The Twenties
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The book entitled The Japanese Film by Ildikó Berkes and Károly Nemes is out soon. Readers of Filmkultúra can get a glance at it as we present one chapter of the book here.

The Twenties

Social Conditions

As the Japanese cinema, like many others, has been strongly affected by social and political changes, let us make some preliminary remarks on Japan in the twenties.

Japan took sides with the Allies in the First World War and consequently kept on strengthening her favourable position in the area (e.g. by getting hold of the German colonies). By the end of the war, however, industrial prosperity was over and could not be recreated by Japan's participation in the intervention against Soviet Russia. In fact, the financial and economic crisis was even deepened by the defeat against the Soviets in 1922. (It was also in 1922 that the Japanese Communist Party was founded which, however, worked mostly underground and was not a significant political factor.) What was called rice revolts did not shatter the country but indicated an economic recession which got even worse after the extremely strong Tokyo earthquake in 1923 when 180.000 (!) people died.1 It was not before 1926 that some economic revival could be felt but its temporary character made the Japanese foreign policy aggressive in the belief that the oncoming crisis could be averted by success abroad. At first this policy failed as the attacks on Manchuria in 1927-28 illustrated. The lack of success abroad, however, led to an even stronger repression of the peasants' and workers' movements at home. The effect of the world-wide depression in 1929 rendered the situation even more serious: production fell by fifty per cent and three million people were unemployed. The effort to find a way out resulted in another aggression against China: Japan occupied Northeast China in 1931 and established the puppetstate Manchuko in 1932. The very same year a military coup d'état was attempted in order to introduce dictatorship is Japan.

That is to say, the period when the Japanese film art started to attain full growth was not peaceful at all in Japan. Although economic and political factors were not the only ones to determine the development of film art, they did affect the interrelation of production and art. That is, producers tried to influence artists.

The Rise of the Film Industry

The competition among film companies manifested itself both in influencing art and in creating new companies and mergers. The production firm Kokusai Katsui (shortly: Kokkatsu) founded in 1919 merged into the Wikkatsu as early as in 1921. In the meantime fifteen more film companies came into being, including such important ones as Teikoku Kinema Geijutsu (shortly: Teikikine) founded in 1920. As the firm Toa appeared on the scene in 1924, the four majors, i.e. Nikkatsu, Shochiku, Teikine and Toa, joined forces and established the Association of Japanese Film Producers in 1925 in order to push the independents out of film production. Although their endeavour failed growing competition had a stimulating effect on production.

The Shochiku could successfully compete with the Nikkatsu when — after the devastating earthquake — the owner's thirty year old son-in-law, Kido Shiro2 had been appointed as its new director. He supported the production of contemporary films as opposed to the shimpa tragedies preferred by his predecessor and surrounded himself with talented young filmmakers like Ozu, Gosho, Ushihara, Shimazu and Shimizu, and in fact, gave them more or less free hand. He had shaped the character of Shochiku films for the long run by having developed what was called "Kamata style" after the company's studio built in Kamata, Tokyo. Kido's ideal was the "cheerful and healthy" comedy reflecting the contradictions of the contemporary Japanese reality with a realism which was light and moderate rather than gloomy and did not challenge the social system as a whole. This type of film has grown into the much talked-of shomin-geki which excels in the realistic representation of the everyday life of the (lower) middle class.

As a result of the competition, the conservative Nikkatsu tried to modernise as well. On the recommendation of Murata Minoru, the company's actual chief producer, Mori Iwao,3 a specialist for importing foreign films and a representative of the new intelligentsia, was appointed as Nikkatsu's new director. It was around this time that Shochiku and Nikkatsu divided the market among themselves: the former has been catering for female, the latter for male audience mainly ever since.

Another development of the time was the renewed breakthrough and transformation of period film. It was due — among others — to Hirodito's accession to the throne in 1926: he increased the role of the army and supported the traditions of Japanese ideology and culture as opposed to Western influence from the beginning of his rule (Showa-period, 1926-1989). The new period films were based on popular serialised novels rather than on kabuki plays or less complex legends about the brave deeds of historical figures. These novels published in dailies and journals endowed the well known heroes with psychological background and created new ones whose nihilistic revolt truly reflected the social unrest of the time. The reason why these more complex stories and characters could be adapted to the screen was, of course, the ever growing use of scripts, intertitles and a more refined photography and montage.

Young directors introduced to period films a dynamism similar to that of the American western by concentrating on and portraying the swordfights more realistically. This is how the swordfight film (kengeki) was born.4 As opposed to the established narrative pattern, any clear distinction between good and bad was rejected here and the hero was glorified for revolting against authority, i.e. the discredited feudal values. The "rebel subgenre" as Lisa Spalding calls it (11;137) was especially popular between 1923 and 1931 and had been developed, first of all, by the talented youngsters discovered by Makino Shozo. The scriptwriters Susukida Rokuhei and Yamagami Itaro, the new samurai star Bando Tsumasaburo and the director Makino Masahiro, Shozo's elder son, contributed a lot to the success of this type of film.5 Of the few still extant examples Okochi (1925)6 and The Street of the Masterless Samurai (1928)7 are the best known.

During the twenties cinema had become, indeed, a mass medium in Japan. The national film production increased ten times as compared to a merely three times growth of foreign import.8 As before, the greatest influence on young Japanese filmmakers was exerted by European and especially American films with their technical innovations.9 The most direct effect of Western productions could be seen in the works of Abe Yutaka10 and Ushihara Kiyohiko11 . Having lived in the USA since his early youth and working in numerous Hollywood productions, Abe returned home to Kyoto in 1924 on the Nikkatsu's invitation and became one of the most elegant and fashionable directors of the period. His films displayed some of the (Ernst) Lubitsch touch but his main service to Japanese film art was an innovative portrayal of love scenes. Ushihara, a former apprentice of Osanai in the experimental workshop of the Shochiku, spent six months in the USA in 1926 and learnt the craft of director and cameraman while working with Chaplin. On the whole, it was modernism and pessimism with regard to social progress that characterised the works of young filmmakers in the second half of the twenties.

In most Western cinemas the twenties, when the classical film art was born, are more or less clearly distinguishable from the thirties when — as a result of a more direct relation between cinema and society — stories about individual heroes came into prominence. Films, due to the sound, could reveal more of their heroes' psychological reality and introduced authentic personalities with more subtly indicated motivations. By revolting against the traditional group interests and community values, the most important Japanese film made during these two decades display much more similarity and unity. The individual started to play a great role as a personality rather than a type. It held equally true of films on contemporary subjects (gendai-geki), those about the life of everyday people (shomin-geki) included, and of period films (jidai-geki). It was, of course, partly due to the fact that the most remarkable filmmakers of the twenties, namely Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, Kinugasa Teinosuke and Ito Daisuke, continued to shape the artistic profile of the Japanese cinema in the thirties as well. There were naturally many others at work but the main course of the given period was determined by the art of those mentioned above.

Ozu Yasujiro

Born in a merchant's family and entering the Shochiku as cameraman after some study of commerce and a short period of teaching, Ozu is generally considered to be the most Japanese of all film directors. His films concentrate mostly on the Japanese family. Accordingly his main concern is the interrelation of the family members, especially that of different generations, rather than some romantic love conflict. In his analysis of the family Ozu portrays characters and their development by cumulating minor details rather than by great dramatic outbursts. Consequently, the tempo of his films is rather slow. Ozu relates everything to the "internal" world of his hero rather than to stormy "outside" events, and introduces to his audience the common man with his everyday drama portrayed in the context of everyday life. This drama usually is caused by the pressure of poverty and the impossibility of breaking out from it, the compromises, humiliation and resignation as the price of adjustment to life in society. There is nothing extraordinary in the imagery, either. Characters are mostly shot from a low angle as if seen by those sitting on a tatami. In order to achieve a great deal of authenticity, Ozu paid much attention to sets, props and design and their composition as they have an important part in creating atmosphere and mood. Individual sequences keep on repeating just as in the real experience of those who live in the same environment.

What has been said above became evident for the first time in two films directed by Ozu in 1929: I. Graduated but... and The Life of an Office Worker (especially in the former one which follows the life of an unemployed). These films whose very titles refer to lower middle class subject are closely related to such later works of Ozu as Tokyo Chorus (1931) and I Was Born but... (1932), both of which indicate a transition to sound film. Ozu, fascinated as early as a schoolboy by Western films, especially Italian spectacular and American adventure movies, had learned his craft as assistant director in nonsense comedies (nansensu mono), the Japanese equivalent of the American slapstick, and directed himself by the dozen such American type comedies from 1928 on. It was, however, in his life-long favourite genre, the realistic shomin-geki with its social message, that his knack for observation and his comic fantasy have fully developed.

Tokyo Chorus, one of Ozu's, most characteristic works, clearly demonstrates the difference between the Japanese and the Western cinema. A married insurance agent with two kids loses his job because he intervened at his boss on behalf of an elder colleague being fired. He is employed by his former gym-teacher now running a restaurant. His wife realises with contempt that he has become an advertising "sandwich-man" in the streets. Finally, with his friends' assistance, he gets a job as English teacher in the country.

The primary concern of this film is not material difficulties as such but the process of how the helpless hero becomes nobody by losing the respect of his family and his environment. It is a far cry from the American conviction that whoever is not able to make money deserves to stay poor as he obviously cannot make use of the possibilities. What Ozu's film is about is rather moral and spiritual than material. According to tradition, the head of the family should be above his wife and children so that they could look up to him. But how to look up to a "sandwichman"?

It is even more subtly conveyed in the other film based on Ozu's own idea. I Was Born but ..., intended as a comedy about children ("a picture-book for grown-ups" — says the sub-title), turned into a rather gloomy film about grownups. The servility of a clerk, having moved his family to the suburb of Tokyo to be closer to his boss, is revealed to his sons by an amateur film: he plays the clown to please the boss. The two little boys, disappointed in their much respected father, are deeply shocked since the boss' son attending the same school readily accepts their superiority. In answer to their angry contempt the father explains them: he has to humiliate himself in order to feed the family.

In the Japanese cinema there are quite a few tendency, or even openly propaganda films. Ozu's films, even if they might seem so, are never like that. The small details which often seem insignificant but recreate the fullness of life exclude this possibility. It is, however, significant what aesthetic image results from the numerous enlisted minor facts of everyday life. Unlike in Western films, it is not his fighting spirit or rebelling attitude which earns the hero — the agent and the clerk respectively — a positive aesthetic qualification. Faced with his wife's contempt, all what the humiliated hero of Tokyo Chorus says is: "When life turns bad one has to depend on things not too good". The father when called a coward and nobody in the other film displays his anger by clapping his son, end the boys go on a hunger strike in protest against his explanation that their food is earned by his humiliation. Eventually they make it up, of course, and in the final sequence the father climbs into the car of his boss much relieved as his elder son urges hiu to do so, while his children, having learned something about life's complexity, keep on terrorising the boss' son with more pleasure than ever. With a brilliance which — according to Sato Tadao is equalled by Vittorio De Sica in Bucycke Tgueves (1948), Ozu portrays the gentle mutual understanding reached by the boys and their father who retreats from the pedestal of the patriarchal family head to equal footing with his children: "they are like friends who are careful not to hurt each other's feelings (13;1336). It is this solidarity that helps the father to tolerate the shame and self-reproach felt over his losing his face and soothes his sons' embittered anger caused by illusions lost. In this way Ozu reveals us the "everyday" heroism of mere survival manifest in the endurance of hardships and in devotion to the community in general and the family in particular.

Tokyo Chorus, basically a satire shot with frequent camera movements, abounds in gags like drying banknotes all over the office — after the secretive clerks counted their premium in the privacy of the toilet. I Was Born but... which tells its story from the children's point of view relies mainly on natural comic effects innate in the situation. The grownups' world with its illogical social differences appears ridiculous, indeed, when confronted with the charming innocence of the boys who live in another — more natural — hierarchy of physical strength. However, humour is gradually mixed with sadness as Ozu tries to show us as wholly as possible the miserable life of the clerk's family (their life and not their misery!). Soon thess truants who have fought out their superiority with the help of an elder friend will be forced to fit into the strict hierarchy of the big society where the individual's value is dependant on his position. By making us realise this fact, Ozu confronts us with the "order of things" which cannot be changed radically still can be transcended emotionally by accepting the fact: "such is life". Like Chaplin, so much adored in Japan12 , Ozu successfully united tragic and comic without turning sentimental. This very complex bittersweet feeling — often called mono no aware — was conveyed by him with such subtlety that this early silent masterpiece of his had been voted by contemporary critics the best Japanese production of the year 1932.


Notes

  1. Due to the earthquake of September 1, 1925, which was then portrayed in many films, both Shochiku and Nikkatsu moved — for one and more than ten years respectively — to Kyoto, famous for its historical monuments, where each of them had already built a studio for period films. Kyoto was called the "Japanese Hollywood" at that time. See 7;33-34.
  2. On the law-school graduate Kide see 7;51-53.
  3. On Mori Iwao see 7;57-58.
  4. Kengeki was also inspired by contemporary theatre and literature: see 7;36-37 and 13;39-40. Shinkogugeki (New National Theatre), Swada Shojiro's popular company performed real swordfights on the stage in 1919 ("Kunisada Chuji"), and the archetype of the nihilistic hero, Tsukus Ryunosuke, was introduced in 1920 in the stage version of the socialist Nakazato Kaizan's popular novel ("The Great Bodhisattva Pass"). Tsukus, a wandering swordfighter, took sides neither with the shogun nor the emperor in the chaotic pre-Meiji times.
  5. The masterless samurai or frustrated commoners, replacing the superheroes performed by Onoe, were confronted with society as a whole rather than with supernatural monsters or individual badmen. This new rebelling hero was introduced to the cinema by the versatile Susukita who had "Americanised" the period film (13;38 and 11,138) and was perfectly embodied by Bando (1901-1953), a former performer of secondary roles in kabuki, who excelled in swordfight and radiated fatalism (7;37 and 19;47). Susukita and Bando who founded an independent production firm in 1925 with Universal's backing left the Makino Studio rather soon, but Yamagami (1903-1945), later attracted to tendency films, continued his successful co-operation with Makino Masahiro until he got fatally ill on the front. On all the three of them see 7;36-40.
  6. Swordfight made up one third of Okochi, the second production of Bando's firm (Bantsuma Pro), which was written by Susukita and directed by Kurihara's pupil, Futagawa Buntaro (1899-1966). On the latter see 18;191; on the film see 18;58-59. Early in the 18th century young samurai (Bando) rejected by his beloved and undeservedly expelled from his clan becomes an outlaw ronin. By saving his love and her husband, kept imprisoned by his host, he goes against the feudal rule which demands total loyalty in exchange for food and accommodation (11;138).
  7. The Street of the Masterless Samurai, a three-part Makino production, voted by critics as best film of the year, was written by Yamagami and directed by Makino Masahiro and portrayed the various adventures of unemployed ronins. On this trilogy of which only seven reels survived see 18;60-61 and 7;39.
  8. As compared to 1920 when 1914 reels /!/ were produced and 5019 reels of foreign films were distributed in Japan, in 1924 21.441 reels of Japanese films were made while only 16.222 reels of foreign films were shown. See 18;13.
  9. The following films had especially great success (the second number indicates the year of distribution in Japan): Civilization (USA, 1916, Thomas Ince — 1917), Intolerance (USA, 1916, D.W. Griffith — 1919), Broken Blossoms (USA, 1919, Griffith — 1922), Dr. Caligari Germany, 1919, Robert Wiene — 1921), A Women of Paris ( USA, 1923, Charles Chaplin — 1924), The Last Man (Germany, 1924, F.W. Murnau — 1926). See 18;13.
  10. The master of refined eroticism and modern morals, Abe Yutaka (1895-1977) worked in Hollywood from 19l1 to 1924, then in his two hits developed the style of light comedy so much missing from Japanese cinema (7;59). The Woman Whose Leg Touched Mine (1926), the best film of the year according to the critics, is an erotic crime movie about a writer, a lady-thief and a detective who all spend one night in a sleeper. (It was later remade by Idhikawa — 1;302 — and then Masumura — 12;132.) Five Women around Him (1927) written by Tanaka Eizo relied on the studio's female stars: a bachelor is adored by a geisha, a servant girl, an actress, a merchant's daughter and a high-ranking lady. As director of spectacular nationalistic war films, Abe was banned till 1961. On his career see 7;59-60 and 19;1.
  11. Ushihara Kiyohiko (1897-1985), a graduate of Tokyo university, joined the Shochiku company in 1920. As Osanai's assistant in the Shochiku Film Institute, he was also scriptwriter of Murata's Souls on the Road. A director in his own right since 1921, Ushihara used what he had learned in the USA in three puberty films starring Tanaka Kinuyo. In the thirties he left for Europe and America, and in 1952 stopped making films. On his career see 19;675.
  12. Chaplin, met with great enthusiasm on his visit to Japan in 1932, is said to represent the comic ideal of the Japanese since his films made them laugh and cry at the same time (1;144-5).

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