[KineJapan] Toho Sogi Gallery Talk's Explosive Ending

Sun Sep 3 02:31:01 EDT 2023

Honchi was careful about not naming names during his presentation, but I
wasn't the only person left thinking he wanted to point the finger at
Miyajima. About four of us stayed after to stand and chat. I finally asked
him outright (ugly American, you know) and he said it will probably never
be known. However, he said that in his deep dive into the literature on the
JCP he found that, historically speaking, there were instances where the
leadership had ties to government. He suggested it had something to do with
the need to know who was really on your side when it came to revolution.
Who's really committed and who's wishy-washy. But he didn't go into detail.

Anyone interested in pursuing this topic should track him down (I have
contact info if needed). The guy's done his homework. At the event, he had
a stack of reference books and nearly every one of them was simply
bristling at the edges with multi-colored post-its.

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

*Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*

On Sun, Sep 3, 2023 at 3:11 PM Jonathan M. Hall <jonathanmarkhall at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Markus,
>
> What a great read! Thank you! That definitely beat anything on offer
> Saturday. Did Honchi suggest in his biographical lead-up on Miyajima what
> it is that Miyajima could gain or preserve in becoming a mole? I imagine
> that would already be a part of the narrative at this point even if the
> info was newly acquired. It also begs the question if there is other
> information on Miyajima, especially police pressure, that’s being
> deliberately withheld.
>
> Fascinating!! Thank you again for sharing!!
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan M. Hall
> California State University San Bernardino
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 2, 2023 at 10:02 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> The National Film Archive has been doing these nice gallery talks up on
>> their 7th floor on the first Saturday of every month. Yesterday, I attended
>> one by Honchi Haruhiko on the Toho Strike just after WWII. This was Part 2,
>> continuing a previous gallery talk. It was so packed they had to snake
>> around the lobby and put up a monitor for people in the back around the
>> corner.
>>
>> Honchi is a collector-researcher, kind of like Makino Mamoru. And anyone
>> familiar with his 『日本映画雑誌タイトル総覧』, which lists over a thousand first
>> issues of Japanese film magazines, knows that he has a completionist bent.
>> This definitely came out in the talk, which walked us through each phase of
>> the strike in remarkable detail. It was overwhelming, actually.
>>
>> Basically, anything having to do with the JCP has to deal with the
>> dynamic between organizational structures—their transformations
>> specifically—with personal politics and personalities. I found this out as
>> a PhD student trying to figure out the history of Prokino. That chapter of
>> my Japanese Documentary Film book is probably deadening with TMI.
>>
>> Anyway, the Toho Sogi was no different and Honchi has spent years
>> figuring it out, reading several bookshelves' worth of titles on the JCP
>> and conducting a deep dive into the archive—particularly the Miyajima
>> Yoshio collection at the NFAJ. Miyajima was, of course, the top
>> cinematographer for the likes of Abe Yutaka, Imai Tadashi, Kobayashi
>> Masaaki and Tanaka Kinuyo. But he also helped form the Toho labor union in
>> December 1945 and was its leader throughout the strike until the occupation
>> threw "everything but the battleships" at it in 1948.
>>
>> Honchi spent a good 90+ minutes walking us through the multiple *bunretsu
>> *of the union and the complexities of the interpersonal relationships
>> behind the scenes—all built on various documents from his own and
>> Miyajima's collections. It was a strong demonstration of serious research
>> in the archive.
>>
>> As he drew to a close, Honchi announced he had one more bit to cover. He
>> pulled out three bound volumes of handwritten and mimeographed documents,
>> explaining that he had just come into possession of these items and hadn't
>> had a chance to do a proper job of analyzing them. But he wanted to show
>> them publicly for the first time.
>>
>> They were collections of memoranda and reports from the police! So far,
>> the story of the Sogi has always been told through interviews, memoirs and
>> documents produced by the communist activists. But here were documents that
>> promised a glimpse into the other side of the barricades.
>>
>> Honchi didn't go into much detail, but he made one thing clear through a
>> number of documents. They included an internal union memo that's also in
>> the Miyajima collection, a map of Toho Studios showing where all the
>> barricades and defenses were setup (and apparently weak points, too), and a
>> long list of union members to be arrested.
>>
>> In other words, it was clear that the police had a spy on the inside of
>> the union, and someone with access to lots of important information! The
>> police knew everything.  The audience was dumbfounded.
>>
>> Honchi said he didn't know who it was, but you could tell he wanted to
>> hypothesize that it was Miyajima (especially based on how he pitched the
>> history up to the conclusion).
>>
>> It was a wonderful afternoon demonstrating the power of historical
>> documents and the archive...at the Archive.
>>
>> I'm looking forward to the next one!
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
>> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
>> *Department of Film, Television and Media*
>> *6348 North Quad*
>> *105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
>> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>>
>
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