shutai vs shutaisei

[mjraine at uchicago.edu]

---- Original message ----
>Subject: KINEJAPAN digest 2797  
>Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:05:17 +0100
>From: Mathieu Capel <mathieucapel at gmail.com>  
>Subject: shutai vs. shutaisei ?  
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>
>   Dear Kinejapaners,
>
>   I was a little bit puzzled lately as reading an
>   article written in 1959 by Matsumoto Toshio,
>   entitled "'Haisen' to 'sengo' no fuzai"
>   (「敗戦」と「戦後」の不在 = The absence
>   of "defeat" and "postwar" ? What could be the proper
>   translation in english ?), what can be read at the
>   end of his famous Eizô no hakken/Discovering images
>   (from p. 188 in the recent Seiryû edition).
>   Actually this text seems to me of prime significance
>   to understand what were the arguments of young
>   cinematographers belonging to the
>   Oshima/Yoshida/Matsumoto generation against the
>   former generation, especially regarding the subject
>   of victimization i.e. higaisha ishiki...
>
>   What puzzled me is the clear distinction Matsumoto
>   begins with, between "shutai" and "shutaisei", what
>   one may translate, very carefully, to "subject" and
>   "subjectivity". Strictly and philosophically
>   speaking, the difference between shutai and
>   shutaisei can easily be understood, I assume... But
>   the point here is that Matsumoto seems, one one
>   hand, to put forward "shutai", and on the other
>   hand, to despise the expression of "shutaisei"...
>   And indeed that's a fact that in Eizô no hakken we
>   always read "shutai", and not 'shutaisei" - what put
>   him aside from the likes of Oshima and Yoshida, who
>   use both terms.
>
>   Matsumoto actually refers to a former article,
>   described as "a critic of Hanamatsu" (花松批判),
>   but no title, no further reference... Considering
>   that this last article is not published in Eizô no
>   hakken (or did I miss it ?), could someone tell me
>   where I could find it, and what's its title ? Of
>   course, I'd be very grateful to anyone kind enough
>   to explain what Matsumot actually means with that
>   "shutai"/'shutaisei" distinction.
>   I understand it as a way to step aside from all the
>   shutaisei theories (Cf. J. Victor Koschmann's
>   Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan) that
>   flourished after the defeat, for Matsumoto's
>   cinematographic theories about "shutai" pretend to
>   be some kind of idiosyncratic and in no way indebted
>   to any recent Japanese thinker (except for Nakai
>   Masakazu, who he wrote about in 1964 ?). But what
>   were his arguments, reasons and motivations, that's
>   what I wouldn't know - except for some hints that
>   one can find in this "Absence of defeat and postwar"
>   piece of writing...
>   Many thanks,
>
>   Mathieu Capel
>   Paris

Hello Mathieu,

I’m away from my papers at the moment so can’t give you a
fuller reply. I think the key to answering your questions is
to read the journal Kiroku eiga, published between 1958 and
1964. Matsumoto’s article, and the others he referred to, were
all published there. Going by my notes, the piece in Eizo no
hakken is actually the second of a pair of articles responding
to pieces published in Kiroku eiga by Hanamatsu Seiboku (?? 花
松正卜) and Maruyama Shoji (??丸山章治) on the question of
shutaisei and the problem of artistic self-expression. As
Matsumoto points out, these concerns about the subjectivity of
the filmmaker and methods of filmmaking were central to the
mission of the journal and he’s despairing (not to mention
disparaging …) in his criticism of the groundless optimism of
his interlocutors’ arguments. He basically indicts simplistic
theories of political activism and existentialist theorists of
“intentionality” etc for not getting at the complex,
historically embedded, struggle for subjectivity (shutai) as a
material condition (as opposed to shutaisei, which he regards
as an “attitude”). I think the postwar shutaisei theorists
knew all that so I’m not sure how much new ground Matsumoto is
breaking in the debate over structure and agency. I think
perhaps his target was something more local: the way the word
shutaisei was being thrown around by filmmakers and many
others in the late 50s (there was even a “shutaisei” faction
of the national agricultural union…). 

I think Justin made clear the intellectual stakes for
Matsumoto yesterday. I agree with him (of course!) that the
article on zen’ei kiroku eiga is also important. The only
thing I’d question is whether the “classical” version of
subjectivity had any currency anywhere in the 20C. I guess
there were a few Cartesians left but from Hegel to Sartre,
plenty of people thought of subjectivity as a complex
engagement with otherness. As you say, most of Matsumoto’s
references are to western philosophy (Marx good; sophists and
scholastics bad…) so what’s wrong with comparing him to Sartre
anyway? Isn’t jiko hitei (perhaps the most common piece of
jargon linking Matsumoto, Oshima, and Yoshida) a Sartrean
phrase? Does anyone know more about the translation of Sartre
into Japanese (not that people like Yoshida needed it of course)? 

Actually, as Sato Yo pointed out, it’s quite complicated.
Matsumoto is getting it from (and giving it to…) both “sides.”
On the one hand, Maruyama is too optimistic and liberal, but
on the other hand Hanamatsu is too programmatic a leftist and
won’t recognize the importance of problematizing the concept
of subjectivity. There’s a useful memoir of Kiroku eiga by
Matsumoto himself from Eiga hihyo in about 1972 (though there
I think he remembers the Hanamatsu hihan as sparked by a later
Hanamatsu article that criticized Matsumoto and Oshima for
being “Anpo boke” – making cool films that said all the right
things but that weren’t based on practical ideas for
revolution. Matsumoto, of course, thinks that Hanamatsu’s
understanding of practical politics is far too naïve – which
is why I think of him as a Political Modernist. 

One thing that strikes me about Matsumoto’s early writing is
that although it’s full of technical and philosophical
reference it’s also strikingly melodramatic (in the sense of
encoding ethical arguments in the language of florid moral
righteousness – viz the historical struggles for subjectivity
that he lists and that Justin mentions). That near-hysteria
seems characteristic of a lot of “new wave” thinking around
1960, and quite different from a more ironic, or cynical,
current in more-or-less popular cinema from around the same
time. Matsumoto was debating with the directors of
documentaries on children and on soy sauce: so why is he so
emphatic? Is it just a carryover from the contemporary
language of politics? Are filmmakers as bad as academics? 

Looking forward to learning from Sato-san’s interviews with
Makino and Matsumoto… 

Michael

Michael Raine
Assistant Professor in Japanese Cinema
University of Chicago