the classical cinema in japan

as Chinas Gone with the Wind, the film can still provoke
floods of tears from older Chinese audiences when shown
today. The film opens with an ideal couple and their son.
However, they are separated by the war when the husband
retreats with the Kuomintang to the interior. There he is
gradually corrupted and becomes the lover of a rich
society woman. His faithful wife suffers through the war
in Shanghai, waiting patiently for his return, but he comes
back as a Kuomintang carpet-bagger, and the film climaxes
when his wife discovers that he is the husband of the
woman for whom she is working as a maid. He disowns
her and she drowns herself in the Yangtze.
Disillusion with the Kuomintang and their hangers-on
is even more pronounced in the films that depict post-war
conditions. Films like Myriads of Lights, Crows and Sparrows,
and San Mao (adapted from a newspaper cartoon about
an orphan) were all enjoyable and humorous, but none
attempted to hide the appalling social contradictions of
these years and the resentment those who had suffered
in Shanghai felt towards their compatriots who had
managed to profit from the war. Stylistically, these films
featured more subtle ensemble playing from actors
seasoned by many years of stage work. Although less
obviously pastiched than the films of the 1930s, they
too represent post-colonial appropriation for prerevolutionary ends, but this time drawing on the western
spoken stage drama and its cinematic equivalents, rather
than popular culture.

The second golden age ended Chinas pre-1949 cinematic history on a fitting high note. In retrospect, it is
remarkable that five years of film-making in the 1930s
(19327) and three years in the 1940s (19469) should
stand out so strongly in a total film-making history of
forty years (190949). However, it would be wrong to
suggest that these two golden ages appeared out of the
blue. Rather, they represented windows of opportunity
when talent that had been long developing was able to
make itself visible. Some would argue that such an opportunity was not to present itself again for another fortyfive years, until One and Eight and Yellow Earth (both 1984)
heralded the arrival of another golden age of Chinese
cinema.

Bibliography
Bergeron, Regis (1977), Le Cinema chinois, i: 19051949.
Berry, Chris (ed.) (1991), Perspectives on Chinese Cinema.
Cheng Jihua et al. (1963), Zhongguo dianying fazhanshi (History of
the development of Chinese cinema).
Clark, Paul (1987), Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949.
Du Yunzhi (1972), Zhongguo Dianyingshi (History of Chinese
cinema).
Leyda, Jay (1972), Dianying: Electric Shadows.
Quiquemelle, Marie-Claire, and Passek, Jean-Loup (eds.) (1985), Le
Cinema chinois.
Toroptsev, Sergei (1979), Ocherk istorii kitaiskogo kino 18961966
(Essays on the history of Chinese cinema).

The Classical Cinema in Japan

hiroshi komatsu
The Great Kanto Earthquake of the first of September 1923
destroyed Tokyo and the culture it had supported. The
Japanese chose not to rebuild the city as it had been
and abandoned its old forms for a new appearance. The
destruction caused by the earthquake also gave the decisive impetus for the development of new kinds of Japanese
film. From 1924 to the early 1930s a number of classics
of Japanese cinema were made at Nikkatsu, Shochiku,
Teikine, Makino, and some small independent studios.
Production and invention were stimulated as archaic
forms were abandoned and film-makers embraced new
European art cinemas.
Although the destruction caused by the earthquake was
the decisive catalyst for these changes, they had been
underway for several years before. As early as 1922, such
films as Reiko no wakare (On the verge of spiritual light,
Kokkatsu/Kiyomatsu Hosoyama) and Yojo no mai (Dance of
a sorceress, Shochiku/Yoshinobu Ikeda) had appeared in

the New School genre. These were influenced by German

Expressionism, partially employing the contorted stage
settings featured in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) and
From Morn to Midnight (Von Morgens bis Mitternacht, 1920).
Formula rather than story had been the important factor
in Japanese film-making since its inception, and so the
German expressionist style could be incorporated very
swiftly. Film-makers took the German imports as a film
art template; a new formula to reproduce. Kenji Mizoguchi imitated the form in his Chi to rei (Blood and Spirit,
Nikkatsu, 1923) completed just before the earthquake and
one of the last to be made in Nikkatsus famous Mukojima
studio.
The earthquake did not destroy the Mukojima studio,
but it made film-making in Tokyo very difficult. Nikkatsu
closed the studio and moved its entire production section to Kyoto, where it would remain for the next ten
years. Kyoto, the ancient capital, was traditionally the
413

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production centre of period drama (jidaigeki), and the surroundings of old houses and streets would seem to provide
a perfect backdrop for this form. Modern dramas
(gendaigeki) were always set in Tokyo, but now Nikkatsu
had to shoot them in the Kyoto studio with set reproductions of the city. The Kyoto production base allowed
for the development of artificial styles, particularly
Expressionism, in the sets of Nikkatsu gendaigeki. The
other major company, Shochiku, also moved the work of
its Tokyo studio to Kyoto in the aftermath of the earthquake, but they found it difficult to create the right atmosphere for gendaigeki there and returned to Tokyo two
months later.
The studio-based gendaigeki produced by Nikkatsu in
Kyoto were clearly distinguishable from those made in
Tokyo by Shochiku and other companies. The Tokyo films
emphasized the place of human relationships in modern
society by representing the daily lives of ordinary people.
Nikkatsu, on the other hand, produced films in its Kyoto
studio which depicted a clearly fictive world detached
from daily life, similar to that represented in literary and
theatrical works or foreign films.
Two directors, Minoru Murata and Yutaka Abe, were
instrumental in establishing the characteristics of
Nikkatsu gendaigeki although they had very different
influences and styles. European cultural influences had
been felt in Japan since the Meiji period, and it was from

Minoru Muratas German

Expressionist-influenced Osumi
to haha (Osumi and Mother,
1924)

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these sources that Murata took his inspiration. His film

Rojo no reikon (Soul on the road, Shochiku, 1921) represented the imaginative world and lacked typical
Japanese realism. He studied German film and theatre
and the impact of Expressionism can be seen in his film for
Nikkatsu, Untenshu Eikichi (Eikichi the chauffeur, 1924),
in which he partially employed expressionist settings. In
utilizing chiaroscuro, added quite artificially on to the
theme of the drama, Murata presaged future Japanese
films, notably the works of Teinosuke Kinugasa. A scene
from Seisaku no tsuma (Seisakus wife, Nikkatsu, 1924), in
which the heroine in fetters, played by Kumeko Urabe,
stands in despair on the street, is similar to the last scene
in Kinugasas Jujiro (Crossroads, 1928), but was in fact
borrowed directly from the snowy night scene in the
German expressionist film From Morn to Midnight. Osumi to
haha (Osumi and mother, 1924) and especially Machi no
tejinashi (The conjuror in the town, 1925), with which he
visited France and Germany, showed Muratas penchant
for European art cinema.
Yutaka Abe, the other major director of Nikkatsu gendaigeki, had been working as an actor in Los Angeles, and
brought Hollywood-style modernism to Japanese film. Abe
particularly admired the sophisticated comedy of Lubitsch, and was inspired to put erotic elements into his
works. His films can be seen as a reaction to the New
School melodrama. Abes films Ashi ni sawatta onna (The

the classical cinema in japan

woman who touched the legs, 1926), Riku no ningyo (The

mermaid on the land, 1926), and Kare wo meguru gonin no
onna (Five women around him, 1927) were welcomed
by film-goers, and their popularity led to a fundamental
change in the form of gendaigeki.
The trend towards modernism can also be seen in the
films produced by Shochiku, the company that had imitated the methods of American cinema from its earliest
days. At Shochiku the producer Shiro Kido encouraged
directors to make films which dealt with the lives of the
middle classes, who composed the majority of the cinema
audience at that time. Traditionally, Japanese cinema had
been based on established plot formulas, the worlds
created on screen being detached from the reality of the
lives of the audiences. By focusing on the daily life of the
middle classes, Shochiku films of this period manifested
an awareness of class without overt political implications.
However, this deviation from traditional cinematic
formula and subject-matter was not wholly revolutionary.
The description of ordinary peoples daily lives existed in
Japanese literature of the Edo period. American films,
particularly those of the Bluebird Company, were popular
in Japan in the 1910s and so audiences had seen that the
daily life of ordinary people could be an entertaining and
attractive cinematic spectacle. Shochikus middle-class
films were characterized by a message of class-consciousness seen through the scenes of daily life that
attracted the middle-class audiences; themes like the
problems of a white-collar worker.
Gendaigeki was not the only form to change fundamentally after the earthquake. Even the Kyuha (Old
School) genre, the most traditional costume drama,
changed in this period. While very traditional films continued to be made, a new form developed from its roots
and became known as period drama or jidaigeki. This genre
too moved away from the repetition of formulas based on
familiar and traditional stories. The more modern form
of jidaigeki was established around 19234, and after the
death in 1926 of Matsunosuke Onoe, the superstar actor
who had virtually symbolized the Old School style, the
new form completely detached itself from the archaism
of the traditional costume drama.
Since 1909, when he directed his first film at the Yokota
Company, Shozo Makino had made many Matsunosuke
Onoe films as a specialist Old School director. However, in
1921 he founded his own independent company, Makino,
and began to make period dramas that differed in form
and style from the formula Matsunosuke Onoe films. Not
only did he direct, but he acted as a producer, discovering
and nurturing talented directors, script-writers, and
actors. Among the directors, Koroku Numata, Bansho Kanamori, and Buntaro Futagawa made jidaigeki for the
Makino Company. The writer Rokuhei Susukita developed
scripts that had nihilistic and sometimes anarchistic

content, injecting a current of leftist ideology into the

jidaigeki.
Despite the death of their star Matsunosuke Onoe, the
Nikkatsu studio continued to make orthodox jidaigeki.
Tomiyasu Ikeda, the main jidaigeki director at the studio,
borrowed his themes from well-known and traditional
historical stories, and so his films lacked the boldness of
Makinos period films in which the heroes were always
heading towards ruin. Ikeda directed large-scale static
jidaigeki such as Sonno joi (Revere the Emperor, expel the
barbarians, Nikkatsu, 1927) and Jiraika gumi (Jiraika
group, Nikkatsu, 19278), and he became the undisputed
master of the most traditional jidaigeki from the late 1920s
into the 1930s. However, not all of Nikkatsus jidaigeki
directors were content with making orthodox period
drama. For example, Kichiro Tsuji conducted unique
experiments with the form. His film Jigoku ni ochita Mitsuhide (Mitsuhide gone to hell, Nikkatsu, 1926) was a
melange of jidaigeki, comedy, revue, Expressionism, and
gendaigeki. He was sensitive to the influences of film art
and introduced them into his own work. In the late 1920s
he even approached the proletarian cinema, making the
masterpiece Kasahari kenpo (The mending umbrella
swordsmanship, Nikkatsu, 1929), but as the Japanese
socialist movement was suppressed by state and police
he returned to orthodox jidaigeki, building a world that
evoked a period feel.
However, it was Daisuke Ito who raised jidaigeki of the
late 1920s to the heights of what was seen in retrospect to
be avant-garde. His films, like the trilogy of Chuji tabi
nikki (A diary of Chujis travels, Nikkatsu, 1927), have
extremely pessimistic themes, but were technically
advanced and critically acclaimed for their moving
camera, rapid cutting, and refined, plastic beauty.
Although famous for avant-garde films like Kurutta
ippeiji (A Page of Madness, 1926), Teinosuke Kinugasa also
opened a new horizon for jidaigeki by his effective direction. He originally acted as an oyama (the male actor who
always played womens roles) in the New School films
made at Nikkatsus Mukojima studio, before joining the
Makino Company as director. He became acquainted with
the contemporary young novelists with whom he made
Nichirin (The sun, 1925), a film dealing with Japanese
mythology. The influence of European art cinema can be
seen in his films Kurutta ippeiji and Jujiro (1928). These films
were exhibited in Tokyo in a theatre normally reserved for
foreign films and attracted a different audience from the
usual for Japanese films.
The jidaigeki form, then, was continuously refined in
the late 1920s, through the innovation of many directors
in different production companies. The films contents
were constituted not only from the traditional sword
plays, but also from the ideas inspired by new ideologies.
Daisuke Itos jidaigeki of this period described the
415

sound cinema

oppression of townspeople and peasants, and riots against

the ruling classes became an important theme in some
jidaigeki. Rebellion by the people was too controversial a
subject to be dealt with directly in the cinema, but the
jidaigeki were set in a period over 100 years previously and
so some ideological content was tolerated. Thus out of
traditional period drama a new form of leftist cinema, the
tendency film, developed.
In 1929 Tomu Uchidas Ikeru ningyo (A living doll) was
released from Nikkatsus Kyoto studio. This gendaigeki
dealt with the themes of evil and the contradictions of
capitalist society, and was one of the first true tendency
films. Following this model, Nikkatsu made Tokai kokyogaku (Metropolitan symphony, 1929, directed by Kenji
Mizoguchi) and Kono haha wo miyo (Look at this mother,
1930, by Tomotake Tasaka), employing realist forms influenced by Soviet and German cinema. The success of
Nikkatsus tendency films caused a wave of imitators. Even
Teikine, the film company that specialized in entertainment films, followed the trend by making Nani ga
kanojo wo so saseta ka (What made her do it?, 1930, directed
by Shigeyoshi Suzuki), depicting the life of a povertystricken female arsonist. This achieved particular boxoffice success, largely because it lightened its social criticism with vulgar elements to amuse the audience.
The censor interfered with all tendency films, particularly cutting parts that represented the destruction of
social order. It was impossible for films to admire revolution or to suggest the legitimacy of Communism, and
even the representation of the bare reality of poor people
was prohibited. This meant that the degree of realism in
these tendency films was weaker than that of their Soviet
and German counterparts. Furthermore, to attract audiences the tendency films had to depend on sensationalist
subject-matter, which limited the possibility of the ideological development of the film. However, they opened the
eyes of Japanese film-makers and audiences to the reality
of society, at the same time as influencing the development of the film industry by incorporating the methods
of European realist cinema.
The production of tendency film indicated the difference in the characters of the two main film companies
in Japan: Nikkatsu was a liberal company boldly producing
this kind of film in its Kyoto studio, but Shochiku, which
was founded on the conformist ideology of American
cinema, remained wary of the dangerous ideology of the
tendency film. However, after the tremendous success of
Nani ga kanojo wo so saseta ka, even Shochiku had to make
concessions to the new form. Yasujiro Shimazu directed
Seikatsu sen ABC (Life line ABC, 1931) for Shochiku, containing scenes of striking workers. The tendency film continued to be immensely popular up to 1931, when the
censor began to interfere more severely than ever, until
such films became impossible to release.
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As tendency films disappeared, propaganda of a different kind took its place. In 1932 Shochiku and some small
companies began to make films that glorified war and
nationalistic ideology, particularly supporting Japans
Manchurian policy.

the move to sound

Sound and silent film coexisted in Japan for many years,
with silent films being made up until 1938. There were
several reasons for this, both financial and cultural. First,
Japanese film companies of the early 1930s tended to be
insufficiently financially developed to equip their studios
with the machinery for sound film production. Even if
the studio was so equipped, it took time and money to
install the necessary sound film projectors and amplifiers
in all the cinemas. As long as some could only show silent
films, these had to be made in parallel with sound films.
The second reason for the slow transition to sound was the
resistance of the benshi (who explained the filmic image to
the audience). They fought the transfer to sound film
production in order to protect their jobs and positions.
Indeed in Japan some of the audience went to the movies
for the pleasure of hearing the skill of the benshi. Japanese
audiences had been used to the role of the benshi, which
had given films a vocal commentary from their earliest
days, and sound film was therefore not experienced as so
revolutionary in Japan as it was in Europe and the USA.
Despite these obstacles, sound films were produced in
Japan from a relatively early date. In 1925 Yoshizo Minagawa acquired the rights to Lee De Forests Phonofilm
kii), and several
and renamed it Mina Talkie (Mina To
sound films were produced by this system from 1927 to
1930, including Kenji Mizoguchis first sound feature Furusato (Hometown, Nikkatsu, 1930). In 1928 Masao Tojo
invented the Eastphone (Iisuto Fon) system that reproduced sound on discs, in a similar manner to Vitaphone.
Using this system, sound films began to be made at the
Nikkatsu and Teikine studios. These two methods of sound
production were dropped when superior systems were
invented. One of these, the Tsuchihashi sound system
developed by Takeo Tsuchihashi, came to be widely used,
notably on one of the first complete sound films made in
Japan, Heinosuke Goshos Madamu to nyobo (The neighbours wife and mine, Shochiku, 1931). However, the production of sound films was not realized systematically,
and even at Shochiku it took four months to produce
Madamu to nyobos successor: Goshos Waka ki hi no kangeki
(The deep emotion in ones youth, Shochiku, 1931).
Shochiku and Shinko Kinema adopted the Tsuchihashi
process. Nikkatsu, however, forced to abandon the primitive Mina Talkie system and lagging behind its rivals in
sound film production, adopted the Western Electric
system, but did not produce a film with it until Daisuke
Itos Tange sazen in 1933. PCL developed a system and

the classical cinema in japan

A scene from Heinosuke

Goshos comedy Madamu to
nyobo (My neighbours wife and
mine, 1931), one of the first
Japanese films with
synchronized sound

recorded sound for news films and the features of

Nikkatsu. This proved successful and the company launched its own sound film production section in 1933. By
the middle of the decade there was effectively a two-tier
system, with the small companies continuing to make
silent films, while all the films made by PCL and most of
the output of the big studios Shochiku and Nikkatsu were
shot with dialogue. By 1937 PCL was reorganized as Toho
and had the best equipped sound studio in Tokyo.
Many important Japanese directors did not make sound
films until well into the 1930s. Yasujiro Ozus Mata au hi
made (Until the day we meet again, Shochiku, 1932) had
music and sound effects but was still structured as a silent
film with intertitles. During the 1930s his films became
tinged with a kind of gloomy social consciousness, and
this culminated in his first sound film Hitori musuko (The
Only Son, Shochiku, 1936). However, unlike the tendency
films of the previous decade, Ozu portrayed this gloom
not as the result of the social structure, but rather as the
loneliness of the human condition. This outlook, characteristic of Ozus films, emerged from Shochikus Kamata
studio and its petty bourgeois tradition of films lacking
an overt political ideology. However, Ozus films reached
beyond the standard studio fare and attained a unique
view of the depths of human loneliness.
There was another director at Shochikus Kamata studio
who found new and original expression through the

medium of the sound film. Working as a director since

1924, Hiroshi Shimizu had established himself as one of
the most original stylists in the Japanese cinema of the
time. His famous silent film Fue no shiratama (Diamond,
Shochiku, 1929) displayed avant-garde techniques with
rapidly changing and unexpected camera angles, and the
use of dream-like settings. The most remarkable of his
sound films were the Road Movies series, such as Arigatosan (Mr Thank-You, Shochiku, 1936) and Hanagata senshu
(A star athlete, Shochiku, 1937), in which the camera
becomes the eyes of the characters with the passing landscape shown through subjective shots. Shimizu refined
this technique into a kind of abstraction.
Mikio Naruse had been directing silent films for five
years in Shochiku. His films were characterized by unique
frame composition and character movement, which, with
his relatively static direction, created the illusion of deep
space, and films of great pictorial beauty. Shochiku was
the starting-point of Naruses career, but even after he
moved to Toho in 1935, his films carried echoes of the
Shochiku style.
These directors absorbed contemporary modernism
from western cinema and in adapting it uncovered a modernist impulse in Japanese culture and cinema.
Despite this shift to new film forms by many filmmakers, there were more orthodox directors working at
Shochiku; notably Yasujiro Shimazu and Heinosuke
417

Kenji Mizoguchi
(18981956)

Mizoguchi became internationally famous only in the

last years of his life. Outside his native Japan his reputation still rests almost entirely on his films of the 1950s
mainly on the lyrical dramas with medieval settings
such as Ugetsu monogatari (1953), Sansho dayu (Sansho the
bailiff, 1954), or Shin-heike monogatari (New tales of the
Taira clan, 1955), but also (to a lesser extent) on sensationalist modern dramas such as his very last film Street of
Shame (Akasen chitai, 1956). But his career stretches back
as far as 1920, when he first entered the Nikkatsu Mukojima studio as an assistant to New School (Shinpa) directors such as Eizo Tanaka, and it is to his roots in the New
School of the 1920s that one must look for an understanding of his art.
New School films were melodramas in the western
sense. Derived from the urban drama that emerged in
the Meiji period (particularly in the 1890s), they used
male actors (oyama) to play female roles, and their stories
typically focus on the sacrifice of women for the sake of
the family. Mizoguchi began to direct his own New
School dramas, employing oyama, at Mukojima in 1923,
and the formula at the heart of the genre was to form the
basis of his art throughout his career.
During his early years, Mizoguchi worked in a wide variety of genres and styles. Outside the New School melo-

418

drama, he made detective films, expressionist films, war

films, comedies, ghost stories, and proletarian films.
During this period he also borrowed boldly from the expressive repertoire of American and European art cinema. In the scenario of Nihonbashi (1929), for example, he
specifically called for a scene to be directed like a scene
from Murnaus Sunrise (1927). Using the formula of the
New School as a foundation, he practised a variety of expressive techniques, which changed from film to film
with each new-found enthusiasm. Throughout this early
period he was a director with a multitude of faces, who
cannot be easily grasped under the western notion of an
auteur. It was with Kaminingyo haru no sasayaki (A paper
dolls whisper of spring, 1926), from a script by Eizo
Tanaka, that he first revealed his own accomplished
Japanese style, inheriting the spirit of Tanakas own masterpiece Kyoya erimise (Kyoya, the collar shop, 1922). But
he also made a number of mediocre films, both then and
later; even in the post-war period he continued to work
outside his favoured mode (as in the Americaninfluenced Wara koi wa moenuMy love has been burning, 1949), with somewhat uneven results.
In spite of this diversity of output, his concern for persecuted women inherent in the New School tradition is
consistent to the end. This is particularly evident in the
trilogy of films adapted from the novels of Kyoka Izumi:
Nihonbashi, Taki no shiraito (The water magician, 1933)
and Orizuru Osen (The downfall of Osen, 1935). But the
influence of New School schemas can also be seen in his

tendency films (realist, political dramas), such as Tokai

kokyogaku (Metropolitan symphony, 1929) or Shikamo
karera wa yuku (And yet they go on, 1931). Involvement
in the tendency film seems to have changed Mizoguchis
attitude towards women. In New School films, women
end up destroyed victims of male society. But in Mizoguchis work from the 1930s onwards the women
characters are vital enough to fight for their own survival against the social system, as in Naniwa erejii (Osaka
elegy, 1936). His later films are often centred on women
who are resilient and even powerful.
In the early period Mizoguchi absorbed many stylistic
influences from foreign cinema, beginning with the expressionist Chi to rei (Body and soul, 1923). In the late
20s he experimented with bold devices like rapidly
changing scenes, frequent dissolves, and (in the trilogy
of Izumi adaptations) a unique use of flashback. These
traits are the opposite of what was to become his mature
style, characterized by long takes and unobtrusive direction, as it emerges in Zangiku monogatari (The Story of
the Last Chrysanthemums, 1939) and Genroku chusingura
(The Loyal Forty-seven Ronin, 1941).
If one sees the New School film form as at the heart of
Mizoguchis work, his most famous post-war films can
be more richly interpreted. The suffering women of
Ugetsu monogatari and Sansho dayu, and the vital women
of The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna, 1952) and Music of
Gion (Gion bayashi, 1953), may seem different, but they
share the same roots. The static and yet lyrical images in
his post-war works were only created after passing
through the diverse film forms of the foreign avantgarde and the New School films of the Mukojima studio.
HIROSHI KOMATSU
Select Filmography
Kaminingyo haru no sasayaki (1926); Tokai kokyogaku (1929);
Nihonbashi (1929); Taki no shiraito (1933); Orizuru Osen
(1935); Naniwa erejii (1936); Zangiku monogatari (1939);
Genroku chusingura (1941); The Life of Oharu (1952); Music of
the Gion (1953); Ugetsu monogatari (1953); Sansho dayu
(1954); Shin-heike monogatari (1955); Street of Shame (1956)
Bibliography
Freiberg, Freda (1981), Women in Mizoguchi Films.
Kirihara, Donald (1992), Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s.
McDonald, Keiko (1984), Mizoguchi.

Gosho. Although Shimazu did not develop such a personal

style as some of his contemporaries, he made many largescale star-vehicles within the Shochiku studio system. He
was often conservative in his direction, but he came to
be considered one of the most trustworthy directors at
Shochiku by making sensitive films such as Tonari no yaechan (The girl next door, 1934). Heinosuke Gosho was
another of the more orthodox directors at Shochiku, and
he was entrusted with the companys first two sound pictures. His personal cinematic style developed after the
war, when his films began to display a tendency towards
literary idealism, while his contemporary Naruses postwar films were still very much in the Shochiku studio
style.
From the mid-1920s onwards makers of jidaigeki were at
the forefront of developing innovative forms of Japanese
cinema. In the 1930s, two directors particularly became
renowned for creating a new age of jidaigeki. Mansaku
Itami directed nihilistic jidaigeki, making such films as
Kokushi muso (1932) and Yamiuchi tosei (The life of a foul
murderer, 1932). Sadao Yamanaka introduced elements
of the gendaigeki (modern drama genre) into the jidaigeki.
In addition to these two, Nikkatsus director Tomu Uchida
brought modern elements from his previous work to the
sword film Adauchi senshu (The revenge champion,
Nikkatsu, 1931). The high-quality jidaigeki of the early
1930s incorporated the ironical content and style of contemporary European cinema. For example, Sadao Yamanakas jidaigeki, Hyakuman-ryo no tsubo (The pot worth a
million ryo, Nikkatsu, 1935) was directly inspired by Rene
Clairs Le Million (1931).
Kenji Mizoguchi, who had developed many different
themes in the course of his career, deployed his mastery
of mise-en-sce`ne in a series of films that took the Meiji period
as their setting. In the mid-1930s his film-making methods
in Naniwa erejii (Osaka elegy, Daiichi Eiga, 1936), Gion no
kyodai (Sisters of the Gion, Daiichi Eiga, 1936), and Aienkyo
(The gorge between love and hate, Shinko Kinema, 1937)
heightened his fame as the maker of realist gendaigeki. This
realism attained the highest stylistic beauty in Zangiku
monogatari (The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, Shochiku,
1939). In an uneasy atmosphere of nationalism and war,
Mizoguchi escaped into the world of traditional Japanese
beauty, a direction he would successfully pursue for most
of the rest of his career.

the war and after

Opposite: The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Zangiku

Monogatari, 1939)

The war cast a dark shadow over the whole Japanese film
industry. A law was passed in 1939 which laid virtually
all Japanese cinema under the control of state power. It
became difficult to make films which did not praise the
war or actively promote Fascist ideology. Yasujiro Ozu
confined himself to a world unrelated to that of contemporary politics by making Chichi ariki (There was a Father,
419

Yasujiro Ozu
(19031963)

At first an assistant cameraman, Yasujiro Ozu began directing for Shochiku Films, one of Japans largest studios, in 1927. When he died in 1963 at age 60, he had
made fifty-three films, nearly all for Shochiku. By common consent, he had become Japans greatest director.
During the late 1920s, Japanese cinema was in the
process of modernizing. Studio heads had built a vertically integrated oligopoly comparable in many ways to
Americas. Directors adapted many stylistic and narrative conventions of Hollywood cinema in an effort to
compete with the slick, smooth films that attracted
Japanese audiences.
The young Ozu flourished in this milieu. Confessing
himself bored by most Japanese films, he absorbed the
lessons of Chaplin, Lloyd, and Lubitsch in order to create
comedies that combined physical humour with social
observation (I Was Born, but..., 1932). He made films about
college life, street thugs (Dragnet Girl, 1933), and domestic tensions (Woman of Tokyo, 1933). In all of them he displayed a mastery of close-ups, editing, and shot design.
His distinctive style was based on placing the camera at a
low height and intricately intercutting objects with facial reactions. Ozu also displayed a quirky humour

which could create nansensu (nonsense) gags around the

circulation of a pair of mittens (Days of Youth, 1929) or an
empty coin purse (Passing Fancy, 1933). He could also turn
modern Tokyo into a landscape of mysterious poignancy.
A shot may dwell on a scrap of paper fluttering down
from an office building, a secretarys compact on a window sill, an empty sidewalk. All of these tendencies came
to focus in his first talking film, The Only Son (1936), about
a country woman who comes to Tokyo and finds that her
son has failed to make a career. By this time Ozu was already considered one of Japans top directors.
His output slowed during the war period as a result of
military service, but he did make such home-front films
as Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941) and There
Was a Father (1942). His first post-war film was a neighbourhood movie reminiscent of his 1930s work, Diary of
a Tenement Gentleman (1947), but his most famous films
would be elaborations of Brothers and Sisterspatient
studies of an extended family undergoing a quiet crisis
that brings out contrasts across generations.
The most famous of these extended-family films is
Tokyo Story (1953). Like the mother in The Only Son, an elderly couple journey to Tokyo. Their children, preoccupied with their jobs and families, treat them coldly; only
their daughter-in-law Noriko, widow of their son lost in
war, shows them affection. On the trip back, the grandmother falls ill; she dies at home. The grandfather gives

Yasujiro Ozu

Noriko his wifes watch and resigns himself to a life

alone. This bare anecdote becomes, in Ozus hands, an
incomparable revelation of the varied ways in which
humans express love, devotion, and responsibility.
A child grows up and leaves the family; friends must
separate; a son or daughter must marry; a widow or widower is left alone; an aged parent dies. In film after film,
Ozu and his script-writer Noda played a set of variations
on these elemental motifs. Each film, however, reworks
the material in fresh ways. Late Spring (1949) is a largely
sombre study of the necessity for father and daughter to
part; Ozus last film, An Autumn Afternoon (1962), integrates the theme with a satire on consumerism and a
nostalgia for pre-war values. Early Summer (1951) also centres on the daughter marrying, but here the action is embedded in a network of domestic comedy and lyrical
evocation of suburban life. Ohayo (1959), in some ways a
remake of the childrens comedy I Was Born, but..., treats
domestic conflict in a more vulgar key, giving us a boys
farting contest which Ozu and Noda compare to the aimless pleasantries of adult conversation.
Throughout these works, Ozus style remained crisp,
rigorous, and capable of great modulation of emphasis.
His static shot/reverse-shots, often frontally positioned,
match characters within the frame across the cut, so that
the screen becomes a field of minutely changing masses
and contours. His camera movements, often virtuosic in
the 1930s work, are eliminated completely in the colour
filmsa decision which only throws into relief the vibrant hues of tiny props arranged carefully in the sets.
Above all, his famous low camera height remains obstinately there, as if he aimed to show that across nearly
forty years a single, simple stylistic choice could yield
infinite gradations of composition and depth. The subtleties which Ozu found in apparently simple technique
have their counterpart in the emotional richness of dramas which seem as close to everyday life as any the cinema has given us.
DAVID BORDWELL
Select Filmography
Tokyo no gassho (Tokyo Chorus) (1931); Umarete wa mita
keredo (I Was Born, but...) (1932); Tokyo no onna (Woman of
Tokyo) (1933); Hijosen no onna (Dragnet Girl) (1933);
Degigokoro (Passing Fancy) (1933); Hitori musuko (The Only
Son) (1936); Todake no kyodai (Brothers and Sisters of the Toda
Family) (1941); Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (1942); Nagaya
shinshiroku (Diary of a Tenement Gentleman) (1947); Banshun
(Late Spring) (1949); Bakushu (Early Summer) (1951); Tokyo
monogatari (Tokyo Story) (1953); Higanbana (Equinox Flower)
(1958); Ohayo (Good Morning) (1959); Samma no aji (An
Autumn Afternoon) (1962)
Bibliography
Bordwell, David (1988), Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema.
Burch, Nol (1979), To the Distant Observer: Forms and Meaning in
the Japanese Cinema.
Hasumi, Shiguehiko (1983), Kantoku Ozu Yasujiro (Director
Yasujiro Ozu).
Richie, Donald (1974), Ozu

Shochiku, 1942), and Mizoguchis Genroku chusingura (The

Loyal Forty-seven Ronin of the Genroku Era, Shochiku, 19412)
was also a refuge from the war. But lesser directors could
not avoid producing films that supported national policy.
The Japanese cinema suffered in other ways in the war
years; the number of productions decreased because of
the lack of film stock, and by August 1945 40 per cent of
all the cinemas in Japan had been destroyed by fire bombs.
Problems continued after the war. In December 1945,
four months after the Japanese surrender, the film law of
1939 was revoked, and in 1946, at the demand of the
occupying forces, war criminals in the film world were
expelled. The occupation army also prohibited the production of nationalistic films and ordered the burning of
225 films from the pre-war era. In this situation it became
difficult to make jidaigeki, as they were based on traditional Japanese forms and took place in the past, and
often appeared to promote fidelity to the feudalist system.
Thus the studios produced films for democratic education
and films attacking past nationalistic tendencies. Despite
such externally imposed requirements on the content of
films, the film industry enjoyed a freedom that had not
existed in the war years.
In the period just after the war hedonistic films of a
kind never permitted before were produced. Mizoguchi
was one of the directors who took advantage of this new
freedom to express sensuality. Shochikus veteran directors reflected these developments in their own ways: Ozus
films developed in the direction of static formalism,
taking the daily world as their subject; Shimizu became
interested in depicting the lives of children; Naruse, who
had been working at Toho since 1935, continued to make
melodramas from a realistic viewpoint; Gosho became an
idealist director who made films that adopted the current
ideologyexistentialism for examplein a schematic and
predictable way.
The most important of the new directors of the postwar period was Akira Kurosawa. His films adopted a
western style of construction to examine dramatically the
subject of human nature. His mise-en-sce`ne was accessible
to a foreign audience, and drew world-wide attention to
Japanese cinema.
Tadashi Imais films were concerned with the problems
of Japanese society, although he sometimes presented
them in a nave or simplistic manner. From the post-war
period of democracy and enlightenment his films began
to take on the ideology of the labour movement and leftwing politics. Keisuke Kinoshita continued to make traditional melodramas in the Shochiku style, but he opened
audiences eyes to the possibility of new forms of art
cinema in the 1950s. He also made the first Japanese
colour feature Karumen kokyo ni kaeru (Carmen comes
home, Shochiku, 1951). Kaneto Shindo wrote many scripts
for the major studios while he established an independent
421

sound cinema

production company to direct his own films. After the

release of his most famous film Hadaka no shima (The
naked island, 1960) he tried, often unsuccessfully, to
bring some experimental elements to his work.
Television broadcasting began in Japan in 1953, and to
cope with this new competition Japanese film companies
moved towards the adoption of colour and the widescreen
format. Nikkatsu made its first colour film in 1955, and
Toei made the first widescreen film in 1957. By the late
1950s colour and widescreen were prerequisites for a
films commercial success.
In the Japanese cinema of the 1930s the coexistence of
sound and silent film had continued for many years due
to insufficient capital and special cultural circumstances.
The 1940s cinema can be divided into two completely
opposing periods; the Fascist ideology films of the war
years and the films of democracy from the second half of
the decade. The ideological changes established by the
occupation did not add anything fundamentally new to

19301960

the form of Japanese cinema, as the assimilation of the

American cinema style had already been achieved by the
1930s. The majority of film art in post-war Japan was
created by directors with an occidental vision, like Kurosawa. However, at the same time Mizoguchi and Ozu, two
important, if very different, directors from the pre-war
period, could carry on developing their Japanese aesthetic
in the post-war era. The war and liberation gave Japanese
cinema the opportunity to foster both occidental and
Japanese sensibilities.
Bibliography
Anderson, Joseph L., and Richie, Donald (1982), The Japanese Film:
Art and Industry.
Hirano, Kyoko (1992), Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo.
Nolletti, Arthur, Jr., and Desser, David (eds.) (1992), Reframing
Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre and History.
Sato, Tadao, et al. (eds.) (1986), Koza Nihon Eiga, vols. iiiv.
Tanaka, Junichiro (1976), Nihon Eiga Hattatsu Shi, vol. iii.

The Emergence of Australian Film

bill routt
pioneers and early features
Projected films were first commercially exhibited in Australia on 22 August 1896 by an American magician, Carl
Hertz, using British films and apparatus obtained from
(R. W.) Pauls Animatograph Works, Ltd. If this event may
be considered the birth of Australian cinema, the infants
parentage is both unquestioned and significant. Like other
parents, the United States and Britain came to be simultaneously loved and hated by the film industry they
fostered, and to serve their progeny as models of patronage
and exploitation, to be imitated and overcome.
The film business in Australia was at first chiefly a business of exhibition. Many of the pioneer Australian exhibitors T. J. West, Cozzens Spencer, and J. D. Williams (all of
whom branched into production in some way) were British
or American. For the first thirteen years the most successful and influential exhibitor and producer, however,
was the Salvation Army, whose Limelight Division toured
the country with shows featuring non-fiction and fiction
films, slides, lectures, and live music. Birmingham-born
Joseph Perry conceived, produced, and organized these
elevating evenings of entertainment, becoming in the
process Australias premier, if not absolutely its first, filmmaker.
Perrys evening-long programmes sometimes contained
more than one hour of footage on a single non-fiction
topicwhat today would be called feature-length docu422

mentariesand in 1904 he made a short fiction film about

Australian bushranging, almost undoubtedly the earliest
example of an Australian cinema par excellence, blending
movement, landscape, and mythology in a kind of
counterpart to the American Western. Within two years
William Gibson, Millard Johnson, and John and Nevin Tait
had combined Perrys multi-reel documentaries and the
bushranging legend into The Story of the Kelly Gang, a show
featuring four reels of film tableaux glorifying the bandit
rebel Ned Kelly along with a lecture commentary, musical
accompaniment, and sound effects.
The critical and commercial success of the Salvation
Army and The Story of the Kelly Gang provided the impetus
for six years of local multi-reel production before such
lengthy films were common in most of the rest of the
world, and set the pattern for the peculiarly Australian
genre of bushranging films, which flourished until such
films were banned by the state government of New South
Wales in 1912 for their supposed pernicious (social and
political) influence. Bushranging films have continued to
be produced sporadically, at times secretly, to the present
day.
The vogue for bushranging films seems to have contributed to a short-lived boom in early Australian production. Between the release of John Gavins bushranging
melodrama Thunderbolt in November 1910 and July 1912
some seventy-nine titles were released, at least nineteen