[KineJapan] Introduction + Inquiries about Prokino and Pre-WWII cinema

Fri Jul 1 18:20:20 EDT 2022

Hi Henrique,

Thanks for your introduction. This sounds like a great project!

Here's some general information about the extant Prokino films:

*Prokino sakuhinshū*
*Yamamoto Senji's Farewell Ceremony *(1929)* - *Tokyo branch, shot by Okada
Sōzō
*Yamamoto Senji Watanabe Matsunosuke Worker-Farmer Funeral *(1929) - Kyoto
branch

According to Namiki Shinsaku, other Prokino members involved in the Tokyo
production included Nakajima Shin and Sasa Genjū, and participating Kyoto
members included Matsuzaki Keiji, Ueda Isamu, Kitagawa Tetsuo, and others.
According to Kitagawa Tetsuo, it was NAPF member Tamura Takao's idea to
film the funeral in Kyoto.

*The 12th Tokyo May Day *(1931) - The production was overseen by Iwasaki
Akira and shot by Okada Sōzō
*Earth *(1931) - Written and directed by Kō Shūkichi, shot by Oka Hideo
*Sports *(1932) - Waseda University Student Film Circle and Tokyo branch
*All Lines *(1932) - Written and directed by Furukawa Ryō, assistant
director Matsukawa Rei, shot by Oka Hideo and Arashi Genkai (aka Inoue Kan
/ Lee Byoung-woo)

*Animated film*
*Chimney Sweep Perō* (1930) - Made at Dōeisha, directed by Tanaka Yoshitsugu

Some English-language sources on Prokino include:

   - Jonathan Clements, *Anime: A History *(for Prokino's animated films)
   - Hikari Hori, *Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial
   Japan, 1926-1945*
   - Diane Lewis, "Home Movies of the Revolution: Proletarian Filmmaking
   and Counter-Mobilization in Interwar Japan," in *Routledge Handbook of
   Japanese Cinema, *edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota Ogawa
   - *In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru,* edited
   by Markus Nornes and Aaron Gerow
   - Markus Nornes, *Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through
   Hiroshima*
   - Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival website, which
   includes relevant interviews
   <https://www.yidff.jp/docbox/5/box5-2-e.html>, filmography, and
   commentary

Best,
Diane

On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 12:23 PM Henrique Quadros via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm sorry if this is not properly formatted, or if I'm not sending this
> email correctly, this is my first time participating in an e-mail list. I
> hope this is correctly addressed. First of all, I'd like to introduce
> myself. My name is Henrique Quadros, I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I
> studied Cinema in college from 2018 to 2020, and currently I'm working on a
> completely independent (not associated with any university or organization)
> research project on pre-WWII cinema, more specifically the left-leaning
> cinema of the 3 countries of the Axis from before their respective fascist
> governments united in the Tripartite Pact in 1940. This, of course,
> involves the cinema of Japan before the war and mostly before the middle to
> late 1930s. My research involved learning about the "keiko-eiga" genre of
> films, some of the jidaigeki of directors like Daisuke Ito, and the films
> from the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), the latter of which
> have become my main area of interest currently.
>
> I've been contacting some scholars in the field of studies of pre-war
> Japanese cinema, like Professor Markus Nornes and Professor Aaron Gerow,
> but I didn't consider contacting the KineJapan list for a broader response
> that could help me get more info on the topic. So here I am. I'll lay out
> my general inquiries and some more specific ones, if you have any way of
> assisting me in any of these aspects, I'd be deeply thankful for your help.
>
> *First*, I'd like to ask what are some good English texts on Daisuke Ito,
> keiko-eiga and Prokino that I can easily find online (either through stores
> like Amazon or via pdf download, for example) that would give me
> information on the history and, specifically, how these films were
> perceived by the Japanese public and authorities. *Second*, if you think
> there are specific films that I should research that were left-leaning in
> nature (or perhaps perceived as such) and generated some sort of
> controversy and censorship in the pre-war years, can you point them out
> please? Part of my research involves creating a chronological list of the
> films that fit the criteria. *Third*, this is a more specific one, do you
> know who directed the individual Prokino films that are extant today (like
> the ones in the Purokino Sakuhinshu collection)? I want to add the Prokino
> films to the TMDB database so that it's easier to find information about
> each production, but I wasn't able to find much information about the
> production crew. If you know who made each film or if you know where to
> find this specific information, please let me know.
>
> That is it for now. I hope this e-mail reaches you properly and that I've
> done this correctly. I'd like to thank Professor Markus Nornes for
> recommending this list, and also I'd like to preemptively thank everyone
> for their time and patience in reading this and trying to help. Have a
> great Friday, a great weekend, and a great July.
>
> Yours truly,
> Henrique
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>

-- 
Diane Wei Lewis
Associate Professor, Film & Media Studies
Washington University in St. Louis
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