Benshi - a couple of questions

[jmhall at uchicago.edu]

Joseph Anderson's article on early cinema in Japan, alongside Komatsu 
Hiroshi's, offers a general introduction to the benshi.  I'm doing this from 
memory, but I remember Anderson describing the use of female benshi especially 
in melodramas.  Both the Anderson and the Komatsu articles can be found in 
Desser and Nolletti's Reframing Japanese Cinema.

Benshi performances often worked in tandem with intertitles.  However, for 
details on the use of titles as cinematic (anti-benshi) practice, see Joanne 
Bernardi's book, Writing in Light, on the Pure Film Movement.  

Jonathan




Quoting J Rand <axis at freeuk.com>:

> Does anyone know whether there were any female Benshi at the beginning of
> Silent Cinema in Japan? 
> 
>  I was watching Ozu's "I was Born But....." with English intertitles and was
> wondering whether there would actually have been any intertitles at all or
> whether the story was told by the Benshi alone?  In one place when it says
> "the following day" the sub-titles are written over Japanese writing whereas
> there are no intertitles in Japanese at all.
> 
> 
>