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Literary Review
Collector's delight
DONALD RICHIE is an American living in Japan. He has made Tokyo his home for four decades. But more importantly, his name has become synonymous with Japanese cinema, and one of the first stops that anybody out to explore the nation's culture is advised is Richie's home. A meeting with the elderly man is a must for a novice.
For, Richie, who arrived in Japan in January 1947 as a journalist for an American newspaper, began studying cinema and perfected the art of understanding it, difficult though it may have been given the nuances of a culture which is not only very different from that of the West, but also from the rest of Asia.
Richie studied Japanese film with the passion of a wide-eyed student, wrote many articles on it, even books. His latest work is certainly invaluable for those curious to follow the way the nation's celluloid medium has evolved ever since it was first seen in 1896. The tome stops with descriptions of contemporary movies.
But, I have a reservation. Richie concentrates on history and sets aside merely the last chapter for discussing modern films, say the last 20 years. Apart from the fact that Richie himself has written a book on early Japanese cinema, any number of other creative efforts can be found on this, both in the local language and English. What is virtually impossible to find is English writings on what is happening in the world of Japanese movies today, what has been happening for the past decade or so.
This period is significant: Often 1989 has been pointed out as the year which marked the beginning of a new, new wave. The man to herald this was Takeshi Kitano, whose cinema completely broke a certain chain set by the first masters, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu and Naruse. Kitano even set himself apart from the renowned directors of the 1970s and the 1980s, like Oshima, Imamura, Shinoda and Kon Ichikawa.
There were several helmers who, like Kitano, operated outside a fast crumbling studio system: Jun Ichikawa, Koreeda, Hashiguchi, Kumakiri, Miike, Harada and tens of others who have gone about painting a canvas quite different from the one Japan has been familiar with. One essential difference has been that these modern men have made a very personal kind of cinema.
While nobody can quarrel with Riche's analysis of Japan's yesteryear films, his casual treatment of today's movies leaves one disappointed. One would have expected him to give more or less equal space to both, keeping in mind that he himself had penned an introductory volume on the historical aspects of Japanese cinema, albeit in 1990.
This criticism aside, Richie makes a few interesting observations on some of the currents trends. On the teasing question of what makes Japanese cinema quintessentially different, something we instinctively recognise but stumble for words to express, Richie assists: "While Western plot stresses occurrence, causality and responsibility," he tells us, "Japan's traditional narrative means, the `suji,' emphasises sequential flow, connection, association."
Richie finds what he terms the presentational ethos more to the fore in the East, the representational ethos more dominant in the West: "The idea of a narrative proceeding through harmony and similarity, not often encountered in Western cinema, is seen again and again in Japanese movies."
Written with beautiful precision, laid out with striking photographs, the publication is a collector's delight.
A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, Donald Richie, Kodansha International, ¥3,500.
GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN
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