The Foundation of Modernism: Japanese Cinema in the Year 1927

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1 September 1923 created a definitive break in the history of Japanese silent cinema. There is a profound difference in content and form in the cinema before and after the earthquake. Although some directors like Norimasa Kaeriyama and Yoshiro Edamasa had tried to make Japanese cinema conform to an Occidental form of film structure and content in the late teens, there was still a strong general resistance to this modernisation of Japanese cinema. The fundamental change was caused by the earthquake. It destroyed Tokyo not only materially but also culturally and ideologically. And it gave Tokyo the opportunity to reconstruct itself. It was the beginning of the modernist trend that would flourish in the latter half of the twenties and the early thirties in the reborn metropolis of Tokyo. This rather abrupt change has been characterized as the assimilation of cultural institutions that had already been seen clearly during the Meiji Restoration. The idea promoted by the Pure Motion Picture Drama Movement in the late teens was substantially realized by the unexpected disaster. Thus the Great Kanto Earthquake provided the impetus for Japanese cinema to assimilate foreign cinema. Foreign cinema here does not necessarily mean American cinema. In other words, Japanese silent cinema after 1924 did not advance directly toward imitating Hollywood cinema. What happened, then, when Japanese cinema tried to assimilate foreign cinema? The result of this assimilation could be seen in the films and in the situation of the cinema in the year 1927. The transformation of Japanese cinema after the earthquake is clearly revealed there.

More than three years had passed since the earthquake. Japanese cinema had reached its high point as the art of silence, as elsewhere in the world's major film-producing countries. The menacing shadow of the future form called sound cinema surely existed, but most people never imagined that it would change the entire film world. On the contrary, greater possibilities for cinema as the art of silence were actively considered and discussed in theoretical writings. The cinema was the most popular mass entertainment in Japan in 1927, and at the same time few people doubted any more that it was an art form.

On 25 December 1926, Yoshihito, the Taisho Emperor, died and the Showa era began. The first year of Showa lasted only six days, until 31 December 1926. Therefore 1927, technically the second year of the Showa era, was effectively its first year. During the last half of 1926, the transition between the old and the new could be seen clearly. The world's first complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels was translated and published in Japan. Young intellectuals were stimulated by this new ideology, and at the same time they eagerly absorbed the latest art and culture. In September 1926 two obituaries and a film industry item were published on the same page of the film magazine Kinema Jumpo that symbolized the transition from the old to the new in this period. The obituaries marked the deaths of Kisaburo Kurihara and Matsunoske Onoe, while the film industry reported that the star Tsumasaburo Bando had signed a contract with the American studio Universal Pictures.¹

Kisaburo Kurihara had worked under Thomas H. Ince in the United States and then returned to Japan where he began to produce Americanized Japanese films in the late teens. He was one of the earliest artists who tried to reform Japanese cinema in both form and content. But he belonged fundamentally to the older era of filmmaking, and he could not follow the radical changes in Japanese cinema after the 1923 earthquake. By 1926 Kurihara, who directed Japanese films between 1918 and 1923, had been nearly forgotten as a film director. The premature death of this reformer (he was 41 years old when he died) had a symbolic meaning in this period when Japanese cinema no longer needed reform.

Matsunosuke Onoe was, needless to say, the superstar of Japanese cinema in the early period. He had appeared in many Old School films since 1909. In the late teens he was...