[KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av coverage

Tue Apr 8 08:27:53 EDT 2014

Dear all,
Roger's post prompts another thought: is 11 years the usual span between a
disaster and any comedy related to it? Wearing another hat, I've written a
paper on how Men in Black 3 was delayed by 11 years and was then set in a
pre twin towers New York, speculating that aliens destroying the city was
not something to be laughed at in the immediate post 9/11 era.
That might explain my misreading of Fish Story's reception: was it its 2011
stage verson that was such a failure and I crossed my wires there? Lola

On Tuesday, 8 April 2014, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> 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<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dm6 at soas.ac.uk');>
> >
> *To:* Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <
> kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','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.
>
>
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