The Uses of History in the Cinema of Japan, 1925-1945
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Re-Viewing the Past: The Uses of History in the Cinema of Japan, 1925-1945 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation O'Reilly, Sean D. 2015. Re-Viewing the Past: The Uses of History in the Cinema of Japan, 1925-1945. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467187 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA REVIEWING THE PAST: THE USES OF HISTORY IN THE CINEMA OF JAPAN, 1925-1945 A dissertation presented by Sean D O'Reilly to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History and East Asian Languages Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts © 2015 – Sean D O'Reilly All rights reserved. Professor Andrew Gordon Sean O'Reilly Re-viewing the Past: The Uses of History in the Cinema of Japan, 1925-1945 Abstract In this thesis I use historical films to construct a social history of Japan's tumultuous interwar and wartime periods. I analyze filmic depictions of the Bakumatsu period (1853-1868), Japan's rocky transition to modernity, from the perspective of the audiences of 1925-1945, an era in which societal interest in representations of the Bakumatsu period soared. Methodologically, I use close visual analysis but move beyond an aesthetically-minded film studies approach to raise issues of audience reception, war and society, empire, sexuality and gender, censorship, urban spaces and popular culture in modern Japan. I have thereby intervened in the existing scholarship, which has either largely ignored films or focused overmuch on film's aesthetic merits. I seek to reclaim films, especially popular films, as historical sources. Close visual analysis illuminates aspects of visual texts that a solely historiographic approach might overlook. And a 'history-as-experience' focus on the audience, and the history of the period in which a given visual text was produced, is critical to the process of historical contextualization. The body of films I analyze offers vital evidence of then-current socio-cultural conditions and perspectives on history. I analyze commercially successful films, produced from 1925 to the war's end, in five chapters, on revisionism, comedy, serial history, hate the enemy films, and romances, respectively, and highlight the ambivalence of each type over the significance of the Bakumatsu period. Despite increasing pressure on the film industry to produce deadly serious hegemonic narratives supportive of the state and later the war effort, the hit films I examine contain many potentially subversive undercurrents. Their box office success indicates that covert resistance to Japan's militaristic course won favor with audiences. Those who lived through the 'dark valley' of 1925-1945 used Bakumatsu films to create a popular culture that was lighter in tone, and more resistant to state goals, than prior research on interwar Japan suggests. Table of Contents Description Page Number Acknowledgements vi A Note on Copyright and Name Order vii Glossary of Key Terms and Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 Why Analyze Popular History Films from Japan? Goals and Stakes 1 What Each Chapter Seeks to Address 9 Popular Culture and the Culture Industry: Theoretical Underpinnings 14 History as Event: the Bakumatsu 18 Chapter One: Valorizing the Villains 23 The First Bakumatsu Boom and 1927's Sonnō jōi Introduction: Historical Resentment and the Social Function of the Bakumatsu Boom 23 Case Study: Sonnō jōi and the changing mythologies of the Bakumatsu 40 Close Analysis: The Assassination Scene, 98:58-100:14 63 Conclusion: the Progressive Potential of Sonnō jōi 70 Chapter Two: History as Nonsense 73 Historical Parodies of the Bakumatsu The King of Comedy: Enomoto "Enoken" Ken'ichi 75 Bakumatsu as Nonsense: Enoken Plays Kondō Isami 78 Kondō as Parody of Bakumatsu History—and the Period Film Genre 94 Comedic Precursors: the Yaji Kita Film Trilogy 100 The Case of Revering the Emperor 106 Inspired by Hollywood? Behind the Front 109 Conclusion 115 Chapter Three: Serial History 121 The Case of Kurama Tengu Introduction: Presentational Heroes, Intertextual Stars 121 Case Study: Kurama Tengu Films from the Late 1920s 128 Shifting the Target Audience: Kurama Tengu in the late 1930s 132 The Most Popular Kurama Tengu Film of the War: Itō Daisuke's Adaptation 144 Comparing Itō's Version to Other 1940s Kurama Tengu Films 184 Chapter Four: Consuming History, Hating the Enemy 189 Introduction: the Problem of Sources, the Problem of History 189 The Anglo-Satsuma War on Film: The Pirates' Flag Is Blasted Away 199 Film and Empire: The Case of Signal Fires 212 Conclusion 248 Chapter Five: Romancing History 249 Introduction 249 Armed and Dangerous: The Woman Who Wields a Sword 256 The Late 1930s Model of Historical Femininity: Flowers Have Fallen 264 The Early 1943 Model of Historical Femininity: Kantarō of Ina 269 Love over Duty: Outa as True Protagonist of Chōji the Famous Sculptor 284 The Uses of Comedy in Chōji the Famous Sculptor 296 The Politics: Analysis of Kusakabe "Killing" Vairocana, 53:52 to 56:25 304 The Romance: Analyzing the Climax of the Film, 66:12 to 68:50 307 The Victory of Love: Outa's Motivation 310 Vengeful Virtue: a Woman's Vendetta in Bijomaru the Famous Sword 312 Conclusion 315 Epilogue: Transwar Japan 318 Beyond 1945: Bakumatsu Films and Transwar Japan 322 A Period Film with a Buzz Cut: the Case of The Last Expulsionist Party 327 Appendix A: The Aftermath of Signal Fires over Shanghai in Japan and China 337 Appendix B: Historical Alterations in Signal Fires over Shanghai 340 Appendix C: Echoes of the Bakumatsu in Films Set in the Wartime Present: Army 342 Appendix D: Growing Proactivity in Women's Roles in Wartime Cinema 345 Appendix E: The Meiji Drama 349 Bibliography 355 Acknowledgements This project would never have been possible without the gracious and patient support of a great many individuals and institutions, of which I would like to single out a few for special mention. Firstly, my primary advisor, Andrew Gordon, has been an invaluable mentor and resource throughout the project. Likewise, David Howell, Jie Li, Alexander Zahlten and Ian Miller have all been tremendously helpful, my teachers in countless ways. Other mentors and colleagues at Harvard whose support was critically important for me include Melissa McCormick, Yukio Lippit, Wesley Jacobsen, Edwin Cranston, and many others. My fellow graduate students were a great help as well, especially Sakura Christmas, Hansun Hsiung, Casey Lee, Shi-Lin Loh, Danny Orbach, Wayne Tan, Jeremy Yellen and Hiro Yoshie. Archival research in Japan was made possible through the generous support of a Fulbright grant, and the good offices of Kyoko Inagaki at Kyoto University, Moriwaki Kiyotaka and the staff of the Museum of Kyoto, and the helpful staff at the National Film Center in Tokyo. The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies has been a source of unflagging support for many years now, particularly in the provision of a supplementary research grant in 2013-2014 and a dissertation completion fellowship for 2014-2015; it is my pleasure to acknowledge their generosity here. Finally, to my family, who have put up with a great deal over the last years: you will always have my gratitude and my love. A Note on Copyright and Name Order The Japanese Copyright Law (Chosaku kenhō) of 1970 stipulates in Article 52 that copyright shall expire 50 years after publication for anonymous printed materials and, in Article 54, that copyright shall expire 70 years after publication/distribution for motion pictures. As such, all of the screen captures taken from the films analyzed herein, and the various printed graphs and data tables taken from Eiga junpō and so forth, are, as of 2015, in the public domain. Japanese names have been given in the standard order of family (last) name followed by given (first) name, except for individuals of Japanese nationality who are active in English-language scholarship, in which case these names are given in Western (first, then last) order. Macrons for Japanese terms have been included in all cases except for widely used terms like Tokyo (rather than Tōkyō), Kyoto, and so forth. Glossary of Key Abbreviations and Terms ELS: extreme long shot (landscape-focused shot that renders humans tiny in the frame) LS: long shot (a camera position of sufficient distance to show a person's full body) MLS: medium long shot (when a person is visible from the knees up in a shot MS: medium shot (sufficiently close to show a person from the waist and up) MCU: medium close-up (close enough to show a person from shoulders up) CU: close-up (a shot near enough to show the human face in considerable detail) ECU: extreme close-up (usually of just one feature, i.e. hands or eyes, in great detail) ASL: average shot length, the average number of seconds per shot in a given sequence Long take: a single uninterrupted shot of considerable temporal length Shot/reverse-shot: the most common type of continuity editing showing two speakers in succession; after showing the first speaker, usually over the shoulder of the second speaker, there is a cut to a shot (often a reaction shot, showing the effect of the first speaker's words on the second speaker) of the second speaker, similarly framed as an over-the-shoulder shot. 180 degree rule: a basic but not inviolable principle of classical continuity editing, dictating that in any scene, for example a shot/reverse-shot sequence of two speakers, the camera must stay, in order to avoid viewer confusion over who's who, on one side of the axis of action.