Film Studies
The primary aim behind making movies is to visually communicate the cultural ideas, while leaving the articulation of the movies’ themes to a wide range of receptive audience. Although a particular film genre and its identifiable iconography can traverse across national boundaries, yet comprehending and understanding the intended message of a particular film still calls for a quite a bit of premonition and intelligence.
An American scholar in the field of Japanese cinema, Donald Richie states that contrary to a few nations like France and the United States, motion pictures have been regarded as a highly reputable form of art by the people of Japan since the time the very first Kinetoscope was showcased at the beginning of the current century. Motion pictures in Japan were considered to be a novel form of art, rather than viewing them as just an innovation in the field of photography. In Japan, the very first motion picture audiences comprised of the developing middle class who were actually in a position where they managed to pay for the movie tickets of the theaters. Most of the early films made in Japan were adaptations of Kabuki plays and were highly apt to suit the common man. Also, people in those days looked for enlightenment as well as entertainment when they watched a movie. The early Japanese films were in complete alignment to these expectations of the audience those days.
The category of horror in Japanese cinema, popularly referred to as J-Horror, is actually a subgenre of Horror that had successfully propelled and eventually garnered massive public attention in Hollywood, was successful in international geographies because of its adapted editions of movies like The Ring (2002). This movie, which was primarily based upon a novel titled Ringu, authored by Koji Suzuki as well as also upon the filmic creation of Nakata Hideo released in the year 1998 with the same name, was further adapted into a movie with a terrifying plot in order to suit the Western film lovers.
As mentioned in many of his writings related to Japanese cinema, the uniqueness of Japanese culture lies in the way their ability to integrate and alter other global cultures. In the book Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema , the author Yoshimoto analyses the approaches taken by the Westerners as well as the Europeans in their evaluation of Japanese films. Akira Kurosawa is popular in both Japan as well as in Western film domains as an auteur, who has created a niche for himself in making period drama movies.
There are two primary trends that he identifies, the first is the focus of Japanese films on universal themes, a kind of a humanist approach that fundamentally contradicts cultural specificity; and the second being the focus on the variations that exist amidst the Japanese and the Western cinemas, more of a Orientalist approach that eventually confirms Western stereotyping of the exoticism and complex variance in the Japanese films.
In terms of precise analysis of the Japanese as well as the Western moviemaking in this book, the author notes that ‘a certain type of anxiety, an apprehension about the validity of the conceptual frameworks because his films problematize Japan’s self-image and the West’s image of Japan.’ As mentioned earlier, there is strong connect that exists between the Kabuki tales and Japanese filmmaking. Kabuki is essentially a unique and primary art form of theater in Japan. While both Kabuki and Kurosawa are strongly connected with Japanese filmmaking, Kurosawa is not known to have a strong inclination towards Kabuki and most of his film ideas have their influence in Japanese conventions.
As Yoshimoto delineates in his work , Kurosawa essentially exemplifies Japanese films to many Western scholars in the field of moviemaking for most part of the last half decade. Actually, there have also been many endeavors to portray kabuki elements of the films made by Kurosawa for many aesthetics details; this nevertheless, was not deemed as an aspect of his auteurism. Yoshimoto essentially endeavors to analyze the extent to which Kurosawa, his films and his popularity, both within the domestic borders of Japan as well as the Western world. According to Yoshimoto, this popularity was fundamentally marked by a certain extent of ambiguity as well as a feeling of anxiety. The reason for this indistinctness is not implausible, because kabuki is known to be having a strong influence upon Japanese films. Kurosawa, who was a studio director, conforms to the typical rules of kabuki; yet, for being different and unique in terms of his own individual style, he makes use of the elements in kabuki in a customized and slightly modified form so that it suits his independent proclivity.
Similarly, yet another great directors who has epitomized Japanese cinema globally is Yasujiro Ozu. Despite Ozu having died about half a century ago, his movie still continue to be extremely appealing, amusing, fresh and extremely empathetic forever. David Bordwell’s book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , discusses the prominence of this legendary Japanese director, his aesthetic strategies as well as cultural impact.
Bordwell questions Ozu’s popular image as being the historical artisan belonging to the Japanese culture while analyzing the aesthetic nature and elements of his movies. Ozu was vigilant in creating a unique and distinctive niche for himself in Japanese filmmaking. Most of his films are designed to be cuttingly distinct when compared to the movies that many of his contemporaries made. The Shochiku studio was the place where Ozu conceptualized most of his films and this studio is regarded as his home base. It was this base that inspired directors to create their own individual styles, while he was also permitted to make artistic selections that might be regarded only as being eccentric and nothing more or less.
For anyone who watches Ozu’s films for the first time, the movies may look to dissolve into a comprehensive notion of “Japanese artistic culture.” However, the more number of Ozu films the person watches, the more will be the idiosyncrasies that one can notice in them. Having given Ozu the opportunity for making such remarkable and extraordinary movies, Shochiku obtained a mutual obligation, because of which Ozu’s legacy continues to be a trademark for a movie studio even today. Japanese cinema essentially comprises of Kurosawa and Godzilla of Toho studios, Nikkatsu action, as well as anime, as far as the whole world is concerned. Shochiku studios, however, had its distinct practice of modest, humanitarian productions that connected with the working-class as well as the middle-class. This tradition was preserved by Ozu and his entire team through the 1950s as a distinct brand identity.
Bibliography
Bordwell, David. 1988. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. BFI Publishing, Inc.
Richie, Donald. 1990. Japanese Cinema: An Introduction. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
—. 1971. Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character. Garden City: Anchor Books.
Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. 2000. "Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline." In Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, 8-29. Durham: Duke University Press.
