Promiscuous Media , livre ebook

Cornell University Press - Hikari Hori

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

312 pages

English

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In Promiscuous Media, Hikari Hori makes a compelling case that the visual culture of Showa-era Japan articulated urgent issues of modernity rather than serving as a simple expression of nationalism. Hori makes clear that the Japanese cinema of the time was in fact almost wholly built on a foundation of Russian and British film theory as well as American film genres and techniques. Hori provides a range of examples that illustrate how maternal melodrama and animated features, akin to those popularized by Disney, were adopted wholesale by Japanese filmmakers.Emperor Hirohito's image, Hori argues, was inseparable from the development of mass media; he was the first emperor whose public appearances were covered by media ranging from postcards to radio broadcasts. Worship of the emperor through viewing his image, Hori shows, taught the Japanese people how to look at images and primed their enjoyment of early animation and documentary films alike. Promiscuous Media links the political and the cultural closely in a way that illuminates the nature of twentieth-century Japanese society.

Sujets

History of film

History of Asia

Media studies

Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

Publié par	Cornell University Press
Date de parution	15 janvier 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781501709524
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	8 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,7500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

PROMISCUOUS MEDIA

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugu rated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of signiﬁcant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

PROMISCUOUS MEDIA Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926–1945

Hikari Hori

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Cornell University Press and the author express appreciation to the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Material in this work was presented to the University Seminar: Modern Japan. The ideas presented in this book have beneﬁted from discussions in the University Seminar on Modern Japan.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2017 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Hori, Hikari, author. Title: Promiscuous media : ﬁlm and visual culture in imperial Japan, 1926–1945 / Hikari Hori. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2017029168 (print) | LCCN 2017030101 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501709524 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501712166 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501714542 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Japan—History—20th century. | Motion pictures—Political aspects—Japan—History—20th century. | Mass media and nationalism—Japan—History—20th century. | Nationalism and the arts— Japan—History—20th century. | Japan—History—1926–1945. Classiﬁcation: LCC PN1993.5.J3 (ebook) | LCC PN1993.5.J3 H67 2017 (print) | DDC 791.430952—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029168

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments

vîî îx

Introduction1 Film and Visual Culture: The Early Showa Era, Historical Contexts, and Narrative Frameworks 1. Photography’s Aura:22 The Modern Emperor and Mass Media 2. Contested Motherhood and Entertainment Film70 3. The Politics of Japanese Documentary Film114 4. The Dream of Japanese National Animation155 Epilogue204

Notes Bibliography Index

217 261 279

Illustratîons

Figure 0.1. Opening shot ofHanako(Hanako san, 1943) 17 Figure 1.1. Crown Prince Hirohito (postcard) 26 Figure 1.2. Extant building ofhōanden (shrine that speciﬁcally preserves “the Photograph”) 37 Figure 1.3. Front page of OsakaAsahi shinbun(January 1, 1937) 58 Figure 1.4. Intertitle ofNippon News,61vol. 1 (June 11, 1940) Figure 1.5. The imperial couple at the ceremony of the Empire’s 2,600th Anni versary inNippon News,vol. 232 (November 13, 1940) 63 Figure 2.1. Actress Takasugi Sanae in her Kokufu apron (postcard) 78 Figure 2.2. Kōzōplayed by Uehara Ken in 1940 digest version ofTheLoveTroth Tree(Aizen katsura, 1940) 90 Figure 2.3. Waka, played by Tanaka Kinuyo, and her son inThe Army(Riku gun, 1944) 99 Figure 2.4. Military women, played by Hara Setsuko and Takamine Hideko in Three Women in the North(Kita no sannin, 1945) 110 Figure 3.1. Atsugi Taka 115 Figure 3.2. The opening pages of the Film Law, with Hirohito’s signature 128 Figure 3.3.Record of a Daycare Center Teacher(Aru hobo no kiroku) ﬁlm adver tisement inEiga junpō(January 1, 1942) 139 Figure 3.4. Young woman at sewing machine inThis Is How Hard We Are Working(Watashitachi wa konnani hataraiteiru, 1945) 152 Figure 4.1.Perō, the Chimney Sweeper(Entotsuya Perō162, 1930) Figure 4.2.Suppression of the Tengu165(Tengu taiji, 1934) Figure 4.3.Momotaro’s Sea Eagle172(Momotaro no umiwashi, 1943) Figure 4.4. Front page of TokyoAsahi shinbun174(January 1, 1942) Figure 4.5.Divine Warriors Descend to Kota Palembang(Shinpei parenban ni kōka su, 1942, postcard) 179 Figure 4.6.Princess Iron Fan(Tie shan gong zhu/Tessen kōshu) advertisement in Eiga junpō187(September 21, 1942)

vîî

vîîî

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 4.7. Dandelion scene inMomotaro, Sacred SailorsUmi no (Momotaro, shinpei, 1945) 197 Figure 4.8. Paratroopers inUSSR in Construction199(December 1935) Figure 4.9. Rabbit soldier inMomotaro, Sacred Sailors(Momotaro, Umi no shin pei, 1945) 200

Preface and Acknowledgments

I ﬁrst became interested in researching ﬁlm by coincidence when I was a gradu ate student in art history in Japan. Through a casual introduction by a friend, I assisted (in minor ways) the documentary ﬁlmmaker Barbara Hammer when she was in Tokyo working onDevotion: A Film about Ogawa Productions(2000), a ﬁlm about the “father” of the Japanese documentary, Ogawa Shinsuke, and his production company.It was an unforgettable experience. I was fascinated by ﬁlmmaking practices (doing research, interviewing, shooting, editing, and carrying a heavy camera—even though it was digital, still heavy enough—and a microphone). I admired Barbara’s stamina as director and instincts as creator, and learned so much from her perspectives as a veteran feminist and lesbian ac tivist. My dissertation was motivated by my desire to answer her question: Who are the pioneering Japanese women directors? This book, however, travelled much further in terms of the geography I worked on and lived in, as well as the questions I wanted to raise. My research turns to the wartime era and to ﬁlms within and beyond Japan. When I did research on the female pioneer Atsugi Taka, who joined ﬁlm produc tions in the 1930s, I was drawn to the time period. I met Tokieda Toshie and Kishi Fumiko, who shared with me invaluable stories and insights into ﬁlm pro duction during the wartime and immediate postwar eras. Documentary director Tokieda was extremely generous about sharing recorded interviews between herself and Atsugi, historical documents, and her own experiences of directing. I was fascinated by these glimpses of Tokieda’s career, which began by joining in documentary ﬁlmmaking on May Day in 1950 and being trained as an assistant director at Iwanami studio the following year. Later she became a very unusual Japanese ﬁlm director, ﬁlming the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China. Kishi was very kind and wonderful, too. She was a remarkable person, who worked mostly in dramatic feature ﬁlm production as a ﬁlm editor. One of her earliest jobs was working onNew Earth(Atarashiki tsuchi; directed by Itami Mansaku, 1937). She learned a lot about new techniques of editing from a Ger man female editor who came to Japan with Arnold Fanck to do the German ver sion of the ﬁlm, titledThe Daughter of Samurai. After this ﬁlm, she moved to Manchuria to work for the Manchurian Film Association (Manshūeiga kyōkai), where she also collaborated with Sakane Tazuko, the Japanese female director.

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

She stayed in China for several years after the war to work in ﬁlm production, and then came back to Japan to continue her career. Thesethreepractitioners—Barbara,Tokiedasan,andKishisan(four,includ ing Atsugi, whom I did not get to know in person)—inspired and encouraged me to think about war; the relations between local and global ﬁlm cultures; the crosscultural circulation of texts, ideas, and art forms; artists’ passion for cre ativity regardless of their political, social, and historical conditions; gender and ﬁlm; and Japanese imperialism. These topics generated fundamental questions for this book. My biggest challenge was to craft my questions and exposition to effectively address both Anglophone and Japanese readers. I hope that this book will be like my own approach to ﬁlm and visual culture: transnational, linking two separate but overlapped ﬁelds with nationally deﬁned disciplinary boundaries. I believe that national boundaries do exist in the academy when a discipline is being formed—I became keenly aware of the point when I moved to the United States aftermygraduatework.Suchboundariesaredeterminedbytheurgentandim mediate social conditions in which researchers are institutionally, psychologi cally, and linguistically situated. But I hope that this book becomes a link across geographical boundaries, following paths paved by earlier scholars but tying to gether these separate ﬁelds.

Needlesstosay,Iamdeeplyindebtedtonumerousfriends,colleagues,andinsti tutions that helped me conceive and materialize this project. I am especially grate ful to Paul Anderer, Theodore Hughes, Eugenia Lean, Haruo Shirane, and Tomi Suzuki in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University for their support and encouragement for this project. At Columbia, librarians and archivists were also immensely helpful: Karen Green at Butler Library, who is also a renowned comic critic; Sachie Noguchi, Jim Cheng, and Tsuyoshi Harada at Starr East Asian Library; and archivists Miki Masuda and Beth Katzoff at the Makino Mamoru Collection on the History of East Asian Film. In addition to the members of Modern Japan Seminar and Junior Faculty Writing Workshop at Columbia, Marnie Anderson, Michael Baskett, Hyaeweol Choi, Janis Mimura, Ken Ruoff, and Mitsuyo WadaMarciano read and com mented on chapter drafts and conference papers despite their busy schedules, for which I cannot be thankful enough. In addition, Kim Brandt, Jane Gaines, and Greg Pﬂugfelder were not only wonderful friends and colleagues but also inspiring, knowledgeable, fun to talk with, and keen readers of chapters. How ever, I am saddened that I am not able to present this book to my dissertation adviser, the late Kaori Chino, and to my mentor, the late Wakakuwa Midori. My