[KineJapan] Docs at Nippon Connection

[Eija Niskanen]

Just to add to Roger's writing on 'The Making of a Japanese', it has a
Finnish co-producer, and the music was composed and performed by a Finnish
musician. The film has gained a lot of attention amongst watchers here in
Finland, and the distributor has arranged numerous screenings for school
teachers, who then have discussion on the film.

Eija Niskanen
Helsinki

pe 21. kesäk. 2024 klo 13.11 Roger Macy via KineJapan (
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu) kirjoitti:

> No one has said here anything on this year's Nippon Connection. I've also
> been pretty tied up but let me try and say something on a couple of films
> before I hit Il Cinema Ritrovato. I did already mention before a couple of
> fiction films shared with FEFF.
>
> The outstanding documentary for me was *Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica*
> by Hirata Junko. Its core format was a classic art documentary, taking a
> historical narrative. But the examination of individual works, closing up
> on details and relating that to the whole composition and to context was
> more than well done. There were suggestions that the idea came out of the
> exhibition at the British Museum a few years back but the film seemed aimed
> at a wider audience, particularly in Japan. Indeed the Japanese title is
> just 春の画 , and the narrative of the film was that shunga was hidden from
> modern view in Japan – I wouldn't say that for the West that I know. So, to
> counter that, we had on-camera voices, female and Japanese, relating
> sympathetically to the sensations and emotions portrayed.
>
> The quality of the images was outstanding and well worth seeing on a large
> screen. But what really brought the film alive for me was the music. It
> would be an easy trap to use various kinds of music with misleading
> connotations but, instead we had an extended original composition by Hara
> Marihiko, played on close-miked traditional instruments that seemed to
> really respond to the art and the narrative.
>
> As part of promoting modern female acceptance, there was the usual
> reference to Edo-era brides bringing shunga as part of their trousseau. I
> could quibble and mention that there was no reference to the
> power-difference, backed by age difference in the genders portrayed , but
> that needs to be someone else's film. It did look at some same-sex shunga.
>
> A documentary I was much less comfortable with was 'The Making of a
> Japanese', by Ema Ryan Yamazaki. One could only admire the dedication and
> patience in following a Year 1 and a Year 6 class through a a year in their
> primary school in western Tokyo. Her editing, and presumably her original
> capture follow very much to the title that Yamazaki has chosen. So, we see
> only situations and lessons that promote group conformity. The teachers are
> shown as hard-worked without any suggestion of the marking workload. The
> delivery of a highly defined and even highly-scheduled curriculum and the
> mind-numbing repetition are absences of Yamazaki's choice. But the primary
> objective of primary education according to many educators – the teaching
> of how to learn – is an absence in Japan that Yamazaki portrays without
> even mentioning it.
>
> In the intro and Q&A afterwards, Yamazaki repeated many times her claim
> that the trains would not run on time in Japan without the teaching of
> social conformity that she portrayed. It is a full century now from when
> Fascism was promoted as 'the trains are running on time in Italy'. I don't
> think Yamazaki's claim is true. Nor do I think that the cause of German
> trains' recent lack of punctuality is a lack of fascism. The 'English
> disease' is something else.
>
> I brought up the contrast with the films of Hani Susumu, where
> non-conformity was more tolerated and children were shown to be encouraged
> in individual self-expression. In contrast, the only 'art' I saw in
> Yamazaki's film was the communal slaughter of 'Ode to Joy' as a lesson in
> machine-like social conformity. I guess Hani and his co-authors were
> promoting ideas that still were not very widespread but, if Yamazaki's
> portrayal is broadly true, Hani's project failed. Bizarrely though,
> Yamazaki considered the education shown by Hani as more authoritarian.
>
> 'The Making of a Japanese' won the audience prize for documentaries at
> Nippon Connection.
>
> Roger
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>


-- 
Eija Niskanen
Programming director
Helsinki Cine Aasia, March 14.-17.2024
www.helsinkicineaasia.fi
+358-50-355 3189
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20240621/7f6b4e2c/attachment.html>