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

Fri Jul 1 22:01:57 EDT 2022

Hello Diane,

Thank you so much for your help! This is exactly what I was looking for.
The books will be extremely helpful for my research. For now, this is all
the help I'll need, if I need anything else I'll make sure to let you all
know by sending another email. Either way, when the research is done, I'll
turn the results into a blog post and I'll make sure to send a link to this
email list, in case any of you are interested in reading it. As of now, I
thank you and wish you all the best

Yours,
Henrique

Em sex., 1 de jul. de 2022 às 19:20, Diane Lewis via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> escreveu:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>
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