Fwd: Cinema as Vernacular Modernism Symposium

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Sorry for not answering these questions earlier.

>I was wondering how (since you wrote that you have been using the concept of
>vernacular 
>modernism in relation to Japan) that would look (specifically in Cinema, of
>course) in a country 
>that probably has a very specific relationship to modernism- Japan hasn't
>exactly gone through 
>the struggles and stages that made Europe and America reach modernism in the
>same 
>chronology, so I would suppose there is a very specific brand of modernism,
>or a different 
>relationship towards it...
>Is that right, and how does that effect the use of the concept of vernacular
>modernism?

I'll have to be brief, but I'll try to say a few things about how the 
concept is interesting to me in my study of Japanese cinema. Others may 
see the concept differently or use it in other ways, but they can speak 
for themselves.

First, in terms of Japan studies as a whole, it helps us find a way out 
of the restricting modern=West vs. tradition=Japan binary, by incribing 
modernities into a global/local nexus of negotiation and shifting 
positionality. The narration of the nation in Japan has frequently 
included an assumption that modernity is the West in order to construct a 
Japan that predates that (the traditional) or is ahistorical (modernity 
itself being a temporal phenomenon). Some scholars have rightly noted the 
unequal power relations in global cultural flows that do often connect 
modernization with Western imperial advances, but there was always the 
danger such a critique would reify a pure Japan as a victim of such 
advances. The conception of the vernacularity of modernity allows us to 
account for the very real "modern" aspects of Japan (and certain 
similarities with theorizations of modernity in the West) without 
reducing it to imperialism or a mere surface that doesn't touch the 
Japanese heart. In other words, we can investigate modernity in Japan as 
being the complex product of negotiation, translation and local 
production, something which allows us to focus on historical 
specificities instead of reducing Japan to the mold of universal 
modernity or ahistorical tradition. It also moves us away from the Japan 
vs. West opposition and allows us to focus more on conflicts in Japan 
over which modernity to construct.

Second, in film studies, it allows us to consider the influence of 
Hollywood cinema in a much more fruitful manner. The term modern has been 
too loosely used in studies of Japanese film (e.g., the early Bordwell 
claim of Ozu being a modernist), a problem often overlapping with simple 
divisions between Japan and the West, the modern and the traditional. For 
instance, in the difference of opinion between Burch and Bordwell over 
prewar Japanese film, I would tend to side with Bordwell in critiquing 
Burch's utopian desire for the preservation of a premodern--almost 
anti-Western--Japanese tradition in cinema. The fact is there are too 
many classical elements to prewar Japanese film style, the result of very 
real and sometimes brutal historical transformations from the 1910s to 
the 1940s. But Bordwell too readily ascribes these classical-looking 
elements to a universal mode, applicable unproblematically to Japan, 
against which difference becomes mere "flourish." In other words, a 
universal Hollywood so becomes his point of reference, he misses the 
other, sometimes local reference points for negotiating film practice. In 
particular, the concept prompts us to focus more on the process of 
reception as translation (for instance, not simply looking at the 
influence of Hollywood films, but actually investigating how they were 
read). In sum, I am interested in prewar Japanese cinema as neither 
Western=Japan or Japanese=traditional, but as a complex struggle in the 
realms of production and reception over alternative modernities in the 
global/local nexus.

Perhaps others have some opinions on this.