[KineJapan] Japanese films in Bologna

[Alexander Jacoby]

Dear all,

Just to announce that the Bologna Film Festival this year, running from 29th June to 6th July, will include the second in a three-part retrospective of early Japanese sound films, co-curated by myself and fellow KineJapan subscriber Johan Nordstrom in collaboration with the National Film Center, Tokyo. This year we focus on Nikkatsu and the precursors of Toho, P.C.L. and J.O. Please find below an introduction to the season. Hope to see some KineJapan members there!

Best wishes,

ALEX




Japan Speaks Out! Singers and Swordsmen

During the early 1930s, despite such pioneering successes as Heinosuke Gosho’s Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine, 1931), fully-fledged talkies had remained a definite minority in Japan. But by the middle of the decade, sound technology had
become more widely disseminated as both studios and theatres
invested in the new medium. In 1933, the Tokyo-based P.C.L.
(Photo Chemical Laboratory) and the Kyoto-based J.O. Studio
had begun production with the remit of producing sound films
exclusively. But the transition to fully integrated talking pictures was a slow one. Although a considerable number of films made limited use of sound technology (eg, part-talkies, films shot silent with added music or sound effects, etc), it was not until 1936 that the majority of films produced in Japan were full talkies.

Japan’s social and political situation too was in an era of transition. The fragile liberal and democratic consensus of the 1920s
had unraveled as the military took an increasingly assertive role
in politics. A prosperous bourgeoisie retained somewhat Westernised lifestyles, but nationalist sentiment was growing. In an era
of economic depression, urban salaried workers faced a new insecurity, while rural regions remained in extreme poverty. Despite
tightening censorship, these social and economic concerns were
reflected in the varied and creative cinema of the period. 

This second part of an ongoing retrospective of early Japanese
sound films focuses on three studios active in this key period.
The work of P.C.L., with its stress on musicality, city life and
its at times trenchant social commentary, highlights the troubled
modernity of 1930s Japan. Catering to the more prosperous urban middle class, musicals such as Ongaku kigeki: Horoyoi jinsei (Tipsy Life, 1933) are evidence of a modern consumer culture
with their sophisticated use of product placement and multimedia tie-ins. Yet P.C.L. also confronted the social and personal
concerns of interwar Japan, its economic and regional divisions,
in realist and socially critical dramas such as Futarizuma: Tsuma
yo bara no yoni (Wife Be Like a Rose, 1935) and Ani imoto (Ino and Mon, 1935). 

J.O. Studio, with which P.C.L. would ultimately merge into Toho,
shared some of these concerns, and is represented here by Ongaku eiga: Hyakumannin no gassho (Chorus of One Million Voices, 1935), a musical similar in tone and milieu to those of P.C.L. In
addition, its base in Kyoto allowed it to produce numerous jidai-
geki (period films), most sadly lost or unavailable today. The jidai-geki was also the speciality of Nikkatsu, a studio whose history
stretched back to 1912 but which now sought to fuse traditional
narratives with the new sound technology, creating a distinctive
style of realist period drama. This is exemplified in particular by
the work of two great filmmakers, Sadao Yamanaka and Mansaku
Itami, whose subversive outputs are represented respectively by
the downbeat yet darkly witty Kochiyama Soshun (1936) and the
sparklingly satirical Akanishi Kakita (Kakita Akanishi, 1935), produced by star Chiezo Kataoka's own production company but distributed by Nikkatsu. Taken together, the work of the three studios exemplifies not only
developments in sound film, but also eloquently expresses the
tensions and transitions in Japanese society during this critical
period. 
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