Bordwell on Nippon: Liebe und Leidenschaft in Japan

[Michael McCaskey]

There is some valuable background information in English about these early Japanese-German film connections in Janine Hansen's article "Celluloid Competition: Japanese-German Film Relations, 1929-1945," in the book Cinema and the Swastika, pp. 187-197. It would be great if this article could be expanded into a book.

There's also interesting information about Kawakita Nagamasa in Sato Tadao's Nihon Eiga Shi, vol. 2, pp. 123-128. Kawakita was so well-known for his film deals with the French and the Germans that he became a key manager in the Japanese-Chinese film industry, mostly based in Shanghai, under the Japanese Occupation. Though answerable to the Japanese military authorities, he seems to have played a fairly positive role - letting the Chinese make films pretty much as they wished, some of them even having some anti-Occupation themes hidden in them.

At the end of the war in 1945, according to Sato, Kawakita also seems to have played a role in trying to keep his film crews and actors from being pubished as collaborators with the Japanese Occupation. Also according to Sato, Kawakita gave testimony which helped keep Yamaguchi Yoshiko/Ri Koran/Shirley Yamaguchi from being imprisoned or executed as a collaborator, and he and Yamaguchi went back to Japan together.

I've watched the first part of the recent fairly lengthy film biography of Yamaguchi, starring Ueto Aya, which is fairly good - DVD 2, which I've not yet seen, is about Yamaguchi's time in Shanghai, and I'll have to see if Kawakita is portrayed as a key player.

Michael McCaskey
Georgetown Univ.
Wash DC



----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu>
Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:21 am
Subject: Bordwell on Nippon: Liebe und Leidenschaft in Japan

> I was reading David Bordwell's blog entry mourning the passing on  
> Edward Yang and came across his fascinating description of a film  
> that just showed at Cinema Ritrovato (dated July 6).
> 
> _________________
> 
> In the early 1930s, Japanese companies explored the possibility of 
> 
> exporting their films to Europe and the US. One result of these  
> initiatives was Nippon: Liebe und Leidenschaft in Japan, a 1932  
> German compilation created by Carl Koch. It originally consisted 
> of  
> three films from the Shochiku studio, condensed and supplied with  
> German intertitles. The original films were silent, so, oddly 
> enough,  
> synced Japanese dialogue was added.
> 
> 
> 
> In the version screened here, only two episodes were presented. 
> What  
> beauties they were! Since many of the 1920s and 1930s Japanese 
> films  
> that survive look quite weatherbeaten, it was wonderful to see, in 
> 
> the print from the Cin?math?que Suisse, how gorgeous quite 
> ordinary  
> movies from this era could be.
> 
> The first story, Kaito samimaro (orig. 1928), deals with a young  
> samurai rescuing his beloved from the clutches of a corrupt 
> priest.  
> Brisk and beautifully shot, it came to the sort of frothing 
> swordplay  
> climax typical of the period?rapid cutting, dynamic tracking, and  
> slashing assaults aimed at the camera. Kagaribi (1928), about a 
> young  
> vassal betrayed by his corrupt lord, likewise ended with a 
> protracted  
> action scene capped by a jolting climax. A prolonged tracking shot 
> 
> follows the young man?s former lover as she backs away from him, 
> but  
> then we cut to a full shot. With a single stroke he kills her,  
> jaggedly ripping a paper door in his follow-through. Both stand  
> motionless for a moment before she falls. A conventional finish, 
> but  
> no less eye-smiting for that. For more on the power of this action-
> 
> cinema tradition, see an earlier entry on this site.