News and Opinion

Shinozaki Makoto’s Sharing and Cinema after 3.11

As I have argued many times before (for instance, in my writings on Kitano Takeshi, on Aoyama Shinji, or for the Japan Foundation), one of central problematics of Japanese cinema of the last two decades has been how to represent the other. In some cases, this has involved representing Japan’s others, especially minorities within the country, but on a more basic level, this has extended to questioning the ability of cinema to represent other individuals. This, I argue, has led many filmmakers of the 1990s to pursue a “detached style” that refrained from using close ups or analytical editing as means of enabling spectators to “know” what characters are thinking and feeling.

This problematic has seemingly declined in importance as new filmmakers have appeared and television—which in Japan has long offered pre-digested visions of the world, as Abe Kasho has argued in Beat Takeshi vs. Kitano Takeshi—has come to dominate film production. But the triple disaster of March 11, 2011, may have revived it in the form of the question of how to understand those who did and still suffer.

Everything © Aaron Gerow. Send comments and suggestions to webmaster@aarongerow.com