Kurosawa DVD case

[Aaron Gerow]

Sorry for the delay in reporting this, but the Mainichi and other 
papers reported on Friday that Toho and Kadokawa have won their case 
against a DVD maker selling cut-rate DVDs of Kurosawa's pre-1953 works. 
I had reported on this case before, but after several courts had 
declared that films made before 1953 were public domain, Toho tried the 
unique route of arguing that Kurosawa's films were 1) covered under the 
old copyright law, which protects works by individual authors for 38 
years after their death (works by corporate authors are only covered 
for 38 years after the release of the work); and 2) that Kurosawa's 
films should be treated as works of an individual author. The Tokyo 
court accepted Toho's argument in part because the credits state at the 
beginning: "Director Kurosawa Akira". The DVD company, which asserted 
these were films by a corporate author, announced it will be appealing.

I was surprised to hear the decision, but perhaps it shows that the 
court doesn't take into account history. The whole thing is ironic, 
first, because Toho was the company that insisted in its first years on 
crediting directors only with "enshutsu" not "kantoku" precisely to 
downplay their importance; and second, because the new copyright law 
changed the provisions regarding film copyright to eliminate the 
possibility--still existent, but very ambiguous, in the old law--that 
individuals could be the authors of studio films (changes I am sure the 
film companies advocated). I also wonder whether Toho isn't just 
opening a Pandora's box in trying to protect its profits from Kurosawa 
DVDs. Will now any old Toho director begin suing Toho for their share 
of DVD sales now that the courts have confirmed they have the 
copyright? And what will Kurosawa's family do?

Any ideas?

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu