The State of "Film Culture" (was Re: Yoshida etc)

[Mark Nornes]

[Take a deep breath. This is a long one.]

So there have been a few messages about the wonderful film culture in 
Tokyo. And we've just gone through yet another exchange starting with 
someone saying the 'industry is dead' and ending with endless examples 
of how large and vibrant it actually is. However, these latter 
discussions usually equate the "industry" with production. When they 
bring the reception context into view it's usually only to point out 
that the number of total theaters is increasing thanks to the cinecon 
(cinema complex) phenom. But what of "film culture", such as it is, in 
the rest of Japan?

I just got back from a few weeks in Shikoku. Most of my time was spent 
in Tokushima. Ten to 14 years ago when I first went there, the place 
was pretty bleak for film culture. There were a few depressing theaters 
in downtown, very hard to use because of the parking situation. There 
were about four major theaters in the city center and a few small halls 
elsewhere (one was the only remaining prewar theater and is now shut 
down).

Things are changing. The old Toei Cinema downtown closed last year, and 
it's most certainly because of competition from a new 8-screen cinecon 
at the city limits. Sometimes numbers are revealing:

There are now 6 theaters showing films in Tokushima Prefecture, 1 
cinecon, 2 major chains and 3 locally owned.  All are in Tokushima City 
(16 screens total).

To give you some perspective, the prefecture has 817,898 people, but 
the city has only 267,664.  So that comes to about 16,729 people per 
screen. That's actually pretty good for Japan (Tokyo has 36,000 people 
per screen; Yokohama has 84,000, and the US average is something like 
7,000). Of course, if you're a film fan living outside of the city 
you've got a hike ahead of you the next time you want to catch a flick. 
This puts much of the prefectural population 1 to 2 hours away from the 
nearest movie theater.

Of the 269 films shown in Tokushima last year, a respectable 35% were 
Japanese (it's unclear whether these are all discrete films, but with a 
multiplex around I doubt it). 83% of these were distributed through the 
major studios. The breakdown for the foreign films goes something like 
this: Hollywood 73%, Other English language films 10%, Europe 8%, Asia 
9%, and nothing from the rest of the world. All of these films were new 
releases, except for a lone Hollywood film at the cinecon.

There are no mini-theaters, although there are 6 non-commercial sites 
that showed 26 films last year. 16 of these were domestic films. 13 
were older films, so if you are a lover of classic cinema---of missed a 
film on its initial run---you're truly screwed in Tokushima.

I could go on. There are lots more numbers where those came from. In 
fact, I want to note where they came from as a segue to what I really 
wanted to write about. The stats were from a thick book put out by Ace 
Japan and through the support of Eiga Bigakko and the Bunka-cho. It's 
titled Chiiki ni Okeru Eiga Joei Jokyo Chosa: Eiga Joei Katsudo Nenkan 
2003, and well-worth getting a hold on for yourself or your library if 
it's collecting Japanese materials. It is the result of a large survey 
of the state of play for movie theaters in the entirety of Japan.

This book gives a very nice snapshot of Japanese film culture through 
numbers. Ace Japan (aka the Japanese Association for Cultural Exchange 
[here is their bilingual homepage: http://www.acejapan.or.jp/]) has 
also has numerous publications that do the same thing through other 
strategies: essays, roundtables, transcriptions of conferences, rejime 
from speeches, etc. etc. I've learned a lot from their newsletters.

Ace Japan is doing all sorts of things relating to film. They've got 
touring packages of Dreyer and Wiseman films. They conducted this very 
important survey. They've been studying and reporting on the many 
configurations of film culture in other parts of the world (in a way I 
find quite reminiscent of the late 1930s, when various sectors of the 
film world struggled over censorship and the relationship of film 
culture and the central government). I once gave them a keynote speech 
on Ann Arbor's spectacular Michigan Theater, a non-profit community 
cinema owned by the city which was the fruit of a citizen's movement to 
save the last remaining movie palace from becoming a parking lot).

That speech was given at their yearly "Network Kaigi", a conference for 
the people in Japan devoted to cultivating/protecting/salvaging 
independent, non-commercial film culture-----and especially outside of 
Japan. This conference has been running since 1996.

You can a sense for the character of the organization from the people 
on its main committee, people like Matsumoto of At?n?e Fran?ais/Eiga 
Bigakko, critic Okubo, Horikoshi from Eurospace/Eiga Bigakko, Ishizaka 
of JF, Tachigi of Aoyama Art Museum and formerly of the Film Center, 
Nishijima from Tamabidai and an Image Forum regular, Miyazawa of 
Yamagata FF, and critic Murayama. Oh, and it's run by the tireless 
Iwasaki Yuko, who is the point person if you want to contact these 
folks for something (iwasy at acejapan.or.jp).

You can get a good sense from what goes on at this conference by 
looking at their 21 Seki no Geijutsu Shinkosaku o Kangaeru---Geijutsu 
Shinko no tame ni Ho to Seido (2003). This has extensive comparative 
reports about the US and Korea, and a long report about their 2002 
Network Gaigi in Gifu with rejime and transcripts. Also part of the new 
initiative of the Bunko-cho.

So they just happened to be holding their 2004 Network Kaigi in Kochi 
while I was in Tokushima, so I dropped in for a visit. Actually, this 
group has just changed their name to Shien Shinema Sentaa, or Japan 
Community Cinema Center (with Ace Japan still in the background). Their 
bilingual homepage is: http://www.jc3.jp/

Let me tell you a little about this meeting in Kochi.

There were some 160 people from all over the country (there were a 
couple people from KineJapan, Kyoko Hirano, Asako Fujioka. Let me just 
tell you what some of the speeches were like.

Matsumoto Masamichi, who's the current head honcho, kicked it off by 
describing what they're up to these days. They're conducting a new 
survey, this time of non-theatrical exhibition across Japan. Making a 
"Community Cinema List" or nenkan. They are about to start a course for 
film exhibition. I don't know how many of you have given any thought to 
what it takes to keep films in the theaters for your viewing pleasure, 
but it's complex and there are very few people in Japan that have the 
know-how.  This course will be meeting some 40+ times with smaller 
courses in other parts of Japan, and cover things like how get prints 
(domestically or internationally), how to plan an event, how to do 
subtitles, advertising, how to run a theater or screening space, how to 
arrange for speeches on film history etc. along with screenings.  This 
is also supported by the Bunka-cho and run by Eiga Bigakko. They'll 
also be doing some kind of symposium on exhibition with the Tokyo Film 
Festival, act as a clearing house for information on exhibition, 
publish more (including on the internet).

The other major plank Matsumoto introduced had to do with film 
education and cineliteracy, which was the main theme for this year's 
conference. Every Network Kaigi has focussed on a different aspect of 
film culture and cultivation. The year I gave a speech it was about 
NPOs and how the new laws could be harnessed to the benefit of 
independent exhibitors and theater owners. Nishijima noted from the 
stage the alarming statistic that only one in 100 junior high school 
students sees a single film per year in a theater. Clearly, if one is 
thinking in the long term, they've got to instill an appreciation for 
film in young people or the theaters will be in trouble a decade or two 
down the road.  In that spirit, they made it their theme for the year, 
while the Bunka-cho is announcing plans for financial support for 
people holding screenings aimed at kids.

So Saiki Tomonori who heads the film section of the Bunka-cho. Saiki is 
a historian by training (Waseda), and used to be one of the main people 
at the Film Center. Naturally, as a film scholar I appreciated the 
historical contextualization. And while he quite appropriately called 
attention to the long history of film education in Japan (back to the 
early Showa era), the history was a little thin and he placed somewhat 
odd emphasis on the difference between "eiga kyoiku" and "community 
cinema."  Actually, I think a slightly more nuanced look at the history 
simply shows this is a return of sorts to 1930ish.

Here's what I mean. Film education was a thoroughly international 
movement, probably one of the first real film movements in film history 
since it goes back to at least the 20s.  It was huge in Japan, starting 
with moral concerns over the cinema, moving into practical matters of 
using films in classrooms and halls in schools, passing through an era 
where it's politicized for the war effort, then politicized by the 
Occupation for the ends of "democratization" and then through the 50s 
to the present where it has been a staple of the nonfiction production 
sector (one veteran film producer there told me that video was changing 
things and not really for the better).

These examples of film education are primarily about using film a a 
tool in education. As teaching material. Saiki touched on many of these 
aspects, but missed the one that really reminds me of the current 
Community Cinema effort. That's Prokino. One might dismiss them simply 
as a failed effort to politicize film education along communist lines. 
However, what sets Prokino apart----and makes them most like Community 
Cinema (CC)----is their assertion that film education is one of many 
elements that can revolutionize film culture. Both CC and Prokino were 
all about renovating film culture locally through a networked movement 
working on a variety of fronts. And most importantly, it was not simply 
the idea of using film as a tool of enlightenment, but it was all about 
teaching what film is---ontological, aesthetic, and political issues.

Of course, a huge difference is their relationship to the central 
government!  Prokino got crushed; these people have the Bunka-cho on 
their side. Many might be cynical about this government involvement, 
but I think it's a significant step. To that end, they invited two 
foreign guests to talk about film education in Britain and France.

These were very interesting presentations. Alain Bergala talked about 
what they're doing in France at the direction of the government and 
with their pretty generous financial support. Wendy Earle of the BFI 
explained their efforts, which are smaller and hampered by the recent 
money and organizational problems at the BFI. What was interesting was 
how different they were. Bergala showed a DVD, one of many they are 
producing for teachers (non-commercial disks designed specifically for 
pedagogy). The one he showed had many clips from around the world and 
many cultural contexts, each of which represented something going DOWN. 
Earle showed a beautiful animated film from Spain and a British 
student's clever rip-off The Ring. Put baldly, the French emphasized 
the aesthetic of film art while the British were more technical, 
semiotic, and politicized. You could palpably feel some of the 
differences between French and British-American film studies there. 
Personally, I liked both and think both are actually quite inseparable, 
although the talks left the vague sense that they're mutually 
exclusive.

 From the perspective of an American, one might be kind of jealous.  The 
country is too big, the population to unwieldy, and K-12 education is 
controlled locally so there's little that the federal Department of 
Education could do if it wanted to spearhead a film education movement 
(one more unfunded mandate?). With the Bunka-cho behind CC, and the 
fact that you've got a centralized education system and ministry (even 
if it can be a scary one), I thought the idea of working on 
cine-literacy is promising. I suppose I'm unreasonably partial, being a 
film educator myself. But surely one way to ensure that audiences are 
watching a variety of films in a variety of spaces is to expose them to 
the wonders of the medium (media) at an early age.

(Although no one at the conference touched on this, I think there are 
good political reasons to do this as well. Surely one reason we have a 
war in Iraq, a close presidential race, and over 40% of Americans 
believing there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaida has a lot to 
do with cine-illiteracy....better yet, cine-stupidity---not knowing 
when you're watching bullshit on the television news.)

That said, one thing that's really great about the Network Kaigi is 
that the audience is stocked with people who just back from the battle 
front. Bergala and Earle were showing them wondrous things. There were 
various ideal scenarios being tossed around.

Then the moment everyone was waiting for: Kageyama Satoshi from Cin? 
Nouveau in Osaka (http://terra.zone.ne.jp/cinenouveau/).

At these kinds of gatherings, Kageyama-san is always reliable to bring 
things down to earth his wonderful kansai-ben. We wait for him to raise 
his hand. Kageyama was one of the people behind the little-known, but 
excellent, Eiga Shinbun, a film newspaper that covered film culture 
from the Kansai POV. I've also written about him in my Ogawa Pro book, 
as he was instrumental in building the 1000 Year Theater for Ogawa's 
Magino Village along with another temporary theater for Dairakudakan.

Kageyama stood up and passionately talked about his frustrations in 
Osaka. Cin? Nouveau is a great little theater, but they have trouble 
getting anyone to go to the good stuff. He recently did an Ozu (or was 
it Mizoguchi) with a benshi and everything, and they had only a handful 
of people show up. It's fine to talk about film education, but there 
are probably more pressing issues. Even regarding film education, there 
are structural problems that are fundamentally standing in the way of 
the few teachers that are interested in film. I'm no expert on the 
Japanese school system, and even after quizzing Kageyama over beers 
that night I still only half-understand what he's talking about. It's 
very complex. But Monbusho cut Saturday teaching to two days a month. 
But students still have a hell of a lot to learn, especially for 
college entrance exams. It seems they didn't really cut the curriculum 
by two days a month, so they took up slack by cutting the times that 
teachers were free to teach their own thing.  This is precisely where 
film education would have to happen, and it's basically disappearing or 
gone.

These people are passionate about what they're doing. Many of them were 
directly involved in the lively transformation of independent film 
culture in the 1960s and early 1970s. Naturally, they remember what it 
was like, and they rue those crazy days. So while they're resolutely 
committed to cultivating a fun and meaningful film culture wherever 
they are in Japan, there is also a pervasive pessimism permeated by 
nostalgia.

One of the last people I spoke to in Kochi was an old friend, Nakajima 
Yo. He's an experimental filmmaker and the owner of Theater Kino in 
Sapporo (http://theaterkino.net/). (Some in the States may remember him 
from a traveling exhibition of Japanese experimental films about 7 
years ago or so.) He started up his theater in 1992----on the 4th of 
July----and at the time he was proud that it was the smallest theater 
in Japan (29 seats with a cute bar attached). In 1998 they moved into a 
new theater, with the best equipment and great seats. And they're still 
struggling. Nakajima-san passionately complained to me that Sapporo is 
on the cutting edge of film culture, that Sapporo is the very image of 
Japan's future. What he meant is that, while the cinecon phenomenon was 
defined by the construction of big multiplexes in the suburbs where 
there would be parking, a new 12-screen cineplex opened right at 
Sapporo Station (http://www.cinemafrontier.co.jp/). Aside from the 
2,700 seats of competition, what really had Nakajima's pants in a bunch 
was the fact that they were getting into programming. For example, they 
held a retrospective of music documentary (Stop Making Sense, Buena 
Vista, Last Waltz, etc..). In other words, the cinecomplexes are 
starting to coopt the Community Cinema world.

When we talk about "Japanese film" or "Japanese film industry" or 
"Japanese film culture", it's good to keep in mind that Tokyo is the 
exception. There are many struggles and transformations going on out 
there.

This has been rather long. I suspect that of the 500-odd KineJapan 
readers, there are probably about five of you that have hung in to the 
bitter end.  But basically, Ace Japan comped but with the liveliness of 
the discussions I didn't have a chance to contribute on the spot. I 
thought the least I could do to show my gratitude is give some feedback 
and let the foreign fans of Japanese cinema have a glimpse at this very 
important film movement going on behind the scenes----in the dim 
theaters and not under the prestigious lights of the sets.

Markus




Ab? Mark Nornes
Associate Professor
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures &
Program in Film and Video Studies
University of Michigan

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