[KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av coverage

Tue Apr 8 22:56:45 EDT 2014

Maybe I missed it in an earlier post, but I'm surprised that Sono's Himizu hasn't come up in this discussion. I recently saw it for the first time at a retrospective of films on representations of disaster in Japanese cinema that a few of my colleagues programmed at Bryn Mawr Film Institute. 

Not having seen Sono's documentary on the subject I can't comment on whether that was a premature response, but I can certainly say that Himizu was. I understand that this film received a lot of criticism from Japanese reviewers who thought Sono's use of real footage of the disaster area interspersed with his fictional narrative was insensitive to the families who were affected by this tragedy. I can see what Sono was going for in terms of showing the audience that trauma is a persistent condition, but he used it as a symbolic device to portray the trauma inflicted on the lead character by his absentee parents and uncaring society. Had the footage been appropriated in a different way, I wonder if the critics would have objected so. 

Either way it was apparent that this was a fully fleshed out story that Sono attempted to integrate aspects of the disaster into, and in that respect I think that even he realized his error. 

Rob

Rob Buscher
Programming Director
Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival
www.paaff.org

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 8, 2014, at 10:03 AM, "Mark Roberts" <mroberts37 at mail-central.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear KineJapaners,
> 
> I've been enjoying this discussion quite a bit, as it has broadened the scope of "disaster films" to bring many different moments in Japanese film history into contact with one another, and in some highly suggestive ways. If I can speak more subjectively about this, in the immediate aftermath of 3.11, I began to wonder how filmmakers, distributors, and audiences would respond to the disaster, especially as fatigue and skepticism about the official discourse (NHK, et al) really set in.
> 
> As Roger and others have mentioned, the first response was from distributors, who deferred release dates of potentially "controversial" films to avoid losing revenue due to "unfavorable market conditions". Needless to say, there was something quite unsatisfying about this, for it wasn't a real statement about 3.11 as much as an evasive maneuver to minimize box office losses (though, given the current balance sheet, we might say "fair enough"). While this had the effect of delaying an engagement with 3.11 in the cinema, I have to say that I felt virtually none of my non-film studies contacts in Japan took any real interest in "alternative" film accounts of the disaster. For example, none of my university colleagues were going to see these films. or were even aware of them. The only people who seemed to be watching them were those who are already tuned into contemporary J-cinema. In effect, it didn't seem to matter much whether 3.11 was or wasn't being addressed by the cinema.
> 
> Be that as it may, what struck me in the fall and winter of 2011 was that documentarists clearly had greater agility in their response to the disaster than fiction filmmakers. The first fiction films to address 3.11 typically did so by "integrating" it into their non-disaster themed projects during the production process. Naturally, the results were mixed, though their intentions were likely salutary. It was for this reason that I became more curious about the documentary films, which seemed to resonate with a greater interest in "actuality" or, if I can borrow Lorenzo's phrase, "an increasing love for reality".
> 
> By the time "Odayaka" and "Kibō no Kuni" were produced, 3.11 had become part of the original conception of the film, with a much greater sense of focus and purpose. As Jasper and Roger have suggested in different ways, perhaps these films are still premature responses, but I cannot help but wonder about this. I agree with Roger's sense that if literature is any guide, we may need to temper our expectations. At the same time, I don't find the case for a literary "misery index" in Connor's article to be very illuminating. And while I have also felt the prematurity that Jasper describes, hasn't it always been part of the mission of cinema to reflect on "the now", even when the language for doing so doesn't yet exist?
> 
> Mark
> 
>> On Apr 8, 2014, at 9:13 PM, Roger Macy wrote:
>> 
>> Dear KineJapaners,
>> Prompted by Lola’s post, about a film whose distribution was affected by the disasters, I did write a very unscholarly account of The Floating Castle / Nobō no shiro at the end of this piece :-
>> http://www.midnighteye.com/features/udine-far-east-film-festival-2013/
>> I think we might have mentioned in another thread about the Chinese film ‘Aftershock’ / 唐山大地震, which was pulled from Tokyo cinemas immediately after March ’11.  Allcinema site has a rather indeterminate release date of “2012/”.
>> 
>> I have appreciated the many contributions to this thread, learning of the different legitimate interests that scholars and teachers can have.  But, in a way, I’m surprised there’s so much.  Somebody with a lot of patience recently did a study that suggested a median time-delay of eleven years between historical events and literature
>> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/if-the-slump-wasnt-bad-enough-stand-by-for-the-literary-misery-thats-bound-to-follow-9047240.html
>> Given that films more often follow literature than precede it, one might expect the delay in fiction films to be greater rather than smaller.  So, I was hardly shocked to read Jasper, in a DVD review in Sight and Sound, to judge ‘Land of Hope’, 2011, by Sono Shion as “premature”.  Even more premature was to be asked in Frankfurt in May, 2011 what the effect on Japanese films was.  Almost any discussion in London that has any connection to Japanese film gets thrown the question of the effect of the triple disaster, or, more often, just the effect of the Fukushima melt-down, in a way that I do not see it put about other countries’ disasters.  So I do wonder whether there isn’t an element of Japanese exceptionalism, at least from non-specialists, in what I’ll call the doubly premature reception of Japanese disaster films ?
>> Roger
>> 
>> From: Dolores Martinez <dm6 at soas.ac.uk>
>> To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu> 
>> Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2014, 12:14
>> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av coverage
>> 
>> 
>> Dear Stephen, 
>> thank you for that! I see the DVD release in 2011 produced some crossed wires for Nakamura's film, which is entirely my fault.  But yes, it is that film I'm writing about, as I find its fictional depiction of Japanese responses to the end of the world somewhat prophetic (I know that in the West, it was all about how calm and well mannered the Japanese were, but if you talk to Japanese who were there and are aware of the actual statistics for the looting and increased reportage of rape in the earthquake hit zone, as Ueno Chizuko has argued, you get a rather different picture of things...).
>> I was also wondering, however, about general writing on Japanese disaster films that are not necessarily Godzilla films. Any thoughts?
>> Yours, Lola 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, 8 April 2014, Stephen Cremin <stephen at asianfilm.info> wrote:
>> Lola, you mean Hayashiya Shinpei's RAKUGO MONOGATARI, which I didn't know had an English title, that opened on 12 March 2011 or Nakamura Yoshihiro's end-of-the-world disaster comedy FISH STORY that opened on 20 Mar 2009 in Japan and on 28 May 2010 in the UK?
>> 
>> The latter played several festivals - HKIFF, Udine, Japan Cuts, Puchon, Vienna, Kaohsiung, Göteborg, Brussels, Terracotta and Fantasia - so there should be some writing in English about it. It was also distributed in South Korea and Taiwan.
>> 
>> For the former, I'd be very surprised if there's anything in English.
>> 
>> Stephen
>> 
>>> On Tuesday, 8 April 2014 at 17:13, Dolores Martinez wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear all, again somewhat off topic, but I've been following this discussion with interest as I'm writing a paper on Fish Story, the disaster 'comedy' that came out on March 12, 2011 and obviously did not do well at the box office.  Has anyone written on this film specifically or on the genre generally (and yes, I know the Godzilla literature!). I was interested to see Paul Berry mention Megalopolis, as an alternative reality anime. I have always wondered if it had attracted scholarly attention -- but anything on this topic would be useful for me. Thanks,
>>> Lola 
>>>  
>>>> On Tuesday, 8 April 2014, Christian Morimoto Hermansen <christian_hermansen at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Another two dealing with the Hanshin Awaji Daishinsai are 
>>>> 1. The 2010 drama-docu Kobe shinbun no nananichikan 
>>>> 神戸新聞の7日間 〜命と向き合った被災記者たちの闘い〜 動画
>>>> on how the News must be published no matter what; starring Sakurai Sho as a Kobe Shinbun photographer covering the disaster.  Quite well done.   
>>>> 2. Sakamoto Junji's "Kao" from 2000, where the main character escapes Kobe, for other reasons, on the morning of the Earthquake.
>>>> 
>>>> Christian
>>>> 
>>>> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 08:08:18 +0300
>>>> From: eija at helsinkicineaasia.fi
>>>> To: kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>>>> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av coverage
>>>> 
>>>> In one of the last Otoko wa tsurai yo films Yamada placed Tora-san in post-quake Kobe, helping the victims. That is the only one I can remember about the Hanshin earthquake. 
>>>> Eija
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 2014-04-08 5:02 GMT+03:00 Jeremy Harley <jeremyharley at gmail.com>:
>>>> Yes, I would think there are certain times when you have to approach the topic from the opposite direction, as in not "are there quake films?" but "where is the quake in these films?" And I would also think it important to look beyond the films themselves.
>>>> 
>>>> I remember when The Day After Tomorrow came out in 2004, as a New Yorker who also happened to be in the city on 9/11, I found the scenes of the city being destroyed to be quite personally upsetting.
>>>> 
>>>> A crime that led to disaster and tragedy for a city had been appropriated as war against the Nation, and New Yorkers were against the Iraq War and (it had seemed at the time) the orgy of crimes the Nation was cooking up in "retaliation". In that context it felt like a big middle finger to New York and to the whole Northeast, which becomes unlivable by the end of the film. 
>>>> 
>>>> I don't want to say that that was necessarily anyone's intention, I'm speaking purely of my own very personal (and possibly excessive) reaction, but I want to say that I would imagine such reactions should be integral to this kind of discussion.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 10:02 AM, J Abel <jandj.abel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Jim,
>>>> Yumeno’s reflection actually cuts both ways because he talks about the fact that there were very few films that dealt with the earthquake directly, then he talks about the rise of decadence (actually pre-empts or influences Sakaguchi Ango’s postwar daraku discourse) and makes the point that maybe those decadent films in the wake of the quake are actually quake films.
>>>> Jon
>>>> 
>>>> On Apr 7, 2014, at 7:58 PM, Cook, Ryan <ryancook at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> >
>>>> > Jim,
>>>> >
>>>> > This was an issue that came up at times at the Berkeley symposium and was a theme in my own paper which situated 3/11 fiction films in relation to atomic bomb and hibakusha films.  I personally came across an observation that the Kanto and Hanshin earthquakes had received surprisingly little attention from fiction/narrative filmmakers.  I'm not quite comfortable mak
>>> 
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