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If you thought Godzilla and samurai flicks are all there is to
Japanese film, think again. The history of cinema in Japan extends over
a century, with the first Western-made moving images being shown to rapt
audiences in 1896. Within a couple of years, the Japanese had imported
equipment and established their own movie industry, which flourished
with all things Western in the early decades of the century. Recovering
quickly after World War II, Japanese film burst onto the international
scene with the innovative Rasho mon, directed by Kurosawa Akira, who
along with Ozu Yasujiro, director of the highly respected Tokyo
Monogatari (Tokyo Story), is the country's best-known cinema auteur.
Apart from the scandal surrounding rshima Nagisa's explicit Ai-no-Corrida
, the movie scene generally languished during the 1970s, while in the
1980s, Japanese corporations were more intent on ploughing bubble-era
profits and investment into Hollywood production companies rather than
home-grown product. The 1990s saw a minor resurgence with the
international popularity of the films of Itami Juzo, Takeshi Kitano and
runaway success of Suo Masayuki's Shall We Dance ?, which has become the
sixth highest-earning foreign-language film ever at the American box
office.
Pre-World War II
Japan got its first taste of cinema at Kobe's Shinko Club in 1896, and
by the end of the following year, the crown prince had put in an
appearance at Tokyo's Kabuki-za theatre to be entertained by the latest
Western wonder. From the very beginning, theatrical embellishments were
considered a vital part of the cinema experience; one theatre had a mock-up
of a valley in front of the screen, complete with fish-filled ponds,
rocks and fan-generated breeze, to increase the sense of realism.
Additionally, the story and dialogue were acted out to the audience by a
benshi , playing a similar role to the theatrical interpreters in
traditional Japanese performing arts. Thus when "talkies" arrived in
Japan in the 1930s, they were less of a sensation because sound had been
part of the movie experience from the very beginning.
The earliest Japanese films also looked towards the traditional
performing arts, such as classical dance and Kabuki, for their subject
matter, although in 1905 cameras were sent to the Asian mainland to
record the Russo-Japanese War. By the outbreak of World War I in Europe,
there were nine film-production companies in Japan, the largest being
Nikkatsu which released fourteen films a month from its two studios.
Western ways of film-making were catching on and it became increasingly
common for actresses to take roles previously played by oyama (female
impersonators).
The contemporary landscape of Tokyo was a popular choice for films which
adopted modern, realistic themes ( gendaigeki ). However, the Great
Kanto Earthquake of 1923 shifted movie production for a time to Kyoto ,
which with its old architecture was the perfect backdrop for jidaigeki ,
or period dramas. Both forms were in turn influenced by the art of
Western film-making, in particular German Expressionism, while at the
same time retaining a quintessential Japanese style.
The 1930s were the boom years for early Japanese cinema with some five
hundred features being churned out a year, second only in production to
the United States. One of the era's top directors, who would not gain
international recognition until the mid-1950s, was Mizoguchi Kenji
(1898-1956). His initial speciality was the jidaigeki melodramas, based
in Meiji-era Japan, but he is best known in the West for his later
lyrical medieval samurai dramas, such as Ugetsu Monogatari (1954).
During the 1920s and 1930s, however, Mizoguchi also turned his hand to
detective, expressionist, war, ghost and comedy films, becoming the
best-known director of realist gendaigeki . As Japan fell deeper into
the ugliness of nationalism and war, Mizoguchi embraced traditional
concepts of stylized beauty in films such as 1939's Zangiku Monogatari (
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums ).
Also developing his reputation during the pre-World War II period was
perhaps Japan's greatest film director Ozu Yasujiro, whose Tokyo
Monogatari ( Tokyo Story ) is a permanent fixture on many critic's
best-film lists. In the 1930s, Ozu was taking his cues from the West,
making films such as Dragnet Girl , about rebellious youths. By the time
he made his first talking film The Only Son in 1936 - the story of a
country woman who visits her feckless son in Tokyo - Ozu was considered
one of Japan's leading directors.
The 1950s and 1960s
Japanese cinema undoubtedly suffered in the authoritarian years
surrounding World War II. In 1945 only 26 films were made and the future
didn't look any brighter when the Allied Occupation Forces took over,
drew up a list of thirteen banned subjects for films, including "feudal
loyalty", and burned movies considered unsuitable. However, the
Occupation authorities were more than happy to encourage "American-style"
gendaigeki , which led to Japan's first screen kiss, a previously taboo
activity, in 1946.
Local talent broke through in 1950 when Kurosawa Akira 's brilliant
Rashomon hit the screen, subsequently garnering a Golden Lion at the
following year's Venice Film Festival and an honorary Oscar. This story
of a rape and murder told from four different points of view - including
most ingeniously from the dead nobleman, via a medium - made a star of
lead actor Mifune Toshiro and ushered in a decade considered to be the
golden age of Japanese film.
In 1954 Kurosawa again teamed up with Mifune to make the classic
Shichinin-no-Samurai ( The Seven Samurai ), about a band of ronin (masterless
samurai ) coming to the rescue of a village community plagued by bandits.
If the story sounds familiar that's because it was copied by Hollywood
in The Magnificent Seven (1960), just as another of Kurosawa's samurai
drama's, Yojimbo (1961), was the basis for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of
Dollars . The story snatching was not all one-way. Kurosawa borrowed
themes and plots from Dostoevsky, Gorky and Shakespeare, Throne of Blood
(1957) being based on Macbeth and Ran (1985) on King Lear .
Ozu's masterpiece Tokyo Monogatari was another highlight of the 1950s.
This simply told, yet quietly emotional tale of an elderly couple's
visit to Tokyo to see their grown-up children and the cold reception
they receive from everyone except their widowed daughter-in-law, has
become a classic of world cinema.
At the other end of the artistic spectrum, the 1950s saw the birth of
one of Japan's best-known cinema icons, Godzilla , or Gojira as he was
known on initial release in 1954. The giant mutant, whose Japanese name
combined gorilla ( gorira ) and whale ( kujira ), was very much a
product of fears surrounding nuclear proliferation, rather than the camp
monster megastar he would later become. At ¥60 million Gojira was one of
the most expensive films of its time, with an all-star cast headed by
Shimura Takeshi, who went on to star in Kurosawa's Shichinin-no-Samurai
. Despite the monster being killed off in the grand finale, the movie's
success led to an American release, with added footage, in 1956 under
the title Godzilla , King of the Monsters . Over the next four decades
Godzilla kept on returning to do battle with, among others, King Kong,
giant shrimps, cockroaches and moths, and a smog monster.
Gangster movies also gained popularity in the 1960s as Japanese studios
began pumping out violent, yet highly romanticized films about the
yakuza . Known as ninkyo eiga (chivalry films), these movies were
usually played like modern-day samurai sagas, the tough, fair yakuza
being driven by a code of loyalty or honour. One of the major actors to
emerge from these movies is Takakura Ken, who has since starred in
Western films including Ridley Scott's Black Rain .
The 1970s and 1980s
The most successful movie development of the next two decades was the
Tora-san series, which began with Otoko wa Tsurai Yo ( It's Tough Being
a Man ) at the tail end of the 1960s. Tora-san, or Kuruma Torajiro, a
loveable itinerant peddler from Tokyo's Shitamachi, was played by Atsumi
Kiyoshi in 48 films up until the actor's death in 1996, making it the
most prolific movie series in the world. The format of the films is
invariably the same; Tora-san chasing after his latest love, or
"Madonna", in various scenic areas of Japan, before returning to his
exasperated family.
Tora-san was only a hit in Japan, but Ai-no-Corrida ( In the Realm of
the Senses; 1976 ) by rebel filmmaker Oshima Nagisa created an
international stir with its explicit sex scenes and violent content.
Based on a true story, the film was about the intense sexual
relationship between a woman servant and her master, that results in
murder and a chopped-off penis. The censor demanded other kinds of cuts,
which forced the director into a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful
legal battle. This was all the more galling for rshima, whose film
gathered critical plaudits abroad, but remained unseen in its full
version at home, at the same time as the major Japanese studios made
their money from increasingly violent films and soft-core porn, called
roman poruno .
By the late 1970s, Japanese cinema was in the doldrums. Entrance fees at
the cinema were the highest in the world (they're still expensive),
leaving the public less willing to try out offbeat local movies when
they could see sure-fire Hollywood hits instead. The art-house filmmaker
rshima turned in the prisoner-of-war drama Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
in 1983 and the decidedly quirky Max Mon Amour , three years later
before retiring, content to build his reputation as TV pundit. Instead
of investing money at home, Japanese companies, like Sony, went on a
spending spree in Hollywood, buying up major American studios and film
rights, thus securing software for video releases.
By the end of the 1980s, the one light on the horizon was Itami Juzo, an
actor who turned director with the mildly satirical Ososhiki ( The
Funeral ) in 1984. His follow up Tampopo (1986), a comedy about the
attempts of a proprietress of a noodle bar to serve up the perfect bowl
of ramen, set against the background of Japan's gourmet boom, was an
international success, as was his Marusa no Onna ( A Taxing Woman ) in
1988. The female star of all Itami's movies, which poke gentle fun at
Japanese behaviour and society, was his wife, the comic actress Miyamoto
Nobuko.
The 1990s
Itami's success was consolidated by a string of hits in the 1990s, but
his satirical approach went too far for some with 1992's Minbo-no-Onna (
The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion ), which sent up the yakuza. Soon
after its release, Itami was severely wounded in a knife attack by mob
thugs. Undaunted, he recovered and went on to direct more challenging
comedies, such as Daibyonin (1993), about the way cancer is treated in
Japanese hospitals, and Supa-no-Onna (1995), which revealed the shady
practices of supermarkets. Itami's career ended abruptly in 1997, when
he committed suicide in the wake of a planned exposé of his love life in
a scandal magazine.
Stepping into Itami's shoes as the darling of Japan's contemporary
cinema scene is Takeshi Kitano , better known at home as Beat Takeshi,
after his old comedy double act with Beat Kiyoshi in the Two Beats.
Takeshi had already taken on a serious role in orshima's Merry Christmas
Mr Lawrence when he starred in and also directed Sono Otoko, Kyobo no
Tsuki ( Violent Cop ) in 1989. His next film 3-4 x 10 Gatsu ( Boiling
Point ) was an equally bloody outing, but it was his more reflective and
comic Sonatine (1993), about a gang war in sunny Okinawa, that had
foreign critics hailing him as Japan's Quentin Tarantino.
Surviving a near fatal motorbike accident in 1994, Takeshi has gone on
to broaden his movie range with the badly received comedy Minna
Yatteruka (Getting Any?) and Kid's Return , a sober film about
high-school dropouts. Given his still numerous TV appearances, it's
amazing Takeshi has time to make movies, but 1997's Hanabi saw him back
on form directing himself as a troubled cop pushed to breaking point.
Hanabi scooped up a Golden Lion at the Venice Festival in 1997, just as
Kurosawa's Rashomon had done nearly fifty years previously. The
legendary director, whose historical epics Kagemusha and Ran had blazed
onto the screen in the 1980s, received a lifetime achievement Academy
Award in 1990, the same year as he teamed up with George Lucas and
Steven Spielberg to make the semi-autobiographical Yume ( Dreams ). His
antiwar film Hachigatsu-no-Kyoshikyoku ( Rhapsody in August ; 1991),
however, attracted criticism abroad for its somewhat one-sided treatment
of the subject. Referred to respectfully as "Sensei" (teacher) by all in
the industry, Kurosawa's final film before his death, aged 88 on
September 6, 1998, was the low-key drama Madadayo (1993) about an
elderly academic.
Meanwhile Kurusawa Kiyoshi has begun to make waves with his quirky genre
pictures, such as The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girls (1985), the
Serpent Path (1998) and its sequel Eyes of the Spider (1998). The
prolific Kurusawa also made Licence to Live in 1998, a poignant account
of a 24-year-old man waking from a decade-long coma.
Other independent filmmakers making their mark with more daring subject
matter include Tsukamoto Shin'ya who had an art-house hit with the
sci-fi horror movie Tetsuo , about a man turning into a machine, and
Yazaki Hitoshi who took a cool look at incest in Sangatsu-no-Raion (
March Comes in Like a Lion ). Two notable films focusing on ethnic
minorities are Nakata Toichi 's Osaka Story (1994), charting the
experiences of a gay Korean-Japanese film student returning from London
to his family, and Masato Harada's Kamikaze Taxi , a gangster flick also
about ethnic Japanese who grew up in Brazil and Peru returning to Japan.
These films, plus the stylish futuristic drama Swallowtail Butterfly ,
by hot young talent Iwai Shunji , have attracted favourable attention on
the international circuit.
Meanwhile, the biggest film of the 1990s, Princess Mononoke , was also
the nation's all-time domestic box-office champ, proving the continued
importance and popularity of animated films ( anime ) in Japan . The
film went on to be released in the US, following in the successful
dancesteps of Shall We Dance? . Director Suo Masayuki 's charming
ballroom dancing comedy/drama swept up all thirteen of Japan's Academy
Awards in 1996 and is the most profitable Japanese film ever released in
America.
Pride, the Fateful Moment , was the cause-célèbre film of 1998. A
critique of the war-crime trials held in Tokyo after World War II, this
home-grown Judgement at Nuremburg sparked controversy because of its
sympathetic portrayal of the Japanese and boorish depiction of the
American occupiers. Police were stationed outside many theatres when it
was first released. Among recent successes are two new Takeshi films,
the low-key charmer Kikujiro , which wowed them at Cannes in 1999 and
Brother (about a yakuza who goes to LA to avenge his brother's death),
which screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. Eureka by Aoyama
Shinji, bagged an award at Cannes in 2000, and Poppoya (The Railman),
swept up nine out of the fourteen gongs at the 2000 Japan Academy
Awards.
The wild world of Japanese animation
Anime , which commands an enthusiastic worldwide audience, is a staple
of the Japanese film industry, where cutting-edge technology is
increasingly being used to bring to life tales of such sophistication
and imagination that they leave the sugar-coated works of Disney and
other animation studios standing. In recent releases you're likely to
come across samurai sword wielding, teenage vampire slayers, renegade
surgeons battling for human rights and antigovernment guerrillas.
Although Japan's first animated film was a cartoon short made in 1917,
it wouldn't be until the 1960s, with the success of the "god of manga"
Tezuka Osamu's Astroboy and Kimba, the White Lion that the industry
began to take off. By the time international attention was grabbed in
1988 by Otomo Katsuhiro's dark sci-fantasy Akira, anime was firmly
established, particularly on TV with series such as Mazinger Z and
Bubblegum Crisis . Today the TV big hits such as Pokemon, Dragonball Z
and Neon Genesis Evangelion are bolstered not just by spin-of movies and
other products but also juggernaut marketing campaigns.
The film Ghost in the Shell (Kokaku Kidoutail) in 1995 - including
cyborgs with jacks in their heads, bodies transferring down the
telephone line, martial arts and a master terrorist called the Puppet
Master - was the next overseas success and a strong influence on the
Keanu Reeves flick The Matrix . At the softer end o the scale, animators
Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao teamed up under the banner of Studio
Ghibli , which has spawned a string of charming family-oriented films
including My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and
Porco Rosso (1992), about a swashbucking pig who literally flies.
Miyazaki's 1997 feature Mononoke-hime ( Princess Mononoke ), a violent
fable with a strong environmental message, not only hit the big time in
Japan (it remains the country's No 1 grossing film) but also in the
all-important US market where the dubbed version featured the voices of
Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Billy Bob Thornton. There's minimal need
to dub Blood: The Last Vampire - a film which has been called a cross
between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X Files - since much of its
dialogue is in English. Aimed squarely at the international market, this
horror story, set in a US army base in Japan on the brink of the Vietnam
War, was made by Production IG - one of Japan's hottest animation
studios - using digital technology. The film's amazing visuals are a
sign of how anime is developing, but the same company's Jin Roh , a tale
of government conspiracy, blending sci-fi, thriller and romance themes,
was created using traditional methods and stills looks fantastic.
Films to look out for
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