Books Around : Japanese Film, Vol. 1

by Olaf Möller

A few months ago I proposed the idea of a regular column on film books, with one condition: I didn’t want any limits regarding the languages in which the books were written. I read around a dozen languages—admittedly, some less fluent than others—occasionally I like to put that to some use. In my hometown’s (Köln) finest foreign-language bookshop (called “Books Around”) I help out in times of consumerist frenzies, and consult whenever customers ask for some really obscure stuff (“I go to Tuva and I’m looking for a Tuvinian novel in English…”). I also travel around covering or working for film festivals, so over the years I’ve got a pretty decent idea about what’s out there, film books-wise. Just one example: Most people probably wouldn’t guess that Italy is the home of one of the biggest film-book cultures in the world. They even publish books on their third-tier directors (I’ve got auteur studies of Italian crossing guards like Mario Mattoli).

So, the point of this column is: There are a lot of interesting books published in many different languages, and, thanks to the internet, it’s by now pretty easy to get them. And if you don’t know the languages, that’s your problem. A certain polyglotism is pretty ordinary for me, as it is for a huge amount of people in this world—so consider this column also a reminder of the diversity and richness of our lives. All that being said, most of the books reviewed here will probably be in English, French, or Italian— but be prepared to suddenly stumble over a book in Spanish, Swedish, or Japanese: You might not be able to read it, but somebody else will, so you’ll have to leave some fun for the others.

There’s one more thing: I’m not one of the hit-the-shops-just-yesterday guys. I’m more interested in contexts, therefore I’ll usually try to package the books—which in some cases may already be (gasp!) a year old—according to some subject which, again, could be a country (like in this column) or a publishing house (the French publishing house Éditions Léo Scheer is just begging for an appraisal) or, why not, a language. A future column might be devoted solely to Italian publications— say, a round-up of 2003-4 publications—as I’m going to do some serious film-book shopping when I’m in Italy in the final weeks of June.

Today’s topic is Japanese cinema. A lot of remarkable (and some unremarkable) books on the world’s most underrated film culture were published in 2003 and 2004, and, yes, they’re all in English. Except for one which is “only” a festival catalogue and “only” in German—well, mainly in German but with some English texts, too—but it definitely deserves mentioning for the importance of its subject: Art Theatre Guild (Viennale and Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien, 2003; ISBN 3901770127), edited by Roland Domenig, who put together the Viennale 2003 retrospective it accompanied. ATG, if you’ve never heard of it, was Japan’s first chain of (what would be called today) arthouse cinemas which developed into the country’s cradle of arthouse filmmaking. Most of the films that constitute the current canon of late Japanese New Wave-masterpieces made between the late 60s and mid-70s by the likes of Oshima Nagisa, Yoshida Kiju, and Terayama Shuji were ATG productions. Art Theatre Guild is not the thick tome this subject deserves, and the essays are, let’s say, more of the introductory kind—the most rewarding piece is Hirasawa Go’s text (in English) on the mid- to late-60s underground/avant-garde scene of which ATG, especially the Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka in Tokyo, was a central part. Domenig’s interview (in German) with Kuzui Kinshiro, the visionary, suavely bottom-line-conscious producer behind ATG’s early masterpieces, is also rewarding; and the very thoroughly researched filmography listing every film ATG produced and/or distributed alone makes the catalogue well worth having.

But on to the books. Let’s start with the more popular, less intellectually challenging stuff: Mark Schilling’s The Yakuza Movie Book (Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, 2003; ISBN 1880656760) and Jonathan Clements and Motoko Tamamuro’s The Dorama Encyclopedia (Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, 2004; ISBN: 1880656817). The latter—an encyclopedia on Japanese TV series (with, unfortunately, no TV movies or plays)—is something to put on the shelf without reading: It’s a work one consults occasionally. Some will argue this is the fate of any encyclopedia, but that’s nonsense—just check out the BFI-published Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen: the entries carry, nay, urge you through this hefty tome. But the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema is a scholarly opus while The Dorama Encyclopedia never transcends its fan roots: It features a very basic introduction, an okay index, ultra-basic credits, and agreeable summaries—but rarely any in-depth discussions (there’s the odd reference to anime, another of Clements’ major fields of interest). One has to be a fan of Japanese series-TV to cherish this book, as its boring pseudo-professional fashion won’t win over any converts. Nevertheless it’s a handy source for filmographical miscellanea.

Of equally limited use and interest, I’m sad to say, is The Yakuza Movie Book. Given the since-Kitano interest in Japanese gangster films, it was just a matter of time before somebody would publish a more extensive study on the subject, and it’s a good thing that a serious and thoughtful journalist like Mark Schilling did. That said, there are many problems with Schilling’s book. The highlighted films and directors are too precisely right in terms of this place and time, and the book is mainly about what’s known (by) now—especially in the West—and not really about what should be known in general; it’s reassuring without opening up too many new perspectives.

Let’s get at the problem from an auteurist point-of-view: In its profile/interview-section the book features some key directors but certainly not all of them—which might be a lot to ask for a first English-language study of a phenomenon, but still...For example, as much as I admire Kitano Takeshi’s work and as much as I can understand the reasons behind featuring him in the profile section—given his popularity in the West—it still seems absurd to feature him but not a classic master like Makino Masahiro who made considerably more decisive contributions to the genre. Makino’s films are at least of equal importance as those of the also-profiled/interviewed Ishii Teruo who’s probably featured so prominently because of his designated cult-director status in the West—the importance of Ishii’s contribution to the genre, especially with both the Man from Abashiri Prison and Gang series, notwithstanding. I would even include directors who might not have changed the face of the genre but nevertheless made a respectable amount of—sometimes even great—films, like Yamashita Kosaku or Nakajima Sadao (both mainly in the 60s and 70s) or Izumi Seiji (in the 90s) before I would profile Kitano in a yakuza movie book. In the end, Kitano isn’t that important for the genre per se: he uses its surface but doesn’t really immerse himself in it, in contrast to his also-profiled/interviewed contemporary Mochizuki Rokuro. And while Makino, Yamashita, Nakajima, and Izumi are at least touched upon in the book’s review section—the first with four, the second with two films, and the final two with only one film each (and Nakajima only with a hack job)—others like Furuhata Yasuo or Saeki Kiyoshi (to stick with Toei-directors, as things get a little more complex, genre-definition-wise, with Nikkatsu or Daiei-directors) are only mentioned in passing in the profile/interview section, and not even deigned worthy of being featured with at least one film in the review section. Instead, there are many films featured by directors that just touched upon the genre, like Ichikawa Kon with The Wanderers (1973), Omori Kazuki with Succession Ceremony (1992), or Negishi Kichitaro with Ties (1998) which, again, wouldn’t be that problematic if only they had done something with it (Ichikawa did, but the others just seemed clueless).

Two further problems. Number one: Schilling puts too much stress on the 90s—without getting really into the world of V-Cinema (the mighty massive direct-to-video-movie market, a Klondike for the true cinephiles)—and not enough on the 60s and 70s (and let’s not get into the problem of chambara-as-yakuza eiga, meaning that a lot of classic sword-fighting movies from the 20s-50s are, milieu-wise, essentially gangster films). Problem number two: The book includes totally unnecessary pans of movies from the 90s while missing loads of films and series from the 60s and 70s. Now, why would one not include more recommendations—pointing the way for the quest ahead—rather than printing pans of films too irrelevant or uninspired to even serve as bad examples? Because some of these pieces have already been written—and some were even published in Schilling’s Contemporary Japanese Film. This is not about using old stuff again—this is about using old stuff again in a useless way. Quite probably, most of the yawn-yawn-90s movies are as unavailable as subtitled prints/videos/DVD as the 60s and 70s stuff, so one cannot even argue that availability for Westerners was a selection criterion. The Yakuza Movie Book is neither an accurate description of the history of yakuza eiga which might serve as an overview map for a voyage of discovery, nor is it a catalogue raisonné of what’s currently available—it’s very limited and in general not very helpful. In fact, with its misspelled titles and different English names for the same film, the book appears to have been in the editorial/proofreading stage when it was rushed to publication. The coup de grace: Of the five yakuza eiga that were shown in May and June on CineCinema Auteur in France as announced in Cahiers du Cinéma no. 590, only one was featured in The Yakuza Movie Book.

Tom Mes certainly did a better job in his related Agitator. The Cinema of Takashi Miike (FAB Press, Godalming, 2003; ISBN: 1903254213). Again, this could have been a fanboy disaster but it isn’t, and while it’s not as exhaustive and intellectually challenging as it could have been it works perfectly well inside the parameters Mes seems to have set for his discussion of Miike’s oeuvre till late 2002 (the last film included is Deadly Outlaw: Rekka—he must have made something like seven or eight more since then). The most important of these parameters seems to have been: Stick close to the primary text, i.e., the story and what can be seen and heard (and read in the subtitles), and include in your interpretations as few references to Japanese culture and history as possible so that every average non-Japanese viewer can follow you. This Mes does, and he never once stumbles; one might argue about his judgments, but that’s the nature of the game. But seeing this approach applied to Visitor Q (2001), it becomes obvious just how many levels remain hidden: There’s nothing about the religious, Buddhist as well as Shamanist symbolism in this video-film (there’s actually a lot of religion to be found in Miike), and nothing about the way the film relates to very real social problems in Japan. Well, Mes probably didn’t want to alienate his potential readership. That said, Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike is a sturdy, very well researched, and solidly argued auteurist study that in some respects dares to counter its designated audience’s expectations—Mes forcefully stresses Miike’s humanist side while most others try to sell him as this ultra-nihilistic weirdo. Which makes it as solid a foundation for a subject as there ever was, and praised be it.