タイトル
     2016 年度   総合国際学研究科
  
Japan Studies 2   
時間割コード
53M0812
担当教員(ローマ字表記)
  イリス ハウカンプ [Iris HAUKAMP]
授業開講形態 授業形態 単位数 学期 曜日・時限 実務経験のある教員による授業
  講義 2 秋学期 木2 -
授業題目(和文)   
 
Title(English)   
Film and History: Politics of Representation/Representation of Politics and Japanese Wartime Film
 
授業の目標   
 
Goals of the course   
Conducting a comprehensive film-historical analysis of a Japanese wartime film.
Deepening our understanding of wartime Japan and its cultural industry.
Reflecting on our relationship to the past.
Evaluating historical films as educational resources.
Working together in a project as an international group.
Producing a website presenting the project and its results.
 
授業の概要   
 
Overview of the course   
This class is intended for postgraduate students interested in the interplay of film and history, the Japanese wartime experience, and/or film analysis.
Is the past past? Since past events continue to influence our worldview and our decision-making today, not to mention international relations, I would argue that the past is part of our present. This hypothesis is supported by the proliferation in Japan (and its neighbouring countries) of films dealing with the Second World War in the recent years. This suggests a desire to represent, and arguably rework, this complicated time in popular culture. Keeping in mind the regular broadcasting of the war-orphan melodrama Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies, 1988) on TV, or the recent box-office successes of the Zero-fighter epos Eien no zero (The Eternal Zero, 2013) or the aviation biopic Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises, 2013), a similar interest appears to exist on the reception side, that is, with the audience. Contemporary films, as all cultural products, however, reflect on contemporary discourses. Therefore, it is questionable in how far they enhance, rather than reflect, our understanding of the past. Yet, in the same vein, it can be argued that cultural production from the time under consideration, by reflecting the very social desires, fears, aspirations and of course ideologies of the time, are uniquely situated to offer a glimpse into the era. As inherently collaborative, audio-visual media, films as texts contain a multiplicity of information or “data”, that can be analysed in order to make more sense of the time when those films were planned, produced, distributed and exhibited.
Such a comprehensive, “deep” film-historical analysis requires approaching the work from various angles and, therefore, is quite time-consuming. Hence, we will devote an entire term to this task and conduct an in-depth analysis of Yamamoto Kajirō’s fighter pilot film Katō hayabusa sentōtai (Colonel Kato’s Falcon Squadron, 1944). I have chosen this film for three reasons: First, it is representative of the body of work known as kokusaku eiga (‘national policy film) produced during the war. These works are often swept under the carpet as mere ‘propaganda’, when, in fact, they need to be understood more fully as part of the social discourse at the time. This leads to the second reason: The film was highly awarded but, more importantly, in contrast to many other films promoted as kokusaku eiga, did very well at the box office and therefore was watched by many members of the public and thus became part of their cultural repertoire in some way. Thirdly, wartime aviation and wartime films are part of the local history, as Chofu airport was used as a base for ‘special attack units’, and various kokusaku eiga were produced by the the Nikkatsu Tamara and later Daei Studios in Chofu. Reminders of this past can be found by taking a little walk through the park next to TUFS. This evidence of the past in our local present provides a good entry point into considering our own relationship to the past and how it is represented.
Each week, we will consider the film from a different perspective and thus will slowly build our own narrative of this particular film project. Questions we need to ask when dealing with historical films as cultural products include narrative, cinematic and historical aspects, such as : Which is the main issue addressed by the film? What (event, situation) is represented, what are the locations, who are the protagonists? How did the filmmakers choose to represent the issue to the audience? What do the filmmakers’ choices tell us about their objective? Are there actual historical facts (an actual battle or incident) represented in the film, and does the cinematic representation conform to or differ from what is known about the incident? In order to answer those questions, we will identify the necessary source material and access it as far as possible (scripts, governmental documents, interviews, related media such as newsreels, museum material etc.).
The process of coming up with questions and looking for answers is incremental and iterative: That is, as characteristic of all good research, we may have to re-evaluate previous ‘answers’ in the light of new findings or intersections of different aspects.
The course will result in a collaborative, full exploration of the film and its background. We will also ask how this time is being remembered today, and will contrast this with our impressions gained from the primary sources. Finally, we will bring our results together in a website dedicated to our work on this film and presenting our findings.
The class will be conducted in English, but necessary sources we will have to find and analyse (critical reception, reviews, script, related material such as newsreels) are in Japanese, so a working knowledge of the language is preferable. As this is an inherently collaborative project, however, we will be able to share tasks according to individual strengths and preferences (international team work!). Consequently, a high degree of our success in this project, and of your grade for this class, is based in your active participation in class. This extends to all classes over the term, not only the one in which you will give a (graded) presentation of the results of your research on a relevant aspect of the film. For your essay, you will be welcome to extend your observations and results from your presentation, or, after discussion with me, branch out into a different topic related to the film.


 
キーワード   
 
Keywords   
Film history; Cultural history; Second World War; Film analysis
 
授業の計画   
 
Plan   
Plan:
1. Introduction
2. Screening: Katō hayabusa sentōtai (1944, Yamamoto Kajirō)
3. Film and history: a theoretical framework
4. Cinematic techniques and film analysis basics
5. Plot and film segmentation
6. Historical and political background
7. Background of production
8. Interviews, archival work
9. Studio (industrial background)
10. Director, cast, and crew
11. Reception and critical reviews
12. Website building
13. Review: Film and our understanding of history
14. Active Learning 1: Visit to Shōwa kan (National Memorial Shōwa Museum)
15. Active Learning 2: Report on independent research on source material
 
成績評価の方法・基準   
 
Grading system for assessment   
Presentation: 30
Final essay: 40
Class participation: 30 (discussion, constructive comments, blog post)
 
事前・事後学習【要する時間の目安】   
 
Preview/review   
You are required to read and/or research relevant material for each week prior to the class, as familiarity with concepts presented in the readings are assumed for the lectures and discussions. Basic film studies’ skills will be introduced, practiced, and consolidated during the term, but you must begin familiarising themselves with or brush up on basic terminologies and theories from week one (relevant chapters from Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction will be made available, a few copies of the book are available for short-term loan from my office). A short, weekly reaction blog post will help to identify open questions to be discussed in class.
 
履修上の注意   
 
Notes   
extbook:
There is no single textbook for this class. Readings will be distributed by the instructor and relevant supplementary literature will be available from the library and the instructor.

Referencebook:
A (non-exhaustive) list of useful additional readings:

Anderson, Benedict. 1993. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, Joseph and Donald Richie. 1982. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Beasley, William G. 2000. The Rise of Modern Japan. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Davis, Darrell William. 1996. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film. New York: Columbia University Press.
During, Simon (ed.). 2007. The Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.
Goodman, Alan. 1976. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Harootunian, Harry. 2000. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton University Press.
Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger. 1993. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirsch, Griseldis. 2015. Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations on Screen: A History, 1989-2005. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Kushner, Barak. 2006. The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
McClain, James L. 2002. Japan: A Modern History. New York: W.W. Norton.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2005. The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History. London; New York: Verso.
Nornes, Abé Markus. 2003. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 2002. Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press.
Richie, Donald. 2005. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. Tōkyō, New York, London: Kodansha.
Rosenstone, Robert A. 1995. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea of History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Rosenstone, Robert A. 2006. History on film/film on history. History, concepts, theories and practice. Harlow: Pearson/Longman.
Salomon, Harald. 2011. Views of the Dark Valley: Japanese Cinema and the Culture of Nationalism, 1937-1945. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Schweinitz, Jörg. 2011. Film and Stereotype: A Challenge for Cinema and Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sharp, Jasper. 2011. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press.
Sodei, Rinjiro. 2001. ‘The Double Conversion of a Cartoonist: The Case Of Kato Etsuro’. in War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia, 1920-1960 eds. Marlene J. Mayo, and J. Thomas Rimer, 235-268. Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press.
Standish, Isolde. 2000. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: towards a political reading of the ‘tragic hero’: Richmond: Curzon.
Standish, Isolde. 2005. A New History of Japanese Cinema. London: Continuum.
Sudo, Naoto. 2010. Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific. Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press.
Tansman, Alan. ed. 2009. The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell. 2003. Film History: An Introduction. London: McGraw-Hill.
Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. 2008. Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. 2015. Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People. New York: Columbia University Press.

Additional Information on textbooks and referencebooks:
n/a


 
教科書  
 
参考書  
 
使用言語  
英語(E)
 
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