So, temperamentally, we have the quiet guy who sees a lot and has real insight, but smiles wistfully and takes another sip of saki-and the guy who is oversized, with an agressive, emphatic style who does not comfortably conclude…he takes a sip of whiskey, but it’s not over!

Thats a lovely way to visualise the pair of them! I agree with you a lot, although I do think that Ozu was a little more calculating than he has been given credit – by which I mean the prevailing sense of wistfulness in his films does allow us to overlook the way he slants his arguments in favour of his lovable old patriarchs. Isn’t it odd though that a man who lived his whole life with his mother was so perceptive about extended families? I think you are quite right about Kurosawa – I think he was always deliberately creating difficulties for himself, just for the challenge of finding his way out of the moral conundrums he sticks his characters in. I love the fact that there is never a clear direction for his films or characters, unlike Ozu or Mizoguchi who always knew exactly where they were going.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the frequent criticism of Kurosawa’s works (one I shared in the past), that his films are excessively didactic is a false one. I see him more as repeatedly laying out arguments, sometimes for the sake of demolishing them himself.

And, that’s what makes him so very interesting. The thing I love most about Kurosawa’s work is that I still wonder about so many loose ends…! It’s as if he has a fake “that’s that!” and has his characters say as much, when you still think “What? That’s not the end of this! What about…?”

Again, this passage of yours, Ugetsu, is brilliant:

That he fails to offer us solutions is not a failure, it is the result his refusal to take the intellectually easy options of blanket condemnation, satire or romanticism. This to me is why his films are so endlessly fascinating.

Does he ever fall short of problematizing the argument? That may be when he is less successful. We had very little discussion of Dersu Uzala, and I guess it is because it is a bit didactic, elegaic, romantic and retro in that it mourns the passing of one time without problematizing that sadness. I think it is a beautiful poem of a film. Mellen called it a love story between two men- and, it does have that-(and, even if some folks snigger at the language, calling a film a “love story”-it is a genuine, true human expression of respect, value, and caring) but it is mostly about the feeling of loss of wilderness-the land and the heart of man. So, for me it is beautiful, although not very tricky.

Ozu is generally understood to be the master of the family drama. He can create a world that feels extraordinarily real!

Passing Fancy and I Was Born, But… bring us into the world of children’s relationships with adults in a compelling way that illuminates long-suppressed memories and emotions. Absolutely stellar filmmaking. I think, perhaps,that Ozu is also discussing, in these two films, hierarchies of power that have feudal connotations-what is it to trade one’s shogun for one’s boss…? (Well, first of all, you are no longer a samurai once you are in the office!)

Although never explicity stated by Ozu, there is a functional criticism in his films of the feudal hierarchies that exist without the moral structures present to reign in the abuses and loss of honor that occur when there are weak and strong. However, Ozu’s response is sad acceptance-while Kurosawa’s is heated debate, and a search for solutions. So, temperamentally, we have the quiet guy who sees a lot and has real insight, but smiles wistfully and takes another sip of saki-and the guy who is oversized, with an agressive, emphatic style who does not comfortably conclude…he takes a sip of whiskey, but it’s not over!

I see these two filmmakers in an “auteur” light-both of them making works from centers within themselves-exhibiting so much of who they are as people, and I love them both.

must see Naruse after what you have written, Ugetsu. I love Kawabata, and The Sound of the Mountain is a haunting favorite read of mine. I will check my NETFLIX que and see if anything is available. (I’ve been meaning to watch a Tarkovsky flick for more than a month! That red envelope with the disc mocks me! Just a very busy time, here).

The book is very good, although for some odd reason when reading it I kept thinking it was very similar to the Irish genre of ‘older men looking back on their life’ type books as written by writers like McGahern, Banville and Tobin, books that I admire for their style but I find a bit tiresomely navel gazing sometimes. The reason I think the film is better is that instead of focusing on the old man, it brings out the other characters, particularly his daughter in law, and examines then as essentially two very similar people – both essentially seeing themselves as morally superior to the family around them, and engaging in a sort of passive-aggressive war with everyone else. It is very beautifully done.

Even while Kurosawa rails against feudalism in favor of the individual, he can’t help but hold the samurai ideals as the highest kind of good. Seven Samurai might be Kurosawa’s sigh of sadness at the loss of those examples of moral excellence.

Well, I think you’ve put your finger on why Mellen (and I agree with her) considers Kurosawa to be the greatest of Japanese film makers (she doesn’t say it explicitly, but it is implicit in what she writes). As she notes, many film makers, from Mizoguchi in the 1930’s to the more radical later film makers like Oshima criticise Japanese society incisively and intelligently, and others like Ichikawa satirise it successfully, but only Kurosawa seems to really want to tackle in depth what is both good and bad about Japanese society and to try (even if unsuccessfully) to find some practical way out of the hole it has dug itself.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the frequent criticism of Kurosawa’s works (one I shared in the past), that his films are excessively didactic is a false one. I see him more as repeatedly laying out arguments, sometimes for the sake of demolishing them himself. It is those film makers who manipulate characters to ‘prove’ their analyses of Japanese society that are being didactic (even if very subtly so, in the case of Ozu and Mizoguchi). There is a constant struggle in his film to understand what is motivating his characters, why they are doing things and how they can improve themselves and the lives around them. In contrast, every other Japanese film maker seems content to just condemn in a blanket manner all of the structures of Japanese society in a manner that too often reminds me of a student radical, appeasing his own ego by shouting out slogans. I think Ozu, in his gentle manner, comes closest to actually looking at how families (and by extension society) can work, but of course he expresses it in a deeply conservative manner that is almost certainly impracticable in a modern world. Mizoguchi is content just to point out how lousy everything is, but never lets his characters find a way out. Oshima and Immamura want to destroy everything, but offer nothing more than simple minded romanticism (a return to some idyllic ‘real’ Japan or left wing sloganising) as an alternative.

Seven Samurai sums it all up for me. Kurosawa without hesitation identifies the crucial flaws in a feudal, militaristic society. But rather than take the simple option and condemn it, he also admires its positive aspects and presents to use the reality of human nature and Japanese society, and leaves it to us, the audience to try to come up with real solutions. That he fails to offer us solutions is not a failure, it is the result his refusal to take the intellectually easy options of blanket condemnation, satire or romanticism. This to me is why his films are so endlessly fascinating.

…”But if there is a good side to economic disaster, I think the breaking of the zaibatsu and the other traditional economic structures is one of them. The problem of course is that they haven’t really found a model to replace it.”

And, that’s really the story, isn’t it ? (all of us smug Western folk, pay attention-this goes for us, too!) It’s all about the search for a structure to replace outmoded, broken or inherently flawed structures (Mellen would say “feudal” structures).

The fascinating thing forme is the degree of nostalgia for elements of the feudal as exhibited in Kurosawa, and certainly, Ozu. Even while Kurosawa rails against feudalism in favor of the individual, he can’t help but hold the samurai ideals as the highest kind of good. Seven Samurai might be Kurosawa’s sigh of sadness at the loss of those examples of moral excellence.

One big reason for the appeal of Seven Samurai in the West must be the romantic/nostalgic one-two punch it delivers…and the sense of loss is trans-cultural. In the U.S. we’ve lost our relationship to the earth and our adventure to the west. So, loss plays a huge role in our unconscious attitudes.

I’ve always thought we were inheritors of the bankrupt Romantic tradition. Mono-no-aware is not exculsive to Japan.

I must see Naruse after what you have written, Ugetsu. I love Kawabata, and The Sound of the Mountain is a haunting favorite read of mine. I will check my NETFLIX que and see if anything is available. (I’ve been meaning to watch a Tarkovsky flick for more than a month! That red envelope with the disc mocks me! Just a very busy time, here).

suppose that I came away with one rather huge idea from Mellen (and I am grateful for this) : that the Japanese have used their films to explore their national identity-and that their national identity is (at the time of her writing) always seen in relation to feudalism. I don’t believe that she overstates this thesis, and find it immensely useful. It helps me to contextualize those filmmakers that I most enjoy.

Quite right, thats maybe the most important part of the book and I forgot to mention it! She does rightly make the point that there is probably no other example of a film industry which has been so important to a countries self image and its attempts at coming to terms with its own problems.

I haven’t seen any Naruse, although the reputation of his work is quite high…because if I don’t know the film, the commentary doesn’t stick…as is the case with the other directors mentioned in the book whose films I have not yet seen.

You need to watch some Naruse quickly then! His films are wonderful, in my opinion only very marginally below Ozu. I think he’s been unfairly overlooked because of his lack of a distinct visual style, although Kurosawa considered him to be the best of all film editors. His version of Kawabata’s ‘Sounds of the Mountain’ is for me one of the finest of all literary adaptions. It may actually be better than the book, which is saying something when the book was cited as one reason for Kawabata’s Nobel Prize for literature. I love Ozu’s Green Tea over Rice, but I think Naruses very similar ‘Repast’ is an even better film.

It would be fascinating for someone who knows the current Japanese film scene to analyze cinematic themes in relation to Mellen’s ideas. Are her ideas outmoded? Has a social structure arisen to replace the old feudal ideals? If so, what? If not, how does feudalism continue to play out? I would be fascinated to hear opinions!

Huge questions! I suspect there are a few PhD’s in that topic for someone. My feeling is that since the crash of 1990 the feudal structures have been unwinding very fast in Japan. I was reading an interesting article last week in the NYT about the new governments attempt to break the control of the Construction ministry and replace the ‘cover everything in concrete’ mentality with a more European style welfare state – implicitly this is aimed at undermining the collective feudalism in exchange for more personal autonomy. And I don’t think there is much doubt that the role of women in modern Japan is very different from 30 years ago – the Japanese women I’ve met have been mostly very confident and independent minded (although of course those I’ve met are probably not a representative sample). But if there is a good side to economic disaster, I think the breaking of the zaibatsu and the other traditional economic structures is one of them. The problem of course is that they haven’t really found a model to replace it.

I suppose that I came away with one rather huge idea from Mellen (and I am grateful for this) : that the Japanese have used their films to explore their national identity-and that their national identity is (at the time of her writing) always seen in relation to feudalism. I don’t believe that she overstates this thesis, and find it immensely useful. It helps me to contextualize those filmmakers that I most enjoy.

Kurosawa’s urgency to find a solution for society to replace the structures of feudal Japan make a lot more sense than if I consider him just a unique oddball. His cultural framework-especially in light of his contemporaries and their various responses to changing times-helps me to better understand their films. (BTW, I consider the concerns of “Feminism” to be completely relatable to the hierarchies of feudalism, and by extension, see those lingering attitudes and social structures in the West, still today.)

It would be fascinating for someone who knows the current Japanese film scene to analyze cinematic themes in relation to Mellen’s ideas. Are her ideas outmoded? Has a social structure arisen to replace the old feudal ideals? If so, what? If not, how does feudalism continue to play out? I would be fascinated to hear opinions!

Remaking Kurosawa by D.P. Martinez

Following Vili’s review, I’ve put my review here.

A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby (foreword by Donald Richie

I mentioned this above – I’ve been dipping into this for the last few weeks and its very interesting, but as I mentioned the lack of a film index is very irritating. I’d also question the omission of animators and also some of the better exploitation film makers. I also have a feeling that Jacoby falls exactly into that category of critic described by Yoshimoto as having been disturbed by how Kurosawa ‘problematicises’ Japanese self image and so much prefer those film makers who can be more comfortably described as ‘pure’ Japanese. This type of western critic has been less kindly described as part of the Chrysanthemum Club by writers like Alex Kerr. I think most of us would find the Kurosawa section a bit irritating with its damning with faint praise and its implied conclusion that Kurosawa’s main worth is in introducing westerners to other Japanese film makers. It is, however, a very useful complement to Richies history of Japanese film as it gives much more detailed information on the key Japanese directors with enough analysis and description to make the reader hungry to see more.

The Waves at Genji’s Door: Japan through its Cinema by Joan Mellen

This book is long out of print (1976), but there are quite a few copies available on Amazon. I must admit I’m surprised its not been reprinted and kept updated as I found it a very enjoyable and insightful book. It is very much a personal view of Japan through its cinema and through a distinctly feminist and anti-feudal (left wing) perspective. Comparing it to Mellens recent book on Seven Samurai, I would guess she would write it quite differently now – some of the analysis seems very much of its time, probably a little strident for some peoples taste – in particular, the repeated use of the word ‘fascist’ to describe pretty much everything about Japan she doesn’t like! But if you accept it as written, its a rich and enjoyable read, although as she is quite an opinionated writer I think everyone would find something to quibble with.

As its very much a personal view, it doesn’t attempt the type of overview of Japanese cinema you can get from Richie or other such authors. She focuses very much on Kurosawa, Ozu, Naruse and Kobayashi from the post war years, and on Immamura and Oshima in the 1960’s. Her central interest in all these film makers is how they tackle patriarchy, feudalism, militarism and misogyny in Japanese society. She is also very much an enthusiast for these film makers (even when criticising them), and this raises the book above a rant or purely academic exercise.

As we know from her later books, she is a fan of Kurosawa, and this book makes clear why she prefers him to the other key Japanese film makers – she emphasizes his ’shrewd understanding’ of human nature and most particularly his constant search for solutions to the problems of Japan – rather than the all embracing satire of Ichikawa, the nihilism of Oshima, the resignation of Ozu, or the failure of Mizoguchi to find satisfactory resolutions for his heroines.

The first two chapters deal with Japanese society and the earlier films. She makes the firm point – probably controversial at the time, but probably now widely accepted, that Japan is and always was a fundamentally feudal society down to its very foundation stone (the patriarchal family) and that the post war reforms did not fundamentally change this. She argues that the huge popularity of period films is that both film makers and audiences have found it easier to address the problems of Japanese society through examining its history. She sees the entire Jidai Geki genre as being essentially about class and feudalism (she makes the firm distinction between jidai geki and chambara films, the latter being in her view purely for entertainment purposes).

From the perspective of us Kurosawa fans, the most interesting chapter is entitled ‘Kurosawas Women’, with the subtitle a quote from Kurosawa ‘Of course, all my women are rather strange, I agree…’ She starts by saying that:

Ozu is a traditionalist and through his films we perceive the feudal, pre-World War II evaluation of the Japanese woman. But Kurosawa has always respected the act of individual conscience, and from him we would expect a more sympathetic response to the psychic enslavement of the Japanese woman.

She sees a progression from The Most Beautiful to No Regrets for our Youth of Kurosawa moving from seeing the independence of his female characters as a necessity of war in the former (she argues that the masculinity of the working women is portrayed as noble but unattractive) to Yukie in No Regrets becoming more truly attractive as she becomes more independent. She argues that Yukie is not only the only true female Kurosawa hero, but that she is one of the very few truly liberated women in all Japanese film. she compares Kurosawas use of Setsuko Hara favourably compared to Ozu:

Her presumed defeminization not only expresses her value, but rejects all previous standards of feminine beauty and demeanor. It is rather ironic that Setsuko Hara plays Yukie as convincingly as she did Ozu’s Noriko. In No Regrets for Our Youth her face expresses the very potential of the Japanese woman that has been so often, during all these long centuries, left wasted and latent.

She sees it all downhill from there – the discussion of Rashomon emphasises what she sees as Kyo’s character as a typical castrating female who in all the versions is manipulative, demonic and/or pathetic. She states that:

After Rashomon, Kurosawa seemed to have abandoned his interest in the potential of women, as if repelled by Masago, that half-demon of his own creation.

She concludes finally (and a little cynically I think) that:

With Red Beard, women in Kurosawa have become not only unreal and incapable of kindness, but totally bereft of autonomy, whether physical, intellectual, or emotional. It is through men that understanding is reached. Women at their best may only imitate the truths men discover, as when Miss Watanabe had to behave like a bushi, a warrior, during the war. It takes men, and in hard times as our own, supermen such as doctor Niide, to teach us how to live.

Interestingly, she also sees Kurosawa as being at one with Shinoda, Imamura and Oshimma in that his oeuvre

…embodies the central angst, the defining crisis and experience of Japanese society and culture

This is a somewhat different to her later book on Seven Samurai where she talks (unapprovingly) of those directors complete rejection of Kurosawa and what he stood for.

Part 3 of the book ‘The Second World War and its Aftermath’ is also very interesting. She is particularly good in dissecting Ozu’s films – she convincingly argues that Ozu was the most actively conservative of the main post war directors and that underneath the humane and lovely depictions of post war family life, he was very much siding with the aging patriarchs of his films, and implicitly supporting a very feudal society. She is also quite critical of the anti war film in post war Japan, noting that most duck the harder questions about japans role in the war. She is an admirer of Kobayashi’s three part film The Human Condition and its deeply dark view of both Japanese militarism and communist hypocrisy.

Part IV is entitled ‘Woman in Japan’ and is primarily about Mizoguchi and Naruse (she seems to have been one of the first critics to have recognised the importance of Naruse). She notes that while Mizoguchi’s films are immensely powerful and beautiful depictions of the evils of feudalism and in particular its effect on women, in his endings he frequently avoids providing any deeper solutions for his characters – for example in his famous ending of Sansho the Bailiff where the camera pulls away from the characters, literally turning away from the weeping mother and her son.

The later two sections of the book are of perhaps the least interest, as she focuses on a number of then fashionable film makers which, I think its fair to say, have not aged well in comparison to the golden age film makers. She does however convincingly argue that Kurosawas The Bad Sleep Well and High and Low are much more sophisticated and courageous political critiques than the then fashionable radical works by Imai and Immamura. I found her analysis of both these films to be particularly interesting (she addresses a few of the points we all here struggled with in those films). Of The Bad Sleep Well:

But the political thrust of the film as an attack on the collusion between government, press, police, and zaibatsu had already been lost two-thirds of the way through the film, when Kurosawa began more and more to focus on the psychology of Nishi. The political satire is abruptly abandoned as Kurosawa confines himself to exploring Nishi’s personality. His single-minded hero is made politically ineffective by the normal assertion of love… Kurosawa seems suddenly to lose heart, as if he finds the theme of how to overcome such a ruling order too disturbing to pursue.

And she continues:

At the center of High and Low is the question of what the individual has a right to expect from the society in which he lives. In Japan, where, as Chie Nakane reminds us, a vertical hierarchy governing all relationships persists and one is always first subject to a predetermined status within a collective; to demand a style of life different from that afforded by one’s allotted place in the system constitutes extreme rebellion. In a social order which functions only so long as everyone accepts his place, to challenge one’s position amounts to a revolt against the organisation of the entire society. Ironically, Kurosawa makes his rebellious kidnapper an interne studying to be a doctor, a person who will soon enter the medical profession; this kidnapper is soon to share in the benefits enjoyed by the privileged within Japanese society. Yet, according to Kurosawa, it is just such a man, about to escape his poverty, who revolts, a man who knows he will soon enjoy a better station in life.

It is a brilliant insight on Kurosawa’’s part that it is precisely a man soon to escape it who would find his poverty so intolerable that he would jeaopardize his entire future by becoming a kidnapper. History confirms that those who become revolutionaries are usually not the poorest and most hopeless, but exactly those who have begun to taste the fruits of prosperity and thus are much more aware of the pain of inequity. Japanese critics like Tadao Sato, who have insisted that an interne would never become a kidnapper and that therefore High and Low is based upon an incredible premise, reveal themselves as simply incapable of grasping the depth of Kurosawa’s social vision.

In the last scene of High and Low the kidnapper faces Gondo, the man he ruined, from behind his prison bars. He asserts his right not to have to live in “a three-tatami room, freezing in winter, stifling in summer”. It is a challenge to the class structure of Japan, because the kidnapper was inspired to his crime by the sight of Gondo’s white mansion high on the bluff, overlooking with supreme indifference the entire city of Yokohama, including the slums below where he himself lived. “Your house looked like heaven,” he tells Gondo.

Gondo has asked “Must we hate each other?” and the implied answer is that they are both more than individuals. They also represent the inequity between rich and poor. As men, they might have been friends. As fellow Japanese, victimized by living in a society that makes life heaven for some and hell for others, they can only hate and fear each other. The arbitrariness of class differences is expressed by Kurosawa as he has Gondo’s face reflected in the glass behind which the kidnapper views him. Gondo’s face is as if superimposed upon that of this impoverished man, driven to drug addiction and murder by an intolerable existence. The point is plain. One could as well have been the other.

She later argues that High and Low succeeds where The Bad Sleep Well fails because midway through the film Kurosawa leaves behind the isolated, noble hero to comment on the police pursuit, which allows him to tell a secondary story about Japanese society.

I know some of the quotes I’ve set out above portray the film as a bit obsessed with an attempt to force all the films into a feminist and anti-feudal narrative, and to a certain extent this is true, but Mellen is a gifted writer and the book is full of very interesting little insights into many of the best known films of the time. I’d certainly recommend it as a complement to the more chronological and academic books on the topic.

Jacoby is obviously a big Mizoguchi fan and so tilts his assessments in that direction. Also, he is a bit too enamored by auteur theory for my taste, downgrading in his view directors like Naruse for the crime of not having a distinctive style. Also, rather annoyingly it doesn’t have a film index, which makes it hard to find a director if you remember the name of the film but not the directors name. Otherwise, the book is very useful and very readable, lots of interesting information in it.

Incidentally, does anyone else think that Yoshimoto’s book has maybe the ugliest cover ever designed? Surely a visual stylist like Kurosawa deserves to be shown with something other than a bad passport photo tinted a horrible shade of blue?