Japn 340 the Japanese Cinema:
Naruse Mikio (1905-1963)
(two years younger than Ozu, seven years older than Kurosawa)
According to the PDF by Catherine Russell that we will be reading, "Naruse's storytelling is very much immersed in the materialism of everyday life," (xiii) something that was said of Ozu as well. But there may be a concrete reason for this. Among the leading figures in the age of Classical Cinema in Japan--Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, etc--Naruse had the toughest life in terms of the socioeconomic conditions in which he grew up. He knew poverty in his youth, went to work at age 15, and had to wait 10 years at Shochiku Studios before he could direct his own films. As Donald Richie's "Commentary" found on the Criterion DVD points out--where he draws upon Audie Bock's writings-- Naruse's view of reality is a bit harsher or darker than Ozu's, probably because he knew "hard times" directly.
Like Ozu with whom he worked, his pacing is slow, deliberate--though not nearly to Ozu's extent--but we will find no low angle, nor fixed camera set ups in Naruse's films. He does enjoy a well thought-out, nicely framed shot and I think we can see a bity of the Ozu influence in them. But his understanding of poverty and economc struggle may be the reason why he made so many films about women, and women's lives: it is because women often had to withstand the same kinds of economic pressures as men...only in a much worse environment, where the game was always rigged against them!
And that may also explain why he was interested in the women who worked in hostess bar trade in postwar Japan. The Ginza night life becomes his laboratory. In this world, Naruse finds a place where he can expose the contradictions of everyday life--as manifested particularly in women's roles in family and society--and by problematizing them, he is able to generate a "narrative construction of women's agency and subjectivity." (xiii)
This is a tall order. Women in this bar scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s are shown to have two choices:
--marry or
--get their own establishement, i.e., own their own bar.
Keiko, the main character in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, was already a "Mama-san" in the sense that she was a manager of a bar; but she was not an owner. As she grows older, she feels her choices starting to narrow. She can either accept an offer from a "Patron" to take his money and open her own bar--for which she would probably have to become his mistress--or accept a marriage proposal should one come her way.
In Russell's estimation, Naruse finds an encapsulation in this world of all the "lost promises" from the prewar years stemming from the Meiji Restoration, as well as the "false promises of democratic revolution" that occurred during the Occupation years. The hard reality that Naruse looks at suggests that class and gender inquities persisted in both prewar and postwar Japan, as does a creeping loss of faith in modernity. (xiii-xiv)
But as bleak as this may sound, Naruse shows us women who want their independence; they do not want to be subservient to men. And they never give up, "They Endure" as Philip Lopate's essay suggests. Lopate feels that Naruse's films "draw us into an astonishgly consistent, psychologically resonant universe. His work...is about people (very often women) of limited means trying to keep their heads above water, escape domestic quagmires, and realize their dreams in a world rife with betrayals and self-betrayals." (8) Yet here is the rub: their profession demands that the ACT in precisely that subservient manner. Their job is to flatter men, entice them, to stroke their egos, make them feel desired and good about themselves...which night in and night out had to be a form of humiliation.
But, women needed their jobs in order to survive, they needed their own money in order to be independent at all. Without family connections or an education, what other opportunities were there?
Many would say that Naruse's bleak outlook on the world was because he understood that money is the driver, it is what makes the world go 'round, so to speak. If you don't have it, you suffer; but in order to get it, women especially had to suffer. There was no win-win formula in sight. As Keiko says in a voice over,
Women working in the Ginza fought desperately to survive. It was a battle I could not afford to lose.
And elsewhere, she says,
Between 11:30 pm and 12:00 am, the Ginza's 16,000 bar hostesses head home in droves. The best go home in cabs. The second rate ones take the train. And the worst go off with their customers.
There you have it. In terms of reputation and stature, you may lose ground if you go home with a valued customer; but you may make material advances.
In 1960, the Ginza represented all that was glitzy, luxurious, like Uptown Manhattan. Everybody wanted a little bit of glitz and luxury. For Catherine Russell, "The modernity [with which Naruse deals is] the world of appearances that is the Ginza." (335) The managers, the Mama-sans, lived in this nightlife and they wore expensive kimono and were renowned for their grace, their wit and their hospitality. But, as Naruse was once quoted as saying, "The world we live in will betray us." The women of the Ginza had to be tough, resilient even though going to work, "Ascending those Stairs" night after night (always framed the same way with her white tabi socks at eye level--see Russell,338) could sap the life out of someone.
But survival, being strong, maintaining their independence--that was the name of the game. This may be why Naruse admired women so much, and empathized with them, and used their stories to create the narrative about the postwar world that he wanted to tell. Russell feels that this film is a kind of noir film even though it is not about crime, but depicts another kind of demi-monde, but one that is very much a women's world.
She feels that When a Woman Ascends the Stairs "seriously undercuts the domination of the male gaze, rendering it a space where women are in control. "(340) But that control is a fragile thing, at best. Keiko is caught "within a fixed social system" so her narrative cannot translate into a full-blown feminist critique or intervention. Lopate puts it nicely at the end of his essay: "Naruse's gift here is being able to keep alive surprise and the fresh possibility of hope, even as you know deep down that he is going to snatch most of that hope away." (11) But never all of it.
The peculiar economics of the mizu-shôbai business, or the hostess bar scene.
Of all the acknowledged masters of cinema, the Japanese director Mikio Naruse is perhaps the one least known in the West, as well as the one whose work is most difficult to see. Minimally represented on VHS and DVD (at this writing, none of his features are available in Region 1 format), the primary way to experience the director's oeuvre is on film, though this in itself—barring the current 31-film traveling retrospective and its mid-'80s predecessor—is often easier said than done. For the most part, rights issues and the lack of subtitled prints have relegated Naruse to the realm of mystery. The upside of remaining out of sight for so long is that a substantial reputation can be built among the movie faithful, yet how can any filmmaker hope to live up to the cinephilic fervor that Naruse's films, by their very absence, have cultivated? Rare that the newcomer to an artist's work is immediately captured and unreservedly convinced of said artist's supreme aesthetic mastery, yet that was exactly my experience upon viewing Naruse's seminal 1960 melodrama When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Several films into the current retrospective (now playing at New York City's Film Forum) and the shock of that first impression, the sense that I had been completely absorbed into and was experiencing an utterly unique cinematic worldview, shows no signs of dissipating. With the relative dearth of English writing on Naruse, this Slant Magazine feature aims to collect, under one banner, as complete a summary and consideration of the director's body of work as possible. Following the general theme of my initial encounter http://www.slantmagazine.com/assets/features/directors_mikionaruse.jpg with When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, each review is a first impression, written from the inquisitive perspective of a neophyte coming to these films for the first time. Taken together I hope these pieces will act as inspiration and guide for our readers to seek out the work of an artist too long in neglect. A final note: Though created and published in conjunction with the current retrospective (which in toto represents little more than a third of Naruse's 89-film output) this will eventually become a stand-alone database with extant titles added as they are seen.
1930s: Flunky, Work Hard!, Not Blood Relations, Apart from You, Every Night Dreams, Street Without End, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, Wife! Be Like a Rose!, Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro, and The Whole Family Works
1940s: Traveling Actors, Hideko the Bus Conductress, The Song Lantern, and A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo
1950s: Ginza Cosmetics, Repast, Mother, Lightning, Husband and Wife, Wife, Older Brother, Younger Sister, Sound of the Mountain, Late Chrysanthemums, Floating Clouds, Sudden Rain, A Wife's Heart, Flowing, Anzukko, and Summer Clouds
1960s: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Daughters, Wives and a Mother, The Approach of Autumn, A Wanderer's Notebook, Yearning, and Scattered Clouds
Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki, 1960
[When a Woman Ascends the Stairs]
Every afternoon, a young widow named Keiko (Hideko Takamine) walks from her modest apartment to her job as a senior hostess in a Ginza bar. Compassionate and courteous, she is affectionately called "mama" by the younger hostesses who see her graciousness and charm as an unattainable ideal. At a glance, the beautiful and demure Keiko, impeccably dressed in a traditional kimono, seems unsuited for her profession. The bar manager, Kenichi (Tatsuya Nakadai) further supports her virtuous reputation by recounting an episode, revealed in confidence, of Keiko's pleas to the burial priest to have her love letter placed with the body of her late husband. Kenichi is devoted to Keiko, but keeps his respectful distance and instead, has a meaningless affair with a brash, ambitious young barmaid named Junko (Reiko Dan). The times are rapidly changing, and although other bars have resorted to unpalatable tactics in order to attract business in the increasingly competitive market, Keiko refuses to succumb to the trend of resorting to modern attire or welcoming the unwanted advances of patrons. As Keiko narrates with dispassionate reflection the daily routine of a bar hostess, it is clear that her dignity and perseverance separate her from the other hostesses in the Ginza district: "Around midnight, Tokyo's 16,000 bar women go home. The best go home by car. Second-rate ones by streetcar. The worst go home with their customers." However, at the relative "old age" of thirty and burdened with increasing financial responsibilities for her aging mother and hapless brother, Keiko is at a personal and professional crossroads. To open her own bar requires financial assistance from clients who, in turn, undoubtedly expect reprehensible favors in return. To remarry is to break her solemn vow to her beloved husband.
Mikio Naruse creates an exquisitely realized, somber, and deeply affecting portrait of dignity and perseverance in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Using the recurring image of Keiko ascending the stairs that lead to the bar, Naruse reflects Keiko's symbolic transcendence from her increasingly disreputable profession. It is a strength of character that is reflected in her early narrative: "After it gets dark, I have to climb the stairs, and that's what I hate. But once I'm up, I can take whatever happens." Inevitably, the daunting stairs provide a reassuring ritual from crushing disillusionment and personal tragedy - a validation of courage and resilience in facing the unknown - a quiet triumph of the human spirit.
© Acquarello 2000. All rights reserved.
http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/naruse.html
Mikio Naruse – A Modern Classic
- published
- 11 February 2007
Although Mikio Naruse is counted amongst the great Japanese classical masters of cinema, alongside Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu, his reputation has only recently reached the West. This is largely due to the lack of availability of his films, a situation lately improving. He did not win any international film festival prizes during his lifetime. Also, critical evaluation of his films within academic circles has never been strong. It is actually curious that Japanese cinema is always taught by centering on the three names mentioned above, and throwing in Oshima to highlight the new wave and Kitano as an example of the current cinema. So a re-evaluation of Naruse as one of the masters of Japanese cinema is a necessary rethinking of the canon.
The invisibility of Naruse might also be due to his style. He was not as elaborate as Kurosawa, and neither did he develop a highly distinctive personal bookmark style, as did Mizoguchi with his long takes or Ozu with his parametric treatment of space. Naruse's style is calmer, simpler and "easier", but it hides underneath it a richly depicted view of human relations, especially those within or resembling domestic situations. The National Film Center in Tokyo already screened several Naruse seasons this decade, and, following the interest, Japanese bookshops now stock a number of new books on the director. In the West, Naruse retrospectives started with the 1983 Locarno Film Festival. It took until very recently for critics, researchers and historians to follow suit, notable among them Jean Narboni, Ben Singer, Freda Freiberg, Catherine Russell, Audie Bock, Alain Masson, Chris Fujiwara and Alexander Jacoby.
Of interest are the recent screenings of pre-war films, such as The Whole Family Works (Hataraku Ikka ,1939), which reveal a tendency towards realism and narrative experimentation. They certainly widen the image of Naruse as a stylistically "invisible" director, as he experimented both with visual style and with the flashback structure of his films. In his first sound film, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (Otome-Gokoro Sannin Kyodai, 1935) Naruse had the chance to experiment with voice-over narration. Thus, alongside our image of Naruse as a mature master of 1950s and 60s, there is another, exciting Naruse to be found in the prewar period. Naruse's prewar films reveal a tendency towards flashier camera work, including tracking shots and cutting over the 180 degree line, as opposed to his more "invisible" postwar style. This more apparent style can be noticed in Morning's a Tree-lined Street (Ashita no Namiki Michi, 1936), a story about two young women who work in a Ginza coffee shop and struggle with their lives and relationships. Indeed, the characters and themes dear to Naruse are there: bar hostesses and coffee shop waitresses who try to support their families, impossible love, and the role of money in relationships.
As the early films already reveal, Naruse worked within the domestic and female-oriented genres, such as shomingeki and domestic melodrama. Already the titles of his films - Mother (Okaasan), Husband and Wife (Fufu) and Older Brother, Younger Sister (Ani Imoto), give an indication about Naruse's interests. Naruse's film center on dialogue scenes, within which a web of human relationships and emotions simmer just under the peaceful surface. The setting of his stories was therefore close to Ozu's, but while Ozu pictures his characters getting on peacefully with their lives despite some disappointment, Naruse's characters seem to deal more actively with their disappointments, and finally end up being more bitter about them. In this sense Naruse's pessimistic view on relationship problems strikes a very modern sensibility, one that we still can identify with. Naruse has been compared to Anton Chekhov on his treatment of human life. If one goes to look for biographical sources, those can be found too: perhaps the numerous women supporting themselves and their children without a husband are a reflection upon Naruse's own childhood of having been raised by his sisters after his parents' deaths. The protagonist of Mother (1952), who gives up her child for adoption is a typical female character in Naruse's films, as well as the war widow who runs a small shop in Yearning (Midareru).
Lacking the funds, Naruse never received a university education, and instead took a job as a set construction assistant at the Shochiku studios. After ten years of assistantships - a normal term before achieving the position of director during the heyday of studio system - Naruse was allowed to direct slapstick comedies.
Although bitter dramas centering around women and families are Naruse's trademark, one schould not forget his sense of humor. Naruse had a knack for bringing out his characters' humorous sides, for example in the sisters and brothers fathered by different men in Lightning (Inazuma, 1952).
Naruse also wove the practical topic of money into the relationships he was depicting. For example, in Late Chrysanthemum (Bangiku, 1954) the female moneylender goes around trying to collect debts back from the geishas, but falls prey to a greedy man herself. The same theme with money as the basis of relationships continues in Flowing (Nagareru, 1956). Family members are married off for fortune and survival rather than the sake of tradition, for example in Summer Clouds (Iwashigumo, 1958) depicts the changing of family relations as being always tied to economic turns.
Naruse directed for two studios. It has been claimed that Shochiku thought one Ozu was enough, and that this is why Naruse switched to PCL, which was later to merge into Toho. It is under Toho's roof that he directed his most famous films, but he also branched out to Shintoho and Daiei. Naruse's first Toho film was Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, based on a Yasunari Kawabata novel. Naruse was to return to Kawabata in 1954 with Sound of the Mountain (Yama no Oto, 1954). Naruse loved literature from his youth on, and was to film numerous novels, many of them from Fumiko Hayashi, Naruse's favorite writer. These include Repast (Meshi, 1951), Lightning, Late Chrysanthemum, the partly autobiographical Lonely Lane (Horoki) and Floating Clouds (Ukigumo, 1955).
The story of Floating Clouds about a woman's struggle in postwar Japan also offers magnificent acting from one of Naruse's regulars, Hideko Takamine, the quintessential Naruse actress with her ability to reflect women's hopes, disappointments, earthly practicality and bitterness. The same bitter fight between one's own hopes and the limits of the surrounding reality are brought out wonderfully in Takamine's role as the bar owner, mama-san, in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga Kaidan o Agaru Toki, 1960). Another Naruse regular was Haruko Sugimura, who specialized in tougher, middle-aged women's roles, for example as the money lender in Late Chrysanthemum. Setsuko Hara also played a good number of roles in Naruse's films.
The stage is often a cramped apartment or a restaurant, bar or guest house frequented by average folk. Naruse used to block his actors on such narrow stages that they were hardly able to move. In dialogue scenes Naruse filmed one actor at a time from the beginning of the scene until the end, before he turned his camera to the co-actor. Acting in Naruse films was not always an easy task: many of his regular players complained that the director never gave them particular instructions on what he wanted from a scene [ 1 ].
In outdoor scenes the bridge is also a crucial set for dialogue scenes, underlining the characters' aim towards something. Naruse's style became more and more simple over time and he did not seem to have any need to highlight his message with visual means. In his last films the camera hardly moves at all. This simplicity, however, was created through a refined system of filming: Masao Tamai, Naruse's regular cameraman, has told how Naruse wanted the outdoor scenes to be filmed so that one actor moves and looks over his/her shoulder at another actor, who then moves. The takes were done with a non-moving camera, but this filming style created a flow in the scenes. Akira Kurosawa, who briefly worked as an assistant to Naruse in the 1930s, has analyzed that Naruse's way to pile short takes on top of each other gives an impression of one long take [ 2 ].
Although as a director he is central to the Classical period, there is something very modern about Naruse's characters and stories. This is perhaps one of the reasons for the recent interest in his films. Watching a Naruse film is not about examining "how they used to make films". It is about getting involved in stories that still strike a chord with us.
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/mikio-naruse-a-modern-classic/