[KineJapan] Kawashima and metareferences

Wed Aug 28 08:34:45 EDT 2013

Yes, you are right, there are a number of at the NFC  made for the recent FilmEx retrospective. I believe there may have already been a few prints with the Japan Foundation too, which would have been the ones that screened at the 1991 Dutch Filmmuseum retrospective.

The 2013 Peckham and Nunhead Free Film Festival will take place 5-15 September at various venues across Southeast London. For more information, click here.
My new book, The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema, is out now from Scarecrow Press
Midnight Eye - Visions of Japanese cinema
http://www.midnighteye.com

Jasper Sharp, writer & film curatorhttp://jaspersharp.com/

From: notreconciled at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 07:22:23 -0400
To: kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Kawashima and metareferences

Jasper,
It may be the case that Bakumatsu Taiyo-den is the only new print which was made by Nikkatsu itself – and as you point out, it was their initiative which made the film available for video release – but there are a number of other new prints that were made recently.

The FilmEx series in 2011 consisted of four new, subtitled prints that were made under the auspices of the Tokyo Culture Creation Project (as far as I understand this is part of the Olympic slush fund): Tonkatsu Taisho, Kino to Ashita no Aida, Ai no Onimotsu, and Suzaki Paradise. The Nikkatsu retrospective at Lincoln Center included another film (in addition to Bakumatsu and Suzaki), which I believe also came from the TCCP: Ashita kuru hito.

The subtitled prints of the three Daiei films that have screened over the years came from the PFA's collection so, as you say, they presumably screened in the US at the time of their release as well. Between those and the Toho screenings, the early 60s seems to have been a better time to see Kawashima in the US than the present.

But as you imagined, mainstream reviewers of the time, when they even bothered to take notice, were ill-equipped to appreciate what they saw. Crowther's review is an object lesson. He dismisses the "remarkably skillful and exquisite color photography" as the sole virtue of "a curious little Japanese film." He seems to object particularly to the mixture of comedy and sentimentality, as well as the way that the various narrative strands are organized, which he finds abrupt, erratic and "progressively more distracting." And then, the coup de grace: "And some rococo English subtitles for the screechy Japanese dialogue do not help the viewer sustain an attentive attitude. Sometimes they are funnier, unintentionally, than the broadest comedy scenes."

Fred.

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:54 AM, Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp at hotmail.com> wrote:

Bakumatsu taiyo-den was remastered as a 4K DCP by Nikkatsu last year. I think it was the only "new print" they made for the centenary, and a film the company was actively trying to promote for the overseas retros. This would explain the DVD release, not because it was something that Eureka hunted down themselves for its Masters of Cinema series, but because finally a version was made available for overseas home video markets.

The Pacific Film Archive has a number of subtitled Kawashima prints listed in its holdings,  suggesting that at least a few were circulated overseas back around the time of their release. For example, I know that Nikkatsu had an overseas office in Hawaii until 1968, and when this was closed, they donated all its subtitled prints to the archive rather than pay the cost of transporting them back to Japan and storing them. There are a lot of rare subbed prints of Nikkatsu films by directors like Masuda Toshio that have never even been checked for quality since this time - god knows what sort of state they're in!

Another interesting thing I've come to appreciate over the years - a lot of Japanese films were distributed in the West by smaller concerns without the cachet of the film organisations and festivals who shaped the canon, and many were dismissed by critics out of hand. I cite the case of Man Who Causes a Storm, by Inoue Umetsugu - this was distributed in London in the late 50s by Gala films, who were largely associated with subtitled "continental films" (a euphemism from the time for saucy French and Swedish films). There's a review in the Monthly Film Bulletin in which the reviewer denounces the film for its garish emulation of American culture, presumably because it was different from the Ozu, Kurosawa and Mizoguchi films that formed the canon in the BFI-sanctified version of Japanese film history. I'd imagine that Kawashima would have been treated in a similar fashion by critics of the time - if his films were release in the US or UK, they'd probably have been similarly dismissed, and more likely, simply ignored for not being "Japanese" enough.

You might want to check through the review index of magazines like Variety or Monthly Film Bulletin though, even Continental Film Review - you'll be surprised at what was released in the West at that time.

The 2013 Peckham and Nunhead Free Film Festival will take place 5-15 September at various venues across Southeast London. 

For more information, click here.

My new book, The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema, 

is out now from Scarecrow Press

Midnight Eye - Visions of Japanese cinema
http://www.midnighteye.com

Jasper Sharp, writer & film curatorhttp://jaspersharp.com/

From: mroberts37 at mail-central.com
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:01:02 +0900
To: kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu

Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Kawashima and metareferences

It might be worth adding that "Japanse meesters van de B-film" was edited by Hasumi as a project of the 20th edition of the Film Festival Rotterdam. 

My guess is that most of these screenings in Europe and North America were sourced by the Japan Foundation, which has perhaps ten films by Kawashima with English subtitles.
After Rotterdam, the next significant retrospective in Europe was possibly in 2003 at the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris:

http://mcjp.fr/francais/cinema/archives-101/yuzo-kawashima-le-vagabond-de-l

Since the Japanese rights holders evidently have zero interest in overseas distribution, it doesn't surprise me that it took fifty years to see Kawashima on DVD with subtitles.

Mark Roberts
Research Fellow, UTCPhttp://utcp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/data/mark_roberts/index_en.php

On Aug 28, 2013, at 9:23 AM, Frederick Veith wrote:
The film in the MoMA series was Bakumatsu taiyo-den, or as they called it: Not Long After Leaving Shinagawa. The Rotterdam publication only gives detailed credits for four films, which suggests to me that they were the only ones which screened at the festival: Suzaki Paradise, Bakumatsu taiyo-den, Onna wa nido umareru, and Shitoyakana kemono. Apart from these four, the only other film which seems to have screened in the US recently is the other Daiei film, Gan no tera. But believe it or not, some of Kawashima's Toho films were shown in the US at the time of their original release. Aobeka monogatari was even reviewed in the New York Times in 1964 by Bosley Crowther.

Fred.

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Hi, Alo,
This doesn't exactly put Kawashima in the West very far 
back, but my notes say he figured in a program at New York MoMA in 2005, 
called 'Early Autumn: Masters of Japanese cinema from the NFC, Tokyo'. I can't 
lay my hands on it to say which film.  Galbraith's  'Japanese 
filmography' is a good place to look for Western releases before that.  But 
there's also the 1991 book published by Rotterdam Film Festival, 'KAWASHIMA 
Yúzó & MORI Issei: Japanse meesters van de B-film ~ Japanese Kings of the 
Bs', which strongly suggests to me that they showed some of his films.  I 
bought my copy at the Amsterdam 'Eye' centre last summer.

I don't recall metareferencing in the couple of Kawashima 
films I've seen, but as far as the Marx brothers and Enoken are concerned, they 
both have a history in vaudeville and radio comedy, in both of which the fourth 
wall is only honoured in the breach.  I read Enoken's to-camera squeak, at 
the beginning of Enoken no seishun suikoden as referencing his radio 
signature for a large part of his audience that might, up to that point, 
have only known him in that medium.

Roger

----- Original Message ----- 

  From: 
  Michael Raine 
  To: Japanese Cinema 
  Discussion Forum 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 10:56 
  PM
  Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Kawashima and 
  metareferences

  Hello Alo,

In terms of direct address, Enoken no seishun 
  suikoden is probably the most obvious. I remember a seemingly complicit look 
  in one of the Yotamono films (Jogakusei to yotamono?) 
  too...

Michael

  On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:43 PM, Alo Jõekalda <alojoekalda at gmail.com> wrote:

    Dear KineJapaners,

I've been writing something on early 
    Kawashima Yuzo recently, and have run into a couple of issues that I'm 
    hoping some of you can help to straighten out.

    First, I'd be interested to know if the metareferencing and overtly 
    self-conscious narration that one begins to see in the Kawashima of late 
    1940s and Ichikawa of early 1950s was something entirely new in Japan. In 
    Hollywood, breaking the fourth wall has hardly been an issue ever since the 
    Marx Brothers or so, but what about the Japanese pre-war? There was, of 
    course, a number of films that referenced or parodied both foreign and local 
    product -- the Japanese King Kongs, for instance, have been brought up here 
    before, as has been Yamamoto Kikuo's book, which lists a number of 
    citational titles. But does anyone know if any of these or other older films 
    actually addressed the audience in the literal sense?

    Also, I''ve been wondering about Kawashima's availability overseas, and 
    whether Eureka's recent release of Bakumatsu taiyo-den really set a 
    historical precedent. Is anyone aware of any other foreign release of a 
    Kawashima film on any home video format? It's hard to believe it actually 
    took them fifty years. As for international screenings, I believe a few 
    films have been shown at Toronto and FILMeX, and Taiyo-den and 
    Susaki paradaisu have, of course, been all over the place since last 
    year's Nikkatsu centennial. Anything else of note?

Thanks in advance 
    and all the 
    best,
Alo

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