Japanese film history

Throughout Kore-eda Hirokazu’s films, a series of themes related to death, memory or the assumption of loss are repeated are repeated, often in relation to a paternal figure. From Dare mo shiranai (No Body Knows, 2004), through Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006), Aruitemo aruitemo (Still Walking, 2008), Kiseki (I Wish, 2011), Soshite chichi ni naru (LIke Father, Like Son, 2013), Umimachi Diary (Our Little Sister, 2015), until his last premiered film Umi yorimo mada fukaku (After the Storm, 2016), we find an absent father that causes a series of dramatic daily hecatombs in the life of their families. Kore-eda is often compared to the classic filmmaker Ozu Yasujiro for his sober staging, a mythomania often fed by Kore-eda himself; but beyond this tutor sense, where is the symbolic father of his master’s films? In this paper, I will analyze some representative scenes of symbolic violence that this absence causes in children.


Resumen
A lo largo de la filmografía del cineasta japonés Kore-eda Hirokazu se repiten una serie de temas relacionados con la muerte, la memoria o la asunción de la pérdida, a menudo en relación a una figura paterna. Desde Dare mo shiranai (Nadie sabe, 2004), pasando por Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006), Aruitemo aruitemo (Caminando, 2008), Kiseki (Milagro, 2011), Soshite chichi ni naru (De tal padre, tal hijo, 2013), Umi yori mo mada fukakuaka (Nuestra hermana pequeña, 2015), hasta su último film estrenado Umi yorimo mada fukaku (Después de la tormenta, 2016), nos encontramos con un padre ausente que provoca toda una serie de dramáticas hecatombes cotidianas en la vida de sus familiares. Kore-eda suele ser comparado con el cineasta clásico Ozu Yasujiro por su puesta en escena sobria, una mitomanía alimentada a menudo por el propio Kore-eda; pero más allá de este sentido tutor ¿dónde ha quedado el padre simbólico de los filmes de su maestro? En este análisis voy a deletrear algunas escenas representativas de violencia simbólica que esta ausencia provoca en el niño.

La idea de una especificidad tan marcada en el humor japonés que imposibilita su comprensión a los no-japoneses parece contar con un amplio consenso. Ahí podría radicar el motivo por el cual la comedia japonesa nos resulta una completa desconocida: la supuesta incapacidad para comprender el humor que la sustenta, haría inviable su distribución internacional.
En la primera parte de este capítulo, vamos a tratar de argumentar que, por más extendida que esté esa idea, se trata de un punto de partida erróneo. Tras esta argumentación, concluiremos comentando la literatura publicada sobre la comedia nipona.
La segunda parte la dedicaremos a presentar brevemente los casos de diversos realizadores contemporáneos. En el repaso a esos autores, trataremos de introducir pistas para entender cómo estereotipamos la interpretación de manifestaciones culturalmente lejanas, para dar al lector herramientas que le permitan enfrentarse a esa visión exótica. Para finalizar, se centra la atención en Matsumoto Hitoshi, planteando que podría erigirse en la figura que inicie la demolición de las barreras que mantienen a la comedia japonesa en los márgenes de la periferia de la cultura cinematográfica española.

The purpose of this course is to explore contemporary (and future) Japan through film from the late 1980s to nowadays. The foundations of the course lie in Film Studies in its broader sense. It is not intended to simply summarize the sociopolitical issues of contemporary Japan as depicted in films. Rather, it is designed to analyze the films themselves in order to understand, through their aesthetics and formal aspects, what new forms of production, distribution and consumption, the intersection of screens (in theatres, at home, in our pockets), pop culture and the media mix, etc., tell us about Japan and how its society is evolving.

Pubicado en: Trama y Fondo, 39, Madrid, 77-90, 2016, http://www.tramayfondo.com/revista.html

En este artículo voy a analizar someramente algunas secuencias representativas de películas japonesas de diversas épocas con un nexo común: se trata de relatos en los que se representan, entre otros, personajes femeninos fuertes, pero siniestros, a modo de diosas fantasmales. Por cuestiones de espacio, me centro exclusivamente en cuatro ejemplos representativos, pese a que la filmografía japonesa está llena de patrones similares.

"Meiji no Nihon" (Japan of the Meiji Era) film collection is a unique and well-preserved anthology of films, shot in Japan in 1897 and 1898 by the cinematographers working for the Limière company. Among them were two Frenchmen: François-Constant Girel (1873-1952) and Gabriel Veyre (1871-1936) and one Japanese photographer and later on the cameraman Shibata Tsunekichi (1850-1929), the pioneer of filmmaking in Japan. The titles of many pieces, belonging to the collection, for example, "Kazoku no shokuji" (Family's Meal) or "Tōkyō no tetsudō eki" (Tokyo Train Station) speak for themselves. Motion pictures shot in Japan, during the significant years of 1897 and 98 simply made a spectacle out of daily life, of the late Meiji period. But, on their way cinematographers met performing artists: dancing geishas, shamisen players, troupes of wandering kabuki actors, even dancing Ainus. Motion pictures, depicting all of the performers in action could be seen as first fiction movies, made in Japan. The "Meiji no Nihon" films were the first cinematographic visions of Japan, which were meant to be shown in the European screening halls. That is why they were so important in the process of creating the image of Japan, in the West, in the turn of 19th. and 20th. centuries. Early cinema was rather a spectacle of attractions with less interest in telling stories. To some point, films of "Meiji no Nihon" collection are the examples of this early cinematographic paradigm.

In this article we are talking about a film on INA and Subhash Chandra Bose that was commissioned by Japan during the World War 2 and the project was being handled by none other than Yasizuro Ozu. Ozu was directing the film. But he had to stop midway as the War was nearing the end. According to him, he had destroyed the footage too. However the archival records of #Singapore present a different story. It shows that the unfinished film actually came back to India and so far as the Indian records go, the film was completed and released here in 1948. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel had played key roles in the process. 

When punk impressed itself upon Japanese youth culture in the mid-to-late 1970s, it arrived at a time when the nation’s film industry was in crisis. The studio system that had presided over film production for decades was in serious decline, curbing opportunities for the next generation of filmmaking talent by ceasing to take on new apprentices. Inspired by the DIY ideology of the emerging punk scene, young, aspiring filmmakers took matters into their own hands by forming small clubs to self-produce zero-budget short and feature-length films on their own terms, relying on friends, classmates, musicians and other hangers-on, and using relatively cheap Super 8 and 16mm filmmaking equipment. In doing so, punk-inspired 'jishu seisaku eiga' (‘autonomously-produced cinema’) became an exciting nonprofessional alternative to the stagnating professional studio system, with many of its amateur participants going on to become influential figures within the Japanese film industry of today. This presentation seeks to provide an audio-visual exploration of punk’s overlooked emergence in Japan, its impact on (and synthesis with) 'jishu' film production, it being a catalyst for important aesthetic schisms such as ‘cyberpunk’, and how it mobilised Japanese cinema to rejuvenate itself. [This paper was subsequently expanded and published as an article with the same name in: Punk and Post Punk, Vol.6, No.1. pp.97-121]

Al escuchar el nombre "Godzilla" (en realidad: ゴジラ Gōjira) se evoca una serie de películas, y otros medios de entretenimiento, en donde un gigantesco monstruo (怪獣 kaijū) arrasa todo lo que se interpone a su paso, ya sea para destruir una ciudad, o bien, para defenderla de otros kaijū. El argumento, al parecer, resulta sencillo: los seres humanos deben ingeniárselas para sobrevivir a toda costa, incluso, si eso significa causar más destrucción que los propios kaijū.

En este sentido, Godzilla no es bueno o malo, ya que él es una figura metafórica de las fuerzas de la naturaleza y su interacción con la humanidad. Asimismo, este mítico ser es todo un icono del Japón, por lo que desde el año de 2015 es oficialmente ciudadano y Embajador de turismo en Tokio. Esta ponencia se presentó el 16 de Enero de 2020 en la sesión del seminario Japón y los Imaginarios Transculturales en el Museo Nacional de las Culturas del Mundo, Ciudad de México.

Abstract en Chino (idioma original): 摘要：自杀是一种现代社会普遍存在的问题，在不同的国家，不同的文化对于自杀的理解都不一样，而且媒体在对自杀问题进行报道时也有不同的偏重。实际上媒体可以是很多问题解决的一个很好的工具，包括自杀的问题。本文中，主要探讨了如何使漫画这种媒介方式成为防治和干预自杀的社会传播手段
Abstract en Español: Vivimos en un mundo lleno de películas, si no queremos volver a ver la misma película todos los días, tenemos que saber criticar negativamente una obra famosa. La sociedad normal debe  aprender a hacer análisis cinematográficos y con ello el apreciar los diferentes generos, Terror y horros son generos difíciles de apreciar y necesita enseñarse a la sociedad a apreciarlos. El cine y los video son ahora algo muy común pero apesar de que hay mucho material de video la gente sigue pagando para ver una película de la cual ya conocen la historia, lo cual la convierte en “vieja”. Las empresas cinematográficas aprovechar las historias populares y más famosas para obtener ventas seguras, basta con sustituir el actor o director para dar la sensación de “nuevo”. La gente sabe que la historia no es el original pero sigue viendo la misma historia por famosa. Sin embargo, las películas de terror son una excepción a la regla de “lo ya visto como venta segura”, ya que si se conoce la historia y se sabe lo que sucederá en una película de terror ya no se sentirá el miedo que se busca probocar. Si quieres una película de terror taquillera la historia tiene que ser original. Las personas que pagan para ver una película de terror esperan que sea una nueva historia, no solo el uso de nuevos materiales y técnicas funciona dentro del mundo del terror. En éste artículo se analíza la importancia de una película de terror como genero en el cine y la importancia de saberlo criticar. El análisis del cine de terror es muy importante, pero por ignorancia los criticos de cine no muestran interes en explicar a la gente el cómo comprender o entender este genero. Al parecer los criticos de cine no quieren aceptar que el genero de terror sevende y  tambien el que es muy dificil realizarlo bien.

When punk impressed itself upon Japanese youth culture in the mid-to-late 1970s, it arrived at a time when the nation’s film industry was in crisis. The studio system that had presided over film production for decades was in serious decline, curbing opportunities for the next generation of filmmaking talent by ceasing to take on new apprentices. Inspired by the DIY ideology of the emerging punk scene, young, aspiring filmmakers took matters into their own hands by forming small clubs to self-produce zero-budget short and feature-length films on their own terms, relying on friends, classmates, musicians and other hangers-on, and using relatively cheap Super 8 and 16mm filmmaking equipment. In doing so, punk-inspired 'jishu seisaku eiga' (‘autonomously-produced cinema’) became an exciting nonprofessional alternative to the stagnating professional studio system, with many of its amateur participants going on to become influential figures within the Japanese film industry of today. This presentation seeks to provide an audio-visual exploration of punk’s overlooked emergence in Japan, its impact on (and synthesis with) 'jishu' film production, it being a catalyst for important aesthetic schisms such as ‘cyberpunk’, and how it mobilised Japanese cinema to rejuvenate itself.

[This paper was subsequently expanded and published as an article with the same name in: Punk and Post Punk, Vol.6, No.1. pp.97-121]

Racialization of crime and the criminalization of race are key mechanisms through which the legal justice system and cultural representations maintain the status quo (Jiwani). This article examines the racialization of war crimes and the particular representation of landscapes in the 21-minute National Film Board documentary The Mask of Nippon (dir. Margaret Palmer, 1942) by comparing it with Profile of Nippon, a 25-minute tourist documentary produced by Tōhō Films in 1936.