July 22, 2023
"Shogun" revisited (1/4)
Two months later Ronald Reagan would be elected in a landslide. A year later, IBM launched the IBM PC. Japan had the second largest economy on the planet. Japanese automakers were leaving Detroit in the dust and Sony was the Apple of its day. Serious people were seriously predicting "Japan as #1."
(And I was studying Japanese at BYU.)
By the end of the decade, Sony Corporation owned Columbia Pictures and Mitsubishi bought Rockefeller Center. Only seven years after that, Mitsubishi lost a billion dollars on the deal and sold off its controlling interest. The real estate bubble burst and Japanese fell into a decade-long recession.
(And I was teaching English in Japan.)
But at the time, Japan was the China of today, with a critical difference being that Japan was and remains a stalwart ally of the United States.
So credit NBC with great timing. But also credit the network for broadcasting a pretty good product. Based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell and starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune, Shogun gave its American audiences a westernized version of a classic NHK Taiga historical drama.
Meaning "big river," the Taiga is a big-budget (by Japanese standards) hour-long drama that runs from January to December. Each year it tackles the life of a notable historical figure. This year, the 16th century female clan leader Ii Naotora; next year, the 19th century general Saigo Takamori.
Unlike Shogun, the Taiga drama strives for sufficient accuracy to use everybody's real names, and does its best to faithfully recreate well-documented events. Though with forty or so hours to fill, a healthy amount of fiction will inevitably backfill the scarcer stuff that historians are confident happened.
Taking place after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598 and before the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Shogun is mostly fictional filler. But the miniseries does nail down the time frame and the principal characters, and does a reasonable amount of justice to the historical context.
Richard Chamberlain's John Blackthorne is based on a real person. Will Adams was the English captain of the Dutch-flagged expedition. Confined to a single year, at the end of which Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated Ishida Mitsunari at Sekigahara, Shogun can't help but downplay what a fascinating figure he was.
It also downplays the cruelly ironic turn of history that would take place in his lifetime. Every indignity suffered by the Protestant sailors at the beginning of Shogun would be visited upon the Jesuits a hundred fold. One explanation for this reversal of fortunes is made clear in Shogun, and another is alluded to.
Made clear is the geopolitical insult of the Treaty of Tordesillas, which "divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Crown of Castile." The reason alluded to was Portuguese involvement in the mid-16th century trade of Chinese and Japanese slaves.
Martin Scorsese's Silence (based on the novel by Shusaku Endo) explores this at length (if you can stomach two hours of man's inhumanity to man vividly illustrated).
Along with the suppression of Christianity, the Edo period of Tokugawa rule was characterized by a strictly-enforced sakoku (isolationist) policy. But Ieyasu did employ Adams to negotiate limited trading rights with the East India Company and the Dutch, though they were confined to a small port off the coast of Nagasaki.
Until the mid-19th century, information about the outside world trickling in from Europe became known in Japan as rangaku (蘭学) or "Dutch learning." Though it was an Englishman that made it happen.
Shogun is not without its anachronisms, stereotypes, and soapy subplots. But as a Hollywood version of Japanese history, it does an all-around better job than The Last Samurai or 47 Ronin. Not merely a noted moment in television time, some forty years later, Shogun stands up well to a second viewing.
Related posts
Shogun revisited (2)
Techno-orientalism
Dances with Samurai
Japan made in Hollywood
Labels: japanese culture, japanese tv, movies about japan, nhk, pop culture, shogun, social studies, sony, television, television reviews
July 15, 2023
Alien encounters
The warlords of the Sengoku period made the most of the firearms imported by Portuguese traders. Briefly toward the end of the 16th century, Japan had the biggest arms industry in the world. Militarily on a par with any European power, Japan was never colonized.
Over the following two and a half centuries, the shogunate's strictly-enforced sakoku (isolationist) policies did keep Japan from getting involved in any land wars in Asia. But while the culture developed in meaningful ways, Japan as an industrial power remained stuck in the 16th century.
The arrival of Commodore Perry's Black Ships, sporting technology three centuries ahead of Japan, triggered a huge social upheaval and kicked off the Meiji Restoration. Ryomaden well illustrates what an encounter with starfaring aliens might be like, including how quickly the Japanese adopted that technology.
Along with everybody else, Ryoma Sakamoto was completely overwhelmed upon seeing the steam-powered Black Ships for the first time. His second reaction was, "I want one of those." And he would get himself one.
Negotiating by day and killing each other by night was common practice in Kyoto politics at the time.
Singer and actor Masaharu Fukuyama does well in the lead role, starting off the series as an affable Prince Hal, leading an aimless existence until Perry's Black Ships arrive and throw the country into turmoil. Not long thereafter, Ryoma crosses paths with Shoin Yoshida, the fiery Patrick Henry of the Meiji Restoration.
The sonno joi ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians!") movement took root soon thereafter. In a rare break with precedence, according to which the emperor took no part in politics, Emperor Komei (father of Emperor Meiji) supported the movement, placing the shogunate in an increasingly untenable political position.
For an alternate perspective on the same events, Atsuhime follows the life of Tenshoin, the adopted daughter of the governor (daimyo) of Satsuma. Hoping to become the power behind the throne, he arranged a marriage between her and Iesada Tokugawa, the third-to-last shogun.
Unfortunately, Iesada proved to be utterly incompetent, and all that effort failed to change the policies that ultimately doomed the regime. But Tenshoin was later instrumental in negotating the peaceful surrender of Edo Castle during the Boshin War. The only major conflict in the city was a daylong skirmish at Ueno.
Labels: history, japanese culture, japanese tv, shogun, taiga drama
October 05, 2017
"Shogun" revisited (4/4)
What struck me the most forcefully when I started rewatching Shogun for the first time in almost 40 years is how politically incorrect it is starting out. And I don't mean the silly Orientalism that You Only Live Twice revels in (though there is plenty of that).
No sooner has Chamberlain's Blackthorne run his ship aground in the "Japans" but his ego collides with every human obstacle in literal spitting (and pissing) distance. In the process, determined to repay every slight and assert his authority, he makes life much worse for himself and his men.
However he may realize that he is a stranger in a strange land, it takes him too long to grasp how the balance of power has shifted, that he has no power and no authority except that which is granted to him.
In any early scene, the hugely enjoyable John Rhys-Davies (his part isn't nearly big enough) commiserates with him in a hilariously vulgar rant. I doubt that any network would broadcast such a soliloquy of racial slurs over the air today.
This is not vulgarity for its own sake. In Blackthorne, Clavell creates a character arc comparable to Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino and even Andrew Garfield's Rodrigues in Silence (though at opposite ends of the civility and introspection spectrums).
All three men find themselves at war with an image of themselves that cannot survive a changing environment, with the moral stakes raised all the higher when the fate of third parties become dependent on their actions.
In both Silence and Shogun, the well-being of their colleagues, and then the lives of villagers unknown to them, are used to extort from them external changes in behavior (in Japanese, tatemae) that eventually become incorporated into their characters (honne).
The English translation of Shusaku Endo's novel was published in 1969, which leads me to believe Clavell was familiar with it when writing Shogun.
There was literally no going back for Blackthorne. He had to adapt or be crushed underfoot, because the new world was not going to adapt to suit his whims. By the end of the story, his sense of who he is as an Englishman will have been taken apart and remade in Japanese terms.
The striking nature of his transformation is illustrated when he is briefly reunited with his old crew. They haven't changed. They can't even imaging changing. The differences are stark. They have literally grown worlds apart. He can't leave their presence and get back to "Japan" fast enough.
Like Rodrigues in Silence, this is a transformation resisted, negotiated, and then embraced. In Blackthorne's case, however, he does so largely on his own terms and not at the point of a sword.
A big disappointment of Shogun is that so much happened after the miniseries ends. As a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Adams fought at Sekigahara, he negotiated trading rights with the Dutch and the East India Company, and captained several voyages to the Phillipines.
As the fictional Father Alvito predicts, Will Adams never returned to England. He died in 1620, leaving behind families in both countries. Adams is buried outside Nagasaki, where his grave marker still exists. Richard Cocks of the East India Company recorded in his diary,
Two and a half centuries later, another man from the British Isles, the Scotsman Thomas Glover, moved to Japan. In 1859, he established himself in Nagasaki and became a key arms dealer supplying guns and warships to the Satsuma and Choshu domains in their successful revolt against the shogunate.
Glover went on to contribute significantly to the industrialization of Japan during the Meiji period. Unlike Adams, he couldn't be made the hatamoto of a shogun who no longer existed. He was instead awarded the Order of the Rising Sun. Like Adams, he was also buried in Nagasaki.
And thus did two subjects of the Queen of England help shape the future of Japan.
No sooner has Chamberlain's Blackthorne run his ship aground in the "Japans" but his ego collides with every human obstacle in literal spitting (and pissing) distance. In the process, determined to repay every slight and assert his authority, he makes life much worse for himself and his men.
However he may realize that he is a stranger in a strange land, it takes him too long to grasp how the balance of power has shifted, that he has no power and no authority except that which is granted to him.
In any early scene, the hugely enjoyable John Rhys-Davies (his part isn't nearly big enough) commiserates with him in a hilariously vulgar rant. I doubt that any network would broadcast such a soliloquy of racial slurs over the air today.This is not vulgarity for its own sake. In Blackthorne, Clavell creates a character arc comparable to Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino and even Andrew Garfield's Rodrigues in Silence (though at opposite ends of the civility and introspection spectrums).
All three men find themselves at war with an image of themselves that cannot survive a changing environment, with the moral stakes raised all the higher when the fate of third parties become dependent on their actions.
In both Silence and Shogun, the well-being of their colleagues, and then the lives of villagers unknown to them, are used to extort from them external changes in behavior (in Japanese, tatemae) that eventually become incorporated into their characters (honne).
The English translation of Shusaku Endo's novel was published in 1969, which leads me to believe Clavell was familiar with it when writing Shogun.
The striking nature of his transformation is illustrated when he is briefly reunited with his old crew. They haven't changed. They can't even imaging changing. The differences are stark. They have literally grown worlds apart. He can't leave their presence and get back to "Japan" fast enough.
Like Rodrigues in Silence, this is a transformation resisted, negotiated, and then embraced. In Blackthorne's case, however, he does so largely on his own terms and not at the point of a sword.
A big disappointment of Shogun is that so much happened after the miniseries ends. As a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Adams fought at Sekigahara, he negotiated trading rights with the Dutch and the East India Company, and captained several voyages to the Phillipines.
As the fictional Father Alvito predicts, Will Adams never returned to England. He died in 1620, leaving behind families in both countries. Adams is buried outside Nagasaki, where his grave marker still exists. Richard Cocks of the East India Company recorded in his diary,
I cannot but be sorrowfull for the loss of such a man as Capt William Adams, he having been in such favour with two [shoguns] of Japan as never any Christian in these part of the world.
Glover went on to contribute significantly to the industrialization of Japan during the Meiji period. Unlike Adams, he couldn't be made the hatamoto of a shogun who no longer existed. He was instead awarded the Order of the Rising Sun. Like Adams, he was also buried in Nagasaki.
And thus did two subjects of the Queen of England help shape the future of Japan.
Related posts
Shogun revisited (1)
Techno-orientalism
Dances with Samurai
Japan made in Hollywood
Labels: history, japanese culture, movies about japan, shogun, social studies
September 28, 2017
"Shogun" revisited (3/4)
Shogun provided plenty of material for the easily outraged.
The propensity to treat a foreign culture as an extended episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not! is known as "Orientalism." It's a valid criticism, though keeping in mind that that the biggest Orientalists in the world are Orientals. Ditto "Occidentalism."
The more blatant Orientalist sins are found in the middle arc of Shogun, which, frankly, slows to a drag. The political scheming and deal-making that would soon shatter the fragile regency and lead to the Battle of Sekigahara was going on elsewhere. So Blackthorne hasn't much to do.
Instead we get a tedious soap opera, poor language acquisition skills, and a crash coarse in Nihonjinron, a nativist philosophy that was all the rage in the 1970s and 1980s. Nihonjinron argues that everything about Japan is unique, special, and unlike anything else in the world.
And every Japanese, by dint of being Japanese, is born a zen master.
Not only James Clavell, but pretty much the entire media establishment bought into it hook, line, and sinker. As a result, any silly assertion could be justified on the grounds that it was "Japanese," including all that pop-psychology blather about "living in the moment" and whatnot.
In part, I believe that writers of Clavell's generation were trying to comprehend Japan's role in WWII. Thus the huge influence of Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Written during the war, it helped spawn the modern Nihonjinron movement after the war.
I remember my Japanese professors of Japanese being the most annoyed about the absurd business with the pheasant and the depiction of seppuku (harakiri) and kiri-sute gomen (切捨御免) as being well-nigh ubiquitous.
Meaning "to cut down without regard," the latter refers to the "right" of the samurai "to strike with sword at anyone of a lower class who compromised their honor." As portrayed, it's about as historically accurate as gunfights at high noon were in the 19th century western United States.
Meaning, it happened. Now and then. Certainly not as often nor as casually as suggested in Shogun (and countless home-grown samurai actioners). Killing commoners was a bad idea in an agrarian society with limited arable land and a staple crop that requires a lot of care and nurturing.
Actual armed conflicts were more likely to erupt between high and low-ranked samurai, hence the term gekokujou (下剋上), meaning "juniors dominating seniors." The legendary "revenge of the 47 ronin" began with two high-ranked provincial lords getting into a tussle in Edo Castle.
The Meiji Restoration was in large part driven by lower-ranked samurai revolting against their masters, up to and including the Tokugawa shogunate.
But let's make love, not war. Orientalism doesn't get any sillier than the scene in which Blackthorne is offered a foursome. The only difference with practically the same material in You Only Live Twice is that James Bond is randier than Blackthorne. And takes himself less seriously.
Of course, the message of this Oriental "exoticism" is that everybody is having better sex than stuffy old us. Though given the current birth rate in Japan, that particular message seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the line.
U.S. Consul Townsend Harris was shocked by the practice back in the 1850s. He was reassured by one of his more anthropologically-minded friends that "the chastity of Japanese women" was due to "this very exposure that lessens the desire that owes much of its power to mystery and difficulty."
Which brings us to a running joke in the Shogun miniseries that happens to be pretty spot on. Again, it was Townsend Harris who observed that the Japanese "are a clean people. Everyone bathes every day."
Back in the 16th century, Europeans didn't. So the first time he's told to wash his smelly self off, Blackthorne reacts as if he's been told to jump into a volcano. Though it doesn't take him long to think better of the practice (especially when he gets to share the tub with Yoko Shimada).
Blackthorne never quite conquers the conjugation of "to be," but the o-furo is one cultural practice he has no problem accommodating himself to.
Related posts
Shogun revisited (4)
Techno-orientalism
Dances with Samurai
Japan made in Hollywood
Labels: history, japanese culture, shogun, social studies, television reviews
September 21, 2017
"Shogun" revisited (2/4)
It's hardly "serious" fiction, but the miniseries Shogun takes Japanese history more seriously than most recent Hollywood productions. One exception is Martin Scorsese's Silence. Scorsese stuck closely to Shusaku Endo's book and hired BYU professor Van C. Gessel as a consultant.
Gessel discusses the experience in the lecture featured below (the audio quality is unfortunately poor).
Shogun is also based on a novel. James Clavell did his homework too. But nobody sells 15 million copies of anything conducting a graduate course on medieval Japanese history and anthropology. So Clavell methodically runs through a checklist of every "educated" stereotype on the subject.
And probably promulgated a few new ones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Stereotypes persist because of their utility. If 15 million people can be persuaded to read a 1152 page melodrama about Japan's Warring States period at the end of the 16th century, maybe they'll be game for more substantive fare.
But how does the miniseries otherwise hold up as a cinematic experience? Sure, it clunks rather loudly at times. But all things considered, better than I expected it would.
Shogun looks like a NHK historical drama from the early 1980s. That's a criticism and a compliment. It was shot at Hikone castle, Himeji castle, and at the legendary Toho, Shochiku, and Daiei-Kyoto Studios. It's nice to see real Japan in a movie about Japan.
The Last Samurai was shot in New Zealand, 47 Ronin was shot in Scotland and Hungary, and Silence was shot in Taiwan. This isn't all the fault of Hollywood. Japanese politicians haven't quite grasped the idea of local film commissions that recruit big budget film productions and cuts through the red tape on their behalf.
One advantage of building sets and shooting in places like New Zealand is not having to matte out the backgrounds. As Akira Kurosawa once noted, "Japan's penchant for power lines and retaining walls has left little unspoiled scenery for movie makers."
Shogun director Jerry London employed the same cheats as Masato Harada did shooting his 2017 historial epic, Sekigahara: high and low angles with tight fields-of-view (which is less annoying when the castle in the background is a real Japanese castle).
Shogun co-star Yoko Shimada wears too much makeup and the wigs aren't terribly convincing. Again, what you'd expect in a NHK drama from forty years ago. They've greatly improved in both departments since, though the chonmage (丁髷) is still a challenge.
The chonmage hairstyle lasted well into the 19th century. It's essentially a reverse Mohawk, hard to pull off without leaving a bump across the forehead. Issei Takahashi in Naotora wears one about as good as I've seen—except when viewed from the back.
But it's a costume drama, so—costumes. Richard Chamberlain wears a hakama quite nicely. But knowing a little more history (and being exposed to a lot more Japanese television) than I did back then, what first upset my suspension of disbelief was the casting of Ishido.
There's no arguing with Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga, nee Tokugawa Ieyasu, though sans the chonmage that in contemporaneous portraits Ieyasu is always depicted sporting. I suspect that Mifune, as well as Kaneko, simply didn't want to go through all the bother, the kind of thing an actor can get away with if he's a big enough star.
But casting Nobuo Kaneko as Ishido only made me grin. The problem is that Nobuo Kaneko resembles a Japanese Edward G. Robinson. Maybe they wanted to be obvious and have a heavy play the heavy.
Ishido's historical equivalent is Ishida Mitsunari, who led the Western armies against Ieyasu's Eastern forces.
Mitsunari was only forty-one at the Battle of Sekigahara. He was a capable administrator who single-highhandedly kept the regime viable as Hideyoshi turned into a paranoid Shakespearean villain, executing anybody who challenged his legitimacy or threatened the succession of his son and only heir.
Mitsunari made a lot of enemies as Hideyoshi's enforcer. He also lacked battlefield experience, not having fought in Hideyoshi's two pointless Korean campaigns. As a result, keeping his allies on the same page was like herding cats. Many simply disliked Ieyasu more than they disliked Mitsunari.
Ieyasu as well usually left the fighting to others. A wily politician and negotiator, he convinced (bribed and coerced) several of Mitsunari's generals to either sit out the fight or defect to his side. The cataclysmic battle was over in a single day, despite half of Ieyasu's army arriving a day late.
As one of history's great might-have-beens, Mitsunari has long been ensconced in the pantheon of Japan's heroic losers. As such, he is invariably played by a dashing young actor, like Shun Oguri's portrayal of Mitsunari in Tenchijin (also sporting a great chonmage).
In the run-up to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Mitsunari and Ieyasu jostled for political control of the regency created by Hideyoshi before his death. Sort of a Japanese version of The West Wing circa 1599. Alas, that's not the kind of material to make an American miniseries about.
There not being enough time or budget to show the battle itself, we're simply told about the subsequent events. This is unfortunate, considering that Adams himself removed the cannon from his ship, accompanied them to Sekigahara, and commanded the battery. Ieyasu had many reasons to prize the man's company.
So in order to place our protagonist in constant peril, Shogun exaggerates the importance of the Jesuits and the Portuguese in the months before Sekigahara. They mostly operated in and around Nagasaki. These confrontations foreshadow the fate of Japan's Christian community and the disastrous war soon to engulf Europe.
And Blackthorne's verbal spats with Father Alvito (Damien Thomas, whose Japanese isn't as "native" as his backstory suggests but is nevertheless quite good) make for better drama than the melodramatically overwrought romantic interludes with Mariko (Yoko Shimada).
Mariko is far more interesting as a spot-on illustration of the highly syncretic nature of religion in Japan, which can seamlessly blend Buddhist practice and Christian belief without a second thought. In fact, this may be the most accurate reading of Japan's contemporary culture in the miniseries.
But speaking of melodramatic excesses, rumors of conspiracies to assassinate Ieyasu really were rife. Though they never materialized, the Machiavellian Ieyasu leveraged them to his own advantage. And so do writers of historical fiction, such as Keiichiro Ryu's Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Gessel discusses the experience in the lecture featured below (the audio quality is unfortunately poor).
Shogun is also based on a novel. James Clavell did his homework too. But nobody sells 15 million copies of anything conducting a graduate course on medieval Japanese history and anthropology. So Clavell methodically runs through a checklist of every "educated" stereotype on the subject.
And probably promulgated a few new ones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Stereotypes persist because of their utility. If 15 million people can be persuaded to read a 1152 page melodrama about Japan's Warring States period at the end of the 16th century, maybe they'll be game for more substantive fare.
But how does the miniseries otherwise hold up as a cinematic experience? Sure, it clunks rather loudly at times. But all things considered, better than I expected it would.
The Last Samurai was shot in New Zealand, 47 Ronin was shot in Scotland and Hungary, and Silence was shot in Taiwan. This isn't all the fault of Hollywood. Japanese politicians haven't quite grasped the idea of local film commissions that recruit big budget film productions and cuts through the red tape on their behalf.
One advantage of building sets and shooting in places like New Zealand is not having to matte out the backgrounds. As Akira Kurosawa once noted, "Japan's penchant for power lines and retaining walls has left little unspoiled scenery for movie makers."
Shogun director Jerry London employed the same cheats as Masato Harada did shooting his 2017 historial epic, Sekigahara: high and low angles with tight fields-of-view (which is less annoying when the castle in the background is a real Japanese castle).
Shogun co-star Yoko Shimada wears too much makeup and the wigs aren't terribly convincing. Again, what you'd expect in a NHK drama from forty years ago. They've greatly improved in both departments since, though the chonmage (丁髷) is still a challenge.
But it's a costume drama, so—costumes. Richard Chamberlain wears a hakama quite nicely. But knowing a little more history (and being exposed to a lot more Japanese television) than I did back then, what first upset my suspension of disbelief was the casting of Ishido.
There's no arguing with Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga, nee Tokugawa Ieyasu, though sans the chonmage that in contemporaneous portraits Ieyasu is always depicted sporting. I suspect that Mifune, as well as Kaneko, simply didn't want to go through all the bother, the kind of thing an actor can get away with if he's a big enough star.
Ishido's historical equivalent is Ishida Mitsunari, who led the Western armies against Ieyasu's Eastern forces.
Mitsunari was only forty-one at the Battle of Sekigahara. He was a capable administrator who single-highhandedly kept the regime viable as Hideyoshi turned into a paranoid Shakespearean villain, executing anybody who challenged his legitimacy or threatened the succession of his son and only heir.
Mitsunari made a lot of enemies as Hideyoshi's enforcer. He also lacked battlefield experience, not having fought in Hideyoshi's two pointless Korean campaigns. As a result, keeping his allies on the same page was like herding cats. Many simply disliked Ieyasu more than they disliked Mitsunari.
Ieyasu as well usually left the fighting to others. A wily politician and negotiator, he convinced (bribed and coerced) several of Mitsunari's generals to either sit out the fight or defect to his side. The cataclysmic battle was over in a single day, despite half of Ieyasu's army arriving a day late.
In the run-up to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Mitsunari and Ieyasu jostled for political control of the regency created by Hideyoshi before his death. Sort of a Japanese version of The West Wing circa 1599. Alas, that's not the kind of material to make an American miniseries about.
There not being enough time or budget to show the battle itself, we're simply told about the subsequent events. This is unfortunate, considering that Adams himself removed the cannon from his ship, accompanied them to Sekigahara, and commanded the battery. Ieyasu had many reasons to prize the man's company.
So in order to place our protagonist in constant peril, Shogun exaggerates the importance of the Jesuits and the Portuguese in the months before Sekigahara. They mostly operated in and around Nagasaki. These confrontations foreshadow the fate of Japan's Christian community and the disastrous war soon to engulf Europe.
And Blackthorne's verbal spats with Father Alvito (Damien Thomas, whose Japanese isn't as "native" as his backstory suggests but is nevertheless quite good) make for better drama than the melodramatically overwrought romantic interludes with Mariko (Yoko Shimada).
Mariko is far more interesting as a spot-on illustration of the highly syncretic nature of religion in Japan, which can seamlessly blend Buddhist practice and Christian belief without a second thought. In fact, this may be the most accurate reading of Japan's contemporary culture in the miniseries.
But speaking of melodramatic excesses, rumors of conspiracies to assassinate Ieyasu really were rife. Though they never materialized, the Machiavellian Ieyasu leveraged them to his own advantage. And so do writers of historical fiction, such as Keiichiro Ryu's Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Related posts
Shogun revisited (3)
Techno-orientalism
Dances with Samurai
Japan made in Hollywood
Labels: history, japanese culture, japanese tv, language, nhk, shogun, television reviews, translations
August 31, 2017
Japan made in Hollywood
As I've noted previously, back in the day, Hollywood made (often very good) movies in and about Japan on a regular basis. The over-the-top camp of You Only Live Twice played well in Japan. Shogun showed up at the right time on American television, with the rights leads (Toshiro Mifune alongside Richard Chamberlain), and with sufficient verisimilitude.
More recently, The Last Samurai gave western audiences the same story from Dances with Wolves while Japanese audiences got an fantasy version of the Satsuma Rebellion. As with Rurouni Kenshin, fantasy versions of the Satsuma Rebellion abound in Japanese historical fiction (it's Japan's version of The Wild, Wild West).
The Last Samurai did reasonably well on both sides of the Pacific.
On the other hand, Memoirs of a Geisha didn't do anything that Japanese historical melodramas don't do on a weekly basis, and without any Japanese actresses in the leads. What was exotic to western audiences was ho hum in Japan.
Silence is an art house film that Martin Scorsese got to make because he's Martin Scorsese, so the box office is beside the point. But he filmed it in Taiwan for $46 million ("low budget" in Hollywood), did a good job recreating a recognizable Edo period Japan setting and finding good excuses for his Japanese actors to speak English.
Why 47 Ronin cost $175 million is beyond me. Its budget probably had a lot to do with the relative success of The Last Samurai. But at those nosebleed levels, it was never going to recoup its investment, Keanu Reeves notwithstanding.
It was too "Japanese" for western audiences, and audiences in Japan had no interest in a "Hollywood rendition of Chushingura bearing no resemblance to the historical epic." And barely any resemblance to Japan, period. Shooting anywhere but in Japan is fine until it it's obvious you're no longer in Japan.
The message wasn't going to resonate. It didn't resonate in 1941, when a version of Chushingura commissioned by the Japanese military and directed by Kenji Mizoguchi was also a commercial failure. It's been sourced for Japanese television miniseries over twenty times, except it's Masterpiece Theatre material, not Marvel Comics.
Though 47 Ronin does prove that Ko Shibasaki, who has the lead in NHK's 2017 Taiga historical drama, can hold her own paired with a big Hollywood star. And with the right direction, Japanese actors can speak okay English. Although it (accidentally) also proves that speaking no Japanese doesn't guarantee anything either.
Mismatched cultural assumptions and a needlessly "adapted" adaptation sank 47 Ronin. Same for Ghost in the Shell. Paramount blamed social politics for the failure of the latter to rise to blockbuster status. I think it more accurate to say that these movies weren't nearly good enough to justify the amount of money spent on them.
At the end of the day, critics don't have much of a say in what audiences will like and pay money to see. And neither do the accountants.
The Marvel and DC universes are the current Comstock Lode of the entertainment business. Alas, the richest veins at the Comstock Lode played out in a decade or two. After that, it took more and more work to produce less and less, until the mines eventually closed.
Well, there's a whole lot of gold in them there manga and anime hills. All Hollywood has to do is figure out the mining technology that will refine that precious ore into movies that American audiences actually want to watch.
More recently, The Last Samurai gave western audiences the same story from Dances with Wolves while Japanese audiences got an fantasy version of the Satsuma Rebellion. As with Rurouni Kenshin, fantasy versions of the Satsuma Rebellion abound in Japanese historical fiction (it's Japan's version of The Wild, Wild West).
The Last Samurai did reasonably well on both sides of the Pacific.
On the other hand, Memoirs of a Geisha didn't do anything that Japanese historical melodramas don't do on a weekly basis, and without any Japanese actresses in the leads. What was exotic to western audiences was ho hum in Japan.
Silence is an art house film that Martin Scorsese got to make because he's Martin Scorsese, so the box office is beside the point. But he filmed it in Taiwan for $46 million ("low budget" in Hollywood), did a good job recreating a recognizable Edo period Japan setting and finding good excuses for his Japanese actors to speak English.
Why 47 Ronin cost $175 million is beyond me. Its budget probably had a lot to do with the relative success of The Last Samurai. But at those nosebleed levels, it was never going to recoup its investment, Keanu Reeves notwithstanding.
The message wasn't going to resonate. It didn't resonate in 1941, when a version of Chushingura commissioned by the Japanese military and directed by Kenji Mizoguchi was also a commercial failure. It's been sourced for Japanese television miniseries over twenty times, except it's Masterpiece Theatre material, not Marvel Comics.
Though 47 Ronin does prove that Ko Shibasaki, who has the lead in NHK's 2017 Taiga historical drama, can hold her own paired with a big Hollywood star. And with the right direction, Japanese actors can speak okay English. Although it (accidentally) also proves that speaking no Japanese doesn't guarantee anything either.
Mismatched cultural assumptions and a needlessly "adapted" adaptation sank 47 Ronin. Same for Ghost in the Shell. Paramount blamed social politics for the failure of the latter to rise to blockbuster status. I think it more accurate to say that these movies weren't nearly good enough to justify the amount of money spent on them.
At the end of the day, critics don't have much of a say in what audiences will like and pay money to see. And neither do the accountants.
The Marvel and DC universes are the current Comstock Lode of the entertainment business. Alas, the richest veins at the Comstock Lode played out in a decade or two. After that, it took more and more work to produce less and less, until the mines eventually closed.
Well, there's a whole lot of gold in them there manga and anime hills. All Hollywood has to do is figure out the mining technology that will refine that precious ore into movies that American audiences actually want to watch.
Related posts
Japan's Bond legacy
Dances with Samurai
Hollywood made in Japan
Labels: business, ghost in the shell, history, japanese culture, movies, movies about japan, nhk, shogun
July 13, 2017
Sub vs. dub
Watching stars like Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise and Diane Lane on Asa-Ichi (NHK's morning show) plugging their latest movies, I'm impressed at what great interviewees they are--not only at ease going through a translator, but setting everybody else at ease too.
Charisma is a real thing. Of course, lots of practice doing lots of interviews helps too.
But it's also a reminder of how rarely American television viewers have to work through the intermediary of a translator. The Il Divo guys default to English on Asa-Ichi. It's easier than arranging for French, Spanish, and German translators everywhere they go.
2017 Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato did his post-race interview in English. Though he's more the exception than the rule. Due to the feudalistic posting system, Japanese baseball players come to the American game midway through their careers, too late in life to bother getting fluent.
Come to think about it, sports is where you're most likely to listen to an interviewee through a translator. English is the world's lingua franca, if not as a first language then as the default second.
Which also means that American rarely have to read subtitles. Unless you are an anime fan, in which case it is a perennially lively topic of discussion. I can't ever remember seeing the subject discussed on a mainstream American chat show the way it is on mainstream Japanese chat shows.
In Silence, Martin Scorsese believably minimizes the use of subtitles. The Shogun miniseries eschews them altogether, depending on in-context translators and the occasional Orson Wells narration. And 47 Ronin has Japanese actors speaking dang good English throughout.
(47 Ronin is a movie with a plethora of problems, beginning with a script that was never going to appeal to American or Japanese audiences. But it does demolish the canard that Japanese actors can't speak English well enough for standard Hollywood productions.)
When subtitles do pop up in lower-brow fare like John Wick II, the director tries awfully hard to pretend the subtitles aren't really subtitles. They're misplaced opening credits! Read them! They might help!
As a general rule, I prefer subs to dubs. For languages other than English and Japanese, my fluency is zero. But when I watch Inspector Montalbano, for example, half the fun is listening to Luca Zingaretti speaking Italian.
I saw an interview with Zingaretti (his English is quite good) in which in said that he plays Montalbano a bit over the top, more "Italian" than the typical Italian. You would miss that in a dub, unless perhaps he dubbed himself. Or recruited Al Pacino or Nick Stellino for the part.
I don't totally discount the possibility of a good dub. Thanks to John Lasseter, Studio Ghibil films can attract top-tier talent. Most U.S. anime releases can't rely on Disney's cache or deep pockets. Though I always hope to be, and sometime am, pleasantly surprised.
Charisma is a real thing. Of course, lots of practice doing lots of interviews helps too.
But it's also a reminder of how rarely American television viewers have to work through the intermediary of a translator. The Il Divo guys default to English on Asa-Ichi. It's easier than arranging for French, Spanish, and German translators everywhere they go.
2017 Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato did his post-race interview in English. Though he's more the exception than the rule. Due to the feudalistic posting system, Japanese baseball players come to the American game midway through their careers, too late in life to bother getting fluent.
Come to think about it, sports is where you're most likely to listen to an interviewee through a translator. English is the world's lingua franca, if not as a first language then as the default second.
Which also means that American rarely have to read subtitles. Unless you are an anime fan, in which case it is a perennially lively topic of discussion. I can't ever remember seeing the subject discussed on a mainstream American chat show the way it is on mainstream Japanese chat shows.
In Silence, Martin Scorsese believably minimizes the use of subtitles. The Shogun miniseries eschews them altogether, depending on in-context translators and the occasional Orson Wells narration. And 47 Ronin has Japanese actors speaking dang good English throughout.
(47 Ronin is a movie with a plethora of problems, beginning with a script that was never going to appeal to American or Japanese audiences. But it does demolish the canard that Japanese actors can't speak English well enough for standard Hollywood productions.)
When subtitles do pop up in lower-brow fare like John Wick II, the director tries awfully hard to pretend the subtitles aren't really subtitles. They're misplaced opening credits! Read them! They might help!
As a general rule, I prefer subs to dubs. For languages other than English and Japanese, my fluency is zero. But when I watch Inspector Montalbano, for example, half the fun is listening to Luca Zingaretti speaking Italian.
I saw an interview with Zingaretti (his English is quite good) in which in said that he plays Montalbano a bit over the top, more "Italian" than the typical Italian. You would miss that in a dub, unless perhaps he dubbed himself. Or recruited Al Pacino or Nick Stellino for the part.
I don't totally discount the possibility of a good dub. Thanks to John Lasseter, Studio Ghibil films can attract top-tier talent. Most U.S. anime releases can't rely on Disney's cache or deep pockets. Though I always hope to be, and sometime am, pleasantly surprised.
Labels: japanese tv, language, movies, nhk, shogun, social studies, television
April 27, 2017
Cleanliness is next to Japaneseness
Cleanliness is deeply embedded in the culture and religions of Japan. After all if "baptism" can wash away your sins, then rinse and repeat! Westerners have also noted this fact for as long as westerners have visited Japan.
In Shogun, James Clavell has his 16th century protagonist John Blackthorne (based on the real Will Adams) point it out. A few centuries later, in the mid-19th century, U.S. Consul Townsend Harris observed that "Everyone bathes every day."
Though that they did it all together in a public bath (sentou) alarmed him.
The sentou goes back a millennia. The hot spring resort (onsen) has been around for even longer. Not a few can claim that a "famous person bathed here." A private bath (o-furo) for the working man is more recent. When families could afford a gas-fired one after the war, it was a big deal.
The shower, by contrast, is a modern import. In the sentou, you soap up and rinse off with buckets of water. Outside the tub! Because you wash yourself first before getting into the tub! This is important! The tub water is for soaking, not for washing.
The bathing-at-night thing (anime and manga fans will have noted this) developed because that's when you went to the sentou. Cleaning the baths and firing up the boilers once took all day. You could spot a sentou a mile away because of the smokestacks (in a residential neighborhood).
The old-school home o-furo was a square tub with a water heater directly attached. The tub was the tank. Even today, apartments with western-style (tank) water heaters are rare. Fill the o-furo (with cold tap water), turn it on, and come back in thirty minutes.
When I lived in Osaka, the hot running water in the kitchen ran off the o-furo heater, but you couldn't shower and run the hot water at the same time. Point-of-use tankless water heaters remain ubiquitous.
Again, the bath itself is not for washing (well, except in Spirited Away, when it's required to purify a polluted river spirit) but for soaking and relaxing.
Showers are more popular now, and have taken over the wash & rinse duties. Budget o-furo are still made out of molded plastic, but as Japan has gotten wealthier, they are more and more resembling western bathtubs.
More home baths means fewer public baths. The number of sentou in Tokyo has declined from 2000 to 600 in the past 30 years. And yet ryokan and hot springs resorts have never been more popular.
Even the staid NHK doesn't shy from onsen travelogues featuring naked kids and naked butts (male only, sumo having made the male butt an inconsequential sight; on camera, women sport white bath towels).
In Shogun, James Clavell has his 16th century protagonist John Blackthorne (based on the real Will Adams) point it out. A few centuries later, in the mid-19th century, U.S. Consul Townsend Harris observed that "Everyone bathes every day."
Though that they did it all together in a public bath (sentou) alarmed him.
The sentou goes back a millennia. The hot spring resort (onsen) has been around for even longer. Not a few can claim that a "famous person bathed here." A private bath (o-furo) for the working man is more recent. When families could afford a gas-fired one after the war, it was a big deal.
The shower, by contrast, is a modern import. In the sentou, you soap up and rinse off with buckets of water. Outside the tub! Because you wash yourself first before getting into the tub! This is important! The tub water is for soaking, not for washing.
The bathing-at-night thing (anime and manga fans will have noted this) developed because that's when you went to the sentou. Cleaning the baths and firing up the boilers once took all day. You could spot a sentou a mile away because of the smokestacks (in a residential neighborhood).
The old-school home o-furo was a square tub with a water heater directly attached. The tub was the tank. Even today, apartments with western-style (tank) water heaters are rare. Fill the o-furo (with cold tap water), turn it on, and come back in thirty minutes.
When I lived in Osaka, the hot running water in the kitchen ran off the o-furo heater, but you couldn't shower and run the hot water at the same time. Point-of-use tankless water heaters remain ubiquitous.
Again, the bath itself is not for washing (well, except in Spirited Away, when it's required to purify a polluted river spirit) but for soaking and relaxing.
Showers are more popular now, and have taken over the wash & rinse duties. Budget o-furo are still made out of molded plastic, but as Japan has gotten wealthier, they are more and more resembling western bathtubs.
More home baths means fewer public baths. The number of sentou in Tokyo has declined from 2000 to 600 in the past 30 years. And yet ryokan and hot springs resorts have never been more popular.
Even the staid NHK doesn't shy from onsen travelogues featuring naked kids and naked butts (male only, sumo having made the male butt an inconsequential sight; on camera, women sport white bath towels).
Related posts
The public bath
Onsen
When in Rome (or Japan)
Labels: history, japan, japanese culture, nhk, onsen, shogun, social studies
December 11, 2014
Massan
NHK's current morning melodrama (Asadora) is doing something it's never done before: cast a non-Japanese actor in the title role.
Newcomer Charlotte Kate Fox (Northern Illinois University, MFA Acting) plays Scotswoman Ellie Kameyama, wife of Masaharu Kameyama (Tetsuji Tamayama), the scion of a sake-brewing family who brought whiskey to Japan.
Like Hanako and Anne, this is a fictionalized account of real people: Jessie "Rita" Cowan (1896-1961) and Masataka Taketsuru (1894-1979), the "father" of Japan's distilled spirits industry. "Massan" was Cowen's nickname for her husband.
They met in Scotland while Masataka was researching whiskey making. His research paid off well: this year, "Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013" was named the world's finest. Masataka Taketsuru was one of the founders of the Yamazaki distillery.
Yamazaki was subsequently acquired by Suntory. Masataka and Rita moved to Hokkaido to establish Nikka (now owned by brewing giant Asahi).
Fox isn't Scottish and doesn't have to be: 95 percent of her dialogue is in Japanese. Besides her acting skills and onscreen presence, she was probably hired for her ability to speak Japanese. Or recite Japanese, since she hadn't studied Japanese before.
This isn't unheard of for Hollywood actors, though some do better than others. Marlon Brando speaks pretty good Japanese in Teahouse of the August Moon. Richard Chamberlain tries hard in Shogun (but not hard enough). Tom Cruise does surprisingly well in The Last Samurai.
But Fox is tackling a huge amount of material: six 15-minute episodes a week for half a year. When all is said and done, she will have memorized—spoken or reacted to—about 40 solid hours of Japanese dialogue, most of it fairly practical, everyday material.
Boy, is there a dissertation in this. Her pronunciation already qualifies as above average, thanks in large part to her tutor, who preps her scripts using heavily modified romaji. It'd be fascinating to regularly test her language abilities along the way.
She has a fine singing voice and probably a good ear for accents. Though the one thing she readily admits she can't do is speak Japanese with a Scottish accent (her Scottish English accent sounds okay to me).
In any case, considering the challenges of performing in a just-learned language, Fox is doing quite well. She has nice chemistry with Tetsuji Tamayama. Together they reveal Massan to really be a modern family sit-com with a historical setting.
As Peter Payne likes to point out, Japanese women often voice the same complaint as Emma Watson (and idealize American men no less):
In that light, by using Fox's Ellie as the extroverted "interloper" in a traditional Japanese family and business, Massan becomes a clever way to talk about marital relationships, and analogize that to Japan's relationships with the outside world.
Newcomer Charlotte Kate Fox (Northern Illinois University, MFA Acting) plays Scotswoman Ellie Kameyama, wife of Masaharu Kameyama (Tetsuji Tamayama), the scion of a sake-brewing family who brought whiskey to Japan.
Like Hanako and Anne, this is a fictionalized account of real people: Jessie "Rita" Cowan (1896-1961) and Masataka Taketsuru (1894-1979), the "father" of Japan's distilled spirits industry. "Massan" was Cowen's nickname for her husband.
They met in Scotland while Masataka was researching whiskey making. His research paid off well: this year, "Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013" was named the world's finest. Masataka Taketsuru was one of the founders of the Yamazaki distillery.
Yamazaki was subsequently acquired by Suntory. Masataka and Rita moved to Hokkaido to establish Nikka (now owned by brewing giant Asahi).
Fox isn't Scottish and doesn't have to be: 95 percent of her dialogue is in Japanese. Besides her acting skills and onscreen presence, she was probably hired for her ability to speak Japanese. Or recite Japanese, since she hadn't studied Japanese before.
This isn't unheard of for Hollywood actors, though some do better than others. Marlon Brando speaks pretty good Japanese in Teahouse of the August Moon. Richard Chamberlain tries hard in Shogun (but not hard enough). Tom Cruise does surprisingly well in The Last Samurai.
But Fox is tackling a huge amount of material: six 15-minute episodes a week for half a year. When all is said and done, she will have memorized—spoken or reacted to—about 40 solid hours of Japanese dialogue, most of it fairly practical, everyday material.
Boy, is there a dissertation in this. Her pronunciation already qualifies as above average, thanks in large part to her tutor, who preps her scripts using heavily modified romaji. It'd be fascinating to regularly test her language abilities along the way.
She has a fine singing voice and probably a good ear for accents. Though the one thing she readily admits she can't do is speak Japanese with a Scottish accent (her Scottish English accent sounds okay to me).
In any case, considering the challenges of performing in a just-learned language, Fox is doing quite well. She has nice chemistry with Tetsuji Tamayama. Together they reveal Massan to really be a modern family sit-com with a historical setting.
As Peter Payne likes to point out, Japanese women often voice the same complaint as Emma Watson (and idealize American men no less):
The Harry Potter star said that even though men from the UK dress well and have good manners they take two months just to ask her out. Instead an American will come up to her straight away and suggest a date, a boldness she finds attractive.
In that light, by using Fox's Ellie as the extroverted "interloper" in a traditional Japanese family and business, Massan becomes a clever way to talk about marital relationships, and analogize that to Japan's relationships with the outside world.
Labels: asadora, history, japanese tv, japanese tv reviews, nhk, shogun, showa period
December 24, 2012
Japan's Bond legacy
Kaori Shoji recently reminisced in The Japan Times about James Bond's one and only adventure in Japan way back in 1967 (perhaps not coincidentally on the heels of the 1966 Cary Grant comedy, Walk, Don't Run, which takes place during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics):
You Only Live Twice was also the movie, along with Go for Broke (1951), that got me interested in all things Japanese. As I have Thackeray recount in Tokyo South,
As a vehicle for communicating Japanese culture to a worldwide audience, You Only Live Twice canonized the silliest of modern stereotypes about Japan. The Japanese, though, were delighted with the whole thing. Just as Americans are the world's biggest "Occidentalists" (we're all "cowboys"), Japanese are the world's biggest Orientalists.
Manga and anime would soon embrace the silliness and fashion from it an unique pop culture movement. The latest incarnation of the anime series 009-1, in particular, is a great homage to the Bond oeuvre, with a female android in the title role.
You Only Live Twice certainly isn't any dumber than dreck like Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989) and Rising Sun (1993). A notable exception from that era is the grossly under-appreciated Mr. Baseball (1992), a sort-of film version of Robert Whiting's witty analysis of Japanese baseball, You Gotta Have Wa (1990).
The Last Samurai (2003) may be the best-looking Hollywood movie made about Japan, but it tries so hard not to recycle the recent stereotypes that it ends up recycling all the old ones, getting the historical context completely backwards and upside down. The campier Shogun (1980) is a far more accurate romanticization of history.
In that light, what I find more intriguing is that a decade before Bond's arrival in 1967, no doubt due to the interest engendered by the American Occupation and the Korean War, the 1950s produced some of the best Hollywood movies filmed on location in Japan, and with big-name stars. Such as:
If nothing else, these films are time machines back to before Japan became a first-world nation and an economic powerhouse. And here is where contemporary directors like Sofia Coppola and Edward Zwick fail miserably. Their time machines keep on going. As Kiku Day bitterly observes about Lost in Translation (2003):
Perhaps because the stereotypes hadn't yet become part of the zeitgeist, Hollywood directors in the 1950s simply filmed what they saw looking through the lens. There is certainly far more truth and wonder to be found in the wide eyes of seven-year-old Jon Provost in Escapade in Japan than in the jaded, postmodern gaze of Bill Murray.
The gentleman spy came to Tokyo and Fukuoka, saw some sumo, consorted with ninja and got intimate with two homegrown Bond girls. Directed by Lewis Gilbert, You Only Live Twice goes down in Japan's collective memory as the one and only time 007 made it to these shores.
You Only Live Twice was also the movie, along with Go for Broke (1951), that got me interested in all things Japanese. As I have Thackeray recount in Tokyo South,
"I think the first time I thought about going to Japan was after I saw that James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. What kind of a reason is that?"
As a vehicle for communicating Japanese culture to a worldwide audience, You Only Live Twice canonized the silliest of modern stereotypes about Japan. The Japanese, though, were delighted with the whole thing. Just as Americans are the world's biggest "Occidentalists" (we're all "cowboys"), Japanese are the world's biggest Orientalists.
Manga and anime would soon embrace the silliness and fashion from it an unique pop culture movement. The latest incarnation of the anime series 009-1, in particular, is a great homage to the Bond oeuvre, with a female android in the title role.
You Only Live Twice certainly isn't any dumber than dreck like Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989) and Rising Sun (1993). A notable exception from that era is the grossly under-appreciated Mr. Baseball (1992), a sort-of film version of Robert Whiting's witty analysis of Japanese baseball, You Gotta Have Wa (1990).
The Last Samurai (2003) may be the best-looking Hollywood movie made about Japan, but it tries so hard not to recycle the recent stereotypes that it ends up recycling all the old ones, getting the historical context completely backwards and upside down. The campier Shogun (1980) is a far more accurate romanticization of history.
In that light, what I find more intriguing is that a decade before Bond's arrival in 1967, no doubt due to the interest engendered by the American Occupation and the Korean War, the 1950s produced some of the best Hollywood movies filmed on location in Japan, and with big-name stars. Such as:
• House of Bamboo (1955, with Robert Ryan and Robert Stack)
• Teahouse of the August Moon (1956, with Marlon Brando, Glenn Ford, Eddie Albert, and Harry Morgan)
• Sayonara (1957, with Marlon Brando, Patricia Owens, James Garner, Red Buttons and Ricardo Montalban!)
• Escapade in Japan (1957, with Jon Provost of Lassie fame)
If nothing else, these films are time machines back to before Japan became a first-world nation and an economic powerhouse. And here is where contemporary directors like Sofia Coppola and Edward Zwick fail miserably. Their time machines keep on going. As Kiku Day bitterly observes about Lost in Translation (2003):
[Ancient Japan] is depicted approvingly, though ancient traditions have very little to do with the contemporary Japanese. The "good Japan," according to [Coppola (and Zwick )], is [samurai,] Buddhist monks chanting, ancient temples, flower arrangement; meanwhile she portrays the contemporary Japanese as ridiculous people who have lost contact with their own culture.
Perhaps because the stereotypes hadn't yet become part of the zeitgeist, Hollywood directors in the 1950s simply filmed what they saw looking through the lens. There is certainly far more truth and wonder to be found in the wide eyes of seven-year-old Jon Provost in Escapade in Japan than in the jaded, postmodern gaze of Bill Murray.
Related posts
Dances with Samurai
Lost on location
The Pacific War on screen
Labels: history, japan, movie reviews, movies, movies about japan, pop culture, shogun, whiting
July 12, 2012
Spic and span
Ryô pretending to be the cleaning boy is not all that anachronistic, even way back then.
One thing the campy Shogun gets right (it actually gets more things right than the horribly revisionist The Last Samurai) is that the medieval Japanese were considerably cleaner than their European counterparts.
And probably still are. In Ume-chan Sensei, despite living in bombed-out Kamata in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the family scrapes together the resources to build a crude o-furo. Priorities are priorities.
In This Old House type shows on Japanese television, the bathroom is always completely modernized, with western-style tubs (rectangular rather than square) and computerized toilets.
When it comes to keeping yourself clean, there's no sentimentality for the old-fashioned ways at home. That's what hot springs are for, and hot springs travel shows are ubiquitous on Japanese television.
But the medieval still holds sway over inanimate objects, from the ritual dusting of shrines and temples to school kids wiping down the classroom floors on their hands and knees. It builds character, you see.
More kids having tons of janitorial fun here.
One thing the campy Shogun gets right (it actually gets more things right than the horribly revisionist The Last Samurai) is that the medieval Japanese were considerably cleaner than their European counterparts.
And probably still are. In Ume-chan Sensei, despite living in bombed-out Kamata in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the family scrapes together the resources to build a crude o-furo. Priorities are priorities.
In This Old House type shows on Japanese television, the bathroom is always completely modernized, with western-style tubs (rectangular rather than square) and computerized toilets.
When it comes to keeping yourself clean, there's no sentimentality for the old-fashioned ways at home. That's what hot springs are for, and hot springs travel shows are ubiquitous on Japanese television.
But the medieval still holds sway over inanimate objects, from the ritual dusting of shrines and temples to school kids wiping down the classroom floors on their hands and knees. It builds character, you see.
 |
| Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. |
More kids having tons of janitorial fun here.
Labels: japanese culture, serpent notes, serpent of time, shogun