Lost In Translation

The Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums

This is the second year in which I am teaching a course on Japanese film in English and I will begin the course with Kenji Mizoguchi's sublime Ugetsu. I was reviewing the reading I assign with the film, Phillip Lopate's essay, "Ugetsu:From the Other Shore." Although I have seen 5-6 films by Mizoguchi, I hadn't seen The Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums (1939) yet and it is the film that Lopate singles out as the film where, "he perfected his signature 'flowing scroll,' 'one-shot-one-scene' style of long-duration takes, which, by keeping the camera well back, avoiding close-ups, and linking the characters to their environment, generated hypnotic tension and psychological density." It is all that Lopate says and more. I can see that it was a prestige film at that time with all the elaborate sets, costumes, and long takes on the kabuki acting. It is also just under two and a half hours, perhaps, adding tot he prestige. this allows Mizoguchi to draw out the performances form his cast and develop the story at a pace that showcases the director's artistry. Luckily, there are still several films available for me to study in the future. Mizoguchi remains one of my all-time favorite directors.

The Inland Sea

I had originally read and enjoyed some excerpts from Donald Richie's The Inland Sea (1971) in The Donald Richie Reader (2002). I have always thought that Richie has done some of the best writing about Japan from a foreigner's perspective and have been sympathetic to many of his opinions about Japan and the Japanese. After reading his journals last year after his death,  I decided that there were several complete works that are worthwhile searching out and reading and this was at the top of the list. However, there are still several others to explore. It is at once a travel memoir, a love letter to a region and way of life that no longer exists, and a mediation on life in a strange country that he was not born in but elected to live in despite the fact it would never truly accept him. Richie also has musing about life in Tokyo versus the country, puritanism, the individual's place in the world, and the things he appreciates about living in Japan. He also makes some revelatory observations about his marriage and sexuality. Some of the experiences he has with locals have to be read between the lines and are not explicit admissions of couplings, but obviously are. There was an interesting scene where an old woman in Miyajima tells Richie a story about a boy who is excommunicated from the village for cutting the fishing nets-an act synonymous with barn burning at the turn of the century in America.

Here are some of the more interesting observations that I largely agree with and find true even today some 40 plus years later:

So the people are indeed backward, if this means a people living eternally in the present, a people for whom becoming means little and being everything.

Words make you visible in Japan. Until you speak, until you commit yourself to communication, you are not visible at all. You might travel from one end and, unless you open your mouth or get set upon by English-speaking students, be assured of the most complete privacy.

But to believe this is to disregard a great truth that all of Asia knows: appearances are the only reality.

Japan is the most modern of all countries perhaps because, having a full secure past, it can afford to live in the instantaneous present.

I answer as best as I can, aware-as one is always in Japan-that I have ceased being myself. Rather, I have become-once again-a Representative of My Country.

The white man who goes native in Samoa or Marrakesh, the Japanese who goes native in New York or Paris-this is possible, but it is, I think impossible for anyone but a Japanese to go Japanese.

Japanese loyalty. I cannot approve of it, and I certainly do not like it. Mindless devotion-whether of samurai or kamikaze-leaves me as unmoved as does the less spectacular variety from I come from. It is  actually a kind of laziness.

The Japanese carry it one step further. Nothing is anyone's fault. This is because no one will take responsibility for anything.

Asia does not, I think, hoard and treasure life as we do. Life, to be sure, is nto considered cheap, but at the same time, one does not see the tenacious clinging to it that is one of the distinguishing marks of the West.

There is no tradition of anything but a politely hidden suspicion of the unknown wanderer. To be anonymous is in Japan, to be nothing. Only after your name, occupation, family, history are known do you become real.

Here, I thought, is a glimpse into the real Japan. This is the way the Japanese mind works. Appearances are reality without a doubt, and if the reality is not sufficient, then change the appearances.

An early symptom (of the influence of the West) was that everything somehow had to become respectable-not according to Japanese standards, where everything was already respectable, but according to the half-understood and even the dissolving standards of the West.

(As someone has remarked, the Japanese have fifty-three words for "prostitute" and yet do not distinguish between "lock" and "key"-which must be a commentary of some sort upon the importance they assign to things).

This nightly closing of all forms of public transportation is, I suggest, but one of the many forms that Japanese puritanism takes.

Europe , America-these lands are also inferior, but their ideas and products may be put to good use if they are first run through the Japanese mill and emerge unrecognizableand therefore very Japanese.

I really enjoyed tagging along with Richie on his journey to the Inland Sea and within himself. Luckily, there is more by him for me to explore.

I, Vitelloni

I am continuing my education in the films of Frederico Fellini and the latest film watched was the coming of age story, I Vitelloni (1953). It tells the story of a group of five young men growing up and coming of age in a small coastal Italian town-said to resemble the one that Fellini grew up in. Compared to his later films this one is somewhat conventional in technique. But I Vitelloni ushers in many of Fellini’s dominant themes and preoccupations: arrested development in men, marriage and infidelity, the life in small towns versus the city, the melancholy and mystery of deserted nighttime streets, the seashore, and the movies themselves. Another entertaining and interesting film in the director's oeuvre.

BFI: An Actor's Revenge

I was surprised to find out that there was a 1995 British Film Institute Film Classics edition of Kon Ichikawa's 1963 visual masterpiece. This edition was written by Ian Breakwell a multi-media artist, diarist and video-maker. It seems to be shorter than most books in the I serious and begins by weaving in personal connections to his first viewing in Bristol in 1967 and the subsequent second viewing in London in 1994 and his descriptions of what took place in the film. Then he writs an epilogue merging his personal reactions with Ichikawa's vision. I think he is particularly good on pointing out the effective uses of sound in the film. However, I think there could have been more background on the origins of the film, Kabuki theater, and Japanese history and its context in the film. 

Wife! Be Like A Rose!

It seems that Mikio Naruse's 1935 film, Wife! Be Like A Rose! is considered one of his breakthrough films. It is a typical Naruse film in that it is mostly about the unhappiness of women in families. However each story has its specific causes for unhappiness. In this story of a man who has left a cold, artistic wife for a more earthy woman causes complications for the daughter he has left behind. The daughter wants to marry her fiance, but needs her father to act as a go-between for the marriage. Thus, the daughter seeks him out and gets him to return briefly in order to ensure her marriage can take place. The daughter finds sympathy for her father as she sees how he is a devoted father to his other family and sees how cold and indifferently her mother treats him as they are opposites and unable to understand one another. The film quality of the version I saw was not so good, but one can still see the virtues of Naruse's style: editing, framing shots, and different camera angles used for specific dramatic purposes.

Nikko 2

Another good Japanese style curry joint on the West side of Ebisu, Nikko 2. ¥1000 lunch set with soup, a drink, and mini dessert.

Central Station

As I prepare for a trip to Brazil I will start watching some Brazilian films starting with director Walter Salles' (also known for The Motorcycle Diaries) 1998 Central Station. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress for Fernanda Montenegro in 1999. She was certainly one of the standout performers in the film, but Vincius de Oliviea, the first time child actor, also has a powerful performance as the boy who is orphaned and searching for his father. Montenegro is the former school teacher letter writer who helps him track down his father's other family after a long road trip searching for him. There is some great cinematography of the Brazilian countryside as well as the hustle and bustle of life in Sao Paulo in the late 90s.

Dead Souls

I have wanted to read Nikolai Gogol's only (unfinished) novel, Dead Souls (1842) since reading his amazing short stories (I think "The Overcoat" is one of the greatest short stories ever written). The novel doesn't disappoint, it is the story of a middle-class Russian, Chichikov, who attempts to bolster his own image by buying dead or missing titles of serfs from landowners that he comes across in his journey (and taking on the tax responsibility of those souls) in order to increase his own image as landowner with a great number serfs in his charge (at least on paper). Through this plot Gogol can satirize many classes and types of Russian society and traditions. The fact that it was unfinished does little to diminish the enjoyment of the novel at large, but does have the story awkwardly end.

An Actor's Revenge

The more films I see by Kon Ichikawa the more impressed I become by his directing style and versatility. The latest film to impress me was his 1963 remake of Yukinojo Henge, An Actor's Revenge (1963). It has been suggested that Ichikawa was assigned this film by his studio to mark the 300th performance of Kuzuo Hasegawa, the most famous actor of that time period. It is the story of an onnagata (female impersonator) Kabuki actor who takes revenge against a trio of businessmen responsible for the death of his mother. The visual aspects of the film linger after the viewing: a sword fight in the dark background, an impressive fire scene, another where otherworldly fog ensnares the actors. Ichikawa does an excellent job of using light and dark, colors, and has great set pieces throughout the film. This excerpt from Strictly Film School sums up several of the elements that I found impressive in the film:

An Actor's Revenge is a stylistically bold and irreverent satire that seeks to reconcile the familiar, traditional elements of Japanese culture with the modern vitality of Western influence in contemporary Japan. Kon Ichikawa uses a performance within a performance perspective to create a union of distinctive artistic influences through the dual role of Hasegawa: the Kabuki onnagata as performed by Yukinojo, and cinema actor as performed by Yukinojo's alterego, the omniscient thief, Yamitaro. Ichikawa's recurrent fragmentation of images reflect the voyeuristic relationship between spectator and performer: obscured, extended fight scenes witnessed from rooftops, seamless visual transitions between theatrical dramatization and off-stage, real-life events, framing of actors through doorways or other visual occlusions that seem to underscore the intrusive, keyhole perspective of the audience. The old-fashioned script for the tragic melodrama (shimpa) popular in early Japanese cinema is infused with irony, social satire, and subversive visual double entendres. The audaciously eccentric fusion of traditional and modern Japanese art forms are further exemplified through an eclectic soundtrack that combines folk music, jazz and avant-garde ambient sounds. Ultimately, An Actor's Revenge becomes an audacious and infinitely fascinating exercise in straddling the fragile equilibrium that interweaves cultural past and present, East and West, theater and cinema.

Yukinojo Henge, produced by Shochiku in 1935, had been directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa, - See more at: http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/an-actors-revenge/#sthash.actc3bFc.dpuf

In Rotation: Lucius, Beck, and Dean Wareham

I learned about Lucius' 2013 debut album Wildewoman, when a friend posted a NPR Tiny Desk Concert on Facebook. This new two woman fronted band has a powerful sound. The standout tracks for me are: "Go Home," "Don't Just Sit There," "Turn It Around," and "How Loud Your Heart Gets."

Beck is back with another great album, Morning Phase (2014), touted as a companion to his 2002 Sea Changes release. It is one of his strongest albums to date in my opinion. My favorite tracks include: "Morning," "Heart Is A drum," and "Blue Moon."

And Dean Wareham has released his first solo billed album, Dean Wareham (2014, the last three were billed as Dean & Britta). i'm ot sure that it stands up to his earlier songs in Luna and Galaxy 500, but definitely worth listening to. Some of the better tunes include: Love Is Not A Roof Against The Rain," "Holding Pattern, " and "I Can Only Give My All."