fukubukuro and Japanese envying "JAPAN"

[Kerim Yasar]

Vanity film production! If it had to happen somewhere,
I guess it had to be in Japan.

As ludicrous as it sounds on the face of it, in the
right hands I can imagine this yielding an interesting
film.  What if Iwasaki Mineko coughs up the ichi-oku
and has her life story made, a kind of "ANTI-SAYURI,"
if you will? Even in the wrong hands, the result may
be a masterpiece of unintentional hilarity.

Speaking of SAYURI, I just returned a few days ago
from Japan, where I saw the advertising slogan for the
film:

 ¥Ë¥Ã¥Ý¥ó¤¬¼»Åʤ¹¤ëJAPAN (Nippon ga shitto suru
"JAPAN"--"The "JAPAN" that Japan envies").

This has to be one of the most mind-bending slogans
for a film I've ever seen.  You have the vaguely
nationalistic phonetic rendering of the aggressively
plosive "Nippon" combined with a sentiment that is
auto-orientalist and self-abasing at the same time. 
This bizarre combination of paradox and calculated
orthography  somehow seems to encapsulate Japan's
tense and complex relationship with the West and the
West's respresentations of Japan by being as tortured
as that relationship itself.

Kerim Yasar

--- Aaron Gerow <gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Those of you who have spent New Year's in Japan may
> be familiar with 
> "fukubukuro," a kind of "treasure bag" that
> department stores sell at 
> the beginning of the year, usually offering a
> variety of things in a 
> package at a reduced price. Most only cost a few
> thousand yen, but some 
> stores come up with some extravagant fukubukuro to
> generate publicity.
> 
> Well, the Nihonbashi Branch of the Mitsukoshi
> department store is 
> offering a 35mm film in a special fukubukuro. No,
> not a print, but an 
> order made film from the Shochiku studios. For only
> 100,000,000 million 
> yen, Shochiku will produce a 60 minute film in 35
> mm, using a 
> professional director with theatrical film
> experience and professional 
> actors, and present it at a special "premiere" at a
> Shochiku theater. 
> The fukubukuro basically offers the option of either
> doing a bio-pic of 
> your own life, or a romance or thriller starring
> yourself. Shochiku 
> will retain the rights, however.
> 
> The spokesman for Shochiku said they would be open
> to requests for 
> Yamada Yoji, the main Shochiku director, to helm the
> piece, but it 
> would probably be for an extra fee and would depend
> on Yamada's 
> willingness.
> 
> Anyone out there interested?
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> KineJapan owner
> 
> Assistant Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and
> Literatures
> Yale University
> 
> For list commands, send "information kinejapan" to
> listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Kinema Club:
> http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
> 
> 


	
		
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