Godzilla and The Ring are two other Japanese genre films that have been re-made in Hollywood versions. The Japanese monster movie Gojira (which was directed by Inoshiro Honda for Toho in 1954, and spawned numerous sequels) was re-edited for American release, adding an American primary character (played by Raymond Burr) and reducing the anti-nuclear content of the original, in which the prehistoric monster who terrorizes the city of Tokyo is reactivated by nuclear explosions, and the devastation he incurs is reminiscent of the destruction wrought on Japanese cities by American bombing at the end of WWII. Most recently, the Hollywood re-make (by Gore Verbinski, DreamWorks, 2002) of the Japanese horror movie The Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1997), transposed to an American setting, and starring Naomi Watts, failed to impress critics. The original not only employed the device of conveying death sentences to projected victims through video and telephone; it also drew on the Japanese ghost tradition, whereby victimized women return after death to exact vengeance.

Japanese animated features have been dubbed into English with American actors voicing the dialogue, rather than re-made. The setting and action remain unchanged. Buena Vista, the distribution arm of Walt Disney Productions, bought the distribution rights to Ghibli Studio productions in all countries outside Japan and subsequently dubbed and re-edited Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001) before distribution. Both of these Ghibli Studio films were made by the most popular director of animated features in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki, who has many fans among Disney animators and, like them, makes charming films with wide appeal, suitable for family viewing, without explicit sex or excessive violence. Princess Mononoke was not a hit abroad, but Spirited Away is – perhaps because it can be appreciated as a magical fairytale for children, and doesn’t require any knowledge of Japanese history and culture or understanding of complex adult issues, as does Princess Mononoke.

In China, too, Kurosawa movies and the products of Japanese animation have been very popular. Kurosawa was much admired by filmmakers of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers. Both Yellow Earth (directed by Chen Kaige, cinematography by Zhang Yimou, 1984) and The Emperor and the Assassin (Chen Kaige, 1998) betray his influence. In the former, the awesome power invested in the harsh landscape, the melancholy mood and the critical attitude towards the disruptive (ultimately tragic) effects of modern sciences and practices on the peasantry, evoke comparisons with Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (Mosfilm, 1975); while the pageantry and epic battle scenes of the latter are more reminiscent of Kagemusha (Toho, 1980).  Japanese animated features are widely distributed in Chinese language versions on tape and DVD throughout south-east Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, as well as in Chinatowns throughout the world, catering to the large Chinese diaspora.

Chinese martial arts films are less influenced by samurai movies than by Chinese operatic, acrobatic and balletic traditions. However, the Taiwanese art cinema does display a debt to the Japanese cinema. This is not surprising as Taiwan was a Japanese colony for the first half of the 20^th century. But, rather than Kurosawa, it is the classic Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, whose influence is most evident.  Ozu was a prolific studio director who made charming films, full of comedy and pathos, about family life and its inter-generational conflicts, but he also displayed a pronounced interest in the patterning and framing of the cinematic image. The art directors of Taiwan display similar thematic and formal concerns. Both Hou Hsiao Hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Chinese title: Tongnian wangshi, 1985) and Edward Yang’s Yi Yi  (2000) focus on three-generational families in conflict, employ comedy and pathos, and are similarly marked by artistic framing. Like Ozu’s too, these films derive humour and pathos from marriages and deaths - and the antics of naughty or playful boys.

Ozu spent his whole professional career (1927-1962) working for the Shochiku company making first silents and then talkies, all movies with contemporary modern settings. The company specialized in films with a modern touch – they were the first company to employ women as actors, to focus on modern westernized youth and to employ slapstick and romantic comedy along Hollywood lines. Ozu was only one of their stable of talented directors. Other notable directors at their studios were Yasujiro Shimazu, Hiroshi Shimizu and Heinosuke Gosho.

In the early days Shochiku’s main competitor was the Nikkatsu company, who specialized in women’s melodramas based on stage hits or popular novels. Women in their films were originally played by male actors – a practice derived from the traditional theatre – and their films were altogether more theatrical in performance style than those of Shochiku. But their talented directors fought the conservatism of the studio and experimented with expressionist, impressionist and montage styles of filmmaking, influenced by contemporary French, German and Soviet Russian cinema. Kenji Mizoguchi, the most noted director of women’s melodramas, was trained at Nikkatsu and spent his early career at that company, before moving on to independent companies with more freedom of expression. His films were much admired by the directors of the French New Wave, who rated them superior to those of Kurosawa. With strong performances by female stars – Takako Irie, Isuzu Yamada and Kinuyo Tanaka, in particular – he produced moving films in both senses of the word:  he used a moving camera very expressively (and is considered by film scholars to be one of the world’s masters of the long take); and he extracted very moving performances from his female stars.

By the mid 30s, Nikkatsu was in financial difficulties and Shochiku’s main competitor became Toho, a new company which came to prominence in the sound era. Toho had the best equipped sound studios in Japan and attracted talent from all the other companies.  They made a variety of film genres – comedies, war movies, documentaries and period films. Kurosawa was trained at Toho and spent most of his career there. Although best known abroad for his samurai films with period settings, he in fact made films of many different genres – including wartime propaganda movies for the home front, detective movies, social issue melodramas, adaptations of Russian classics and Shakespeare, and personal essay films.

In the pre-war period, both Shochiku and Nikkatsu had studios in Kyoto where period films were made. Period films were also made by independent companies founded by star period actors who were dissatisfied with the major companies and employed young directors to enhance their performance skills. These young directors were fans of the Hollywood western and introduced faster cutting and more dramatic angles of shooting the action to speed up the pace and increase the emotional tension of their films. The stories of legendary swordsmen, yakuza (gamblers and gangsters) and ronin (unemployed or master-less samurai) were usually adaptations of popular fiction and/or stage productions. The performance style of the stars was marked by exaggerated gestures and grimaces, and their bravura macho performances were very popular with audiences. In the early Thirties, young directors like Daisuke Ito, Sadao Yamanaka and Hiroshi Inagaki churned out entertaining films featuring these legendary heroes, with comedy routines as well as action, but they also honed their skills as filmmakers and displayed artistic flair.

When Japan became more embroiled in overseas expansion and military aggression, the cinema turned more serious. In wartime conditions light entertainment was deemed frivolous and unpatriotic; the realist cinema, the patriotic war movie and the documentary were viewed with more favour. It was in these conditions that Kurosawa made his early movies. Following the defeat, the country was occupied by American forces and the cinema was then supervised and censored by them. The Americans initially set out to democratize Japan and expressed disapproval of traditional Japanese culture, which they deemed feudalistic, ultra-nationalistic and militaristic. On those grounds they banned period films and vetted film scripts, conscientiously searching for signs of undemocratic tendencies. However, within a short while, by the late 40s, the Americans were embroiled in the Cold War with Soviet Russia and thereafter became more concerned about the dangers of left-wing ideology than about feudal and nationalist tendencies. Japanese filmmakers were understandably confused by the shifts in American policy and the concept of democracy; so, at the end of the Occupation, in 1953, they were relieved to be able to return to their staple genres of the past (the period film, the woman’s melodrama, the family sit-com) without having to suffer the interference of the censors. They instituted a system of industrial self-censorship, like the Hays Code of Hollywood, a system which gradually became less and less moralistic and more and more permissive. The Japanese cinema flourished in the 1950s, reaching an all-time high in number of productions and theatrical attendances in 1958. However, television soon made a dramatic difference. A huge drop in box office, with women and children and the aged staying at home to watch television, led to increased sex and violence and the use of wide-screen formats, in an effort to attract and retain adult male audiences to the cinema.

The Japanese New Wave filmmakers of the 1960s, like those in France and Italy, were more highbrow and politically radical than the earlier studio directors. They tended to work outside the studio system and exhibit their films at art cinemas and international film festivals. The most famous of these directors were Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura – both of whom attacked the conservative and misogynist aspects of Japanese society and shocked conventional audiences with  explicit portrayals of sexual obsession, incest, rape and homosexuality. 

With the decline of the studio system, and the popularity of Hollywood blockbusters with Japanese audiences, the Japanese cinema in recent decades has struggled to survive. The traditional genres of the industry in its heyday have moved into television, which screens women’s melodramas, period films and home dramas as television serials and series. As in Australia, filmmakers find it hard to get funding. The one healthy area of the industry is anime, which is a big earner and the major source of profit from both domestic and overseas sales – of prints, tapes, and DVD – for theatrical exhibition, video rental, the domestic DVD market and television programming. Japanese anime circulates in the US and Australia in dubbed English versions, and is avidly consumed by children and adolescents who are not always aware that they are watching films made in Japan. The reasons for this are that the characters do not look particularly Japanese (they often have blue eyes and blond hair) and don’t speak Japanese; the settings are often futuristic or fantastic (not recognizably or specifically Japanese); the stories and themes draw on a wide range of cultural references (Greek myths, Christian iconography, European fairytales, Hollywood westerns, sci-fi literary and movie classics, and vampire mythology, amongst others) and raise issues of universal concern to young people (friendship, romance, fear and courage, justice and injustice, conflict with parents and teachers, relations with pets, the animal kingdom and the world of nature).

Anime is made for a variety of different audiences – varying in age, gender and interests – but the most popular genres are fantasy, romance, adventure and sci-fi. The most popular movies often cover more than one genre. Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1987), for example, is a mixture of sci-fi, the teen movie, horror, and action suspense. In the West, the sci-fi movies of Katsuhiro Otomo and Mamoru Oshii have been the biggest critical and commercial hits, but in Japan the most popular animator is Hayao Miyazaki, who makes films suitable for viewing by the whole family. His films have youthful protagonists (often girls) and fantasy settings, lack sex and excessive violence, and teach wholesome values – compassion for others, concern for the environment, respect for nature, tenacity and courage in overcoming adversity and fighting against injustice… His films are exquisitely beautiful and full of movement - with magical sequences of humans, animals and machines flying, gliding, running, galloping and stampeding; but they are also emotionally moving, making us feel the fear, pain, loneliness and longing of his characters. His recent features, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, have won awards and acclaim overseas. In the late 1980s, Disney bought the rights to the overseas distribution of the products of Ghibli Studio, the studio shared by Miyazaki and his partner, Takahashi. Disney animators are great fans of Miyazaki, who remains largely faithful to the hand-drawn tradition of animation and tries to avoid the use of digital technology.

The vitality and artistry of Japanese animation, with its dynamic graphic lines and exquisite compositions, draw strength and power from a strong native tradition of graphic arts - calligraphy, sumi-e (ink painting), hanga (wood-block printing) and manga (cartoons). Furthermore, more than American and European animation, it employs the techniques of live action cinema – detailed and elaborate set design, variety of camera angles, use of the moving camera, dramatic and lyrical editing devices – which make it more dynamic, exciting and involving than the rather static and prosaic overseas competition, Unlike Disney films, it caters to adolescent and adult audiences as well as children. Japanese animators tend to be well educated, with degrees in economics and politics, history and sociology, as well as training in art, so there is more social comment and reference to social issues in anime than in Disney movies. In general, artists and intellectuals in Japan tend to be left-liberal and socially critical. The animators of Eastern Europe under communist rule used to make biting political satires and sophisticated allegories for adults in cartoon form; if Japanese animation is not quite so sophisticated politically, it is because it is primarily geared to the concerns of the youth market. Its heroines and heroes are usually children or young adults, in conflict with adult authority figures, who are shown to be excessively greedy for money and power. Most anime are wish-fulfilment fantasies for children and adolescents – movies in which youthful protagonists overcome their fears and weaknesses to triumph over evil-doers and power-mongers. Ishii Mamoru’s anime are unusual in featuring adult protagonists – a female cyborg in Ghost and the Shell (1995) and a counter-terrorist policeman in Jinroh (1999) – confronting contemporary issues like cyberculture, computer crime, state power and terrorism in a sophisticated adult manner. 

A more common protagonist in Japanese animation is the cute little girl character, called the shojo in Japanese.  She is pre-adolescent, virginal, pretty, sweet and kind.  The more popular anime play variations on this feminine stereotype: Miyazaki’s heroines have the strength of the conventional male hero – they are active, adventurous, determined and courageous – and yet retain conventional shojo characteristics also. Apart from being cutely pretty and not yet fully adolescent, they are very kind and caring towards wounded animals and humans.

Even if they know little about Japanese culture or history, two generations of Australian children have become familiar with Japanese animation from childhood television viewing of such popular series as Astro Boy, Sailor Moon, and Pokemon  – and now enjoy the more sophisticated and ambitious products of the Japanese industry at the cinema, on video and DVD.  You don’t have to be Japanese, or speak Japanese, to appreciate the pleasures it offers.

For further reading:

D.P.Martinez (ed), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture, Cambridge University Press, 1998

Audie Bock, Japanese Film Directors, Kodansha International, 1978

Gregory Barrett, Archetypes in Japanese Film, Susquehanna University Press, 1989

Ian Buruma, A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture, Jonathan Cape, 1984

Susan Napier, Anime: from Akira to Princess Mononoke, Palgrave, 2001

For viewing:

I Was Born But…  (1933) -  Yasujiro Ozu

Sisters of the Gion  (1936) -  Kenji Mizoguchi

Tokyo Story (1953) - Yasujiro Ozu

Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) - Kenji Mizoguchi

Twenty-Four Eyes  (1954) - Keisuke Kinoshita

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) -  Kenji Mizoguchi

Godzilla (1954) - Inoshiro Honda

The Seven Samurai  (1954) -  Akira Kurosawa

The Ballad of Narayama (1958) - Keisuke Kinoshita

Ohayo/Good Morning (1959) - Yasujiro Ozu (re-make of I Was Born But…)

Yojimbo (1961) - Akira Kurosawa

The Insect Woman (1963) - Shohei Imamura

Death by Hanging (1968) - Nagisa Oshima

The Ceremony (1971) – Nagisa Oshima

The Ballad of Narayama (1983) – Shohei Imamura

Nausicaa in the Valley of the Winds (1983) – Hayao Miyazaki

Akira  (1988) – Katsushiro Otomo

Tombstone for Fireflies (1988) – Isao Takahata

Ghost in the Shell (1995) – Mamoru Oshii

Princess Mononoke (1997) – Hayao Miyazaki

Jin-Roh (1999) – Mamoru Oshii

Spirited Away (2002) – Hayao Miyazaki