UNIVERSITY OF READING An Invitation to Travel The Marketing and Reception of Japanese Film in the West 1950-1975 Submitted for Ph.D. degree Department of Film, Theatre & Television Boel Ulfsdotter March 2008 ABSTRACT An Invitation to Travel – The Marketing and Reception of Japanese Film in the West 1950-1975 is a reception study which presents the events and efforts that characterize the reception of Japanese film in France, Great Britain and the United States, after World War Two. Chapter One presents the research questions informing this study and discusses the historically located Western cultural concepts involved such as the aesthetics of art cinema, Japonisme, and the notion of ‘Japaneseness’. The argumentation as such is based on the presumption of a still prevailing Orientalist discourse at the time. The thesis discusses the Japanese film industry’s need to devise a new strategy of doing export business with the West in relation to the changed postwar context in Chapter Two. The preparations on the part of the Japanese to distribute their films in the West through different modes of transnational publicity are in focus here, from introductory ‘film weeks’, to marketing vehicles such as UniJapan Film Quarterly, and the first Western books on Japanese film history. The thesis then proceeds to deal with the groundbreaking introduction of this first non-occidental national cinema from four different angles; exhibition (Chapter Three), critical reception (Chapter Four), publicity (Chapter Five) and canon formation (Chapter Six). Chapter Three looks into the history of Western exhibition of Japanese film in the countries involved in this study and identifies divergent attitudes between institutional and commercial screenings. It also locates possible changes in exhibition policy over time. Chapter Four establishes the main players in the critical reception of Japanese cinema in the West and examines national divergences in attitude towards this ‘new’ national cinema. In order to do so, it necessarily discusses the development of Western auteurism in the late 1950s, and its effect on the film periodicals in the countries involved. Chapter Five presents an alternative venue of research through the image of Japanese cinema induced by Western poster design. It explores Western responses based on concepts involving Japonisme and national stereotypes in both commercial (capitalistic) and non-commercial (communist) aesthetic contexts. Chapter Six explores the history of canon formation and the evaluation of Japanese film in the West. The thesis argues that the extant Western canon on Japanese film is inconclusive and that it could be exchanged, in part, for at least three other versions of the same national cinema, enough to make the current image of Western postwar Japanese film history seem utterly unsatisfactory. The conclusion in Chapter Seven presents the outcome of the effects of exhibition, critical reception and publicity, as well as the trajectory of canon formation in the previous chapters. By looking back again at its components, this study indicates several areas that warrant further research in order to extend the existing Western conceptualization of Japanese film history. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE 1.1 INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1 1.2 METHODOLOGY AND CONCEPTS 8 1.3 BASIC CONCEPTS 9 1.4 ARCHIVAL SOURCES 16 1.5 LIMITATIONS 17 CHAPTER TWO MARKETING JAPANESE FILM IN THE WEST AFTER WORLD WAR TWO AFTER WORLD WAR TWO 2.1 INTRODUCTION 19 2.2 RASHOMON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 20 2.3 ONE FRENCH AND THEN ONE AMERICAN BOOK 25 2.4 JAPANESE FILM WEEKS IN NEW YORK 31 2.5 UNIJAPAN FILM QUARTERLY AND UNIJAPAN BULLETIN 33 2.6 THE ORIENTAL ECONOMIST 41 2.7 CASE STUDY: TOHO CHAMBARA VS NIKKATSU AKUSHON 44 2.8 SUMMARY 58 CHAPTER THREE EXHIBITION: FILM FESTIVALS, CINÉMATHÈQUES, RETROSPECTIVES AND COMMERCIAL SCREENING 3.1 INTRODUCTION 66 3.2 EXHIBITION LOCALE 67 3.3 NON-COMMERCIAL SCREENING 72 3.4 COMMERCIAL SCREENING 92 3.5 CASE STUDY: THE ISSUE OF LOCALE 100 3.6 SUMMARY 103 CHAPTER FOUR CRITICAL RECEPTION: PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPER REVIEWS 4.1 INTRODUCTION 113 4.2 DOMESTIC CRITICAL RECEPTION 114 4.3 OVERSEAS’ CRITICAL RECEPTION 117 4.4 CASE STUDY: THE WESTERN CRITICAL RECEPTION OF FIVE JAPANESE FILMS 140 4.5 SUMMARY 151 CHAPTER FIVE PUBLICITY: NATIONAL IDENTITY IN WESTERN FILM POSTERS FOR JAPANESE FILMS 5.1 INTRODUCTION 159 5.2 FETISHIZED STEREOTYPES 168 5.3 ICONOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS REFUSING COMMODIFICATION 184 5.4 EXPLOITING JAPANESE FILM STILLS 195 5.5 CASE STUDY: THE EROTICISATION OF A JAPANESE FILM 199 5.8 SUMMARY 211 CHAPTER SIX CANON FORMATION 6.1 INTRODUCTION 215 6.2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON CANON FORMATION 215 6.3 WESTERN CANON(S) OF JAPANESE FILMS 218 6.4 SUMMARY 226 CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION 228 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 237 LIST OF GRAPHS 241 FILMOGRAPHY 242 BIBLIOGRAPHY 254 1 CHAPTER ONE What is required by the hermeneutics of the Other sought out in non-Western national cinema scholarship is neither a simple identification with the Other nor an easy assimilation of the Other into the self. Instead, it is a construction of a new position of knowledge through a careful negotiation between the self and the Other. 1 Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto 1.1 INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS The historiography of Western reception of Japanese film product has not yet been addressed in academic studies. Until now, this national cinema has mainly been approached in terms of the historical or geopolitical development of its industry and/or the textual structure of its product. Neither focus necessarily concerns itself with either the export or the overseas exhibition of film and have therefore remained studies of the national circumstances. This study is concerned with a contextual and comparative history of the postwar marketing and reception of Japanese film product in France, Great Britain and the United States. The main reason for my focus on the early postwar decades is the interesting historical relations that have existed between Japan and the West since the United States forced the Asian country to open up for trade in 1868. Most Western countries had become deeply influenced by Japanese aesthetics and fine arts by the 1880s and thus developed a strong cultural relationship with Japan within disciplines which are artistically and culturally connected to film practice. This new art form embraced Japan from early days and thus strengthened the cultural bond between the continents although no data suggest that this bond involved Western commercial exhibition or reception of Japanese film product before World War Two. This is of course not the same as saying that exhibition of this product did not take place, but it indicates a very limited interest in Japanese film at the time, possibly involving mainly private exhibition and ethnical reception aspects. Japan fought on the same side as France, Great Britain and the United States during World War One. Similar to most Western film product, the Japanese counterpart became markedly nationalistic during the inter-war years in the hands of their respective governments and Japan went on to fight World War Two against the three Western countries concerned in this study. Under the severe command of the Americans the Japanese film industry then began to explore the possibilities of exporting its film product in the late 1940s although no Japanese films were exhibited in the West before 1950. The 2 continued presence of mainly French and American military forces in the Asian region between 1950 and 1975, implies that the Japanese film product was marketed and exhibited in the above Western countries at the same time as they remained deeply politically and economically involved in the Asian region. I have therefore decided to apply the same time frame to this study in order to see how these circumstances impacted on the reception of Japanese film in the West. I understand Yoshimoto Mitshuhiro’s call for ’a construction of a new position of knowledge through a careful negotiation between the self and the Other’, as a call for new aspects on Japanese film studies and I am therefore interested to see how the reversed focus implied by a change of geographical locale may effect Western studies of the Japanese cinema and its historiography. Given the time frame of this study, I have used sources dating from around 1951 until the emergence of Western academic writing about Japanese cinema in the second half of the 1970s. Another way of constructing a ‘new position of knowledge’ is thereby attained by examining how these early sources informed the now established historiography of Japanese cinema. Prompted by Yoshimoto’s use of the ‘Other’ in the above quotation I have followed suit and thus refer my findings to the influence of Orientalism on the Western reception of this product. Another reason to situate my work within an Orientalist discourse is also motivated by the fact that the notion of Japonisme had already been embedded in our reception of Japanese culture for centuries. Interestingly, an application of a reversed focus in this case involves the possibility of a deliberate use of Orientalism by the Japanese, thus implying a certain degree of self-Orientalization on their part. This study has addressed both instances of Orientalism and shows several clear instances of how it was used to culturally inform Western reception of Japanese cinema at the time. The publication of Noël Burch’s study of Japanese film history in the late 1970s, is traditionally said to begin Western academic writing about Japanese cinema.2 A general assessment of Western scholarship concerned with Japanese cinema, indicates a continued focus on hermeneutic, semiotic or textual studies of this cinema during the 1980s and early ‘90s. Aided by the perspectives of scholars such as Robert Cohen3 and David Bordwell4, most studies of this cinema relied on a formalist set of aesthetics which allowed Western Academia to limit their research to textual sources which were considered to be characteristic of a certain image of this particular national cinema.