Society for Japanese Studies

Review
Author(s): Audie Bock
Review by: Audie Bock
Source: The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1983), pp. 359-363
Published by: Society for Japanese Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/132303
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 Review Section 359

Currents in Japanese Cinema: Essays by Tadao Sato. Translated by

GregoryBarrett. KodanshaInternationalLtd., Tokyo and New
York, 1982. xii, 288 pp. $21.50.

Reviewed by
AUDIE BOCK
Berkeley, California

After decades of publicationon Japanesefilmby Westerners,a book

in English by a native film scholar warrantsmajorcelebration. The
long-awaited-twelve years since the originalJapanese version and
two separate attempts at an English version-Currents in Japanese
Cinema establishes Tadao Sato in the West for what he alreadyis at
home: the leading authority on the relationship between Japanese
cinema and Japanese society. Sato's unique voice as a participantin
the times and mores portrayedin the films we have only recently
come to know in the West-the postwar masterpiecesof Kurosawa,
Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, and a succeeding generation-makes this
book, in the excellent translation by Gregory Barrett, a valuable
addition to the library for study of one of the greatest national
cinemas of the world.
The pioneering work on the subject of Japanese cinema, The
Japanese Film: Art and Industry, by Joseph L. Anderson and
DonaldRichie, goes back to 1960andthe discovery of the old master
directorsat art theaters. For its wide scope and depth of scholarship,
this book remains the outstandinglandmarkin the field, although
many of the people, companies, and even the films themselves, are
long gone and never to be seen again.
Few aficionadosof Japanese film are aware that commentaryon
the subject outside Japan began with the writing of the brilliant
Soviet directorand montagetheorist Sergei Eisenstein in the 1920s.
More emerged in the work of French film encyclopedist Georges
Sadoul and the Nouvelle Vague critics Franois Truffautand Jean-
Luc Godard in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s many English-
language writers began devoting whole volumes to Japanese film,
among them the Trotskyite-feministdiatribes of Joan Mellen (The
Wavesat Genji'sDoor) and the structuralistdiatribesof Noel Burch
(To the Distant Observer). Occasional additional volumes by Donald
Richie, who lives in Japan and sees everything, have continued to
offer an informationalbalance to the polemics of others.
Sato's book presents that other viewpoint so sorely needed in the
approaches to Japanese film: the native. Fortunately, the preten-

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360 Journal of Japanese Studies

tious title of the original, Nihon eiga shis6 shi [The intellectual
history of Japanesefilm], has been abandonedand the book is being
presented for what it is: a collection of essays with no unifying
theme. The subjects covered will be new to most readers who have
not followed the writing of Max Tessier in French on the newer
genres of Japanese film (Le cine'majaponais au present: 1959-1979),
for Sato treats everythingfrom long-sufferingmotherfilms to gang-
ster (yakuza) and porno films that draggedthe marketdown in the
1970s. Whatmakes his writinguniqueis that he can invariablycome
up with a reason for the popularityof the trashy films as well as a
good analysis of the artistic ones. The result is a great deal of
revelation of the culture in which he lives.
Tadao Sato is anythingbut an ivory tower critic. He is a self-
educated devotee of film, active in numerouscinema organizations,
present at every screening of a soon-to-be-releasedmovie, be it an
adaptationof serious literaturecosting millions or a few-thousand-
dollar cheapie based on a comic book, and he is a very popular
writer appearing in a wide range of magazines and newspapers.
Testimonyto his popularityis the fact that the originalversion of the
volume at hand has undergone seventeen reprintingssince 1970.
Clearlyhe strikessome chordwith his Japanesereadershipthat feels
authentic to them. He demonstrates an uncanny ability to spot
trends and to isolate feelings in his own life or his own generation
that he can illustrate with the analysis of a film. He must, in this
sense, be considered a spokesman for the postwar generation (he
was fourteen at the close of the Pacific War).
But such popularityhas its drawbacks.Sato has publishedsome
65 books since his first volume appearedin 1956. At this rate of 2.5
books per year, he hardly has time for profoundresearch or even
coherent organization.His books, like Currents,all tend to be col-
lections of essays, reviews, and fleeting observations. One reads
very much like the one before, and a close comparisonoften reveals
the author quoting himself indirectly with only the slightest varia-
tions. Sometimes he doesn't even bother to rewrite or rethink. In
Currents, for example, he introduces his main contributionon the
style of old masterMizoguchiby saying, "I once wrote the following
about it," and proceeding to quote himself directly for two pages
with no source cited (pp. 182-183). This is sloppy editingand raises
needless questions:Does he not hold the copyright?Does he want to
prove he said it first?(Thenwhy no source?)Oris he just too busy to
rephrase it?

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 Review Section 361

The same problemof hastiness and superficialitymanifests itself

in the lack of organizationand the excess of contradictionsin Cur-
rents in Japanese Cinema. The openingchapter,for example, begins
by drawinga fascinatingdistinctionbetween two opposing types of
leading man in Japanese film, the tateyaku, a strong, silent samurai
type, and the nimaime, a weak, romanticlover type. He traces the
origin of both types to the Kabuki theater, but here the historical
analysis bogs down. He fails to establish clearly that the term
tateyakurefersto all majormale roles, and in fact the nimaimeis one
category of tateyaku. Sato's explanation would have been much
clearer if he had used the terms Anderson and Richie introducedto
film students years ago: jidaigeki (period piece) and gendaigeki
(contemporarydrama). For in fact the lead in the first play of the
standardKabukiprogram,always a period piece, was performedby
the head of the troupe. The nimaime (literally"second billing")was
the lead in the second play of the day, always a contemporaryor
"social drama" (sewamono). To this day the heroes of the period
films in Japanhave the greaterappeal for male audiences, while the
heroes of contemporarydramashave the greater appeal for female
audiences. The distinctionis exactly parallelto that of the American
Western and melodramaforms.
Sato can perhaps be excused for garblingthe technical vocabu-
lary and history of Japanese classical drama, but he cannot be
excused for miscastingfilmactors in the two types he distinguishes.
He claims that both Sessue Hayakawaand Toshiro Mifunerepresent
the "facial expressions and bearingof the tateyaku, appearinglike
the samuraiof old in their performances.To the modern Japanese
this frequentlyseemed anachronisticand overtheatrical;however in
Western eyes these actors became splendid representatives of the
samuraitradition"(p. 19). I believe that what looked "anachronistic
and overtheatrical" to the modern Japanese (presumably Sato
would include himself as a modernJapanese)was not Mifune's films
but Hayakawa's, and not because of Hayakawa's acting style. In
fact, at the height of his popularityin American silent films of the
1910s and early 1920s, Hayakawa was a romantic star whose roles
usually involved frustratedinterraciallove. His "repressed" acting
style was seen by Americanaudiences as a refreshingcontrastto the
overtheatricalacting of his American counterparts,but to today's
audiences almost all films of this era look anachronisticbecause of
their slower editingpace-shots were held for many seconds longer
thanwe are accustomedto today in orderto allow the meaningto sink

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362 Journal of Japanese Studies

in fully for audiences that were not yet fully conversant in film
language, and this was part of savoring a particularactor's perfor-
mance.
Sato is closer to the markwith his appraisalof Mifune'sstyle, but
does not, I feel, give the actor enough credit for the romanticroles
he played as a young man. Today Mifune has indeed lapsed into a
stiff, samurai-likeimage due to the type-casting he has suffered at
the hands of both Western and Japanese directors who do not use
him as well as Kurosawa did. Even Mifune's last performancefor
Japan'sgreatestliving directorin the 1965filmRed Beard shows the
actor playing too much to "type." But in early Kurosawacontem-
porary dramas like Scandal, Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, and
even TheBad Sleep Well, Mifuneturnsin stunningperformancesas
a romanticlead. True, he is not a weak-willednimaimetype, but that
is because Kurosawahas never stuck to the facile traditionalgenres.
If there is anything "anachronistic"in Mifune's acting today, it is
that no one bothers to direct him any more, so he keeps giving the
same performancein everythingfrom1941 as a submarinecaptainto
Shogun as the pompous Toranaga.
The fine points of these criticismswill probablyescape all but the
most devoted of Japanese film students. But those dedicated few
are precisely the ones who should beware of the all too common
practices of publication in Japan. Sato's book will remain an ex-
tremely valuable contributionto the field of analysis of Japanese
cinema, but readersmust recognize that it is writtenlike a greatdeal
of popularcriticism in Japan-off the top of the author's head. The
thoughtspresentedwill not standup to a rigorousscholarlyanalysis,
and they are often tossed out with an irritatingnationalisticsmug-
ness such as can be seen in the contempt for "Western eyes" that
emerges in the chapter on male acting styles.
Amid the chaos, contradictions,and glib generalizationsin Cur-
rents in Japanese Cinema, however, are enough gems to make the
book well worth reading. If the reader learns to accept Sato as an
inspired,intuitivespokesmanfor his generation,the truevalue of his
writing emerges. His final chapter on the trends of the 1970s pin-
points a loss of identity in Japanese heroes which he associates
brilliantly with the Japanese nation's economic superiority-who
are you when you have no one left to look up to? No one but Sato
could have found three films as diverse as Kurosawa'sKagemusha,
Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine and Suzuki's Zigeunerweisen to il-
lustrate the Japanese identity crisis, and make the argumentwork.

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 Review Section 363

Read, enjoy, but don't ask too many questions. At 2.5 books a year,
we will undoubtedly be hearing more from Tadao Sato.

Artist and Patron in Postwar Japan: Dance, Music, Theater, and

the Visual Arts, 1955-1980. By Thomas R. H. Havens. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1982. ix, 324 pp. $25.00.

Reviewed by
THOMAS RIMER
WashingtonUniversity, St. Louis

Even a casual visitor to Japan is soon made aware of the seeming

importanceof the arts-visual, musical, and theatrical-in contem-
porary urban life. Yet along with that perception soon comes a
vaguely-definedsense that, in terms of access for the general public
at least, the organizationalstructuresemployed are strikinglydiffer-
ent from those familiarin the United States, and, indeed, in most
Europeancountries. Tickets for some events are difficultto procure
without special access. Art exhibits are often sponsored by prefec-
tural or national government organizations, and other important
displays are often held in departmentstores. Top actors perform
new productionsin repertorycompanies largely funded by salaries
earned elsewhere by individual actors and then donated to their
group. Then too, taste, particularlyin music, is fixed and often quite
conservative. A concert calendar for a given month may contain
multiple offerings of a difficult work like Beethoven's Ninth Sym-
phony, but there will be no sign of any Webernor Stockhausen, or
Schoenberg.
The more one has an opportunity to observe, the more pro-
foundly unusual seem the methods undertakento produce and dis-
seminate all that becomes audible or visible in the landscape of the
Japanese arts. And it almost invariablyturns out as well that both
the conception and execution of, say, Swan Lake in Tokyo will be
quite unlike that availablein New York or Paris. The Americanand
Europeanversions may be largelyinterchangeable,but the Japanese
have even developed their own performingtraditionsfor the staples
of the Western repertory. Obviously different expectations are in-
volved.
The reasons for such differences, as Havens points out with

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