Violence in Japan(ese movies)

i wonder whether violence is truly the best export, film-speaking. certainly hong kong established their regional supremacy (once upon a time) on the basis of swordplay and kung-fu, but can the same be said of bollywood?

it didn't really occur to me until i saw "kill bill"--yes, which is supposed to be a "movie about movies" instead of about any actually existing reality--until i began to really wonder about the nature of the appeal of yakuza films etc. to western audiences. it seems to be a kind of exoticism, against which one might counterpose the "universal" appeal of the japanese films of ozu. kitano's almost obsessive interest in the vagaries of honor and self-recrimination among the yakuza (which gets a bit boring itself i think, witness his "brother") is both a part of and, i guess, i kind of comment on the tendency.

in a recent interview donald richie counterposes the great kore-eda but i imagine his is a minority tendency in the japanese cinema and doesn't attract many more paying customers there than elsewhere...

Comedies are also common, such as the one about out of work middle aged Japanese who have recently lost their jobs, as are period dramas. The only Japanese genre that is actually as big over there as here is animation.

Unagi (the Eel) was big in Japan.

The answer to your question, Amst, would I suppose be similar to the why the Japanese music that is exported and embraced here is not the everyday pop music that is loved in Japan.

Isn't that true of every country, though? National cinema is an indie sideline. It's a result of monoculture, of the current monopolies over film production and distribution. American cinema is 'the particular' that is allowed to be 'the universal' (we could call it 'the designated particular' -- the cinematic equivalent of 'the chosen people'?). All other cinemas are merely 'particular' (ie, they tend to deal with peculiarities and exceptions).

One almost thinks of the cinema of one's own country as something requiring subtitles. 'What language are they speaking? Oh, it's my language! No wonder I didn't recognise it! Fancy hearing people in a film speaking like they do on the street!'

When national cinema does get produced, it tends to be for export, for art houses abroad. It tends to play up to the images foreigners have of the nation. Takeshi Kitano is a case in point. He actually has two names and two identities. In Japan he is Takeshi Kitano, the guy on TV (he's on every night, MCing gameshows). Outside Japan he is Beat Takeshi, director of whackily violent / sentimental films that get shown at festivals and on the art house circuit.

If a Japanese film manages to be universal, like the recent Ring horror films, it tends to get remade by Hollywood. It's almost as if Hollywood says, 'Nice try, guys, but the Universal is our job.'

The only exceptions I can think of are children's films like Pokemon and Spirited Away. They slip under the radar. Harry Potter is our British 'pokemon' in this sense. It's allowed to be Universal as long as it's for children. The moment it's for adults, it has to become an American product.

It's when you come to reception that you get a (small) break from monoculture. You can control what people see, but not how they see. And so it is that in Japan ET and Audrey Hepburn became sort of shinto deities -- just as Jerry Lewis became a sort of French god. The 'designated universal' can be read in particular ways. And the studios don't mind that, as long as we keep paying attention, and keep paying. What they would mind is if a local industry tried to rival them, proclaim the particular conditions of a different nation than the US 'universal'.

Pop music shows the same pattern. Japan has a record industry dominated 70% by Japanese talent -- idols with strong TV presence. This might seem to show resistance to monoculture. But big-selling Japanese pop is mostly a take on the dominant US R+B styles, with Japanese lyrics on top. If US templates are 'the universal', the Japanese industry 'particularizes' them for the local market -- on condition that this in no way gives Japanese artists 'universality'. Many Japanese artists have thought they could break America by singing in English and using 'universal' idioms. They soon found that Japanese artists who sounded different -- ie rather eccentrically Japanese -- were outselling them in the US... but still never breaking out of an arthouse ghetto.

Hollywood is always on the look-out for possible threats. If a new national cinema looks like it might begin to define the Universal, it gets co-opted. It's interesting that the fight scenes in The Matrix and Kill Bill are choreographed by the guy who did Crouching Tiger. I mean, imagine having that guy playing for the other team? Before long, everyone would be watching Chinese cinema, and they'd have distribution chains and everything.

this is really a wild generalization and i don't think it always holds. here in france i was surprised to discover genres and actors and directors who were wildly popular in france (although obviously not as popular as the select few american blockbusters which dominate screens at any given time, with rare exceptions) without being known at all in the states. in the states we get the "auteur" films--chabrol, rohmer, ozon, etc.--but not things like "je reste!" and "le furet."

france of course is itself a kind of exception--its national cinema is stronger than most others'. but you'd really have to do a breakdown of box office in many countries. i know in korea a film called "memories of murder" either topped or nearly topped the box office this year, over various american imports.

An American fan discovers Yuen Wo-Ping, a Chinese director whose success in Hollywood has made him 'vanish':

'The fight scenes in 'Iron Monkey' are far better than The Matrix , without the $70 million budget... I'm instantly a huge Woo-ping Yuen fan. I can barely remember his name, but I love his stuff.bI must see more... Unfortunately his stuff is pretty hard to find. It's really too bad that I discovered him so late, we may never see another movie directed by him. His last movie was Tai Chi 2 in 1996. Don't think I love his films based soley on the fact of the incredible fights. The photography of his films is beautiful. He tells some pretty good stories too, Tai-Chi Master is very Shakespearean. I guess I'll just have to live with his fight direction in the next 2 Matrix films.'

The Japanese horror that is of the ultra violent sort takes in Guinea Pig 1 and 2 (the second called Flower of Flesh and Blood) and the likes of The Untold Story, Guts of a Virgin and the All Night Long series. I know of these films but I have never, and likely will never, watch them - having read descriptions I know in advance I'm likely to be really offended. So, really... draw your own line.

A good site to order Japanese DVDs is www.dddhouse.com

(i should add to my posts above that i wasn't exactly contradicting momus. select exceptions don't really contradict his basic point that hollywood film dominates cinemas nearly everywhere. the big exception i forgot to point out is india--where the norm remains bollywood films [and in certain regions, bengali films on the bollywood model etc.] and hollywood films are, while quite popular, a kind of alternative option.

i should also note that w/r/t the remakes issue--hollywood has been remaking foreign films since the beginning, really. and it's worth noting that hong kong and bollywood films cannibalize hollywood all the time (someone has noted that if copyright were to be enforced in india the way it is in europe, bollywood would have some changes coming) and this seems to be a normal process both ways. i guess one can judge by the results--and in fact IMO the hollywood remake of "the ring" was quite good. i don't think that hollywood remakes of foreign films are by definition inferior to HK, japanese, indian borrowings from hollywood films--to insist on this point for the purpose of insulating a larger argument about capitalism and monopoly would seem pedantic to me. not that this is what you're doing, but i've read criticisms that fall along those lines.)

Personal favorite is The Pillowbook
Beautiful yet kooky, like japan i guess

Man City have take the lead!