 
(Tsuma wa kokuhakusuru being the dividing point) is a young 
representative of a woman's world "resisting" a male adult world, but the 
post-1961 Wakao is an adult woman who brings her resistance into the 
adult world. Saito wanted to think of this resistance as taking place on 
the set too, and thus see the later Masumura as in part co-productions 
with Wakao.

Kato Mikiro discussed the fall of Daiei industrially, focusing on the 
issues of overproduction due to the block booking system and of Daiei's 
lack of theaters, it always being more of a movie studio movie company 
than other Japanese companies with lots of theaters. THis comes out in 
Daiei's technical superiority.

Finally, Saito and Yomota Inuhiko had a talk with long-time Daiei 
producer Fujii Hiroaki, who produced most of Masumura's films and many of 
Ichikawa Kon's. He talked a lot about the institutional place of the 
kikakubu at Daiei, the characters of Masumura and Wakao, and a lot about 
Mishima Yukio, whose Yukoku Fujii also produced.

As with some of the previous Meigaku film symposiums, perhaps this one 
will also see the light of day in book form.

Any comments from other people who attended?

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