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Reigniting Japanese Tradition with Hana-Bi

Darrell, Davis. “Reigniting Japanese Tradition with Hana-Bi.” Cinema Journal 40.4 (2001): 55-80.

This article, published in a cinema journal in 2001, reviews Kitano Takeshi’s 1997 film Hana-Bi, or “Fireworks,” in the context of Takeshi’s use of traditional Japanese icons in a modern, global gangster-film market. Immediately, the other main subject of the article is Akira Kurosawa, as demonstrated in the first sentence. In order to catch the audience’s interest, Takeshi is introduced as the greatest Japanese filmmaker since Akira Kurosawa by generic Western critics. The author, Darrell Davis, interrogates Takeshi’s personal message, however, when he questions whether “Japaneseness” in cinema is merely a marketing ploy by the filmmakers. He points to Takeshi’s meticulous attention to traditional Japanese customs in his films despite his public desire to be disavowed from a primarily Japanese identity. In a New York Times interview, for example, he criticizes Kurosawa’s adherence to stereotypical Japanese representations, while the next day asks for Kurosawa’s particular input and recommendations. Darrell asserts that perhaps Takeshi exploits the icon of Japanese cinema, Kurosawa, to garter a particular image for himself publicly, and then by censuring him plays a keen political tactic. Darrell moves on to the study of Takeshi’s work and Japanese cinema. He uses the three types of Japanese film as described by Kurosawa to structure the remainder of her analysis. According to Kurosawa, the three modes of Japanese film are the reflectionist, dialogic, and contamination models. Darrell ends by commenting on Hana-Bi’s release at the Cannes Film Festival and an ending remark on the work and Takeshi.

This article is useful to my study of Kurosawa’s Rashomon for two main reasons. First, the detailed descriptions of Kurosawa’s labeling of film genres offer a new level of discussion applicable to the film Rashomon. Secondly, the discourse about Kurosawa’s samurai films among the modern industry provides a look into the sustainability of Kurosawa’s films over time, of which his masterpiece Rashomon is included. Particularly, while many articles today celebrate Kurosawa’s work from a Western perspective, it is interesting to see how he is discussed by his Japanese peers.

Confronting Master Narratives: History As Vision in Miyazaki Hayao's Cinema of De-assurance

Susan. “Confronting Master Narratives: History as Vision in Miyazaki Hayao’s Cinema of De-assurance.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 9.2 (2001): 467-493.

Susan Napier’s article discusses the cinematic master narratives in the context of Japanese cinema and the larger global cultural consciousness. Its main subject is Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, though his work is described in view of his contemporaries and influences. Napier begins by discussing the broad ideas of modernization vs. history and the role of cultural identity in art and cinema. She asserts that films have the power to “write history” and “create national identity” on the global stage. She points to the crucial post-WWII period in Japan when Japanese cinema first made its mark. Specfically, she credits Akira Kurosawa and his jidaigeki, “period films,” with their realism and dazzling visual aesthetics, as being the most influential Japanese filmmaker at the time. In his films, Kurosawa both “exploit[ed] and deconstruct[ed] the mythology of samurai.” His films powerfully brought humanity to the Japanese traditions and brought the past into the contemporary discussion of Japanese identity. Similarly, the animator Miyazaki, of the title of the piece, created scenes and characters that while being decidedly Japanese are individual in their personalities and actions. Notably, this characterization can be seen in Miyazaki’s many female protagonists, who stand out from their group-oriented traditional counterparts. The article then focuses on Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke, comparing it to the English powerhouse animation counterpart, Disney.

The relevance of this article to my project is found beyond the simple citing of Kurosawa’s influence and works. The real insights came from the comparisons of Miyazaki’s style and that of Kurosawa. Miyazaki is cited as criticizing Kurosawa’s formulaic depictions of good and evil in his samurai films. However, it seems clear in the larger sense that Kurosawa’s humanism did anything but adhere to clichés. He brought life into historical stereotypes. Furthermore, Princess Mononoke is praised as being “history as vision,” or representing in a new light a “historical reality,” recognizable yet distinctly unique. What style could better apply here than that of Kurosawa and his Rashomon-effect. Rashomon deals entirely with the reconstructions of identity through deceit and the power of perspective on redefining historical fact. The two directors offer a great deal of illumination to one another.

Pluralism: Rashomon and Contested Conceptions of Criminality

Brion, Denis J. “Pluralism: Rashomon and Contested Conceptions of Criminality.” (2006) Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2006-11.

This paper is a Legal Studies paper written by Washington and Lee student Denis Brion in September 2006. In his paper, he uses the film Rashomon as the basis for his argument about pluralism in human perception carried into the various degrees of criminality. The film depicts four different reports of a violent crime in twelfth century Japan, told by three participators and one witness. These four perspectives are the extended to elaborate on the four modes of criminality and the four levels of individual human consciousness using the California Supreme Court case Taylor vs. Supreme Court as the specific case study. By providing a deep analysis of the aesthetics within the film Rashomon, Brion contends that the United States judicial system works as well by aesthetic acts. He begins by providing a close textual analysis of the four different storytellers in the film: the bandit, the woman, the man, and the witness. In parallel, he then goes on to closely evaluate the Taylor vs. Supreme Court case. Brion then extrapolates his argument into the subject of human nature playing its role in each case. After describing the four levels of consciousness alluded to above, he writes, in a phrase with which Kurosawa would surely agree with, that “perception is a hypothesis; and the reality we perceive is an interpretation.”

Primarily, this paper is extremely useful in a study of Kurosawa’s film Rashomon since it provides a scene by scene close textual analysis of the four different reports shown in the film. Furthermore, it provides a unique insight into the deeper human nature described in the film. Finally, its emphasis on a legal studies perspective in the discussion of the paper provide an important view on the nature of crime in the film, a point that is often overlooked in the greater narrative of perception.

Movies: Kurosawa Retrospective: Films That Won the West

Thomas, Kevin. “Movies: Kurosawa Retrospective: Films That Won the West.” Los Angeles Times 9 Jan. 1983: T16.

This article is a retrospective on director Akira Kurosawa’s body of work and appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 9, 1983. At this point in Kurosawa’s career, he warrants the description in the opening paragraph of the article as “the world’s greatest living director.” The article’s subject relates to the retrospective being exhibited in Kurosawa’s honor at the County Art Museum. The author Kevin Thomas then goes on to enumerate the many unique accomplishments and characteristics of Kurosawa which earned him the title attributed above. He states that above all Kurosawa’s films evoke a powerful, lingering response in the viewer, of any background. The author is clearly well-versed in the language of film, as he sites the specifics of Kurosawa’s mise en scène, camera movement, and overall narrative. He gives interesting insight into Kurosawa’s training, including his frequent family outings to movies in his youth, training as a painter and calligrapher, his work as a narrator for foreign silent, and being an apprentice screenwriter in accord with Japanese tradition. He points out that while Kurosawa brought Japanese cinema to the world stage, he stands out in his own community as a dynamic, and therefore Western, anomaly among traditional Japanese cinematographers.

This article provides a nice summary of the works of Akira Kurosawa, while highlighting with key example the reasons for his critical success in global cinema. The author balances the overall influence of Kurosawa culturally with specifics of technical film analysis. The information on Rashomon is very in depth, seeing as it’s the film which first established Kurosawa and Japanese cinema in the world’s eye. Consequently, the film is given much attention in the article and has some useful analysis passages. The quotes incorporated from Kurosawa himself paint the picture of the man and his work very well and give the reader insight into what drives this innovative man and therefore his work. Overall, he is depicted as human; yet his work makes him immortal.

Coming to terms : the rhetoric of narrative in fiction and film / Seymour Chatman.

Chatman, Seymour Benjamin, 1928- . Coming to terms : the rhetoric of narrative in fiction and film / Seymour Chatman. 0801424852 (alk. paper) series Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1990.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN212 .C47 1990

In the chapter A New Kind of Film Adaptation, Chatman counters the critique often aimed at film adaptations based on literature: that film adaptations take away from the audience's use of imagination by displaying everything on screen. Noted scholar Wolfgang Iser is quoted by Chatman saying that, "The point here is that the reader is able to visualize the hero virtually for himself. The moment these possibilities are narrowed down to one complete and immutable picture, the imagination is put out of action." Chatman argues that the imagination is not excluded by the visual medium of film and much can be left for the audience to imagine. In particular, dialogue and narration do not always present what the characters are thinking or feeling in film. For example, body language and expression often go unexplained by direct conversation or even diegetic context in the film.

Chatman mentions Rashomon as an excellent adaptation that invokes the audience's imagination. Although Kurosawa directly translates the dialogue and storyline from which the film is based onto the screen, the film still leaves it to the audience's imagination to try and resolve incongruities and figure out what actually happened. Each of the stories in Rashomon represents what the characters think and believe, however, imagination is not limited by this straightforward presentation of the characters' perspective. In fact, it turns out that these presentations are not straightforward after all. Although everything is presented to the audience visually, there is room to play with and entice the imagination of the audience.

In many ways, the term he uses, imagination, may be inadequate. What he is referring to is the workings of the human mind in its entirety. Rashomon inspires thoughts that do not fall under the scope of imagination, namely critical-thinking, rationalism and emotion. These thought processes make the audience active participants in the film.

Warrior's camera : the cinema of Akira Kurosawa / Stephen Prince.

Prince, Stephen, 1955- . Warrior's camera : the cinema of Akira Kurosawa / Stephen Prince. Rev. and expanded ed. 0691010463 (pbk. : alk. paper) series Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1999.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.3.K87 P75 1999

In the chapter 4, Experiments and Adaptations, Prince critically dissects the cinematography and editing techniques Kurosawa uses and points out which techniques were innovative and experimental when the film was released.

To start with, the pictorial and cinematic work in Rashomon explores the confines of a single setting, the grove where the death of the samurai character takes place. Kurosawa works within this physical spatial limitation by expanding the dynamic space for his character's emotions and psychology through cinematography and imagery. For example, Prince suggests that the play on light and shadow creates "a kind of spiritual and emotional labyrinth," hinting at the emotional depth Kurosawa bestows upon his characters. Also, camera movement gives depth to the characters as well by panning, shaking -- mimicking their emotional state. Long tracking shots and "sensuous" camera movements follow the woodcutter as he wanders through the forest, whereas jolting and aggressive shots characterize the film after the woodcutter discovers the dead samurai.

Hence, Kurosawa experiments with the narrative by invoking emotional depth in cinematography. Rashomon is quite similar to silent films, where everything is communicated solely through the characters' movements and filming techniques. Kurosawa does not settle for the dialogue as his sole means of narrative, he employs every constituent aspect of the film to this purpose as well.

The dialogue and the cinematography, both as narrative forms, complement each other and interweave to tell the five different accounts in the film. Clearly, as the accounts are conflicting versions of the same story, the dialogue is unreliable and subjective. But, because the imagery is coordinated through the perspective of the first-person, there are richer emotions projected in the film.

Philosophy of the film : epistemology, ontology, aesthetics / Ian Jarvie.

Jarvie, I. C. (Ian Charles), 1937- . Philosophy of the film : epistemology, ontology, aesthetics / Ian Jarvie. 0710210167 : series New York : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995 .J36 1987

Jarvie's chapter Rashomon: Is Truth Relative? discusses the film from a philosophical standpoint and examines what he calls the "Rashomon problem" as proposed by the film in the 1950's - simply, which person's storyline described in the film is true? Or is it even that none of them true as they are all mutually exclusive? Kurosawa does not imply that the samurai did not exist, or that the wife did not lose her husband. Instead, the construction of events, based on single-person perception tells "truths" based on their individual points-of-view.

In Rashomon, the audience is deliberately given too much information. They cannot coherently piece together the contradictory details and create a cogent picture of what happened. Jarvie argues that the film is more than only the truth relative to a point of view; it is also about each reality that the subjective truths attempt to describe and how those truths are interpreted through the character's perception of events.

Kurosawa uses several film techniques to show different points-of-view in Rashomon. He knows that the audience is able to transition across cuts to deduce what is going on; techniques such as eyeline matching, seamless sound, and complementary point-of-view shots, enable the audience is able to fill in the gaps between cuts. But Jarvie argues that Kurosawa goes beyond these simple editing tricks by showing the audience that in one setting, events are presented in a manner in which the mind cannot reconstruct. Hence, transitioning is made difficult, and the audience's sense of reality is thwarted. This effect is intentional and induces the audience to think about relativity in truth.

In addition, Kurosawa plays with point-of-view through the film's cinematography. Although each story is told from a first-person perspective, the cuts in the scene and the shifting of the camera do not make it clear who is speaking. The eye-witness is not in a fixed position, as to be assumed in first-person, and the point of view is shifted from one eye-witness to several. This freedom in filming that Kurosawa incorporates makes Rashomon even more of a challenge to the audience to view the chain of events as truth, which the audience may never solve.

Rashomon and seventeen other stories / Ryunosuke Akutagawa ; selected and translated with notes by Jay Rubin ; with an introduction by Haruki Murakami.

Akutagawa, RyuL