Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1661585
Hwajin Lee
ABSTRACT After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937), the Japanese government restricted the importation of foreign films into Japan and its colonies. Wartime regulations influenced not just film trade between Japan and the Western countries, but also brought about further changes with regard to distribution and exhibition in colonial Korea. Seoul, the capital of colonial Korea, enjoyed the largest concentration of movie theatres on the Korean peninsula. As a local market of the Japanese empire, theatres in Seoul were directly affected by the changing dynamics of war. The unstable situation of the distribution and screening of foreign films continued until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 when commerce between Hollywood and Japan collapsed completely. This essay examines how imperial Japan controlled film imports and its impact on the screening of foreign films in colonial Seoul during wartime, while also discussing the complexities of wartime film culture as well as political and economic asymmetries affecting colonial Korea and mainland Japan.
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Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1675267
I. Hwa
In Discussing Joseon cinema, it is first necessary, though most ordinary, to consider the circumstances of the formation of Joseon cinema. No doubt Joseon cinema is a kind of Joseon’s modern culture in a comprehensive sense as well as an object originating from the formation of Joseon’s modern culture. This is the most self-evident fact for which there is no room for reconsideration. However, it is necessary to reflect upon the circumstances of Joseon cinema’s formation at the moment, because in any event, it is easy to regard film with bias. Needless to say, there are certain reasons for anybody speaking of film, whether it be a person directly involved with film or an unrelated third party, to be captivated by the bias to specify it as a particular form of art. This is because film is undoubtedly a distinctive form of art. In the history of other culture and art of all mankind, which have long traditions of thousands of years, it may be utterly inconceivable to think of the history of film, when it has less than half a century of tradition. It may be hard to imagine that a culture or art that has been formed in less than half a century may have a form and meaning of its own. Nonetheless, it is an undeniable fact that film is a culture and art of today. If this admirable contemporaneity is one reason to conceive film with a particular bias, another reason would be, let’s say, its commercial nature. At any rate, this other reason for fostering a temptation to isolate the history of film from that of the rest of the other culture and art seems to be found in its commercial nature and particular process of filmmaking. Though I know not enough to inquire further into this matter, I at least know there will no longer be a reason for film to be received with bias and regarded in isolation, considering the solemn fact that Joseon cinema is a culture based on Joseon people’s modern life upon which it has formed as an art form. I know it even without inquiring into every case of how film, from its invention to this day, has formed relationships with literature, visual arts, theater, and music. Besides, self-righteously thinking or arbitrarily judging the future and course of Joseon cinema would be an irresponsible manner of reasoning. Film may be considered to yield pleasure or even sheer amusement at times, but this is not a feature unique to film alone. Literature, theater, and music could also be the object of pleasure and hobby under certain circumstances; moreover, all forms of art amuse people to some degree. Therefore, to hastily regard film alone to be an amusement would be taking the trouble of disparaging film, or making an unreasonable attempt at isolating it from culture and art in general. Regarding solely film as amusement is a tendency that is mostly supported by or originated from film industrialists. But a genuine and healthy spirit of film culture would be one that safeguards the essential principles of art culture
{"title":"Discourse on Joseon cinema I (Chunchu 2, no. 11, November 1941) Im Hwa","authors":"I. Hwa","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2019.1675267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2019.1675267","url":null,"abstract":"In Discussing Joseon cinema, it is first necessary, though most ordinary, to consider the circumstances of the formation of Joseon cinema. No doubt Joseon cinema is a kind of Joseon’s modern culture in a comprehensive sense as well as an object originating from the formation of Joseon’s modern culture. This is the most self-evident fact for which there is no room for reconsideration. However, it is necessary to reflect upon the circumstances of Joseon cinema’s formation at the moment, because in any event, it is easy to regard film with bias. Needless to say, there are certain reasons for anybody speaking of film, whether it be a person directly involved with film or an unrelated third party, to be captivated by the bias to specify it as a particular form of art. This is because film is undoubtedly a distinctive form of art. In the history of other culture and art of all mankind, which have long traditions of thousands of years, it may be utterly inconceivable to think of the history of film, when it has less than half a century of tradition. It may be hard to imagine that a culture or art that has been formed in less than half a century may have a form and meaning of its own. Nonetheless, it is an undeniable fact that film is a culture and art of today. If this admirable contemporaneity is one reason to conceive film with a particular bias, another reason would be, let’s say, its commercial nature. At any rate, this other reason for fostering a temptation to isolate the history of film from that of the rest of the other culture and art seems to be found in its commercial nature and particular process of filmmaking. Though I know not enough to inquire further into this matter, I at least know there will no longer be a reason for film to be received with bias and regarded in isolation, considering the solemn fact that Joseon cinema is a culture based on Joseon people’s modern life upon which it has formed as an art form. I know it even without inquiring into every case of how film, from its invention to this day, has formed relationships with literature, visual arts, theater, and music. Besides, self-righteously thinking or arbitrarily judging the future and course of Joseon cinema would be an irresponsible manner of reasoning. Film may be considered to yield pleasure or even sheer amusement at times, but this is not a feature unique to film alone. Literature, theater, and music could also be the object of pleasure and hobby under certain circumstances; moreover, all forms of art amuse people to some degree. Therefore, to hastily regard film alone to be an amusement would be taking the trouble of disparaging film, or making an unreasonable attempt at isolating it from culture and art in general. Regarding solely film as amusement is a tendency that is mostly supported by or originated from film industrialists. But a genuine and healthy spirit of film culture would be one that safeguards the essential principles of art culture","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"186 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2019.1675267","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41880657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1661957
Aaron Gerow
ABSTRACT The recent surge in studies of Japanese film theory can be seen as an aspect of efforts to counter Eurocentrism in film studies and the aversion to theory in Japan studies. It could also help scholars think through the problem of utilizing theory in East Asian studies. Yet even if knowing the film theory of an era can help us understand the context of the films of that era, it should not simply serve as a sort of local informant for the foreign theorist. Just as there are problems in only rooting Japanese film theory in an age-old traditional aesthetics, there are issues in valuing that theory only to the degree it resembles Euro-American theory. That can lead to forms of theoretical ventriloquism or projected translations that only reinforce the geopolitics of theory centered in Europe. This can be a particular problem with Japanese film theory because it was caught between Japan’s imperial aspirations and Japan being subject to Euro-American neo-colonial influences. This “theory complex” can teach us much about the geopolitics of theory. Exploring Japanese film theory as a “minor film theory” may eventually even help “provincialize theory.”
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Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1661654
Pil Ho Kim
ABSTRACT The Golden Age of South Korean cinema was served a healthy dose of social realism soon after the April Revolution of 1960 with such outstanding films as Kang Dae-jin’s Mr. Park and A Coachman, Yu Hyun-mok’s Aimless Bullet, and Kim Su-yong’s Kinship. They not only shared the realistic portrayals of the poor and working class, but also the particular locale, Haebangchon (Liberation Village). Haebangchon was a wretched slum of Seoul where the early refugee population from North Korea (wollammin) had been concentrated since Liberation, hence the name. Relying on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of social production of space, I explain why this refugee space was such a focus of cinematic attention during the brief period of social realism. While wollammin became assimilated into mainstream South Korean society and the old Haebangchon shantytown mostly disappeared, the wollammin theme subsisted. Anticommunist films of the 1970s celebrated North Korean refugee vigilantes as national heroes, whereas the critical realism of the 1980s took pity on the wollammin experiences of poverty and discrimination. As the new century arrived, Haebangchon made a couple of brief, unexpected returns to Korean cinema, exposing an ongoing spatial transition that might possibly lead to a new kind of refugee space.
{"title":"In Liberation Village: the production of cinematic space for early North Korean refugees","authors":"Pil Ho Kim","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2019.1661654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2019.1661654","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Golden Age of South Korean cinema was served a healthy dose of social realism soon after the April Revolution of 1960 with such outstanding films as Kang Dae-jin’s Mr. Park and A Coachman, Yu Hyun-mok’s Aimless Bullet, and Kim Su-yong’s Kinship. They not only shared the realistic portrayals of the poor and working class, but also the particular locale, Haebangchon (Liberation Village). Haebangchon was a wretched slum of Seoul where the early refugee population from North Korea (wollammin) had been concentrated since Liberation, hence the name. Relying on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of social production of space, I explain why this refugee space was such a focus of cinematic attention during the brief period of social realism. While wollammin became assimilated into mainstream South Korean society and the old Haebangchon shantytown mostly disappeared, the wollammin theme subsisted. Anticommunist films of the 1970s celebrated North Korean refugee vigilantes as national heroes, whereas the critical realism of the 1980s took pity on the wollammin experiences of poverty and discrimination. As the new century arrived, Haebangchon made a couple of brief, unexpected returns to Korean cinema, exposing an ongoing spatial transition that might possibly lead to a new kind of refugee space.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"137 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2019.1661654","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48149528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1661653
Barbara E. Wall, Claus Nygaard Petersen
ABSTRACT Filial piety forms the core of human relations in Confucian morality. One form of filial piety is ‘filial cannibalism’, a term for incidents in which children offer their own flesh to their parents out of filial piety (Wang, Sixiang. 2012. “The Filial Daughter of Kwaksan: Finger Servering, Confucian Virtues, and Envoy Poetry in Early Chosǒn.” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 25 (2): 175–212). One method of filial cannibalism during the Joseon dynasty in Korea (1392–1910) was thigh slicing. This motif appears in Kim Ki-duk’s film Pietà, in which the male protagonist Gangdo slices his thigh and offers his flesh to Miseon, a woman pretending to be his mother. While many studies on Pietà examine the Christian references and decode the film’s title as a reference to compassion, this study suggests there is also value in examining Confucian references. The act of cannibalism in the film can be understood as initiation of compassion and filial piety, although it is still clear that the relation between Gangdo and Miseon is based on betrayal and revenge. Arguably, filial piety– the very core of Confucian morality– can be understood as representative of Confucianism itself, similar to the way that compassion is one of the central concepts of Christianity. The film’s disturbing usage of both concepts seems to reveal what Steve Choe calls the ‘possibility of ethical impossibility’ (Choe, Steve. 2007. “Kim Ki-Duk’s Cinema of Cruelty: Ethics and Spectatorship in the Global Economy.” Positions 15 (1): 65–90).
{"title":"Questioning ethical possibility: thigh slicing as ritual for the initiation of compassion and filial piety in Kim Ki-duk’s Pietà (2012)","authors":"Barbara E. Wall, Claus Nygaard Petersen","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2019.1661653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2019.1661653","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Filial piety forms the core of human relations in Confucian morality. One form of filial piety is ‘filial cannibalism’, a term for incidents in which children offer their own flesh to their parents out of filial piety (Wang, Sixiang. 2012. “The Filial Daughter of Kwaksan: Finger Servering, Confucian Virtues, and Envoy Poetry in Early Chosǒn.” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 25 (2): 175–212). One method of filial cannibalism during the Joseon dynasty in Korea (1392–1910) was thigh slicing. This motif appears in Kim Ki-duk’s film Pietà, in which the male protagonist Gangdo slices his thigh and offers his flesh to Miseon, a woman pretending to be his mother. While many studies on Pietà examine the Christian references and decode the film’s title as a reference to compassion, this study suggests there is also value in examining Confucian references. The act of cannibalism in the film can be understood as initiation of compassion and filial piety, although it is still clear that the relation between Gangdo and Miseon is based on betrayal and revenge. Arguably, filial piety– the very core of Confucian morality– can be understood as representative of Confucianism itself, similar to the way that compassion is one of the central concepts of Christianity. The film’s disturbing usage of both concepts seems to reveal what Steve Choe calls the ‘possibility of ethical impossibility’ (Choe, Steve. 2007. “Kim Ki-Duk’s Cinema of Cruelty: Ethics and Spectatorship in the Global Economy.” Positions 15 (1): 65–90).","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"170 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2019.1661653","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41763083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1661655
Jinsoo An
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the short-lived and easily overlooked cycle of Korean thriller films centring on mother characters in the mid-to-late-2000s. I call these films ‘mother thrillers.’ Through an analysis of the cycle’s key recurrent characteristics, I explore the reasons behind the popularity of this cycle, as well as the social commentary offered by such films. Focus is laid primarily on Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009) and Seven Days (dir. Won Shin-yeon, 2007) as examples of the sub-genre, though other films are also referenced. Before offering such analyses, the paper examines a film from the 1980s that can be labelled a direct precedent of contemporary mother thrillers: Park Chul-soo’s Woman Requiem (1985). By first exploring this film, the paper sets a historical precedent for the contemporary cycle, while also bringing awareness to this neglected work.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1600697
D. O’Neill
ABSTRACT The exclusion zone in Fukushima has become an object of intense interest for scientists and politicians where the rebound of wildlife is taken to be compelling evidence of nature’s resilience in the face of nuclear disasters. By taking up a range of cinematic works on re-wilding, this paper explores how ecological futures are reimagined through human and non-human interactions. It seeks to understand re-wilding as attempts to remake “life” by securing the future of the individual animal, the species it represents and the wider human ecology it helps to sustain. It will also explore how eco-media may redirect our attention to the participation of nonhumans in the making of nature, one that generates a certain dissonance in which the best interest of different forms of “life” may not always align.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1600696
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
ABSTRACT With a death toll surpassing 18,000, the events of 3.11 stand as an unprecedented disaster in post-World War II Japan. Yet we have not actually witnessed people dying, in Japanese mass media, due to self-censorship practices within the industry. Animals, however, are another story. The media have used animals’ corpses as a stand-in for what is otherwise impossible to make visible. In this article, I will carefully listen to the animals who have been forced to become the apparatus by which human death and suffering is rendered visible, or to stand in for disadvantaged groups – including women, children and foreigners – who tend to be overlooked in society. By paying careful attention to these ‘silent’ groups, this article will shed light on the problems immanent to contemporary Japanese mass media and society, as well as the counter-discourses – specifically documentary films – which have responded to this media landscape. The focus will be on three documentaries: Fukushima: Record of Living Things series (2013–2017), by Iwasaki Masanori, Little Voices from Fukushima (2015), by Kamanaka Hitomi, and A2-B-C (2013), by Ian Thomas Ash, an American filmmaker living in Tokyo. I will investigate the discriminatory post-nuclear disaster system governing discussion of Fukushima and the many ways it suppresses unprivileged voices such as the ones in these documentaries.
3月11日，日本发生了一场前所未有的灾难，死亡人数超过18000人。然而，我们并没有在日本大众媒体上看到有人因行业内的自我审查行为而死亡。然而，动物是另一回事。媒体用动物的尸体来代替原本不可能被看到的东西。在这篇文章中，我将仔细倾听那些被迫成为人类死亡和痛苦的机器的动物，或者为社会中往往被忽视的弱势群体——包括妇女、儿童和外国人——做替身的动物。通过仔细关注这些“沉默”群体，本文将揭示当代日本大众媒体和社会固有的问题，以及对这种媒体景观做出回应的反话语——特别是纪录片。重点将放在三部纪录片上：岩崎正典的《福岛：生命的记录》系列（2013-2017）、Kamanaka Hitomi的《福岛的小声音》（2015）和居住在东京的美国电影制作人Ian Thomas Ash的《A2-B-C》（2013）。我将调查核灾难后管理福岛讨论的歧视性制度，以及它压制非特权声音的许多方式，比如这些纪录片中的声音。
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Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1611013
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
More than eight years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. What changes, if any, has that dark day spelled for Japanese culture? In the wake of the 2011 earthquake, people throughout the country and the world were alarmed by the information pouring from the mass media sources; in the grip of a profound unease, many of us panicked, utterly uncertain what we should do. After 3/11, Ōnuma Yūji, who in 1988 as an elementary school student came up with the now-outdated motto ‘Nuclear Power is the Energy for a Bright Future!’ rewrote the slogan: ‘Nuclear Power: Energy That Cannot Be Controlled’ or ‘A Bright Future – once we Abandon Nuclear Power’. His spirited opposition to a disaster that cannot be undone has borne fruit, freeing many from the myth that nuclear power is safe. Yet at the same time, I feel an unsettling hopelessness in this sort of response. Would it not be better to ask, how can we all live in such a way as to gain access to a truly ‘bright future’? In the wake of Fukushima, the Japanese filmmakers discussed in these essays have been in search of an answer to that question. In considering the films that have been made since Fukushima, one thing is clear: every single one of them takes a political stance that seeks to create critical awareness. But when we speak of ‘critical awareness’, about what kind of phenomenon must we think more critically? In 1949, Martin Heidegger launched a series of lectures in Bremen entitled ‘Einblick in Das Was Ist (Insight into That Which Is)’. In these lectures Heidegger unveiled his philosophical theory of technology, outlining his deep skepticism – particularly vis-à-vis nuclear power – toward the nature of (then-) modern science and technology. Modern science and technology are at root what he called ‘Gestell (Enframing)’, a huge all-encompassing system, which incorporates human beings, nature and everything else in existence, and that, according to Heidegger, leads ultimately to nihilism. Embedded in his arguably rather mysterious theory of modern science and technology, Heidegger offers a valuable warning to us today about the nature of ‘crisis’: ‘The most critically dangerous aspect of any crisis... is the fact the true nature of the crisis – that it is a crisis – is being hidden’ (Heidegger 2003, 71). I argue that one of the goals of Heidegger’s theory of technology is to awaken humankind’s critical awareness. Fukushima was a civilizational error, one which has already happened and cannot be undone. Yet it may well be only a small part of the larger crisis modern technology has unleashed upon us. An enormous crisis may be looming, one which until now has been hidden from our sight, and if so, it is that crisis about which we must think deeply and critically. What, then, is the nature of this enormous crisis? I have not been able to encapsulate it in a single word yet but have
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Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1600695
Yutaka Kubo
ABSTRACT Post-3/11 mourning films have thus far gained little scholarly attention. This paper aims to correct that imbalance by analyzing a novel and three films that deal with loss and absence: Tendō Arata’s The Mourner and its film adaptation by Tsutsumi Yukihiko, as well as Nakagawa Ryūtarō’s films Calling and Tokyo Sunrise. While the type of loss in each film differs, all three films focus on mobility and absence in the process of mourning. This paper aims at expanding the scope of the study of so-called shinsaigo eiga (films dealing with the 3/11 tsunami and its aftermath) to include the role of mobility and absence in cinematic mourning as well as offering an analysis of a rare representation of male mourning in Japanese film in the wake of the recent spate of disasters that have afflicted Japan.
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