Subtitles in Japanese Theaters in the 1930s

[Alexander Jacoby]

Am I right in thinking that there is actually a version of The Blue Angel still preserved with benshi commentary?
   
  ALEX


Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:
    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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