[KineJapan] Tsunami and heartwake film versions of Kanto daijinsai

Tue Apr 8 05:40:14 EDT 2014

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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 > KineJapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
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 > 
 > 
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 >
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