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

[Howard Katz]

Hi all,
I've been lurking here for a couple of weeks. This seems like a good time to
leap in and say hello. I spent five years in Japan in the early 70's and am
just now, after a 30-year hiatus, getting back into the language and culture
again. I'm having a great time using the fabulous resources available on the
web to resurrect old language skills. 
 
I have a question. I enjoyed Letters from Iwo Jima and would love to see the
screenplay. I have found several suppliers on the web, but it's not clear
whether the screenplays they're selling are in English or Japanese. I had
heard that Iris Yamashita wrote the original script in English and then had
it translated. Does anybody know which language the commercially available
screenplay is in? (I don't have much interest in an English version.)
 
Thanks,
Howard


  _____  

From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Nornes
Sent: May 14, 2007 7:59 AM
To: KineJapan
Subject: Ikui Eiko's "Letters from Iwo Jima: Japanese Perspectives"


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




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