I think I put off reading The Japanese Film: Art and Industry(Expanded Edition) (1982) by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie since I had already read Richie’s excellent overview, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History. And while that is a great overview, it seems that Anderson and Richie delve more into the origins and trends in the art and industry of cinema in Japan. The book is divided into two parts: “Background” and “Foreground.” The “Background” part has 12 chapters: 1. “Slow Fade-In” (1986-1917), 2. “Establishing Story” (1917-1923), 3. “Wipe” (1923-1927), 4. “Costume and Property” (1927-1931), 5. & 6. “The Talkies, Exterior / The Talkies, Interior” (1931-1939), 7. “Shooting Script” / 8. “Background projection,” 9. “New Sequence” (1945-1949), 10. “Adaptation and Atmosphere” (1949-1959), 11. “Soft Focus” / 12. “Long-Shot” (1954-1959). The “Foreground” has six chapters: 13. “Content,” 14. “Technique,” 15. “Directors,” 16. “Actors,” 17. “Theaters and Audiences.” In addition there are several supplementary sections at the end of the book: “Appendix A, Second and Third Thoughts about the Japanese Film” by J.L. Anderson, “Appendix B, “Terminal Essay” by Donald Richie, “Selected Bibliography: Japanese Language,” “Selected Bibliography: Non-Japanese Language,” “Chart 1. Directors as Pupil and Teachers,” “Chart 2. Development of Major Companies,” and an Index. I found the Long-Shot” (1954-1959) section particularly interesting since there are several films and directors (that might be considered of secondary importance to the great masters)that are singled out for their vision and accomplishments such as: Sadao Yamanaka, Tadashi Imai, Kimisaburo Yoshimura, Heibosuke Gosho, Yasuki Chiba, and Shiro Toyoda for example. Chapter 15, “Directors” was also informative as the authors singles out nine directors for discussion and identified their best and most influential films: Kenji Mizoguchi, Heinosuke Gosho, Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Shiro Toyoda, Keisuke Kinoshita, Akira Kurosawa, Kimisaburo Yoshimura, and Tadashi Imai. In the “Actors” section there is a discussion of acting techniques and styles through the years as well as some descriptions of leading actors of the day, including some of my favorites like: Setsuko Hara, Sachiko Hidari, Kyoko Kagawa, Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Hideko Takamine, etc. There is a discussion of the film industry in the section on “Theaters and Audiences.” I was not so interested in Anderson’s essay “Second Thoughts About the Japanese Film” with praise for the benshi (film narrator). However, Richie’s essay, “Terminal Essay,” is an essential part of the book since he discussed how that only Imai of the nine directors discussed in the “The Directors” section of the book was still making films at the time of the writing: 1982. He also introduces directors and films that he feels are important at the time of the 1982 expansion: Kon Ichikawa, Masayuki Kobayashi, Yasuzo Masumura, Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, Yoshige Yoshida, Susumu Hani, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kaneto Shindo, Kihachi Okamoto, Seijun Suzuki, Yoji Yamada, and Shohei Imamura among others. I was amused to see some editorial comments in the “Selected Bibliography: Non-Japanese Language” about Joan Mellen’s two contributions: Voices from the Japanese Cinema (“When questions are germane to the filmmaker the results are valuable,; when germane mainly to the interviewer, they are not.”) and Waves at Genji’s Door (“An attempt to explain Japan’s social history through its film and vice versa. The results are readable, but simplistic.”). Obviously this is outdated, but it contains a lot of good information about the early era of cinema and some curated opinions on several directors and eras of film-so extremely useful in that regard.
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