Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan by Hideaki Fujiki (review)

Hideaki Fujiki’s deeply researched book makes a major contribution to the literature on Japanese film history and to our understanding of international film history in the years after World War I when American studios extended their reach into global film markets. Bookended by two moments—the local proto-film stardom of the operetta performer Nakamura Kasen from 1909 and the mediatized circulation of Ri Kōran’s star image across imperial Japan’s colonies from 1939—the work methodically examines film stardom in Japan as it progressed through several key stages during the 1910s and 1920s. It provides detailed case studies of the actors Onoe Matsunosuke, Kurishima Sumiko, Tachibana Teijirō, Clara Bow (as viewed in Japan), and Natsukawa Shizue; it also discusses critical and popular discourse, industrial history, and changing standards in the craft of acting. Fujiki combines perceptive analysis of rare extant films from the period with conclusions drawn from archival research in film periodicals and popular magazines. He analyzes writings by intellectuals and authors (notably Gonda Yasunosuke and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, among many others), photographic materials, and official records and builds upon a rich body of secondary literature in film studies, social history, theater, and art history. Generously illustrated with photographs, film stills, and star publicity materials, including a number of color plates, his work is a model of film-historical research.

Over nine chapters and a substantial introduction and conclusion, Fujiki develops a complex argument that approaches film stardom as a nexus of social discourse, aesthetics, and historical forces linked to Japanese modernity. He demonstrates that “popular education” and citizenship, modernism, Marxism, and nationalism formed the predominant and at times contradictory concerns of Japanese film criticism and discourse during the period, then shows how film stardom was often understood in relation to these coordinates.

The book begins with the period from around 1909 to 1917, when the benshi film narrator system flourished. In these early years, the Japanese film industry was exhibition-oriented, with production entrusted to troupes of actors rather than centralized under studio management. As performers on the exhibition side, the benshi of the time more closely resembled later film celebrities than did the largely under-billed actors appearing onscreen. Even once screen-actor celebrities emerged, their performances remained symbiotic with live benshi accompaniment, meaning that film narrators enjoyed influence and public recognition throughout the 1910s. Characterizing the economic structure of film narration, Fujiki argues that the professional positioning of benshi entailed a degree of continuity with the iemoto system of apprenticeship and transmission from Japanese theatrical arts like kabuki and rakugo. But he also makes the key point that this positioning within hierarchical and exclusive networks was incomplete and was not what guaranteed the success of benshi. Cinema as it was emerging was more a capitalist enterprise than a licensed craft, and the careers of benshi were governed primarily by popularity as a market principle. This was a key element of the modernity of the cinema.

While the popular nature of film narration meant that the benshi system was institutionally looser, more open, and more “democratic” than theatrical arts under the iemoto system, this openness also contributed to problems of legitimacy. Lacking the prestige of a hereditary name, and thoroughly immersed in consumer culture, benshi were eager to establish social standing. This tendency became pronounced in the context of reform discourse that called for Japanese cinema to “modernize” on the model of Western films, which among other things were narratively more self-contained. Such Pure Film discourse tended to dismiss the benshi as vulgar holdovers from low theatrical forms; it also overlapped with both critical and official concern for the role of cinema in popular education. As the state increasingly took a regulatory interest in cinema, benshi themselves bought into a state licensing system, formalized in 1917. But official accreditation converged with other historical forces that began around this time to take Japanese cinema in new directions, including toward the...