ryuganji: film news from japan

Back in February, the Asahi Shimbun’s monthly current affairs magazine Aera put out a special Japanese film issue introducing non-movie-savvy readers to a quite comprehensive selection of their country’s active directors. Included was a series of three essays by veteran entertainment reporter Kanazawa Makoto explaining the current state of the local movie biz, which I’ve been meaning to translate for ages. Fortunately they’ve remained relevant, so here’s the first instalment. Stay tuned for parts two and three.

Film business in the 21st Century
Part one: The advent of a Japanese film ‘bubble’? Top dog Toho dominates

In 2006, Japanese films achieved a 53.2% share of the total market, marking the first time in 21 years that their box office takings exceeded that of foreign films. Overall box office revenue was 107.9 billion yen, with that of domestic films alone breaking the 100 billion yen barrier. 417 Japanese films were screened, which is 1.5 times more than 10 years earlier. Consecutively in 2007, local product recovered from a flat first half of the year to take a close to 50% share against foreign films. Going by these figures Japanese cinema would appear to have entered another boom period, but there are murmurs that it’s merely a bubble while other voices cast doubts on the future.

Film companies that have ceased production concentrate on promotion and distribution

As cinema complexes with multiple screens have become standard, the overall number of screens is increasing. In 2006 they exceeded 3000 for the first time in 36 years. However audience numbers stayed at the 160 million mark while total industry revenue sat at around 200 billion yen, continuing to remain mostly unchanged. Earnings per film are not increasing.

With the market failing to expand and a large number of films fighting for a piece of the pie, an inequality has also become apparent. Of the Japanese films that ranked in the top ten box office successes of 2006 - “Tales From Earthsea” (4th), “Limit of Love: Umizaru” (5th), “The Uchoten Hotel” (7th), “The Sinking of Japan” (8th) and “Death Note: The Last Name” (9th) - only the latter was not distributed by Toho. Even looking back at box office receipts from 2001 to 2006, 44 of the 59 films that made over 2 billion yen were distributed by Toho, accounting for over 70%.

Since “Godzilla: Final Wars” in 2004, Toho has ceased in-house production and devoted itself solely to promotion. Thanks in part to its takeover of Virgin’s chain of multiplexes in 2003, the number of screens owned nationwide by the Toho Group stands at 559 (as of March 1st, 2008), making it the industry number one. Other major film companies are also producing films primarily through the production committee system and releasing them through their own distribution networks, but Toho has the greatest ability to carry out large-scale releases.

Linkages with television stations, hits with adaptations

A characteristic of recent hit films is the technique of massive, intensive advertising campaigns that utilise the broadcasting reach of television networks through their involvement in production committees. Toho enjoys an unparalleled advantage in this area as well. This is largely attributable to its enduring relationship with Fuji Television, from “Antarctica” in 1983 to 2007’s biggest hit Japanese film “Hero”, as well as its sturdy linkage with Nihon Television for Studio Ghibli’s films such as “Spirited Away” and collaborations like “Always - Sunset on Third Street 2″.

Such a trend also points to an industry-wide decline in originality. Of the 27 Japanese films that Toho distributed in 2006, only three were not adapted from novels, manga, video games or television series. It feels as if film has taken on the role of processing material emerging from other media into celluloid. Film is essentially a powerfully original medium where creators’ ideas are transformed into moving images, but the current situation makes it difficult for popular original cinematic stories and characters such as Godzilla to be born.

Conversely, this trend sees publishing companies and television networks actively participating in film production committees and using Toho’s promotional muscle to generate greater buzz for their own products. “Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World” and “Densha Otoko” were huge hits. In 2008, the 2007 bestseller “The Homeless Student” will be adapted for Toho’s cinema chain. Due to Toho’s successes, other film companies are also producing their own adaptations of original works with audience-attracting potential.

At the same time, the number of multiplex screens is approaching saturation point. Warner Mycal Cinemas Higashi Kishiwada in Osaka closed in February of this year, citing slumping business due to intensified competition and ageing facilities. Its continued operation had become difficult due to the appearance nearby of several cinema complexes over the last few years.

In conjunction with the fierce competition between suburban multiplexes attached to large scale shopping centres, cinema complexes in urban centres have also increased in number. Some say the latter trend has accelerated customer churn away from these suburban multiplexes that have made such a contribution to increased audience numbers.

Searching for a balance between commerciality and creativity

The film industry at large is full of activity once more. But behind this is a model for developing media-mix¹ products to secure a piece of the gimmicky ’safe pie’. There is also a strong case to be made that there has been a hollowing-out of quality in films. The power of film companies to make films and their facility for fostering creative talent are fading away.

What will happen if audiences begin to tire of these media-mix films? Despite the effort being put into advertising and promotion, audience numbers will cease to merely remain stagnant if there is a lack of attractive films that harness the intrinsic originality of the medium, such as the works of Kurosawa Akira. In the midst of this so-called boom, it’s time for the industry as a whole to get serious and face up to that encroaching shadow.

*1: “Media-mix” is a term commonly used in Japan to describe entertainment properties that achieve a certain degree of success in one medium and are subsequently adapted for other media to capitalise on their popular recognition and maximise commercial gain. Currently, media-mix films are seldom the source of such phenomena and are mostly adaptations of subject matter that has originated from other media such as books or manga. See Wikipedia Japan’s extensive article for more.

According to Sono Sion pal and Outcast Cinema honcho Marc Walkow in the comments of this post, the “Love Exposure” creator’s next film more than likely won’t be the lucid dream-inducing drug freakout “Room of Dreams” but instead “an adaptation of a novel about the infamous ‘Black Metal murders’”. I couldn’t track down any details about it on the web, but Wikipedia has this article on the backstory.

I hopped over to Sono’s official site and found no info there either, but there was a link to another new project featuring… Avril Lavigne?! Titled “Make the Last Wish“, it’s described as an audition “dramentary” mixing reality and fiction that revolves around Koike Minami, a fictional young woman competing in an actual talent search to find Lavigne’s Japanese “younger sister.” The winner will appear on stage with the Canadian pop star and is promised their own showbiz debut. What’s most noteworthy about all this apart from Sono’s involvement is the casting of several faces from “Love Exposure” in the dramatic portion, such as Mitsushima Hikari as Koike (herself a former teen idol with girl groups Folder and Folder 5) and also Ando Sakura and Horibe Keisuke.

Pedantic linguistic note: Sono spells his first name “Sion” in English, but the Japanese pronunciation is actually Shion. It’s quite common for the “shi” syllable to be romanised as “si”, perhaps because it’s quicker to type (”tsu” is often rendered as “tu” too), but it does look a bit odd when you understand English and Japanese. Also, although it looks and sounds like a nom-de-plume, the official line is that Sono Shion/Sion is his real name.

Now that Tokyo Filmex is over for another year and I find myself filled with the spirit of Blue Christmas, allow me to officially reopen Ryuganji for business. Putting breaking news stories into English has become less of an essential endeavour for me since I first began this site thanks to all the cross-pollinating sites and blogs that have emerged, so from now on I’m going to concentrate less on time-sensitive news that everyone else will inevitably jump on anyway and instead turn my attention to translating a random selection of features and interviews, which will hopefully be more edifying and entertaining.

But back to Filmex, which had a touch of the surreal to it for me this year. I help out with translation of the official catalog so I got seats in the main venue beside some of the jurors and other friends of the festival, such as Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Nishijima Hidetoshi and Tony Leung Ka Bloody Fai. Naturally being a big fan of all three I didn’t have the nerve to chat them up, so instead I consoled myself with the knowledge that I could have easily put any of them in a rear naked choke. OK, maybe not Big Tony.

First of all, believe the hype about Sono Sion’s special invitation film “Ai no Mukidashi” (Love Exposure). This was its big public coming out, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a screening that generated such palpable excitement; it truly made me feel privileged to be amongst the first in the world to see it. Not only is it a priapic hot beef inoculation against all those flaccidly soppy junai (pure love) films that have drowned multiplexes in smug crocodile tears in recent years, this is the ultimate date movie: take someone you fancy along, and if they laugh raucously and gasp in awe throughout without once pressing the bastard light button on their G-Shock, wait for the lights to go up before heading straight for your nearest marriage registry office (preferably following some appropriately hot nasty coitus). Even if you remain unimpressed by the ribald audacity of Sono’s vast yet extremely personal vision, you’ll still be forced to applaud his achievement in drawing such fearless and committed performances from his young leads, especially at a time when talent agencies’ overly cautious management of their chattels has all but neutered and sterilised commercial cinema. This should do wonders for Sono’s reputation and recognition overseas, and Variety Japan even quote him as saying he’s currently gearing up for his next film which will also feature a religious cult and will be a Norwegian and U.S. co-production. I wonder if he’s talking about this one?

The two Japanese entries in competition were both dramatically sound and skillfully realised, but ultimately let themselves down with unsatisfying endings. Debut director Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s dialogue-heavy but engrossing ensemble drama “Passion” focused on somewhat played-out subject matter for young indie filmmakers - the opaque romantic relationships of urban 20-30-year-olds - but managed to engage through the script’s evolving characterisations and uniformly impressive performances from the low-wattage cast. Surprisingly attractive cinematography for a talky low-budget project too, let alone a student production (it was Hamaguchi’s graduation film for Tokyo University of the Arts). “Nonko　36-sai (Kaij-tetsudai)”　(Non-ko) saw Kumakiri Kazuyoshi build his film around recent muse Sakai Maki (”Green Mind, Metal Bats“), who succeeded admirably in instilling a modicum of likeability in a mostly unlikeable character. It also benefits from a great supporting cast, especially Tsurumi Shingo as Nonko’s sleazy showbiz agent and ex-husband who still knows the way into her knickers, and Saiki Shigeru as her bad-tempered asshole of a father. Strange though that it seemed to crib much of its final act directly from Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate,” with a last scene that almost seemed tacked on as an afterthought.

With some creative scheduling I managed to catch all but one of the twelve Kurahara Koreyoshi films which offered a diverse overview of his partnership with screenwriter Yamada Nobuo, his eye-catching aesthetic and his affinity for outsiders, despite working within the restrictions of churning out star vehicles for a major studio, namely Nikkatsu. One aspect of his work that stood out in particular was his often sympathetic, three-dimensional depictions of foreign characters such as gay Korean drummer Ko and the Algerian resistance fighter in the deeply cynical socio-political drama “Warera no Jidai” (The Time of Youth). Its pessimistic forecast for the directionless youth of its era, especially its protagonist’s opening narration, could easily be applied to the present and would likely be denounced as “anti-Japanese” by net-ridden right wingers were it released today. In “Kuroi Taiyo” (Black Sun), delinquent jazz aficionado Akira (Kawachi Tamio) puts on minstrel makeup (!) and daubs A.W.O.L. G.I. Gil (Chico Rowland, Japan’s go-to cinematic black guy throughout the ’60s and ’70s) with white paint (!!) so that they can slip by M.P. blockades disguised as clowns. At Akira’s favorite jazz bar, the customers are delighted to be in the presence of an authentic negro but treat Gil like a circus attraction, browbeating him into dancing for them. Returning to the dilapidated church where Akira lives just as it is being demolished, Gil is surrounded by a crowd of metal-mouthed housewives and children who cackle at him as he desperately improvises an out-of-tune melody on Akira’s trumpet. Shots alternate between closeups of Gil’s sad, terrified eyes and the braying, near-identical faces of the locals. It’s a brief but extremely evocative moment that perfectly captures Gil’s sheer terror and isolation.

Taking the social outcast character to fantastic extremes, “Kaitei kara kita Onna” (The Woman from the Sea) paired its naive Taiyo-zoku protagonist (a young Kawachi) with a vengeful shark-turned-femme fatale clad in a bikini several sizes too small played by Tsukuba Hisako, who would later put her piscine expertise to use in the United States as producer of the “Piranha” film series under the name Chako van Leeuwen. Although the supernatural element of Ishihara Shintaro’s original story was rather underplayed and left you wondering what a director like Nakagawa Nobuo would have done with it, its core theme of romance between ill-fated lovers was portrayed with striking eroticism for a film made in 1959. But for me the standout film from the retro was “Gurasu no Joni: Yaju no yo ni Miete” (Glass Hearted Johnny/Glass Johnny: Looks Like a Beast), which will be familiar to readers lucky enough to experience the “No Borders: No Limits” Nikkatsu action collection that has been touring North America of late. With more endings than “Return of the King” as it relentlessly entangles the fates of its hapless characters on the way to an excruciatingly poignant conclusion, this is practically crying out for the Criterion Collection treatment. It goes without saying that Shishido Jo and Ashikawa Izumi are as perfect in their roles as you’d expect, but the real revelation was half-Filipino tough guy I. George, built like a brick shithouse and packing the concealed weapon of a sweet baritone croon. How can a filmmaker get away with suddenly turning an amoral whore wrangler into a sympathetic anti-hero troubadour? Only Kurahara knows.

Four films in the retro featured the luminescent Asaoka Ruriko in her prime, the most powerful of them being “Shuen” (The Flame of Devotion), her 100th film appearance in the space of only 10 years. Today’s filmmakers should study it as masterclass in depicting how war affects personal relationships, without an ounce of cynically overplayed pathos or excessive emphasis on national victimisation. Asaoka herself was present at a talk show with festival director Hayashi Kanako following the screening of the Ishihara Yujiro-starring road movie “Nikui Anchikusho” (I Hate But Love). Nikkatsu has a summary of the event in Japanese with photos - note the reverent distance between Hayashi and Asaoka, and the overly powerful lighting trained on her which was apparently improvised at the last minute when panicked staff realised the old-school star would feel naked without it. Although it seemed to last for only ten minutes, Asaoka was in fine form recounting her difficulty performing driving scenes in “Nikui Anchikusho” due to the fact that she had only just got her license and could barely reach the pedals of her Jaguar, consequently scaring the bejesus out of the crew on several occasions including a collision with a camera that left its operator with a black eye. She also revealed that the role of her lover in “Shuen”, which was eventually taken by future director Itami Juzo, was supposed to have been played by Watari Tetsuya who was a newcomer at the time and ultimately judged to be too inexperienced for the part (even though it was also Itami’s first starring role).

My best of the rest was Johnnie To’s exhilarating and exquisitely choreographed pickpocket caper “Sparrow,” which will be a must-buy from Eureka if they release it on Blu-ray as they did with his “Mad Detective”. I was also thoroughly impressed by “Treeless Mountain” which fully deserved its share of the Special Jury Prize, and it’s difficult to believe that its young Korean-American female director Kim So-yong is an art school graduate who learned filmmaking from working on her husband Bradley Rust Gray’s own first feature. Its documentary-rivaling realism and powerful yet almost subliminally delivered message suggested favorable comparisons with the work of Kawase Naomi and Kore-eda Hirokazu. Closing the festival on a incongruously heavy and doom-laden note was the Hungarian riverbilly sibling drama “Delta”, which might best be described as Bela Tarr meets Straw Dogs with musical selections from Borat’s walkman (the rest of the soundtrack is actually as moodily atmospheric as its gorgeously languorous photography).

Although it may lack the ‘green carpet’ glamour of the sprawling, business-like Tokyo International film fest (do you know of any other major festival in the world that assails its audience with TWELVE commercials from its sponsors before the main feature rolls?), Filmex’s inclusive atmosphere and dedication to introducing new talent and supporting filmmakers has enabled it to firmly establish its own unique identity. The festival turns ten in 2009, which is an even more impressive feat when you think of all the others that have come and gone since its inception,

Filmex also helped me break the 100-film barrier for films seen in cinemas this year, which is not bad at all seeing that half were Japanese and I’m not even on any of the distributors’ mailing lists for media previews. There’s still plenty to consume before oshogatsu too, including “Nightmare Detective 2” (wasn’t that impressed with the first one and I’ve never been a big fan of Tsukamoto Shinya’s work, but his films always deliver one hell of a ride), “Oretachi ni Ashita wa Naissu” (another indie from the prolific and constantly improving Tanada Yuki following her major studio debut with the Aoi Yu vehicle “One Million Yen Girl” for Nikkatsu), ’60s Group Sounds comedy “GS Wonderland” and Kore-eda Hirokazu’s music documentary with Cocco, “Daijobu de aru yo ni - Cocco: Owaranai Tabi“.

Kyoto-based film historian and writer Stuart Galbraith IV should be a familiar name to anyone with an interest in Japanese cinema. Chances are you’ve read his online reviews for DVD Talk and the Daily Yomiuri, or have cracked open an amaray or digipak and consumed his essays, interviews and commentary tracks for the Criterion Collection and others. Of course he is first and foremost a published author of several non-fiction works including his acclaimed joint biography of Mifune Toshiro and Akira Kurosawa “The Emperor of the Wolf,” and now he’s produced a comprehensive appraisal of one of Japan’s most powerful film factories, “The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography.” Stuart was kind enough to chat with Ryuganji about his experiences writing the book and his opinions on the current state of the industry.

Don Brown: How long have you been living in Japan?

Stuart Galbraith: I moved to Kyoto at the end of 2003, after visiting Japan every few years starting around 1994. My wife’s Japanese, and after living in Los Angeles where we’d spend 1-3 months out of every year visiting or working in Japan, permanently moving to Kyoto quickly became more appealing and practical — while going back to L.A. became a more difficult adjustment each time. Then coincidentally early last year, within a space of about a month, we bought a house, got a dog and my wife became pregnant, so now we’re pretty well entrenched.

DB: You’ve written several Japanese film books to date - what were your reasons for writing a book on Toho?

SG: Westerners tend to have a very skewered view of Japanese cinema, though less so recently because so many Japanese movies are at long last being released on DVD, plus the Internet and YouTube have changed have made all of Japanese pop culture infinitely, instantly far more accessible. Yet when most people think of Toho they still think: Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune, Godzilla movies, and maybe jidai-geki like Hiroshi Inagaki’s Chushingura or chanbara like Kihachi Okamoto’s Sword of Doom.

In fact Toho’s main genre was salaryman comedies, movies starring actor-comedians such as Hisaya Morishige and Hitoshi Ueki, about the white collar workplace. Toho also did Hollywood-style musicals, film noir-type thrillers, women’s dramas, spy pictures — all kinds of movies really, yet almost none of those films have been shown in the west because of our preoccupation with samurai and swordplay cinema in the ’50s through the ’70s, and then with so-called “outlaw masters” like Seijun Suzuki and exploitation films like roman porno.

What I want to do with The Toho Studios Story is to present to the reader a complete picture, to put everything into context so that they can better understand the methods and the trends during one studio’s history. Also and maybe most importantly, I hope the book will generate some interest in these heretofore obscure movies, so that maybe they’ll start turning up at retrospectives or picked up by smaller DVD labels and western audiences can finally get a chance to see some of these wonderful things.

DB: Could you talk more about some Toho films or filmmakers that don’t have much of a profile and/or haven’t been released on English-friendly DVD but deserve more attention?

SG: Boy, where to start? Two filmmakers that immediately come to mind are Mikio Naruse and Shiro Toyoda. Naruse’s films are finally starting to become available, but there’s still so much out that that remains unreleased, and the situation is even worse with Toyoda. Or Tadashi Imai — talk about being unjustly ignored! Early postwar directors like Hiromichi Horikawa, Zenzo Matsuyama, Senkichi Taniguchi, Seiji Maruyama — almost nothing is available in the U.S., and that’s criminal in a market where Americans have easy access to every Pokemon movie.

I’d really like to see some of Toho’s comedies, musicals, documentaries, and film noir-type films released. Personally, I’m fascinated by other countries’ comedy films and stars - Mexico’s Cantinflas, France’s Fernandel, etc. - because these films, designed mainly for domestic consumption, tend to reflect the culture and the period in which they were made, often more intimately than big prestigious or art house-targeted films. Comparing and contrasting Japanese comedies to American ones, the differences and the similarities of cultures, is endlessly fascinating I think, and I suspect Americans interested in Japanese cinema would find much to like in Toho’s best “Shacho” and “Ekimae” movies, as well the later stuff with The Crazy Cats and The Drifters and the earlier films with people like Enoken, Achako & Entatsu, and Tony Tani.

Toho made some of the most interesting World War II films of any Japanese studio, both propaganda films during the war, and interesting postwar movies that walk a fine line between nostalgia and nationalism and tragedy and contriteness.

I think cross-cultural films are also extremely interesting, international co-productions with Toho, or Toho films shot on location abroad. Susumu Hani’s Bwana Toshi, for instance, about a Japanese man in Tanganyika (and played by Tora-san himself, Kiyoshi Atsumi), was a big critical and commercial success here in Japan but it hasn’t been seen in the U.S. probably since the mid-1960s when it played the “sukiyaki circuit.”

DB: What aspects and themes did you focus on?

SG: Well, it’s a reference book, basically a filmography, so I wanted to include the kind of information not normally available (or incorrect) on resources like the Internet Movie Database, and to present it in such a way that, in addition to looking up individual titles, readers can also leaf through it page-by-page and note gradual technological changes, the rise and fall of different actors, directors, and genres, and so forth.That’s why the films are presented chronologically; it’s really amazing what you can learn just by examining a single year of Toho’s long history.

DB: How long did it take to write, from inception to completion?

SG: That’s a difficult question to answer because I actually started working on it way back around 1998, about the time Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo! was released. The project was put on hold during most of 1999-2001 while I was writing The Emperor and the Wolf, then it got sidetracked again as it went through several different book designers and there were other delays. Actually, to give you some idea, when I first started writing it I was saving it on old-style floppies and printing out pages on a daisy-wheel printer! And every few years I had to go and bring it up to date — the finished book is complete through the end of 2007 — and the last bit of work I did on it was early this spring, so in a sense you could say it was 10 years in the making!

DB: Were you commissioned by the studio, or was it your idea?

SG: Toho had absolutely nothing to do with the book. At one point I toyed with the idea of selling them a significant piece of it in exchange for the use of lots of photos. I’d have liked to have included one still for every entry in the book - several thousand in other words. But I’ve also seen the extreme frustration many colleagues of mine have gone through — Steve Ryfle on his Godzilla book on now his documentary on Toho’s special effects films, for instance – and I don’t have his incredible patience and tolerance for such arbitrary idiocy.

DB: Toho are notorious for being very protective of their properties.

SG: I don’t think anywhere in the world there’s a company quite as perversely self-defeating as Toho, though to some degree this attitude is industry-wide. In Toho International’s case, they’ve got obscenely expensive digs in Century City, a big office in some of the priciest real estate in Tokyo — I was in their older offices before they moved, but that was huge –and high-priced attorneys on retainer in L.A. I suspect they have to justify all those salaries somehow, yet one suspects the money generated from American sales is disproportionately small. I mean, how money can U.S. DVD rights on The War in Space really generate? But if they can sue Subway Sandwiches for a gazillion dollars they look like they’re at least protecting their company’s interests, even if most of these lawsuits over the years have been pretty ridiculous.

Incidentally, there’s a stark contrast between these front office types and the folks actually in the trenches making the movies. Toho’s ever-shrinking studio is some distance away in Setagaya, and many of the older directors, actors and the like I’ve interviewed over the years live or lived nearby. They were always, without fail, extremely courteous and generous with their time, and always happy to help foreign researchers. It’s the front office - people that really had nothing to do with the production of these films we love - that’s so meddlesome.

The sad thing is Toho and the other studios are really shooting themselves in the foot. For several years I tried launching my own boutique DVD label, hoping to release some of the very same films I’ve described, basically movies 50-60 years old probably no westerner ever even inquired about before, and which in most cases their international departments never even bothered trying to sell abroad. I met with representatives from Shochiku, Kokusai Hoei (keepers of the Shintoho library), Toho and others but they all made outrageous demands on the most obscure of movies, as if we were negotiating the rights to Star Wars instead of some obscure Tony Tani comedy three people in the U.S. have vaguely heard of.

I kept trying to explain that the titles I was asking about required the kind of special nurturing someone like myself could provide, but even so you’re still talking about DVDs that would in all likelihood sell less than 5,000 units apiece – actually, probably closer to 1,500 units. Adding insult to injury, on top of the obscene licensing fees some also charge a separate rate, several thousand dollars as I recall, to access their video masters, even though big American companies routinely provide those for free or at cost to licensees. I know. I worked at MGM and was involved in exactly that.

What this means is that only a few companies with deep pockets like Sony or Janus Films can afford to deal with companies like Toho, and that they aren’t likely to take chances with marginal titles, even ones of exceptional interest to classic Japanese film fans.

I think also there’s a proprietary attitude by the Japanese toward their own cinema, a feeling by some Japanese that, for instance, foreigners can never truly understand Ozu, that movies like that are really for their consumption alone, and not the world’s. Here in Japan, you can routinely buy DVDs of Hollywood movies for under 1,000 yen while most Japanese DVDs are ludicrously expensive, usually 4,800 to 6,000 yen apiece. I asked Donald Richie once why he thought Japanese home video labels almost never provide English subtitles on their DVDs, and he had a very interesting answer: “Battaa kusai” (”stinks like butter”). In other words, by putting English subtitles on the disc, you ran the risk of “tainting” it with the whiff of Americaness, a foreigner accessibility, therefore somehow making it less purely “Japanese.” I tend to agree with Donald Richie.

DB: The book appears to be a very comprehensive record of the studio’s activities - how did you go about researching it?

SG: In retrospect it’s kind of interesting. When I started on it back in 1998, my only real options were to go to Japan and buy Japanese-language cinema reference books, while in Los Angeles, at USC’s Cinema-Television Library with a friend named Tony Sol, I photocopied virtually every review and advertisement for a Toho movie in the pages of Kinema Jumpo since its inception. I also relied on picture files at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library and my own private collection of studio magazines and UniJapan booklets. Back then I could read a very limited amount of Kanji, mostly common names like Yamada, Tanaka, Yasuda, etc., but relied heavily on my Japanese translators.

Now, ten years later, I’d say about 90% percent of all that information is readily available, at least in Japanese, on websites like Kinema Jumpo’s MovieWalker and the Japanese Movie Database. I’m well over the hump of my second ”Studios Story” book now and I’m amazed that I’ve been able to compile the same kind of information probably 10 times faster. And because of both my improved Japanese, such as it is (it’s still pretty terrible!), and thanks to the Internet, many difficult-to-read Japanese names are accompanied by hiragana readings, so I can do a much larger percentage of the work myself.

DB: Did you experience any difficulties in writing and researching the book?

SG: The biggest problems with a project like this are things like trying to nail down Japanese names definitively. The producer commonly known as Tomoyuki Tanaka is usually called “Yuko Tanaka” by those that knew him, actor Akira Takarada for instance, because the characters for Tomoyuki can also be read as “Yuko.” Which is correct? Oftentimes, there’s no way to know for sure short of knocking on the door of the family home and asking their spouse or children.

On some of the older films, even my native Japanese translators couldn’t read the title of the movie because the Kanji characters had fallen out of use in the years since, and they’d have to spend several hours on a single title trying to figure out how it was read and what it meant. Other titles didn’t translate easily to English. My favorite example of this is a comedy called Showa hitoketa shacho tai futaketa shacho - Getsu Getsu Ka Sui Moku Kin Kin. That translates as “First Decade Showa Company President vs. Second Decade Showa Company President - Monday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Friday,” but do you leave a title like that alone or attempt to simplify it and make it more understandable to readers (such as translating the last part as “Open Seven Days a Week”), even if you have to change the meaning a little? I pretty much invariably opted for the more complete and direct translation approach, but these are issues that cropped up all the time.

DB: Toho is still the largest and most successful Japanese film studio, but how has their position in the industry changed, especially in light of the current influence of television companies?

SG: Toho is virtually out of the business of making movies. Back in the late-1950s and early-’60s, they were producing upwards of a hundred movies every year. Nowadays they’re making only one or two fully in-house productions while owning small pieces of maybe a dozen others, mostly in distribution fees. The New Face system of training and building up young actors, the same system that gave rise to Toshiro Mifune and lots of other stars is long gone, which is why filmmakers are turning to TV non-talent and J-Pop stars like the guys from SMAP. There’s no nurturing of filmmakers like Kurosawa and Okamoto who rose up through companies’ apprentice programs. That’s why there aren’t many good films being made in Japan by people under the age of 70.

DB: Is that possibly a matter of personal taste? Could you possibly name any films or filmmakers by younger directors that you feel are worthy of praise?

SG: Partly it’s a matter of taste, but when something like Japan’s dumb rip-off of The Matrix, Returner, gets four major Japanese Academy Award nominations, it’s a sign that expectations have been significantly lowered. Yeah, there are filmmakers out there that I like: Shunji Iwai, Junji Sakamoto, Kokki Mitani, Hirokazu Kore’eda. But I don’t think they’re necessarily as consistent or as groundbreaking as the great Japanese filmmakers working in the 1930s-1960s, when there was this great big orgy of incredible films and filmmakers. What I meant by that statement was, particularly 10 or 15 years ago, for me the most interesting films were being made by veterans like Imamura, Shinoda, Shindo, Kon Ichikawa and Yoji Yamada. Of course, most of these guys are gone now. And another thing: where the ordinary Japanese program picture of the ’50s and ’60s was extremely well made for what it was, the same kind of comfort food cinema Japan cranks out today tends to be miserably bad, almost unwatchable. Of course, it could be a matter of taste, and that I’m hardly in the targeted demographic for stuff like Umizaru 2. 

DB: How would you characterise Toho in comparison with the other film studios operating today?

SG: As I discuss in the book, big companies like Toho are now huge conglomerates that make most of their money managing subsidiary companies. Toho has their hands in all kinds of things: nursing homes, pet stores, home improvement centers - you name it.  

At this point there’s really only Toho, Shochiku, and Toei. They’re all pretty out of step with contemporary Japan, though Toei maybe less so, just as they’ve been since the early ’70s. Director Yoji Yamada is about the only glue holding Shochiku together; I had to think of what will happen to the company after he’s gone; probably it and Toho will become virtually indistinguishable, while Toei might maintain its gangster reputation for another decade.

DB: What about the revived Nikkatsu? They seem to be in a much better position than in recent years.

SG: Maybe, but I don’t think its successes are any indication of a major revival of studio-based production. Of course, we haven’t discussed anime - and that’s the real international success story, and I don’t see peaking anytime soon. In fact, I’m amazed U.S. rights to characters like Doraemon and Anpanman haven’t been snapped up yet - or have they? I can see each of those becoming monstrously successful with American pre-schoolers.

DB: If television companies continue to be successful in producing commercial films, can what’s left of the big four studios continue to justify their existence?

SG: Good question! I guess now primarily they’re all trying to find new venues for their film libraries — probably with Blu-ray and down-loadable movies in a big way over the next few years — while generating additional income renting out studio space and equipment.

DB: What drives you to keep writing about Japanese cinema? I imagine the amount of personal investment is disproportionate to the financial return at least, so how do you keep motivated?

SG: It is pretty disproportionate, and what motivates me has changed over the years. When I first started writing about Japanese cinema almost 20 years ago, there was a fair amount of film theory-style literary analysis of directors like Ozu and Mizoguchi, but almost nothing in English about the nuts and bolts of the Japanese film industry other than the seminal Donald Richie/Joseph Anderson book The Japanese Film - Art & Industry, and virtually nothing about genre films.

To say that’s changed in the years since would be an understatement. There are lots of good people out there – Chris D, Markus Nornes, Patrick Macias — who’re exhaustively exploring areas of Japanese film that were pretty much virgin territory 20 years ago. Really, now there are so many people writing about Japanese film in books, magazines, and on-line that I really don’t feel the sense of  urgent obligation I once did.

I’d still like to write biographies or do genre studies, but those projects require time and money to research properly - and there aren’t any publishers left offering advances so that the writer can at least break even on the deal. So I’m sort of semi-retired from the field, though I enjoy tinkering with these filmography books for the sheer enjoyment of it, and because it’s new and useful information for people who enjoy Japanese cinema.   

DB: Do you have any other books or projects on the horizon?

SG: Taschen is still planning to release a book I did that originally was called Cinema Nippon but which has since been retitled Japanese Cinema. It’s one of their typically picture-filled coffee table-type books that’s being designed by Paul Duncan, who handles many of the cinema history titles. Last I heard, it’s released has been pushed back to early 2009.

In the meantime, I’m still plugging away at more “Studio Story” projects. I’d like to finish all of the major studios — Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Toei, Shintoho, and Daiei — and maybe a separate volume of major independents like Art Theater Guild within 7-8 years. We’ll see.

Now that the first instalment in the trilogy is out of the blocks, it has been revealed that 23-year-old relative nobody and Horipro talent Kinami Haruka has been cast as high school girl and reluctant resistance operative Koizumi Kyoko. One of the saga’s less well-rounded and more annoying sub-characters, Koizumi nevertheless plays a crucial role at certain points in the latter half of the story as well as adding some ditzy comic relief, and was introduced to audiences with a brief unheralded appearance at the end of the first film. Iza has pics here, and on this scant evidence she at least seems to have the character’s gormless hysteria downpat. Kinami’s only other film role so far was as chainsaw fodder in “Seven Rooms”, Adachi Masaki’s contribution to the omnibus film “Zoo”.