Japn 340 Japanese Cinema: Ugetsu

Questions on the Yoshimoto Reading:

1. What strikes Yoshimoto about early film criticism on Japanese film? (8-10)

 

 

2. What is an enduring legacy, but also an unfortunate weakness in his eyes, of this kind of humanist criticism? (10-11)

 

 

 

3. What does Yoshimoto note as a second tendency in the humanist interpretive tradition? (11-12)

 

 

 

4. At this juncture he takes on Paul Schrader's book about Ozu and his "Transcendental Style" of which Yoshimoto is critical. What are his reservations about Schrader's analysis? (12-14)

 

 

 

5. How do the whole "National Character" studies and/or explanations figure into this? (16-18)

6. Burch and a "Theoretical Turn"--How does

Yoshimoto critique Burch? (19-23)

 

 

 

 

 

7. How does all this leave us?

 

 

 

 

Some answers:

 

 

 

 

 

He points out that the history of film criticism in English on Japan was begun by people like Donald Richie and Joseph Anderson, The Japanese Film (1960), which he calls an "informative overview," and "the most basic reference book" for studying the Japaense cinema.

 

 

 

 

 

He sees this 1960s discourse on Japanese cinema as a kind of "humanist criticism" founded on the belief that films can be a "repository of universal values." They can offer moral lessons regarding human dignity, freedom, and the unity of the human race. What could be wrong with an approach like this? I certainly like it; I use it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. But, what is an enduring legacy, and also an unfortunate weakness in his eyes, of this kind of humanist criticism?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoshimoto argues, it could result in some unfortunate "reductionist thinking" that equates "national character" with behavior or aesthetics; it can make "Japaneseness"--whatever that is--into a, or the determining factor...Results in "stereotypes of the Japanese national character and cultural essence that are routinely used to explain thematic motifs, formal features, and the contextual background of Japanese films."(10)

 

 

So we wind up saying things like: these films offer us glimpses into an "ahistorical Japanese mind," a an "unchanging collective essence" or that "Japanese culture is marked by a valuing of the irrational...." Or, Whatever.

 

 

 

 

In other words, we risk coming to rely on trite stereotypes to "explain" the mysteries of Japan: its Buddhist worldview, how its Zen approach is manifested, throwing out terms like yugen, wabi, sabi, the void, etc., etc.

 

So humanism is a useful approach but has some dangers for which we need to be on the alert.

 

 

 

 

 

3. What does Yoshimoto note as a second tendency in the humanist interpretive tradition?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tendency to highlight "auterism," where the unique "take" of the director or screenwriter can mediate cultural specificity and deliver us that "universal message" that is at the core of the Humanist worldview.

 

 

 

 

 

The "auteur is supposed to transcend time and place, [provide] a personal vision of the world with consistency and a coherence of statement...This view of universality of shared human experience is indispsensable for making Japanese films intelligible to American audiences."

 

 

 

 

 

How is this useful...and then also not so useful?

 

Again, nothing really wrong with an "auteur" approach, especially since this works so well for European Cinema which differs from the standard American, Hollywood Studio approach. There it is rare that the Director is also the scriptwriter and gets to go in and impose his own vision on everybody working on the film. We alway hear stories about a script idea being "pitched," then the idea circulates, until somebody at the studio (a suit?) buys it, hires a scriptwriter, then they find a director who comes on board, who has is onw ideas, sometimes the director and the studio may clash, etc.

In France, with the New Wave, we have Directors like Truffaut and Goddard; in India, Sajayit Ray; Ingmar Bergman in Sweden; in Japan, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Naruse, etc. In the US, other than Hitchcock ( who was English) , we rarely see this. Maybe a John Ford, or a Sam Peckinpah...but their films were rarely thought of as intellectually demanding cinema.

 

 

 

So, it can be a useful and valid approach. But of course, since the history and traditions of the "auteur" inevitably sneak back into their vision, aren't we again at risk of talking about a typical Japanese view or approach -- and what if there really isn't one?

 

4. At this juncture he takes on Paul Schrader's book about Ozu and his "Transcendental Style" of which Yoshimoto is critical. What are his reservations about Schrader's analysis?

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Zen and the Orient" become like magical words to Schrader which he throws out there but never really defines. In the end, where Ozu's "Zen style stops and the transcendenttal style begins is almost indiscernible in Ozu's films." (16)

 

Yoshimoto asks where are the detailed studies of these things? Who can really explicate the "nuances of wabi, sabi, aware and yugen"? Yoshimoto says he knows of no such studies and he does not know any Japanese people who talk about this sort of stuff.

 

 

 

If Zen permeates Japanese culture, can Ozu in fact transcend it?

 

 

 

 

 

5. How do the whole "National Character" studies and/or explanations figure into this?

 

 

 

 

 

The impetus for these National character explanations was to offer an alternative to Racism....using "enculturation" instead...but it wound up being appropriated as apart of a racist dicourse. Aren't you still focusing on the irreducible "differences" between the Other--Japan--and the west?

 

 

 

 

 

--At fault here may be Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), which tries to identify cultural patterns which are enculturated, or "permanently attached to a nation or race and are not modified by changes in the environment nor by the power of time." Not to mention, class or gender.

 

 

She tries to find "deep-seated cultural patterns in seemingly contradictory manifestations of Japanese daily life." She looks at on, giri, chu and ko which are all talking about social and moral obligation, loyalty and filial piety. Race receeds but if these cultural patterns are pemanetly attached to a particular race without any real possiblity of change...then how much does it differ from overtly racist theories?

 

 

 

The purpose of Benedict's study--developing during the wartime years--was to help policy makers figure out how to deal with Japan after the war...But it comes off being too "totalizing" of an agenda.

 

 

 

So instead of using film to understand the mysteries of the Japanese national character, now the national character analysis is supposed to help us unpack Japanese film! Kind of a weird "inversion" of the question and answer: what should be studied through careful film analysis is used as the answer to interpetive questions raised by the filmmakers.

 

And the results we get will always be the same: that Japanese films are different because of this elusive entity called "Japan." (18) But this is kind of tautalogical and does not really help us much.

 

 

This where the works of Doi Takeo (1971) and Nakane Chie (1970) are often invoked; but they proceed from the assumption that the Japanese are unknowable by westerners unless we think in terms of group harmony, dependence and vertical loyalties, etc. If we go in with these assumptions, then the outcome is already predetermined.

 

Neither Doi's nor Nakane's works were developed by them to be put to these uses...and they have been around for 50+ years...but that is how they have been used.

 

Yoshimoto would argue that we need to get away from them and concentrate more on what we actually SEE in Japanese film and how what we see should be treated from a Film Studies perspective.

 

The problem with concepts like "amae(dependence)" and "the vertical society" is that they become static; they don't open up things to deeper, more meaningful analyses...but just freeze Japanese society or behavior in a kind of a rigid mold. These ideas have their utility but should not be overrelied upon or used uncritically.

 

 

 

 

6. Burch and a "Theoretical Turn"--How does Yoshimoto critique Burch?

 

 

 

 

 

Burch seemed to offer an alternative, drawing on "theory" to see western cinema as Representation and Japanese as more Presentational. Western painting is more illusionist, focusing on depth; Japanese art tends to draw attention to Surface and process, forgrounding the constructedness of meaning, and thereby going against western bourgeois ideology that valorizes originality and individual creativity. But what does Yoshimoto see as a flaw in his argument?

 

 

 

 

 

--In the end, he, too, is "Orientalist" and binary in his view because he sees that Japanese cinema is meaningful primarily because it functions as a different model of cinema that critiques western bourgeois, capitalist modes of representnation. This is OK, even pretty cool.

 

 

 

 

But Japan in this configuration remains an abstract ideal, an imaginary construct, not a reality. Burch claims to be historical but he also admits that he does not know much about Japan or Japanese history. He is only a "Distant Observer" he tells us in his title, so he tailors what he learns to fit into his preconceived model.

 

He, too, then predicates his arguments on "essential difference" instead of analyzing Japanese film for what it is, for taking it on its own terms. Ironically, he ends up affirming the same ideology that he critiques. He also falls into an "Us/Not-Us" paradigm by posing the absolute dichotomy of the west and Japan.

 

What Burch is ultimately interested in is not really Japan, but critiquing the western bourgeois model of representaation and he discovered in Japanese literary and plastic arts, the perfect foil. He assumes a completely hegemonic system of western cinema as though all western cinema is the same. He does not consider "the specificty of the institutional site of discourse." The value of Japanese cinema is always determined through its comparison to the dominant western cinema." (21)

 

 

 

What is missing from this kind of analysis is precisely this "specificity," i.e., the historical and cultural CONTEXT for the film we are watching.

 

--In the end, Yoshimoto finds that Burch's work failed to create a "theoretical turn" in the study of Japanese cinema. (22) In the end, it just authorizes "the continuation of more traditional humanistic studies." (23) And so be it.

 

But is this the worst thing in the world? How does it leave us?

 

 

 

Can't we practice a kind of modified humanistic/auteur approach to Japanese films while doing our best to see them on their own terms--in relation to a body of work--by the same director, by other Japanese directors, and by other directors elsewhere in the world? And try to learn from these films and appreciate about them simply everything that we can.

 

In doing so, we should bd able to learn something about the world, about the times, and about ourselves.

We could do a lot worse with our time!!!

 

I think you/we can look at Japanese films, absorb the critical analysis that may bring out things that are "different" about Japanese film and Japanese sensibilities--without necessarily subscribing to or falling prey to some model that focuses on Japanese films as weird, exotic, different. Hopefully. So be thoughtful, sensitive observers.

 

 

So saying, the first couple of films that we are watching do strike many critics as featuring elements of pace, narration, style, flow, filmic technique, etc., that have an indebtedness to some Japanese artisitc practices. Wouldn't it be odd if they didn't?

 

People love to comment on the beauty and elegance of Mizoguchi's style, the fluid motion of his camera, his long takes from a boom that sweeps over the landscape the way a Japanese scroll--an emaki mono--unfolds. OK, but without knowing anything about emaki mono we can still SEE and appreciate the sweep of his camera and the various positions from which he shoots his scenes, can't we?

 

Catherine Russell in her book, Classical Japanese Cinema, says this:

Classical Japanese cinema is a stylish cinema....There is a consistency of elegant composition, figure placement, use of architecture and lighting design. Elegance in conjunction wit the simplicity of everyday life is one of the distinguishing features of this cinema....The stylishness of the visual field indicates a cultural impetus to aestheticize, to raise the status of everyday life to something more meaningful, more harmonious and more beautiful than, in truth it really was or could be. At the same time, this is realist cinema that demonstrates a keen eye for detail, for both the modern world and the historical.

 

If we think of the impulse to "aestheticize" as being related to the idea that Burch promotes: that Japanese--because of their hybrid writing system--are more inclined to see and appreciate the the "constructedness of meaning," and our willing to be open about it and therefore are less intersted in being "Illusionist."

 

 

Something else to which Burch alerts us is that Japanese tend to value "Intertextuality" in their literary and associated arts, and that they don't necessarily see texts and narratives as "bound" by rigid border lines. Rather, things seem more permeable not because of some deep seated cultural practices....but simply because it is what makes the most sense to them as artists! So, literature, music, dance, theatre, painting, chanting, intoning...we should not be surprised to see and hear these things. But nor should we be too shocked if they are not there!

 

Ugetsu

 

Right off the bat, in the opening frames, we
hear the sound of Noh chanting, and we see as a backdrop, some beautiful Japanese screens and dyed fabric patterns. 

There appears some Japanese writing on the screen--beautiful, calligraphic, painterly.

It is a passage from a literary text:

Ueda Akinari’s Tales of Moonlight and Rain or Ugetsu (1776).  

Hello, Intertextuality!

 

Then a voiceover intones:

Mysterious Fantasies continue to enchant modern readers.  This film is a new refashioning of those fantasies.

Fade and move to a Long Shot, a pan of a village where we meet two couples.

Note on the Setting for the Film:

Ueda’s Tales were written in the Edo period (late 1700s) but the time frame has been moved back about 100 years to the late 16th century, probably the 1570s.  A very tumultuous and fluid period.

The locale is Omi Province, home base of the Great Warlord, Oda Nobunaga, near Lake Biwa. 

The main characters:

1. Couple One is loading a cart with pottery packed in straw.  This is Genjurô and Miyagi.  They hear the rumble of distant gunfire and Genjurô assumes they must be “executing Shibata’s spies” (Shibata Katsuie, 1530-1583, was a real historical figure, a samurai trusted General of Oda’s). 

Genjurô has heard that with the arrival of Hashiba’s forces (another real historical figure, Hashiba Hidekatsu, 1568-1586; Oda’s 4th son) has brought an economic boom to the market town of Nagahama where he plans to sell his wares.  So Mizoguchi clearly incorporates an element of historical reality here....and in paying such close attention to the artifacts in his films, the settings, the costumes, the art, the atmosphere, etc., he is bringing a real past alive in his films. But that is not his only point!

Because the Sengoku or Warring States period is a fluid time, opportunities to rise in the world abound, but so do dangers.

 

2. Out of one of the village houses comes the Second Couple: Tobei followed by his wife Ohama who is goading him,

“Go on if you must!  Some samurai you’ll make!” 

Tobei retorts,

“How high can a man rise if he does not have dreams?  Ambitions must be as boundless as the ocean.” 

“Stick to your trade, or you will regret it,” Ohama advises. 

This turns out to be a prophetic foreshadowing. 

In different ways, the onset of War has stirred desires and ambitions in the males and it is the women who will bear the brunt of the suffering. 

 

Speaking to postwar audiences in 1953, it is hard not see all of the references to war and how dreams and ambitions push human beings into making unfortunate decisions as Mizoguchi’s way of getting at what Japan’s push to control most of Asia under the aegis of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere has meant for the Japanese people.

 

Quotes:

Mizoguchi was speaking to war survivors: those who had approved and enabled the conflict, those who viewed Japan's militaristic and imperial ambitions with skepticism, and those who had not yet come of age but still had to endure its harsh effects. Filmed somewhat in response to the success that his younger disciple Akira Kurosawa achieved with Rashomon, Mizoguchi's vision embraces the frailty of human nature with a generous tolerance that nevertheless retains both the wisdom and nerve to confront it when our weakness begins to wreak havoc on the innocent. 

Ugetsu challenges us to open our eyes, question our ambitions (and those of our would-be leaders) and recognizes that the ghosts that haunt us the most profoundly are those we summon up from our hidden depths.

David Blakeslee

 

Two kinds of Reality in Mizoguchi's Cinema: Social or Historical/Political Reality v. Supernatural Otherworldliness

 

I thought that film was about reproducing reality.  I knew that literature could be fantastical but I thought movies were supposed to be a faithful reflection of reality. But watching Ugetsu, I forgot all about that.  In Ugetsu I felt as if the world of fairy tales had been perfectly recreated in images and this was a huge surprise.  So we can say that Mizoguchi was a supreme realist while at the same time, a supreme fantasist.  Therefore, he presents to us as an ambivalent figure. 

For temporal reality we usually expect three things: Events, Narration and Dramatic Progression.  But with Ugetsu, Mizoguchi broke all those rules.  He had real time and fantasy time, along with real space and fantasy space completely mixed together; they were all part of a single world. 

Ugetsu is the most successful film I have ever seen at moving back and forth between these two worlds, between these two realities.  His approach reminds me of traditional Japanese scrolls-emaki.  Having his characters move back and forth through spaces like this was unprecedented.

Masahiro Shinoda, Director

 

Catherine Russell had said much the same thing when she noted about the elegance and stylishness of Japanese clasical film directors:

The stylishness of the visual field indicates a cultural impetus to aestheticize, to raise the status of everyday life to something more meaningful, more harmonious and more beautiful than, in truth it really was or could be. At the same time, this is realist cinema that demonstrates a keen eye for detail, for both the modern world and the historical.

 

So Japanese "Classical Cinema," she suggests is marked by a wonderful elegance, a stylishness, a strong aestheticism...but it is also (socially) realistic. So it is an interesting juxtaposition; not something we would necessarily anticipate.