No creative films?

[Mark D. Roberts]

Indeed, the omission of cinema is remarkable, but what are the  
possible reasons?

The site does carry the disclaimer that "The views expressed in the  
articles are those of the contributors, and are not necessarily a  
reflection of the views of the Japanese Government." and the article  
on "Manga, Anime, and Games" was authored by only one person ? Megumi  
Onouchi ? who is identified as a "Media Content Producer". With that  
title, I'd guess that Megumi is looking at the industry from a kind  
of "new media" perspective, rather than that of someone interested in  
cinema. Presumably, the staff in charge of editing/assembling the  
project would have noted the omission, but evidently not. One would  
like to think it was just sloppiness.

For me, there are two questions: first, to what extent is this about  
a failing of government policy w.r.t. the promotion of live-action  
film, and second, to what extent is this simply a reflection of how  
people in Japan see visual culture now?

The first question has to do with some specific policies. The second  
one is harder to answer but may be more telling.

It strikes me more and more that live-action cinema has a strong  
class/age dimension in Japan, more so than I've encountered in  
America or Europe. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem that a large  
number of working or young people are tuned into contemporary  
Japanese cinema, let alone "classic" cinema. It's as if cinema as a  
whole is just one option among many other forms of diversion, that  
cinema, manga, and music are now all sort of interchangeable. There's  
a lot of interest in "portable" or "take out" forms of entertainment,  
things that you could take on a train, for example.

Does anybody know of some good research on patterns of film  
spectatorship in Japan? We all know the overall numbers, the decline  
in the 1960s, etc., but what about the demographics of the audience?  
Who's going to see films now? Who was going in 1990, 1980, 1970, etc.?

Mark


On Jul 20, 2007, at 9:03 AM, Aaron Gerow wrote:

> Not much traffic on KineJapan these days. Is everyone off on summer  
> vacation?
>
> The Japanese embassy sent me a note saying that the Ministry of  
> Foreign Affairs has put together a new pamphlet called "Creative  
> Japan" spotlighting the world-wide influence of contemporary  
> Japanese culture:
>
> http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/creativejapan/index.html
>
> A nice publicity pamphlet, but do you notice something missing?  
> Anime is included, but nothing on live-action film. Even with the  
> world-wide interest in J-horror, Kitano, Miike, Tsukamoto and  
> others, is live-action film not part of "Creative Japan"? What do  
> KineJapanners think of this? Is it one more sign that all the  
> government's emphasis on "cool Japan" and "the contents industry"  
> does really not include live-action film (or TV, for that matter)?  
> Or what?
>
> 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
>