Cinema of Japan

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Japanese cinema (映画; Eiga) has a history in Japan that spans more than 100 years.

Contents

1 Genres
2 History

2.1 The Silent Era
2.2 The 1930s
2.3 The 1940s
2.4 The 1950s
2.5 The 1960s
2.6 The 1970s
2.7 The 1980s
2.8 The 1990s
2.9 2000 and after

3 Footnotes
4 References
5 External links
6 See also

Genres

Anime: Japanese animation. The word "anime" means "animated cartoon" in English.
Jidaigeki, period pieces featuring samurai, also known as Chambara (onomatopoeia describing the sound of swords clashing).
Horror films such as Ringu, also known as J-Horror
Cult Horror, such as Battle Royale or Suicide Club
Kaiju: monster films, such as Gojira
Pink films, pornographic films. Often more socially-engaged and aesthically well-crafted than simple pornography.
Yakuza films: films about mobsters.

History

The Silent Era

The first film produced in Japan was the short documentary Geisha No Teodori (芸者の手踊り) in June of 1899.

The first Japanese performer to appear in a film professionally was the dancer/actress Tokuko Nagai Takagi, who appeared in four shorts for the American-based Thanhouser Company between 1911 and 1914 [(source)].

Most Japanese cinema theatres at the time employed benshi, narrators whose dramatic readings accompanied the film and its musical score which, like in the West, was often performed live. ¹

The 1923 earthquake, the Allied bombing of Tokyo during World War II, as well as the natural effects of time and Japan's humidity on the then more fragile filmstock have all resulted in a great dearth of surviving films from this period.

Some of the most discussed silent films from Japan are those of Kenji Mizoguchi, whose later works (e.g., The Life of Oharu) are still highly regarded today.

A study of the "gendaigeki" (contemporary/modern film drama) and writing for film in Japan in the 1910s to early 1920s, with select translations of scripts (complete as well as excerpts) is available in "Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement" (Joanne Bernardi, Wayne State University Press, 2001).

The 1930s

Unlike Hollywood, silent films were still being produced in Japan well into the 1930s. Notable talkies of this period include Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion (Gion no shimai, 1936), Osaka Elegy (Naniwa erejî, 1936) The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Zangiku monogatari, 1939). With increasing censorship, the left-leaning tendency films of directors such as Daisuke Ito come under attack.

The 1940s

Akira Kurosawa makes his feature film debut with Sugata Sanshiro in 1943. With the SCAP occupation following the end of WWII, Japan is exposed to over a decade's worth of American animation that had been banned under the war-time government.

The 1950s

The 1950s were the zenith of Japanese cinema, and three of its films (Rashōmon, The Seven Samurai, and Tokyo Story) made the Sight and Sound's 2002 Critics and Directors Poll for the best films of all time.http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/ The decade started with Akira Kurosawa's Rashōmon (1950), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and marked the entrance of Japanese cinema onto the world stage. It was also the breakout role for legendary star Toshiro Mifune., p.127. 1952 and 1953 saw another Kurosawa film, Ikiru, as well as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. The year 1954 saw two of Japan's most influential films released. The first was the Kurosawa epic The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai), about a band of hired samurai who protect a helpless village from a rapacious gang of thieves, which was remade in the West as The Magnificent Seven. That same year Ishirō Honda released the anti-nuclear horror film Gojira, which was translated in the West as Godzilla. Though it was severely edited for its Western release, Godzilla became an international icon of Japan and spawned an entire industry of Kaiju films. In 1955, Hiroshi Inagaki won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for of his Samurai Trilogy.

Kenji Mizoguchi directs The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Onna, 1952), Ugetsu (Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho Dayu, 1954).

Mikio Naruse directs Repast (1950), Late Chrysanthemums (1954) and Floating Clouds (1955).

Yasujiro Ozu directs Good Morning (Ohayō, 1959).

The 1960s

Akira Kurosawa directs the 1961 classic Yojimbo, which is considered a huge influence on the Western.

Technicolor makes its mark. Kon Ichikawa captures the watershed 1964 Olympics in his three-hour documentary Tokyo Olympiad (Tōkyō Orimpikku; 1965). Nikkatsu fires Suzuki Seijun for "making films that don't make any sense and don't make any money" after his surrealist yakuza flick Branded to Kill (1967).

Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atomu introduces anime to television and gives the world Astro Boy in 1963.

Nagisa Oshima, Kaneto Shindo, and Shohei Imamura emerge as major filmmakers during the decade.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964) takes the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and is nominated for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film Oscars. Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1965) also picks up the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

The 1970s

Nagisa Oshima directs Ai no koriida (In the Realm of the Senses; 1976), a World War II period piece about Abe Sada. Staunchly anti-censorship, he insisted that the film would contain hardcore pornographic material; as a result the exposed film must be shipped to France for processing, and an uncut version of the film has still, to this day, never been shown in Japan. However, the pink film industry became the stepping stone for young independent filmmakers of Japan.

The 1980s

Hayao Miyazaki adapts his manga Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika) into a feature film (an anime of the same name) in 1984. Katsuhiro Otomo adapts his manga Akira into a feature-length anime in 1988. New anime movies are run every summer and winter with characters from popular TV anime. Shohei Imamura wins the Golden Palm at Cannes for Narayama Bushiko (1983) (Ballad of Narayama; 1982).

The 1990s

Shohei Imamura again wins the Golden Palm (shared with Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami), this time for Unagi (The Eel) (1997), joining Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Bille August as only the fourth two-time recipient. Takeshi Kitano emerges as a significant filmmaker with works such as Sonatine (1993), Kids Return (1996) and Hana-Bi (1997), which was given the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Not to forget, Takashi Miike makes up to 50 films in a decade, building up an impressive portfolio with titles such as, Audition (1999), Dead or Alive (1999) and The Bird People in China (1998). Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Koreeda both launch acclaimed careers. Hayao Miyazaki directs two mammoth box office and critical sucesses, Porco Rosso (1992) which beat E.T. (1982) as the highest-grossing film in Japan, and Princess Mononoke (1997) which also claimed the top box office spot until Titanic (1997) beat it.

2000 and after

Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement to direct Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi; 2001), breaking Japanese box office records and winning the U.S. Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2002, Dolls is released, followed by a high-budget remake, Zatoichi in 2003, both directed and written by Takeshi Kitano. The horror films Ringu and are remade in English and met with commercial success. In 2005, director Seijun Suzuki made his 56th film, Princess Raccoon. Hirokazu Koreeda proclaims film festival awards around the world with two of his films Distance and Nobody Knows.

Footnotes

Note 1: For more on benshi, see the books:

: ([review]) and

: [link])

References

External links

[Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)]
[Lisa's Japanese Movie Listing]
[Midnight Eye]
[Cinemasie]
[Resources for the study of Japanese Cinema at the University of Iowa Library]
[Colin's Master's of Cinema Page]
[Japanese Cinema to 1960] by Gregg Rickman
[The Problem of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Horror Films], discussion paper by Timothy Iles in the [electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies], 6 October 2005.
[Female Voices, Male Words: Problems of Communication, Identity and Gendered Social Construction in Contemporary Japanese Cinema], discussion paper by Timothy Iles in the [electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies], 31 January 2003.
[Reviews of Japanese Films], in the [electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies].
[Cinema.3Yen] - Daily news and info on Cinema from Japan.
[A forum about Asian entertainment]