Unseen Femininity: Women in Japanese New Wave Cinema
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UNSEEN FEMININITY: WOMEN IN JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA by Candice N. Wilson B.A. in English/Film, Middlebury College, Middlebury, 2001 M.A. in Cinema Studies, New York University, New York, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in English/Film Studies University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Candice N. Wilson It was defended on April 27, 2015 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, Film Studies Program Neepa Majumdar, Associate Professor, Film Studies Program Nancy Condee, Director, Graduate Studies (Slavic) and Global Studies (UCIS), Slavic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Advisor: Adam Lowenstein, Director, Film Studies Program ii Copyright © by Candice N. Wilson 2015 iii UNSEEN FEMININITY: WOMEN IN JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA Candice N. Wilson, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 During the mid-1950s to the early 1970s a subversive cinema, known as the Japanese New Wave, arose in Japan. This dissertation challenges critical trends that use French New Wave cinema and the oeuvre of Oshima Nagisa as templates to construct Japanese New Wave cinema as largely male-centered and avant-garde in its formal aesthetics. I argue instead for the centrality of the erotic woman to a questioning of national and postwar identity in Japan, and for the importance of popular cinema to an understanding of this New Wave movement. In short, this study aims to break new ground in Japanese New Wave scholarship by focusing on issues of gender and popular aesthetics. Each chapter investigates female archetypes in light of their postwar transformation in an analysis that demonstrates how the New Wave woman challenges conventional notions of history, memory, and the human in Japan. Chapter One questions the mythology of male centeredness to the New Wave by examining the domestic figures of the Japanese wife and daughter as “anti-heroines” in the films of Oshima Nagisa as well as in earlier popular Sun Tribe films. Chapter Two explores the political significance of the transgendered body to institutional protest and war memory through a consideration of pornography and underground cinema. Through the films of Wakamatsu Koji and Matsumoto Toshio, this chapter engages in a queer study of the New Wave that rethinks postwar Japanese masculinity, aggression, and landscape. Chapter Three looks at the “comfort woman” and how Suzuki Seijun and Masumura Yasuzo utilize time narratively and aesthetically in their war cinema to negotiate the sexual iv mechanization of bodies before and after World War II. Chapter Four analyzes the transformation of the “good” mother into a demon in Shindo Kaneto’s horror films Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). Drawing from a range of older cult horror films and venerated haha-mono (mother films) to articulate its argument, this chapter highlights the importance of horror to the New Wave in its production of new social discourses surrounding gender and the popular. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION: UNSEEN FEMININITY IN JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA. ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 DEFINING THE JAPANESE NEW WAVE .................................................... 4 1.2 POSTWAR EROTICISM: KASUTORI CULTURE AND THE FALL ....... 10 1.3 THE POLITICAL POSTWAR LANDSCAPE ............................................... 14 1.4 CHANNELING DAVID DESSER: THE PROBLEM OF OSHIMA ........... 17 1.5 CHAPTER DESCRIPTION ............................................................................. 25 2.0 THE EROTIC WOMAN: FEMINIZING THE JAPANESE NEW WAVE ........ 32 2.1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMAN IN JAPANESE CINEMA ..................... 36 2.2 THE TAIYOZOKU EIGA: THE ANTI-HEROINE ........................................ 41 2.3 MASUMURA YASUZO AND ICHIKAWA KON: A NEW FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY ................................................................................................................. 45 2.4 OSHIMA NAGISA: SENTIMENT AND CRUELTY .................................... 56 2.5 OSHIMA AND PORNOGRAPHY .................................................................. 64 3.0 THE WOUND AND THE BLADE: THE SYNTHESIS OF THE PORNOGRAPHIC (FE)MALE ................................................................................................ 70 3.1 OVERLAPPING EROTICS: THE PINK AND THE NEW WAVE ............ 76 vi 3.2 SITUATING THE PINK: HARDCORE OR SOFTCORE?—THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION .......................................................................................... 81 3.3 IN DEFENSE OF PORNOGRAPHY: BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PINK? AND THE IMPORTANCE OF CENSORSHIP ................................................ 87 3.4 WAKAMATSU AND ADACHI: TRANS-SIGHT AND QUEER SPACES OF DESIRE ......................................................................................................................... 97 3.5 THE COMFORT BODY: VIOLATED ANGELS (1967) ............................. 109 3.6 THE TRANS-WOMAN: FUNERAL PARADE OF THE ROSES (1969) ... 115 3.7 THE TRANS-BODY AND URBAN PERFORMANCE .............................. 122 4.0 THE COMFORT WOMAN: SANITIZED BODIES AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZING OF DESIRE .................................................................................. 127 4.1 SANITIZING MEMORY: THE POSTWAR PROSTITUTE AND FILM CENSORSHIP .................................................................................................................. 132 4.2 CENSORING MEMORY: THE WAR FILM .............................................. 137 4.3 SITUATING THE COMFORT BODY: THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE ......................................................................................................................... 140 4.4 MASUMURA YASUZO’S RED ANGEL (1966): THE NURSE AS COMFORT WOMAN ...................................................................................................... 148 4.5 NIKUTAI NO MON (1964): THE PROSTITUTE’S LAMENT .................. 158 4.5.1 The Prostitute and the Soldier .................................................................... 163 4.5.2 The Prostitute and the Fall ......................................................................... 165 4.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 168 5.0 THE DEMON MOTHER RISES ........................................................................... 170 vii 5.1 LEGISLATING THE MOTHER: GOOD MOTHERS, WEAK FATHERS…. .................................................................................................................... 174 5.2 1950S SHINDO KANETO: THE HIBAKUSHA MAIDEN ......................... 181 5.3 SEX AND THE “NIGHTMARE-MOTHER” .............................................. 189 5.4 THE SCARRED MOTHER: OIWA AND ONIBABA ................................ 193 5.5 KURONEKO (1968): JIDAIGEKI AND THE SAMURAI ........................... 200 5.5.1 The Kaibyo and the Ghost House ............................................................... 207 5.5.2 Theater and Traversing the Inbetween in Kuroneko ............................... 211 5.6 THE IE AND THE RETURN OF THE MOTHER ..................................... 216 5.7 CONCLUSION: THE ARCHIVE .................................................................. 221 6.0 EPILOGUE – THE JAPANESE NEW WAVE TODAY: A CINEMA OF RETURN? .................................................................................................................................. 223 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 238 viii PREFACE When I first began studying Japanese cinema I never imagined that I would not only live and engage in research in Japan and the United States, but that I would meet so many individuals who would inspire and challenge my academic and emotional growth. Now, dissertation in hand, I can honestly say I never would have completed this document without the guidance and support of key people throughout the years. Adam Lowenstein, my chair, has been an unending well of advice, providing a clear lens through which my work increasingly came into focus. His horror and posthuman seminars provided a steady platform for many of the ideas that needed to be thought through in this dissertation. Adam’s hands off approach and simultaneous encouragement to enter into unknown disciplinary arenas within my work, allowed me to truly take risks in my scholarship, while his firm standards forced me out of comfort zones that were obfuscating my writing. I have become not only a better thinker, but a better writer under Adam’s tutelage. Since my entrance as a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, Neepa Majumdar has been one of my greatest supporters. The thoughtfulness, detail and clarity of Neepa’s feedback is only equaled by her deep belief in me as an international film scholar. Our many talks arising out of discussions on Indian and Sound cinema or how to balance academia and motherhood, among a host of other conversations, have been instrumental in pushing me to continually strive for originality and voice within the field. Throughout my time in Pittsburgh, ix Marcia Landy has