the eerie silence on KineJapan is maddening!

[Quentin Turnour]

William,

Perhaps to shift things just to the issue of film archives...Thanks for 
your great and thoughtful post, Odd also considering I've just spent the 
morning doing a run through of the NFC's 35mm print of the 
SHINGUN/MARCHING ON and also reading your great on-line article about this 
unusual early Showa silent. 

Literarily a few minutes after your post came up, Kae Ishihara at the Film 
Preservation Society posted an email and link to English-speaking FPS 
members http://www.homemovieday.jp/English/latest-news/

In the last few days I've had some contact with her, Akira Tochigi at the 
NFC and a few others in the Japanese screen culture community (such as 
Fujioka Asako of the Yamagata Doco festival - a cultural event which of 
course takes place within a prefecture once removed but still very close 
to the tragedy of the tsunami). But Kae's email is a great summary of 
what's happening with the NFC and regional film archives, and even some 
Japanese film industry matters - Sony's HDCam tape plant was at Sendai, 
for example.

As I alluded to, ironically we've been doing a season here of 1920s 
Japanese silents from the NFC and Matsuda, and the reconstruction of the 
Kanto area post-1923 obviously looms as a sub-text in many of the films we 
were screening... Or as a text on some of the mid-1920s Ministry of 
Education Tokyo reconstruction films, such as the eccentric PUBLIC MANNERS 
TOKYO SIGHTSEEING (...which has led us to making the decision to postponed 
a screening of these films). 

Our program included a visit by the benshi Mr. Kotoaka Ichiro, who bravely 
went ahead with a performance of his final session only minutes after 
getting the news of the earthquake and then had some difficulties getting 
back to Tokyo from Australia the following day. We are currently ben asked 
to hold the prints from this series for the NFC until advised; as the 
FPS's site indicate it seems not so much that their facilities have been 
damaged, but shipping services are still unreliable, power is a problem 
and staff simply have having trouble getting to work

Finally, and noting the debate that your email inadvertently sparked over 
foreign perceptions... Those who know some of the history of what happened 
in the wake of Great Kanto will remember that immediate international 
goodwill degenerated badly in mutual recrimination in the weeks and months 
following; especially in Japanese-US relations. Whilst some of this had to 
do with the coming of US legislation restricting Japanese immigration, the 
beginnings of militant nationalism, and a   trickle of international press 
accounts of bad Japanese official behaviour (especially of the anti-Korean 
pogroms), lets hope the same thing doesn't happen again.



Quentin Turnour, Programmer, 
Access, Research and Development
National Film and Sound Archive, Australia
McCoy Circuit, Acton, 
ACT, 2601 AUSTRALIA
phone: +61 2 6248 2054  |  fax: + 61 2 6249 8159
www.nfsa.gov.au

The National Film and Sound Archive collects, preserves and provides 
access to Australia's historic and contemporary moving image and recorded 
sound culture. 






ReelDrew at aol.com 
Sent by: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
18/03/2011 02:27 PM
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the eerie silence on KineJapan is maddening!






 
I have been a member of KineJapan for the last ten years. I joined 
originally out of a need to obtain translations of the intertitles of 
Japanese silents on VHS in my collection. I am very grateful to those 
members on KineJapan who aided me and made it possible for me to, among 
other things, write an article on Hiroshi Shimizu that is published on 
Midnight Eye.
 
Since then, I have regularly received almost daily the messages that have 
been posted here. In all honesty, a large number--perhaps the majority, in 
fact--have been of limited interest to me inasmuch as they tend to deal 
with contemporary Japanese films. Consistent with my enthusiasm for films 
in other countries, including my own, produced in earlier decades, it is 
my interest in the Japanese cinema of the past, especially the films of 
the 1920s and 1930s, that has been of consuming interest to me. 
Nevertheless, from time to time issues involving those golden years do 
come up here.
 
However, whether or not the topic has been of particular interest to me, I 
have always valued the fact that KineJapan has always been there, an 
extremely valuable resource to be consulted when needed. Never before 
since I've been here did this group shut down. Certainly, it was very 
active right through the events of 9/11 as were other film discussion 
groups in which I participated.
 
Since the tragic events that began a week ago, though, this place has 
suddenly turned into a ghost town. Aside from a very limited amount of 
posts specifically on the topic of the tsunami, there has been absolutely 
nothing here. No one has even bothered to post how things are going on in 
Tokyo, while all sorts of wild, apocalyptic rumors circulate unchecked in 
the US that Tokyo is about to become irradiated, that it may be doomed. I 
believe a few welcome posts here from knowledgeable people in the Japanese 
capital might help to clarify the situation and perhaps alleviate some of 
these fears. 
 
I have had a consuming obsession with early Japanese cinema for the last 
36 years. In trying to interest people in the West in this topic and to 
recognize the value of Japanese films from those years, I have long had to 
confront an enormous amount of indifference and insensitivity to these 
achievements by too many in America and elsewhere in the outside world. It 
has taken so long to bring attention to these films here. Indeed, it was 
only this January that the premier venue for classic cinema in the United 
States, Turner Classic Movies, after being on the air for 17 years, 
finally presented three Japanese silents--Ozu's famous masterpieces, 
"Tokyo Chorus," "I Was Born, But. . .," and "Passing Fancy." So it is only 
very recently that this neglected period of Japanese film is just starting 
to receive some recognition here.
 
Given this obession of mine, I would very much like to know how the 
archives and other collections of Japanese cinema are coping with the 
current crisis in Tokyo. Are they able to function normally in their work 
of preservation considering the power blackouts etc.? If there really 
should be an evacuation of the capital, has there been discussion of 
removing films and other cultural treasures from Tokyo to Kyoto, a much 
safer city and which I personally feel should be restored to the position 
of Japan's capital? 
 
As to whether now is the proper time to discuss the preservation of 
culture in view of the terrible loss of life and the continuing threat, I 
believe that, far from being at odds or incompatible, the preservation of 
human life and humanity's cultural heritage are inseparable. The heroic 
people of Egypt have shown all of us the way recently in this area. During 
a time of turmoil in which a corrupt, discredited dictatorship was 
attempting to hang on to power by employing ruthless methods against the 
protestors, demonstrators courageously appeared to form human chains 
around the Library in Alexandria and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to 
protect these treasures of our history. I would hope that, should it ever 
become necessary, a similar sense of cultural responsibility will be 
demonstrated in other countries, including Japan. The heritage of Japan, 
including its film history, is the common property not just of one country 
but indeed, the legacy of all the people of the earth.
 
In all those non-Western countries that the West chose to lump together as 
"Oriental," for much of the 20th century the four most significant in 
terms of creating outstanding cinemas in the first half of the last 
century were Japan, China, India, and Egypt. This preeminence in the new 
art of film was emblematic of these nations' continuing cultural 
leadership in the modern world. In terms of documenting and preserving the 
national film heritage, however, Egypt under the Mubarak regime was 
scandalous. The Egyptian film archive was by far the worst run in the 
entire world, mismanaged by members of Mubarak's family. So neglected was 
the state of the archive that it was a common sight to see rats crawling 
out of cans of film in the vaults. The situation with the Egyptian archive 
was thus symptomatic of the larger ills afflicting the society under the 
corrupt regime that ruled Egypt for thirty years. Needless to say, with 
the present rebirth of Egypt through revolution there is a far greater 
hope that the glories of Egyptian cinema from its bright beginnings in the 
silent era to the achievements of later decades will be at last properly 
preserved.
 
While the infrastructure of Japan including its archives can hardly 
compare to its counterparts in Egypt in the Mubarak years, there has 
nevertheless been a steady decline in Japan in the two decades since the 
economic bubble burst in the early 1990s. Egypt is now trying to recover 
from a social disaster, Japan from a natural one exacerbated, it seems, by 
a variant of the same corruption and cronyism that long afflicted Egypt. I 
think Japan, like Egypt, will need to transform itself anew, but as with 
Egypt, that transformation must be solidly based on the preservation and 
dissemination of past achievements including a glorious legacy of early 
cinema. Consequently, in addition to my general concern at the eerie 
silence that has suddenly taken over KineJapan, as though all its members 
have been struck dumb, I would in particular like to know how the film 
archives and other institutions consecrated to cinema history in Japan are 
faring during the present crisis.
 
William M. Drew 
 
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