[KineJapan] Kawashima and metareferences

Wed Aug 28 07:22:23 EDT 2013

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<http://www.freefilmfestivals.org/whats-on/free-films-in-peckham.html>
> .
>
> My new book, *The **Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema*,
> is out now from Scarecrow Press <https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810857957>
>
> Midnight Eye - Visions of Japanese cinema
> http://www.midnighteye.com
>
> Jasper Sharp, writer & film curator
> http://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, UTCP
> http://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 <raine.michael.j at gmail.com>
> *To:* Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum<kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
> *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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