Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

166 SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATIONhis experiences in the internment camp, slowly madepeace with his past life.Maybe everyone will agree that watching The Cats ofMirikitani is a privilege. The hidden message of thisfilm is very strong: connecting every prejudice that isaffecting the world after 9/11 with an experience of avictim of such prejudice during the Second World War.I witnessed the loudest applause at the end of The Catsof Mirikitani screening, far louder than for any otherfilm included in the Japanese Eyes Category at the 19 thTokyo International Film Festival that I watched.In term of quality, I know no one will question thejudgment of the jury when they picked The Cats ofMirikitani as the best Japanese film at the TokyoInternational Film Festival 2006. However, for me,one interesting question still comes up: is The Cats ofMirikitani really a Japanese film? Does the fact thatThe Cats of Mirikitani falls in a Japanese film categorytell us about something more than just a simple filmcategorization?Yes, Masa Yoshikawa, the producer of this filmis Japanese. He had previously worked on manyproductions for the Tokyo Broadcasting Systemand NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). KeikoDeguchi, the editor of The Cats of Mirikitani, is alsoJapanese. However, both of them are now based inNew York. Yoshikawa has written and produced manyfeature films and American television programs, whileDeguchi has edited many big American feature films,including Steven Shainberg’s recent narrative featureFur.So, why can The Cats of Mirikitani easily be categorizedas a Japanese film? Is it because the hidden narrativein this film tells the deep feelings of the victimizedJapanese under American domination? Or is it because,nowadays, the nature of film production is really difficultto keep within one national boundary? For a long time,questions about national cinema were not easy to defineor answer. Film theorists agreed that national cinemais a term used to describe the films associated with aspecific country. However, its meaning is still beingdebated by film scholars and critics.For the industry, it is easier. National cinema isdetermined by the place that provides the capitalirrespective of where the films are made or thenationalities of the directors. For the industry, a film issometimes just a number on a balance sheet. However,cases like The Cats of Mirikitani call this definition intoquestion, as well.Jimmy Choi, in his paper Is National Cinema Mr.MacGuffin?, suggested we look into the artifact, or thefilm itself, to find out what elements in the film textconstitute national cinema. Borrowing a term fromWalter Benjamin, Choi wrote that national cinema hasan “aura.” It is not just any “aura;” it is an aura thatbespeaks a national identity. In films, it embodies thelanguage spoken, the nationalities of the protagonists,the dress, the setting, the locale, the music and manydifferent elements that Choi call cultural icons. Togive the “aura,” many of these elements have to acttogether.Choi also acknowledged that this “aura” is somethingyou can feel when it is there but is hard to fully explain.Maybe this is the case in The Cats of Mirikitani.However, being international is not something new forJapanese cinema. Some say that, in Japanese history,cinema was always international before it was national.The first films to be exhibited in Japan were producedabroad while the first Japanese productions dependedon foreign-made equipment and advisors. Even thespread of cinema as a key element in early Japanese massculture during the Taisho and Showa period can be saidto be a result not of Japanese traditions but of vernacularmodifications of industrial and textual practicesdeveloped by Hollywood studios in the 1910s.Starting with that introductory phase, a big culture ofcinema-going slowly arose in Japan and the Japanesefilm industry grew stronger and larger. As an industry,we can say that the Japanese film industry was copyingHollywood’s success. Its studio system and star systemwas similar to Hollywood’s. At one point, in the 1950s,the Japanese film industry reached its peak and producedabout 650 films a year; at that time, this was even morethan what was produced in the United States.While the influence of Hollywood’s modes ofproduction deeply penetrated the Japanese movieindustry, Japanese cinema provided a different imageinternationally. Since the 1950s, great directors likeKenji Misoguchi, Yasuhiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawaburst onto the international stage and became darlingsof world cinema. Some of them, like Misoguchi, weresometimes slow to be recognized, and only known longafter their productive years, but all of them definitelychanged the way people saw Japanese cinema.Masterpieces by Misoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa suddenlyprovided fascinating alternatives to crude Hollywoodspectacles with their insipid narratives. Thanks to them,suddenly Japan became Western cinema’s “privilegedother.” Rashomon, Sansho Dayu and Tokyo Story wereAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows