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Kurosawa Akira's One Wonderful Sunday : censorship, context and ‘counter-discursive’ film

2007; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09555800701580121

1469-932X

Rachael Hutchinson,

Cinema and Media Studies

Abstract Abstract Reading One Wonderful Sunday (Subarashiki Nichiyōbi, 1947) as counter-discursive film, this paper challenges humanist readings of the film to argue for a more critical commentary on the problematic postwar. The essay investigates the labels of ‘pro-democratic’ and ‘compliant’ director ascribed to Kurosawa Akira (1910–98), stemming from the reception of No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kuinashi, 1946). In light of Kurosawa's experience with negotiating censorship boundaries, the essay argues that Kurosawa's strategy should be read in terms of creativity and critique rather than mere compliance with external demands, with a close reading of One Wonderful Sunday providing evidence of critical construction. The film is placed in the context of SCAP policy to demonstrate that such ‘problematization films’ were not only useful to Occupation aims but welcome, seen as supporting the wider goal of rebuilding Japan in a realistic way. The essay concludes that simple binary expectations, attached to terms like censorship and non-censorship, discourse and counter-discourse limit our understanding of the complex censorship process. Once the contextual location of the viewer is taken into account, however, the seeming disjunction between non-censorship and counter-discursive film are seen to disappear. Keywords: Kurosawa AkiraOccupationSCAPfilm censorship One Wonderful Sunday postwar Japan Acknowledgements This article was written with the support of Colgate University's Picker Research Fellowship. The author thanks Julie Nelson Davis and G. Cameron Hurst III at the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for hosting her as visiting scholar during the research period. Rachael Hutchinson is Assistant Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Delaware. She is co-editor of Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: A Critical Approach, and author of ‘Occidentalism and critique of Meiji: the West in the returnee stories of Nagai Kafū’. Her work on Kurosawa Akira has appeared in Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film (ed. Song-Hwee Lim and Stephanie Dennison) and World Cinema's ‘Dialogues’ with Hollywood (ed. Paul Cooke). She is currently working on a book-length manuscript on Occidentalism in Nagai Kafū's work, based on her doctoral dissertation from the University of Oxford. She may be contacted at rhutch@udel.edu Notes Notes 1. The story of One Wonderful Sunday may be based on D. W. Griffith's Isn't Life Wonderful (1912) (Richie 1996 Richie, Donald. 1996. The Films of Akira Kurosawa, , 3rd edn, University of California Press. [Google Scholar]: 43; Yamada 1999: 74), but it is likely that Kurosawa was also influenced by Frank Capra's style at the time (Richie 1996 Richie, Donald. 1996. The Films of Akira Kurosawa, , 3rd edn, University of California Press. [Google Scholar]: 45). 2. While SCAP technically stands for ‘Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers’, referring to the person or office of General Douglas Macarthur, the acronym is generally used to refer to the administration in its entirety (see Hirano 1992 Hirano, Kyoko. 1992. Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation, 1945–1952, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. [Google Scholar]: 3). The term points to the USA rather than to the other Allied powers, and many critics refer to the occupation of Japan as the ‘American Occupation’, Hirano's rationale being a typical example (1992: 3). However, this usage not only minimizes the contribution of the other Allied powers, but tends to overemphasize the binary US-Japan relationship at the expense of other interactions in the period. I will therefore attempt to differentiate between SCAP's censorship offices, staffed mainly by American personnel, and the Allied forces as a whole, by referring to the ‘American film censors’ and the ‘Allied Occupation’. 3. The Press Code covered newspapers, books, magazines, radio, film and theatre, and was enforced by two arms of the SCAP administration: the CIE (Civil Information and Education section), focusing on civil censorship, and the CCD (Civil Censorship Detachment), focusing on military and intelligence censorship. On the goals and responsibilities of the various offices involved in Occupation censorship, see Takemae (2002) Takemae, Eiji. 2002. Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy, Edited by: Ricketts, Robert and Swain, Sebastian. New York and London: Continuum. [Google Scholar]; also Braw (1991: 21–31), Hirano (1992: 6) and Dower (1999: 407–8). On the prohibitions and enforcement of the Press Code in regard to film, see Hirano (1992: 36–7, 44–5), Braw (1991: 41) and Dower (1999: 410–15). 4. Dower (1999: 407–10, 431–2) explains this invisibility and its ramifications. 5. A similar question was asked by Edward Fowler in his investigation of ‘How Ozu does a number on SCAP’ (2001). 6. Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, made in 1945, is notable for attracting attention from both the Japanese and American censorship systems. While Japanese censors objected to the ‘mockery’ of the kabuki classic, American censors found the film too feudal in its outlook. On the convoluted history of the film's banning and release, see Kurosawa (1983 Kurosawa, Akira. 1983. Something Like an Autobiography, Edited by: Bock, Audie. New York: Vintage. [Google Scholar]: 142–4), Yoshimoto (2000 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. 2000. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 94–5) and McDonald (1994: 171, 180). On the film's intertextual references to Kanjinchō and Ataka, see Yoshimoto (2000 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. 2000. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 107–13) and McDonald (1994: 170–80). 7. Daruma-dera no Doitsujin (A German at Daruma Temple) was selected by the studio but rejected by the censors (Kurosawa 1983 Kurosawa, Akira. 1983. Something Like an Autobiography, Edited by: Bock, Audie. New York: Vintage. [Google Scholar]: 117), while Mori no sen'ichiya (A thousand and one nights in the forest) and San Paguita no hana (The San Paguita flower) were both ‘buried forever by the Interior Ministry censorship bureau’ (Kurosawa 1983 Kurosawa, Akira. 1983. Something Like an Autobiography, Edited by: Bock, Audie. New York: Vintage. [Google Scholar]: 118). 8. Yuki (Snow) and Shizuka nari (All is quiet) won prizes in a contest sponsored by the Ministry of Information (Kurosawa 1983 Kurosawa, Akira. 1983. Something Like an Autobiography, Edited by: Bock, Audie. New York: Vintage. [Google Scholar]: 116). 9. Kurosawa expected the script of Three Hundred Miles Behind Enemy Lines (Tekichū ōdan sanbyaku-ri) to have an enthusiastic response, as the action adventure set in the Russo-Japanese War told the story of a hero still alive and fighting in the Pacific theatre: ‘I had calculated that with this kind of subject and support the censors in the Ministry of the Interior were not likely to complain’ (1983: 120). While the film would undoubtedly have been useful for propaganda purposes, it was rejected by Tōhō as too ambitious a project for an inexperienced director. 10. Hirano compares Kurosawa's ambivalent statement with the agonized soul-searching of Itami Mansaku, who despite a similar level of complicity with wartime militarism was far more critical of himself and others after the war ended (Hirano 2001 Hirano, Kyoko. 2001. “‘Japanese filmmakers and responsibility for war: the case of Itami Mansaku’”. In War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia 1920–1960, Edited by: Mayo, Marlene J., Thomas Rimer, J. and Eleanor Kerkham, H. 212–32. University of Hawai'i Press. [Google Scholar]: 223–4). 11. Daiei's The Last Nationalist is praised as ‘technically the best moving picture produced since the Occupation’ (SCAP 1945: 3.180); Shochiku's Victory of Women is mentioned twice, as ‘an outstanding treatment of the theme of equality of women’ (SCAP 1946: 7.18) and ‘the first feature produced which dramatically embodies the concept of women's equality with men’ (SCAP 1946: 7.269). 12. This film is praised by SCAP as ‘the story of a family during the later war years [showing] how the Japanese attitude changed from support of the war and its objectives to a complete renunciation’ (SCAP 1946: 5.276). 13. Interviewed in 1991, Kurosawa lamented the continued taboos on subjects such as the emperor and contemporary politics, and complained about increased studio control (Schilling 1999 Schilling, Mark. 1999. Contemporary Japanese Film, New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill. [Google Scholar]: 58–9). 14. Kurosawa is referring to George Gercke, head of the Motion Picture and Drama branch of CIE from November 1946 to 1952 (Takemae 2002 Takemae, Eiji. 2002. Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy, Edited by: Ricketts, Robert and Swain, Sebastian. New York and London: Continuum. [Google Scholar]: 184; Hirano 1992: 102–3). 15. Kurosawa's self-reflexivity is discussed in Hutchinson (2006: 174–7). 16. Dower (1999: 112) reports that chaotic scenes of crowded trains provided the subject for popular children's games in 1947, as children re-enacted the postwar confusion through play. 17. I use the term ‘mise-en-scène’ in the narrower sense of staging or the framing of shots, rather than the overarching sense of a particular director's ‘signature style’ or ‘authorial sign’. 18. I have noticed that American undergraduate students shown this film tend to laugh at this scene and utter the word ‘trash’ out loud. Whether they are laughing at the incongruous effect of English in a Japanese film or at the humorous associations of ‘trash’ in a supposedly romantic farewell scene, it is noteworthy that the effect of the word is strong enough to produce a verbal response. 19. A striking example is the English sign in Shimizu Hiroshi's Children of the Beehive (Hachi no su no kodomotachi, 1948), stating ‘This Area Off Limits to Occupation Personnel By Order of the Provost General’ (Hirano 1992 Hirano, Kyoko. 1992. Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation, 1945–1952, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. [Google Scholar]: 278, n. 35). 20. Higuchi (1999: 162) notes the significance of framing in One Wonderful Sunday when only the couple's feet are shown on the busy, crowded streets, citing this as an example of the impact Kurosawa could produce with his framing technique. 21. See Dower, ch. 3, ‘Kyodatsu: exhaustion and despair’ (1999: 87–120). 22. The title of the work is Symphony no.8 in B minor, which Schubert started in 1822 but left unfinished, hence the popular and better-known appellation. 23. See Hirano (1992: 154–62) on the vogue for ‘kissing films’ at the time, although suggestions of salaciousness due to American influence were discouraged (Dower 1999 Dower, John W. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York and London: Norton. [Google Scholar]: 430). 24. These films may be given long descriptions for two reasons: to chart the development of desirable themes in the Japanese motion picture industry and to provide sufficient information for the careful monitoring of possibly inflammable topics. 25. A good summary of the wide variety of activities undertaken with regard to motion pictures may be found in SCAP's summation journal (1945: 2.173). 26. This is the context in which my students were presented the film, and serves as a caveat to my observations on student reactions to it. 27. Haraszti (1987) Haraszti, Miklós. 1987. The Velvet Prison, Edited by: Landesmann, Katalin, Landesmann, Stephen and Wasserman, Steve. New York: Basic Books. [Google Scholar] claims that the ‘classical’ model of censorship based on suppression and resistance is based on no more than a rumor, while Post (1998) Post, Robert C. 1998. “‘Censorship and silencing’”. In Censorship and Silencing: Practices of Cultural Regulation, Edited by: Post, Robert C. 1–12. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. [Google Scholar] describes how the classical model is giving way in recent scholarship to more Foucauldian models of dispersed social power.