[KineJapan] NFAJ cuts

[reeldrew at aol.com]

I have some observations and questions regarding the current disturbing information about the drastic cuts in funding for the National Film Archive of Japan. Although we have often heard about film archivists in the West pleading for increased funding to preserve cinema heritage, the NFAJ seems to be confronting a more severe situation than has been true of other archives in the USA and Europe. Indeed, it reminds me of the crisis five years ago with the Cinemateca Brasileira in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Despite my close contacts with Brazilian cineastes in the 2000s, it was a Facebook post by Kae Ishihara in 2021 that brought the difficulties then faced by the Cinemateca to my attention. Here, too, there was a severe reduction in funding for the archive by the very right-wing Bolsonaro regime. It soon became an international issue with Martin Scorsese in the vanguard of cinephiles around the world expressing concern, so much so that this pressure forced the Brazilian government to restore funding for the archive. The next year, of course, saw the return of Lula da Silva to the presidency and a far more favorable environment for cultural activities under this revived progressivism.
 Like Brazil some years ago, Japan has been drifting further and further to the right in recent years, generating a reactionary climate that seems inimical to cultural activities like film preservation. While the NFAJ's crowdfunding efforts are definitely helpful, I think they should also enlist the aid of Scorsese and other notable preservationists in bringing the issue of film preservation in Japan to greater international attention. This kind of pressure might have an effect on the Japanese government and steer it in a more positive direction. I also think the NFAJ should be more open to sharing its treasures of Japanese cinema of the 1920s and 1930s with the wider world-wide public via online streaming and DVD/Blu-ray releases following the lead of such other archives as Russia's Gosfilmofond, the Danish Film Institute, the Czech Republic's National Film Archive, and our own Library of Congress among many others. The Cinemateca Brasileira was founded in 1946 by Paulo Emilio Sales Gomes, a leading public intellectual affiliated with the left who had studied film preservation at the Cinematheque Francaise under Henri Langlois. I believe the Cinemateca Brasilieira was the first film archive in either of the two vast, cinematically rich continents of Asia and Latin America whose early achievements were long neglected by most establishment cinema historians in the West. In its early years, the Cinemateca took shape as a department of the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo before branching out on its own, much like the Film Library of New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Film Center of Tokyo's Museum of Modern Art. In his efforts, Sales Gomes faced opposition from conservative guardians of culture who did not recognize cinema as an art while his radical politics often put him at odds with  various authoritarian governments in Brazil. Over the years, the Cinemateca has been plagued by several fires, the most recent of which in 2021 generated a sense of urgency accentuated by the Bolsonaro regime's neglect of the archive and contributed to the world-wide support for the Cinemateca.
 I know much less about the development of film archives in Japan and would very much appreciate any information about this from KineJapan members. The 1930s saw the birth of archives with the establishment of such institutions in Germany, the United States, Great Britain and France, all of whom came together as FIAF in 1938, while Italy, the Soviet Union and the Nordic countries also initiated similar activities in that decade. Does anyone know if there were any cineastes in Japan, inspired by these activities in the West, who either proposed or attempted to found a Japanese film archive in the 1930s? If so, was the realization of this idea prevented by the onset of WWII? It was not until 1952, one year after the success of Rashomon generated world-wide interest in Japanese cinema, that MOMA in Tokyo started a collection of historic Japanese films which formally became an archive, the Tokyo Film Center, in 1970. Did the beginning of film preservation efforts at the Tokyo MOMA owe anything to an individual visionary founder like Iris Barry, Henri Langlois or Paulo Emilio Sales Gomes, or was it mainly a group of cinema enthusiasts in Japan who thought it would be a good idea to include films in a museum dedicated to modern art?  I would very much like to have a better grasp of the history of archiving activities in Japan than I presently have and, as I said, will appreciate any information KineJapan members can give me. William M. Drew
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