[KineJapan] Benshi Bonanza

[quentin turnour]

Thanks so much for the report Marcus,
... A quick alert to anyone here connected with the book recommended: I'm outside the US and trying to buy. I've emailed the address  Transact Campus

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Transact Campus


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at to ask to arrange international purchase some weeks back but have heard nothing back. Anyone else having that issue?  It would be nice if some means of e-commerce access to purchase could be sent up for us poor ex-North-Americans. Especially if it is going to sell out.
Or an e-book alternative perhaps?
Quentin TurnourNational Archives of Australia.



    On Monday, 29 April 2024 at 01:34:25 pm AEST, Markus Nornes via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:  
 
 The other night Waseda/UCLA’s Yanai Initiative ended its US benshi tour with a splendid evening of benshi performances at Waseda’. It was one of the best evenings of benshi I’ve ever seen, starting with the fact that they actually packed Okuma Kodo with about 1,200 people. (I think _someone_ needs to figure out Yanai’s trick. How do you get just a few of these people to make the very short trek to shitamachi for the regular benshi screenings?!) 
The first film they did was Not Blood Relations, a 1916 film from Kobayashi Sankai and directed by the actor and shinpa giant Inoue Masao. This is most definitely not the Naruse film from 15 years later. It’s a great example of shinpa filmmaking. Almost no intertitles. Straight on long shot/long medium shots and close to one shot per scene editing. And audiences probably had no idea how lucky they were to experience proper kowairo benshi accompaniment. There were three benshi for this one, Kataoka Ichiro, Yamashiro Hideyuki and Yamauchi Nanako (the tour itself featured Omori Kumiko, but she fell ill and Nanako stepped in at the last minute with a flawless sub). It was great. 
The last film they did was also before the Pure Film Movement shift, but kyugeki. The film was Matsunosuke’s Jiraiya. I have only seen this film on a crappy video on a laptop. To see it on the big screen with a as fine a copy as is extant, and with kowairo to boot, was a wonder to behold. Sure the kabuki physical SFX were all the cheesier, but I have to say it gave a sense for Matsunosuke’s onscreen presence. You could get a sense for why he was so popular. 
They presented one American comedy, Sweetie. It’s a Baby Peggie film, of which there are few extant. Although she was wildly popular, she’s not my favorite. But with a benshi, it was good fun. 
It was much more fun to watch Straightforward Boy the Ozu comedy with Tokkan Kozo. Ichiro’s setsumei was delightful with machine-gun dialogue. These films were all presented with projected subtitles for the setsumei (by Kerim, so they were really good). But only the first part of this film got the subtitles. Ichiro’s banter was so relentless that whoever was hitting the advance button on the PowerPoint got hopelessly lost and just gave up. Can’t blame them. It was crazy and crazy fun. It was also a longer version, which just added that much more pleasure to the mix.
Another film that was presented in a newly extended version was Ito Daisuke’s Blood Spattered Takadanobaba (I prefer something like Mists of Blood in Takanobaba, a far freakier rendition). First of all, I thought it was cool watching this film a couple hundred meters from where the historical battle took place. There’s even a sekihi commemorating it. Second, Yamashiro’s setsumei was the best I’ve heard—and I think I’ve heard everyone do this film. It was a bang-up performance. Really thrilling. And third: Ota-san at the Toy Museum found a 9.5mm print with just a bit more of the film, so now we’re up to 12 minutes of furious filmmaking. Damn, that’s fine filmmaking! Makes Eisenstein’s editing look tame. The extra minutes of film make a remarkable difference. I want to see it again. And soon. 
Finally, the other film they did was Oath of the Sword, the recently discovered Japanese American film. This was also nice to see on a big screen for its pictorial qualities. In his maesetsu, Ichiro threw out some red meat for the film mania types: the substantial supporting role by Jack (Yutaka) Abe. I’m fascinated by this film, which I see as a thorough mixing of American and Japanese filmmaking.  It’s a 1914 film, which puts it at a crucial moment in film history for both national cinemas. By 1914, Hollywood had firmly established the tenants of silent era continuity style, so films were quite self-contained thanks to new approaches to narrative construction which included the careful use of intertitles. Oath of the Sword makes little to no use of these innovations. 
The film has the feel of an American film, particularly the comedic moments on campus, which feel uncannily like Lloyd’s The Freshman, which comes out nearly a decade later. Importantly, the acting is quite natural (for the day…in America) and the female roles were all played by women. 
On the other hand, the photography—mostly long shot, long take and static, if lovely—hewed to Japanese cinematic conventions of the time. Additionally, there are almost no intertitles and the story is straight out of shinpa and older oral storytelling traditions in Japan. It even has a climactic suicide overtly telegraphed by the title, if you’re used to Japanese stories. (I suspect someone that knows that territory could tell us specific narratives it was drawing on.) I initially saw this online and could only get the larger narrative arc (and had writings by Denice Khor to help). In other words, this is a cinematic narration dependent on the supplement provided by benshi. So, naturally, the full-blown narrative spun by film/benshi was a very different experience. I think it’s clear this film’s conception was predicated on the existence of a benshi in the room. 
It’s all very fascinating. But I have to say I was taken aback by the reaction of the audience. Now it could be that Ichiro elicited this by a comment in his maesetsu about a surprising reaction in America (one of the themes of the day in a pre-event talk show). He noted that Americans laughed at much of the film. They did at Okuma Kodo as well. Some scenes were built for it, like the gym scenes. But others were more of a camp response. It was strange. He ought to show it again in Japan and avoid any mention of the American response and see what happens. I’d be curious. I suspect it would demonstrate the power of the maesetsu. 
Finally, I have to mention the catalog. Book actually. There are a set of great essays on benshi history and coming at it from all sorts of angles: theater construction, imperialism, diaspora, stardom, music, the transition to sound. This is to say the initial editorial shaping by Daisuke Miyao and Michael Emmerich is incredibly smart. But, I have to say, even better is the design by Shibata Kotaro and Ichiro. I don’t know about Shibata-san, but Ichiro is a serious historian and just as serious collector. This book has what feels like hundreds of astounding images of theaters, people, films, and archival materials. It’s incredible. A very important book that’s surely fated to go out of print fast. Get one while they’re still on sale!  https://yanai-initiative.ucla.edu/publication/the-world-of-the-benshi
I am so jealous I couldn’t experience the whole slate of films back in the US. But then here in Japan there are so many opportunities. Indeed, for those in or coming to Japan on May 31, the Shinjuku Higashi-guchi Film Festival (yes, there is one) has an entire day of films with benshi—11 of them to be precise!  Details at www.matsudafilm.com
Markus_______________________________________________
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