Reminder: Meiji Gakuin Film Workshop Tomorrow (10/26)

[Kim Icreverzi]

A reminder that the next meeting of the Meiji Gakuin Film Workshop will 
be held tomorrow, *Wednesday, October 26th, from 6 to 8 PM*. Andrew 
Leong will be presenting on "A /Bellflower/ in America: Women's 
Education and Cinematic Diplomacy after the Manchurian Incident" 
(abstract below).

Please note that the*venue will be a different room from our last few 
meetings*: **room 7405* *(across the hall from where the workshop was 
held previously), on the 4th floor of Hepburn Hall (the tall building 
attached to the main building).

The Japanese Film Workshop is open to all and welcomes participants from 
any discipline.  Directions from stations and the campus map can be 
found at: http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/campus/shirokane/index_en.html.  
Following the presentation and discussion, we will reconvene at an area 
Izakaya to continue the conversation.  We look forward to seeing you there!

Presentation Abstract:
Following the Manchurian Incident of 1931, Japanese consulates and 
immigrant leaders in the United States embarked on a campaign of 
"people's diplomacy" (/kokumin gaiko/) aimed at converting overseas 
Japanese into popular diplomats for the Empire. Throughout the 1930s, 
Japanese-language film distributors in the United States linked 
themselves to the people's diplomacy campaign by arguing that film could 
serve as a means to educate American-born Nisei about the history, 
culture, and foreign policies of the motherland. Thus informed and 
mobilized, Nisei could become effective advocates for Japan abroad. 
Young Nisei women, in particular, were seen as key figures in the 
people's diplomacy campaigns. If Japanese film could win the hearts and 
minds of Nisei women, these women could in turn, win the hearts and 
minds of the American public.

Although there have been general historical studies about 
Japanese-language film and people's diplomacy in the United States, 
there is still a lack of detailed analyses of how these campaigns worked 
in practice. This presentation draws from the screening notes of Takeshi 
Ban (1884-1956), a Congregationalist minister, /benshi/, and film 
distributor responsible for presenting hundreds of films to Japanese 
American audiences during the 1930s. I focus in particular on his 
commentary around screenings of /Tsuriganeso/ (/The Bellflower/, Shinko 
Cinema, 1935). Based on a bestselling short story written by Yoshiya 
Nobuko (1896-1973), /Tsuriganeso/ provides an object case of the 
contradictions inherent in people's diplomacy and cultural education 
efforts directed at Nisei women. Japanese scholars have previously 
examined how /Tsuriganesao/ and other films based on Yoshiya's girl's 
stories rely on "double-coding" where ostensibly sentimental films about 
pure-hearted girls also encode critiques of Japanese patriarchy and 
heterosexual marriage. The screenings of /Tsuriganeso/ in the United 
States raise another set of questions about how these forms of 
double-coding would have been read, or interpreted for and by Nisei women.

Andrew Leong is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative 
Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation, 
/The Stillness of the Migrant/, examines figures of stagnancy and stasis 
in literature produced by Japanese travelers and immigrants to the 
United States prior to 1938. His translations of Nagahara Shoson's 
/Lament in the Night/ and /The Tale of Osato/, two novels written and 
published in Los Angeles during the mid-1920s, are forthcoming from Kaya 
Press.

For more information about the workshop or if you are interested in 
presenting, please contact: kicrever at uci.edu.

Kim Icreverzi
PhD Candidate
Department of Comparative Literature
University of California, Irvine

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