Japanese Cinema articles
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Digital Cinema
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NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE FILM
INTRODUCTION
In this paper I will stress the connections between certain traditional Japanese patterns of narrative expression and contemporary japanese film narrative.
“Since most stories come to us with gaps and information narrated out of order, one of the spectator’s primary tasks is to reconstruct the tale in terms of its fictional time and space, but also to clarify the cause-effect relations between elements. Film studies often speaks therefore of the story not as a passive object, but rather as a dynamic text, full of cues, repetitions, false paths, parallels, and contrasts that is only available to the viewer in bits and pieces which must be sorted through, extrapolated and reorganized to be fully understood. For this reason, narrative study of the cinema usually draws up narrative categories by distinguishing group style, or classic Hollywood cinema, with its predictably generic stories from the diversity of European Art Film.”[1]
Japanese contemporary cinema in the digital environment is rapidly changing the narrative approaches. The linear plot driven narrative and time-space continuation achieved through very long wide shots set as standard by filmmakers like Mizoguchi and Ozu are now replaced by unexpected mix of plot and characters; cross-cutting scenes, flashbacks, interruption of space and time; experimental narrative approaches, avoiding climaxes and clear closures.
The classical narrative structure “kishotenketsu” (起承転結) containing the staple four stages (introduction, twist, climax,ending) and the Noh play three stage narrative(jo- introduction; ha -destruction, and kyu-haste)was critical for the Japanese genre film narrative, especially the jidaigeki and melodrama . Japanese narrative cinema in the last 10 years seems it has changed the course and now we have character driven and motive driven narratives,which means that not an actual plot but a motive(search for Mother; purification; search for Self) is the moving power in the narrative and the narrative structure containing 3 or 4 stages is no longer the blueprint for successful storytelling.
At the other hand, The Hero types occupying the screen became more passive and less goal orientated, they are inert heroes that “go with the flow”, spontaneously following the path of uncertainty of life, seeking psychological transformation and accomplishment of inner goals. The Classical “One Main Hero on a Quest for knowledge and some higher socially applicable GOOD” formula of the ’60 and ’70 (Zatoichi Movie Series; Tora san; Yojinbo etc) seem forgotten; instead Japanese movies feature a group hero, usually a pair embarked on a journey. Unlike the Hero journey in the classical myth Japanese heroes don't return to their home with an Elixir. Instead of going after something, the Heroes of the contemporary Japanese film usually are running away from something.
The Heros from HANA-BI (1997, Takeshi Kitano) run away from their families, the social pressure and the reality; the Heros in VIBRATOR (2003, Ryuichi Hiroki) run away from the loneliness and the isolation in the city of Tokyo, where they exist among millions unconnected individuals facing the transience of youth and the frustration of unrealized dreams; Eiji’s Okuda A LONG WALK (2006, Eiji Okuda), is a runaway from the Japanese ruined family values; PICNIC (1996, Shunji Iwai) is a runaway from the lunatic reality of the heretically closed Japanese society and institutions build on rules which can no longer sustain the function to maintain the harmony in the challenging modern world. The list of movies that features a wandering Heroes on a journey without final destination is very long and with every year new titles add up a value to this statement.
To stress my thesis in this presentation I will mainly focus on three major narratives points- 1. the narrative structure and stages 3. Major repetitive motives 3.the visual time-space illusion of continuity achieved by traditional art techniques derived from the emakimono visual narrative approach.
WALKING THE CIRCULAR JOURNEY-OPEN CIRCLE ENDINGS
As I mentioned above one of the major thematic occupations of contemporary Japanese film narrative is the actual journey-plot narrative. Heroes of these journeys are walking the journey of inner purification, in the fashion of Buddhist walking mediation practice called angya, which means simply “going on foot”. Walking meditation helps to break down habitual automatic mental categories, "thus regaining the primary nature of perceptions and events, focusing attention on the process while disregarding its purpose or final outcome."[2]
The idea of the circular pilgrimage journey “junrei”(巡礼) in Japan comes from the idea of the symbolical round-trip journey that originated in India and it is related to the Buddhist concept of rebirth and purification.
Contemporary Japanese Heroes go through a circular journey in order to experience the archetype and connects with the roots. Archetypical Japanese motives, such as: meet/connect with other people or oneself; (Vibrator ; Midnight pilgrims Yaji Kita );walking towards death/looking for pure place to die; purifying oneself (michiyuki –Kazahana, Picnic;Dolls) ;walking to remember; to evoke “natsukashii”(nostalgic) feelings (Still walking); walk to “the source”-to the Sea, to the Mountain; to the Mother ( Long Walk, Kikujro, Picnic) urban walk- finding the Center of Self in the labyrinth of the city (Picnic,Tonton).
The Walking Scenes in some of the mentioned movies sometimes take ¼ or even ½ of the entire story. There are very long scenes in almost all Kitano movies such as “Violent cop” “HANA-BI, Dolls, and A Scene by the Sea”. The new Koreeda movie Aruitemo, Aruitemo(eng Still Walking), a 24 hour family drama in Chekhov style has several walking scenes-walking to the sea, walking to the house and walking to the graveyard . Instead of condensing the film time that doesn’t bring a dramatic change as usually Hollywood cinema does, Koreeda uses these “empty” walking scene to merge us with a walk of the soul ultimately are walking us through the memories, nostalgia, regrets and grief of his Heroes.
THE STRUCTURE – FROM VERTICAL TO HORIZONTAL NARRATIVE
Mainstream European and American Film narrative are mainly structured by the 3 act narrative formula and we have this tendency in the Japanese cinema as well. Usually the 3 act stories are linear and “safe” because they solve the problems that are brought up. Kurosawa once said “ A good structure for a screenplay is that of the symphony, with its three or four movements and different tempos. Or one can use the Noh play with its three-part structure: jo( introduction), ha (destruction), and kyu (haste). But in a screenplay, I think the symphonic structure is the easiest for people of today to understand.” (Akira Kurosawa, Something like an autobiography, p.193)
Hal Ackerman says in his book “Write Screenplays that sell”, argues: “Screenplays are structured in 3 acts. Why three why not four? Broadway dramas are mostly two acts. They used to be three. Musicals were always in two. Now they have no intermission. Shakespeare’s play were in five acts, Moliere in four. Movies are in three now. In ten years, after the influence of the Internet has permeated our groundwater, we may see movies as having 10 acts or 56”. Ackerman was right to point out the possibility of the digital technologies influencing the narrative patterns.
Explicit example we have in Kankuro’s Kudo directorial debut, the comedy Midnight pilgrims –Yaji and Kita (“Mayonaka no Yaji san Kita san”, 2005). The movie is a good example of a film narrative that skillfully mixes the traditional Japanese motives and narrative patters with popular modern fragmented multi plot narrative approaches and SF visual esthetic. The movie is a hybrid of genres from comedy and road movie, to musical and science fiction, all mixed up in a very well structured multi plot narrative. The idea for the scrip is adopted from the comic book with the same title by SHIRIAGARI Kotobuki, which in turn was inspired by the Edo era comic novel Tokai dochu hizakurige - Shank's Mare by JIPPENSHA Ikku. The book inspired another recent movie by the Hirayama Hideyuki- Three for the Road (a.k.a. Yajikita Dochu Teresuko), which is more of a classical comedy following the classical structure.
Kankuro Kudo’s Yaji Kita journey however is everything but a classical narrative. Yaji (NAGASE Tomoya) and Kita (NAKAMURA Shichinosuke) are gay lovers who live in the city of Edo. Kita-san is a drug addict who has completely lost touch with "reality". Using the excuse to cure Kita-san of his drug addiction and to rediscover the nature of the elusive "reality", they set off on a pilgrimage to the Ise shrine. The real motivation for Yaji is actually to run away from the quilt he feels for accidentally killing his wife in an argument.
The action is separated in several episodes each marked as a separate chapter. This movie, even though is composed by several separated chapters it is a 3 act structure movie in the sense of the Noh 3 act formula. The proportion of these stages is however different. Here we have the Introduction-part, the Ordinary World in which Kita and Yaji live (Edo period); we have the second stage of the Hero’s Journey- call for Adventure, and the Third part is the journey itself or the main body of this narrative is constructed by fragmented episodes separated into several stages, similar to the stages of the video-game. “There is a generation that is used to fragmented game narratives, where time is chopped and spun,” says the games journalist David McCarthy. “In fact, 1960s postmodern concepts of the carved-up narrative are part of their everyday story experience.” In country like Japan where the release of a new video game is an event that makes thousands of young people to wait in line for entire night until the shop opens so they can be the first to purchase the game, the grammar of this fragmented narrative is a language they are very familiar with. The opening of the movie is one of the most effective I’ve ever seen. Here Kankuro Kudo defines the style and the dramatic conflict within the first 2 minutes. He show us a shot of a female hand dramatically washing the rice in a pan; then peaceful scene by the river where Yaji san is fishing. From the river instead fishes we see dead bodies floating, at first a corps of his lover Kita, then the dead bodies multiply in the form of his wife Ohatsu, which is dead since the start of the story but we learn about that at the later half of the movie.
Yaji and Kita embark on a journey similar to the video-game narrative logic- If the Heroes passes the initial stage, they can continue the journey continuing to the next level and if not it is “Game Over”. The first stage of the journey is the Laughing Inn-where they have to come up with a funny joke, if they fail they can’t continue or they even might get executed. The following stages are the Pleasure Inn, The Singing Inn and The King’s Inn. In the King’s Inn (the King is King Arthur who is in fact funny dressed Japanese farmer) the overdosed Kita kills Yaji in a rage and doesn’t even remembers it. Kita can’t stand this reality full’s himself that Yaji is alive so they continue the journey together. Yaji’s death here is a reversible event and same as in a video game where “if the player’s character dies in a game, the player will not stop the game there, but will rather reload a previously saved game and try again.” This means that the player character’s death has no emotional impact, and indeed isn’t really an option in the story.” (Diane Carr, ‘Playing with Lara’, in Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.), Screenplay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, London, Wallflower Press, 2002, pp. 173-174.)
After Yaji’s death the film narrative splits into two multi-plot lines that flow in parallel – one plot line is Kita’s Dream in which Yaji is still alive and they continue the journey and the other parallel narrative plot in the Underworld where Yaji meets his wife; ask for forgiveness and is given a chance to go out for the underworld. The parallel realities – the dream of Kita and the death experience of Yaji flow in parallel boiling up to a point where these 2 realities meet each other in the culmination scene.
Even though this kind of film narrative breaks the classical time-space continuation the audience has the illusion that the continuation has never been interrupted. This “flowing” is influenced by traditional Japanese narrative stule caracteristic for the monogatari form and the nikki (diary) literature from the early Heian Period. The flowing narrative was visually illustrated with the emakimono or simple “emaki” flourished in Japan between 11th to 16th centuries. Kazuo Miyagawa, the cinematographer that worked long years with Kenji Mizoguchi, explained the director’s work like this:“ For him a film was like a picture scroll with successive images moving steadily forward, never turning back. You follow the story all the way to the end. Some parts are intense and exciting, some are touching and there are parts you should just skim through.”(Kazuo Miyagawa’s interview in the documentary movie “ Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai”, 1975, Kaneto Shindo)
The emakimono is apposite visual representation for a story that “flows” naturally in the time and space, allowing the occurrences to unfold in front the viewer’s eye in intrinsic manner. The Japanese emakimono is viewed(read) from right to left, viewing one portion at a time same as it is in cinema-a few shots flow in continuation. To illustrate better this “flowing” of the story through the cinematic space I will illustrate here some examples. As you can see in the emaki -Momotaro handscrol on paper. Ko Sukoku, end of 11th century, 519 ¾ x 11 ½ in (1320x29cm). Kumon Institute of Education (book One Thousand Years of Manga) the story enfolds, flows from right to left, flowing from one space and time into another using the golden background color and landscape elements such as clouds or greenery in order to make the visual link between the episodes. Same example we have in Midnight Pilgrimage, where the green color and the forest background serves as link;while in the Kitano’s movie “A Scene by the Sea” , the blue color and overall tonality of the scenes are an extended background of the ocean landscape. Using the tonality of the background and landscape or the tonality of the background serves as a “link” that provides the illusion of continuity of space and time.
In many contemporary Japanese movies directors chose to set the direction of movement from right to left, especially then they are directing the walking scenes. According to the classical cinema language conventions showing a walk where characters move from right to left movement means, “going back” not “going forward” as in the still you can see here. In this “dream-like” space-time creation the gaps are not noticeable on purely cognitive level since the human eye allows the new information to flow unstopped because of the common background and similar picture tonality. This allows rapid and drastic space-time displacements (flashbacks) to be followed without any irritation.
Open Circle Endings
The movie Midnight Pilgrims Yaji and Kita ends up with a scene where they ride giant pink elephant and eating magic mushrooms. Magically the elephant turns into the motorcycle we saw in the beginning of the movie taking the two wanderers into the endless road. As we can conclude the goal of the journey is insignificant; reaching Ise is no longer the desired destination because the protagonists(Yaji and Kita) already achieved the transformation through the process of the journey itself. Same as in many other Japanese movies the “goal” is absent. The story “flows” naturally to its dénouemenst and the characters are as active as it is necessary to be part of the story i.e. they don’t create the conflict and move forward to fulfillment of the goal. In the Hero’s journey the end comes after the hero goes back to the society applying the knowledge and lessons learned on the journey otherwise his journey is meaningless. It is when Luke Skywalker defeats Darth Vader and restores peace and order in the galaxy. Japanese movies though in general don’t have the happy ending formula or even the determination to clearly define a closure that will resolve the conflict. This approach is not original Japanese film narrative element but a pattern of traditional storytelling. To point the difference between the western “ they live happily even after” and the typical Japanese ending Dr. Hayao Kawai in his book “The Japanese psyche” pick out the fairy tale “The Bush Warbler’s Home”(old Japanese fairy tale). The Hero of “The Bush Warble’s Home” tale as an example of a hero who has been given an opportunity to gain benefits and just when we almost attain his goal (love, glory, power), he is provoked by an adventure, breaks a taboo (a rule) and ends up loosing everything i.e. ending up having nothing, just as it was before the opportunity was offered to him.
“In other words nothing has happened. The story may be assumed to be simply about “nothingness”. The “nothingness” is beyond negative and positive values. The first and the last scenes of the story are identical: namely, nothing has happened. If there is any movement, the starting point and the goal are the same and can be anywhere on the circumference of the circle. Inside, the circle is empty; within it, there is nothing. ” (Kawai Hayao, The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan, Spring Publications 1996,p 20, 21)
Dr. Hayao talk about the story as a circle. An empty circle is the symbol of Zen, representing in the same time the “nothingness”(Mujo) and the “Whole” or completeness and perfection. We have the same kind of “open circle ending” in Kitano’s movie KIKUJIRO (“Kikujiro no natsu”1999, Takeshi Kitano). Kikujiro and the boy(Masao) after the amazing journey of many adventures, laughs, tears, disappointments, hopes and delusions, at the end they go back to Tokyo having their goodbye on the same bridge that we see in the opening scenes of the movie. Same as if nothing really happened and they are meeting for the first time, the boy asked the man for the first time what is his name. The man answers simply: Kikujiro! and they set apart. What is left for the audience to experience in these last few shots of silence is the “mono no aware”, the pathos of life, the sadness, joy, love, anger and pleasure. Happy ending or satisfying solution to the problem is not offered to the audience.
Conclusion
The thesis of this observation which was conducted as part of my PhD studies in Japan, watching numerous old and new movies and looking for repetitive patterns and exceptions gives me enough proves support the idea that contemporary Japanese films even though appear as if they are a result of an auteur individual style of contemporary Japanese directors, in fact are very deeply influenced by traditional Japanese narrative patterns. The contemporary Japanese cinematic narrative follows archetypal patterns in the construction of the story and the visual representation of the narrative text. This narrative approach is an alternative of the Hollywood film narrative that dominates the market. It offers a creative freedom in re-defining the media of moving images as an art. In the same time these archetypal methods are the key for grasping the uniqueness of the narrative Japanese cinema style.
[1] Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. "Art Cinema." In The Oxford History of World Cinema, edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 567–575. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996. p106
[2] Alberto Perez-De-Albeniz and Jeremy Holmes, Meditation: concepts, effects and uses in therapy, International Journal of Psychotherapy, Mar2000, Vol. 5 Issue 1, p49, 10p
All rights reserved © Andrijana Cvetkovik
Reproduction in whole or in part of any article without permission is prohibited.
“In other words nothing has happened. The story may be assumed to be simply about “nothingness”. The “nothingness” is beyond negative and positive values. The first and the last scenes of the story are identical: namely, nothing has happened. If there is any movement, the starting point and the goal are the same and can be anywhere on the circumference of the circle. Inside, the circle is empty; within it, there is nothing. ” (Kawai Hayao, The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan, Spring Publications 1996,p 20, 21)
Dr. Hayao talk about the story as a circle. An empty circle is the symbol of Zen, representing in the same time the “nothingness”(Mujo) and the “Whole” or completeness and perfection. We have the same kind of “open circle ending” in Kitano’s movie KIKUJIRO (“Kikujiro no natsu”1999, Takeshi Kitano). Kikujiro and the boy(Masao) after the amazing journey of many adventures, laughs, tears, disappointments, hopes and delusions, at the end they go back to Tokyo having their goodbye on the same bridge that we see in the opening scenes of the movie. Same as if nothing really happened and they are meeting for the first time, the boy asked the man for the first time what is his name. The man answers simply: Kikujiro! and they set apart. What is left for the audience to experience in these last few shots of silence is the “mono no aware”, the pathos of life, the sadness, joy, love, anger and pleasure. Happy ending or satisfying solution to the problem is not offered to the audience.
Conclusion
The thesis of this observation which was conducted as part of my PhD studies in Japan, watching numerous old and new movies and looking for repetitive patterns and exceptions gives me enough proves support the idea that contemporary Japanese films even though appear as if they are a result of an auteur individual style of contemporary Japanese directors, in fact are very deeply influenced by traditional Japanese narrative patterns. The contemporary Japanese cinematic narrative follows archetypal patterns in the construction of the story and the visual representation of the narrative text. This narrative approach is an alternative of the Hollywood film narrative that dominates the market. It offers a creative freedom in re-defining the media of moving images as an art. In the same time these archetypal methods are the key for grasping the uniqueness of the narrative Japanese cinema style.
[1] Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. "Art Cinema." In The Oxford History of World Cinema, edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 567–575. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996. p106
[2] Alberto Perez-De-Albeniz and Jeremy Holmes, Meditation: concepts, effects and uses in therapy, International Journal of Psychotherapy, Mar2000, Vol. 5 Issue 1, p49, 10p
All rights reserved © Andrijana Cvetkovik
Reproduction in whole or in part of any article without permission is prohibited.