how many 47 ronin

[Aaron Gerow]

Lisa Spalding, in her article on prewar Japanese period films in 
Reframing Japanese Cinema, cites a 1967 Kinema Junpo survey that counts 
how many times certain stories have been made into jidaigeki. According 
to this list, there are only 12 prewar and 12 postwar Chushingura. 
Compare this to a total of 42 Jirocho movies.

The number does seem a bit low, but it depends how you do the counting. 
Many prewar Chushingura were released in two, sometimes three parts--do 
you count those as one or as several films? Then--and this is always 
the problem with early Japanese cinema--there are a lot of rereleases 
of old films with different titles (same footage, different title)--are 
these separate films? Finally, when you get into the postwar, there are 
a lot of Chushingura parodies or films lightly based on Chushingura 
such as OL Chushingura, Salaryman Chushingura, or Wanwan Chushingura. 
Do you count these?

Doing a search for Chushingura on the Japanese Movie Database comes up 
with 136 entries, but some of these are doubled, some refer to separate 
parts of the same film, etc. Plus there's a about 40 entries for a One 
Piece series. Do also note that Chushingura films can also go under 
different titles such as Ako roshi. You get 21 hits when you search for 
Ako on the JMDB, but that includes people with the name Ako and clearly 
unrelated films.

The moral of the story? Basically that someone has to do some serious 
research to come up with a number, one based on a clear definition of 
what a Chushingura movie is.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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