Between War and Media / video notes

[M Arnold]

Am I correct in assuming the symposium at Maison Franco-Japonaise is open to 
the public?  On the website the English schedule says entrance is free and 
the Japanese schedule says entrance is free but limited to the first 150 
guests.

Last night I got in a Jack Nicholson mood and went searching for "The 
Terror" at Tsutaya in Shibuya, but I couldn't find it.  To my surprise they 
didn't even have a Jack Nicholson row in the "actors" section.  Later I went 
looking at the Shinjuku branch.  They had a section for him and they even 
had the tape I was looking for.  While I was searching at the Shinjuku store 
I stumbled through the cult corner and was surprised to see that they also 
had four copies of Schrader's Mishima, which is banned in Japan as Aaron 
Gerow mentioned in a recent post.  All four copies were the American version 
of the video, and there was a little sticker on the side of the box that 
said, "If you want to rent this video please bring the case up to the front 
counter."  The rest of the videos at Tsutaya are left in the cases, and you 
just take the tape itself up to the cashier for checkout, so I guess 
somebody's worried about something happening to the Mishima videos.  I don't 
know much about the films Mishima the person starred in, but you can still 
easily find the video for Karakkaze Yaro in Tokyo rental shops -- I rented 
it about 2 months ago -- and it will even be screened in an all-night 
showing on March 30th as part of a (another) Masumura Yasuzo retrospective, 
at Cine Saison Shibuya.  Actually I've been searching for a video of Yukoku 
for years, and now I have an idea of why I haven't had any luck.

Before renting videos I had a little time to kill in Shinjuku yesterday 
afternoon, so I sat down for some coffee and thumbed through the movie 
section of this week's Pia magazine.  In the "special screenings" page there 
was a listing for an all night pink eiga movie festival to be held that 
night featuring films from the four 'tenou' (not sure how to translate that) 
of the genre, Zeze Takahisa, Sato Toshiki, et al.  I wanted to go because 
they were going to show Zeze's "Haneda ni ittemiro..." and a few other films 
I was sure I wouldn't be able to track down on video.  There was even a 
panel discussion scheduled featuring all four directors themselves and a few 
other guests.  HOWEVER, it turns out that this was another one of those 
sneaky "women only" pink movie festivals so I didn' t even have a chance of 
getting in.  "Minors and men prohibited" says the ad.  So aside from the 
fact that most of the guests were men (all of the directors were), last 
night's showing was separate but equal.  After coffee I went to Tsutaya and 
discovered that not all was lost; I looked in the new DVD section and 
discovered that all four of the films scheduled to be shown at last night's 
all-nigher have recently been released in Japan.  Haneda..., Don't Let it 
Bring You Down, Tanjun na hanashi and Himitsu no hanazono are all now for 
sale at 3800 yen.  If I find any more information about them I'll post it 
here.

Michael Arnold

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