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Katsii'geki which had been championed by Onoye-Matsunosuke quickly went out of fashion, to be replaced by a new type called Keri'geki (sword plays), which dealt with the strifes and bloodsheds of a sanguinary knighthood in an heroic and thrilling way. The new art not only fitted in perfectly with the feudalistic sentiment still left in the hearts of the people, but was actually possessed of purely visible charms as a dynamic spectacle.
It rapidly brought the masses under its spell. The Japanese screen from 1924 to 1927 was almost entirely monopolized by Keri'geki films, producing such great stars of fencing scenes as Tsumasaburo Bando, Denjiro Okochi, etc. One important point to be noted here is that, while the Keri'geki was fundamentally a product of the feudalistic psychology of previous ages, it was no less a reflection of the psychology of the bourgeoisie pressed hard by post-earthquake despair and scepticism, and was strongly characterized by what might be defined as sentimental nihilism. “Orochi” (A Monmouth Serpent, 1925) and “Maboroshi” (A Phantom, 1925) in both of which Tsumasaburo Bando star¬ red, “Chuji Tabi Nikki” (The Travel-Diary of Chuji, in three parts, 1927) directed by Taisuke Ito, “Ronin-Gai” (Vagabond Samurai Quarters, 1928) and “Kubi no Za” (A Seat for Beheading, 1929) both directed by Masahiro Makino — all these were typical works of the new art. While depending upon the historical past for their stories, they were all unfeignedly expressions of a most modern psychological type. (Of course in the back¬ ground there was a great multitude of empty, inferior Keri'geki films that had nothing to offer but savage scenes of fighting and bloodshed.) In all these representative photoplays there was evident a revolt against the sufferings of life, a burning hatred of social evils. But those who revolted and hated simply clamoured in despair, not knowing exactly against what their anger should be directed. They revolted in blind despair until they sank in the depths of nihilism. In this tragedy, however, there was felt a pulse of the life that was to come.
The life that came next to the Japanese screen was a leftist movement. As already explained, the post-earthquake depression brought a sudden menace to the life of the masses, leaving them at the mercy of poverty and unemployment. The proletariat and petit bourgeois were awakened for the first time to a Marxist class-conscience. Com¬ munism as a political and social practice broke out and was fast gaining influence. A proletarian culture or proletarian art was conceived and developed among the progressive intelligentsia and was taking deep root among the masses. Proletarian literature came to occupy a dominant position even in bourgeois journalism, and the leftist theatre, depend¬ ing on that large class which consisted of labourers and petit bourgeois, proved even a big business success. This tendency, naturally enough, led to the birth of a new screen genre of leftist films, popularly known as “tendency films” or “ideological films”. All these were produced at capitalist studios purely as money-making commodities. The whole enterprise was a timely speculation for the capitalist executives of the film industry.
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