Subtitles in Japanese Theaters in the 1930s

[Mark Nornes]

You heard right. I have not come across mentions of benshi narrating  
over a subtitled film; however, benshi + talkie was a common  
practice. I am unsure how long it lasted. I'm sure it was around up  
to 1935 to 1936. After that, the Japanese industry converts to sound,  
so it's hard to say. I haven't seen articles about it that late.

I can give you a few choice quotes to whet your appetite. Here is a  
foreign visitor to Japan in 1931:

> Benshi are as indispensable as ever; only, in relation to the  
> "talkie," they must sandwich their words between an exasperating  
> jumble of mechanical foreign-language dialogue and sound effects, a  
> task that cannot but make the whole ensuing struggle (for that,  
> indeed, it is) seem farcical. The benshi-plus-silent-film  
> combination was beautifully suited to Japanese needs and  
> temperament. With the advent of sound films the unpopularity of  
> American pictures for a time threatened to become almost as  
> emphatic as once had been their popularity. But this feeling was in  
> no measure due to the fact that an anti-American sentiment had  
> arisen. On the contrary, it was the simple reaction of a public  
> chagrined at not being able to comprehend something that in the  
> past had brought it genuine pleasure.

Here is a sound engineer visiting from Hollywood, having just seen a  
benshi-accompanied screening of the 1928 film The Redskin:

> It gave the impression of benshi vs. ERPI [the General Electric  
> sound system]…[The benshi] was getting rather angry, according to  
> the manager, who explained on day that if we did not favor him he  
> might start a general strike.

And here is Tachibana Takahiro:

> [The benshi] explains the difficult points in a complicated  
> intrigue, reminds the spectators of what has gone before, and  
> generally indicates who's who and what's what to those to whom such  
> things might not be obvious. Moreover, in the tensest moments of a  
> drama, he will impersonate the figures on the screen, and, with  
> considerable ventriloquial skill, will be successively the  
> murdering villain, the wailing mother and the awe-struck child. For  
> the foreign pictures he does all these things with equal skill, and  
> incidentally he translates the printed captions, so that the  
> language difficulty never presents any insurmountable problems.  
> With the introduction of the foreign talkies he has attempted to  
> carry on in the best traditions of his craft, with results that can  
> be perhaps better imagined than described. The unfortunate  
> spectator's ears are assailed on the one side by the strident  
> accents of a foreign tongue, and on the other by the gallantly  
> explanatory benshi forever doing his best. It is Man versus the  
> Machine, and the result pandemonium, or as a foreign friend once  
> described it to me in parody of Mr. Kipling's lines, "The benshi  
> brawls / But the talkie squalls / and it weareth the benshi down."  
> Thus it can be seen that the benshi who was a great asset to the  
> foreign silent film is hardly that to the talkie.

You can find out more about the translation strategies of talkie era  
distributors and exhibitors in my upcoming book on film translation.  
It should be out at the end of the year, from Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Markus






On Jan 15, 2007, at 7:18 AM, Michael McCaskey wrote:

>> An American who lived in Japan in the 1930s once told me that  
>> European and American films shown in Japanese theaters not only  
>> had Japanese subtitles, but even at times a benshi to narrate,  
>> while the original sound track was going. I believe this person  
>> also said that sometimes there might be a second set of subtitles-- 
>> perhaps English ones (?), if the sound track was in a Continental  
>> European language.
>>
>> This would have been between 1935 and 1941, so it would have been  
>> unlikely that any of the films were silent. The titles were  
>> displayed directly on the picture screen--not inter-titles.
>>
>> I was quite young, not paying full attention when I heard all  
>> this. Some people on this list are experts on 1930s Japan and  
>> film, so perhaps someone could shed some light on whether the  
>> actuality was anything at all like these shaky third-party  
>> recollections.
>>
>> Michael McCaskey
>> Georgetown Univ.
>>
>>
>
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