"Potemkin" in Japan

Dolores Martinez dm6 at soas.ac.uk
Fri Jan 14 09:47:07 EST 2011


It would be worth asking Donald Richie about this.  He told me once, in
passing, that Kurosawa's memoirs were more representative of how he wanted
things to have been...
That being said, Donald might know if any 'illegal' copies of the film had
possibly circulated earlier anyway.  Given the strong connections, pre-war,
that liberals had with the broader world (I love Miriam Silverberg's book on
this era), they might have seen the film outside Japan and circulated
descriptions within Japan.  Film magazines may well have published the story
and stills, etc.
We really need a historian here!
Lola

On 14 January 2011 14:34, <ryan.cook at yale.edu> wrote:

>
> My understanding is that Potemkin was not released in Japan until the
> 1950s, and
> then only by means of film clubs (working with the Russian embassy) who
> organized screenings after several attempts to distribute the film
> commercially
> had failed for various reasons.  Yamada Kazuo wrote a book in 1978 about
> the
> efforts to bring Potemkin to Japan in the postwar period, called "Senkan
> Pochomukin" (Otsuki Shoten).  It would be very interesting to know where
> Kurosawa might have seen the film in 1926...
>
> Ryan
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Michael Kerpan <mekerpan at verizon.net>:
>
>  I seem to recall reading that someone who saw Potemkin in Europe did a
>> very detailed analysis of the film -- so that film makers in Japan who could
>> not see the film could know (at second hand) what Eisenstein was up to.
>>
>> --- On Fri, 1/14/11, Sybil Thornton <camford1989 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> From: Sybil Thornton <camford1989 at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: "Potemkin" in Japan
>> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>> Date: Friday, January 14, 2011, 12:28 PM
>>
>> Hi,
>> People do "misremember" what they saw or did not see, or when.
>> However, the film could have been shown at the Russian embassy.   It would
>> have come through the diplomatic "bag" and evaded customs.
>> Cheers,
>> Sybil Thornton
>> Arizona State University
>>
>> --- On Fri, 1/14/11, mccaskem at georgetown.edu <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: mccaskem at georgetown.edu <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
>> Subject: "Potemkin" in Japan
>> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>> Date: Friday, January 14, 2011, 4:38 AM
>>
>>
>> It seems to be a fact that the 1925 Eisenstein film "Battleship Potemkin,"
>> presumably in the form of reels in cans brought off a ship, was denied
>> clearance
>> by the Yokohama Customs in the later 1920s, apparently because it was
>> (obviously) a "revolutionary" film.
>>
>> But Kurosawa says in his autobiography that he saw it in Japan ca. 1926.
>>
>> I know that foreign goods and people also had to go through Japanese
>> Customs
>> in Kobe, and likely in other major Japanese port cities as well, and the
>> record
>> only says that the film was barred in  Yokohama.
>>
>> The 1928 V.I. Pudovkin film "Storm Over Asia," according to imdb.com, was
>> released in Japan in 1930. One would think it would be more "sensitive"
>> than
>> "Potemkin," since it's about revolution in East Asia, while "Potemkin" is
>> set during
>> the Russo-Japanese War, and in one intertitle near the start of the film a
>> Russian
>> sailor says that Russian
>> POWs are fed better by the Japanese than Russian sailors
>> are on the Battleship Potemkin.
>>
>> Kurosawa says that he saw "storm over Asia" in Tokyo ca. 1930.
>>
>> There were multiple ports of entry at the time, and Kurosawa was a member
>> of
>> "Proletarian" groups that would have had an interest in seeing Soviet
>> films in any
>> case, by one means or another.
>>
>> I also once read an essay by or about Uchida Hyakken, indicating that back
>> then
>> some Japanese in literary and artistic circles were interested in the
>> concept and
>> technique of "montage," as developed by Eisenstein in "Potemkin." I'd have
>> to go
>> find the physical book to track this essay down, but it does seem as if
>> "Potemkin" was somehow available for viewing in Japan in the later 1920s.
>>
>> Textbook-type Japanese histories say that "Potemkin" was not seen in Japan
>> until decades later, but is this really correct?
>>
>> One would think that Kurosawa, of all
>> people, would have known whether or not
>> he actually saw the film "Potemkin" in Japan as a young man, and he
>> definitely
>> said and wrote that he did.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Michael McC
>> Georgetown Univ.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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