[KineJapan] The Meiji Era through the Dark Valley at NFAJ

Fri May 11 08:55:24 EDT 2018

Hi Roger,

I enjoyed reading your notes here, and revisited them after watching the
Ito Daisuke Kurama Tengu film yesterday. I want to offer a small
correction, as I think you've misattributed scenes from one film in your
account of another. The street scenes of a circus coming to town which you
mention in connection with Hiwa Norumanton Gō-jiken: Kamen no butō sound
very much like the opening scenes of the Ito Kurama Tengu film, including
all the characters you describe. Perhaps both films have similar scenes and
characters, but given that they screened consecutively earlier in the
series, it seems like perhaps you've transposed these scenes onto the other
film.

The Ito film is striking, if decidedly uneven, but as you say, the
anti-semitic caricature should not pass unacknowledged. Though far less
central to the film's construction, there is some regrettable brownface as
well. It mars what might otherwise have been a fairly entertaining (and
visually quite remarkable) chanbara film.

Fred.

On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 3:15 PM, Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum via
KineJapan <kinejapan at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

> The Meiji Era through the Dark Valley at NFAJ
>
> Dear KineJapaners,
>
> As reported before, the National Film Center has now become the National
> Film Archive of Japan - NFAJ. The signage inside and out at Takarachō has
> been changed, including the directions in the metro station, The website
> <http://www.nfaj.go.jp/> now has its own domain, which links to the library
> catalogue
> <http://kinbiopac.momat.go.jp/mylimedio/search/search-input.do?mode=comp&nqid=2>,
> which is, for now, still under the wing of Momat.
>
> Some things don’t change so fast though. There are still worryingly few
> staff to administer research, conservation and curation for a major
> national film archive; there are still continuing programmes of films at
> wonderfully low prices; and there are still no more than two screenings
> each day in the cinema. Refreshing for those increasingly blasted by
> trailers at the likes of the BFI, all films still start on the dot after
> precisely fifteen seconds of silent darkness.
>
> After a shorter opening programme, the first major retrospective
> inaugurating the NFAJ is ‘Meiji Period in Films
> <http://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/meiji-201804/#section1-2>’. 2018 is the
> 150th anniversary of the deposition of the Shogunate but, since the
> Emperor Meiji came to the throne the previous year, one can justify the
> squeezing in of some civil war dramas. As the introductory text
> <http://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/meiji-201804/#section1-1> states, it’s
> partly an opportunity to show some films rarely shown. All the films I saw
> were NFAJ prints, with their original ‘NFC’ logos.
>
> Of particular interest to me this last week has been a strand of films
> made in the late 30s and earlier 40s, which I have never had the
> opportunity to see. As they are all to get their second screening in the
> next week or so, I’m flagging them up, should someone care to read on, with
> the proviso that anyone who caught the tonnage of dialogue that passed
> through this non-linguist’s ears might have heard quite different films.
>
> Actually, only one of the six films was mostly set after the Meiji
> restoration, and three were set during the events leading up to it. But
> what interested me was how history was being redeployed and re-narrated
> during this modern era.
>
> The one that was set almost completely in the Meiji era was *Hiwa
> Norumanton Gō-jiken: Kamen no butō*, - perhaps ‘Normanton Incident
> Special: Masked Dance - made in 1943 by SASAKI Keisuke. One might
> reasonably think that the story of criminally racist arrogance by the
> British in the actual events of 1881 was bad enough not to need
> embellishment, but embellished it was. The surviving Indian cabin boy
> becomes Chinese, all the better to show the Japanese supporting him against
> the racism of the British. In a long opening section, which introduces life
> in a western-embracing Meiji era, a young lawyer leads the push-back.  For
> the 1943 filmmakers, this allows the copious display of long-vanished
> elaborate dresses and ball-gowns, whilst also showing disapproval of them.
> The British white-wash at the end is emphasized, and becomes here a vehicle
> to show that the lawyer, and his firebrand friend, are on the right side of
> history. Their expressions of resentment dissolve into a hate-the-enemy
> coda which depicts the 1940s military destruction of British-occupied urban
> areas.
>
> As one might expect in a 1943 Japanese film, the casting of the
> westerners’ roles was decidedly mixed. Some of these actors, by the
> evidence of these films, had something of a living depicting wicked
> foreigners. But earlier in the film, I seem to recall, there were street
> scenes of a western circus coming into town. The point here was that the
> foreign vagrants were unfairly disrupting the living of honest,
> hard-working families, particularly a widow and her two performing
> children. The brash circus was very convincing, fronted by a blonde with
> bare limbs and shoulders, straight out of Hollywood casting. I’d love to
> know more about where they got these players from. Come to think of it, the
> people of all classes in the street scenes of 1881 were unrealistically
> well-clad - presumably all the better to depict the ‘nakedness’ of the
> westerner.
>
> *Seiki no gasshō-ai kuni kōshinkyoku* - *Century Chorus - Patriotic March*,
> 1938, was a biopic of the musician SETOGUCHI Tōkichi. Since he lived on
> to 1941, his life, by definition, covered far more than the Meiji period,
> although there is a substantial section set in that era. As a naval bandsman
> with composing ambitions, we eventually see him get his sea-legs. To the
> sound and back-drop of active gunnery in rough seas, he composes his *Battleship
> March* with full notation. To those wary of over-exposure to
> *Gunkan-kōshinkyoku*, I’d say there are many films of the period that
> employ the tune far more blatantly. In the sound-track, we first get it in
> fragments and, indeed, much of the sound-track uses a backdrop of silence
> to illustrate the sounds that Setoguchi hears and imagines. After his naval
> retirement send-off, to the unavoidable accompaniment, we see Setoguchi
> entering civilian life, and hear his new world - that of Taishō modernism.
> Setoguchi’s reception during his Western tour in this era is off the menu
> in this film. He seems, if I got it right, to be living above a record
> store. This long episode, of a fish-out-of-water, I found highly
> imaginative. But the authors had their own reason. Taishō becomes Shōwa and
> a new generation enters military service.  They are finally able to
> report to his bedside that his music is back in fashion, and he’s big - in
> Italy and Germany. We hear *Gunkan-kōshinkyoku* again, which the visuals
> cut to be an accompaniment of a march-past of Hitler. Taishō modernism gets
> to be shown here as a historical mistake that has been corrected.
>
> More exposure of *Gunkan-kōshinkyoku* could be heard in another ‘naval’
> film in the same programme, *Sugino Heisō-chō no tsuma* - perhaps *The
> Widow of the Honoured Heiso Sugino*, 1940. Only three of five reels
> survive. We follow a widow of a casualty of the Russo-Japanese war as she
> struggles to bring up three sons. The arithmetic of that makes this film
> also a Taishō drama, but set rurally. I didn’t ascertain exactly which
> reels survive, but we seemed to get the end, even though I didn’t spot the
> ‘end’ character. Perhaps at the beginning of that reel, there is an
> extraordinarily beautiful and evocative scene. An elegiac, long-phrase
> accompanied song, different from any gidayū I have heard, accompanies a
> slow sweep over landscape of considerable beauty. The camera eventually
> pans down on a memorial visit to the father’s grave. After the rituals are
> completed, the family walk back down the road. The three sons are in naval
> uniform, the mother in formal attire. The mood lightens, the pace quickens
> and the four of them are marching proudly ahead - to *Gunkan-kōshinkyoku*.
> This, I thought I was being told, was how honourable people had spent their
> Taishō era - preparing for the next joyful march to war.
>
> There was a fine restoration drama, *Ishin no kyoku *- *Melody of
> Restoration*, made by USHIHARA Kiyohiko in 1942. It was the prestige
> commencing drama of the new conglomerate Daiei company with an all-star
> cast and staff. To me, it had something of the feel of 1950s epics. That
> might be partly due to the different feel of the grand scenes of marching
> armies that punctuated long interior dramatic scenes, seemingly made by
> different units. The excellent acting was well photographed. There had
> clearly been a move away from the placing of characters in ensemble scenes
> of many 1930s films to a style more familiar to modern eyes, of easily
> readable characters in the foreground. The print was also in very good
> condition (it does not appear to have been preserved via the ‘captured
> films’), apart from a few minutes of cyclical lightening, probably at the
> beginning of the penultimate reel, which was starting to give me a headache
> before it abated.  Made in Kyoto, it seemed to me that several scenes
> were shot in Nijō Castle’s interior. The music was mostly, if not all
> diegetic.
>
> The two other tales of restoration were filled by the derring-do of the
> then familiar character of Kurama Tengu, the legendary man of the people,
> who had been appearing in films since 1928. His July 1941 outing, directed
> by SUGANUMA Kanji, *Satsuma no misshi* - Envoy of Satsuma - is a
> hate-the-French vehicle, elaborating an attempt at that time by French
> agents to arm the Shogunate. Redeploying Kurama Tengu, along with his
> popular star, ARASHI Kanjurō (‘Arakan’), who had played this role since its
> film debut, was a well-trodden propaganda move. It recalled for me the
> deployment of long-playing heroic character, Maxim, in the first 1941
> U.S.S.R. ‘Fighting Film’, *Meeting with Maxim*, *Vstrecha s Maksimon*.
> Who better to gain quick approval of a patriotic hating of the enemy than
> an already well-established popular hero? This is shown most obviously in *Satsuma
> no misshi* in a sequence where the resentful face of Arakan gets step
> closing-ups, montaged with step close-ups of the tricolor on the French
> ship that was bringing the armaments.
>
> There are overwhelming reasons why neither could have been a direct
> influence on the other, and there is also a very important difference in
> their contexts. The U.S.S.R. had then been invaded, whilst Japan was not
> at war with France, and would not be so for most of the war. It’s also
> worth noting that this anti-Gallican piece appeared just as those, I think,
> of more liberal complexion, were extolling all things French in journals
> like *Eiga Hyōron*. I’ll go further: I’d say the scriptwriter of *Satsuma
> no misshi*, MARUNE Santarō, here under the pseudonym, 来栖重兵衛, had the same
> idea as me that interest in  the French was a proxy for a wished-for
> opposition. And it’s not just the French who are selling the country, but
> their Japanese collaborators, shown in extended scenes of wine-drinking,
> rather than cheese-eating. Despite photography by MIYAGAWA Kazuo, it looked
> cheaply made with unconvincing sound. The print, a bit flecked, appears on
> the L.o.C. lists of captured films.
>
> Kurama Tengu’s next outing the following year, still with Arakan, was
> under the script and direction of ITŌ Daisuke. This was easily the
> best-preserved print of the set and looked as if it had never been through
> a projector before (although ja.wikipedia refers to a 2010 NFC screening).
> In fact, it was the best preserved print I’ve ever seen, with sparklingly
> clear images and sharp sound throughout. As you might expect for a film by
> Itō, there’s a spectacular sword-fight, this one being set in a
> multi-floored, brick-built warehouse and filmed by a camera that roamed
> vertically and horizontally. As in Suganuma’s film, there are nice flashes
> of light on Kurama’s sword-blade, but in this film we see it on the
> revolver, and even, flamboyantly, on the point of a pin. That pin,
> belonging to a blinded woman, has strong connotations in the plot.
>
> Every suspense-and-rescue trope, and then some, is thrown at the final
> denouement. The British, and probably others, are linked orally to the
> nefarious arms dealers, but the over-whelming direction of hate in this
> film is something so deplorable that it should require far more
> contextualisation than that given. The arms-dealers are called ‘Jacob’ and
> have grotesque false noses and habits. Such gratuitous promotion of
> anti-semitism, during the very maelstrom of the Holocaust, surely needs to
> be overtly acknowledged and commented on at any screening. The film was
> projected and billed with its original title, *Kurama Tengu: Kogane Tengu
> - Kurama Tengu - Golden Hell*. I seem not to be the only one who sees
> that trope of avarice as part-and-parcel of the anti-semitism, since, at
> some point, the film’s title in Itō filmographies got changed to *Kurama
> Tengu: **Yokohama** ni arawaru - Kurama Tengu Appears in **Yokohama**.*
> The film does not appear in any list of captured films and, at this point,
> I know nothing of its history of preservation.
>
> Roger
>
> macyroger at yahoo.co.uk
>
>
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