Re Hibari film title

[amnornes@umich.edu]

--On Thursday, April 24, 2003 4:30 PM +0100 Stephen Cremin 
<asianfilmlibrary at mac.com> wrote:

> For example, if Markus is writing a book on a
> 1960s Japanese documentary filmmaker, perhaps he's in the best position
> to determine the best English titles in the filmography.

Interestingly enough, I am wrestling with this issue vis a vis Ogawa 
Productions films. Some of the English-language titles are simply awful. 
For example, they used "Magino Village: A Tale" for "Magino-mura 
monogatari: sennen kizami no hidokei"; a somewhat clunky, but more accurate 
and evocative title would be The Magino Village Story: Sundial Carved with 
a Thousand Years of Notches." My current thought is to junk the old ones I 
dislike---noting the change, of course---and (arrogantly?) assuming my 
book-length study can shoulder the old titles out and set new precidents.

A second issue in the Ogawa Pro case is the fact that many of their films 
fit broadly into two series, the Sanrizuka series and the "Magino Village 
Story." Some titles reference this broad, intertextual structure. Others 
don't. I'm inclined to change some of the titles to give them the 
cohesiveness of a series, a critical move that certainly has something to 
do with the power built into film series and my desire to tap into that 
power to promote my favorite films. I'm still working on that one.

In all cases, I am making the issue of naming and title translation an 
object of scrutiny. For instance, as he started the Sanrizuka series, Ogawa 
was quite public about his intent to make a documentary Taiga drama 
structured by the seasons. The first film, "Front for the Liberation of 
Japan: Summer in Sanrizuka" would be followed by "Front for the Liberation 
of Japann: Winter in Sanrizuka." The production of the latter film expanded 
to unimaginable proportions for an indy doc of the time, and Ogawa rather 
pretentiously and unilaterally decided to change the title so simple 
"Sanrizuka" because he thought it would be the ultimate representation of 
the Sanrizuka struggle---the film said it all, so the title only needed to 
be the place name. However, this idea came late and the PR for the film was 
already out, tickets and pamphlets in distribution. The staff argued 
vigorously against the change, but Ogawa won as usual. To this day, the 
former members often refer to it was "Fuyu." I agree with them. And the 
film was actually publicized as Winter. I will opt for the old title, I 
think, and tell this rather revealing story about Ogawa's personality and 
his relationship to the staff.

In any case, I agree with all of Aaron's points, with the following 
qualification. Aaron writes, "If it is the official release title, you are 
largely bound to it, but if it is just a translation, I think you can voice 
an objection if the transltion is bad (while not forgetting to note that 
this bad transltion already exists in the literature)." However, as the 
examples above illustrate, I'm not convinced that I'm resigned to use the 
impoverished titles Ogawa Pro came up with, mostly because of their lack of 
English). To the extent that what I write will be somewhat authoritative in 
the English-language literature, that the English titles were produced in a 
haphazard manner, and that I take careful note of the various titles 
"gracing" the films (especially if accompanied by historiographic context),

Markus