Drama within the Japanese cinema occurs on both an epic scale and in miniature, and yet also somewhere in between, as Eastern film-makers have embraced the epic and the intimate while also taking to the streets of major cities to document urbanization and the social-economic shifts of the post-war era. In broad terms, dramatic Japanese cinema can be divided into two categories: jidaigeki (period pieces) and gendaigeki (films set in contemporary or modern times), both of which reveal much about Japan’s past and present, even when work- ing within the confines of genre, or serving as government- endorsed propaganda pieces, or painting a nostalgic portraits of ‘lost’ eras. Many directors have alternated between both categories of film, depending on both their own interests and the changing taste of the domestic audience, with the jidaigeki and gendaigeki leading to sub-genres such as chambara or
yakuza, both of which are now firmly established as narrative
forms in their own right within Japanese cinema.
The period drama often takes place in the Edo period of Japanese history (1603–1868), with the stories focusing on such protagonists as samurais, lords, craftsmen, merchants, and peasants. However, some film-makers, such as Kenji Mizoguchi, have explored the Heian period (794–1185), while others, such as Horoshi Inagaki, have located their stories within the Meiji era (1868–1912). Akira Kurosawa actually made his directorial debut with a Meiji-era picture, Sanshiro
Sugata (1943), a film which captured the spirit of judo and
became something of a template for martial arts film in general. The formation of modern Japan started in the Edo period with the nation’s exposure to Western imperialism, although this did not immediately affect the lives or liveli- hoods of the masses, as many were not able to reject older methods of living and working, however much they may have
wanted to. The palpable tension caused from the transition between two eras is explored in the jidai-geki genre, as directors have utilized the narrative form to discuss modernization and shifting social roles within an evolving economy.
Many period pieces involve samurai, although this has led to the chambara film, a sub-genre of the jidaigeki that has its own characteristics and conven- tions. The chambara genre often has more of an emphasis on action and places thematic importance on the code of honour, although some entries into the cycle, such as Masahiro Shonoda’s Samurai Spy (1965) and Hideo Gosha’s
Hitokiri (1969) also reflect the politics of the period through stories that mix the
excepted action with genuine intrigue, and emphasize the status of the samu- rai as an exceptionally skilled ‘hired hand’ rather than portraying such warriors as romantic figures. Yoji Yamada’s more recent trilogy of The Twilight Samurai (2002), The Hidden Blade (2004) and Love and Honour (2006) take a realistic look at the daily responsibilities – and occasional drudgery – of samurai life, examining the economic hardship which can come with such rigid nobility.
As Sybil Thornton has argued, the jidaigeki has always been inherently anachro- nistic in that the genre has been adopted by directors not as a means of recap- turing Japan’s past but as a vehicle to critique its present, with the trappings of the period piece actually enabling film-makers to be more overtly critical of the Japanese government and various national institutions.1 This is certainly true of the
work of Kenji Mizoguchi, who frequently dealt with the issue of the role of women in society, either in fiercely-realist contemporary dramas such as Osaka Elegy (1936) or period pieces like Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) and The Life of Oharu (1952). The events and themes within Mizoguchi’s work were heavily influenced by his own childhood, during which his sister was sold to a geisha house and his mother passed away prematurely. In many of his films, the female characters make great sacrifices to help their families or to potentially better their own standing in society, only for their efforts to be ultimately futile. After being forced by the government to make propaganda pieces within the jidaigeki genre during the war, such as The 47 Ronin (1941), Mizoguchi became perhaps Japan’s first feminist director, balancing period and contemporary films that were as emotionally engaging as they were aesthetically ravishing. Widely acknowledged as a master of the period piece, Mizoguchi completed 94 films in a career which spanned four decades, with his most celebrated cinematic achievement being Ugestu Monoga-
tari, an account of two peasant couples whose lives are uprooted when Shibata
Katsuie’s army rampages through their rural farming community. Sansho the Bailiff (1954) is based on a short story by Mori Ogai and follows the fate of two children who are sold into a life of slavery, while The Life of Oharu deals with the misfor- tunes of the titular prostitute in seventeenth-century society.
Akira Kurosawa also worked within the jidaigeki genre, although many of his masterpieces, such as Yojimbo (1961), are more associated with chambara cycle. His work is also distinctly different from that of Mizoguchi, less episodic in structure and with an emphasis on heroism and vividly-realized battles, not to mention a grander scale of tragedy in such epics as Throne of Blood (1957) and the later Ran (1985), with Kurosawa exploring the archetypes of the genre as opposed to Mizoguchi’s victims of the social condition. However, his gen-
daigeki films have no qualms about tackling the darker side of Japanese society. Drunken Angel (1948) is set in a squalid slum that is largely ruled by the local
yakuza, and the director utilizes this milieu to represent the moral decay of post- war Japan, observing that moral standards have not survived the conflict, and selfishness and opportunism have emerged: negative attributes which are here exemplified by the presence of the yakuza and their own internal power
struggles. Kurosawa provided another tour of the seedy side of Tokyo just one year later with Stray Dog (1949), an uncompromising police drama about a homicide detective who loses his gun, leading to a series of crimes and an excursion into the underbelly of society to retrieve his missing weapon.
Both these film exemplify the influence of American film noir on the Japanese cinema, yet while they adhere to a certain genre template in their use of shadows, flashbacks, narration and urban locations, they also examine the social fabric of post-war Tokyo through the interactions of characters with defined roles (the doctor in Drunken Angel, the detectives and their superiors in Stray Dog) with criminals and other individuals who occupy the social margins. Stray Dog in particular offers an unflinching insight into a world where women will steal pistols for criminals just so they can secure rice-ration cards, and the uneasy shift from one era to another is suggested by the climactic pursuit through vegetation territory, where the city and the countryside meet. The pessimism of Kurosawa’s contemporary films would perhaps reach its peak with I Live in Fear (1955), a film which dealt with the issue of nuclear power just one year after Honda’s Godzilla (1954) by focusing on an elderly foundry-owner who tries to persuade his family to flee Japan for South America to avoid nuclear fallout, with his relatives perceiving his fears as a sign of instability.
The comparatively-calm oeuvre of Yasujiro Ozu has excited scholars of Japanese cinema for a variety of reasons. Bordwell and Thompson have frequently focused on his film-making technique; placing academic emphasis on the trademark long takes.2 They have also commented on Ozu’s preference for low angles and the
prominent positioning of such seemingly mundane, everyday objects as teapots, laundry baskets and kitchen appliances within the frame, sometimes at the expense of the actual protagonists of his slight, but socially-revealing, narratives. Tokyo
Story (1953), perhaps Ozu’s best known film in the West, is a fascinating study of
generational differences which focuses on an elderly couple who make the long journey from the countryside to the big city to spend time with their children, only to find that their career-oriented offspring have little time for them. Ozu invented the ‘tatami shot’, where the camera was placed at a low height, as if one were kneeling on a tatami mat, which provided his films with a great sense of intimacy, involving the audience in the gradually-unfolding, often understated, family drama. In con- junction with his preference for purely diegetic sound and lack of regard for the 180- degree, this signature style sets Ozu apart from his contemporaries and influenced later international film-makers as diverse as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kauris- maki, and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the last of which would direct the Shochiku-financed
Café Lumiere (2003) on location in Tokyo to celebrate the centenary of Ozu’s birth.
The output of these film-makers, and others not discussed here, is incred- ibly varied in terms of subject and style, and it should be stated once again that ‘drama’ is a general category which encompasses a wide range of films that focus on multiple time periods. As Japanese cinema spans more than one hundred years, and is both the oldest and largest film industry within Asia, the genres of jidaigeki and gendaigeki offer remarkable insight with regard to the history of the nation, and its post-war evolution.
Notes
1. Sybil Thornton (2007)The Japanese Period Film: A Critical Analysis, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
2. David Bordwell & Kristen Thompson (2006) Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edition,
New York: McGraw-Hill.
john Berra
Synopsis
Widower Hirayama lives with his 24-year-old daughter Michiko and younger son Kazuo. His older son, Koichi, is now married and lives in a small apartment with his wife Akiko. Hirayama’s friend and col- league, Kawai, proposes an omiai (arranged introduction) to find Michiko a prospective husband. Whilst Hirayama hesitantly raises the issue with Michiko, she seems content to remain at home looking after her father. Meanwhile Kawai and Hirayama, together with another old friend, Horie, have organized a class reunion with former teacher Sakuma. When the pair escorts the drunken teacher home, they find that he has been reduced to running a cheap noodle bar with his unmarried daughter. After seeing the desperation of the middle-aged daughter, Hirayama becomes more determined to find Michiko a husband.
Critique
An Autumn Afternoon was Ozu’s final film before his unexpected
death at the age of 60. As with many of the director’s works, the film uses story lines and characters with echoes of earlier films, particu- larly in this case the father-daughter relationship from Late Spring (1949). In this film, however, the focus is less on the ‘springtime’ of the daughter and more on the ‘autumnal’ perspective of the aging father. This is also why the literal translation of the Japanese title is ‘a taste of sanma’, a type of fish in season during the autumn months. As with other Ozu films, narrative drive typically gives way to an emphasis on everyday conversations, whether day-to-day exchanges in Hirayama’s home, the married bickering of Akiko and Koichi, or the alcohol-laced dinner meetings of the three old school friends. Indeed, in this film, important narrative events such as Miura’s engagement and Michiko’s marriage ceremony receive no onscreen representation. There is even an authorial self-consciousness about such an approach in the way Hirayama, Kawai and Horie reveal or conceal information when playing jokes on each other. Whilst there are also other familiar Ozu ‘games’, such as the inconsistent positioning of objects, this conceal- ing and revealing can have profound as well as comic effects. It is particularly effective, for instance, when the rather shallow characters of Horie and Kawai suddenly demonstrate far greater depth when, in their final conversation, they stop joking and instead reminisce about their own children leaving home.
Just as the film is engaged in a process of repetition and differ- ence from Late Spring, repetition and difference also form part of the internal structure of the film, particularly in the comparisons between Hirayama and his eldest son, Koichi, even down to the different ways they take off their ties at the end of the day. The marriage plot works alongside another logic that builds a picture of the life of Hirayama. Whilst the death of his wife remains almost entirely undiscussed, there are other striking disclosures such as about Hirayama’s days as a captain during the Pacific War – a role more important, of course, than a mid-level salaryman. It may now seem incongruous to see Shima