Edo influences on modern films

[elkie leenen]

Thank you for your information. I haven't thought about looking at Ukiyo-e 
prints before. This will help, thanks a lot!


>From: Michael McCaskey <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
>Reply-To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>Subject: Re: Edo influences on modern films
>Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 14:25:18 -0400
>
>Dear Elkie Leenen,
>
>There are likely lots of influences in the area of what is known as 
>jidai-geki, "period drama," mostly "samurai" pictures set in the Edo 
>Period. People might visualize and set up scenes in such films, based on 
>settings in Edo Period prints. It may be hard to pinpoint specific Edo 
>visual influences in various films readily, but one pretty clear case is 
>the Edo drama Chushingura. There are several books on Chushingura in 
>English, but the one below is perhaps the most applicable.
>
>Author Bell, David, 1950-
>Title Chushingura and the floating world : the representation of Kanadehon 
>Chushingura in Ukiyo-e prints / David Bell
>Imprint Richmond, Surrey : Japan Library, 2001
>Descript 170 p. : ill. ; 24 cm
>Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references and index
>ISBN 190335000X
>Subject Takeda, Izumo, 1691-1756. Kanadehon Ch?ushingura
>  Ukiyoe
>  Forty-seven R?onin in art
>  Color prints, Japanese -- Edo period, 1600-1868
>  Kabuki in art
>  Forty-seven R?onin in literature
>
>This wd. be about the way that 1) Edo prints visualizing the actual events 
>might affect staging of dramatizations, 2) the dramatizations wd. give rise 
>to prints visualizing the atage settings, and 3) processes 1) and 2) cd. 
>interact, and yield a whole artistic tradition.
>
>I believe there's also a fairly recent book in German about this topic.
>
>There are many, many film and TV versions of Chushingura on DVD. The early 
>1960s Inagaki Hiroshi version of Chushingua and an even older one by 
>Mizoguchi, from the early 1940s, are the only readily available Chushingura 
>DVD's in US format.
>
>Since you are in DVD Region 2, you may be able to get other versions of 
>Chushingura in PAL format. There are a lot available in Japanese Region 2 
>NTSC format--actually enough to watch full-time for a couple of weeks, to 
>compare settings of given scenes.
>
>
>A major visualization to compare in many different film and TV versions is 
>the fight out in the snow-covered garden, from Act/Scene 11 of the 
>traditional drama. That setting goes back to the earliest Edo print 
>visualizations. It's in almost every one of the later film and TV versions 
>on DVD, and it was also borrowed by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill Vol. 1. 
>Though Tarantino may have been directly influenced by another derivative 
>Japanese film which borrowed the visual concept of the fight in the snow in 
>the garden from the Chushingura films.
>
>There's so much Chushingura material that there's more than enough there to 
>occupy several more researchers. There are also dozens of books in Japanese 
>about Chushingura, and a number of different novelizations of it.
>
>You could of course pick some other sort of film if you prefer, but in this 
>case there are a number of parallel sets of Edo prints for Chushingura, and 
>there are 11 acts/scenes, so each set will tend to have a dozen or more 
>pictures, which can be compared with each other, with films, and with 
>scenes in books. Plus various related books in European languages.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: elkie leenen <elkieleenen at hotmail.com>
>Date: Sunday, August 14, 2005 8:50 am
>Subject: Edo influences on modern films
>
> > Hello, my name is Elkie Leenen. I'm a dutch student, and currently
> > I have a
> > project involving Japanese art. One of the subjects is Japanese
> > cinema. I'm
> > trying to find out if there are any artistic influences from the
> > Edo-Period
> > which affect modern Japanese cinema. If there aren't any, I want
> > to find the
> > main differences between modern cinema and the artistic diciplines
> > from the
> > Edo-period.
> >
> > Does anyone have answers to this, or maybe any good resources?
> >
> > Thank you in advance.
> >
> >
> >
>