The law in Japanese film

[Michael McCaskey]

One of the classic Japanese films about lawyers, legal issues, and trials, is Skyandaru/Scandal/Shubun 醜聞, an early postwar (1950) Kurosawa film. Mifune plays an adventurous motorcycling guy who is falsely paired by paparazzi as the lover of celebrity Shirley Yamaguchi. They sue the scandal magazine for defamation, and there are a series of events involving the corrupting of their lawyer, a dramatic trial, their lawyer's last-minute repentance, etc. This movie was way ahead of US films on similar themes.

In real life Yamaguchi was a wartime film actress who then went to America to make a name in Hollywood movies, appeared and did well in one or two minor films, and married the noted Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. She was soon afterward attacked by McCarthyites as a leftist, was pressured to leave the USA, and was not allowed back in. She was then divorced by Noguchi, who was under McCarthyite pressure back in the USA himself. She later remarried, and ended her life as a successful right-wing politician, and a long-term national legislator in Japan.

There is a lot in the film about the state of the legal profession in postwar/US-occupied Japan, the rise of sensational tabloids, the way cases were developed and handled, and the way trials were conducted. Kurosawa was way ahead of his time with this film, as he often was. There were some rumors that he was sensitized re these legal issues by rumors about an affair he may (or may not) have had back then himself, and resultant unwelcome attention he got from some scandal magazine.

There should be both USA DVD and VHS versions of this picture, as "Scandal." There is also an excellent, nicely restored recent Japanese DVD from SHV (Shochiku Home Video).

Regards,

Michael McCaskey


----- Original Message -----
From: jlaza at umich.edu
Date: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 8:03 pm
Subject: The law in Japanese film

> Hi, my name is Justine Lazarus and I am a second-year student at 
> the Univeristy
> of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I am currently 
> enrolled in a
> class on Japanese Law and I plan to write a paper on depictions of 
> lawyers or
> the legal process in Japanese film.  Can you recommend any 
> subtitled films
> depicting lawyers or the legal process?  I am also interested in 
> films dealing
> with situations in which lawyers/the legal process could 
> potentially be
> present, but are not (for example, a crime drama where someone is 
> arrested, but
> his/her attorney or trial is never shown).  Thanks for your help!
> 
>