JAPANESE CULTURE, EXPLAINED
日本映画
Japanese cinema includes live action, animation and many production traditions. Its history connects artistic choices with the practical systems that finance films, make them, distribute them and bring them to audiences.
Film exhibition and production reached Japan in the late nineteenth century. Silent screenings did not necessarily have silent rooms: benshi narration and music could contribute to the event. NFAJ’s historical display includes projection equipment and company records alongside film materials, bringing the setting of a screening into the story.
The 1931 film The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine is an important point in the transition to sound. Studios, performers and cinema networks supported expanding production and exhibition. Sound altered performance and recording, but the appearance of a landmark talkie did not end every silent screening at once.
The 1939 Film Law intensified controls on what could be made and shown, alongside company consolidation. Defeat brought a different system of occupation censorship and distribution control. Production and cinemas recovered after the war, with admissions reaching a historical peak in 1958. These institutions matter alongside the celebrated films and directors.
Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 Tokyo Story gives attention to everyday conversation and meals. Shochiku Otani Library’s 2012 exhibition commentary identifies an extremely low camera position in its production photographs. The relation between camera placement and ordinary activity provides a concrete way into the film’s form, without making that choice a universal style of Japanese cinema.
Around 1960, directors including Nagisa Oshima, Yoshishige Yoshida and Masahiro Shinoda emerged at Shochiku, associated with the label Shochiku New Wave. The film archive describes long takes of political debate at a wedding in Oshima’s Night and Fog in Japan. Its 1960s–70s retrospective also includes comedy, science fiction, suspense and youth films, showing varied subjects and forms alongside changes in the studio system.
Production makes the film; distribution supplies it to cinemas; exhibition screens it for audiences. A 2003 cultural-agency report describes some major studios concentrating on the latter two as television spread and attendance fell. Production committees pool investment, with television and later rights uses offering returns beyond ticket sales. Home video broadened that income; multiplexes grouped several screens at one location.
NFAJ’s animation programme distinguishes commercial theatrical and television work from artist-led screening activities. Institutions such as Toei and Mushi appear alongside other presentation networks. Animation is thus more than one studio or visual style. The programme gives Puppet Animashow, associated with Okamoto Tadanari and Kawamoto Kihachiro, as one artist-led presentation example.
Digital production and delivery changed the materials that archives must preserve. An industry survey published by NFAJ’s predecessor identifies questions about masters, distribution files and responsibility across production partners. A playable release is not automatically a long-term preservation copy. Film history also concerns what survives and who takes care of it.
No. It includes animation and several production and exhibition traditions.
No. Benshi narration and musical performance could accompany them.
They help explain how a work reaches audiences and which images and sounds survive for later viewers.