It is a paradox that such a small number (already canonized) films and directors have triggered such a vast number of western researches of Japanese film Studies of Japanese film are in the new phase of transition but they are still divided by an unreachable, original view from their own culture



When talking about the lost connection of humans to the world, Deleuze claims that the power of modern film restores faith in our world. The film Charisma (Karisumu, 1999) directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa adopts the traditional trope of accepting life as it is as grounds for a schizoid revolution: approaching the new world following a period of chaos - chaosmos. In a hostage situation, before murder and death begin, a kidnapper gives a policeman this message: “Restore the rules of the world”. The setting becomes representative of any space, a timeless landscape of a sick society and besieged nature. In the heart of a contaminated forest and a ruined sanatorium, there is a battle for the mysterious tree-cyborg, Charisma. The tree’s fanatical guard tells a policeman: “My goal is to restore the forest’s rules, which most likely are the rules of the world. You are Charisma.” Kurosawa’s film, characterized by a post-human state of dystopia and post-apocalyptic tone of radical individualism, is certainly the most provocative film in this program of heterogeneous (neo)nostalgic Japanese films. Within that context, this film is also a critique of an affective state that Jameson called “nostalgia for presence”. In postmodern Japanese discourse, the yearning for a selective re-creation of the past, described by the foreign word nosutarujii when it was adopted by popular culture in the 1970’s, at first was connected to certain mechanisms of oblivion essential to the evaluation of post-war realities.

Thanks to the Japanese Foundation, an indispensable organization for distributing Japanese culture internationally, we get to see films by three representatives of the Japanese New Wave of the 1990’s (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Nobuhiro Suwa, Junji Sakamoto), three directors who made their debuts in this century (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoshi Sasabi, Keiichi Nomura) and the most famous film in this program, Twilight Samurai, the first jidai-geki by Yoji Yamada, the popular director of family melodramas with contemporary themes.

The film Always: Sunset on Third Street (Always san-chôme no yűhi, 2005) by Takashi Yamazaki takes us back to the youth of the “technological apocalypse”. Yamazaki is a master of SF visual effects and in this film he reconstructed the building of the Tokyo tower, that symbol of the post-war optimism, economic booms and unity of the 1950’s, which are nostalgically evoked with the use of objects and souvenirs, food and music hits from that time.

The acclaimed debut film about young people 2/Duo (2/Dyuo, 1997) by Nobuhiro Suwa about the fear of emotions and yearning for togetherness, takes a look at the breach between idealization through memories and yearning and the aspects of reality that cannot be represented. Suwa follows the modernist practice of films about young people seishun eiga and a pseudo-documentary mode of filming that arises from the subsequent editing of actors’ material during the rehearsals and improvisations of a creative group.

A partial memory of retro culture is recycled by the eclectic Junji Sakamoto in his bizarre comedy about ghosts and yakuza Biriken (Billiken, 1996) and the dual appropriation of the American lucky charm Biriken, so-called “deity of luck” and “deity of things as they should be”, popular in Japan since 1908, as well as about the history of Tsutenkaku tower (Tower that reaches into the sky) in Osaka. Almost a century later Sakamoto liberates the real wooden Biriken (which disappeared when the original tower was closed down and subsequently replaced by the copy that sits in the tower today) from dead time and material.

The cross-cultural melodrama Chirosoku Summer (Chirusoku no natsu, 2003) by Kiyoshi Sasabe -- about the meeting of two strangers, a Japanese girl and a Korean man, at a student festival and their relationship over a period of thirty years -- portrays the differences, prejudices and conflicts between the three generations of Japanese and Korean nationality. The debut film by Keiichi Nomura Turn Over - An angel is coming (Futari biyori 2004) about the love and optimism of the older generation in the form of a pastiche, returns to the conventions of films about family themes gendai-geki, using the historically preserved architecture of traditional houses in the director’s hometown of Kyoto, which was once the place all historical films were shot.

The program ends with the nostalgic hybrid homu drama with samurais by the master of family film Yoji Yamada, Twilight Samurai (Tasogare Seibei, 2002), based on Shuhei Fujisawa’s short stories about the final years of the Tokugawa/Edo period. It is a requiem for humanity and the passing of the old world.

It is a paradox that such a small number (already canonized) films and directors have triggered such a vast number of western researches of Japanese film. Studies of Japanese film are in the new phase of transition but they are still divided by an unreachable, original view from their own culture and an external one that usually arises without knowing the language and preoccupied with questions from a far away perspective. The necessity to change rules of the established disciplines, need for research within the original reference frame and the only possible intervention - separate contextualization of each film, especially when talking about western readings, leads to the conclusion that “new studies of Japanese film in post-disciplinary time have to be political” (Yoshimoto) and that pictures of charisma can be revealed in one film. (Tanja Vrvilo)