Beautiful rolling Manchuria

[David Blair]

hi Gavin,

The information I have is a bit old, from the age of VHS, however....
and excuse me if what I say is a bit incorrect.

there are a couple of Japan/Manei co-productions that used to be 
available from Shochiku's VHS best-of series.
There are of course Yoshiko Yamaguchi films.... e.g. Bluebird, which is 
a really odd romance set against the background of Russian Harbin.
There is another, a village romance with her which may in fact be one of 
her work-for-hires in Shanghai, the main part of which I remember is 
Y.Y. herding some very large black pigs. And of course a emotional shot 
of the Japanese flag over the village at the end.

Markus is referring to a company called Ten-Sharp in English. From what 
I could understand, it was run profitably by a Japanese blue-grass 
musician who discovered the post-Soviet cache by way of a conversation 
while on tour. As I remember, there are only 3 fiction films, and the 
bulk are newsreels, some from the SMR film unit, most from Manei, and 
some from Japanese agencies, and of course a couple hours of Soviet 
post-invasion best-of-our-fightingforces. A fairly large amount of their 
material is in fact in the US National Archives, but that isn't easily 
accessible to you either in London. Markus was right.... during the 50th 
anniversary, the company only sold the complete set of tapes, for 300,000 Y.

However.... Ten Sharp did publish a photobook in conjunction with the 
films. I can't write Japanese, but I will give you the ISBN number, and 
can send you a scan of the cover and title page if you want to start 
looking for that.  ISBN4-08-781121-2. It had a good circulation, and I 
bet you can get it second hand if you know how to do that, I don't.

There is a nice book by a fellow named Yamaguchi [sorry, I forget his 
first name], which is a pretty complete history of Manei. There are 
others as well, as I understand.

I'd be curious to hear, what is your topic?


David Blair


Gavin Rees wrote:

>Hi, 
>
>I was wondering if anybody could recommend any Manei films that I might be
>able to get hold of relatively easily in London (or of course by mail
>order). 
>
>I am doing some research work on the Japanese empire before the war, and I
>am looking for some films which I can use to discuss attitudes to settlers,
>and living in the empire etc...
>
>The angle of the piece is going to be more political and cultural rather
>than aesthetic per se, but any references to literature about them would
>also be a help. 
>
>Thanks in advance, 
>
>Gavin 
>
>
>
>  
>