[KineJapan] 100 years of Kinema Junpō

Fri Jul 12 13:09:12 EDT 2019

I might be able to provide some insight here, as I am one of the dozen or so indexers working on the FIAF Periodicals Indexing Project worldwide, which as you can probably appreciate, is not really a huge number of people responsible for indexing every single film-related journal published at the moment, especially when one considers the indexers are not employed full time but on a piece work basis – ie, per article indexed, which is a time consuming job because it requires reading every essay the whole way through and writing original abstracts (as the abstracts in the journals fall under the publisher’s copyright) and filing under specific subject categories.

Given this, it is a comprehensive as one could hope for. The emphasis is on academic publications. Specialist film magazines such as Sight and Sound or Film Comment are included – although only the reviews, interviews and longer articles not the smaller sidebars, puff pieces or news announcements – and not more obviously commercially oriented titles like Empire or Total Film. With weeklies like Variety, The Radio Times or Time Out, the material chosen for indexing is much much more selective.

You can see a list of the journals included here: https://www.fiafnet.org/pages/E-Resources/Journal-List.html

There is also a huge backlog to catch up on, especially given the proliferating trend in universities publishing their own online journals, such as The Projector or Frames Cinema journal. And of course there’s huge amounts of material un-indexed from prior to 1972 when the indexing project first started.

I am not entirely clued up on what is chosen for index and what isn’t, but there are a wide variety of publications from different territories -  including areas like Finland, Macedonia, Uruguay, Portugal, Turkey Hungary etc – and in a variety of languages.

It’s interesting to note however that all of the journal languages do essentially use the standard roman alphabet, or when languages like Polish are indexed, are simplified into it, presumably due to legacy issues with the database design. I’ve never really asked, but there is a complete absence of journals indexed in Arabic, Russian, or Chinese, for example. Problems could be avoided by specialist indexers in the language transliterating into the roman alphabet, but due to the scale of the project, this could be difficult. I’ve had to correct numerous transliterations errors or issues due to variations in transliteration standards in Japanese film titles and directors’ names alone. Imagine the problem with Chinese or Indian dialects for specific film titles.

As I said, this is basically undertaken by a skeleton staff of freelancers, and there is not a lot of money in the project, so the scope of what is indexed is about as impressive as one could hope.

Aaron’s explanation that the lack of coverage of Japanese material is a decision by Japanese FIAF members not to participate makes perfect sense. Japan’s marginalisation when it comes to accusations of Eurocentricism is often self-inflicted. But one notices no Korean or Russian titles indexed either. No one has ever suggested to me that Kinema Jumpo should be indexed, but I can always ask why this is the case, as I’m my own Japanese skills would be up to the task were it ever required.

But I will say, having spent a good part of last year catching up on every back issue of semi-academic online journals like Jump Cut, there’s certainly more than enough in the English language alone to keep the indexers busy.

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________________________________
From: KineJapan <kinejapan-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Gerow Aaron via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
Sent: 12 July 2019 12:07
To: unkleque at yahoo.com.au; Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum
Cc: Gerow Aaron
Subject: Re: [KineJapan] 100 years of Kinema Junpō

Thanks Quentin!

Except, as mentioned, the Index’s data is volunteered by its members. There are two FIAF members in Japan: the NFAJ (member since 1958) and the Fukuoka City Library (Associate since 2003). Both could have been contributing to the Indexing project in order to reflect the status of Japanese screen journals of record, but seem not to have been.

Yes, you are right. The lack of Japanese film periodicals in the FIAF index is not just due to Eurocentrism, it is largely due to the fact that Japanese FIAF members made a decision not to participate in the indexing project. That might be understandable with Fukuoka, which is pretty small, but it is unfortunate that the NFAJ never did it. I did ask someone there about that some time ago and it seems to have been a combination of lack of money and lack of personnel. But we should also remember that for a long time the major periodical index in Japan, Zasshi Kiji Sakuhin, which is prepared by the Diet Library, ignored film magazines. They picked up KineJun sometime in the 80s, but it has only been in the last decade that they’ve tried to make up for some of the missing decades. They’ve added a few more magazines, but are still missing many major ones. And even now, the indexing is poor. Instead of indexing each film review, for instance, they’d just create one entry “Japanese Film Reviews” for that section of the issue.

So I can’t help think that the NFAJ dropping the ball on indexing film magazines is part of a larger national failure to recognize its own film culture and history.

Aaron Gerow
Professor
Film and Media Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
143 Elm Street, Room 210
PO Box 208324
New Haven, CT 06520-8324
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu<mailto:aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
website: www.aarongerow.com<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aarongerow.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cf9a8619133224f70822908d706c19851%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636985300867853634&sdata=esEvHbBGvVnGVyq0NsqJopjWKzPQyiQ7zfOt6GcNIC4%3D&reserved=0>

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