KINEJAPAN digest 2867

Thu Mar 11 12:01:54 EST 2010

Thank you all so much.  This is very helpful.

Just to be more clear: The texts I'm talking about are Shashin  
Shousetsu in magazines like Shufunotomo and Fujin kouron, about which  
I am publishing an article in Positions. So the photographer is often  
the magazine studio, and the magazines gave permission thankfully.   
There is also text by fiction writers, and I dealt with that to the  
extent that they are reachable or died fewer than 50 years ago.

But for some reason, I just didn't really think about the subjects of  
the photos who are marked as being studio actors and credited.  In a  
sense, you could think of these as being like film stills because  
they are part of a narrative, but the whole texts only have 10 pages  
or so, so I could not argue that it is only 5%, which as per Kristin  
Tompson's argument for free use of film stills.  The writers' guild  
in Japan looked at the images and my article and agreed that this  
would be "inyou" so that is great. But they also felt I needed  
permission of the photograph subjects though I've gotten nowhere on  
their whereabouts - Eiga nenkan might yield something, so that's  
helpful.  I feel I need to do what I can, and also give _Positions_ a  
good account of what I've tried and how they might think of this  
legally.  I have worked on the permissions for this rather  
complicated case for so long, and even published a couple of these  
images in my book,  but somehow I didn't really think about the  
subjects in the photographs as such until quite recently.  Shouchiku  
confirmed that if these were images from a film, only their  
permission would be necessary, but if it were, say, a portrait of Ozu  
they would ask his family.  This case is sort of in between it seems  
to me since the subjects in the photo were knowingly posing for a  
widely distributed text with its own "author" (the author of the  
accompanying text) and photographer. Some people at Toei are also  
thinking about this for me too.  One made reference to "koe wo  
kakeru" to the families - supporting Aaron's sense of this being  
courtesy.  Most of the actors are not widely known, though people on  
this list know them them - generally people in 10-20 films between  
late 1920s and 70s.  I sort of avoided, and happened to find less  
interesting, the shashin shousetsu with high profile people like Hara  
Setsuko and Takamine Hideko,

For those not familiar with it, quite helpful on Japan-related image  
use and permission acquisition is this site: http:// 
www.fas.harvard.edu/~ncc/imageuse/index.html     They even have some  
bilingual templates for permission letters.

Sarah

On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:06 AM, KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu wrote:

>
> 			    KINEJAPAN Digest 2867
>
> Topics covered in this issue include:
>
>   1) Actors and Estates/contact information?
> 	by Sarah Frederick <sfred at bu.edu>
>   2) Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
> 	by "Thomas LaMarre, Prof." <thomas.lamarre at mcgill.ca>
>   3) Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
> 	by Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
>   4) Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
> 	by Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
>
> From: Sarah Frederick <sfred at bu.edu>
> Date: March 10, 2010 12:16:58 AM EST
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Actors and Estates/contact information?
>
>
> I am working with some photographs of Japanese studio actors and  
> need to reproduce them for publication.  They are not film stills  
> but posed directly, which I believe means that I need the actors'  
> permission.  I apologize if this is in Aaron and Markus's book  
> already, but is there some means by which to find addresses for  
> such people or their family's (many are deceased)?  Generally,  
> these are not particularly famous actors.  Many were Shochiku, but  
> Shochiku has no information on them.  Does that mean I am unlikely  
> to find them by other means?   I am familiar with these issues for  
> copyright, but not sure how to go about finding actors.
>
> Thank you in advance for any guidance.
>
> Sarah Frederick
> Associate Professor of Japanese
> Dept. Modern Languages
>    and Comparative Literature
> Boston University
> 718 Commonwealth Avenue
> 402C
> Boston, MA 02215
> 617-358-4654
> sfred at bu.edu
>
>
>
>
> From: "Thomas LaMarre, Prof." <thomas.lamarre at mcgill.ca>
> Date: March 10, 2010 9:13:38 AM EST
> To: "KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio- 
> state.edu>
> Subject: Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
>
>
> Sarah,
>
> Did you try Kawakita?  It has many Shochiku photos.  If they have  
> the photos on file there, you simply pay a fee for the prints and  
> have permission to use for educational purposes provided you cite  
> Kawakita.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On 10/03/10 12:16 AM, "Sarah Frederick" <sfred at bu.edu> wrote:
>
> I am working with some photographs of Japanese studio actors and  
> need to reproduce them for publication.  They are not film stills  
> but posed directly, which I believe means that I need the actors'  
> permission.  I apologize if this is in Aaron and Markus's book  
> already, but is there some means by which to find addresses for  
> such people or their family's (many are deceased)?  Generally,  
> these are not particularly famous actors.  Many were Shochiku, but  
> Shochiku has no information on them.  Does that mean I am unlikely  
> to find them by other means?   I am familiar with these issues for  
> copyright, but not sure how to go about finding actors.
>
> Thank you in advance for any guidance.
>
>
> Sarah Frederick
> Associate Professor of Japanese
> Dept. Modern Languages
>    and Comparative Literature
> Boston University
> 718 Commonwealth Avenue
> 402C
> Boston, MA 02215
> 617-358-4654
> sfred at bu.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
> Date: March 10, 2010 7:29:52 PM EST
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
>
>
> Sarah,
>
> This is a difficult problem, one we did not specifically address in  
> our book. In any photograph, the photographer does have copyright  
> (with stills, that is technically owned by the company). So I would  
> first try to determine the photographer. If these are bromides, for  
> instance, they might have the bromide company printed on them  
> somewhere. (Most, however, are out of business.)
>
> If you cannot determine the photographer, the question then  
> revolves around the possibility of rights concerning the actor's  
> own image (shozoken), person (jinkakuken), and property  
> (zaisanken). I am no lawyer, but from my understanding, the first  
> is not actually strictly written in law in Japan and is mostly a  
> matter of custom. And it is usually considered irrelevant in the  
> case of photographs that were originally intended to be widely  
> distributed. The problem is whether one could be violating the  
> actor's right of person (but that is only really an issue if you  
> intend to alter the photographs) or their property (the money they  
> could make from selling their image--but that is not really  
> relevant with much academic publishing).
>
> The Japanese Wikipedia article on this is actually not that bad:
>
> http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%82%96%E5%83%8F%E6%A8%A9
>
> Personally, given all these problems, I would just go ahead and  
> publish them if you can justify them as quotations (i.e., if they  
> are not just illustrations of the actor you mention, but are  
> actually the subject of what you discuss). If your publisher  
> insists on you at least making an effort, I would go to old copies  
> of Eiga nenkan to find the home addresses of these actors (it has  
> actually only been in the last few decades that Eiga nenkan has  
> stopped publishing those). Since people in Japan move less than in  
> other countries, there is a decent chance the family of the actor  
> is still at the address.
>
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate 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
> site: www.aarongerow.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
> Date: March 10, 2010 7:32:13 PM EST
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Actors and Estates/contact information?
>
>
>
>> Did you try Kawakita?  It has many Shochiku photos.  If they have  
>> the photos on file there, you simply pay a fee for the prints and  
>> have permission to use for educational purposes provided you cite  
>> Kawakita.
>
> Unfortunately, Kawakita has stopped doing that out of the fear of  
> copyright. In most cases with Japanese film, they now demand you  
> get permission from the copyright owner before they make a copy.
>
> The excessive protection of copyright is again hurting film studies  
> in Japan.
>
> Aaron Gerow
> KineJapan owner
>
> Associate Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
>
> For list commands, send "information kinejapan" to
> listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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