'many Japanese'

[Mark Mays]

As to the former, you could say it’s a function of wiki entries cross
pollinating with a view of Japan coloured by those who have only viewed
through their computer screens.

 

  _____  

From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Roger Macy
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 4:35 AM
To: KineJapan
Subject: 'many Japanese'

 

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu.

 

Last week, I went to the final screening at the NFT of the BFI's season:
'Wild Japan: Sex in Japanese Cinema in the 60s and 70s', where they showed
Imamura's “Erogotoshitachi” yori: Jinruigaku nyūmon (The Pornographers).

I was irritated by this passage from the notes: "Incest and paedophilia
would be almost universally accepted disturbing pornographic concepts, and
yet Imamura turns both conventions on their head by making mother/son,
father/daughter trysts at any age seem a normal, if unspoken, rite of
passage for many Japanese."

The notes were all taken from one site, dvdverdict.com, and credited to Bill
Gibron.

Clearly, Imamura does address incest in this film and is making a commentary
on the society he sees, but to put into his mouth the observation that
incest is a national activity is unjustified and, in my view, plain wrong.
What is it about much popular writing on Japanese that allows
non-specialists to write generalisations about 'The Japanese' that they
wouldn't dream of writing about fiction from closer to hand?  (And I think
that putting the racial categorisation into the mouth of Imamura makes it
worse, not better.)  Was Euripides, and his many followers, in Medea,
writing that child murder was normal for many Georgians? etc. etc.  It
recalls, to my mind, some of the war-time propaganda for which some of the
writers at least, made amends afterwards.

 

I should add that most of the season's notes have been very good, as the
notes' editors have relied on Jasper Sharp's new book.  In its many tens of
thousands of words, although there is the material for several debates, I
don't think you'll find a remark like that.   But The Pornographers is not
directly reviewed there, so the editors had to cast elsewhere.  Far better
sources would have been David Desser's Eros plus Massacre, where
Pornographers and incest is dealt with very carefully, or in Audie Bock.

 

I can see that the list has looked at western takes on the Japanese before,
but I hope you will indulge my getting this off my chest?

 

Incidentally, whilst casting around the internet for reviews, I noticed I
could buy a term paper on The Pornographers for $55, so I'm guessing that at
least one list-member has set such paper?

http://www.academon.com/lib/paper/103002.html

or, if 'you want your essay to have an added edge', it's still £30, 

http://cssa-shef.org.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=82139
<http://cssa-shef.org.uk/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=82139&extra=page%3D2>
&extra=page%3D2

so you might as well have the reading done as well ...

 

Roger

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20090106/faed2590/attachment.html