H-JAPAN (E): representations of blacknesS, Japanese & Korean Cinema

[Roger Macy]

Re: H-JAPAN (E): representations of blacknesS,  Japanese & Korean  CinemaMaybe it's in bad taste to revive a thread from eight months ago, but it doesn't look like anyone mentioned ISHII Teruo's 1960 Ōsen chitai,Yellow Line, 黄線地帯, for a highly questionable representation of blackness.
Most of the film is set in the 'Casbah' section of Kobe.  The leading man eventually encounters a prostitute who has the trade name of 'The Moor' (‘Mūa’).  She's patently blacked up and played by an actress who is very white, with a narrow face, thin lips with strongly pronounced nose, jaw and sharp eyebrow ridges.  She's also auburn (the film is in colour).  I thought, to start with, that we were supposed to perceive her as blacked up, required by her pimp to take this trade role, but as the dialogue progresses, it seems that she is simply supposed to be black.  It's played with a strong, halting accent, but I wouldn't care to say how that would have been placed.  The character comes to a sticky end and the plot lurches off elsewhere.  She is played by 'Susan Kennedy', who has no other roles on IMDb or JMDb. The alliteration of 'zen' for 'san' in 'Susan' seems universal, so not indicative of britishness for this actress.

Walking back across Udine, I was discussing this role with a Slovenian TV journalist.  I argued for a dearth of black actresses in Tokyo in 1960 - she argued for the blackness to be part of the humiliated role within the plot (by her pimps).  We then walked into Mark Schilling who basically agreed with me, but, either way, it's more multiple exploitation, than multi-culturalism.  However, I wouldn't be surprised to find similar representations of blackness in British and other European films up to that time.
Roger

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nornes, Markus 
  To: KineJapan 
  Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 1:15 PM
  Subject: Re: H-JAPAN (E): representations of blacknesS, Japanese & Korean Cinema


  Several years ago, Nippon Connection showed a really obnoxious film by Shinozaki Makoto. This is a director I respect, so I was really at a loss when the lights went up. I guess you’d call it a madcap parody of TV police/detective series. One of the main characters was a black detective, played by a Japanese actor in overt blackface. It traded on the worst kind of stereotypes. I think there’s even a scene where he eats watermelon out of the refrigerator at a crime scene. I could bee wrong about that, as I’ve tried hard to forget about the film. 

  I complained to several (American and European) festival visitors about this (although couldn’t bring myself to bring it up with Shinozaki-san himself); however, they didn’t see the problem. This suggests that it might be a rich text to look at, as there may be some contradictions or ambivalences worth playing with. 

  But I doubt it.

  Markus




  On 9/3/09 7:51 AM, "Brian Ruh" <brianruh at yahoo.com> wrote:


    Just saw this review of the film "Minami no Shima no Furimun":
    http://metropolis.co.jp/movies/eiga/minami-no-shima-no-furimun/

    The film is set in Okinawa, and according to the review, "Worse than this highly unoriginal plot is the fact that all the (mainly black) GIs are violent, arrogant and abusive. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the portrayal is outright racist."

    Also, last week I sent an email to the list about "Hotel Hibiscus," another film set in Okinawa, but I never saw it come through. Here's what I wrote (apologies if it did make it through for others and you're seeing this for the second time):
    Nakae Yuji's "Hotel Hibiscus" focuses on a family on Okinawa. The children in the family don't all have the same father (but they do have the same mother) -- one of them has an African-American father while another has a white American father. It's been a while since I've seen the film, but I don't think much is made of this except to note it in passing. Which could be noteworthy in itself.

    == Brian


         

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