Ainu in Japanese film?

Mark Nornes amnornes
Mon Jun 16 14:44:30 EDT 2003


I wonder if Chupchisekor's newsletters ended up in any library? They 
were very odd, but contained his unique perspective on all sorts of 
films and video games that reference anything Ainu. Somewhere I have 
his list of films featuring things Ainu (no matter how thin a 
connection), and it was a dense page long.

A word or two on the documentaries:

There is little to learn in English, but there was a small catalog on 
Ainu and cinema published with the Yamagata sidebar. Recently, there's 
also been a large Ainu exhibition at the Smithsonian (?); one short 
article in their very handsome catalog is about documentaries.

The first docs on Ainu go back to the turn of the century with the very 
first films. Constant Girel shot some Ainu dances in 1897 in the 
vicinity of Muroran. They are numbers 741 and 742 in the Lumiere 
catalog.

In the 1920s, Hatta Saburo----a zoologist at Hokkaido 
University----shot over 30 minutes of footage on all aspects of life in 
Shiraoi Village.

Then N. G. Munro, who a number of books about prehistoric Japan, lived 
in Nibutani between 1931 and 1942 volunteering as a doctor. He wrote 
Ainu Creed and Cult and shot home movies about daily life, dances and 
ceremonies. The film Aaron mentioned, Chisenomi, is a compilation of 
this footage made in 1993 by the Shimonaka Foundation.

In 1936 or 1937, well-known screenwriter Sakane Tazuko became the first 
(?) female director in Japan with the bunka eiga Kita no doho.

Himeda Tadayoshi collaborated on quite a number of ethnographic films 
with Kayano Shigeru in Nibutani. I like Ainu Wedding the best (1971). I 
think a few of these are available through the Japan Foundation. But 
check with your local anthro department or university library because 
they sold a lot of prints. I once found a stash of Himeda films at the 
Arizona State University Anthro department, collecting dust in some 
closet.

There's also Ainu Shitappiri in 1972. You can find the scenario for 
this---and Ainu Wedding---in the second Eiga Hihyo.

Words: The Symbol of a People (1993) was our (Daishima Haruhiko and my) 
attempt at the Yamagata International Film Festival to stimulate some 
video art and activism in the Ainu community. As far as we could tell, 
Ainu were either objects of documentary film or they collaborated with 
professional filmmakers in the Himeda mode. This was precisely the 
relationship we wanted to problematize at Yamagata, so we hooked Kayano 
Shigeru's son, Shiro, up with Sapporo video artist Nakajima Yo. He 
taught Shiro-san how to use a camera and edit. As is typical with first 
efforts, Shiro's ambitions were a bit beyond his reach. It ended up as 
a relatively simple documentary on carving canoes. To my knowledge, he 
never made any more films.

One more thing. It's not about a film, but a little film lore. Eiga 
Hihyo published a number of articles by revolutionary Ota Ryu about the 
Ainu liberation movement and cinema in its pages. One of the editors of 
Eiga Hihyo was Adachi Masao. Back in 1972, Ota was shooting a film 
about the Ainu liberation movement, and Adachi was around the shooting. 
One day Adachi went for a walk and found the crew shooting a statue of 
the Ainu hero Shakushain. This was a controversial memorial because it 
was done by a non-Ainu artist and featured an inscription credited to 
the Governor, who was hardly a big friend of the Ainu. When Adachi 
arrived at the statue, he gave a few suggestions for lighting to the 
crew; he also noticed one of them chiseling off the mayor's credit!  
This became quite a political incident, and a couple years later the 
police searched Ota's home and found a letter in his hand that 
mentioned how Adachi's lighting direction made for a great shot. Thanks 
to this aside, Adachi ended up with an international warrant for his 
arrest. He was in Lebanon preparing for the production of a sequel to 
Aka-P, and it was probably one factor in his getting stuck in the 
Middle East.

Markus
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