Bazin in Japan

[ryan.cook at yale.edu]

Dear Mathieu,

Nozaki Kan has an essay about this in the presently appearing Oxford UP Bazin
anthology "Opening Bazin" edited by Dudley Andrew and Hervé Joubert-Laurencin
(in which I also have a small essay about Bazin's writings on Japanese
cinema... pardon the self-promotion).  Your 1958 reference predates what he
understands to be the "first appearance of Bazin" in Japan which he dates to a
1960 Eiga Hyoron article about Q'est-ce que le cinema by Okada Susumu and
Mayama Yuriko.  Although it seems that even after being thus introduced Bazin
was not *well* known, and has never become a terribly significant figure in
Japan the way he eventually did in China, for example.

I've personally seen reference to some mid-60s translations of Bazin on 
Italian
neo-realism by Hasumi Shigehiko for cine-club publications (just as Kokai
Eiji's complete translation of Q'est-ce que le cinema began appearing, one
volume at a time).  I assume that if these essays were being translated 
in such
a forum at this time they probably were not otherwise available in Japanese.

I recommend Nozaki's informative essay on this!

Ryan



Quoting Mathieu Capel <mathieucapel at gmail.com>:

> Dear Kinejapaners,
>
> Would someone know precisely since when André Bazin were known in Japan ?
> The oldest reference I could get is from Iwasaki Akira's *Gendai Nihon  no
> Eiga, *published in 1958, where he gave account of Bazin's "La leçon de
> style du cinéma japonais". But, by that time, were his texts about Italian
> neorealism known by critics or cinematographers ?
> Many thanks,
>
> Mathieu Capel
> Paris
>
> --
> Mathieu Capel
> 67 rue de la Roquette
> 75011 Paris
> 06 50 32 45 00 / 01 43 79 19 19
> mathieucapel at gmail.com
>