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January 31, 2000
WATCHING POST-WAR JAPAN EVOLVE ON FILM
I love history -- and in recent years, I've especially focused on the history of modern Japan. Unfortunately, most history texts seem to cover ancient Japan up through the samurai years but ends there, before Japan's Westernization. Or else it focuses on the Meiji era of Westernizaton during the late 1800s. Then the story picks up with many books that cover Japan after World War II and outline the country's rise to prominence as a world industrial and financial power, right up to today.
| I've been engrossed in watching the development of post-war Japan through the artistry of movie directors and the stories they've told. |
But very little exists in American books or videos that describes the Japan of the 1930s through the early 1950s: the pre-war years, the wartime era and the Occupation of Japan by the U.S. military from 1945-'51. The same seems to be true for Japanese books and videos -- I keep searching in vain for photo books or documentaries that show Japan during this period.
It finally dawned on me one day when I was looking at videos on the Web retailer Amazon.com that I should stop looking for documentaries and study fictional films made during the period, to get a feel for what the country was going through. The idea paid off; for the past few months I've been engrossed in watching the development of post-war Japan through the artistry of movie directors and the stories they've told.
There are plenty more videos I want to see, but here are a few you can order. They're all in Japanese with English subtitles. I watched them in chronological order, so I'll write about them the same way:
"One Wonderful Sunday" ("Subarashiki Nichiyobi," 1947)
-- One of acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa's earliest feature films,
this is about a couple who are engaged to be married amidst the devastated
backdrop of Tokyo immediately after the war. The settings veer from freshly-built
up shopping and residential districts to what look like miles and miles
of flattened cityscape with nothing but concrete rubble. The couple is
so poor they can't even pool together 35 yen for their weekly Sunday outings.
Yuzo, the man, despairs for their situation, while Masako is eternally
optimistic. The film follows the couple's adventures during one Sunday,
finding entertainment and pleasure amongst a city poised like a Phoenix
to rise from the ashes. The story's slow and doesn't particularly go anywhere,
but the interaction between the two characters is sweet, and of course
Kurosawa captures a lot of the feel of Tokyo circa 1946.
"Stray Dog" ("Nora Inu," 1949) -- Another
early Kurosawa film, starring a young but already-intense Toshiro Mifune.
Although the director is best-known for samurai epics such as "Rashomon"
or "Seven Samurai," I've been collecting his urban films, many
-- like this -- of which were made in the film-noir style with gangster
story lines. Mifune plays a cop whose gun is stolen, and he discovers
during the search for the culprits that the weapon was used in several
crimes including a murder. The film's most fascinating for its almost-documentary
look at the Tokyo underworld, with the camera following Mifune through
crowded Tokyo streets into alleyways and bombed-out areas where the poor,
homeless and criminally-connected live. The richly detailed backdrop in
this movie is as interesting as the story itself.
"Tokyo Story" ("Tokyo Monogatari," 1953) --
Yasujiro Ozu, another acclaimed Japanese director, filmed this story about
an elderly rural couple who go to Tokyo to visit their children. Unfortunately,
by the end of the Occupation Japan's economy was starting to gather momentum,
and the couple finds that their children's families are busy and resentful
of their visit. Chishu Ryo and Chieko Higashiyama star as the parents
who suffer through a strained and miserable trip and realize that they're
not wanted in the hustle and bustle of the new city. The story's a sad
one about the passing of values as generations move on. Ozu's film is
deliberately paced and reveals a lot about day-to-day life in a changing
Japan, where modern conveniences are taking over but the homes are still
old-fashioned with sliding "shoji" walls and tatami-mat flooring.
In fact, the entire film is subtly shot from the perspective of someone
kneeling on the tatami mats. It's a beautiful and thoughtful film, although
not entertaining by today's standards.
"Good Morning" ("Ohayo," 1959) -- Another,
later film by Yasujiro Ozu, "Good Morning" is his first color
film. It captures the spirit of a Japan that's a few more years down the
modernization road, and though the suburban development of this film still
features tatami-mat floors, there's more of a western flair to the architecture.
The story's a comedy (few of the films from the post-war era seem to be
comedies, perhaps mirroring a societal need for serious reflection), so
I think it shows Japan's increasing confidence in its place in the world.
The film follows a couple of brothers who go on "strike" and
refuse to talk because their parents won't buy a television set so they
could watch the popular sumo wrestling matches after school. There are
several entertaining subplots, including the nasty gossiping among the
women who live in the small cluster of homes, and the relationships between
some of the husbands and wives in the "new Japan." This is the
Japan I was born into, one of possibilities and potential, and this film
definitely conjures up familiar feelings and memories for me.
"When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" ("Onna Ga Kaidan O Agaru
Toki," 1960) -- Hideko Takamine stars in a gloomy story about
Tokyo nightlife filmed by director Mikio Naruse. Takamine is a bar hostess
who aspires to own her own place -- the only way to be free of the constraints
of both her bosses and her clientele. Meanwhile, she has to struggle with
her age and how a "proper" woman would be married by this point
in her career and not have to work. She also has to deal with her younger
employees who quit to start their own bars -- one in particular doffs
her kimono and hosts clientele in a western cocktail dress, proving that
even in this hierarchical world, "modernism" is changing values.
There's heartbreak in the plot, but the film depicts a culture of businessmen
and bars that established a strong identity of sexual roles and stereotypes
that still pervades mainstream American culture today.
"Tokyo Olympiad" ("Tokyo Orimpikku," 1965)
-- Most historians choose the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics as the moment
where Japan showed the world how it had recovered and taken its place
among world leaders. By '64, Japan was a fully modernized country -- almost
everyone had TV sets and washing machines, two consumer items that the
families in "Good Morning" yearned for. Director Kon Ichikawa's
award-winning and very stylish (and stylized) documentary is a straight
reporting of the Olympic games with all its winners and losers, with occasional
Japanese narration and overlays of Japanese TV coverage of the events.
It doesn't show much of how Tokyo presented itself to the international
visitors (the U.S. film "Walk, Don't Run" starring Cary Grant
does a pretty good job of that), but it's a terrific sports film. The
segment where the Japanese women's volleyball team defeats the Russian
team is incredibly moving, even after all these years.
One thing that I found curious from these films which might change after I view other movies from the era, is that the presence of the U.S. military seems nonexistent. Whether it's the grungy Tokyo back alleys of "Stray Dog" or the more opulent Tokyo suburbia of "Good Morning," American culture and political power is only implied, not explicit.
I'm hoping other films will help me get a more complete picture of the times -- there's a more recent film about the Occupation and how baseball was a theme that brought the GIs and Japanese together. But for now, I'm happy to be seeing movies that capture the Japan I'm curious about, from the perspective of Japanese who lived through the era.
I'll write more on movies and books about Japanese history as I come across them. All the videos described above are available at Amazon.com. If you order them by clicking here, I'll get a small percentage of your purchase as an Amazon affiliate Web site. It's one way I can underwrite the Nikkei View. Thanks!