Aaron Gerow's Blog, page 11

Japanese Film Industry Statistics for 2013

For those interested, Eiren (the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan) has released the official statistics for the film industry in 2013. The Japanese summary is here; for English, you have to scroll down to the bottom of this table for the 2013 figures, or click here to see the box office leaders.

There's not much change from 2012. Total BO is slightly down, while total attendance is slightly up. The market share for Japanese films went down from 65.7% to 60.6%, but still remains strong, since the last time Japanese films kept foreign films under 40% for consecutive years was 1968–1969. The number of screens increased slightly to 3318, the most they've had since 1970. The average ticket price went down to 1246 yen (which is not what you pay at the theater—it's the average of all the tickets sold at different prices), which likely means that more are taking advantage of discount screenings or price specials (like ladies' day, etc.). 

The problem again is that the number of films released increased once more: 1117 total (up from 983), with 591 being Japanese films (up from 554). That's the highest number in history and an average of 21 films opening each week. Some of this is due the fact that they started including so-called ODS (Other Digital Stuff), like screenings of live events in movie theaters, in the stats, but part of it is due to showings of more low-budget digital works in very short runs.

ANA's "Racist" Commerical and Japanese National Identity

There has been a little bit of a hubbub over a new TV commercial that the Japanese airline ANA has put out. Some news organizations have reported complaints that it is racist, and ANA has responded by apologizing and is changing the ad. Here is the original CM: 

It's a disturbing commercial, but not exactly for the reasons some have stated. Since the issue of audience is important, it might be good to think about how the average Japanese viewer might see this. FIrst note the casting. The actor on the left is Nishijima Hidetoshi, a very good actor in straight dramas like Kitano Takeshi's Dolls who I like a lot (whom I've met, by the way). The one on the right is Bakarizumu, a popular comedian who has done some great routines (you can check out one here). The cut to Bakarizumu with the gaijin get-up is then intended to be comedic, both because of the casting (most Japanese would know who the two are) and the extreme get-up. You don't see that kind of get-up in Japanese TV comedy much any more, but when you do, it is rather self-conscious, emphasizing not only the stereotyped "gaijin" image, but also the slapstick, vaudeville-like nature of the comedy. That's the case here as well, with the rubber bands attaching the nose being quite visible. So on one level, the CM works by allowing the viewer to laugh not just at the "gaijin" but also, in a meta way, at the comedy. They thus laugh at the get-up as ridiculous, as patently false and comedic—perhaps even understanding it as old-fashioned and a stereotype. 

ANA's "Racist" Commerical and National Identity

There has been a little bit of a hubbub over a new TV commercial that the Japanese airline ANA has put out. Some news organizations have reported complaints that it is racist, and ANA has responded by apologizing and is changing the ad. Here is the original CM: 

It's a disturbing commercial, but not exactly for the reasons some have stated. Since the issue of audience is important, it might be good to think about how the average Japanese viewer might see this. FIrst note the casting. The actor on the left is Nishijima Hidetoshi, a fine actor in straight dramas like Kitano Takeshi's Dolls (whom I've met, by the way). The one on the right is Bakarizumu, a popular comedian who has done some great routines (you can check out one here). The cut to Bakarizumu with the gaijin get-up is then intended to be comedic, both because of the casting (most Japanese would know who the two are) and the extreme get-up. You don't see that kind of get-up in Japanese TV comedy much any more, but when you do, it is rather self-conscious, emphasizing not only the stereotyped "gaijin" image, but also the slapstick, vaudeville-like nature of the comedy. That's the case here as well, with the rubber bands attaching the nose being quite visible. So on one level, the CM works by allowing the viewer to laugh not just at the "gaijin" but also, in a meta way, at the comedy. They thus laugh at the get-up as ridiculous, as patently false and comedic—perhaps even understanding it as old-fashioned and a stereotype. 

Catching Up: The Japanese Film Musical

It's been another long gap between posts. Still, I felt I had to get one more in before the new year.

This post was not the only thing that took time. So did the book I want to introduce. It not only took several years for it to get published, but it then seemingly took forever for me to get a copy. But it is a fascinating book: The International Film Musical, edited by Corey K. Creekmur and Linda Y. Mokdad and published by Edinburgh University Press (ISBN 9780748634767).  

The book itself is an important step towards overcoming the tendency to equate the film musical with Hollywood cinema. It explore the broad range of narrative musical film traditions in a multitude of national contexts, including Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Egypt, and Turkey.

My contribution considers the phenomenon of musicals in Japanese cinema by focusing on the problem of genre, both in terms of the general issue of the structure of genre in the Japanese film industry and the specific problem Japanese musicals have faced in trying to pursue what is often perceived as a Hollywood genre. The paper takes up two examples of the salaryman musical: Harikiri Boy (Harikiri bōi, dir. Ōtani Toshio), a P.C.L. musical from 1937 starring Furukawa Roppa; and You Can Succeed Too! (Kimi mo shusse ga dekiru, dir. Sugawa Eizō), arguably one of Japan's greatest musicals, made in 1964 with Frankie Sakai. It explores how Japan too, amidst the complex geopolitics of genre and nation, could succeed at the film musical. 

Kobe Planet Film Archive

In the same trip to check on Kyoto film archives, I also went to Kobe to visit the Kobe Planet Film Archive (Kobe Eiga Shiryokan). 

It's located about a five minute walk from Shin-Nagata Station on the JR line on the second floor of a shopping complex. The area was one of the worst hit during the Kobe Earthquake in 1995 (which I experienced in Kyoto), so much of the area is newly rebuilt. The neighborhood is known among anime and manga fans as the location of the Tetsujin 28-go monument (the robot hero of the Yokoyama Mitsuteru manga/anime that was released in the USA as Gigantor) that was built as a symbol of local revival in 2009.

The Film Archive opened in March 2007 with support from the city as another element in Kobe's revival plan. It is managed by Yasui Yoshio, one of the core figures in the Kansai film scene. He runs the Planet Bibliotheque de Cinema in Osaka, a private film library that also manages a small theater, Planet + 1. He has unearthed a number of important films, including most recently two of Ofuji Noburo's animated films, and co-authored books like Osaka ni Toyo 1 no satsueijo ga atta koro. I've known him since 1993, when he was coordinating the historical retrospectives of Japanese documentary for the Yamagata Film Festival. We also ventured off to Minamata together to interview Tsuchimoto Noriaki and he provided the prints for my wife's DVD, Roots of Japanese Anime. 

Preserving Kyoto's Film Culture

The other day, I made a trip to Kyoto on Yale business. While there, I had the chance to meet with Moriwaki Kiyotaka, senior curator for film at the Museum of Kyoto. Markus Nornes and I are updating our Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies in preparation for a possible Japanese edition and I thought I'd check up on the Museum. Unfortunately, it does represent some of the problems film studies and archiving face in Japan. While their collection of materials is superlative (centered on the Ito Daisuke collection), their reading room no longer exists and scholars are only allowed to view the collection on a case by case basis. But it was great hearing from Moriwaki-san about how the Museum, despite these difficulties, is making use of what it has and even rethinking the role of archives. The Museum is not simply trying to preserve the artifacts of Kyoto's film culture, a culture largely centered around jidaigeki, but engineering opportunities for the knowledge of that film culture to live on in younger generations. Thus it is attempting, for instance, to put young anime and manga artists in touch with older film veterans so that the current fad for samurai and period manga/anime can actually feed off of a longer history.

Catching Up: Japanese Film and Television

In trying to start up this blog after a long respite, I noticed that there are a number of my publications I have not announced.

One is the chapter I wrote for the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society, edited by Ted and Vicki Bestor and Akiko Yamagata, entitled "Japanese Film and Television." While I have written on television before (such as my article on telop in variety TV), it was a challenge to combine histories of the two media in a single, 13-page essay. The article is weighted towards the medium with the longer history (cinema), but I attempt to offer a concise history of both, making them overlap on the issue of media, considering how media have not just represented modern Japanese culture and society, but also shaped and construct it. Crucial in this are the debates and efforts to articulate "how meaning was to operate in an age of mass cultural production and consumption."

The book itself is a treasure trove of information on Japanese politics, history, society and culture with chapter by top scholars such as Peter Duus, Dave Leheny, Merry White, Susan Napierr, Ian Condry, Bill Kelly (my colleague at Yale), Koichi Iwabuchi, and Ted Bestor. A paperback edition should be appearing soon.

Iwasa Hisaya and Olo: The Boy from Tibet

The important documentary and experimental filmmaker, Iwasa Hisaya, died on 4 May 2013. He was attending a screening of his most recent film, Olo: The Boy from Tibet, in Miyagi when he fell down the stairs of the inn and struck his head. He was 78.

Iwasa was one of a number of crucial postwar Japanese filmmakers who emerged from Iwanami Productions, a studio run by the Iwanami publishing house that mostly made educational and PR films. While producing films for an emerging Japan Inc., filmmakers like Iwasa, Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Ogawa Shinsuke, and Kuroki Kazuo were hotly debating, in an informal group they called the Ao no kai, or “Blue Group,”  what not just documentary but also cinema was. Ogawa and Tsuchimoto went on to become the two pillars of postwar documentary while others like Kuroki and Higashi Yoichi became important fiction filmmakers. Iwasa was different, however, going independent like the others but treading a fine line between experimental and documentary film with works like Spring-Powered Cinema: Am I an Actress? (Nejishiki: Watashi wa joyu?, 1968).

Page of Madness and Guide to Japanese Film Studies e-books

It has certainly been a long time since I posted on this blog. Blogging requires both a font of energy and a certain amount of time, and I'm afraid both were lacking in the latter half of 2012. I will try to do better in 2013.

Before saying goodbye to the old year, I did want to mention that the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, which has published two of my books, has started to sell e-book versions of some of the titles in its catalog. You can thus now get e-book editions of two of my publications:

A Page of Madness (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, Number 64)

My analysis of the conflicted history and textuality of Kinugasa Teinosuke's 1926 masterpiece. An explanation is here. You can purchase the e-book here. 

Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies (co-authored with Abé Mark Nornes, Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, Number 65)

Our guide to the resources useful when researching Japanese film, from the important books to the crucial archives. Here is the explanation, and here is the e-book link.

Yamada Isuzu

The great actress Yamada Isuzu has passed away. She died on July 9 at the age of 95.

It is important to remember not only her magnificent performances in such films as Kurosawa Akira's Throne of Blood or Mizoguchi Kenji's Sisters of the Gion, but also how much she lived the history of Japanese cinema. She debuted at the age of 12 in 1930, when Japanese cinema was still mostly silent. That film starred Okochi Denjiro, the actor whose face graces this site. At Yale we showed Itami Mansaku's masterwork, The Peerless Patriot (Kokushi muso, 1932) - which unfortunately only exists in an abridged version - and Yamada was already playing beautiful adult women at age 14 or 15. Her first two tour-de-force performances, in Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion and Osaka Elegy, were done when she was only 18 or 19. Her talent was tremendous.

And she could do many roles. Few abroad have seen these, but her jidaigeki with Hasegawa Kazuo during the war at Toho, which combined mystery and comedy, are wonderful to watch. After the 1950s, she appeared progressively more on stage and television, but she still kept winning major awards. She was the first actress to be given the Order of Culture by the Japanese government (Sugimura Haruko was offered it first, but declined). Her personal life was not the happiest - born to a poor family; married four times; a daughter, the actress Saga Michiko, who died before her - but her performances overwhelmed us with their strength, range, and subtlety.