[KineJapan] Scant trace of Chinese film content

[Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum via KineJapan]

Dear KineJapaners,

Engeiji ringu’s source and aftermath

Engeiji ringu, written and directed by Kinoshita Keisuke, 1950,got a pair of screenings as part of the BFI’s current 50s season, ‘Rears andLaughter, Women in Japanese Melodrama’ (which runs through November and I don’tthink has been mentioned here).

I was recounting the film to a Chinese friendand he remarked on the similarity with Spring in a Small Town,1949.  There are differences of course. Forexample, Spring in a Small Town has a quadrangular complication; butthey have enough similarities to have intrigued me.

The very little that I have found inMarianne Lewinsky’s book (Mariann seems to have had an ‘e’ when she wrote inFrench), and the rather more that Mats Karlsson has kindly dug up in the booksof Satō Tadao and Osabe Hideo all point to couple of sentences that Kinoshitawrote defensively after a critical drubbing (he was proud that the only writerin support was Mishima Yukio). I have not read the original criticism butKinoshita points to a furore over a scene where Tanaka reacts to the smell ofMifune’s vest. Apparently ignoring that the stock-in-trade of much film wasdesire, the portrayal of such desire by a respectable mature woman was‘pornographic’.  Kinoshita then seems towrite of his Karumen kokyō ni kaeru as a pushback. For there to be enough objection forKinoshita to be wounded seems barely credible for such a fleeting scene andseems to me to be deflected criticism of Tanaka. This was the first releasedfilm after her controversial return from the U.S.

All of that seems to eclipseany discussion of the origin or inspiration of the story in the literature. Ican find no reference in ‘Allcinema’ to the original Spring in a Small Townbeing shown in Japan at all. Shanghai was close enough to Japan, but I know nothing of any traffic inthe closing months of the Nationalist presence on the Chinese mainland,although people and reports must have crossed. To feed my innerconspiracy-theorist, I note that, by the time Engeiji ringu wasreleased, the Korean War had broken out and mention of a Chinese inspirationwould have been fraught.

Indeed, I can think of noinfluence of home-grown Chinese film on Japanese cinema in the first threequartiles of the twentieth century which, if a valid observation, is someabsence (‘Home-grown’ is there to exclude occupation-era productions byJapanese film companies - I don’t even know of any export to Japan from the Shanghai studio run by Kawakita. And there were,later, a few famous Hong Kong co-productions).  I grantthat there could be a Chinese film nesting in the index of Yamamoto’s book onthe ‘Influence of Foreign Films’, but I can’t spot any.
So I would be grateful forany enlightenment on an influence from mainland Chinese film content upon Japan in this period or, indeed, alternativethoughts on inspiration for Engeiji ringu.Roger
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