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[1]
A shorter version of this paper was delivered in English at
the Society of Cinema Studies, Chicago, Illinois, on 10
March 2000. A Japanese version, "Fukusei gijutsu jidai no
wan purinto," was later given to the Nihon Eigashi Kenkyukai
at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 25 April 2000. I would
like to thank the participants of both sessions for their
questions and comments. The September
1917 Katsudo no sekai (Movie world),
containing probably one of the first attempts at a broad
factual overview of the Japanese film industry, is a
valuable resource to those studying the early Japanese film
industry. For instance, in the corner of one page, the
journal summarises the average budget of a four-reel,
four-thousand foot shinpa or kyuha film
(shinpa, literally "new school," were the films set
in the contemporary era and often based on the
"contemporary" stage genre of the same name, while
kyuha were "old school" period
dramas).[2]
In itemising the expenditures of a typical movie that would
take four days and ¥2270 to make (in the conversion
rate of those days, about US$4500), Katsudo no sekai
lists some numbers that must strike some as
curious: [2]
"Shin-kyuha eiga no satsuei nissu to satsuei hiyo,"
Katsudo no sekai 2, no.9 (September 1917):
55. Negative
film: ¥360 Positive
film: ¥360 Location
costs: ¥200 Costume/Props: ¥350 Script: ¥100 Filming
rights: ¥150 General
costs: ¥650 Miscellaneous: ¥100 According to the
magazine, "filming rights" (satsuei shoninryo) was
the gratuity paid to the "author" when filming one of his or
her works; "general costs" included studio salaries and
other costs and were calculated by considering the
proportion of four days of work out of the studio's monthly
costs. But it is the figures for the cost of film stock that
stand out, and not simply because the price for the two
accounted for 32% of the total budget: note that the amount
for negative and positive stock is the same. While
Katsudo no sekai's numbers must be taken with a grain
of salt (they, for instance, probably did not take into
account the slight difference in cost between positive and
negative film at the time[3]
), they
seem to reflect a film industry that not only rarely re-shot
a scene, but considered making only one positive print from
a negative the norm. This assumption about prints is backed
up by other sources[4]:
up until the early 1920s, Japanese studios rarely made more
than one or two prints of a film. If a film had more prints
than that, like the five of Ikeru shikabane (The
living corpse, 1918),[5]
it was treated as a sign of success, not regular practice,
one worth noting in movie journalism. [3]
The June 1917 Katsudo no sekai gives the price per
foot as 8.5 sen for negative and 7.8 sen for positive:
"Honpo ni okeru hirumu no yunyu to kako," Katsudo no
sekai 2, no.6 (June 1917): 32. Note that such numbers
underline the fact that for a 4000 foot film, very little
film was shot that was not used (4000 x 7.8 = 31200 sen or
¥312). [4]
For instance, Tanaka Jun'ichiro quotes the pioneer director
Makino Shozo describing the practice in the days of Yokota
Shokai (before 1912) in Nihon eiga hattatsushi vol. 1
(Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1975), 176; and the editorial "Obei
gekidan to Toyo no geki" laments the same practice in 1914:
Kinema rekodo 2, no.9 (March 1914): 2-3 [5]
"Mukojima satsueijo kenkyu," Katsudo no sekai 3,
no.10 (October 1918): 29. The article does not mention
whether the extra prints were made at the time of the film's
release or later, after the film's success. This fact can
strike almost anyone with a basic knowledge of early film
industry practice outside of Japan as odd. The first movie
producers elsewhere made their money less by renting than by
selling prints, and thus the mass production of prints was
essential to business. Even after film exchanges helped make
rentals more central to industry commerce, multiple prints
were a matter of course for an increasingly international
business with prints traveling all over the country and the
world. Theorists like Walter Benjamin in Germany and Gonda
Yasunosuke in Japan focused on the technological potential
of the moving pictures to fundamentally change conceptions
of art (for instance, "aura" and "originality"). Why then
did the Japanese film industry go against what seemed to be
not only common business practice, but the capacity of the
technology? One print in the
age of mechanical reproduction could potentially be an
example of those "idiosyncrasies" that have served as fodder
for studies of Japanese cinema both inside and outside
Japan. The most famous "idiosyncrasy" is the benshi,
that apparent anachronism whose existence well into the
1930s has, in the work of Noël Burch, Joseph Anderson,
and others, been a marker of difference that guides
explorations of the cultural contrasts between Japan and the
West. While the ways scholars have used these idiosyncrasies
vary, the tendency has been, for instance with Burch and
Donald Richie, to have them represent the cultural
uniqueness of Japan and its cinema rooted in cultural
tradition. That trend, however, often obscures specific
historic industrial factors as well as the precise conflicts
over forming the modern nation - and thus "a culture". In
this paper, I would like to use the idiosyncrasy of one
print in the age of mechanical reproduction to elaborate
historical appropriations of mechanical reproduction in a
specific context and thus explore the relations of industry
and culture in a modernising Japan. In doing so, I will
investigate the problem of one print less as a form of
cultural resistance against modernity than as an
articulation of cinema as event through an alternative,
hybrid form of modernity that problematised the contemporary
formation of the nation. This case can thus provide a
fascinating example to those studying early cinema of not
only the particular historical problems of structuring the
nation and the modern in a non-Western context subject to
the pressures of universalisation and globalism, but also of
the varied, local articulations between industry and culture
that shape cinematic experience. I will structure my
discussion by considering how the three fields of economy,
power, and culture offer various explanations for this
seemingly aberrant practice. One of the
economic impetuses behind the development of technological
means of reproduction was the capitalist pursuit of cost
reduction, labour savings, and rational efficiency,
conditions that in the motion picture world led not only to
the mass production of prints, but to the creation of styles
and forms of story-telling conducive to Fordist production.
The Japanese film industry's practice of one print in the
1910s seems to go against such modes of economic
rationalism, a suspicion that is initially justified by a
look at the numbers. If we accept
Katsudo no sekai's figures as reasonably accurate for
the time,[6]
it is clear that film costs accounted for a major portion of
the budget in the late 1910s. It would only take striking
six more prints for a film's budget to double. This was
largely due to the fact that the price of film stock, which
was a wholly imported product (and would remain so until
Fuji began domestically producing 35mm film in the
mid-1930s), rose dramatically after the start of World War
I. It was also a reflection of the fact that, with an
industry limited in production facilities (Tenkatsu, for
instance, still did its filming on a rickety open-air stage)
and without an established star system (with most being
third-rate travelling players, actor salaries were
relatively low), other elements in the budget were not
costly. But while the rise of the price of film may help
explain why prints were not mass
produced,[7]
it does
not account for the practice of only one print: that existed
from before the war. [6]
Even Katsudo no sekai would give different numbers in
1918 in its more specific reviews of Nikkatsu (in October)
and Tenkatsu (in December). They, however, still confirmed
the fact that the cost of film stock accounted for a
significant portion of the budget. [7]
The increase in price is one reason Tenkatsu, which was
founded in order to produce films in Japan using Charles
Urban's Kinemacolor process, abandoned producing Kinemacolor
pictures, since the process used twice as much film as a
regular camera. Scarcity of film,
which was occasionally lamented in the trade journals, could
have also served to check the large production of prints,
but as a cause it does not quite square with the
contemporary volume of production. From the mid-1910s, most
Japanese theatres changed their bills once a week or once
every ten days, and showed programs averaging sixteen reels
(about four hours long), composed of one foreign film, one
shinpa or kyuha and several comedy or
actuality shorts.[8]
Although foreign movies were in the majority, Japanese
studios still had to produce a considerable number of titles
to keep up with the pace. In 1918, Nikkatsu's Mukojima
studio (specializing in shinpa films) was making four
to five pictures a month and Nikkatsu's Daishogun studio in
Kyoto (for kyuha) about seven to eight, which for
just one company amounts to about eleven to thirteen titles
a month - most about 4000 feet in length.[9]
Amidst this flood of products, Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu took a
variety of measures to save costs, ranging from rereleasing
old films either as is or under new titles, or "remaking"
films by using old footage and just adding a few newly shot
scenes. One must wonder why it wouldn't have been more cost
efficient to organise distribution such that a few more
prints at ¥360 a piece could substitute for producing
an entirely new ¥2270 film. [8]
In August 1918, Katsudo no sekai reported twelve-reel
programs as the norm for high-class theatres, sixteen for
lower ranking city and Japanese-film-centered cinemas, and
phenomenal five to six hour programs (up to twenty-four
reels!) as the fad in Osaka and the countryside. "Naigai
katsudo josetsukan no bangumi," Katsudo no sekai 3,
no.8 (August 1918): 30-31. [9]
See "Nikkatsu Kyoto satsueijo kenkyu" (34) and "Mukojima
satsueijo kenkyu" (27) in Katsudo no sekai 3, no.10
(October 1918). Financial
instability also seems not to have been a factor. Even
though Nikkatsu would continue to be plagued by the debts it
incurred in its inception, when four companies were merged
in 1912 to form a "trust," after the initial shock of the
increase in film costs had passed, and the wartime economy
began to boom, the companies after 1915 were reporting
phenomenal profits: Nikkatsu in the first half of 1918
reporting a gross profit of ¥185,155.03 on inlays of
1,250,243.45 (14.8%),[10]
and Tenkatsu a gross profit of ¥227,436.84 on an income
of ¥292,431.13 (an amazing 77.8%!) for the same
term.[11]
One could speculate that the preference of a new film over
extra prints of an existing one was the product of a luxury
mind-set brought on by excess profits, but given that
Nikkatsu gained these profits in part by engaging in such
notorious practices as cranking at eight frames per second
or selling worn-out films to fairground dealers who would
cut them up and peddle them one frame a piece to fans, these
studios were not known for their largess. [10]
Nikkatsu yonjunen-shi (Tokyo: Nikkatsu Kabushiki
Kaisha, 1952). [11]
"Tenkatsu Kaisha no genjo," Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12
(December 1918): 8. One economic
factor behind the low number of prints may lie in the
structure of the exhibition circuit. Both Nikkatsu and
Tenkatsu possessed large theatre chains, with Nikkatsu
having about 247 and Tenkatsu 134 at the end of
1918,[12]
but
neither owned many of those theatres. Although each company
had different ways of categorising its relationships with
chain theatres, in general cinemas were divided between
chokuei (directly operated), tokuyaku (special
contract), and buai (percentage) houses. With
chokuei, which need not have been directly owned, the
studio had to pay all the costs, but in exchange could take
in all the proceeds. Tokuyaku houses were owned by
others, who contracted with the company to show only
company-distributed films - in essence, this was a
block-booking contract. The theatre owner paid a set amount
each month for a guaranteed supply of films, but the studio
had to bear the cost for at least the projectionist and one
clerk (to make sure the company wasn't being cheated), and
sometimes the benshi and the projector. With
buai theatres, the theatre owner usually bore all the
costs (although companies would still send a clerk to check
receipts) and simply paid a percentage to the movie company
(50-50, 40-60, 60-40 were the usual options). Importantly,
tokuyaku far outnumbered the other kinds of houses -
accounting, for instance, for 146 of Nikkatsu's 247 chain
theatres (what Nikkatsu called kyodo and
chintai houses) - but in this period provided the
least income: only ¥136,217.750 (10.9%) of Nikkatsu's
total income of ¥1,250,243.450 in the first half of
1918, a figure less than half of the ¥345,370.115 in
income Nikkatsu's 65 buai houses
generated.[13]
Clearly chokuei houses, while being the fewest in
number, brought in on average the most income for the
company, with Nikkatsu's 36 theatres in 1918 providing
¥684,777.610 (54.8%) in inlays, or ¥19021.6 per
theatre for a six-month term. Whether chokuei houses
were the most profitable is another matter,
considering the company had to bear all the costs. The fact
Japanese studios refrained from maintaining more than a few
dozen chokuei houses until the late 1930s indicates
that only the small number of central urban cinemas were
profitable enough to be maintained as chokuei. This
is possibly due to the reality that Japanese theatres in the
silent era, while on average large, also maintained sizeable
staffs sometimes numbering over seventy. Given these
conditions, it is conceivable that the small number of
prints was a factor of the fact that, the more prints were
made, the more they had to run at theatres that were less
profitable. Making a limited number of prints and
concentrating them at their better grossing houses before
sending them on to second-run theatres made good economic
sense. [12]
See "Nikkatsu no genjo," Katsudo no sekai 3, no.10
(October 1918):11; and "Tenkatsu Kaisha no enkaku,"
Katsudo no sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918):
4. [13]
"Nikkatsu no genjo", 11. This, however,
does not explain why the companies made only one or two
prints. Nikkatsu, after all, had far more chokuei
houses and chain theatres than that. The structure of the
exhibition circuits thus provides only one element in why
the number of prints was small, but it, like the other
economic determinants mentioned here, does not sufficiently
account for such an absolutely low number. For this, we have
to combine the economic factors with a consideration of the
power structure in the industry. It is interesting
to compare the average return between tokuyaku and
buai theatres. Using the Nikkatsu numbers from above,
the difference between the two is clear: an average of
¥933 per tokuyaku theatre versus 5313 per
buai house. The gap is almost too wide to believe:
given that the average tokuyaku rental rate was
¥300 a month, one would imagine a figure closer to 1800
for this six-month term. Perhaps theatres themselves
deducted the salaries of those sent from the company before
paying rentals. Nonetheless it is true that for Nikkatsu,
buai income exceeded that from tokuyaku
theatres for the first twelve years of its existence. The
reasons are complex, but one has to do with the fact that
buai houses were generally less powerful theatres in
the countryside and so could not demand lower rental
fees.[14]
Conversely, companies could not exact more from
tokuyaku theatres precisely because they did not have
a dominant position at the bargaining table. Tokuyaku
contracts involved block-booking, but they could be broken
easily (for a penalty), and it seems many were: although
Nikkatsu was formed in 1912 as a supposed monopoly, upstarts
like Tenkatsu and later Kobayashi Shokai had little problem
in acquiring theatres (albeit not always in the best places)
because of the relative freedom of choice theatre owners
had.[15]
Allegiance of theatre owners to a company was thus weak: it
was not uncommon for an owner of two or more theatres, like
Ono Keiji who ran the Daiichi Kofu-kan and Daini Kofu-kan in
Kofu, Yamanashi, to have each contract with a different
company.[16] [14]
One other reason is the fact that two of Nikkatsu's top
theatres, Tokyo's Chiyoda-kan and Osaka's Ashibe Kurabu,
were buai houses. Thus not all buai theatres
were less-powerful rural houses. [15]
Katsudo no sekai uses the case of Kobayashi , which
was able to acquire some fifty theatres within a year of its
inception, to illustrate the weakness of other producers and
the mobility of theatres: "Eigyojo ni okeru josetsukan to
kaisha to no kankei," Katsudo no sekai 2, no.9
(September 1917): 68. [16]
See "Zenkoku katsudo shashin josetsukan ichiranhyo,"
Katsudo no sekai 3, no.8 (August 1918):
84. The struggle for
dominance between producers and exhibitors is certainly one
of the central issues in early Western film history, but it
remains a crucial framework for narrating the structural
transformations in Japanese industry history even after
World War II. In general, one can argue that in the Japanese
film industry strong exhibitors dominated weak producers up
until the 1950s.[17]
The
reasons for this are multi-fold. One is the fact, stressed
by Naoki Sanjugo in his critiques of the industry in the
1920s,[18]
that regardless of the amount of capital companies reported,
they were actually capital-poor, a condition that made them
vulnerable to the demands of the more monied exhibition
interests. Second, there is the reality that, partially due
to prolonged police regulation of theatre construction
(which started from the Edo era - for kabuki theatres - and
continued with varying degrees of restriction until World
War II),
there
were far fewer theatres per capita than in other major film
producing nations; the houses that did exist thus tended to
be sizeable enterprises that could use that as leverage
against the capital-weak producers.[19]
Third, and most importantly, there is the reality that most
of Japan's early film producers were exhibitors who began
making films simply in order to fill their programming.
Although Yoshizawa Shoten was originally a supplier of
photographic equipment, Yokota Shokai, M. Pathe, and
Fukuhodo, while possibly obtaining their capital from
elsewhere, were all at first exhibition companies;
exhibitors, or those who started out as exhibitors, like
Yokota Einosuke, Kobayashi Kisaburo, and Yamakawa Yoshitaro,
continued to dominate later companies like Nikkatsu and
Tenkatsu. The production studios themselves, more than being
companies creating a product to sell on the market, or
factories producing commodities for their sales outlets, the
theatres, were like subcontractors hired by exhibitors to
maintain film supply, a tendency that would colour the film
industry until well into the 1930s. This relationship was
reflected in at least two dimensions: the power of
individual theatres and the loose structure of the film
companies. [17]
This observation is echoed both by contemporary critics of
the industry (for instance, Kinema rekodo's editorial
"Kaku arubeki katsudokai," Kinema rekodo 20 (February
1915): 2) and later historians (see Tanaka, 225). Imamura
Kanae, following Shibata Yoshio, cites the post-World War II
democratisation of stock holdings as one of the crucial
factors enabling production to free itself economically of
the demands of exhibitors: Imamura, Eiga sangyo
(Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1960), 64; Shibata, Eiga no
keizagaku (Toyohashi-shi: Eigakai Kenkyujo, 1954),
13. [18]
See, for instance, Naoki Sanjugo, "Nihon eiga oyobi
eigakai," in Naoki Sanjugo zenshu vol. 31 (Tokyo:
Kaizosha, 1935), 208-216. [19]
This situation changed after World War II when inflation
sparked a boom in the construction of theatres, which were
now less regulated. The resulting surplus of theatres,
putting suppliers in the better bargaining position, was
another factor in enabling producers to finally dominate
over exhibitors. See Imamura, 152. First, in the
1910s, it was quite common to see individual theatres,
usually the flagship houses of a company, specifically order
the production of films. This was not simply a case with
theatres running rensageki, the "chain-drama"
combination of scenes acted out on stage with those
presented in film, which by definition could only be made
for a theatre and its resident acting troupe. For instance,
the tokuyaku Taishokan in Asakusa specifically
ordered kyuha films from Tenkatsu's Nippori studio;
on average three films a month were made for that
theatre.[20]
Benshi in such cinemas were also known to write up or
suggest film stories. Seemingly then, relations between
producers and exhibitors were such that one 1200-seat
theatre in the central location of Asakusa like the
Taishokan - a theatre not even owned by the company - could
dictate over half of what the Nippori studio
produced. [20]
See "Tenkatsu Nippori kyuha satsueijo kenkyu," Katsudo no
sekai 3, no.12 (December 1918): 14. This was possible
in part because film companies in the 1910s were not
centrally organised entities that dominated over the
individuals in them. It might strike some as odd that
Nikkatsu, which was formed by buying up Yoshizawa, Yokota,
M. Pathe, and Fukuhodo, did not also as a result acquire the
Asian rights to Kinemacolor, even though Fukuhodo had bought
those rights and applied for a Japanese patent well before
it agreed to the merger. One can speculate that this was
only possible because Fukuhodo's employees, whether legally
or illegally, had power over the rights that the company
itself did not.[21]
Most other companies were like that. On the one hand, this
character facilitated the kind of one-man businesses that
were prominent in the industry until World War II; on the
other, it often meant that companies had little central
control over the powerful individuals within it, especially
when they had strong ties to exhibitors. For better or for
worse, the Japanese film industry was far from being a
business run on modern accounting and centralised management
principles: money was - and sometimes still is - handled in
a donburi kanjo manner (where precise books are not
kept and fooling with the figures is a persistent problem);
fraud and cheating was not uncommon; and relationships with
organised crime often influenced the status of individuals,
theatres, and companies. [21]
Technically, Nikkatsu did not end up with Kinemacolor
because Fukuhodo had bought the rights secretly and did not
reveal that to Nikkatsu. But that must mean that the rights
were purchased not by the corporate entity "Fukuhodo" which
was bought by Nikkatsu, but by the individuals who ended up
using it later in Tenkatsu. A good example of
this kind of de-centralised, if not unorganised, company is
Tenkatsu.[22]
A year and a half after it was formed in March 1914, the
company effectively subcontracted out its operations to
Kobayashi and Yamakawa, two power-brokers who either owned
or had influence over many central theatres (Kobayashi in
Tokyo, Yamakawa in Osaka). The two resigned from Tenkatsu's
board but effectively ran the company from behind, being in
charge of both production and exhibition. After a year,
Kobayashi, always the maverick lone wolf, pulled out of the
contract to start Kobayashi Shokai, but Yamakawa, more
conservatively calculating, remained in Tenkatsu even after
the contract ended, essentially ruling autonomously over the
company's Osaka operations. Although Tenkatsu had an Osaka
branch office, which was located in the office of Kada
Shokai, a company owned by Kada Kinzaburo, a powerful
financial backer of Tenkatsu, there was a separate
chokueibu (directly operated theatre office) which
was located in Yamakawa's home and was largely independent
of the branch office. The branch office handled film rentals
for tokuyaku and buai theatres west of Nagoya,
but the chokueibu was in charge of the chokuei
houses in the region - most of which were owned or operated
by Yamakawa. Importantly, the Osaka studio was under the
jurisdiction not of the branch office, but of the
chokueibu. At first, the studio was on the grounds of
the country villa of a relative of Yamamatsu Yujiro, a
powerful Osaka exhibitor close to Yamakawa, before a new one
was completed in January 1917. Even after that, the studio
essentially concentrated on producing films for Yamakawa's
theatres, especially rensageki for the
Rakutenchi.[23] [22]
For more on Tenkatsu, see Hiroshi Komatsu, "From natural
colour to the pure motion picture drama: the meaning of
Tenkatsu Company in the 1910s of Japanese film history,"
Film history 7, no.1 (1995): 69-86. [23]
See "Tenkatsu Osaka satsueijo," Katsudo no sekai 3,
no.12 (December 1918): 20-23. Given this
example of how exhibitors exerted considerable control over
production companies, it is less difficult to understand why
only one or two prints of each film were being made. When a
single theatre or its owner was powerful enough to order a
film from a company, or to exert influence over production,
the production of other prints that could be shown at other
houses at the same time was out of the question. Even
figures like Yamakawa or Kobayashi, who had control over
several theatres, were not likely to demand more prints for
their own theatres, first because both were involved with
rensageki, itself a form that required only one
print, and second, because the power of their individual
theatres, and the hierarchy of exhibition, depended largely
on location (Tokyo's Asakusa being the prime spot) and
status as a fukirikan (less a "first-run" than a
"premiere" theatre) - that is, as a theatre which was the
only one to show certain films first. A consideration
of the structure of power in the industry does much to help
us understand the background of one print in the age of
mechanical reproduction, but it should be clear that the
realm of culture - the meanings attached to these practices
- has already entered the picture. The power of certain
exhibitors, for instance, was based not only on their
economic strength or influence on production companies, but
also in an audience practice of placing value upon seeing
unique films first at fukirikan in special locations
like Asakusa or Sennichimae.[24]
While it is difficult, given the paucity of primary source
materials that still limits research on early Japanese film
history, to locate evidence to elaborate on these spectator
attitudes, contemporary magazines do offer indications of
the importance of the local fukiri house. The value
of fukiri status, for instance, is evident from
theatre ads that promoted film programs as not yet being
shown anywhere else in Japan, while the importance of single
theatres is apparent from trade journals, such as the early
Kinema rekodo, that introduced less the recent films
than the new bills showing at particular houses. Magazines
would continue to print introductions to famous theatres
into the 1920s, emphasising their atmosphere and unique
programming. Sections in Kinema rekodo and other
journals, usually supplied by local fans, reported in every
issue on conditions in cities away from Tokyo, often
lamenting the time it took films to reach their towns, while
also emphasising, for better or for worse, local differences
in programming, benshi, audiences, and theatre
conditions. [24]
This value was not just ascribed to Japanese films. The term
"fukiri" was first attributed to imported films shown
just after being unloaded from the boat and unpacked or
unsealed (fukirareta). In general, there was usually
only one print of foreign films as well. This emphasis on
the cinematic experience as local, as a form of event or
performance, was more visibly associated with institutions
such as the benshi or rensageki, but I would
argue it was also reinforced by the industrial practice of
producing only one print of a film. Films in 1910s Japan
retained some of their aura as unique objects, as originals
that could be viewed anywhere only in a certain time and
place. We, however, should take care when attempting to
theorise this culturally. It would not be
hard to consider the practice of making only one print as
part of an effort to appropriate cinema within pre-modern
cultural traditions such as kabuki, joruri, or
other performance or narrative traditions. This echoes
Burch's point, but other scholars like Anderson and Komatsu
Hiroshi have also emphasised how the benshi, for
instance, carried on traditions of verbal narration, in
part, as with kowairo renditions of kyuha
films, to perfect an illusion of kabuki
theatre.[25]
I hesitate, however, to call this practice "traditional" or
"pre-modern." While I believe this research tells us much
about the textual relationship between benshi and
film, or even between benshi and audience, it has to
be contextualised within both larger industrial and
exhibition practices and contemporary discourses on class
and the nation. I would argue that, far from representing
the traditional culture of the nation, the practice of one
print represents a hybridity which renders problematic
notions of culture and nation itself within the
modern. [25]
See J. L. Anderson, "Spoken silents in the Japanese cinema;
or talking to pictures: essaying, the Katsuben,
contexturalizing the texts," in Arthur Noletti, Jr. and
David Desser, eds, Re-framing Japanese cinema
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 259-311; and
Komatsu Hiroshi and Frances Loden, "Mastering the mute
image: the role of the benshi in Japanese cinema,"
iris 22 (Autumn 1996): 33-52. Consider first
the critical discourses generated around the practice of
making only one print. Kinema rekodo, from soon after
the journal's inception, was editorialising against the
practice on basically two fronts: industrial and national.
First, the problem of one print was cited within a discourse
calling for modernisation of the industry. In several
editorials, the practice was taken as an example of an
industry that failed to rationally distinguish the roles of
production, distribution, and exhibition, and instead
allowed exhibition to rule over the rest.[26]
That failure was in part related to differences in class.
Showman-like exhibitors (note the frequent use of the
epithets "kogyoshi" or "yashi" - the latter
literally meaning "charlatan") were seen as different in
taste and world view from producers, not only catering to
the lowest denominator, but also lacking the modern business
acumen of the new industrialist. I have noted that this
picture was not without foundation - people like Yamakawa
did not exactly fit in high society - but to attack the
practice of one print was to attack a wide range of
industrial methods which were seen as crass, vulgar, and
unfitting a rising industrialised nation, an assault that
was not unrelated to contemporary criticisms of dirty and
smelly theatres, bare-chested labourer spectators, or
audience tastes as being those of children and
nursemaids.[27]
Eliminating the practice was then one part of a larger
effort to not only institute a clear division of labour in
the industry, introducing to Japan such new independent
businesses as "renters" and distributors, but also reverse
the existing power structure in light of modern commercial
practice and capitalist society. The reformer Kaeriyama
Norimasa's model for the film business was the publishing
industry, where publishers/studios would create the product
that was distributed to the readers/spectators, leaving it
such that "exhibitors are retail book
stores".[28] [26]
See "Kaku aru beki katsudokai," 2; and "Kaku aru beki
katsudokai (shozen)," Kinema rekodo 21 (March 1915):
2. [27]
For more on the class issues involved in film reform in the
1910s, see my Ph.D. dissertation, "Writing a pure cinema:
articulations of early Japanese film" (University of Iowa,
1996). [28]
Kaeriyama Norimasa, "Katsudo shashin no shakaiteki chii
oyobi sekimu," Kinema rekodo 41 (November 1916):
479. The problem,
however, was not simply industrial. The first mentions of
the one print practice in Kinema rekodo go alongside
discussions of foreign-made films featuring stories "set" in
Japan. Criticising these works, the editors lamented an
industry that, far from eyeing the international market by
mass producing prints, could not even make more than one
print for its home market. By their reasoning, prints had to
be reproduced so that truer images of Japan could be sent
abroad and understood. In a related argument, that meant,
however, that Japanese films must abandon such practices as
having the benshi bear narrative information, and
adopt the international language of cinema already found in
the globally successful films of Hollywood and Europe. Both
the mass production of images and the adoption of a
universal language were thus, in some ways paradoxically,
seen as the means by which Japanese cinema could represent
the nation - in effect become a national cinema expressing a
national culture. In the eyes of
intellectual reformers, then, industry practices such as
making only one print were representative, first, of a
business culture that was economically unsound and socially
vulgar, and second, of a form of local experience that did
not further the interests of national or universal culture.
Given this criticism, there is the temptation to term the
persistence of these kinds of practices as then a sign of
resistance against such class-based efforts to modernise the
nation. One wonders, for instance, whether this situation is
not similar to that in Québéc described by
Germain Lacasse. Lacasse argues that the longevity of the
lecturer (bonimenteur) in more plebeian venues was a
sign of local resistance against both the dominant high
culture that criticised them and the universal pretensions
of cinema.[29]
The situation in Japan in the 1910s does resemble that which
Lacasse details in Québéc, to the extent that
divisions between class-related cultures overlapped with the
opposition between the local and the national/international
spheres. However, there are crucial differences which make
one hesitate to call the practice of one print a form of
resistance. First, while reformers of a socially higher
class did strongly criticise these localising practices,
they were in the minority: it was the culture of the
benshi narrating solely existing prints that was the
dominant one in the Japanese film world (though one that
would come under increasing pressure towards the end of the
decade, not just from reformers, but from censorship
officials). Second, I still think there is insufficient
evidence that any of these practices like the benshi
or making one print were operating specifically in
opposition to other practices. Komatsu Hiroshi has brought
forth evidence of audience discourse that defended such
institutions as the onnagata against the attacks of
reformers, in part by using nation-based reasoning (that is,
that practices such as the onnagata are good for
Japanese while those promoted by the reformers are good for
Westerners).[30]
But while he rightly notes that the presence of such
discourses indicates a multiplicity of conceptions about
cinema at the time, when he uses the term teiko
(resistance, opposition) in describing these discourses, he
does not relate them to any culture-wide hegemonic linking
and thus does not show them to be anything more than cases
of individual defence. It has yet to be sufficiently argued
that the institutions themselves were, in conjunction with
modes of reception, specifically operating in opposition to
Western film cultural practices. [29]
See Germain Lecasse, "Du bonimenteur québécois
comme pratique résistante," iris 22 (Autumn
1996): 53-66. [30]
Komatsu Hiroshi, "Hisutoriogurafi to gainen no fukususei:
Taikatsu o rekishikasuru tame ni," Eigagaku 13
(1999): 2-11. There are several
reasons for arguing that such forms of opposition were
unlikely. To begin with, non-Japanese films were still in
the majority numerically and were not yet subject to any
significant nationalist discourse rejecting their presence
or influence (this would only become significant after 1920
in reaction to the Yellow Scare in the United States. A
discourse resisting Western film culture would only coalesce
in the 1930s in conjunction with the rise of militarism).
The greater part of film programs were a mixture of Japanese
and Western movies, and thus the latter could not be easily
avoided by viewers.[31]
This then cautions us about concluding that, because
benshi working with a shinpa or kyuha
film may have depended upon Japanese narrating traditions,
the spectators were engaging in a cinematic experience
rendered traditionally Japanese. While they might have
expected the benshi to fill in for the image in a
kyuha film, they were perfectly well enjoying
another, possibly different kind of semiotic experience with
the Western film that invariably played before or
afterwards. No research has yet shown that there were
discourses existing within reception that clearly demarcated
these experiences and marked any as non- or
anti-foreign. [31]
In the mid-1910s, a small number of "high-class" urban
theatres began offering foreign-film-only programs,
partially in response to the desire of some audiences to
avoid the vulgar Japanese fare. In this way, the manner by
which Western films were shown at certain venues could serve
as a marker of social divisions within Japan. The same is true
with the issue of the modern. While it is certain that
traditional stories, narrative structures, acting styles,
and forms of verbal narration were being used by the films
and the benshi that were narrating them, sometimes to
the extent that kyuha films were being presented like
traditional theatre, they were often being offered on the
same bill with Charlie Chaplin or Pearl White; at a speed
unlike that of kabuki; in a space darker than any
kabuki hall; with benches in a building with,
especially in Asakusa, a Western architectural style; and in
amusement centres like Asakusa that featured not only neon,
noise, and the mass, anonymous urban crowd, but also Asakasa
Opera and other Westernised entertainments. In other words,
the cinematic experience as a whole in Japan was still
participating in some of the modern transformations of time,
space, and perception that have been noted of film in
Western nations - and which Gonda Yasunosuke claimed as
early as 1914 in his writings on film in
Japan.[32] [32]
Gonda, for instance, saw in film the end of art as "quiet,
excellent, calm, rare, unique, or the non-practical" and the
beginning of a beauty that is "mobile, stupendous, majestic,
organised, and practical": Gonda Yasunosuke, Katsudo
shashin no genri oyobi oyo (Tokyo: Uchida Rokakuho,
1914), 453. For my analysis of his conception of film, see
"Gonda Yasunosuke to kankyaku no eiga bunmei," Media-shi
kenkyu 10 (2000) (forthcoming). The fact that
only one print was made does imply that film culture in
1910s Japan was less subject to the destruction of the aura
of the art object, but it does not mean that this practice
was either pre- or anti-modern. Rather, I would contend it
was situated in a more complex temporality, mixing modern
and pre-modern elements. This included an alternative or
competing modern experience occasioned less by massification
and Fordism than by the combinations made possible by new
technologies and forms of transportation: the unique
experience of spatial juxtapositions and mixtures occasioned
by international commerce and the photographic image; the
new flows and encounters concomitant with the urban crowd
and mass transport; the hybridity that arises in a country
rapidly transforming in an imperialist world system.
Spectators who went to see early film stars like Onoe
Matsunosuke or Tachibana Teijiro probably did enjoy the
pseudo-theatricality of their kyuha and shinpa
films, but they also were attracted to the mixtures of
films, people, spaces, and, in some ways, temporalities of
which these works were only a part. The best way to
understand this culture of combination is to recall that
what disturbed reformers about contemporary Japanese cinema
and its industry was not as much its non-cinematicity as its
hybridity. The appellation jun'eiga (pure film)
underlines their advocacy of non-mixture, one defined less
as a modernist pursuit of cinematic essence, than a modern
advocacy of rationalised divisions and orders. The prospect
of cinema imitating theatre, of films being shown between
theatrical acts (rensageki), of silent images being
spoken for by a benshi, of male actors playing women,
of Japanese films playing with Western ones, of a mechanical
reproductive technology being used to make only one
print--all these implied border crossings that upset the
rational organisation of perception, experience, and meaning
production. They were, however, precisely what many
audiences in Japan in the 1910s preferred. The practice of
making one print provides an interesting focal point for
analysing these issues. On the one hand, a one-print film,
by not having a transcendental - national or transnational -
character through reproduction (where it is the same in
different places at the same time), becomes easier to mix
and manipulate at the local level because it had no
competing existence "elsewhere." At the same time, it truly
made that mixture an event because no other space could have
that same component at that time. Advertising and modes of
exhibition made audiences aware of the singularity of the
event such that, even if one cannot prove how conscious
spectators were of the lack of other prints, the combination
of few prints with recognised local and regional differences
in benshi style, program length, social mileu,
programming, and other factors helped shape modes of
reception that had unique and local dimensions. On the other
hand, the uniqueness of the text provided a check on the
total chaos mixture could bring. It has been said that the
practice of the benshi undermined text-based meaning
because two benshi in different theatres showing the
film at the same time could offer different meanings. That,
however, was largely untrue because films were rarely
subject to different readings at the same time. From week to
week, a film's meaning could shift, as it was combined with
different benshi, different theatres, and different
programs, but for any given time, its status was relatively
secure in a unique local combination of reception factors.
One print enabled a film to belong to a local space for a
time as a singular entity, and thus while it helped local
theatres provide unique mixtures, it managed that hybridity
by making it more intimate and possibly more
human. Its localism,
however, did not make the practice of one print sit well
with those attempting to construct a national culture or
cinema. Whether it represented a form of resistance to these
nation builders is a matter worth pursuing, but in the least
it represented the fact that Japanese popular entertainment
culture had not been rendered national as of the 1910s. Yet
just as the benshi, onnagata,
rensageki, and canned theatre came under attack from
reformist critics as well as government and educational
elites, the practice of one print was subject to reform as
industry practices changed in the 1920s. The fact that new
studios like Shochiku and Taikatsu announced their intention
to aim for the international market - an aim one must admit
was never realised - signalled their desire to move away
from one print culture and enter the realm of a national
cinema operating through universal forms of signification
and industrial rationality. It was at this time that
companies actually began producing more than one print as a
matter of regular business practice. Yet just as the
benshi took a long time to disappear (although the
institution was subject to change and reform in the
meantime), the number of prints would stay low until World
War II as studios still persisted in opting for mass
production of titles over mass production of
prints.[33]
This persistence of the local - of cultural and industrial
hybridity - was probably one reason cinema would remain
socially inferior in the eyes of government and cultural
elites; its practices, after all, did not represent the
nation well. And it also provides a background for why,
after the Film Law in 1939, the attempt to construct a
nationalist cinema was conjoined with an industrial reform
aimed at reducing the number of titles and increasing the
number of prints.[34]
If one accepts that the material conditions for the
formation of a cinema capable of serving a national
"imagined community" include a centralised, top-down
industrial structure; the availability of theatres for most
of the populace; a large number of prints for each film; and
a film language understandable not only by the national
citizenry but by non-citizens (who then recognise those
films as a product of that nation), I would argue that most
of these conditions were only met in Japan during and after
World War II. Only after this time was a Japanese national
cinema finally mechanically reproduced. [33]
While Home Ministry censorship records show an average of
five to ten prints for films in the 1930s, by the late
1930s, the industry as a whole was producing over five
hundred titles a year, a figure that in some years made it
the top producer in the world. This was not a source of
pride for industry observers and government regulators, who
considered the overproduction of such cheap films a sign of
the backwardness of the industry. [34]
During the war, government officials used both the Film Law
and their monopoly over film stock to consolidate the
industry, reduce the number of films made, and increase the
quantity of prints. The September 1941 agreement between
regulators and the industry that merged the ten existing
companies into three also stipulated a total production rate
for the industry of six films a month, with thirty prints
per film (doubling the then average figure)
6222 words
Abstract
| Printer
version
Economy
Power:
exhibition over production
Culture
