[KineJapan] RIP Roger Macy

Wed Oct 29 07:16:02 EDT 2025

I never got to meet Roger in person. He must have been a special person. Years ago, I put out a call here for anyone who wanted to participate in the book I was editing on goddesses in Japanese cinema, and he was one of the people who responded, but he got confused about the dates and was travelling to Bologna..., so he couldn't participate, but he was very elegant and honest. We talked about Princess Kaguya (1935 Tanaka's version), and told me this:

 "...I've been trained as a miniaturist.

Perhaps you called for papers some time ago when I didn't connect this to the idea of goddesses which I associated somehow with divas.  In fact, the 1935 film is a full-frontal attack on the concept of goddesses - but really of gods, as it's hardly gendered  and, yes, it's an unlikely time for it to appear  I've seen all of the surviving 'export' version of 33 minutes. The hysterical blindness is performed entirely by males, from the emperor down.

But the intriguing thing for me still is that this blind hysteria is worked up directly to us, the audience, by a blind musician, MIYAGI Michio.  Was he in on the visual ending, when he ends ecstatically with 'Kaguya - shoten' ?  I still don't know, but the reviewers fail to notice the visuals clearly showing Kaguya escaping with her lover and family in a cart under the noses of the emperor and all his men.  That takes me into cognitive dissonance theory.

Anyway, you might want to check that the paper on the 2013 film doesn't make any unguarded assumptions about the 1935 film.  I would, of course, be very interested to read anything on the subject of Kaguya-hime, if and when you can see yourself able to forward it, please."

" I have the  material for a short essay on 1935  Its relevance to 'goddesses' is that, in this version, a  sorcerer advises Kaguya to cultivate a cult of herself as a  'goddess' - one that blinds people with her dazzling deity - and, undercover of such hysteria, she cons everyone
- including the emperor - to slip away and enjoy carnal love  down on the farm."

In any case, it was a shame that he couldn't participate. I'm sure it would have been a very interesting chapter.
Rest in peace,

 [cid:17cbed52-0360-4890-ba2e-47f52a8e071a]

Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano

Vicedecano de Investigación y Relaciones Internacionales

Vice-Dean of Research and International Relations

Catedrático de Comunicación Audiovisual

Professor of Audiovisual Communication

レイ・フアン・カルロス大学 コミュニケーション科学部 (日本研究) 教授

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicación

Departamento de Comunicación y Publicidad

Edificio de Gestión - Decanato

Camino del Molino s/n, 28943 Fuenlabrada

comunicacion.investigacionrrii at urjc.es<mailto:comunicacion.investigacionrrii at urjc.es>

lorenzojavier.torres.hortelano at urjc.es<mailto:lorenzojavier.torres.hortelano at urjc.es>

Director Trama&Fondo. Lectura y Teoría del Texto<http://www.tramayfondo.com/>

https://materscreen.udl.cat/es/

https://tramayfondo.com/congreso_12_La-Ley.html 

________________________________
De: KineJapan <kinejapan-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> en nombre de Marcos Centeno via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
Enviado: martes, 28 de octubre de 2025 02:11
Para: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
Cc: Marcos Centeno <m.centenomartin at gmail.com>
Asunto: Re: [KineJapan] RIP Roger Macy

Alex, thanks for letting us know , I am shocked to read the sad news about Roger. He had become a recognisable figure of the Japanese cinema scene in London, a tireless and enthusiastic cinephile, at one point he also was interested in screening some reels of Ozu´s films at Birkbeck cinema and I was even close to renting a place he had in the city. It's amazing to see the extraordinary network of people he brought together around common interests, and how he will be missed all across the world. Rest in peace...

Marcos

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 at 13:56, adrian restorationasia.org<http://restorationasia.org/> via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>> wrote:

Dear Markus,

Your posting prompted me to see what was the earliest post of Roger’s that survives in my email, it was from September, 2008 on the topic of Film archive catalogues.

What the search also unearthed was an email I drafted in reply to a question from Roger which, until today, I never finished. This was from October, 2009 and I will, if only out of respect for our departed friend, send it shortly.

It would also be remiss of me not to say that if it weren’t for a posting by Roger in 2021 regarding Nippon, my long journey researching the story of the film would never have come about nor would my collaboration on that research with Wayne Arnold, who Roger had posted on behalf. The third peer-reviewed article that I have supported Wayne on, based on our research into the film, is due for publication in the very near future.

Roger will be sorely missed, but not forgotten.

May he rest in peace.

Adrian Wood

From: KineJapan On Behalf Of Markus Nornes via KineJapan
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2025 1:42 AM
To: KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>>
Cc: Markus Nornes <nornes at umich.edu<mailto:nornes at umich.edu>>
Subject: Re: [KineJapan] RIP Roger Macy

Oh Roger, Roger. I will miss you. I had no idea, so this came as quite a shock.

Roger was one of a number of non-academic lovers of Japanese cinema that are key to our group’s vivaciousness and longevity. It’s what enables Kinema Club to minimize, if not rub out, the difference between scholars, critics, cineastes, fans or whatever boundaries that needlessly sort us all out. I dug into the KineJapan archives to figure out when Roger graced us with his virtual presence. It was (probably*) December 1st, 2007 and he was all Roger out of the gate.

Yuna de Lannoy asked about Noh-inspired films from the fascist period and Roger makes his impressive first-appearance with the suggestion of Naruse’s Uta andon (1943). Damn! This was a year before Catherine Russell’s book came out, which makes it all the more impressive.

He follows this up the same day with a call for help. How does one use the persnickety JMDb for a 1920s film even if you can't read kanji? In subsequent posts that December, it becomes clear why he asks:  he’s investigating the identity of a "J. Shige Sudzuky,” who wrote a 1929 article in Close-up. He was archive diving and braving the language barrier long before Google translate.

In those posts, he self-consciously refers to himself as a “bluffer” and writes, “I'm prepared to make a fool of myself again in order to learn something.” Roger was fearless. And it wasn’t long before he made himself at home in the Kinema Club community. Those self-conscious asides disappear as his posts turn from informational inquiries to analytical reviews of events and smart contributions to threads on films and filmmakers. And then he began showing up at Kinema Club events and his presence became indelible.

I got to know him over the years from both his posts and through numerous encounters around the world. I even couch surfed his flat once. But Roger also kept his boundaries clean. He would talk glowingly of his family, but not himself. My curiosity tested his patience when I asked about the career that sustained his serious avocation in the Japanese cinema. I have my suspicions, but in deference to his cagey avoidance of the topic I’ll keep them to myself. Roger surely wants to be remembered for his wonderful contributions to the study and loving of Japanese cinema. Some of those are ephemeral, and mainly preserved in our memories which are fated to disappear. But thankfully, we will still have his formal writings for venues like Midnight Eye and Senses of Cinema, and his incisive and sometimes provocative contributions preserved in the KineJapan archive.

Goodbye, Roger.

Markus

PS: Alex, of course you can share all this, and permission is unnecessary. KineJapan is a form of publication and it is archived<https://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/> and searchable.

* The KineJapan archive is not perfect, so it might have been before this.

--

Dr. Centeno Martin, Marcos
Profesor Titular / Reader
Universitat de València.
https://www.uv.es/uvweb/college/en/profile-1285950309813.html?p2=cenmar&idA=

Máster en Estudios Japoneses y Coreanos<https://postgrado.adeituv.es/es/cursos/arte_y_humanidades-9/estudios-japoneses-coreanos/datos_generales.htm>.
JRC <https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/marcos-centeno> (Japan Research Centre), SOAS, University of London. Research Associate.
PI  TRAMEVIC<http://www.uv.es/tramevic> (Transnational Memories in East Asian Visual Culture). Ref. CIGE/2023/066
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. Co-editor in chief
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20251029/0e6d97bc/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Outlook-45azqxeq.png
Type: image/png
Size: 69856 bytes
Desc: Outlook-45azqxeq.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20251029/0e6d97bc/attachment-0001.png>