Onmyoji/recent japanese cinema

[tim.iles at utoronto.ca]

Have I missed something--this now being the weekend and my brain being in
non-functioning mode--or is it truly surprising to people that Japan's
film industry produces work of as mixed a quality as the film industries
of virtually every other nation? Japan's film industry is market
driven--films are made for profit--and so it shouldn't be so surprising
that work of marginal artistic merit does well at the box office... It's
_designed_ to! Friends of mine were excited to see _Spy Sorge_ (and no,
I'm not actually ashamed to call them my friends--they have other
redeeming qualities! ^_^) even though just the posters were enough to make
me cringe (I'm not really trying to sound elitist).

But take a look at the box office returns of Hollywood films, most of
which are dismal exercises in lowest-common-denominator production...
France produces some dreadful films that do well enough to receive
international distribution, so does Germany, so does Britain... And so
does Japan--there's no _reason_ behind it that makes Japan's case
particularly mystifying, I hope--just a question of a distributor thinking
that what works as the lowest common denominator in one market may work in
another...

Let's all heave a collective sigh, but accept the fact that Japan really
just isn't a special case at all--it's as capable of producing good works
of cinema as bad...

Well, I guess that _is_ a shame after all... On the other hand, so long as
Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Miike Takashi, and Kore-eda Hirokazu are alive, there's
still hope! ^_^



Timothy Iles
Assistant Professor, Japanese Culture and Cinema
University of Victoria