[KineJapan] Kawashima and metareferences

[Roger Macy]

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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