"Potemkin" in Japan

[ryan.cook at yale.edu]

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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