[KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake film versions of Kanto daijinsai

Tue Apr 8 05:46:08 EDT 2014

Dear Kine-Japaners,

I know this is a bit off-topic, but if you happen to be in the LA/Santa Barbara area in coming weeks, please join us for the film series that I organize at UCSB's Pollock Theater. As you know, Odayaka is one of the post-3.11 fiction films on the nuclear disaster.

Nuclear Japan: Japanese cinema before and after Fukushima

April 15 (Tue): Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape (2011, dir. Matsubayashi Yojyu)
* Guest Speaker: David Novak (Music, UCSB)

April 22 (Tue): Odayaka (2012, dir. Uchida Nobuteru)
* Guest Speaker: Margherita Long (Comparative Literature, UCR)

April 29 (Tue): Ashes to Honey (2010, dir. Kamanaka Hitomi)
* Guest Speaker: anne-elise lewallen (EALCS, UCSB)

All the screenings will begin at 7PM. More info can be found here: 
http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/pollock/events/nuclear-japan-japanese-cinema-and-after-fukushima

Best,
Naoki

Naoki Yamamoto
Assistant professor
Film and Media Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

On Apr 8, 2014, at 2:40 AM, Jim Harper wrote:

> 
> Isola was the only contemporary reference I could find in the horror genre. And you're absolutely right; there are dozens of films that deal with the Aum attacks and cults in general, from Miike's over-the-top MPD Psycho to one Itami's long line of comedy dramas starring his wife (Woman of the Police Protection Unit). Sogo Ishii's Angel Dust and Izo Hashimoto's Hideki: Evil Dead Trap 2 are pre-Aum films that make for interesting comparisions.
> 
> I haven't yet had a chance to watch Zeze's Pandemic yet, so I'll be interested to know how it connects with these earlier films.
> 
> Jim.
> 
> On Tue, 8/4/14, Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake film versions of Kanto daijinsai
> To: "kinejapan" <kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, 8 April, 2014, 9:48
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, the
> 1923 Kanto earthquake has appeared in cinema quite a few
> times, largely because for Showa era directors it
> represented figuratively the turning point between Taisho
> liberalism and early-Showa nationalism. The Tanaka
> Noboru-directed Roman Porno Watcher in the Attic (Yaneura no
> sanpôsha, 1976) is another good example, based
> on a number of stories by Edogawa Rampo. I'm sure there
> are many more.As
> for the 1995
> Hanshin earthquake, the
> only reference I can think of is MizutaniToshiyuki’s
> J-horror Isola
> (Isola: Tajû jinkaku shôjo, 2000), about a psychic
> girl with multiple
> personalities rescued from its ruins. As the Aum gas attacks
> on the Tokyo subway occurred within a matter of weeks of
> this, it was this latter disaster that formed the basis of
> much of the pre-millennial manifestations of national
> trauma, felt particularly strongly in films by Aoyama Shinji
> and Zeze Takahisa.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Creeping
> Garden - A Real-Life Science-Fiction Story about
> Slime Moulds and the People Who Work With
> them. Currently in production,
> directed by Tim Grabham and Jasper
> Sharp. 
> The Historical Dictionary of Japanese
> Cinema (2011) is out now from Scarecrow
> Press
> Midnight Eye - Visions of
> Japanese cinema
> http://www.midnighteye.com
> 
> 
> 
>> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 16:29:44 +0900
>> From: hakutaku at kansaigaidai.ac.jp
>> To: kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake film
> versions of Kanto daijinsai
>> 
>> Concerning cinema versions of the Kanto daijinsai, I
> think there are many. Two popular ones are Jissoji
> Akio's Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (帝都物語, Teito
> Monogatari, 1988 that has all kinds of detailed models of
> the city begin destroyed in a fantasy narrative. There is
> also Fukusaku Kinji's retelling of Yosano Akiko's
> life in Hana no ran 華の乱 also from 1988 that ends with
> the chaos of the earthquake. I think there are many more. 
>> It is interesting to reflect on the varied treatments
> like this.
>> Paul Berry
>> Kyoto
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Ryan Cook <ryancook at fas.harvard.edu>
>> To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum
> <kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
>> Sent: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:58:12 +0900 (JST)
>> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av
> coverage
>> 
>> 
>> 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 making that claim myself because I
> haven't followed up on it very much, but Jonathan Abel
> gave a paper at Berkeley in which he cited an interesting
> quote from an essay by Yumeno Kyusaku written shortly after
> the 1923 earthquake.  Yumeno had interviewed an official
> responsible for film censorship who noted that there had
> been a lack of screenplays dealing with the disaster
> submitted for official approval at the time.  The conclusion
> was that screenwriters had exercised self-restraint at least
> in the historical moment.  Self-restraint (jishuku) has also
> been a theme since 3/11, but evidently not to the point of
> altogeth
>> 
>> er preventing films from being made.
>> 
>> The Wind Rises contains a dramatic depiction of the
> Kanto earthquake, as someone else just mentioned. 
> That's interesting in that it is a depiction of the
> earthquake from a post-3/11 vantage point (at least the film
> was released in 2013... I don't know when production
> began), and in that sense it is also a "3/11
> film."  Miyazaki of course has publicly come out
> against nuclear energy, and it seems reasonable to imagine a
> subtext in all the talk of Japan "exploding" and
> the persistence of the wind motif in the film, the wind
> being as ambivalent as the dream of flight, lifting
> beautiful things into the air, but also spreading fires and
> poisonous things.  Wakamatsu Koji was reportedly planning an
> adaptation of the nuclear fallout graphic novel "When
> the Wind Blows" before his death.  Off the top of my
> head, I can't think of other dramatic representations of
> the 1923 earthquake in film, though I'm probably
> overlooking important examples.
>> 
>> Ryan
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From:
> kinejapan-bounces+ryancook=fas.harvard.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
> [kinejapan-bounces+ryancook=fas.harvard.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu]
> on behalf of Jim Harper [jimharper666 at yahoo.co.uk]
>> Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 5:34 AM
>> To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum
>> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake 2011 Av
> coverage
>> 
>> Forgive me butting in here, but I'm curious about a
> couple of things.
>> 
>> a) Has much been written about the presentation and
> portrayal of disaster in Japanese cinema in general, prior
> to 3/11?
>> 
>> b) Have specific disasters- like the Great Kanto
> Earthquake of 1923 or the 1995 Kobe Earthquake- been heavily
> represented in contemporary film, also prior to 3/11?
>> 
>> Can anyone help? Just a couple of brief answers would
> be very much appreciated. Thank you!
>> 
>> Jim Harper.
>> 
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