Cinema year book of Japan (1937)

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sentimentalism, unintelligent pictures whose business was to inspire sweet ecstasies and longings in the hearts of sentimental girls. These empty products, however, fitted in perfectly with the depressed spirit and gloomy life of the bourgeoisie of that time for whom an inevitable financial depression was waiting ahead as a logical reaction to the past prosperity. It may be more accurate to reverse this statement: The gloomy outlook of the bourgeoisie was responsible for the production of these insipid, sentimental movies. Just the same, the Shochiku’s policy proved very wise — as far as money was concerned — and the company has ever since been one of the big two in the Japanese film industry, together with the Nikkatsu. Furthermore, recently the Nikkatsu itself has been placed financially in a directly subordinate position, and the Shochiku has become the dominant film trust of Japan. One factor that contributed to this rapid success of the Shochiku is the fact that it was the first to employ regular actresses, abandoning the unnatural custom of having men assume female roles on the screen — a traditional Kabuki custom known as Oyama. The appearance of actresses was greeted with overwhelming approval, and Miss Sumiko Kurishima, the first star, was thus introduced. Even at this time when the Japanese screen had made considerable progress and was developing into a cinematic pattern, the relations between the stage and the screen were inseparable. As already noted, the Japanese screen had since its earliest infancy been influenced by the Kabuki drama and a popular dramatic school known as Shimpa (or New School) more strongly than by any other. The Kabuki, as is well-known, is a historical drama — to the theatre-goers of to-day, anyway — which had been born and developed in the feudalistic system of the Yedo period, and the Shimpa or New School, a popular “contemporary” drama, was a darling child of the Meiji bourgeoisie. The form and ideology of these two dramas have survived to this day, more or less, as the two essential characteristics of Japanese films. In addition, a new progressive dramatic movement known as Shingeki or New Theatre was started under the influence of modern European drama. And this movement was not without its effects upon the film directly or indirectly. The works of Tolstoy, Gorky, Hauptmann, Schmidtbonn and other European authors were adapted to the screen. And this is worthy of note as a direct effect of the New Theatre movement upon the Japanese cinema. The Great Earthquake which worked such tremendous destruction in Septem¬ ber 1923 ruined much of the industry as well as other industries, throwing it for a time into a veritable state of chaos. III. The Perfection of Silent Films (1923-1931) Both the Nikkatsu and Shochiku were prostrated by a stroke into incapacity of production ; all studios in Tokyo were demolished, and were replaced by new ones in 5