Introduction
Japanese film industry provides as an example of the way cultures can wrap images of their perceved ‘others’ in a form of artwork in which they appear to embrace its culture and traditions. These images are not usually harmless, they point out the fears and desires possessed by a large segment of a particular culture, they also bring out stereotypes in order to allay that fears or satisfy that desire, Japese culture for this instance.
Hollywood is continuing to develop Japanese images in their films for example “Back to the Future” film that has changed American perception towards Japan and the Japanese people. Japanese cultures in film has been able to influnce media houses in Hollywood in developing somethind similar to it (Remakes), Sushi restraunts and anime series in our silver screens have become a hit. On the other hand Japan has also been influenced by Hollywood films in building suburbian houses and English-language movies that have helped students speak fluently. The relatioship in movie production between Japan and Hollywood has been mutual since Hollywood has helped Globalise Japanese movies and even provided ready market in its country.
Background
Japanese cinema began in 1886 with the premiere of Edison’s Kinetoscope. In 1887, a French Cinematography Lumiere brother’s was introduced to the Japanese Cinema. In 1898 Japenese and French cinematographers continued to work together and shot various scenes from different locations na making making the movie together. In 1897, the fiirst Japanese film was made that concentrated its scenes on dancing geishas and live street movies.
Geishas were happy to show case their dancing techniques to the visual documentations. The first feature film was introduced in 1898 made by the same cinematographer and actor that was based on dramatisation of a robber’s famous arrest and another comedy about a person playing prank on a man sleeping on a park bench. After that another short film was introduced known as the Game of Autumn Leaves. Game of Autumn is one of the oldest existing Japanese films produced and performed by famous Kabuki artist of the old days (Sato 2003).
Japan has always had the most beatiful cinemas in the world. The films were masterpieces from its history such as silent era, militarist period of 1930s and 1940s, post war of American occupation and economic resurgence. Most of these premier films made through post war era and have continued to influence Japan’s film pioneers. Actualy early Japanese cinmas have become very rare sinc the firebombs of the pacific war but a small portion of it can be found available on DVDs. In 1897, producer Shiro Asano made the first importation of motion piocture camera in Japan. These took place two years after Lumiere Brothers was screened in Paris (Rickman 2005).
Japanese cinematographers became famous such that they were called upon to document Russian-Japanese war from 1904-1905. These war films become popular in Japan as a result of increased number of theatergoeors. Japan film industry then moved to mass production in the years from 1908-1909. Only a few films from this period exist as most of them were destroyed. Makino Shojo is among the first film producers and directors in Japan.
Shojo gained his reputation as Japenese reknown film director when he produced over 300 films between 1909 and 1928. First he started as the owner of Kyoto theatre, then moved to making films for Yocota company, foreign film import company. He started out by taking shorts of Kabuki troupe regularly performing in theaters. Among the troupe shots he took was Onoe Matsunisuke that geared Shojo’s career as a famous producer and the first “film stars” in Japanese Cinema history. This film was considered a big hit among audience in 1921 (Sato 2003).
In 1911, a film company was established by Yokoda Company that concentrated on catalog film distribution. Most of Japanese film in the catalog were short films that ran under 200 feet. Chushingura film starring Onoe Matsunosuke was the only lengthy film that ran approximately 7170 feet at that period. These film was made in the year 1910 and directed by Shojo. Later Japanese films started advancing to more complex scenes. Mastuda Film Company in Tokyo was added on it some traditional music, benshi voice-over and re-editing (Sato 2003).
Japanese Antarctic Expedition
Japanese films progressed from producing cinemas to documentary films and news reels. These documentaries borrowed scenes from old movies such as “The City, Kabuki, Sumo, Royal and current affairs that would entice viewers for example; Dancing Geishas or celebrity funerals Russian-Japanese war and the Gowanda incidents. They successfully produced a Taiwan documentary film in 1907. There were a lot of questions about Taiwan’s economy the period the film were introduced; therefore the purpose of filming the documentary was to advertise the country as available piece of land that anyone would invest in without fears.
Later in 1908, prince of Chosen was brought to Japan by Ito Horobumi. The film was highly criticised for the belief that the prince was a hostage. Hirobumi ordered a documentary of prince of Chosun made to familiarize it in Japan and remove existing controversies about him.
This example illustrates how Japan used documentary films for political campaigns. Japanese Expedition film dated 1912 is among the oldest Japanese documentary film still exiting in the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art. M. Pathy Company was responsible for producing this ancient documentary. The 1910 documentary film of Antarctic Expedition of naval lieutenant, Shirase and his companions were funded by Umenya Shokiri, Osumi Shigeno; a politician and Sohn Moon. From the documentary scenes we can also see that the film was used as a political tool for expedition-related seminars rather that the commercial purposes it was intended for (Sato 2003).
Martial arts and Samurai Japanese movies influence on America
Hollywood has been able to adopt Japanese film industry in its movie production, for example samurai and martial arts have been the major influence in American films. These Japanese movies were charactersied with blood, violence and were nasty minded compared to Hollywood movies wich were not as bloodier and violence such as Kill Bill, Volume one and Urotsukidoji. But actually when we look at Urotsukidoli, the film is based on science fiction and fantasy and has not incorporated samurai or martial art flicks in it and has les v iolence in it.
A lot of superficial things have been happening on Hollywood filmatography, for instance, cartoon shows that are made in Amerca want to look like they are made in Japan. When ‘Star Blazerz’ produced in 1978 it brought some fantasy to the movies. The movie was based on small crashed spacecraft and and an alien princes who died to give earth a chance to survive. At the end of the movie, battleship Yamato a starship serving all the earth was raised from dry seabed and renamed the Argo.
Kids love this kind of a movie with scenes of life-and–death, honor-and–betrayal like what Star Wars was all about, but American kids were constantly fed with healthy pabulum and poor writen shows such as animinated movies and live action movies with a few cartoon characters such as Tom and Jerry. Japanase movies brought shows with plots that continued from episode to episode and deaths of charaters that kids liked. Bad guys such as Desslok of Gamilon was possed two characters, one as a suave aesthete and the other as an astute military dictator and sometimes scenes of horror were incorporated into the movie (Suburbanshee 2003, online).
Japanese movies brought face reality in their films christened with beautiful art and stunning score. On the other hand, American scrpits were abit distorted since their scriptures had turned tried to emulate Japanses shows but turned out to be troubling Japanese Nationalist. A lot of up-the skirt shots were transformed into a Star-Trek-line multinational crew that was led by captaned who drunk quite a lot of “Earth minerals water” instead of sake. In filming the movie, American actors were skillfully transformed to speak and act like Japanese people since it had discovered that Japan was a real place where people told good ancient stories and valued their culture.
“Star Blazers” taught people virtues and drawbacks of Japanese cultural values. For example, Bushido character in the movie was portrayed as a honourable warrior always doing his duty, always ready to die, always respecting his opponent and never giving up unless for uncalled circumstances, values always dominant with Japanese characters. Also some wierd things that Japanese movies did such as getting killed for no reason because it made them feel better about their honor, the importance of family was also incorporated in the films, beauty appreciation and impermanence characters were very similar toto the values Western civilisation. Though the propotion was different, we can not conclude that Hollywood was influenced by these values (Suburbanshee 2003, online).
Star Wars an American film on the other hand was remodelled on Kurosowa’s a samurai movie and renamed it “The Hidden Fortress”. In early 1990s, Japanese movies such as ‘The Seven Samurai’, ‘Kagemusha’, Ladoos War’ and ‘Vampire Hunter D’ were the finest Japanese production at the time and everyone including American kids and college students associated to it. Japanese movies was always on a low budget but their stuff looked better, for example the movie composition was short, the blood on the snow looked like woodcuts, the costumes looked like something that came from a museum, animination in the film only two low number of frames per minute, anime character eyes never blinked but the shots always looked better.
The grounds were gorgeous, poetic story was culminating, the silence in the shot of flowers, drawings on the still frame that looked like animination were cheap, gorgeous and smart and everytime, the beats were expensive, ugly and didnt make much sense but all in all, the whole script was fun (Suburbanshee 2003, online).
Japanase movies were also superior in terms of music. American film scores were characterised with huge orchestral marches and their TV shows did not have good music either. American animination music was diverted from fun opening theme into a brief instrumental full of commercials. Japanese cartoon scores were used as a showcase for every genre of music. They did not use their normal pop bands for opening and closing songs but instead used a combination of good music that attracted the audiences.
For example, ‘women-in-mechasuits verses Bubblegum Crisis’ incorporated rock music into the storyline by making one character a member of the band “Pris and the Replicants”. These new adventure in films brought in more cash since the music was good. There was some kind of beauty and expressiveness of Japanese voice actors and singers that really challenged American vioce actors to improve their skills (Suburbanshee 2003, online).
Hollywood’s Interest in Asian Movies leads to Globalisation
Hollywood started having interest in Asian films with inspirations from Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa. John Sturges of the “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) was among the remarkable actors of the Kurosowa classical films of Seven Samura (1954) ever produced. Others were; Fistiful of Dollars (1964), Star wars (1977), Yojimbo (1961) and Hidden Fortress (1958). When Bruce Lee the legendary martial artist first introduced ‘kung fu’ in 1970s, he captured American fascination with his skills. Hollywood was moved by it and even adopted man action pictures into martial arts as the standard for fist-fight scenes.
The popular series “Kill Bill” directed by Quentin Tarantino showcased the best Japanese and Hong kong’s martial art genres there was. Another martial art film was ‘Matrix triology’ produced from (1999-2003) and featured martial arts moves that showed slow motion pictures such as long distance lips, running up walls, flips and somersaults and kick boxing (Lee 2005, p.3).
Hollywood has been intergrating Asian regions martial arts into its films since the 1950s and its earnings have been climbin since then. Hollywood is endowed with economic and political powers that enables it wield influence worldwide without competition. However, Hollywood studios have been able to deligate blockbuster production to other high-tech studios in the overseas since movie production expenses in their own country are quite expensive.
It takes about $90 million to make and market a movie in Hollywood. It’s advantegious to produce in other countries since labour costsare cheaper and union regulations are linient. Sequel and remarks was another of reducing budget since it saved on time and energy invloved in the arduous process of creating its own original motion pictures. Sequel and remarks looked inferior as compared to the original ones. Slight alterations were made to the original movies that already have been proved to be profitable. For example, DVD remarkes bring more profits to the original pictures and in reality remakes measure up to the standards of the originals and rarely noticed (Lee 2005, p.4).
However the remarkes do not produce rich themes as compared to the original ones, character development are sometimes neglected, cultural development on the film often losses translation and plots are often weakened. Also Hollywood studios have been hiring foreign directors and scene writers to lead Americab remakes. For example, the original director of the Grudge, Shimizu Takashi was made to do an America version, the original Japanese Ringu directed by Hideo Nakata was tapped into making ‘The Ring 2. A Hong Kong martial arts superstar Jackie Chan known for his comical and acrobatic stunts was given authority to conduct his perfomances that we see currently see in Hollywood works such as Shanghai noon, Rush hour series and Shanghai Knights (Lee 2005, p.4)
By Hollywood poaching popular directors and stars from Asian countries especially Japan, it has raised global awareness of Asian talents and forced its film centres to work with each other in order to survive harsh competition from Hollywood film industry. The objective behind intergrating Asian film was to work together at their domestic offices so that they could outgun Hollywood’s big-budget production. Japan-based Sony Corporation was the biggest investor in Asian production and produced movies such as Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon directed by Ang Lee.
Also in 1995, Japanese public bradcasting company, NHK established a biennable film project that co-produced five motion pictures from most of the Asia countries to be shown every odd year, another example of global awareness. Asian movies have been doing well over the years but piracy has been slowly killing the Asian film market. Asia has been loosing its popularity from pirated DVD and free internet downloads. However, the government in all Asian countries have put in place anti-piracy laws to enable the film industries earn some profits (Lee 2005, p.4).
Japanese horror movies on American films
In the recent years we have seen more United States Movies that were influenced by Japanese horror movies. Hollywood has been looking in every part of the world to draw inspiration in creating new movies. It seems like it has exploited all areas of the world, science and history to inflence its movie making. Recently Hollywood is leaning towards Japan for movie inspirations. Movie makers from Japan are considered to be on of the most visual visual movers in the whole world. Japanese horror movies attempt to bring reality into action and nightmares seem so real on silver screens. The graphics are designed in a way that viewers are haunted for many years to come.
Examples of movies inspired by Japanese horror movies to Hollywood films are ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Grudge’. Most of the Japanese horror movie genre are characterised by ghostly curses. In most cases the ghost was brought in by a curse to haunt the main character, the story usually follows that direction. Typically ghost are depicted as dirty entities, invisible in some circumstances and usually soiled. This simplifises that the ghost must have been burried in a casket deep in the grounds an d must have been been battling to get through the dirt.
Hollywood had not considered this psychological idea until Japanese filmakers brought it out in the movies and copied from it. United States has standardised this horror idea it borrowed from Japanese films. Japanese horror movie makers made ghost to be very scary and it flashed in and out of frame (Poupard 2007, p.1) (Gugie 2006, p.1).
Many ghosts are characterised by long and dark hair that symbolises shrouds given in death and also symbolises horrifying nature of ghost appearance that should not be seen in day light. In Japanese horror movies, ghost are portrayed as horrible demonic children. These images affect many parents because they love their children and want the best in them. Parents always see their children as little angels not demons as the screen portrays them. Hollywood is continuing to draw inspiration from Japan movies for the next years to come. At least a breath of fresh air and freedom has been experienced in Hollywood from drawing focus on symbolism in their movies as depicted by Japanese horror movies (Poupard 2007).
Asian Horror movies influences new wave of horror
The world has increased interest in horror movie industries especially Asian, Japanese Horror Movie Industry for that matter. Statistics reveal that the top five best horror movies came from Asia and three of them have remade into American version. An example o an americanised Asian movie is ‘The Ring’ from ‘Ringu’, ‘J-On’ transformed into ‘The Grudge’ and ‘Kairo’ into ‘The Pulse’.
History of three top Asian movies tapped into American film cultures
Ringu that was transformed into The Ring (1988).
Ringu was directed by Hideo Nakata and starts out as a slow-burn type of a movie and slowly picks at the middle of the story. One can easily predict the premise of the story with unpleasant death at the end of the movie, however the movie does not depredict what will happen at the end as compared to American movies where the audince finds himself interested to see how the hereos will meet their demise. Some last minutes of the movie ends with the most inedible horror-movie images you have never seen and it works so wel in capturing audience unawareness (Carter 2007, p.1).
The art of Asian horror movies
American film directors have become see the magnificent art behind Asian horror cinemas and they are making efforts to remake the exact surreal feel in theor movies by altering visions to America screens. The beaauty of Asina films is that they dont get to explain whats really going to happen at the end of the film. Directors remake this films witha feeling that american will not enjoy the subtleties of Asian horror, but to their amazements people still watch them but they dont appreciate the remakes. We cant really speak out for everyone, a majority of people appreciate remakes of Asian horror films since they had never seen the Asian originals.
What’s different about remake films is that America versions usually have high jumb factors, they satisfy and quick thrill that an average moviegoer is looking for. American movies do not care about a thought process innthe plot. Japanese films are characterized with scary children that bring out horror in the films and creep visions enough to qualify for a movie ticket (Sposato 2006, p.1) (Yoshihara 2002).
Recent developments of Japanese films
Many cinema works in Japan derive their stories from literature source. “Rashomon” and “Battle Royale” are one of the Japanese classifical films that picked their stories classical novels. Recently Japanese cinema has started adopting the popular manga. Manga is known as Japanese comics such as the anime TV series that go to the cinemas as feature-length animinated films. Example of adopted anime series are Pokeman, Doraemon and Gundam. Manga films were slowly adopted to live actions on big screen since Japanese films has already gained popularity. Example of the adopted films are the “Boogiepop and Others, Kagen No Tsuki and Cutey Honey”.
These films were made under low budgets with little exposure during theatrical runs and turned out to be excellent. Manga films were difficult to be remade into live action since the films were initially made in pictorial form. Japanese films are able to adopt the American comics due to the its new ambition anatsy of manga that was stimulated by computer graphis advancements (Kevin 2008).
Manga films was produced in 1997 and created by Toru Fujisawa. The new adoptation movies became an instant hit in Fuji Television and later transformed into 12-episodes series in 1998 with Takashi Sorimachi starring in it. These film also become a massive hit ranking eight highest rated program in 1998 and the best comical series in Japana television history. In December 1999 Fuji television produced another hit, GTO the Movie that proved that manga can translate into a live action. In 2005 TBS, a television network in Japan adopted another worldwide sensational known as NANA, a story of two girls hunting for love and success in Tokyo.
The use of live music and cross-promotion won alot of audience attention though it never reached the top chats of box office. An actor in the film Yuna Ito was a lead singer of a pop band in the film, Japanese earlier films such as the samurai and others did not have pop bands. Hollywood movies are characterized with musical bands, so the Japanese film picked this trend from Hollywood movies. We can not blame it all on Japanese influencing Hollywood movies, they too pick up some trends from Hollywood films (Kevin 2008).
Influence of Japanese Film on American movies
Since the beggining of Hollywood, adiences have been viewing Japanese horror movies as more innovative and more scary as compared to Hollywood movies such as House of Wax. Classical universal horror movies that were considered at time to be scary and frightening are nolonger percieved to be such in this new error. Dracula, Wolf-Man and Frankenstein scary movies of the 1940s to 1950s have been replaced with excessive violence because censorship boards have relaxed on their rules. In 1960s horror films were occupied with “Psycho” and “Peeping Tom” characters. Psycho role was to deal with issues moviegoers had never seen before such as necrophelia and voyeurism.
Producers brought new adventure in the films never been seen before that shocked audience as many of them were horrified and frightened by the infamous shower scenes where a character was stabbed to death in a shower, watching a murder scene was something new. Peeping Tom was about a young man who murdered young women and and used a move camera to film them dying, thats the joy he got from it. Audence were shocked by this kind of behaviour portrayed by the killers in the two films Peeping Tom and Psycho. Japanese Psycho films influenced American horror films such as the Halloween and Friday the 13th films (Coates 2005, p.1).
In 1970s and 1980s John Carpenter stepped in to revolutionize the horror genre with other sweep of films such as The Thing, Halloween, The Fog, The Friday the 13th and Night Marae On Elm Street. In early 1990s most of these movies suffered repetitive and dull scenes. It’s evident that Hollywood did not have originality in making movies anymore. Horror movies picked a new face and started showing more violence and body counts instead of concentrating on the plot of the movie and atmosphere. At this period, American films were lacking originality whereas Japanese horror films were at its peak in movie markets and become very popular among audiences. People relate to Japanese horror films for their cleverness and restraints incontract to the American films that concentrated entirely on excessive nidity and high body counts films (Coates 2005, p.2).
Another characteristic of Japanese horror films is that of surreal plot lines and revenge as a common theme in the films. Japanese movies also have twisted plotlines and able to confuse audiences at the beggining of the movie, it tales someone a while to understand what’s really going on. The good thing about this movies is that they keep you guessing, its not easy to tell what will happen at the end unlike the Hollywood movies. Japanese horror films relied on psychological horrors that were the base of earlier American horror films back in the days, example of this is The Haunting, Poltergeist and The Shining. These first films were inspirations to Japanese horror directors since they were highly apprecaited by audiences.
The stories in the movies were ancient such that the films used folklores, tales of horror, ghost stories and allegiance. These horror movies deal with breakdown of reality, the mind and family set up. All in all Japanese horror films dealt with the unexplained. An example we have seen above in Ringu, a Japanese film that inspired the making of the American film ‘The Ring’, Hollywood looked upon Japan to produce more horror films so that they could remake. Ju-On stepped in as the next Japanese horror film after Ringu, Hollywood hurriedly remade it and tittled it as ‘The Grudge’ and became very successful at the box offices (Coates 2005, p.2) (Coruss 2001) (Gugie 2006, p.1).
In recent years, American movies have started to look like action films moving away from horror films with hyper kinetic action scenes and also editings done in MTV style. In Japanese films story telling normally goes slowly, it takes a viewer considerable amount of time to really understand the story. These stories are occassioned by silence and empty spaces an art tha creates sensation of impeding death and doom. An audience may not exactly know what’s going on in the films, the formation of suspense is what creates terror. People usually get scared of what they don’t dont understand or know what’s going to happen next.
For example the movie Jaws used the suspense theme, the shark was brought in the middle of the movie that made the film more suspenseful and scary. Horror movies such as The Ring, The Ring 2 and the Grudge brought assurity to the Hollywood movie industry to still look across the Pacifics for more original and scary ideas in movie creation. Japanese horror films are on higher grounds of dreamline levels as compared to the current American horror films. They give a feeling of not being in control which is the main basis for horror movies. We continually hope that Japanses horror films will keep inspiring Hollywood horror films for many years to come (Coates 2005, p.3).
Hollywood
Hollywood movies depict American way of life. The images of the Hollywood surburbs have spread around the world as the image of American surburbs. Japanese people have tried to emulate this by building their structures to look like the American surburbs. High growth of Japanese economy stimulated the growth suburbs after the second world war. The invention of the surburbs in Japan was like a show-window of economic growth.Japan emulated American surburbs through Hollywood movies.
They emulated eaxctly what they saw on fiction movie sets and built houses from it. Real lifves of the Hollywood surburbs are different but Japanese took the fictious surburbs to be the real town. Japanese trying to emulate Hollywood way of living seemed as though they are betraying their own culture. These meant that living in the surburban houses needed to combine images from the given mass media such as Hollywood films, television, Japanese comics and American pop music that would make someone escape from reality for minutes (Erickson &Shimada 2002, p.1-3).
Japan is the Holywood’s flavour for the moment. With the flavours of sumurai myths, American film makers are considered naive in Japan. Japan has become Hollywood’s flavour at the moment since it remakes every movies that comes out of it, for example “Kill Bill Vol.1, Quentin Tarantino’s bloddy revenge flick, blue-eyed Bride, Uma Thurman’s blonde and O-Ren Ishii that was played by Lucy Liu”. With advent of samurai, Hollywood sorted kismet that produced similar movies about ‘deadly steroids and exploding volcanoes”, Junko (2000) laments. Hollywood theaters are suddenly overturned with Japanese images.
Another example of Japanese images in Hollywood is that Tom cruise film “The Last Samurai” acted on the battle fields of Meiji Restoration in Japan. “Lost in Translation” is another Japanese film that portrayed American aliens in Toyko, this movie was well recieved and attracted a majority of audiences.
These movies become the centre of heated debate siince Japanese claimed that Depiction of Japan in the movies was not well presented on the grounds that it depicted Japanese as racist, naive, accurate and well-intentioned. “The Last Samurai” also portrayed Japanese culture as stale and portrayed the white man as the hero teaching modernisation in Japan o how to honor their past. In Detroit News Tom Long lamented that “The Last Samurai” was a cheap sentiment that pretented to honor Japanese culture. He continues to argue that what the movie does is to present big fights and worship stars that provide shame to Japanese culture (Junko 2000, p.1).
A party planner for the Los Angels premier of the “The Last Samurai” advertised for auditions for beautiful Asian women, with free spirit to dress up and mingle in character so as to an image of ancient Japan, circa 1870s. This advertisement was seen as disrespecting Asian women and treating them as attractve set of piece and a stereotyped idea that all Asian women are equivalent. Sara Park, an Asian woman complained that Hollywood clumps them all together without caring what they are wearing be it kimonos, handboks or saris (online). Tomoni also laments that another American film attempt to transfform Japan into its movies such as “Shogun” and the “Rising Sun” has improved over the years. Whereas American is making progress in emulating Japan on screens, the films are humiliating Japanese audiences (Junko 2000, p.2).
Hollywood rushes to remake Japanese films without getting to understand Japanese culture or traditions. Even though Japanese audiences are relishing the opportunity to engage in the new century’s moviegoing tradition, viewers have comalined about anachronistic samurai ballet gear, overtalking warriors and the emporor appearing before a foreigner, American scripts that lokked so vague. Serious pictures like “Hiroshima Mon Amor” did not win viewers attention, they contnually picked on the mistake. What makes Japanese movies stad out is the fact that they make their movies as story book approach to the samurai.
Samurai viewed as unfailingly noble and presented pure worriors that anyone would think of. Of recent years, samurai myths are fading away in Japan, we see that the movie some scenes in the movie were highly glorifies but they did not exist in reality. But since the myth as originaly created by Japanese Literature film, doesn’t look appealing to see the tarnished images returning in new American packaging (Junko 2000, p.3).
Back in the days Japanese characters in western movies were portyaed as “bucktoothes, glass wearing, cruel, treacherous semi-animalistic characters”. After World War II, more paternalistic films have come up such as “Sayonara” that brought new meaning to Japanese characters. These new films portrayed women as mysterious and compliant contray to Hollywood films of feisty and Independent women.
A revisionist war film of the 1970s “ToraTora Tora”, emphasised the power of the military on both sides of the war, none was declared more victorious than the other. But since 1980 to 1990 when Japanese economical power was going down the drain, there presentation in American film, Japanese images were portrayed as cold executives and dehumanized moneygrubbers in films such as “Gung Ho” and the “Rising Sun”. With the absence of conflicts in Japan, Hollywood-Japan obsessed movies have increased the popularity of Japanese culture worldwide. Sushi bars have become a common thing in most Western cities and anime vidoes have become the hype. Japanese famous actors such as Pokemon, Ichiro Suzuki and many more have become household names (Junko 2000, p.3).
Adopting Japanese names in Hollywood has something to do with Fads and Fashions in Japan. In the recent years, Japan became more familiar to Westerners through exporting its popular culture. Critics christened familiarity in Japanese movies as cultural stereotypes. For example the adevent of anime films and Japanese technology transfered in movies such as “Lost in Translation” was well recieved among young audiences since they were less exotic and hip. “The Last Samurai” on the other hand brings out nostalgia and simplistic desire of honouring other cultures by adopting them.
These movies bring some comparison to the American “Dance with the Wolves” by Kevin Costner a white man who attempts to join Native American tribe. Jean Basinger, chairman of film department in Wesleyan University points out that they are only using Japanese movies to embrace the culture of the people and understant it, it doesn’ mean that they are shifting eastwards. He emphasises that Hollywood has ran out of settings in which to do its story and their stories are getting worn out so they would like to do find something new (Junko 2000, p.3).
Hollywood also presents Japanese images in their films in a demoralising way that is not necessarily true. For example, an episode that showed a Japanese riding on a motorcycle, bullying American pedestrians, shoving a katana sword around and a non-samurai woman doing hara-kiri were not considered to be true nature of Japanese culture. When Japanese see this kind of movies, they sense a lot of vagueness in them.
Professor Takashi of International Liberal Studies laments that the reason why Japanese people and the image of Japan in Hollywood are not accepted to Japanese people is because of the superiority nature imagined of the Western people towards the Eastern ones thefeore ignoring the actual situation in the East. He continues to point out that Japanese poeple would never ride a motorcycle while waving a katana sword around, Holywood uses these images in famous movies as “Occedentalism”, what the West portrays the people from the Asia to be like. On the other hand, Japanese stereotype America movies as “Bright white teeth and a happy-go-lucky family”.
The humor in the film would not actually be enticing to the veiwer if the producer used ordinary Japanese family in the movie either than the sterotyped images we have on minds already. So stereotype images are produced by both American and Japanese cultures in film, we can not blame it alone on Hollywood since the Japanese tak part in it as well (Takashi 2006) (Waseda Weekly 2006).
The Last Samurai, Kill Bill and Lost in Translation films translate the way Japan has advanced into American consciousness both in technology and in cultural sophistication. Hollywood films should never be seen as trying to copy any of its others films, it only remakes the movies to entertain its audience and keep them coming to theatres for more. The films are intended to sell first and then mirror reality to the films so that audiences would connect to them no matter how tenuous the story on the screen and those of history would appear.
For instance the first film of 1939 “Mr. Moto’s Last Warning”, Japanese film was first introduced in the American film consciousness in the silent film arena. An early Japanese actor Hayakawa Sussue starred in post war films from (1889-1973) such as “The Bridge on the River Kwai” that received an Academy Award nomination. From his popularity, he maintained an on screen early history of motion pictures that was termed as “impassive mask” that was characterized with attempts to manipulate white women into his clutches (Bardeche et al 1938, p.107) (Kartz 2001).
Stereotypes can be negative or positive depending on personal point of view. American’s presents Japanese females in the films of silent arena and the Japanese makes are represented as Hayakawa. For example the film “Madame Butterfly” a remake of David Belasco’s of 1900 “One Act” that originated from John Luther Long 1898 novel, portrayed stereotype images of Japanese generations playing the feminine role.
Also the silent movie of 1915 of tragic Japanese heroine, love went sour has been tapped in most of the American film productions. “Madame Butterfly archetype” is known for the Butterfly and her American lover Pinkerton as the devoted self-sacrifice of her past regardless of neglect and sexual exploitation of the male lover. Stereotype in these images shows that love is not mutual, relationships in Japanese culture do not have rational basis but love still is considered a great intensity for Japanese woman, she devotes all she’s got including sacrificing her life to serve the undeserving love (Charles 2002).
Japanese culture contains sexual appeal and emotional purity of self-sacrificing that always portrayed them as subservient woman. These devotional selfish feminism images was looked upon by everyone in the society and required for them at all times and men were represented in the films as cruel, deceptive, large impassive exteriors that could not be questioned by a woman. Next in the cinemas was “Mr. Moto” series of the 1930s that focused on portraying cultural meaning in the movie into the world. Mr. Moto has been able to influence Hollywood in integrating sexual element in the films. Scenes in Moto film suggest to audiences that Moto can be anyone he chooses to be at anytime, he can make transition instantly.
The 1930’s audiences accepted Japanese as the movie hero because of his sexual appeal and later transported the images in Hollywood films. Majority of Japanese pictures are filmed with various escapades. The main character Bob typically the film star would be having four divorced wives and working his way to paying his past and has just come to a decision that Yoko Mori must be his new wife. Yoko Mori expressing her absolute faith no matter the circumstances, she is not allowed to oppose the marriage proposal (Murakami 1993) (Masuda 2004).
“Memoirs of a Geisha”, a Hollywood film remake of Japanese film has generated complains in Japan about cultural insensitivities. Geisha is based on blockbuster book by Arthur Golden. The book was transformed into an American version of Japanese colourful ladies of the night acted by Chinese actors and filmed in California. Producer Douglass Wick on a phone interview comments that “Japan has always had an appreciation of Hollywood magic”. Wick emphasized that Geisha movie is not based on historical background on geisha culture but a “universal love story” directed worldwide audiences. Geisha film was based on Japanese story but did not feature Japanese stars because of cultural sensitivity (Satran 2005).
The idea of national cinema was discouraged in early Japanese film history as on the basis of universal humanism. These early films discussed detailed Japanese movements in context of national, political and social grounds. The films provide accurate insight and extensively analyze Japanese genres, films and directors. “Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano’s Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920 and 1930s” is the main contributor in embracing Japanese culture by writing books about Japanese film studies that researched on early Japanese cinema.
Kristen Thompson, David Bordwell and Janet Staiger took up intensive analysis in defining the birth of old Hollywood in relation to cinema culture of the “classical Hollywood cinema”. They compared early Japanese cinema to the classical Hollywood films to find some connection to it. Wada-Marciano made efforts in defining the old Japanese cinema’s art and industry in the context of “classical Japanese cinema” constructed between 1920 and 1930. Classical Japanese cinema took industry-manufactures approach in making film ideas relying entirely on modern national character, identity and Japanese culture (Mitsuyo 2008: Standish 2005).
Japanese filmmakers started modernising its film industry from “Tokyo urban space, the middle-class film, modern sports and the athlete star, the woman’s films; Shochiku Kamata style and the historical discourses that amounted to film criticism” (Mitsuyo 2008). Tokyo after having its facilities demolished in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 were crucial in shaping Urban Tokyo in the contemporary dramas contrary to that of Kyoto’s Japanese period pieces (jidaigeki).
These films for the first time brought modernity in the films that enabled audiences to view average people in the films such as salary men, schoolchildren and housewives. The films helped foster nostalgic and fictive national Japanese images regardless of western cinematic influences that seek transform power over community. Wacha-Marciano distinguishes films studies and other areas of studies to bring out new meaning of studio history, images in urban Japan as well as Hollywood and filmmakers’ practices.
After 1917, western films were widely imported to Japan. Modern devices such as pans, close-ups and the suburbs began to influence Japanese cinema. Despite world depression and political turmoil in Japan, it continued to integrate with other Asian film companies in forming a strong film industry. Japanese studio had an advantage over others since it owned its own studio theatres such as MGM, Paramount and other chain of theatres in the United States.
What favoured Japanese director over Holywood directors is the fact that they had more autonomy in story selection, cinematography, story writing and editing. Japanese directors had also greater career stability, for example Yasujiro Ozu took most of time working at the studio, while Akira Kurosowa made his films from1943-1965. That is considerable amount of time dedicated to complete a given movie. The director assistants were trained in the pre-war error to adequately carry out their responsibilities. It is this training that made assisant director Ishiro Honda make his own movie Godzilla and its sequels. In the film Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1962) received mixed reaction from different commentetors. A European filmaker Paul Schrader wanted the movie to be spiritual, while Danold Richie a Japanese scholar wanted the movie to have a “Bhuddist mono non aware” expression that symbolised sadness, and serene acceptance.
Later on, directors picked on Japanese idea of what the film theme should be. The were very excited of breaking western filmmaking standards and allowed to shoot every scene from a low angle, taking shots of tea kettels, laundry, banners and curtain shots. They continually broke western filmmaking rules of eye line matches, screen direction and positions. Their increadible beauty that the film provided from mixed ideas of directors brought a new meaning of filmic plays ever produced (Rickman 2005).
Famous glasses came from Japanese designers, inlfuences the most starred restraunts in world’s major cities and even the American food show “Iron Chef”. Japanese comical books are occupying shels in American bookstores and anime infuenced movies such as “The Dark Knight” and “Spider-Man-3” have attracted huge audiences in Hollywood as well as the world. Imperial Japan studies on trans-national film culture shows how national identity was formed through film culture, it examines different types of culture in a given society that reached similar outcomes, Japan for that matter. Michael Baskett (2008) examines how different attitudes, ideas and myths of Japanese imperialism were formed as represented in the cinemas. He focuses on how Asia replaced Hollywood “as the premier source of news, entertainment and education”.
Early Japanese films expanded from manga, pop music and film journals forming a multi-media connection with cinema culture that they could identify with therefore attracting huge number of audiences that are connected together through filmic discourses. Marginalisation of films in Asia greatly contributed to the Japanese imperialist achievements of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that contributed to positive visual representation of Japan’s East Asian hegemony. Asian countries working together made its films more superior to that of the Western counterparts (Hartzheim 2008, p.3) (Newcomb 2008).
The Japanese Period film: A critical analysis, Sybil A. Thornton transforms the history of the period film into present day cinematography. For instance the samurai and sword dramas as depicted in most familiar Western audiences are connected to earlier periods of pre-war and post-war incidents. Thornton ironically defines in his book that Japanese film has inspired, informed and influenced so many western film industries in its theatrical, literacy tradition and oral perspectives. Orientalism has discouraged Western scholars in participating in Japanese film cultures. They are also avoiding focusing on social-cultural specifics such as Japanese narratives.
Thornton argues that “The Japanese film “jidaigaki” was an anachronistic in film that the intended purpose was to describe the iconography, history of the past and how filmmakers avoided the government censorship that criticised modern institutions”. On his study Japanese cultural history on cinematography, Thornton provides us a deeper understanding of Japanese periods of films, art and cultural history we see today in the movies as some may want to call stereotypes. We have to understand Japanese culture at forehand before watching the movies to reduce cultural criticism. Every country is entitled to its own culture, we should not try to make them become what we want them to be rather sit back enjoy the movie and appreciate their artist skills (Sybil 2007).
Hollywood Cinemas
Hollywood movies are set in generic codes and convections that act as motifs that attract the viewer’s attention in understanding and identifying with the films. These Hollywood cinemas are divided into genres such as westerns, musicals and romantic comedies and all stick to ‘clarity unity-goal-oriented characters…and [narrative] closure’. The aims of this films are to ensure that audiences understand the film and able to relate to it. Hollywood directors also create individualism pieces of art into the movie that can be equal to the traditional venerated European art-house cinema. Monogram pictures shows as the influence Hollywood as on cinemas worldwide.
In Bout de Scouffle, Michael Poiccard the central star tries to “imitate the physical mannerism of film star Humphrey Boggart with his thumb” that indicates the model of masculinity in Hollywood films. Hollywood works hard to deliver quality in its star presentation so that the public would to allow the public to consume and live in the images so that they would imitate the character, the attire and mannerism in the movie. Audiences imitate all they see in the starts because they believe the personality the star presents is the idea (Pramaggiore & Willis 2007, p. 356: David & Kristen 1990, p. 218: Leo 1979).
Impact of Hollywood film to young people
Hollywood movies have had a positive influence to young people in the world. For example France’s youth are being influenced by cultural output of Hollywood films. Hollywood films continue to influence the movie culture in the world; the French have not been left behind. There is this new craze in France that “commercial cinemas are as important as Art-house cinemas” (Motley 2008, p. 2: Phil &Keith 2000, p. 21). Most students who want to improve their English speaking skills continually watch Hollywood movies. Hollywood movies are very important to foreign students as they help them gain speaking confidence.
Correct English sentences stick to students heads, they imitate easily imitate the sentences and incorporate them in their daily speeches. Apart from Hollywood movies, there are also books from the movies that help students learn how native speakers write in English that they would ordinarily never been interested in, but the movies enable them learn how to speak and pronounce words. The language used in the movies are sometimes deeply rooted in slang phrases that enable them learn idiomatic and informal words that are not yet in English dictionary and able to converse with other student anyway.
The movies enables students improve word pronunciation in areas such as grammar, vocabulary and listening skills. As Hollywood remakes movies from Japan and translated them to English, it helps English learners in Japan and the world as a whole and also promotes Japanese culture (Colwell 2006: Frieden 2005: Kaufmann 2006: Liu 2005: Szynalki & Wajcik 2007: Witt 2007: Toastmaster International 2007).
Japanese cinema at large
Mr. Bruce Goldstein and Dr. Napier Susan professor of Japanese Studies at Tufts University were interviewed on CNY and share their ideas of Japanese series and classics. Nakadai is a Japanese series that was created by Bruce Goldestein.
He reports that this film represents golden age of Japanese cinema. The film was directed by Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Kuboyashi, Gosho, Okamoto and Teshigahara. He laments that American remake movie stars such as Paul Newman of The Seven Samurai cannot match of up to the standards of Japanese actors. He says that Japanese actors are nurtured and mature over time as compared to American overnight Stardom. One of the directors of The Human Condition, Kobayashi began filming the movie in 1959. So has gained his star status for a period of 50 years that no Hollywood actor has ever had (Nakadai 2007).
Hollywood Entices the Japanese
Contrary to the myth that Japan infuences Hollywood in film industry, Japanese film companies have been investing in Hollywood entertainment industry. The biggest Japanese companies are financing feature films in Hollywood such as “Bright lights, Big City” and “Betrayal” in making films. Quite a number of Japanese corporations and partnerships are buying stock in motion pictures and television studios. Sony Corporation has started distributing American made movies to Japan. Hollywood has always opened door to new investors willing to finance its version of artistic visions and the Japanese have been the biggest investors attributed wuh passive and creative input.
Hollywood is an appealing target to the Japanese people because they are looking for English-language movies that contribute to nearly half of the box-office business in Japan. They also striked a deal with Hollywood that would enable them easily distribute films in Hollywood. Japan movie industry has advanced over the years that has increased demand for films and television programs that ave been boosted by media outlets such as cable television, video cassette recorder and satellite recording. Japanese companies have turned to american studios and English-language production because there is no where else they could sell their domestic films (Stevenson 1988, p.1).
Conclusion and Recomendations
In conclusion Hollywood has expanded its influence globally interms of movie production but countries are increasingly intergrating with one another especially the asian community to break down the stereotypes of distinctly Indian, Japanese or american cinema. Japanese having already taken over worldwide cinemas by storm, Hollywood is slowly letting its comic adoptation into its silver screens. Japanese cinema manages to mantain healthy balance because of its original independ films, remakes, manga adoptationd and commercial adoptations. Hollywood-Japanese relation in the movie industry has basically been mutual. Each one of them depends on the other for its sucess.
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