American movies in Japan

[mark schilling]

A few notes on the subtitling question:

1) Not all foreign films on Japanese TV are dubbed; NHK broadcasts of
"classic" films, usually European, being the prominent exception.

2) Blockbuster Hollywood films are often released here on video in both
dubbed and subbed versions. I once asked a distributor why they bothered
since most video shops, in Tokyo at least, stocked only one dubbed
videocassette of a given title for every nine subbed ones. He told me that
the demand for the dubbed videos was higher in the provinces, thus dubbing
made economic sense.

3) The straight-to-video gangster titles that Toei Video made in the States
in the early nineties ("No Way Back," "Distant Justice") are released here
in dubbed versions, for an almost exclusively male audience.

As these examples indicate, the audiences for the dubbed films, both on
television and video, is perceived by the industry as being (1) more
provincial than urban, (2) more male than female and (3) more the masses
than the classes. In other words, a construction worker in Niigata will opt
for a dubbed Clint Eastwood flick on a commercial network over a Jean Renoir
film in the original French on NHK.

The real question is -- why not more dubbing? There are various reasons,
including the tendency of industry practices here to settle into stone, but
if enough Niigata construction workers and similar folk would trek to the
theaters to see Al Pacino and Brad Pitt emoting in Japanese, distributors
would accommodate them. But they prefer to watch movies of whatever origin
on the tube -- and have for decades.

Michael wrote: "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."  I believe Inuhiko's "everyone" refers more to the urban,
educated classes than the provincial, working-class masses. Also, "the
majority of admissions were to Japanese films" because the quota system for
foreign (mainly Hollywood) films in place then helped ensure the dominance
of the local industry.

Mark Schilling
schill at gol.com




----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Raine" <michael.raine at yale.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 2:00 PM
Subject: RE: American movies in Japan


> 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?
> >
> >
>