Return to World Cinema syllabus
Updated 18 September 2006
English 212, Section 3: World Cinema
Week 3: 11 September 2006
6:00-6:15 Quiz 1
6:15-6:40 Japanese Film: Recovering an industry
6:40-8:30 View Yojimbo
8:30-8:40 Break
8:40-9:30 Discussion of Yojimbo and Kurosawa, later trends
The Japanese Film Industry, Before and After World War II
(See Wexler book and other sources for details)
§ Japanese film industry emerged in early 1900s but lagged about 10 years behind U.S. in major developments (rise of studio system, coming of sound etc.)
§ Silent films were characterized
o by the use of all-male casts with women’s roles played by oyama, female impersonators, a tradition carried over from kabuki theater,
o and by benshi, live narrators in the theaters who commented on action and provided dialogue and often became stars in their own right)
§ 1930s: highly-developed industry producing hundreds of films each year from a handful of major studios, but most films unknown in the West
o Studio structure emphasized role of director, over producers or stars
o Highly developed sets of genres, most sub-categories of jidai-geki (period films of the historical past—usually pre-modern) or gendai-geki (films of contemporary life)
§ From 1937-1945, film companies were expected to produce films that reflected values and self-sacrifice of military government and Japan’s wars in China, the Pacific, and (in 1941), World War II
§ After World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur imposed new constraints on filmmaking as part of effort to demilitarize Japanese society; some older films destroyed, new jidai-geki discouraged until end of American occupational government
First major Japanese film to be seen in the West was Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1951), which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival
Three major directors after World War II, all with roots in pre-Occupation film industry:
§ Yasujiro Ozu: Oldest, best known for gendai-geki about conflicts within families. Not widely seen in West until 1970s. Often characterized as “most Japanese” of these 3 directors. Most radical in style: Favors long takes, contemplative in mood, reflects Buddhist values of resignation and acceptance, editing does not stress narrative continuity. Noted for use of “tatami” camera position (about 3 feet off ground, similar to someone sitting on a tatami mat in a Japanese home). Films include Tokyo Story, Autumn Afternoon, Ohayo (Good Morning)
§ Kenji Mizoguchi: Also began career in 1920s. Films are in both jidai-geki and gendai-geki, including films about actors, artists and prostitutes. Favors long moving camera takes, long shots that place characters in the context of the setting. Films often show sympathy with position of women in a male-dominated society.
§ Akira Kurosawa: Most famous Japanese director in West and often characterized as “most Western” of the three. Began career during World War II. Best-known for jidai-geki like Rashomon, Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai, but also worked in gendai-geki (Ikiru/To Live; Red Beard). Drew inspiration from Western sources, including John Ford Westerns and American detective novels (Yojimbo, from Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest; High and Low, from an Ed McBain novel) and Western classics (Throne of Blood, from Macbeth, The Lower Depths, from a Maxim Gorky novel, and Ran, from King Lear), but he has also drawn from traditions of the kabuki and noh theater. Many postwar films star Toshiro Mifune. Films emphasize the individual against larger social or natural forces, but often carry tragic sense of Fate. Kurosawa’s own films have influenced other filmmakers in America and elsewhere: The Hidden Fortress (Star Wars), The Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven), Yojimbo (A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing), etc. His widescreen films show a mastery of composition for the wide screen equaled by only a few other directors. Yojimbo was followed the next year by a sequel about the same character, Sanjuro.
Yojimbo (The Bodyguard, 1961):
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Kurosawa and Riyuzo Kikushima
Cinematographer: Kazuo Miyagawa
Editor: Kurosawa
Music: Masaru Sato
Cast:
Toshiro Mifune (Sanjuro Kuwabatake/the bodyguard-ronin)
Kamatari Fujiwara (Tazeomon, the silk merchant)
Takashi Shimura (Tokuemon, the sake merchant)
Tatsuya Nakadai (Unosoke, the young ronin with the pistol)
Eijiro Tonu (the sake seller)
Atsushe Watanabe (the coffin maker)
Context: The film is set in the 1860s, at the end of the Tokugawa dynasty, the shoguns who ruled Japan in the name of the Emperor. This was a time of relative peace but also a time as Japan was about to undergo a rapid modernization. Samurais who were not employed by a master (known as ronin) had to search for a way to make their living.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Thanks to Clint Eastwood (and John Belushi!), the kind of hero represented by Sanjuro has become a stereotype of many contemporary movies. What sets him apart from earlier depictions of film heroes, whether samurais, gunfighters, or others?
2. What “heroic” values does Sanjuro still embody? How does he demonstrate those qualities?
3. What does the division in the town between two forces suggest about “traditional” Japanese values? Do these suggest anything about contemporary society?
4. How does Kurosawa stage the action scenes to be convincing? What is the purpose of stretches where no action takes place?
Discussion Summary:
Although Yojimbo is sometimes discussed as a “lighter” and more action-oriented film than some of Kurosawa’s other works, it has important connotations when taken in its cultural context. Sanjuro, the yojimbo (bodyguard) is a samurai without a master, a ronin, whose traditional position in Japanese society made him a kind of outcast. The samurai’s prime duty was to serve his master, but when there was no master to serve, his existence became purposeless. The historical period of the film is marked by Unosoke’s pistol—a modern weapon that will help to make the swords of the samurai warriors obsolete. Although we see little other evidence of it in the film, Japan under the Meijei Emperor is about to end its own isolation from the rest of the world and eliminate the samurai as a class while launching a program of rapid modernization that will make Japan an international power within less than half a century. The new emphasis on commercialism and a middle class of merchants is suggested by the division in the town between the gangsters who support Tazeomon, the silk merchant, and Tokuemon, the sake merchant. The glories of Japan’s civilization are reduced to a town torn apart by the these rival factions. At the same time, this division between two forces that threatens the lives of ordinary people suggests a parallel with the situation of the Cold War between the United States and the Communist Soviet Union, which threatened the world with annihilation in a possible nuclear war.
Sanjuro himself reflects the condition of cultural decay in his physical appearance. The samurai class under the Tokugawa shoguns had become a leading force in Japanese cultural life, patronizing the theater and becoming connoisseurs of such arts as the tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Sanjuro shows little evidence of that kind of culture. He is scruffy, and scratches and twitches. He works as an individual within a hostile land, markedly set against the Japanese values of cultural conformity and, at first, he seems to be motivated only by the need for money to support himself. Eventually, though, he works to set the two sides in the town against each other, and leaves without actually taking any money for himself. He either gives it back to his would-be employers or donates it to the peasant family he saves. As the old sake seller observes, he’s really good at heart.
Even the impediments to Sanjuro’s plans have significance. He is happily watching the two sides attack each other when the battle is called off because a government inspector is coming to town. The inspector himself passes days enjoying food, drink, women and bribes until he is called away by a murder in another town, arranged for by one of the rival gang bosses. Sanjuro’s own plans for actions are delayed by the arrival Unosoke and his pistol, a weapon that upsets his plans and the balance of power in town. He winds up making mistakes, including letting Unosoke take his sword, the supreme mark of disgrace to a traditional samurai, but Sanjuro ultimately takes his revenge by using a dead man’s sword. His own personal pragmatism overtakes any sense of shame that he might have from his situation. At the end of the film, he has finally achieved his goal and announces to the old man and the coffin-maker, “Now there will finally be some peace and quiet in this town,” but they are virtually the only ones left alive. The only peace at the end is the peace of the grave.
Kurosawa uses his action scenes sparingly, building tension until it almost literally explodes in a fit of action, notably in Sanjuro’s final showdown at the end of the film That scene is also typical of Kurosawa’s control of the composition of light, dark, and movement on the wide screen, filling it so that every visual detail counts. Near the end, we see the two guards who are sitting next the old sake seller, who has been captured. Off in the background, we see Sanjuro. In the midground, the town crier emerges to call out the hour, but he quickly runs back inside when he sees Sanjuro, bringing the guards’ attention to him as well. Only as they dash off to the left to warn the others does the camera pan to the left and tilt up to reveal the disgruntled face of the old man, hanging in the air from his bound arms. That use of depth and movement in the scene is a striking example of Kurosawa’s visual style.