Gender and Body Politics in the New Wave Japanese Cinema
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Negotiating Power: Gender and Body Politics in the New Wave Japanese Cinema by Bianca Otilia Briciu A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree o f Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Mediations Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2012, Bianca Otilia Briciu Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94211-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-94211-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada Abstract I analyze in this dissertation films about women made by Imamura Shohei, Yoshida Kiju and Hani Susumu, three representative figures of the New Wave Japanese cinema, arguing that these films make visible gender and body politics in postwar Japan. They explore the cultural construction of female bodies through the representation of the body as an interface between individual subjectivity and cultural norms, politicizing both sexuality and the medium of cinema. In my analysis of the films I will outline the duality between the look and the gaze and I will demonstrate that these filmmakers construct an ethical form of representation that recognizes the alterity of women. My analysis is informed by phenomenological theories that explore bodies as interconnected ways of being in the world and a feminist analysis of power concerned with the disciplining of female bodies. The main argument of the dissertation is that these three directors perform a negotiation of gender power inherent in the institution of cinema through a self reflexive cinematic style that critiques the power of the male gaze. Imamura, Yoshida and Hani regard cinema as a mode of intersubjective engagement with the world based on an ethical negotiation of gender power. Their ethical position involves an encounter with female alterity that disrupts the filmmaker’s illusory position of omnipotence or the power of the gaze as a gendered mechanism of oppression. The representation of the female body involves both desire and responsibility, a duality inherent in their films as the interlacing of the gaze with the look. This duality makes it possible for the three filmmakers to explore female bodies not only as objects of male desire, but also as the foundations of female subjectivity. The films represent women’s version of the body as political struggle against repressive ideological forces of society, in contrast to the dominant postwar male discourse of the body as source of pleasure and liberation. My case studies will be Imamura’s two fiction films: Insect Woman (1963) and Intentions of Murder (1964), Imamura’s two documentaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970) and Karayuki-san, the Making o f a Prostitute (1973), Yoshida’s Eros Plus Massacre (1969) and Hani’s Nanami, the Inferno o f First Love (1968). Acknowledgements I would like to thank my husband, Constantin Rusan, for his invaluable technical and emotional support as well as my children, Maya and Andrew, for teaching me the paradoxical lesson that less (time) means more (focus). I would like to thank my advisor, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano for her detailed reviews and for her continuous support during these years. Special thanks to the Social Sciences Research Council for four years of financial support that made possible this research. iv Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1 Chapter One. Bodies as Subjects and Objects-An Interdisciplinary Consideration of Gendered Bodies in Cinema ..............................................................20 Chapter Two. Rituals of Disciplining the Female Body: Prostitution and Rape in Imamura Shohei’s Insect Woman (Nippon konchuki, 1963) and Intentions of Murder (Akai satsui, 1964)................................................................................................. 35 Chapter Three. The Female Body as Boundary of the Nation: Embodying the Postwar in Imamura Shohei’s Documentaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (.Nippon sengoshi, madamu Onboro no seikatsu 1970) and Karayuki san, The Making of a Prostitute (.Karayuki-san, 1973).............................104 Chapter Four. Bodies in Time: The Politics of Love, Sex and Freedom in Yoshida Kiju’s Eros + Massacre (Erosu +gyakusatsu, 1969)...................................................141 Chapter Five. Love and Power, The Appropriation of the Adolescent Body in Hani Susumu’s Nanami, Inferno of First Love (Nanami, hatsukoi jigokuhen, 1968) 180 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 210 v Introduction Many scholars have shown how the dramatic social and political transformations in Japan, the collapse of imperialist regime, loss of war, Occupation, and political protests in the 1960s affected the structure of the self and subjectivity in postwar Japan. The fragmentation of national unity into groups with conflicting interests paralleled a fragmentation of subjectivity that in turn affected gender identities and led to new configurations of bodies and sexual relationships.1 I will analyze films about women made by Imamura Shohei, Yoshida Kiju and Hani Susumu arguing that these films make visible gender politics in Japan’s postwar society. These films explore the role played by historical institutions such as the feudal family, the rural system of female exchange, the system of prostitution and the pervasive economic and social gender inequality in the configuration of female bodies ■y and subjectivities. These three filmmakers expose the medium of cinema as a technology of gaze that tends to objectify the female body for male desire but they also envision a different way of seeing. In my analysis of the films I will outline the duality between the look and the gaze and I will point out the strategies used by these filmmakers to construct an ethical form of representation that recognizes the alterity of women. 1 See Mark McLelland, Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation (N ew York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), J. Victor Koschman, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) and Isolde Standish, Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011). 2 Throughout my dissertation I will refer to specific institutions that reinforce gender norms producing certain bodies and subjects. I use in introduction this generic term in order to highlight the shifting process of the outside that becomes inside, of social structures that form particular subjectivities through the disciplining of the body. 1 The context of defeat in WWII, American Occupation and the failure of political protests in the 1960s explain the political inclinations of the New Wave filmmakers. The focus on political issues is paralleled by a relentless exploration of subjectivity and the ways in which history impacts the consciousness of characters.3 These filmmakers politicize bodies, critiquing the repressive regime of the state, family and gender relationships. Their political commitment is also an expression of their self-reflexive cinematic style. I will analyze this self-reflexivity as a negotiation of the gender power inherent in the process of cinematic representation. Imamura, Yoshida and Hani regard cinema as a mode of intersubjective engagement with the world based on an ethical relationship between directors and the filmed subjects. In other words, they try to extricate themselves from the technologies of power that turn filmed bodies (especially female bodies) into objects.