Japanese New Wave

Japanese New Wave
The is a term for a group of loosely-connected Japanese films and filmmakers between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. The most prominent representatives include directors Nagisa Ōshima, Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda and Shōhei Imamura.
History
The term New Wave was coined after the French Nouvelle vague, a movement which had challenged the traditions of their national cinema in style and content, countering established narratives and genres with "the ambiguous complexities of human relationships" and polished techniques with deliberately rough ones, and introducing the theory that directors should be the auteurs of their films.
Unlike the French counterpart, the Japanese New Wave originated within the film studio establishment, especially Shochiku, whose head Shirō Kido hoped that "cheaply made, innovative pictures could emulate the success of the Nouvelle Vague in Europe". This policy saw the emergence of filmmakers like Nagisa Ōshima, Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda (all three Shochiku employees). Important early examples of the Shochiku New Wave were Cruel Story of Youth and Night and Fog in Japan (both 1960, dir. Ōshima), Blood Is Dry (1960, dir. Yoshida) and Dry Lake (1960, dir. Shinoda). Pigs and Battleships, released by Nikkatsu the following year, exemplified Shōhei Imamura's status as a director of the New Wave. The (possible) influences on these filmmakers are diverse: While Ōshima's antecedents have been seen in the theories of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Bertolt Brecht, and in the Japanese Leftist theatre (an influence of Jean-Luc Godard on Ōshima has been alleged, but also questioned), Yoshida was an outspoken admirer of Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman.
Kido soon withdrew his support for these films (due to commercial failure according to film scholar Alexander Jacoby, due to the uncompromising political content of Ōshima's films according to historian Donald Richie). By the mid-1960s, Ōshima, Yoshida and Shinoda had all left Shochiku and produced their films independently, as did Imamura. At the same time, Ōshima and Yoshida were the representatives of the New Wave who rejected both the term and the notion of a "movement" the most rigorously.
Other directors associated with the New Wave included Hiroshi Teshigahara, Toshio Matsumoto and former documentary filmmaker Susumu Hani. Hani directed his works almost entirely outside of the major studios, and favored non-actors and improvisation when possible. The documentaries Hani had made during the 1950s (Children in the Classroom and Children Who Draw) had introduced a style of cinéma vérité documentary to Japan, and were of great interest to other filmmakers. Kon Ichikawa, Yasuzō Masumura and Seijun Suzuki have also been encompassed with the term. Masumura's debut film Kisses (1957) has often been cited as a precursor of the New Wave and had been received enthusiastically by Ōshima upon its release. In addition, Film scholar David Desser placed director Kaneto Shindō next to Masumura as a "crucial" (Desser) predecessor and contemporary of the New Wave.
Themes addressed by the New Wave included radical politics, juvenile delinquency, uninhibited sexuality, changing roles of women in society, racism and the position of ethnic minorities in Japan. The Art Theatre Guild, originally co-initiated and co-financed by Toho to distribute foreign art films, became an important factor in the distribution of these films, sometimes also acting as producer.
As funding outside of the studio system became increasingly difficult in the 1970s, with the big studios finding themselves in a decline (largely owed to television), the Japanese New Wave began to come apart. While Ōshima had to look for investors outside of Japan, Imamura and Hani switched to documentary filmmaking for television, and Shinoda retreated to "academic" (Jacoby) adaptations of classic literature.
Films associated with the Japanese New Wave
1950s
1956: Children Who Draw, Susumu Hani (documentary)
1956: Punishment Room, Kon Ichikawa
1956: Crazed Fruit, Kō Nakahira
1957: Kisses, Yasuzō Masumura
1958: Giants and Toys, Yasuzō Masumura
1959: The Assignation, Kō Nakahira
1959: A Town of Love and Hope, Nagisa Ōshima
1960s
1960: Cruel Story of Youth, Nagisa Ōshima
1960: The Sun's Burial, Nagisa Ōshima
1960: Night and Fog in Japan, Nagisa Ōshima
1960: Naked Island, Kaneto Shindō
1960: The Warped Ones, Koreyoshi Kurahara
1960: Blood Is Dry, Yoshishige Yoshida
1960: Dry Lake, Masahiro Shinoda
1961: Bad Boys, Susumu Hani
1961: Pigs and Battleships, Shōhei Imamura
1961: The Catch, Nagisa Ōshima
1962: The Revolutionary, Nagisa Ōshima
1962: Pitfall, Hiroshi Teshigahara
1962: Harakiri, Masaki Kobayashi
1963: She and He, Susumu Hani
1963: The Insect Woman, Shōhei Imamura
1964: Intentions of Murder, Shōhei Imamura
1964: Assassination, Masahiro Shinoda
1964: Pale Flower, Masahiro Shinoda
1964: Onibaba, Kaneto Shindō
1964: Gate of Flesh, Seijun Suzuki
1964: Tattooed Life, Seijun Suzuki
1964: Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara
1965: The Song of Bwana Toshi, Susumu Hani
1965: Sea of Youth, Shinsuke Ogawa (documentary)
1965: With Beauty and Sorrow, Masahiro Shinoda
1965: A Story Written with Water, Yoshishige Yoshida
1965: Kwaidan, Masaki Kobayashi
1966: Bride of the Andes, Susumu Hani
1966: The Pornographers: An Introduction to Anthropology, Shōhei Imamura
1966: Emotion, Nobuhiko Obayashi
1966: Violence at Noon, Nagisa Ōshima
1966: Fighting Elegy, Seijun Suzuki
1966: Tokyo Drifter, Seijun Suzuki
1966: The Face of Another, Hiroshi Teshigahara
1967: A Man Vanishes, Shōhei Imamura
1967: The Oppressed Students, Shinsuke Ogawa (documentary)
1967: Manual of Ninja Arts, Nagisa Ōshima
1967: A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Song, Nagisa Ōshima
1967: Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki
1968: Inferno of First Love, Susumu Hani
1968: Profound Desires of the Gods, Shōhei Imamura
1968: Summer in Narita, Shinsuke Ogawa (documentary)
1968: Death by Hanging, Nagisa Ōshima
1968: Three Resurrected Drunkards, Nagisa Ōshima
1968: The Man Without a Map, Hiroshi Teshigahara
1969: Aido, Susumu Hani
1969: Ryakushō Renzoku Shasatsuma, Adachi Masao
1969: Eros Plus Massacre, Yoshishige Yoshida
1969: Funeral Parade of Roses, Toshio Matsumoto
1969: Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Nagisa Ōshima
1969: Double Suicide, Masahiro Shinoda
1969: Go, Go Second Time Virgin, Kōji Wakamatsu
1970s
1970: History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess, Shōhei Imamura (documentary)
1970: The Man Who Left His Will on Film, Nagisa Ōshima
1970: Heroic Purgatory, Yoshishige Yoshida
1970: Buraikan, Masahiro Shinoda
1971: Red Army, Adachi Masao
1971: The Ceremony, Nagisa Ōshima
1971: Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, Shūji Terayama
1971: Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Shūji Terayama
1971: Summer Soldiers, Hiroshi Teshigahara
1972: Dear Summer Sister, Nagisa Ōshima
1973: Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute, Shōhei Imamura (documentary)
1973: Coup d'État, Yoshishige Yoshida
References
Further reading
Oshima, Nagisa and Annette Michelson (1993). Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima. MIT Press, Boston. .
External links
1960s in Japan
1970s in Japan
Movements in cinema
New Wave in cinema
History of film of Japan