American movies in Japan

[Michael Raine]

I think this gets to the heart of the problem. I'm still not convinced that
subtitling is dominant in most markets -- at least not in the larger ones. I
tried making a list of different practices once but I can't find it now.
>From what I remember, commercially succesful foreign films in most major
markets are dubbed (eg. Western Europe). Japan is one of the few places
where the dominant cinema (but still less dominant than almost anywhere
else) is subtitled.

That leads me to also have doubts about the "general consensus" too: if fans
prefer subtitles because dubbing is "too commercial" then why didn't studios
(both US producers and Japanese exhibitors -- eminently commercial entities,
surely) favor dubbing? For example, I think most anime on VHS is dubbed in
the USA (on DVD, you get a choice). It seems to me that Japanese producers
recognized that dubbing is important to commercial success. Iwasaki Akira
claimed that there were only 40 cinemas in the USA that would show Japanese
films in the 1950s. Hence Gojira was remade (dubbed) as Godzilla for
international distribution. I think it was Iwasaki who said that Japanese
films would have to be dubbed if they were to do well abroad -- I seem to
remember that he said this was impossible in Japan (for linguistic, not
technological, reasons I suspect) so the work should be done in Hong Kong.

That still leaves the question of why foreign films were not dubbed in
Japan. Markus has written about some of these arguments (Russian passion
would sound ridiculous in Japanese, etc.) but I wonder if, in addition to
this culturalist justification, there aren't also class and institutional
explanations. Yomota Inuhiko told me that "everyone liked Hollywood films in
the 1950s" but statistics show that the clear majority of admissions were to
Japanese films. Perhaps that "everyone" has a class specification attached
to it. If so, perhaps that explains the tolerance for subtitles. But perhaps
there's also another explanation: Japanese studios benefitted from not
having to compete directly with dubbed foreign films. I'm not sure I'm
interested in researching the policy implications of debates over
subtitling, but I'd certainly like to hear more about it.

There's one more way that films can be "dubbed" for international
distribution: they can be made in the target country's language. Anyone
remember Jack Palance in Solar Crisis, for example? There are dozens of
examples of directors and actors making films in English, sometimes in the
USA and sometimes in the same foreign studios that American filmmakers make
"American" films. I can't think of any examples of foreigners making films
in Japanese though -- does anyone know of any? Does Hiroshima, Mon Amour
count? Surely not The Yakuza and Black Rain? How about the 1936 Nippon
musume / Japan Yinthwe, the first Burmese sound film directed by U Niipu?

Michael



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of
drainer at mpinet.net
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 6:50 PM
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: American movies in Japan



  It seems to be the same way in most foreign markets. In Brazil, movies are
subtitled in theaters, subtitled in video release (family movies are dubbed,
of course), and dubbed when played on TV (for obvious reasons, although on
the bigger networks they transmit it in SAP so you can get the original
dialogue).
  The general consensus is that something is lost in dubbing, which is true.
The closest example I can think of when relating it to Japanese film is by
looking at anime -- fans prefer subtitled releases over dubbed releases,
which they deem too commercial, ruined, etc...
   Now, about subtitling Japanese TV shows, I always thought it just served
as an aid in learning to read kanji... at least, that's how I learned what I
know.

-df


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Raine" <michael.raine at yale.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 1:00 PM
Subject: RE: American movies in Japan


> Hello Eija,
>
> I'm not sure that this is "of course" true. Wouldn't you say that
Hollywood
> films are dubbed in most non-English speaking markets? Germany, France,
> Italy, for example. In Eastern Europe dialogue is apparently sometimes
> narrated by a single voice, in West Africa often not translated at all.
>
> There were, of course, attempts at dubbing: reports from the late 1950s
> indicate that dubbed sports films and westerns met with success in Asakusa
> (the class connotations are obvious). The reasons for the continuations of
> subtitling, and the use of dubbing on TV, are both technological and
social.
> I remember there was some debate over both aspects in late-50s film
> journals, which often incorporated a section or hosted special issues on
TV.
> In one of the first Anniversary volumes for the TV studios (I think it's
> Fuji TV) there's a story about trying to show a film with subtitles. They
> were unreadable on the "braun-kan" (cameras and receivers in those days
had
> far less resolution than contemporary TVs, though the signal was the
same).
> But it also strikes me that the TV audience, at least by the early 1960s,
> was broad enough that the dual distribution strategy of Japanese film
> studios wouldn't work on TV.
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> [mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of Eija
> Margit Niskanen
> Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 4:03 PM
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: American movies in Japan
>
>
> Of course they are subtitled, as in most non-English-speaking countries.
> Why: because the majority of the audience cannot understand fast spoken
> American English.
> Movies for children, for ex. Disney films, tend to be dubbed. The local
> singers doing the Disney dubs (not only in Japanese but in any foreign
> language) have to approved by Disney, this happens through taped
> voice/singing samples.
> Eija
>
> At 03:52 PM 6/2/02 -0400, you wrote:
> >Is it a lot more common for American movies to be subbed or dubbed when
> they
> >are shown in Japanese theaters? why and why not?
>
>