attitudes to Ozu

[Mark Mays]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sven Koerber-Abe" <svenkoerber at gmx.de>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: attitudes to Ozu


> Okay, there may be some points where especially the people here on the
> KJ-list don't agree with Hasumi regarding the topic especially about Ozu
and
> how Non-Japanese could or could not understand Japanese cinema.
>
> I personally don't want to defend Hasumi and his views that much, but what
I
> have to appraise a little bit is that he tries to break the status of the
> big (foreign) names who are seen today as the untouchable writers about
> Japanese film, especially Donald Richie. Please do not missunderstand me,
as
> I am a admirer of the works of Mr. Richie !
> But as I made the exprerience many times in discussions and lessons (by
> myself and by others, too) that it has become a kind of a final and not
even
> to be doubted argument that "Richie / Bordwell says it is so ...", I have
to
> say that it feels like a "vitalizing breeze" in the fields of the talks
> about Japanese film when not every single word of the big names I
mentioned
> above is taken given like a commandment.

well said.

then Tim

> The Hasumi work on Ozu struck me as yet another case of chauvinistic
> attitudes on the part of some Japanese scholars towards non-Japanese
> researchers, and that's why he singled out the western critics at the
> beginning--to provide a basis for his opinion that only in Japan does a
> "true" understanding of film still exist (of course this opinion is
> possible in part because of the insularity of Japanese film
> scholars--Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro alludes to this at the beginning of his SAQ
> article on the lack of film studies in Japanese universities).

Aaron's comments suggest Hasumi's opinions are a bit more complicated than
just an outre' dismissal of foreign scholars, or am I missing something?