Cinema Year Book of Japan 1938 (1938)

eager to find a real source of new interest in this growing cinema ; and at the same time, the younger generation which, inspired by all the signs of a new age, was enthusiastic to absorb foreign culture, naturally began to show similar interest. The cinema ceased to be a mere toy, only favoured by high-school pupils : it came to address itself to a rising generation of young people. In this fashion, European and American films gradually gained ground in the cultured stratum of the Japanese people. Thus the cinema became a worthy object of interest of the intelligentsia. Literati, novelists and stage people who had held a disdainful attitude toward the screen were attracted again to this form of entertainment. The next step was its acknowledgment as a new art. And modernity was its forte. Already there had come into being a number of magazines that dealt exclusively with foreign movies. The theatres specializing in foreign pictures were given a full measure of support by young members of the cultured classes. Some of the more progressive movie-critics organized a group called “ The Society for Praising Good Movies ” as a part of the enlightenment movement to disseminate the appreciation of superior films by Japanese intellectuals. The society itself lasted only a few years, and the shortness of its existence was regretted by the contemporary people. A few years later, however, the expansion of screen journalism and the growing interest in the cinema on the part of the intelligentsia in general became such as to make up for the disappearance of such a society. This favourable position of the cinema in Japan was further solidified by the coming of the sound film. Let us review the panorama of those years from another point of view. Before the cinema was endowed with such advanced methods of expression and contents as it is to-day, that is, at a time when it was still unable to attract the interest of the majority of Japanese intellectuals, the people’s thirst for knowledge of foreign culture was mitigated and satisfied only through books. They were in a hurry to purchase and read the translations of Western novels, plays and literary studies as soon as they were published. They all but ran to the theatre to see a translated European play performed. All this proved a useful channel to the understanding of foreign thought, culture, customs and social trends. The people were also getting familiar with the geography and history of Western nations through letters and graphs. At that juncture the cinema came to the fore. And instantly it proved its usefulness as a practical means of introducing things foreign, a popular, but quite a different, means from the literary channel. It must not be assumed, however, that the film was a means superior to the previous one of letters. Nor did it make up for all the shortcomings of the other. All that can be said is that book-knowledge was substantiated by visualising the facts on the screen, and screen-knowledge was systematized and rearranged by reading books. Especially since the “ film found its tongue”, the modes of expression and the content have added to the realism, thus providing valuable material for studying Western culture. An old Japanese adage says, “ Hearing a hundred times is not equal to seeing once ”. Seeing, indeed is believing, and the film has proved, to a certain extent, the truth of this saying. As a matter of fact, even those who are not so familiar with foreign novels and other literary works possess a considerable knowledge of foreign countries through the help of the screen. As they frequent movie-houses, they accumulate, unawares, knowledge and information concerning Europe and America. It would be no exaggeration to say that the younger people of to-day, without exception, know at least what sort of street New York Broadway is, what the down-town section of Paris is like, and so on. They are more or less acquainted with the jazz music, gangster, college life of America ; they appreciate the French esprit ; they are impressed by the scientific German mind, and, at the same time, carried away by the Vienna waltz. All this is a commonplace to the man in the street. Not only that ; he has an individual impression of the American film, the P'rench film, the German film, though the distinction may be along general lines. In other words, he has a knowledge, somewhat vague perhaps, of America, France and Germany. But the more intellectual people look in the cinema for something more significant ; they study its ideological implications, analyze the national character and society that gave birth to such an ideology, and observe some of the world trends. What has this film to say? How is that theme treated ? Why had this or that film to be made ? These points are examined, criticized and analyzed by the intellectual who obtains, as a result, a more accurate estimate of situations abroad. In this way, the people have added to their understanding of the West, and, on the other hand, enriched themselves by the knowledge gained through the cinema. European and American films have affected 52