You can be successful in the US being very Japanese, you just have to be intended for Japanese pre-teens.
I don’t know if Ozu’s unpopularity in the US is due to being ‘Too Japanese’. It’s more due to his films being too uneventful to interest non-cinephile Americans. Americans love samurai stuff and scifi/fantasy anime.
Mizoguchi and Teshigahara probably fit your description.
Yes. I’m quite familiar with Mizoguchi (just finished up a long string of his films plus a documentary on him by Kaneto Shindo) and I’ve only seen “Woman in the Dunes” by Teshigahara. Thank you.
Yes, I can see Ozu boring the hell out of just about everyone that I know (save a few mindful individuals) but everytime I saw a film of his I felt completely obsessed with whatever was going on. Thus my interest here in such directors who’re possibly “too Japanese” for their own good in terms of economic viability.
Too artistic is more like it. 13 Assassins is a film that’s very popular in the states right now and it’s very japanese.
Yes…I’ve been a bit iffy on Miike’s films (though I’ve only seen his Graveyard of Honor remake and Gozu), perhaps feeling that I don’t really understand them as well as I try to (then again, he has been heavily influenced by Paul Verhoven…) though I don’t think that’s a regard of being “too Japanese”. I am inclined to the more artistically deemed films to be honest. For example, all that I could find of Shura (known in English as Pandemonium) is in the form of a torrent, by the same director of Funeral Parade of Roses (which was said to have influenced Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange).
I’d argue that Ozu’s themes aren’t really Japanese at all. They are domestic films about family. Dramas with some real everyday problems as opposed to a made up situation or comedies about social position. I think that Good Morning and I was Born But… are possibly the best films about children growing up and finding that your parents aren’t perfect. His films are still quite modern (A typical Indy or Hollywood film would no doubt have a lot of yelling and have the parents have some serous flaw. Ozu just sees the separation between parents and children as a logical step in growing up).
But, is he Inherently a Japanese director? Not sure. The later films have little movement (Not necessarily a Japanese attribute). The early films have the camera as fluid as a Renoir film.
Kitano has been borrowed from quite a bit. Not sure why he’s not as popular as Miike, though he is more critically praised.
Well, there’s a problem with perception here. Filmmakers like Ozu, Naruse, Gosho, Mizoguchi and others have all been held back by the Japanese because they felt these filmmakers were “too Japanese” for Western audiences to comprehend. While a filmmakers like Kurosawa has been called “too western” to be truly Japanese, but he asserts he’s never read a western critic that didn’t insert themes into his work, and he’s as Japanese as any other filmmaker.
Much of this comes down to ideas of the self and the community (‘giro’ and ‘ninjo’ in Japanese). Ozu, though an extremely individual formal style, is seen as celebrating the ideas of the “collective,” while Kurosawa is seen as a total individual.
In fact, filmmakers like Shohei Imamura and Yuzo Kawashima actual argue there is a perceptive Japan, one of quietness and contemplation and simple truths, and a “real” Japan, one of backsliding and betrayal and very human foibles, that they present. They argue that the perceptive Japan, the one the Japanese want to see themselves as, are very friendly to western audiences and explains the success of Ozu and Mizoguchi in foreign markets.
So, the question becomes more, “what do you perceive Japan as?” That must be answered first before we decide who is and isn’t Japanese.
Personally, I feel a great filmmaker presents a reality that is both specific and universal. So, I would argue great Japanese filmmakers are both very Japanese and very worldly (which definitely explains Ozu, Naruse, Gosho as well as Imamura and a bevy of others).
One mainstream film that I don’t believe has been released at all in the US is “Yamato”, the 2005 big-budget retelling of the fate of Japan’s biggest battleship in WW2
I guess they figured veterans would not be pleased…..
“Personally, I feel a great filmmaker presents a reality that is both specific and universal:
this, entirely
Hey, if little HAUSU can make it here…
Honestly, i think East Asian films (by which I mean Japan, China, and Korea) have far more of a presence in America than, say, general European films. Over a period of 4 years from 2004-2008, I think I recall seeing at least 4 or 5 East Asian films in non-art-house theaters. How many French films could I have seen? Approximately zero.
Sure, there’s an appetite for a certain kind of Asian cinema in the US (action/martial arts, some drama), but at least there’s an appetite for it. Most other foreign films are ignored for the purposes of mainstream (as in, you can see it in a cineplex in Alabama) theatrical release.
“Unmarketablity in the US due to being “too Japanese”…"
That happens with all countries which aren’t trendy enough for American and subsequently, worldwide audiences. Even for the average cinephile, it’s difficult for him / her to love more Brazilian or Yugoslavian films as opposed to Frenhc, American and Japanese, assuming they HAVE seen Japanese cinema and not just Seven Samurai and Ichi the Killer.
@Bolo Tie
That’s true. Just doing through a quick Google search of ‘Asian film festival’ there are plenty of Asian Film Festivals in NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas etc.. Not to mention all of the Anime Expos along the East Coast, Texas, and West Coast here. Asian (the big three at least) cinema has a large market in America.
^ Are most Asian film festivals though in the U.S. open to Iranian, Lebanese, Indian and Pakistani cinematographies with new releases and retrospective of directors’ filmographies? Or is their field of interest mainly located in the eastern part of the Asian continent?
Teshigahara is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time IMO.
The Face of Another is a classic example of a decidedly “Japanese theme” as well as Woman in the Dunes. The Man Without a Map also revisits similar themes but is not as strong as the former two. Pitfall should also be checked out.
And Yoji Yamada directed a great trilogy of “very Japanese” themed films: Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor. Highly recommended.
I think I’m using that “term” very Japanese correctly – I take it to mean: not an Americanised sentiment? heh
The Eastern part Dimitris. There is still a bad habit in America for Asian to only mean those from East Asia.
Too Japanese or too good?
At Newbury Comics they have an Asian Cinema section that tends to be about twice the size of the ‘Foreign’ section. In terms of films, Japan is the most popular foreign country in the US and probably the only non-Anglophone country to have market penetration outside of cinephiles. Of course, only if the film is fast paced.
It is true that a film that came from the UK, Japan, or France has a much better chance to be screened in the US than from other countries. But there are exceptions. Namely, if the director is famous or if the film did well at festivals. For a Lebanese film to get screened in the US it would have to win a prize at Cannes.
The funny thing is the most popular flicks in japan nowadays are big “michael bayish” blockbusters.
“I think I’m using that ‘term’ very Japanese correctly – I take it to mean: not an Americanised sentiment? heh”
An interesting thing, Donald Richie posits about filmmakers of the new wave, mainly focused on Imamura, Yoshida, Oshima and Teshigahara, is that all of them started their careers with influences clearly outside of Japan and an extremely individualized approach to filmmaking.
But all of them begin, as they get older, to get very traditionalized and explore more “Japanese” themes. Richie focuses on Teshigahara’s absence from film. Teshigahara’s father was an Ikebana (flower arrangement) instructor and when he passed away Teshigahara took over his business. When Teshigahara entered back into film (13 years after Summer Soldiers he makes Antonio Gaudi) he moves from an extremely personal, individualized form of expression to a very communal, outward form of expression (where is Teshigahara’s voice in this silent documentary about another artist’s formal mastery?). Apparently, this is even more apparent in his final two films (both of which I’ve yet to see).
But, Richie states both of these are inherently Japanese, especially in regards to film. The generation before these young filmmakers (and it is kind of a misnomer to lump the “Japanese New Wave” together, some of them didn’t even know each other), Ozu, Naruse, Gosho, Shimazu, etc. all started out in silents with very western influenced formal techniques and even narratives. As each filmmaker got older, though, they all simplified their approaches and focused on less “foreign” themes.
So, essentially Ozu’s super-Japaneseness is no less or more Japanese than Teshigahara’s extreme individuality. Maybe that’s why, even as foreigners, we never really feel like we’re in all that strange a land when watching a true master in Japan.
Charles Deckert
Many Japanese directors and films have yet to be available commercially in the US due to their unpopularity in the foreign film market, otherwise deemed informally as being “too Japanese.” Directors like Yasujiro Ozu and Takeshi Kitano have been criticized or limited in the American distribution of their works here because of such a notion of not being accessible enough to American consumers (note that I said consumers rather than audience). This is merely the prologue for my question to all of you: What other Japanese directors have been criticized for being deemed “too Japanese” in their films? I am interested in seeking them out.