Preface
This paper is a historical paper examining the film studio Shochiku and their involvement in the start of Japanese New Wave. I use the definition of the Japanese New Wave by David Desser:
”The Japanese New Wave is here defined as films produced and/or released in the wake of Oshima’s A Town of Love and Hope, films which take an overtly political stance in the general way or toward a specific issue, utilizing a deliberately disjunctive form compared to previous filmic norms in Japan” (Desser, s. 4)
I chose to limit the paper to look at only Shochiku and Nagisa Oshima, prominently because of these reasons: With only ten pages available, I had to extract the causes and Oshima was probably the most prominent and rebellious of the new wave directors working under Shochiku. And since I use the Desser definition of the Nouvelle Vague, Oshima made the first Japanese New Wave film.
This story is a dive into political, cultural, industrial and economic causes, and I want to show that the Japanese New Wave started, as opposed to Le Nouvelle Vague, out of economic reasons, and Oshima as a man trying to be a revolutionary inside a studio system.
Another New Wave director, Shohei Imamura said: “I'm a country farmer; Oshima is a samurai.”(Bock, s. 309) I hope you also think of Oshima as a samurai after you have read this paper.
Shochiku – film must be salvation
Shochiku was founded in 1898 as a theatre company and in 1920 they began as a film studio. They shaped their organization after the American Hollywood studios, making the movies, distributing their movies and showing the movies in their own movie theatres, they even copied the star system. (Wada-Marciano, s. 3) In 1924 the infamous Kido Shiro become the head of the Shochiku studio and if this story has two main protagonists; it’s him and Oshima.
In 1923 the Great Kantō earthquake hit Japan. It was devastating, killing over 100.000 people and leaving Tokyo, where the main part of the studios was, in ruins. Donald Richie says in his book A Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema: “The cinema was a hard hit. Many of the studios and theaters in the capital were destroyed or badly damaged (…)” (Richie, s. 43) The only studio left in Tokyo was Shochiku Kamata, and they were the only studio in Tokyo, until Nikkatsu got a studio there in 1934.
The earthquake was terrible, but Kido seems like a genuine capitalist, looking at the Japanese society finding a new audience he could sell movies to. He was a strong studio chief who created Shochiku’s house style, the Shochiku Kamata. The Shochiku Kamata is a styled called up after Kamata, where the studios were located. It was a style with focus on ordinary people, semi-humorous and warm films. In a speech Kido hold when he was made the studio chief:
There are two ways to view humanity …cheerful and gloomy. But the latter will not do: we at Shochiku prefer to look at life in a warm and hopeful way. To inspire despair in our viewer would be unforgiveable. The bottom line is that film must be salvation. (Richie, s.44)
The films were not only about nice life and people finding love, it could be about hookers and hoodlums as well “as long as debts to society were properly paid and righteous paths recovered by the final fade.” (Stephens, https://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/so05/shochikufeature1.htm)
This house style is a form of shomingeki. Richie defines the shomingeki as “films about the lower-middle classes, the “little” people. More strictly, serio-comedy about the salaried classes”(Richie, s. 298), and those films are popular in other studios as well, but the Shochiku Kamata style is linked more to the studio, than the genre. In 1936 the studio in Kamata was closed down and Shochiku moved their studios to Ofuna, so the Kamata house style is now called for the Ofuna style, but Kamata and Ofuna is the same style. Isolde Standish calls the style for “behavouralist” (Standish, s. 33), in which she means that the style of the films lies in the linear narration of the films. This she means have a connection with the strong belief Kido had in the screenplay.
“It must be remembered that up until the late 1910s most films were made without the aid of screenplay, filmmakers giving instructions to actors during the actual filming. At Shochiku all apprentice directors joining the company began their careers by studying the art of screenplay writing: only after they had produced and acceptable screenplay they were allowed to advance beyond assistant director status. “ (Standish, s. 77)
Not just was Shochiku a studio that had focus on story, they were a progressive studio; it was the first studio to use women in film, the first studio who made a sound film and the first studio that showed a kiss on screen, but that was not until 1946 with Yasushi Yasaki's Twenty-Year-Old Youth. Kido went on a tour of Europe and USA some time after he was made studio boss, and when he came home to Japan he was interested in making the Shochiku films more realistic, like Hollywood. It was also another thing that was starting in the West that interested him, films with sound. (Wada-Marciano, s. 114) So when he got home he started to make the converting to sound films and in 1931 Shochiku presented the first Japanese talkie: The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (Gosho, 1931). After WW1 and the earthquake everybody in Japan helped rebuilding the country. Everybody even meant the women, and when they worked they earned money. Money they could spend on movies.
“The fact that old moralistic ideas have a repressive stranglehold on women presents opportunities for us to create various theatrical stories for our films.” Kido said, demonstrating he was interested in showing the real Japan to the audience, before he continued: “Also, women don’t come to the movie theater alone; they are always accompanied by other people such as friends, sisters, and boyfriends, so we can have a larger audience while spending less for advertising” (Wada-Marciano, s. 80) Maybe Shochiku was a progressive studio, but the women films also “re-contained through romance within traditional roles of passivity and sacrifice.” (Standish s. 194) They was not about to make revolutionary films, they made films for the petite bourgeois.
In the beginning of the thirties the transformation of the film industry, that culminating with the war, started. It was nationalizing the film industry. The Film Law of 1939 was making demands to the industry, and the government was in charge. (Standish, s. 142). When the war started it had an enormous effect on the film studios; they had to merge. In 1941 ten of the studios was rearranged into two studios: “(…) becoming, in effect, instruments of government policy.” (McDonald, s. 6) Shochiku studios help their government the best their could, and produced propaganda films during the war.
After the war, the occupation of Japan started. Kido was classified as a Type A War criminal and was not back at the Shochiku before 1951 (Standish, s.176), when the occupation ended and Japan signed The Security Treaty between United States and Japan.
“That Kido should be branded a war criminal by postwar U.S. occupation forces for the fistful of military-themed movies he’d produced against his better judgment would never cease to gall him, especially as he suspected that the envy of rival studio bosses was secretly to blame.” (Stephens)
During the occupation the film business was under strict control from the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE), and they made strict guidelines on what kind of films that was being prohibited and some guidelines of films they should make. Luckily for Shochiku on the list of desirable subjects were films “Showing Japanese in all walks of life co-operating to build a peaceful nation” (Standish, s. 155). When the treaty between USA and Japan was written in 1951, it was time for home dramas and the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema.
The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema is also called the Second Gold Age (Iversen, s. 143) and the Third Golden Era (McDonald, s. 7), but this is the time for the international recognition for Japanese Cinema, with directors like Kurosawa and Ozu. Ozu made all his films for Shochiku; home drama and women films were known genres from Shochiku. It was in these times the “Ofuna flavor” was really connected to women films from Shochiku: “Warm, sentimental, subscribing to myths of basic human goodness, romantic love and maternal righteousness” (Bock, s. 199).
The Golden age of Japanese Cinema peaked in 1958 with the incredible number of 1.127.000.000 tickets sold (Desser, s.8), but only five years later the sales was reduced to half with 511.000.000. What happened in those five years?
The decline of the Golden Age, or how the television stole my audience
The first of February 1953 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai started their transmission, but not for many viewers; it was only 866 television sets with a receiver contract (http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/aboutstrl/evolution-of-tv-en/p09/index.html, 2010). The television broadcasting started in 1939, but that was an experiment and was sat on hold when the war started. In 1953 a television set cost 180.000 yen, which was one-year salary for a white-collar worker, so televisions was just for the dirty rich or public enterprise, like cafés or pubs. After one year it was sold 16.000 receiver contracts, but it was primary to the public enterprises, which demanded money for showing particular programs for customers (http://homepage3.nifty.com/katodb/doc/text/2622.html, 2010). There is only one reason to the extreme decrease in the movie ticket sales and that is television, but there were three reasons that it happened so fast. One reason was that the sets became cheaper and cheaper, in 1958 the price for a set was half the price in 1953. The second reason was an “Ofuna flavored” reason: It was announced in the autumn of 1958 that prince Akihito was going to marry Michiko Shoda. It became a symbol of the new democratic Japan, with the Prince marrying out of love and not arranged, as was the tradition. It is estimated that 150.000 saw the wedding on their new sets. (Ibid.) And last, the third reason: The Olympic Games. In 1959 it was announced that Japan was going to host the Olympic Games in 1964. The television company’s understood the power that it had and they promoted that “We promise you the best seat to watch Olympic games” (Ibid.), and like a plague the television grasped the Japanese audience and never let go:
“The Olympic game, with participation of 5,586 athletes representing 94 countries, the biggest in scale in its history, was held in Tokyo from October 10 through 24, 1964. The inauguration ceremony was watched by 65 million people in Japan, or 84.7% of the nation's population.” (Ibid.)
These were bleak times for Shochiku. Their main audience, women, choose the comfort of the home and television instead of melodramatic times presented by the silver screen. They needed a new audience.
Taiyozoku
Cut to: Shintaro Isihara, a young writer. His books Season of the Sun (1955) and Crazed Fruit (1955) became immensely popular with the youth. The books were about the Taiyozoku’s (the sun Tribe), the young and the restless, living a nihilistic life and introducing the new youth culture. In Michael Raines essay about Crazed Fruit, he compares it with James Dean and the rock n’ roll culture that emerged in America at the same time.
Nikkatsu had found their untapped goldmine, and in 1956 both novels was out as films, reaching a new audience. Shochiku understood that their audience would relapse when television would hit the mainland and looked at the Taiyozoku films seeing that this audience was an audience they also could reach. Shochiku had always had a policy taking in young people as screenwriters and assistant directors. Who better to make films to the young than the young? One of this young filmmakers working for Shochiku was Nagisa Oshima; the new times would hit him hard, and he was going to fight back.
Oshima
When Oshima first saw Crazed Fruit he wrote the article: Is it a Breakthrough? “In the rip of a woman’s skirt and the buzz of a motorboat, sensitive people heard the heralding of a new generation of Japanese film.” (Oshima, 1958, s.26) Sensitive people would soon be introduced to Oshima as a filmmaker. The very next year he made his debut with A Town with Love and Hope (1959).
Oshima was not initially interested in film. He was a graduate from Kyoto University and during his time on the University he was heavily involved with the student movement. In 1951 he was involved in what has been known as the “Emperor Incident”. The student association was not allowed to ask open questions to the Emperor when he was visiting the University, so Oshima and his colleagues had a demonstration with posters saying that so many students had been killed in the war in the name of the emperors divinity. “The result of the “Emperor Incident” was the dissolution of the student association.” (Bock, s. 314)
In 1953 the association was revived, with Oshima as the president. But when the University refused them to hold their meetings on campus, massive demonstrations started. The police got involved and 70 people was injured in the clash. The University closed down all student association and “In effect, the student movement was crushed (…)”(Ibid.). Oshima was after this branded as a “Red Student”, making it almost impossible to get a job. Shochiku was a company that needed new assistant directors and he got a job there in 1954.
He was not so interested in his work, famously saying, “If I thought the work was boring, I’d quit and go home.” (Bock, s.315), working on only 15 films in five years. He started to get an interest in writing film criticism and screenplays, which were published in assistant directors magazines. He was an eager critic of both films and the Ofuna style, demanding innovation. In a review of the research done on the studio, Sleeping Lion: Shochiku Ofuna (1959), Oshima said the company wasn’t a sleeping lion; it was a dead lion. He then confronted the Ofuna style:
“Given the fact that the content and method of this sort of work– which had peaked in 1954 with Twenty-Four Eyes - was already beginning to lose its ability to attract audiences and would soon loose it completely, why did works of the same type, in an even more degenerated form, keep appearing on the screens of Shochiku films?” (Oshima, s.38)
Oshima wanted something else.
Le Nouvelle Vague
In 1958 the French director Francois Truffaut made his debut with the film Le Quatre Centre Coups, and this is marks the start of the Nouvelle Vague. It had a massive impact on films. It was not made within the established movie industry, but from a young movie critic, heavily inspired by film theoreticians like André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc. The Nouvelle Vague was soon followed up with films by such as Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol (and many more), making film cool and important again.
The Nouvelle Vague hit Japan and Shochiku as well, and Kido saw the potential in making cheap films that could meet the young audience. Shochiku met at these times a financial crisis and Kido thought of a “social quality” film. (Bock .s 316) Kido saw the potential in letting his young assistant directors make the films, creating their own wave: The Shochiku Nouvelle Vague.
Kido was aware of Oshima as an intellectual, and that’s probably the reason he was hired to make his first film. He choose Oshima’s script The Boy Who Sold His Pigeon to be the first film to be made in his young and cheap “social quality” movies. Kido didn’t think the title was suiting for Shochiku so the title was changed to The Town of Love and Hope, quite ironic since there isn’t much love or hope in the movie. It was a critical success, but Kido thought it didn’t suite the Shochiku style and gave it a minor release. The year was 1959 and the world was a turbulent place.
The Zenkyoto and Oshima
When U.S. ended the occupation of Japan in 1951, they wrote a security treaty between the countries’, which “dictated that Japan grant the U.S. the territorial means for it to establish a military presence in the Far East.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Treaty_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan) In 1960 this treaty was to be renewed. The Zenkyoto was the name for the people against the renewed treaty. It was prominent of students and communists, and is also known as the “The Anpo movement” ”The Anpo movement, in accordance with Clause 9 of the postwar Constitution, attempted to stop the extension and revision of the Japan-U.S. security treaty.” (Standish, s.255) This renewal led to enormous demonstrations, with fatal outcome. A young student of the Zenkyoto was killed in clash with the police. In the middle of this was Oshima, making movies with journalistic speed; in 1960 he premiered with three movies: Cruel Story of Youth, The Suns Burial and Night and Fog in Japan.
Both Cruel Story of Youth and The Suns Burial were about young delinquents, and Oshima challenged the Shochiku style, with handheld camera and dark stories, making him the lead figure in the Shochiku Nouvelle Vague. A title he didn’t appreciate: “He maintained that there were too few “new directors” to constitute a “wave”(…). (Bock, s. 317) The films had a nihilistic tone, showing that the good or the weak would not survive, only the unsentimental and strong would. Richie says about the films: ”Whole these films could be seen as extensions of the concerns of the taiyozoku – violent youth in revolt – they were also found interesting by the critics for their narrative innovations and inherent social concerns.” (Ritchie, s. 197) They differed from the taiyozoku films that the people in the films were not rich and bored; they lived in a political world, with the contemporary demonstrations as a back curtain. The symbolism in The Suns Burial is quite easy to read: The sun is a known symbol for Japan, and in the film he shows a picture of the sun that are setting, burying his contemporary Japan.
His next feature Night and Fog in Japan was something completely different, both in style and in narrative. The film had a wedding scene in it, that’s probably why he could fool Shochiku into making it: Set during a wedding just after the Anpo demonstrations the film is, like the Alan Resnais film the title is borrowed from a modernistic approach to cinema. Displaying Oshima’s disappointment with the left after letting the Japan-U.S. security treaty was signed.
“Framed within a generational debate between student communist of the early 1950s and disillusioned debate between student activists in the contemporary 1960 Anpo movement, the film described as “filmed ideological treatise” (shiso ronbun) was based on a “one-scene-one-shot” editing pace. Sweeping camera movements between characters and the inclusion of flashbacks all contributed to an antithetical style at odds with Shochiku’s Ofuna-cho (style)”(Standish s. 256)
The assassination
12th of October, three days after Night an Fog in Japan had opened, Otoya Yamaguchi entered the scene where Inejiro Asanuma - the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party - were holding a speech, killing him with a sword on live television.
Shochiku pulled Night and Fog in Japan from the theaters the very same day. The film ha been a commercial failure, both Richie (s. 198) and Bock (s. 318) claims that Shochiku used the assassination as an excuse to pull the film, pleading the risk of political “unrest”.
Oshima and the rest of the crew wrote an angry letter, In protest against the Massacre of Night and Fog in Japan (1960): “This massacre is clearly political oppression.” The letter said, continuing: “If this isn’t political oppression, let even one theater, one independent screening group, give it one opportunity to be shown! Lend it out!” (Oshima, s. 54)
The letter is criticizing the studio executives for pulling the plug on the film, but also the journalists in Japan for not doing their job: “What do you mean “New Wave”? Have you ever used the term “New Wave” as anything other than a synonym for sex and violence? (…) Stop using the term “New Wave” once and for all!” (Oshima, s.56-57) Night and Fog in Japan became Oshima goal for every other film – seeing this film as “the weapon of the people’s struggle.” Continuing “I will continue making films like this.” (Ibid.) Oshima left the studio quickly after this, creating his own company Sozosha (Creation), ending his career as a studio filmmaker.
Bock writes in Japanese Film Directors that it was the revolt of the house style that culminated in Oshima leaving the studio. (Bock, s. 318) Kido wanted films that got the audience back to the theaters, but Oshima wanted to make films: “(…) to the audience that usually turns its back on movie theaters, the audience that take life seriously.” (Oshima, 1960, s.56)
The style of the new wave films was individualistic, like the auteur theory accentuated. Kido didn’t understand that, or at least didn’t care for. He made entertainment, not political art. The Nouvelle Vague was for Kido a new fad that maybe could bring the audience back to the theaters. It was just another tag to promote the films. This is where it the Japanese New Wave started, and I let David Desser conclude:
“Thus we might conclude that if there was no conscious movement, no formal announcement as such, on the part of the younger Japanese directors to create a “New Wave”, the combination of the culture’s interest in youth, the backgrounds of the young directors, the particular characteristics of the Japanese film industry, and the massive protests surrounding the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty renewal conspired, in a sense, to bring about a new look, form, and feel to the Japanese Cinema” (Desser, s.47)
Aftermath (fade out)
Oshima went on making movies independently, being a prominent New Wave filmmaker, with such others as Shohei Imamura, Yoshida Kiju and Susumu Hani. They challenged the Japanese film industry with film after film, until the wave was over in the seventies. Shochiku had some troublesome years, not managing to make any hits until 1969 when they started the popular comedy series Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp, which spanned for 45 installments from 1969 to 1995.
Shochiku produced Oshima’s latest film Taboo in 1999.
Literature list
Books
Bock, Audie (1980) Japanese Film Directors, s. 309-338, Tokyo, Kodansha International Ltd.
Desser, David (1988) Eros plus Massacre, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press
Iversen, Gunnar (2005) Globale fabler og nasjonale fortellinger – Om den japanske filmen s. 139-153 i Grønningen, Terje (red.): Vinduer mot Japan, Trondheim, Tapir Akademisk Forlag
McDonald, Keiki I. (2006) Reading a Japanese Film, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press
Oshima, Nagisa (1992) Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima 1956-1978, edited by Michelson, Annette, London, MIT press
Richie, Donald (2001) A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, Tokyo, Kodensha International
Standish, Isolde (2005) A New History of Japanese Cinema, New York, The Continuum International Publishing Group
Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo (2008) Nippon Modern – Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press
Internet Sources