Cinema of Actuality by Yuriko Furuhata

7/28/2019 Cinema of Actuality by Yuriko Furuhata

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JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE FILMMAKING

IN THE SEASON OF IMAGE POLITICS

yuriko furuhata

c inema of actua l i ty



-f: , ,

Editors: Rey Chow, Michael Dutton, H. D. Harootunian, and Rosalind C. Morris



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Japan ese avant-Garde F ilmmakinG

in the season oF imaGe polit ics

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duke univers ity press | durham and london | 2013



© 0 Duke Uiversity Press

All rihts reserved

Prited i the Uited States

o America o acid-ree aer ♾

Desied by Amy Ruth Buchaa

Tyeset i Whitma by Tse

Iormatio Systems, Ic.

Library o Coress Cataloi-i-Publicatio Data

Furuhata, Yuriko, 9–

Ciema o actuality : Jaaese avat-arde

lmmaki i the seaso o imae olitics /

Yuriko Furuhata.

aes cm—(Asia-Pacic : culture, olitics, adsociety)

Icludes bibliorahical reereces ad idex.

isbn 9-0--90- (cloth : alk. aer)

isbn 9-0--0- (bk. : alk. aer)

. Motio ictures—Jaa—History—0th

cetury. . Motio ictures—Political asects—

Jaa—History—0th cetury. I. Title. II. Series:

Asia-Pacic.

pn99..j9 0

9.09—dc

00



acknowledgments

It is icredible how writi a book could eerate so may ecouters. While there were dicult times—rom locatin obscure materials to

bei stuck i what seemed like a dead-ed o research—ow that thebook is complete, happy moments prevail. The kernel o this project

ed ou dool deo I woe ude he ude o Réd

Besmaïa, Rey Chow, ad Mary A Doae at Brow Uiversity. Theiritellectual eerosity ad critical isiht ushed me to thik beyoddisciliary boudaries. As I bea to exlore the coectio betweemed eve d Jpee v-de lmmk ee, he ou

o the roect shited more toward media history. I the course o de- veloi the roect ito a book, I beeted rom ecouters ad co- versatios with a umber o scholars ad researchers. I would like to y hk e oup o ed d olleue whoe eey

ad itellectual rior I admire. They have take time to read drats o my chaters ad heled me develo my ideas: Thomas Lamarre, Masha Salazkia, Tess Takahashi, Alaa Thai, ad Teresa Villa-Iacio. Partso the book were reseted at coereces ad delivered as talks whereI received valuable eedback. I would like to thak i articular AaroGerow, Akira Mizuta Liit, Mark Abé Nores, Phili Rose, ad Mir- yam Sas or their elihtei commets ad ecouraemet at vari-ous staes o this roect.

I Motreal, I have oud a amazi commuity o rieds ad col-leaues at the Deartmet o East Asia Studies ad the World Cie-mas Proram at McGill Uiversity, as well as those at Cocordia Ui-



viii acknowledgments

versity ad the Uiversité de Motréal. From oyous à atheris toexhl demo o he ee o Moel o mul wokhop

ad study rous, they cultivated my belie i our collective uture. Iaddition to those whose names I have already mentioned, I want to

ive sincere thanks to Charles Acland, Alia Al-Saji, Brian Berstrom,

Erik Bordeleau, Luca Caminati, Michael Cowan, Kenneth Dean, Kay

Dickinson, Victor Fan, Grace Fon, Adrienne Hurley, Erin Mannin,

Rosanna Maule, Brian Massumi, Livia Monnet, Derek Nystrom, Ara

Osterweil, Matthew Peey, Elea Razloova, Carrie Retschler, PeterRist, Catherie Russell, Johae Sloa, Joatha Stere, Will Straw, To-shiya Ueo, Haidee Wasso, ad Robi Yates.

I the course o comleti this book, I discovered a covivial com-muy o Jpee em d v-de hol, whoe hol-

ship deeply inorms my own work. Many thanks o to Roland Do-

me, Sho Hyh, Gō Hw, Sheu Mu, Ae MKh,

Michael Raine, and Julian Ross. In particular, I want to thank Gō or

heli me coect with lmmakers, scholars, ad activists i Jaa.It was his pathbreakin research on fūkeiron that rst inspired me to

develo some o the chaters here. Likewise, I wat to thak the ol-lowin lmmakers or sharin their thouhts and allowin me to use

imaes rom their visual works: Adachi Masao, Kanai Katsu, Matsu-

moto Toshio, ad the late Wakamatsu Kōi.I cout mysel very ortuate to have met Ke Wissoker, my woder-

ul editor at Duke Uiversity Press. His costat assurace ad strosuort o my roect made the etire rocess o roduci the book eoyable. Ke ad the editorial sta—Elizabeth Ault ad Jessica Ryai articular—at Duke made me eel like I was o a shi with rst-ratenaviation. My sincere thanks also o to the two anonymous readers

whose illumiati commets heled me e-tue the mauscrit. I would also like to exted my ratitude to Harry Harootuia ad Rey Chow or invitin me to publish the book in their Asia-Pacic series.

Secial thaks also oes to Alai Chouiard, Valdis Silis, ad Patrick DeDauw or coyediti the mauscrit. I would also like to ackowl-ede the eerous udi rom the Fods Québécois de Recherche surla Société et la Culture (qrsc), which allowed me to conduct addi-

tioal research i Jaa to comlete this book.May others have heled me over the years, ad some o them de-

eve o e hked o h he houh d o ju e hee

ood rieds: David Beri-Porter, Roxae Carter, Josh Guilord, No-



introduction

I Juy 98, he popul lm mze Eiga Geijutsu (Flm ) pu-

lished a dialoue—sensationally titled “Fascist or Revolutionary?”—

ewee Ohm N, lmed ée d -epeeve

o Jaaese New Wave ciema, ad Mishima Yukio, a reowed ov-elist who was to stae a ailed cou d’état ad ritual suicide as a sec-tacular media event two years later. The dialoue is intriuin not so

much because it sugests a rare oit o areemet betwee Oshima d Mhm, who e odeed o d oppo ed o he pe-

trum o olitical activism (the atiatioalist Let ad the ultraatio-alist Riht). Rather, the dialoue is ascinatin because it hihlihts

their shared interest in television and, more broadly, in the political

eects o televisually iduced media evets. Oshima ad Mishima co-cur that the New Let eeratio o Jaaese studet rotesters are thechildre o televisio whose olitical actios are deely coditioed by the ubiquitous resece o the ews camera. Oshima calls this media-coscious orm o studet rotest a “exressive act” aki to a artisticerormace. Mishima criticizes this view by oti that the substitu-tio o olitical actio by the exressive act attests to the bleakess o the television ae in which they all live. Oshima, in contrast, reards

this blurri o the boudary betwee artistic erormace ad oliti-l o pove lh, ue h he vey me o pol

ad art should be rethouht i liht o this situatio.1Ohm d Mhm wee o loe emk o he med o-

sciousess o studet rotesters duri the so-called seaso o olitics



2 introduction

(seiji no kisetsu) that eruted i the late 90s ad early 90s. Variousactios o studet rotesters alleedly chose the colors o their ubiq-uitous costructio helmets (wor duri rotests) based o how they would look on color television.2 Both the dialoue and this anecdote

point to the increasin imbrication o politics and media in Japan, to

which the rise ad cosolidatio o televisio reatly cotributed. Theseaso o olitics, which coicided with the olde era o letist ide-edet ad avat-arde lmmaki ractices, was, i eect, the sea-so o image olitics.

Oshima’s call to redene politics and art in liht o the media-

coscious studet rotesters also sheds liht o a little- studied asecto Jaaese olitical avat-arde lmmaki i the 90s: the tesiobetwee ouralistic media ad ciema that became visible aaist thebackdrop o intensiyin imae politics. Durin the 960s, the prox-

imity between cinema and journalism ained wide attention rom

critics ad lmmakers. Political avat-arde lmmakers started to a-proximate—or, more precisely, to appropriate—television and other

journalistic media orms. This avant-ardist appropriation o journal-

ism marks a imortat but overlooked tedecy withi ostwar Jaa-ee em. The mely ppopo o eol ew, hh-pole

media evets, ad other toical imaes widely circulati i the ressby lmmakers such as Oshima Naisa, Matsumoto Toshio, WakamatsuKōi, ad Adachi Masao i the 90s ad early 90s oits to a collec-tively shared cocer with ouralistic actuality. For the sake o clarity,I will call this body o lms the “ciema o actuality.” The sectacularterrain o sensational newsmakin and media events in particular at-

tracted these avat-arde lmmakers, but their aroriatio o our-alism was ot a simle reversio back to ciema’s early social uctioas a “visual ewsaer.”3 Istead, the ouralistic roductio o sec-tacular ad sesatioal ews became a comlex site o calculated a-roriatios ad critical exerimetatios i the 90s, as these Jaa-ese avat-arde lmmakers raled with the itertwied questioso how to radicalize ciema i liht o the escalati mediatizatio o olitics ad how to situate ciema withi a raidly chai media e- vironment.4 The appearance o the cinema o actuality was hence an

extremely timely resose to rooud chaes occurri i the Jaa-ese media shere.

Althouh these lmmakers belon to the eneration o cinéastes

who have bee subsumed uder the cateory o New Wave, ot all o



introduction 3

the so-called New Wave lmmakers cotributed to the ciema o actu-ality.5 Likewise, the lmmakers whose works I analyze in this book

have aities with uderroud ad lesser-kow exerimetal lm-makers, such as Jōouchi Motoharu, Okabe Michio, ad Kaai Katsu, who do ot aear i most studies o the Jaaese New Wave. I heceeschew the clichéd label New Wave i avor o the term political avant-

garde in describin the lmmakers whose works orm the cinema o

actuality. The term political avant- garde ackowledes the ermeability ewee ommel d udeoud om o lmmk— peme-

ly h eed y he em New Wave.6 The ommo ee o

aroriati ad recycli curret, toical, ad ote sesatioal ma-terials culled rom the realm o ouralism should also be read aaistthe historical situatio o the 90s, a decade marked by a seemily edle ee o eleved o, hjk, hoe e, d

mass street protests. My arument is that cinema—itsel an appara-

tus o spectacle—became a testin round or the refexive critique

o media spectacle precisely at this moment in Japan. Central to my

aalysis is the chai cocetio o ciema i relatio to televisioand other imae-based media; this chane is reistered by the risin

emed ooue mo he lmmke whoe wok om he

ciema o actuality.

the Journalistic turn

The ouralistic tur o olitical avat-arde lmmakers i the 90s isexemlied by the icreased discursive currecy o a loa word: aku-

chuaritii (actuality). This term started to widely circulate in the Japa-

nese discourses on lm, photoraphy, television, and literature dur-

i the late 90s ad became oe o the key cocets used to discussthe political ecacy o art throuhout the 960s. The broad rane o

connotations (topicality, newsworthiness, currentness, contemporary

relevance, and actuality) attached to the term actuality is interal to

understandin why journalism became an object o critique or lm-

makers concerned with the political ecacy o cinema. Another key

term that entered the Japanese lm-theoretical discourse durin this

eriod was eizō (imae), which aied currecy aroud the same timeas the ouralistic cocet o actuality bea to circulate amo avat-arde circles. The term eizō was oten invoked in order to articulate

ciema’s relatio to televisio, the ewly domiat medium that e-



4 introduction

erated stron sensations o actuality. The concurrent prolieration o

discourses o the imae ad actuality attests to a historical correlatiobetwee these two cocets as well as to the imact o televisio.

Not surprisinly, these intertwined discourses on the imae and

actuality arose whe the Jaaese lm idustry itsel was uderoi a siicat restructuratio. Sice the late 90s, televisio had steadily eclipsed cinema as a prime source o entertainment, brinin about

the ast declie o the vertically iterated Jaaese lm idustry. Thedisinteration o the industry, as the narrative oes, in turn enabled

small independent production companies to fourish in the 960s.

This decade thus came to be kow as the olde ae o ideedetcinema, a decade marked by an outburst o experimental and avant-

arde lm productions. The establishment in 96 o the Art Theatre

Guild ( atg)—a uique roductio, distributio, ad exhibitio com-pany exclusively dedicated to the dissemination o art cinema—was

emblematic o these istitutioal chaes.7 Almost all the lmmakers whose works are aalyzed i this book exhibited their lms at the ArtTheatre Shiuku Buka or its uderroud couterart, Theatre Scor-po (So-z). Nmed e Keeh Ae’ expemel lm Scorio

Rising (9) by oe other tha Mishima, Theatre Scorio was a ei-ee o Jp’ udeoud lm ulue d hopo o v-de

theater, experimental music, and intermedia perormances. Located

below Shinjuku Bunka in Tokyo, this clandestine basement art space

hosted lively discussios o olitics ad art, ad ostered close collabo-o mo lmmke, mu, phoophe, peome -

ists, and playwrihts. A rowin number o intermedial experiments

that deed covetioal boudaries betwee dieret media emereddirectly rom this social ad cultural milieu.

This rouh sketch o the sociocultural cotext o the 90s that averise to the ciema o actuality, however, is erhas ot comlete with-out a ew additioal remarks. Oe such elemet is the traser o thericial roductio site o visual ews rom the lm idustry to thetelevision industry. Durin the 90s, newsreel theaters specializin

in newsreels, short animations, and documentary lms fourished in

Japan. Major national newspaper companies, such as Asahi, Yomiuri,

ad Maiichi used to domiate the roductio o ewsreels, with eachrui its ow lm roductio comay reularly sulyi ewsreelhee wh he podu. Mjo udo uh Shōhku lo e

roduci ad marketi ewsreels or visual ewsaers (me no shin-



introduction 5

bun) as early as 90.8 I the 90s ad throuhout the 90s, the sameewsaer comaies shited their ocus ad ivestmet rom lm toelevo, whle ou o exe ool ove he joul phee

o ews roductio. Televisio radually relaced ewsreel theaters asthe ricial chael o dissemiati visual ews. The ciematic e-eme wh he eo o uly h emeed he 90 w,

aruably, a resose to this shit. Beore the rise o televisio, ciema was a rivileed medium or caturi the momet: it was the visualmedium o actuality. Yet the raid develomet o ews shows o televisio, alo with the ostwar restructuri o the lm idustry with emph o pom pue ed o he yem, ly

weakeed ciema’s associatio with actuality. The ouralistic tur o olitical avat-arde lmmaki duri the 90s came ater this ru-ture, which severed ciema’s aity with ews ouralism. I this re-ard this ouralistic tur was, artly, a esture o return to the oriialasciatio with the sesatio o actuality that ciema used to imarti the early days.

A umber o semial theoretical texts o the mass media ad tele- vo wee lo led o Jpee du he 90. Fo e,

Daiel J. Boorsti’s ifuetial text, The Image: Or What Happened to the

American Dream? (92), ppeed lo 94, he ye o he

Tokyo Olymics, which boosted the atiowide sale o televisio sets.The ollowi year the rst traslatio o Walter Beami’s texts a-eared, icludi his essay “The Work o Art i the Ae o MechaicalReroductio,” which came out i rit three years rior to its Elishtraslatio. Marshall McLuha’s 9 bestseller, Understanding Media:

The Extension of Man, was traslated i 9, accelerati the so-calledMcLuha boom i Jaa, ad stirri assioate debates o the rela-tion between contemporary art and mass media.1 But i these newly

translated texts ound enthusiastic receptions rom critics and artists

i Jaa, it is because these readers already were amiliar with may o the theoretical issues articulated i these texts. Amo my aims ithis book is to reset the theoretical ad discursive cotext o debatesaroud the imae that receded ad accomaied the traslatios o such texts, ad that reared the way or their wide recetio.

The ocus o the discursive cotext oits to aother itervetioI hope to make: to shed liht on the important relationship between

heoy d pe mo poll v-de lmmke o he me.

There is a eduri miscocetio o Jaaese lm culture, amely



6 introduction

the assumption that “the very notion o theory is alien to Japan; it is

cosidered a roerty o Euroe ad the West,” to ivoke Noël Burch’smemorable statemet.11 Eve today, the term theory withi lm studiespredominantly—and almost exclusively—reers to theoretical writ-

ins penned by European and North American critics and scholars,

as is evidet i the ocus o umerous atholoies beari the words“Film Theory” in their title. Yet there is irony in this exclusivity. For

one, Japanese cinema played a sinicant role in the development o

the lm theory that emered in the 960s and the 970s (also called

0s lm theory or scree theory). Jaaese ciema, as Mitsuhiro Yoshi-moto notes, was instrumental at this ormative stae o lm studies

as a discipline in North America. Some o the canonical texts o this

lm theory drew heavily o the work o Jaaese lmmakers such asOzu ad Oshima.12 The critical role Oshima’s work layed is esecially visible in infuential texts such as Stephen Heath’s “Narrative Space”

(976).13 In spite o such accrued interests in Japanese cinema in the

90, howeve, h heoel duo o he em h Ohm

ad his cotemoraries eerated have ot received due attetio.14Disprovin Burch’s claim beore the act, many o the avant-arde

lmmakers at the time also thouht o themselves as theorists. And

their writis, ublished i umerous lm ourals (Kiroku Eiga, Eiga

Hyōron, Eiga Hihyō, Eizō Geijutsu, ad so o), were i close coversatio with the lmmaki ractices o the time. This is articularly true ithe case o someoe like Matsumoto, who searheaded the exerime-tal lm ad video art scee o the 90s ad 90s. Matsumoto’s rstbook, Discovery of the Image: Avant- garde and Documentary (Eizō no hak-

ken: Avangyarudo to dokyumentarii, 96) had a wide-reachin impact

o his cotemoraries, icludi Oshima, his reatest rival, ad o theollowin eneration o experimental lmmakers, such as Adachi, Jō-

nouchi, and others who conreated around the an Film Research

Ceter (a lmmaki collective ormed by ormer studet lmmakersrom Niho Uiversity). Similarly, we caot overlook the equally i-fuetial role layed by a earlier eeratio o letist itellectuals likeHaada Kiyoteru i isiri the ostwar eeratio o olitical avat-arde lmmakers. Matsumoto, Oshima, Adachi, and others took seri-

ouly Hd’ ll o yheze he v-de d doumey ,

and they also consciously inherited the activist notion o the “move-

met” (undō) that Haada’s cohort o avat-arde artists advocated ithe 90s. The activist ede o political avant-arde lmmakin that



8 introduction

a criminal. It is this imposition o moral judment unleashed by the

imae ad by ewsmaki ractice that Nakahira obects to.Nakahira’s critique o the manipulatin power o the imae orms

the erect obverse o Oshima’s observatio that the arameters o oli-tics have reatly chaed sice the emerece o media-savvy studetprotesters, underlinin the act that the critique o the imae was by

o meas uiorm across the Let. Their comlemetary take o televisio ad its ower sugests how ambivalet the mediated aeal o the sectacle could be eve or those o the Let who ostesibly sharethe same critical stace toward olitics. The sectacle works ot oly i avor o oe who beets rom the existi structure o domiatio,but also or those who cotest it. For the camera-coscious rotesters,he ey o de o ede muh he de poe o

dissemiatio throuh the media as i the actio itsel. A clear distic-tio betwee directess ad idirectess, or the immediacy o actioad the mediatedess o its imae, becomes uteable. I this Jaaese versio o the society o the sectacle, what we d is the udametalambivalece o the imae.

I Nakahira’s distrust o televisio comes close to Guy Debord’s well-kow critique o the sectacle, Oshima’s call to recocetualize oli-tics in liht o the spectacle reminds us o Jacques Rancière’s recent

critique o Debord’s narrow denition o the spectacle as a source o

disempowerment.18 For Oshima, the deliberate act o settin up and

he poe o he me oh o e deed. Mhm,

i the dialoue reerred to above, assumes that there is a essetial di-erence between a real political action and a theatrical or expressive

act (with which he alins student protests), and would thus seem to

be i areemet with Nakahira’s critique o the sectacle. Oshima, othe other hand, insists that such a distinction no loner holds. Here,

Oshima miht be envisionin the relation between politics and the

spectacle in the manner comparable to Rancière, who overturns the

Platoic reudice imlicit i Debord’s eative view o the searatiobetwee the sectacle ad the sectator.1 Racière’s uderstadi o politics as somethin spectacular is a view that Oshima stronly es-

ouses i his coversatio with Mishima ad i his lmmaki rac-tice throuhout the 960s. For Oshima, the expressive act o student

activists is ote immediately olitical, ad olitics i tur is radically recoured throuh the dramatic act o stai the sectacle that at-temts to dislocate ad disrut the existi olice order.



introduction 9

As is evidet i the disareemet betwee Oshima’s ad Nakahira’scritique o televisio, however, the Jaaese letist discourse o oliticsad the sectacle i the 90s ad early 90s is ar rom uiorm: thesectacle is variably viewed as a olemical obect o critique as well asa site o emowermet. I short, the roblem with the imae roducedad relayed by televisio or these critics resides ot i its sectacularppee pe e; he deve om he ed o whh eve. Th

duality o the imae as a meas ad a medium became, i eect, a re-curret roblem or olitical avat-arde lmmakers. I the mediatiuctio o the imae i ciema ad televisio received such itesescrutiy by olitical avat-arde lmmakers ad critics i the 90s, itis recisely because olitics could o loer be thouht aart rom theudametal ambivalece o the sectacle. This ambivalece marks theciema o actuality ad thus iorms the tesio betwee ciema adouralism.

I order to set u the mai ramework o aalysis, I trace i chater the eealoy o the term eizō (“imae”) ad examie its sudde roli-eratio i the wake o televisio. Beii i the late 90s, theoreti-cal and popular discourse on cinema in Japan increasinly dealt with

the questio o ciema’s secicity i relatio to other orms o imae-maki media. The cocet that layed a crucial role here was eizō, a term that dominated the debates around imae- makin practice, and

which desiates a secial class o imaes roduced ad mediated by a techoloical aaratus. This rowi cocer with the imae, whichtook shae i various orms o imae theories rom the late 90s adthrouhout the 90s, also heled to revive discussios about ciema d medum pey. Thouh loe ly o Mumoo’ d

Ohm’ emedl expeme wh ll phoophy d he om

book, I lay the roudwork or the cosideratio o the ciema o actu-ality withi a wider media-historical cotext.

The imae is, o course, a topic that has received much attention

in North America in recent years throuh the work o theorists such

as W. J. T. Mitchell, Anne Friedber, Jean-Luc Nancy, Geores Didi-

Huberma, ad Marie-José Modzai. There has bee a rowi iter-est i the status o the imae i cotemorary societies amo scholarso lm studies, media studies, cultural studies, ad art history, i artbecause o the rowi romiece o diital media that radically re-coured our uderstadi o the materiality o the imae. However,this widely shared iterest i the imae has bee marked by a curious



10 introduction

tendency toward eneralization that seems to leave out questions re-

lati to its historical ad cultural secicity. Scholars have too oteued he wod image o me yh om he epeeo o o-

ect i oe’s mid to a aiti, a hotorah, or a comuter scree.2The hoom o h ppoh h he me ome o eomp

yh om e ve p o phoo dplyed o lpop,

all while its implicit rootedness in Judeo-Christian epistemoloy re-

mais uquestioed. Just as the term theory has bee assumed to be aexclusive roerty o the West (Euroe ad North America), the termimage in the disciplines o the humanities oten presupposes its epis-

temoloical roots i this Wester or Judeo-Christia traditio. My at-temt to ma out the eealoy o the term eizō is iteded to rovidea alterative ramework o aalysis rouded i the historical ad cul-tural coditios o the ostwar Jaaese media eviromet.

Accomayi the discourse o the imae I discuss i chater is aequally romiet cocer with the cocet o actuality. Extedi theiterroatio o ciema’s relatio to other media, i chater I histori-cally situate the tesio betwee ciema ad ouralism, ad ask what was at stake i these ciematic exerimets. I order to thik throuhthis questio, I ocus o the coectio betwee theatricality ad actu-ality. Tracin the tension between the documentary understandin o

lmic actuality as actuality ad the ouralistic cocetio o actuality oply, I exme key dee Jpee lm heoy uoud

this concept o actuality. These debates inorm my analysis o Matsu-

moto’s ad Oshima’s timely aroriatio o hih-role media evetsand news in lms such as For the Damaged Right Eye (96), Funeral

Parade of Roses (99), Death by Hanging (9), ad Diary of a Shinjuku

Thief (969). Instead o simply reproducin the journalistic sensation

o actuality, these lms, which ote directly aroriate ad “remedi-ate” toical media evets, reveal the costitutive artice at the heart o actuality, or what I call “artiactuality” (ollowi Jacques Derrida).21

I chater I exted the ivestiatio o artiactuality by hihliht-i the temoral dierece betwee two ecoomies o the imae: our-alism ad ciema. The markedly exerimetal “Pik” or sotcore lmsby Wakamatsu Kōi, which cosciously ad switly aroriate cotem-orary media evets, rovide a uique vatae oit to aalyze this di-erece. Wakamatsu’s lms rom the 90s ad early 90s lay with a well-calculated timi o the ciematic aroriatio o media evetsthat eerated a itese sesatio o actuality. By situati Wakama-



introduction 11

tsu’s ractice withi the larer olitical climate o the time, I exlorehow h mode o em eveo w epod o he e-

i mediatizatio o olitics—both let wi and riht wi—that televisio acilitated.

I chater I retur to the relatio betwee ciema ad ouralism,this time with a emhasis o the way i which this relatio was rob-lematized i the lm discourse o the fūkeiron (“theory o ladscae” or“ladscae theory”) ad its attedat lmic works: A.K.A. Serial Killer (99), expemel doumey lm ho y Adh, d The Man

Who Left His Will on Film (90), a exerimetal arrative lm shot by Oshima. These two lms and the concomitant discourse o ūkeiron

added a new dimension to Japanese lm theory, as they approached

the imae o ladscae i terms o state ower, ad overmetal co-trol over urba sace i articular. By drawi attetio to the ormalsimilarity between the actuality lms o early cinema and these two

ladscae lms, I show how the ormal stratey o ocusi o emty landscapes helped these lmmakers to develop a new ramework or

aalyzi the olici ower o the state.I chater I ivestiate a case i which the ciema o actuality di-

rectly coroted televisio. I this chater I closely aalyze Wakama-tsu and Adachi’s sinular propaanda news lm, The Red Army/ pflp:

Declaration of World War (97), which opens with remediated news

ootae o airplane hijackins. Comparin The Red Army/ pflp’s use o

televisual news and imaes o the landscape to the remarkably simi-

lar work Here and Elsewhere (97), a lm shot by Jean- Luc Godard,

Jea-Pierre Gori, ad Ae-Marie Miéville, I examie how these lmscomlicate the ideal o militat ciema. Emhasis is laced o the te-sio betwee the alleed directess o a militat actio, such as hiack-i, ad the alleed idirectess o the ciematic mediatio o such aactio.

In the conclusion I map out the eventual decline o the cinema o

actuality i relatio to two eochal evets o the 90s: the World’s Fairin Osaka (Expo 70) held in 970 and the hostae crisis known as the

Asama Sansō Incident in 97. By tracin the structural transorma-

tio i the overmetal cotrol over urba sace, the olici o thecotiuity betwee street olitics ad ciema, the rise o video art, adthe icreasi retreat o imae-maki ractices ito eclosed saceso exhibitio, I situate the ed o the seaso o imae olitics i a widerhistorical cotext.



12 introduction

I sum, I take as my oit o dearture the resuositio that Jaa-ese avat-arde ciema o the 90s ad early 90s must be situatedrmly within its theoretical and its medial contexts. It is thus to the

discourse o the imae ad the bureoi itermedia ractice that Iow tur.



204 notes to introduction

mediatized by the exchange value system o abstraction).” Jean Baudrillard,

“Requiem or the Media,” in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign,

trans. Charles Levin (St. Louis: Telos, 1981), 175–76.

5 David Desser’s seminal work, Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the

Japanese New Wave Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988),defnes the Japanese New Wave as a body o “flms produced and/or re-

leased in the wake o Oshima’s A Town of Love and Hope, lms which take

an overtly political stance in a general way or toward a specic issue, uti-

lizing a deliberately disjunctive orm compared to previous lmic norms

in Japan” (4). While Desser’s analysis o the New Wave as an “avant-garde

artistic movement” is useul, his denition o the New Wave presupposes

the autonomy o flm history and cinema’s independence rom other

media orms such as television and photography. His is hence a strictly

flm-historical perspective, which locates an internal rupture—ormaland thematic—within the already circumscribed boundary o Japanese

cinema. My approach difers rom Desser’s on two points. First, the lms

I discuss in this book do not stand in or the general category o the New

Wave cinema. Second, I approach this unique moment in the history o

lmmaking in Japan rom the media-historical perspective that takes into

consideration parallel events happening in the adjacent elds o cinema,

photography, and journalism.

6 In using the term political avant- garde, I gesture toward the discursive nexus

between the theorization o cinema as a political orm and the practice o avant-garde lmmaking that we nd in D. N. Rodowick’s seminal work on

political modernism, The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology

in Conemporry Film Theory (Berkeley: Uvery o Clor Pre, 1988).

My use o the term political avant- garde also draws on Peter Wollen’s analysis

o the avant-garde tradition that inherits the language o Marxism and oper-

e o he perphery o he ommerl yem. See Peer Wolle, “The Two

Avant-Gardes,” in Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter- Strategies (Lon-

don: Verso, 1982), 92–104.

7 The atg started as an association o ten movie theaters committed to thedistribution and exhibition o “art lms” as opposed to commercial program

pure d Hollywood flm. The de o elh he atg ored he

activities o a group o cinephiles and cinéastes named Nihon Aato Shiataa

Undō no Kai (Japanese Association or an Art Theatre Movement), which

promoted the establishment o noncommercial theaters exclusively devoted

to the presentation o art lms. In addition to distributing and exhibiting art

lms—most o which were independently produced oreign lms—at atg-

owned movie theaters, the Art Theatre Guild also started to produce lms

made by independent Japanese lmmakers, including young directors suchas Imamura Shōhei, Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, Yoshida Kijū, Hani



notes to introduction 205

Susumu, and Kuroki Kazuo, who were already making lms on the periph-

ery o the industry. For more inormation on the history o the atg, see Satō

Tadao, atg eiga o yomu: 60 nendai ni hajimatta meisaku no aakaibu [Reading

atg lms: An archive o classics that started in the 1960s] (Tokyo: Firumu

Aato-sha, 1991); and Ushida Ayami, atg Eiga + Shinjuku [ atg lms + Shin-juku] (Tokyo: D-bungaku Kenkyūkai, 2007).

8 Fujioka Atsuhiro, “Kindaika suru toshi no eiga kankyaku” [The Film Spec-

tators o Modernizing Cities] in Eigagaku teki sōzōryoku [The Imagination

o Film Studies], ed. Katō Mikirō (Tokyo: Jinbunshoin, 2006), 33. These

newspaper conglomerates largely controlled newsreel production, except

dur wrme, whe he overme oolded ll he produo om-

panies into a single corporation (Nippon News) under the 1939 Film Law,

and during the immediate postwar years (1945–52), when lm production

was subjected to the military censorship o the Allied occupation orces.For an analysis o wartime lm production in relation to state policies, see

Peter B. High, Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War,

1931–1945 (Mdo: Uvery o Wo Pre, 2003). For llured

account o newsreels produced by Nippon News, see Kitajima Noboru, Nip-

pon nyūsu eigashi: Kaisen zen’ya kara shūsen chokugo made [Film history o

Nippon News: From the eve to the wake o the war] (Tokyo: Mainichi Shin-

bunsha, 1977). For a study o the culture o censorship and Japanese cinema

in the occupation era, see Kyoko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Under

the American Occupation, 1945–1952 (Washington: Smithsonian InstitutionPress, 1992).

9 See Mitsunobu Sugiyama, “Media and Power in Japan,” in De-Westernizing

Media Studies, ed. James Curran and Myung- Jin Park (London: Routledge,

2000), 192: “What is particularly interesting concerning Japan’s television

broadcasts is that all our o the Tokyo-based key stations enjoy close re-

lationships with Japan’s prominent national newspapers: tbs with the Mai-

nichi, Nippon Television (nt ) with Yomiuri, Fuji Television (cx) with the

Sankei, and t Asahi ( ann) with Asahi. Even Nikkei is tied-up with Tokyo’s

local station, t Tokyo (tn).”10 Matsui Shigeru, “Tōno Yoshiaki no terebiteki na . . .” [Tōno Yoshiaki’s tele-

visual . . .] (paper presented at the Yebisu lm estival at Tokyo Metropoli-

tan Museum o Photography, Tokyo, Japan, 11 February 2011). Matsui Shi-

geru argues that the ervent interest in McLuhan exhibited by Japanese art

critics such as Tōno Yoshiaki was a continuation o Japanese art discourse’s

engagement with mass-communication theory, which social psychologists

and sociologists associated with the study group Shisō no Kagaku (such as

Shimizu Ikutarō and Tsurumi Shunsuke) had introduced in the 1950s. This

interest in mass communication and mass media, especially television, alsoinorms some o the activities o postwar avant-garde collectives, such as



206 notes to introduction

Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai, which brought together letist intellectuals includ-

ing Hanada Kiyoteru. I want to thank Marc Steinberg or noting that the

McLuhan boom preceded the translation o Understanding Media.

11 Noël Burh,To he Disn Observer: Form nd Menin in he Jpnese Cinem,

reved d eded y Aee Mhelo (Berkeley: Uvery o Clor Press, 1979), 13.

12 See Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “Japanese Cinema in Search o a Discipline,”

in Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Durham: Duke University

Press, 2000), 8–49.

13 See Stephen Heath, “Narrative Space,” Screen 17.3 (1976): 19–75; and Noël

Burch, “Oshima Nagisa,” in To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the

Japanese Cinema, revised and edited by Annette Michelson (Berkeley: Uni-

versity o Caliornia Press, 1979), 325–44.

14 This scarcity o attention paid to Japanese flmmakers’ theorization o cinema outside Japan is epitomized by the lone publication o Cinema, Cen-

sorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima (1992). This book was to

remedy he uo whh, Aee Mhelo pu , “lle or oe o

Japan’s critical or theoretical production” was available to English- language

readers. See Annette Michelson, “Introduction,” in Cinema, Censorship,

and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, by Oshima Nagisa, edited by

Annette Michelson, translated by Dawn Lawson (Cambridge: it Press,

1992), 4. My book will by no means solve this problem in its entirety, but it

intends to ll in this disciplinary lacuna. In this regard, I share the commit-me o rhvl reerh o Jpee flm heory d rm h oud

in the recent works o Aaron Gerow, such as his Visions of Japanese Moder-

nity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895–1925 (Berkeley:

University o Caliornia Press, 2010), and in Abé Mark Nornes’s Forest of

Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary (Minneapolis:

University o Minnesota Press, 2007) and Japanese Documentary Film: The

Meiji Era through Hiroshima (Minneapolis: University o Minnesota Press,

2003).

15 Nakahira Takuma, “Kiroku to iu gen’ei: Dokyumento kara monyumento e”[The document called illusion: From document to monument], in Mitsuzu-

keru hate ni hi ga . . . [Fire, at the horizon to which I gaze . . .] (Tokyo: Osiris,

2007), 236. The essay was originally published in the July issue o Bijutsu

Techō in 1972.

16 See Daniel Boorstin, Gen’ei no jidai: Masukomi ga netsuzō suru jijitsu [The age

o the image: Mass media’s abrication o acts (original title: The image:

Or what happened to the American dream)], trans. Gotō Kazuhiko and Ho-

shino Ikumi (Tokyo: Tokyo Sōgensha, 1964).

17 Nakahira, “Kiroku to iu gen’ei,” 224.18 Debord writes, or instance, “reality erupts within the spectacle, and the

spectacle is real.” See Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald



notes to introduction 207

Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone, 1995), 14. On Debord’s denition o the

spectacle and its historical relation to television, see Jonathan Crary, “Spec-

tacle, Attention, Counter-Memory,” October 50 (autumn 1989): 96–107. For

Rancière’s critique o Debord, see Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spec-

tator , trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009).19 As Peter Hallward argues, or Rancière the state o separation between

the spectator and the spectacle is empowering precisely when it is used

to stage the gap between equality and inequality. Rancière’s conception o

politics is a orm o “theatrocracy” based on this “inversion o a Platonic

position.” See Peter Hallward, “Staging Equality: Rancière’s Theatrocracy

and the Limits o Anarchic Equality,” in Jacques Rancière: History, Politics,

Aesthetics, ed. Gabriel Rockhill and Philip Watts (Durham: Duke University

Press, 2009), 142. Distrustul o appearance, simulacra, and mimesis, Plato

scorned theater as a source o duplicity, since actors who speak in the nameo oher d ould e wo h oe dey he pol order o keep

everyone in their designated place (Hallward, “Staging Equality,” 143–44).

While politics understood in this antimimetic tradition is rst and oremost

grounded in the orderly distribution o one’s social unction or occupation,

genuine political activity according to Rancière, in contrast, “is whatever

shits a body rom the place assigned to it or changes a place’s destination.”

See Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose

(Minneapolis: University o Minnesota Press, 1999), 30. This dislocation o

the body rom its designated place is what brings about the disruptive andemancipatory efects o genuine political action.

20 See, or instance, Georges Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images: Question-

ing the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. John Goodman (Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005); Jacques Rancière, The Future of

the Image, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2007); Anne Friedberg,

The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge: it Press, 2006);

Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image, trans. Jef Fort (New York: Ford-

ham University, 2005); Marie- José Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy: The

Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary, trans. Rico Franses (Stan-ord: Stanord University Press, 2005); W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory:

Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University o Chicago

Press, 1994); W. J. T. Mitchell, “What Is an Image?,” New Literary History 15.3

(spring 1984): 503–37; and Sunil Manghani, Arthur Piper, and Jon Simons,

eds., Images: A Reader (London: Sage, 2006).

21 On the concept o remediation, see Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin,

Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: it Press, 1999); and

on the concept o artiactuality, see Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler,

Echographies of Television: Selected Interviews, trans. Jennier Bajorek (Cam-bridge: Polity, 2002).

Cinema of Actuality by Yuriko Furuhata

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