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Oshima Nagisa

Oshima Nagisa. Sex and Violence in the Modern Japan. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry. Founded in 1912 One of the oldest production companies. After the dormant period, it resumed production in 1954 ; it recruited directors from other studios - Imamura Shohei and Suzuki Seijun .

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Oshima Nagisa

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  1. Oshima Nagisa Sex and Violence in the Modern Japan

  2. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry • Founded in 1912 • One of the oldest production companies. After the dormant period, it resumed production in 1954; it recruited directors from other studios - Imamura Shohei and Suzuki Seijun.

  3. A successful genre, Nikkatsu Action Eiga- action movies for male audiences in the 60s. After the popularity of cinema declined, it successfully turned to the production of soft-porn films, Nikkatsu Roman Porno, with relatively high-budget and production values.

  4. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry • Founded in 1920 • One of the most successful and reliable companies through the 30s, 40s and 50s - Studios in Kyoto specialized in producing jidaigeki - Studios in Tokyo (Kamata and Ofuna) specialized in producing gendaigeki

  5. Director’s studio - employed a large number of established and talented directors under contract.Conservative production policy targeting mainly the female audience.The decline from the late 50s as its movies increasingly looked out of touch with the rapidly changing Japanese society.

  6. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry • From 1945 to 2002 Under the charismatic president of the company and chief executive producer, Nagata Masaichi, it produced internationally acclaimed films - Rashomon (1951), The Tale of Ugetsu(1953) and The Gate of Hell (1954).

  7. From the 50s to 60s it produced high-budget epics using top film stars such as KyoMachiko, Yamamoto Fujiko, WakaoAyako, and Ichikawa Raizo. Autocratic Nagata became the cause of trouble rather than asset in the 60s. Sensationalist movies in the 60s.

  8. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry The film production branch of Takarazuka Theatre Company founded by Kobayashi Ichiro, a show- business entrepreneur, in 1937. After the war, the company experienced the greatest labour dispute and was split into two companies - Toho and Shin (new) Toho.

  9. Kurosawa was under contract in the 50s.Monster films such as Mothraand Godzilla were its hit products of the 50s. During the slump it shifted to the production of movies for children.Now the most successful company turning popular TV programmes and comics into films.

  10. The Post-war Japanese Film Industry • The youngest major film company founded by the millionaire owner of Tokyu Railway Co. Goto Keita in 1949, and later came to specialize in genre pictures - crime thrillers, sward play films, and Yakuza movies.

  11. Commercially the most successful and the only film company making healthy profits through Yakuza films during the 60s and 70s while other film companies were struggling to survive.It came to also specialize in animation from the 80s.

  12. New Youth Films • The emergence of a new genre in the mid-fifties - youth film • Its origin - the success of a novel - Season of the Sun (1956) by Ishihara Shintaro - a bestseller which scandalized the older generations and created a social phenomenon, Taiyo-zoku(‘Sun-tribe’) lifestyle and a series of ‘Taiyo-zoku’ movies • Taiyo-zokuJapanese equivalent to Greasers youth sub-cultural movements in US and Rockers and Mods in Great Britain

  13. Japanese youth subcultures in the 50s and 60sconsumerism, care-free and reckless actions, loose sex, drug, rock music

  14. New Youth Films • Phenomenal successes of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel without a Cause (1955) and Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle (1955) - featuring the youth and youth culture with sympathy

  15. New Youth Films • British films which dealt with the youth and new youth culture in northern industrial cities: KarelReisz’sSaturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner (1962)

  16. New Youth Films Taiyo-zokumovies and the new youth film - about young men and women who live amoral, licentious and irresponsible lives • Season of the Sun (1956) • Crazed Fruit (1956) • Punishment Room (1956) • Man Who Caused a Storm (1957) The genre was first exploited by Nikkatsu

  17. Created the new young idols - Ishihara Yujiro, Shishido Joe, AkagiKei’ichiro, Kobayashi Akira

  18. Nitani Hideaki, Watari Tetsuya, Matsubara Keiko, AsaokaRuriko.Thanks to the new strategy, movie attendance rose to just over a billion in 1958, the post-war highest.

  19. New Youth Films • In 1958 Shochiku was the poor fourth after Nikkatsu, Toho and Toei at the box office • Rivals’ triumph, poor performances of its films (including Ozu’s) and the success of French nouvelle vague films prompted: Change of its production policy (shift to the movies targeted for the youth market) and promotion of young assistants to directors.

  20. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • Entered Shochiku as assistant director in 1954. • With his friends he started a film journal and wrote scripts which were never filmed. • Political and artistic radical.

  21. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • An admirer of Crazed Fruit by Nakahara Ko • “Some people realized coming of new age for Japanese movie within the sound of the woman’s skirt torn and the swelling noise of the motorboat on which the hero killed his brother.”

  22. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • Suddenly and unexpectedly he was given a chance by Kido Shiro to direct a film. • A Town of Love and Hope (1959, the original title; The Boy Who Sold His Pigeons)

  23. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • Cruel Story of Youth (1960) • A college student rescues a high school girl who are being sexually assaulted. Their affair is not a innocent one. They learn they can make quick profits by extorting money from men who make a pass at her.

  24. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • The film is an examination of hopelessness, victimization, apathy, exploitation, and cultural alienation against the background of radical political and social change - the student uprising in Korea and the movement against the US-Japan Security Pact.

  25. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku • The Sun’s Burial (1960): The underclass in Osaka’s slum engage in pilfering, assaulting, robbing, trading IDs and blood. • Portrayal of Japan’s ‘lost generation’ in the midst of the economic miracle; the examination of the loss of Japanese cultural and spiritual identity and its subsequent chaos and nihilism.

  26. OshimaNagisa in Shochiku Night and Fog in Japan (1960) • A group of young intellectuals and their professor gather for a wedding in which the betrayal of the left-wing political activists is revealed. • Shochiku withdrew the film two days after its opening.

  27. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Oshima left Shochiku in protest and became an independent filmmaker. His films were often financed by ATG (Art Theatre Guild), which started as a distributor and exhibitor (‘art theatre’) but later produced films of such directors as OshimaNagisa, Imamura Shohei, Shinoda Masahiro, Yoshida Yoshishige(guild or co-operative).

  28. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Violence at Noon (1966): A wealthy housewife is raped and murdered by a drifter whom her maidservant knows. The complicated past relationship between the murderer and the maid and his wife is revealed through flashbacks. • The portrayal of sexual desire, repression, and guilt.

  29. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku Death by Hanging (1968) • A Korean rapist and murderer is sentenced to death by hanging, but he survives the execution. For the following hours, his executioners try to work out how to handle the situation in this black farce.

  30. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Film is a tragi-comic and surrealistic reflection on the identity crisis of a Japanese-Korean, intolerance, and capital punishment. • clip

  31. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Boy • A man and a woman travelled around Japan with their young son, whom they had trained to run into a moving car and pretend to be hurt. The parents would then demand money from frightened driver. • clip

  32. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • The Ceremony (1971) - A marriage is arranged between the two who had never met before but it is about to be cancelled once the bride-to-be sends words that she will not be arriving. The patriarch insists the ceremony continue as planned. The forms of tradition must be obeyed, so the gathered guests watch on the humiliated bridegroom standing at the altar aloneand ‘marrying’ nothing but air.

  33. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • In the Realm of Senses (1978) • A former prostitute now working in an inn is seduced by its owner. A great passion sparks in both and they leave the inn and travelling together around the country. They give their entire existences to sex. In the end, with the man’s consent, the woman strangles him to death in a sex ritual and cuts his penis.

  34. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Empire of Passion (1978) - a labourer in a provincial village falls in love with thewife of a rickshaw driver. The labourer and his lover kill her husband to prevent him from discovering their affair, but when the driver’s ghost begins to haunt the lovers till they fall apart.

  35. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) - set in a POW camp in Java, a British officer exerts a strong sexual pull on the Japanese captain, who runs the camp. However, he is in no circumstances allowed to love his enemy of the same sex.

  36. OshimaNagisa after Shochiku • Taboo (1999) • Shinsengumiemploys a young samurai, who has feminine beauty. He becomes the centre of homosocial and homosexual desire among the members of the militia.

  37. Oshima’s Themes and Subjects • At the first glance, his subjects and themes are eclectic. • ‘Active subject’ = the director expresses his deepest passions, anxieties, and obsessions • Oshima’s ‘Active subjects’ are: • What Japanese cinema did not show or continued to hide: Alienation among the young; social hypocrisy and corruption;

  38. Oshima’s Themes and Subjects • Failures of and disenchantment with left-wing politics; material and social deprivation of the lower classes; various hangovers from the imperial past – feudalism, authoritarianism, patriarchalism, and nationalism; various forms of repression – social, moral and sexual; deep-rooted discrimination and prejudices – racism, sexism, classism; gender and sexual repression; suppression of freedom – freedom of speechand expression

  39. Oshima’s Themes and Subjects • Through examining criminal actions and sexual behaviours, Oshima (1) flaunts the vulgarity of characters, but at the same time, (2) reveals the hypocrisy and corruption of the seemingly prosperous and polite nation, which has created them and makes them exist - or disorder and chaos underneath surface order and harmony. Then, he demonstrates (3) sexual crime and violence are not without connection with social exploitation, alienation and repression.

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