Ikui Eiko's "Letters from Iwo Jima: Japanese Perspectives"

[Mark Nornes]

Aaron has translated Ikui-san's revision of an Asahi Shinbun article  
for Japan Forum. Here are a couple nuggets:


What is intriguing is that a hero like Saigo is exceptional less in  
Japanese history than in the history of Japanese film. It is well  
known that not all Japanese during the war were fascists and that it  
was not rare for common soldiers at the front to privately express  
discontent like Saigo. But the depiction of low-ranking grunts  
complaining in Japanese film up until now has been significantly  
different. One basically did not see a soldier who clearly looks as  
weak and as insignificant as Saigo baring his grievances so openly  
and incessantly in films by Japan’s major studios (the producers’  
casting of the idol singer Ninomiya Kazuya in this role was astute).  
That’s why, as the narrative progresses, Saigo gradually approaches  
the image of the common man one occasionally sees in American cinema.  
Yet the great majority of Japanese spectators were not conscious of  
this.

Viewed from this perspective, one realizes that the peculiar praise  
of Letters as “a movie a Japanese should have made” bore a simple  
meaning for most Japanese viewers that was not at all unnatural. To  
put it a different way, it suggests how much the manners of American  
cinema have become close and familiar to today’s Japanese audiences.  
In most cases, the history that cinema depicts belongs not to the  
past but to the present, and in an interesting fashion Letters  
foregrounds “which present” contemporary Japanese viewers are living in.

....

In Flags of Our Fathers, there is not a single high-ranking officer  
or politician worthy of respect, while in Letters from Iwo Jima, the  
most esteemed figure is the enemy who dies. It is for this reason  
that this combination of films bears a great political significance  
in American society that is not found in Japan.

Find out what it is by directing your browser to:

http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2417

Markus


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20070514/1f9e8b6e/attachment.html