shutai vs shutaisei

[Mathieu Capel]

Dear Michael,

Sorry for being late answering your e-mail. Let me first thank you for
pointing out the references to Hanamatsu and Maruyama's texts from Kiroku
eiga. I shall go back to them in order to clear some points (but actually
you and Justin made most of them rather clear to me...).

I just would like to go on with this shutai/shutaisei issue from the remark
you made about Sartre and how he was translated to Japanese.
By the way, when talking about drawing some comparison about him in one of
my first e-mail, I was just referring to Matsumoto's panel of citations,
where one could find many quotation from Sartre, introduced with (almost)
full references, when most of the Japanese thinkers Matsumoto could be
supposed to be connected with didn't receive an equal treatment...
Actually, that question of translating shutaisei to french is something I
have been thinking about for months now, and some hints were given from the
reading of Yoshida's writing, trying to reconfigure the intellectual realm
he was involved with...

Of course, the clearest "influence" (I actually dislike this idea of
influence, but here I assumed that it shall not be avoided) is to Sartre,
especially to *Nausea* (see that 1995 text beginning with : "All my Sartre
was in *Nausea*" - well, it is something everyone on this list is aware of,
no need to add anything about that).

The second main reference in Yoshida's writings is of course Nakai Masakazu.
We can find references to his I*ntroduction to Aesthetics*, from 1962's
"Fear of space" to *Bi no bi* serial about Egypt - by the way, that *Bi no
bi *series seems really indebted to Nakai, something like an homage, but
when one think that Nakai's epistemological theory of spaces and
subjectivity is quoted from 1962 (Hani and Matsumoto refer to him as well :
who else ?) one may think that *Bi no bi *was not something out of Yoshida's
official filmography, but something he was bound to make, in a way...
Yoshida makes the connection clear between "his" Sartre and Nakai in a short
contribution to a Nakai leaflet we can read in Jiko hitei no ronri, untitled
"Watashi ni totte no Nakai Masakazu". There he claims, more or less, that
discovering Nakai suggested him that he'd been making quite a detour when
studying Sartre, for everything was already there, in Nakai's writings...

Actually *Introduction to aesthetics* is the one place where I could find
the clearest definition of the distinction between shukansei and shutaisei.
Nakai's epistemological stance about subjectivity seems really convenient to
fully understand that difference (the one you pointed out as "classical").
But to me his historical exposé could be regarded as well as a, let's say,
"horizontal", conceptual and a-chronological discussion about the issue of
subjectivity back to 1952, when Nakai's book was first published. Or at
least, Yoshida's stance, urging cinematographers and the audience to define
a "shutaiteki" place instead of relying on their own shukansei, suggests
that kind of unchronological, "horizontal" reading of Nakai's...
Then, taking advantage of the track from Sartre to Nakai suggested by
Yoshida, we may notice some kind of similarity between Nakai's historical
approach of subjectivity, based on the transition from shukansei to
shutaisei, and Sartre's distinction between cartesian subjectivity and
existential subjectivity...

Well, no need to make such a detour to discuss the ruin of classical
cartesian subjectivity in the 20th century, especially after WW2... But from
that thinking process, I then wondered how Sartre's short "Existentialism is
a humanism" was translated to japanese. Unfortunately I still miss the
japanese edition... But I could find hints on the internet. And it seems
that subjectivity from an existentialist point of view is to be translated
to "shutaisei", and the cartesian one to "shukansei". More embarassing is
the translation of "intersubjectivité/intersubjectivity" to "間主観性 aida
shukansei" - I still have to understand why not "aida shutaisei"... But
those are nothing but hints, and I can't give a rightful answer for now...

I have no time now to discuss it further, but calling Nakai in seems
interesting for the intrinsic relationship between cinema and shutaisei, and
may be refered to when discussing the search for a non-litterary, truly
cinematographic cinema, what is at the core of Yoshida's or Matsumoto's
thinking (the need for a true cinematographic expression is of course
something we can trace back to the 20's... and it was already in Nakahira
and Masumura's writings in the 50's but, from my point of view, under a
different guise).

Rather far from Nakai's argument are Yoshimoto Takaaki's when discussing
"Eizô hyôgen" in 1960. But he also brings into light the necessary link, one
could say essential, between cinematographic expression and "subjective
change" (shutai tenkan 主体転換). (I don't know yet what to make out of this yet
: I just wanted to draw attention to Yoshimoto's cinematographic view, what
I first read last week...)

All the best,
Mathieu
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