THE PAST of JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY MOVIES L /'Faron (]Erou;

Yale University From the SelectedWorks of Aaron Gerow 2016 The asP t of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies Aaron Gerow Available at: https://works.bepress.com/aarongerow/20/ Beyond Godzilla Alternative Futures and Fantasies in Japanese Cinema Editor Mark Schilling Illustrations Francesca Ghermandi THE PAST OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES l_/'faron (]erou; Godzilla appears in the 1954 film as a surprise, as a horror seemingly tied to the newest of scientific inventions: nuclear weaponry. But he does have a history, and not just the millions of years spoken of in the film. (]odzilla may be the first Japanese special effects (tokusatsu) science fiction or fantasy film many can name, but the genre has a past as well, a long history of monsters and magic ninja that predate and prepare the ground for Ishiro Honda's film. That past is a bit like Godzilla itself: powerful but also somewhat cheesy, present but only rarely emerging into public view, significant but seldom allowed to enter the realm of great art. That history can go back to the first days of cinema in Japan, when film attracted crowds not just for its views of foreign lands and people, but also for the technology itself Sold as a new and foreign marvel, it was presented alongside electricity and x-rays as a scientific wonder - as science fiction become real - but often in a manner that resembled the hyperbole of or misemono (sideshow entertainment). This mix of the serious and the sensational set a pattern for subsequent Japanese science fiction or fantasy films, which would continue to tread the boundary between cinema and showmanship, high and low culture. In the same vein as pioneering fantasy/sci-fi director Georges Melies, many early Japanese films took ad vantage of cinematic tricks to present fantastic stories. For instance, a number of the movies ofMatsuno suke Onoe, often termed Japan's first film star, fall into the 'fantasy' category. In]iraiya the Hero ((]oketsu ]iraiya, dir. Shozo Makino, 1921), he is a ninja flying through the air and transforming into a giant frog; in Shibukawa Bangoro (dir. Kokichi Tsukiyama, 1922), a judo master who battles a monstrous spider in the mountains; in Yaji and Kita's Zenkoji Pilgrimage (Yaji Kita Zenkoji Mairi, 1921), a comic bumpkin who uses a magic leaf to cause hurricane winds and to see places far away. To a certain extent, this was a continuation of the stage tricks ofkabuki or the illusionism of misemono, but some of the techniques were unique to the cinema, such as reverse motion, double exposures, and stop-motion substitution. It is thus interesting that Onoe's films were subject to much criticism by intellectual film reformers in the 1910s and 1920s for lacking cinematic artistry. Loosely called the Pure Film Movement, they 33 THE PAST OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES/cAaron (jerow THE PAST OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES/ cAaron <jerow lambasted contemporary Japanese film productions for being overly theatrical and advocated a more With regard to true independents, recent research has shown significant experimentation in cinematic cinematic cinema, one that used devices such as editing and close-ups to enable the image to tell the story technique by amateur filmmakers in the 1930s. Most famously, Shigeji Ogino not only created experi instead of relying on the benshi, the narrator who explained films to the audience during the silent era. mental abstract animation and color films (decades before the first commercial color movies), but also Onoe's movies were certainly theatrical in certain respects: not only was the acting close to the stylized made an animated science fiction short, One Day I 00 Years from Today (Hyakunengo no Aru hi, 1932), form of kabuki, but even the onnagata - the male actors who specialized in female roles - was standard. which film historian Maki Takatsuki has declared to be the earliest pure sci-fi film he has been able to But there was something peculiar in calling his fantasy films un-cinematic. To a certain extent, they did locate in Japan. A story about the spirit of a dead Ogino being revived in the year 2032 through "magic align with the hopes ofJun'ichiro Tanizaki, the famous novelist who penned a renowned article in 1917 television," it is a curious mix of the scientific and the occult. that is often seen as supporting the Pure Film Movement, and who celebrated cinema's ability to make In general, however, the effect of the Pure Film Movement was to push the fantastic into the periph the fantastic believable. ery of the industry, left to minor or poverty-row studios, and consigned to the realm of low culture or What is clear is that the Pure Film Movement did not simply advocate for cinema: They pushed for kiddie entertainment. This was not unique to the film world. There is a long history of science fiction a certain kind of cinema, one aligned with their conception of modern culture. In their mind, the literature in Japan, with pioneers such as Shunro Oshikawa in the Meiji era and Juza Unno in the 1930s, motion pictures were essentially a realist medium, one that should not slavishly copy reality but artis but their work rarely received recognition by the literary establishment in their lifetime, and was often tically interpret it, while never stooping to crass fantasy. No matter how many cinematic techniques considered children's literature. Yet their work has survived, while that has mostly not been the case were used, ninja frogs and spider monsters were vulgar, a sign of a backward Japan that had not yet with films. What came out of those marginal studios was occasionally incredible and exciting, but is modernized. now hard to confirm, since the products of such an industry were rarely treated carefully, and few of Although the Pure Film Movement itself was not wholly successful - the benshi, for instance, contin these films survive for us to see today. Takatsuki has done an authoritative job of digging out records of a ued until the end of silent era - it did have a significant influence over the culture ofJapanese cinema few of these films in his history of prewar Japanese SF films, Senzen Nihon SF Eiga Soseiki: Godzilla wa from the mid-1920s on. Not only did the onnagata disappear, but the entire genre of kyugeki - the Nan de Dekiteiruka (The Genesis ofPrewar Japanese SF Films: What Is Godzilla Made From?), so I will period films of Matsunosuke Onoe's day - was transformed into jidaigeki, the new form of samurai introduce a few of his finds here. films that, in its dominant mode, was more serious and modern and refrained from the fantastic. Takatsuki identifies Yoshiro Edamasa as a crucial bur tragic figure in the development of science fiction This was in stark contrast to Chinese wuxia films, which were banned in the late 1930s for being film in Japan, given both his own productions and his role in educating Eiji Tsuburaya. One example unrealistic, but have persisted in showing flying swordsmen up until today. Japanese movie samurai was the aborted production of The judgment ojthe Spirits (Rei no Shinpan), which was supposed to be in general don't fly. Japan's first science fiction film but was never finished. The film was being shot in 1926 at the movie While the conception of cinema proffered by the Pure Film Movement continued to dominate Japanese star Tsumasaburo Bando's independent studio at the same time its novelization was being serialized movie culture for decades, it was not always consistent and could support the unrealistic, especially ifit was in the Asahi newspaper. Yet while the novel was completed, the film was not. Enough remains of the for intellectual and artistic reasons. Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page ofMadness (Kurutta Ippeji, 1926), for production, including stills, for the benshi Ichiro Kataoka to recently perform a version of it, narrating instance, was famous for experimentally using practically every device in the cinematic book, from double a story about attempts to develop superhumans through unearthing the hidden personalities in all of exposures to warped lenses, to present the mental state ofa man descending into madness. Significantly, the us, combined with a mystery about a murder committed by the repressed personality of one of the char assistant cameraman on that film was a young Eiji Tsuburaya, who later became the special effects wizard acters. Another Edamasa special effects film, The Wandering Great Buddha (Daibutsu Kaikoku, 1934), that made Godzilla and Ultraman a reality. A Page ofMadness is famous for being independently produced, was completed, but failed at the box office. One of many films influenced by the release of King Kong although as I have shown in my book on the film, it was in fact supported by a major studio. in Japan in 1933, it featured a huge statue of the Buddha wandering the country - ala Daiei studio's 34 35 -------------------------------- THE PAST OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES/\..A'aron (jerow THE PAST OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES/\..A'aron (jerow postwar ambulatory idol Daimajin - but apparently little else in terms of a story. Ads presented it as big magic masks (such as in the Flute Boy series [Shin Shokoku Monogatari: Fuefuki Doji, dir. Ryo Hagiwara, budget entertainment - with sound and parts in color - but it was produced by the Great Buddha Film 1954]). But to my knowledge Toei didn't throw robots into their samurai battles. Studio, a suspicious one-shot company that was apparently backed by Komakichi Tateishi, a fixer who While such hybrid productions are certainly interesting, one still wonders whether studios made films caused waves in the 1920s for his machinations at the Teikoku Kinema studio.

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