[KineJapan] Use of memoir in film histories

[LCE]

I am intrigued that Kore-eda had to go to France to explore the theme of
"memoir."
In AFTERLIFE, the setting is more reminiscent of a Japanese kaisha.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 11:56 AM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> It's so interesting that you share your thoughts on the autobiography just
> as I am reading, with great admiration, Obama's new book. Anne, you're
> raising such provocative questions. They really got me thinking. It makes
> me want to pull out the autobiographies on my shelves, but they are all out
> of reach at my office. I did find a few scattered examples here at home,
> they inspired some scattered thoughts.
>
> The first thing I notice is that they are all by men, and I think plenty
> of male filmmakers, producers, actors and even subtitlers have written
> memoirs. I can think of memoirs by screenwriters and other kinds of staff
> members, and many of these might fit a subgenre of "My work with _[*fill
> in the director]*___" books.
>
> Two of the memoirs here at hand are proper accountings of one's life: *My
> Life as a Filmmaker* by Yamamoto Satsuo (recently translated into English
> by Chia-ning Chang) and Mochinaga Tadahiito's *Animeshon Nitchu Koryuki.* I'm
> struck by the nuance with which they narrate their lives against the drama
> of modern Japanese history. And in retrospect, I have the sense that if
> there is one thing that really marks off a generation of memoirists it's
> the spectacular disruption of WWII. And even within that, it's hardly one
> generation. Some writers were adults and established professionals; others
> tell the story of the war from the child's perspective.
>
> One thought: perhaps you're noticing the new wave era as a break simply
> because one starts contemplating a memoir while facing the end of life.
> It's a time in life when there's more to look back on, and looking forward
>  is becoming increasingly disconcerting. What's more, society positions you
> less as a "productive member" than a keeper of wisdom and keys to the past.
> I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where the kids from Springfield and
> Shelbyville go to war when Grandpa sits down next to a tree saying, "Ah,
> some things never change...", and Milhouse points, "Hey everybody, an old
> man talking!" and the kids gather 'round for his story. These
> autobiographies tug at our curiosity about the past in similar ways.
>
> But isn't one reason why we don't have many autobiographies from post-60s
> filmmakers that it's a bit presumptuous to write one before a certain age?
> Filmmakers in their 20s, 30s and 40s probably haven't lived enough. If they
> were born in the 60s, they're beginning to consider it.
>
> Another thought: there seems to be a unique structure to some number of
> film autobios. Because of the gargantuan effort a film requires, it's as
> though their lives are clocked film by film. Two of the autobiographies I
> found today take this as their structure: Shinoda Masahiro's *Watakushi
> ga Ikita Futatsu no "Nihon" *and Kore-eda's *Eiga o Torinagara Kangaeta
> Koto. *I think there are quite a few of these and they strike me as
> cheating. Writing a proper memoire looks like hard work. At the same time,
> I wonder if the gender issues Anne points us to aren't at the heart of
> this.
>
> And one last thought: there are strong substitutes to the autobiography in
> the film world. Anne points to *zadankai* and even the *hyoron-shu*, but
> there's also the book-length interview. I'm working on a biography of
> Adachi Masao now, and am thoroughly impressed by Hirasawa Go's *Eiga/Kakumei.
> *Here you have a brilliant interlocutor who knows his political, social
> and film history back and forth, so the subject doesn't need to simply or
> talk down and the book becomes something of an autobiography—at least so
> close that writing a "proper" autobiography would be a waste of time.
>
> And as I wrote that, one other thing comes to mind. Since the 90s, it
> seems to me another kind of substitute appeared. Many independent
> filmmakers—narrative, but especially documentary—publish books in
> conjunction with their new films. It's not simply because it's possible,
> but hawking books in the lobby is one way to supplement the meager revenue
> of indie filmmaking. A foot of one of my bookshelves is lined with such
> books by Funahashi Atsushi and Soda Kazuhiro. I wonder if these books will
> interfere with the writing of "proper" memoirs when they reach that certain
> age.
>
> This is all very fascinating. Anne, I hope you write something up about
> this. I'm very curious, as always, about your perspective!
>
> Markus
>
> ---
>
> *Markus Nornes*
> *Professor of Asian Cinema*
> Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages
> and Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design
>
> *Department of Film, Television and Media*
> *6348 North Quad*
> *105 S. State Street*
> *Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 11:33 AM Zahlten, Alexander via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi Anne,
>>
>>
>>
>> What a great topic! My immediate thought on the “obsolescence” of this
>> genre/subgenre is along the lines of what you mention – it really comes
>> down to what one bills as a memoir (though it is probably exactly relevant
>> if the ones producing it understand the work in that way).
>>
>>
>>
>> Can you say a bit more about your focus on nouvelle vague? Since it is
>> arguably is a tiny part of the mainstream film industry, looking beyond it
>> (and the immediate definition of memoir)will show up more (as you’re
>> already doing with Haneda, Atsugi, etc.); there are the industry figures
>> like Okura Mitsugi (apparently full of fabrications) or Toei’s Okawa
>> Hiroshi, or even Uchida Masaru (of Shonen Magajin, important for the early
>> manga-animation tie-ups); later on pink film’s Hamano Sachi or Nishihara
>> Giichi (see Kim Icreverzi’s excellent thesis for more on the former; the
>> latter is a kind of interview/memoir mashup) are some examples.
>> Scriptwriters are quite active as well (e.g. Katsura Chiho, in a kind of
>> memoir/essay hybrid, similar to Yamagiwa Eizo). I assume there are quite a
>> few written by actors/actresses.
>>
>>
>>
>> It’s difficult to say without actually doing a systematic count, but my
>> sense would also, as you already say, be that generally there is a
>> generational cut-off point after which these publications become less
>> common – I’m less certain it has to do with specific discourses circulating
>> in the “high-culture” end of the film industry, maybe that is also
>> symptomatic of broader shifts? I don’t have a good explanation though.
>>
>>
>>
>> Apologies for the haphazard reply – again, a terrific topic, I hope you
>> decide to write on this!
>>
>> Alex
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *KineJapan <kinejapan-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Anne
>> McKnight via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
>> *Reply-To: *Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
>> *Date: *Friday, December 25, 2020 at 22:28
>> *To: *Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
>> *Cc: *Anne McKnight <annekmcknight at gmail.com>
>> *Subject: *[KineJapan] Use of memoir in film histories
>>
>>
>>
>> Greetings all, and happiest of holidays~
>>
>>
>>
>> I am reading a handful of memoirs of female documentarists at the
>> moment—by women who all debuted in the early 1950s, and wrote memoirs late
>> in life. I think this mode of writing (memoir) used to be common, but I
>> can’t remember many male directors doing so once you get into the nouvelle
>> vague era (Ōshima Nagisa would be an exception here, with his multiple
>> volumes of memoir; also, Wakamatsu Kōji).
>>
>>
>>
>> This just struck me as interesting, given the awareness of this
>> generation of historical meta-narratives and one’s place in it—war, the
>> Shōwa era, etc. And memoirs are  common in literary figures of the time,
>> seen pegged to “large” histories. ( *My Shōwa* by Yasuoka Shōtarō is one
>> such highly crafted memoir, discussed by Kendall Heitzman in his recent
>> book).
>>
>>
>>
>> In the case of the female directors—Nakamura Rinko, Okano Kaoruko, Haneda
>> Sumiko, and Atsugi Taka—all of them did write and publish, and all stressed
>> the micro-politics of labor relation on the set and in the companies they
>> worked for.  (Basically all the postwar doc directors employed at studios
>> except for Tokieda Toshie, and not Tanaka Kinuyo or Sakane Takuzo). The
>> science film directors’ memoirs is the niche I am especially interested in.
>> Though Haneda branched out and Okano ultimately quit, and Nakamura went
>> freelance after a number of years, the science film is extensively covered
>> in each memoir as a privileged stage or pivot.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, I am wondering what elements to take into consideration if they might
>> be called a small cluster, a sub-genre, when reading them as they
>> articulate the relation between life and work —time of debut, position in
>> the industry, wartime experience (related to debut and corporate role),
>> gender, other media and genres of self-expression available overall and to
>> each person. (Literary critic Hibi Yoshitaka has a nice phrase “the
>> distributed self” [or “I", I can’t remember, but you get the point]).
>> Basically, why they all waited to write and publish memoirs, when the male
>> nouvelle directors seemed to opt out of the genre and to take up a
>> different array of “I”-media in real time.
>>
>>
>>
>> Beginning with the nouvelle vague people (and slightly earlier, in at
>> least one interesting account I can think of), the concepts of humanism
>> were challenged, and the debates on subjectivity and filmmaking put forth a
>> number of ways of thinking about the role of critique, complicating “naive”
>> readings of individual action and relation with institutions. They had many
>> critiques of “expression.” TV, of course, would made put first-person
>> critiques accessible in the 1950s. On top of that, all kinds of essays and
>> *zadankai* and *taidans *contain elements one could consider memoir-
>> *like* (with all of the performativities specific to these venues, which
>> are probably different in a memoir).  The emphasis on life experience how
>> it is narrated, figured, vis-a-vis one’s relation to various histories
>> (labor, production, etc.) is what I guess I am trying to frame.
>>
>>
>>
>> I would be very curious for any thoughts about this genre of memoir and
>> its obsolescence, or major ones I might have forgotten, whether independent
>> or in the studio system (like Kurosawa Akira).
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
>> Anne
>>
>>
>>
>>
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