Movies - Cinema of Japan

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	Movies - Cinema of Japan

Japanese cinema (映画; Eiga) has a history in Japan that spans more than 100 years.

Genres

Anime: Japanese animation.
Jidaigeki, period pieces featuring samurai, also known as Chambara (onomatopoeia describing the sound of swords clashing).
Horror
films such as Ringu
, also known as J-Horror
Cult Horror
, such as Battle Royale
or Suicide Club
Kaiju
: monster films, such as Gojira
Pink films
, pornographic films. Often more socially-engaged and aesthically well-crafted than simple pornography.
Yakuza films: films about mobsters.

History

The Silent Era

The first film produced in Japan was the short documentary Geisha No Teodori (芸者の手踊り) in June of 1899.

The first Japanese performer to appear in a film professionally was the dancer/actress Tokuko Nagai Takagi, who appeared in four shorts for the American-based Thanhouser Company between 1911 and 1914 .

Most Japanese cinema theatres at the time employed benshi, narrators whose dramatic readings accompanied the film and its musical score which, like in the West, was often performed live. (See also the books Benshi, Japanese Silent Film Narrators, and their Forgotten Narrative Art of Setsumei A History of Japanese Silent Film Narration by Jeffrey A. Dym and .)

The 1923 earthquake, the Allied bombing of Tokyo during World War II, as well as the natural effects of time and Japan's humidity on the then more fragile filmstock have all resulted in a great dearth of surviving films from this period.

Some of the most discussed silent films from Japan are those of Kenji Mizoguchi, whose later works (e.g., The Life of Oharu
) are still highly regarded today.

A study of the "gendaigeki" (contemporary/modern film drama) and writing for film in Japan in the 1910s to early 1920s, with select translations of scripts (complete as well as excerpts) is available in "Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement" (Joanne Bernardi, Wayne State University Press, 2001).

The 1930s

Unlike Hollywood, silent films were still being produced in Japan well into the 1930s. Notable talkies of this period include Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion (Gion no shimai, 1936), Osaka Elegy (Naniwa erejî, 1936) The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Zangiku monogatari, 1939). With increasing censorship, the left-leaning tendency films of directors such as Daisuke Ito come under attack.

The 1940s

Akira Kurosawa makes his feature film debut with Sugata Sanshiro in 1943. With the SCAP occupation following the end of WWII, Japan is exposed to over a decade's worth of American animation that had been banned under the war-time government.

The 1950s

The 1950s were the zenith of Japanese cinema, and three of its films (Rashōmon, The Seven Samurai
, and Tokyo Story
) made the Sight and Sound's 2002 Critics and Directors Poll for the best films of all time. The decade started with Akira Kurosawa's Rashōmon (1950), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and marked the entrance of Japanese cinema onto the world stage. It was also the breakout role for legendary star Toshiro Mifune. 1952 and 1953 saw another Kurosawa film, Ikiru
, as well as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story
. The year 1954 saw two of Japan's most influential films released. The first was the Kurosawa epic The Seven Samurai
(Shichinin no samurai), about a band of hired samurai who protect a helpless village from a rapacious gang of thieves, which was remade in the West as The Magnificent Seven
. That same year Ishirō Honda released the anti-nuclear horror film Gojira
, which was translated in the West as Godzilla
. Though it was severely edited for its Western release, Godzilla became an international icon of Japan and spawned an entire industry of Kaiju
films. In 1955, Hiroshi Inagaki won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Part I of his Samurai Trilogy.

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