Keiko McDonald's 1994 "Japanese Classical Theater in Films" (Associated University Presses) has become an indispensable text. Anyone studying the cinema of Japan will find no richer source concerning the beginnings and the continuing assumptions influencing filmmaking. Now McDonald has issued a companion volume about modern Japanese literature in films that is equally imperative for both student and scholar.
The reason is that no other expert in the film has more completely presented those qualities that make the Japanese cinema so singular. One (the theme of the 1994 book) emphasizes that Japan did not see film as a new kind of photography (as did, for example, the United States), but as a new form of drama. The connection of film and theater created and maintained the "benshi"-commentator, the stagelike, long-held, distant shot, theatrical styles of acting, and so on.
Another distinguishing factor (the theme of this new book) is that, as the author states, "It could well be that of all the world's cinemas, the Japanese is unique in its closeness, early and late, to the nation's literature." Not only does this mean that there are a greater number of films based on plays or books than in most other film industries, but it also indicates ways in which Japanese film developed.
For example, the fact that the earlier works filmed were in large part melodramas indicates at least an amount of vivid reportage. This requires a greater degree of realism than is common on the Japanese stage. If a literary work was chosen, as later occurred, for its fidelity to real life, then the filmmaker "could get closer to ordinary people whose lives they would portray realistically," as critic Motohisa Fujita put it. Thus, says McDonald, "borrowing from literature paved the way to realism."
There were many other results. One of the more curious was the concept of "kyosaku" or "competing literary works," in which different versions of the same vehicle (considered box-office poison in the West) were used to spur attendance. An early Shimpa adaptation, "My Sin," was remade 25 times, with competing versions sometimes released in close proximity. "Chushingura" has had 83 remakes.
Another result was that the emotional and intellectual restrictions imposed by melodrama forced filmmakers to use literary works that were more serious. A demand for a literature more true to life had resulted in "junbungaku," often translated as "the pure literature movement." Film followed with "bungei-eiga," pictures based on these works.
Thus novels by Yasunari Kawabata, Shiga Naoya, Junichiro Tanizaki and many others began appearing early in motion-picture form. McDonald mentions Tomu Uchida's 1936 "Theater of Life," an adaptation of the Shiro Ozaki novel, as an example. It was a seminal work in its creation of conventions for bungei-eiga, went on to inspire some 13 film versions, and is still seen in TV renderings.
Adapting serious "pure literature" works to the "popular" screen was not, however, without its problems. The delineation of these makes McDonald's work particularly important. As in her earlier work, she sets the scene with introductory chapters that survey the field (and give more detailed information than any similar texts in English) and then devotes a chapter each to a number of modern examples. Here, early chapters follow the "peak" periods of 1908-1920, 1935-1941 and 1937-1959, and her examples are -- with the exceptions of the Kawabata/Gosho "Izu Dancer" of 1933, and the Tanizaki/Shimazu "Story of Shunkin" of 1936 -- all from the period 1951-1992.
One of the problems in adaptation lies in the conflicting natures of fiction and films. The supreme quality of the former is that it allows access to the interior, to thought, to processes; the distinguishing quality of the latter is that it offers complete access to the exterior, to appearance, to actions. A hoped-for solution, the voice-over, heavily used, doesn't work, and a dramatization of intellectual and emotional problems is often impossible.
Consequently directors and their writers tend to "correct" their sources. Kon Ichikawa and Natto Wada completely changed (and greatly diminished) the conclusion of Tanizaki's "The Key" ("Old Obsession"). Later, the director had the help of Shinya Tadaka in traducing "The Makioka Sisters." Shiro Toyoda left out an entire textual layer (the story within the story) in the adaptation of Kafu Nagai's "A Strange Tale from East of the River." ("Twilight Story.")
I cannot think of a single example where the adaptation is superior to the original, though McDonald would, I think, tend to give the benefit of the doubt to those where adaptation creates an attractive hybrid.
This is because she is an auteurist and the director is given authoritative responsibility. Thus, the screenwriter is not often mentioned and nowhere praised or blamed.
The above Kafu adaptation, for example, is the work of Toshio Yasumi, best known of the junbungaku adapters -- he also did two early versions of "The Makioka Sisters" and the best of the Tanizaki adaptations, Toyoda's "A Cat, Shozo and Two Women." His name does not appear in the index, although he is named in a footnote on p. 220. Other scriptwriters are mentioned in the text, but it is the author's assumption that it is the director who is responsible for the end result.
This is a perfectly respectable presumption and one that renders the confusions of filmmaking more coherent. If it reduces the complications, it also makes something like a consistent linearity possible. McDonald can move within the shifting confines of the bungei-eiga and she does so with confidence and surety.
The result is a book that enormously enlarges our knowledge of the Japanese cinema and its idiosyncrasies. All libraries must have it and all scholars will need it.
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