Japanese Cinema Goes Global: Filmworkers' Journeys

Introduction

x Preface of economic globalization have significantly undermined the national basis of such an understanding of cultural production and its value. On the one hand, the cosmopolitanism of capital has freed certain individuals from the national frameworks and engaged them in new forms of transnational cultural production and hybridization. But, on the other hand, it has significantly undermined the local capacity for the production of meaning, and individuals have been subjected to the new constellation of power that have formed under the regime of transnational capitalism. I have spent a great deal of time talking with many of my contemporaries in the Japanese film industry in the course of this research. By analyzing their experiences of this period of global change, my intention was to see how their experiences conjoin with my own and formulate a better understanding and an account of what is going on in this world through the lens of someone who has spent many years crossing the borders and working in the media industry. I am grateful to my supervisor Professor Chris Berry, who encouraged and supported me all the way to publication of this book. I am also grateful to my original supervisor Professor Kevin Robins, who accepted me to the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmith College, University of London as a PhD student, and Professor Yoshitaka Mouri of Tokyo University of the Arts for introducing me to this wonderful world of academia. I had a happy few years in the college enjoying a friendly and intellectually stimulating atmosphere. I owe many ideas in this thesis to academic staff and my fellow students there. Finally, I am very thankful to my wife and son — Midori and Mafuyu Tezuka — who offered me understanding when I packed up my film production business to become a PhD student at the age of forty-five. It would have been impossible for me to complete this project without their moral support. Acknowledgements In this book, Japanese names are put in the Western order, i.e. given name first then family name, since it is customary to put names in this order in English writing in Japan. Chinese, Korean and other Asian names are put in the usual East Asian format, i.e. family name, then given name, unless someone is well known by the Western order of names. I have adopted the Hepburn System for romanization of Japanese. All translations of Japanese materials are mine, unless stated otherwise in the bibliography. Note on Romanization of Asian Names and Scripts This book investigates the ways in which inter/transnational filmmaking practices have been conducted in the Japanese film industry from the post-World War Two period to the present. By doing so, it provides an insight into the ways in which the Japanese film industry went for “global” after defeat in the war and, more importantly, through the prism of Japanese cinema, it aims to open up a broader understanding of the political, economic, and cultural dynamic at work in Japan’s relations with the US, European film cultures, and with the Asian film industries during this time. Having been through the globalization of the last part of the twentieth century, how did our film culture change over that time and are we really becoming more cosmopolitan as a result of it? If so, what does it mean for national cinema, culture, and our sense of national belonging ? My approach to these questions will follow the spirit of what David Held et al. called the transformationist view of globalization that follows from Anthony Giddens’ accentuated modernity thesis (1990; 1991), by which he sought to account for the transformative dynamics of globalization: in his theorization, globalization is seen as the spread of Western modernity. Accounting for how globalization is changing societies and the lives of individuals across the world, Anthony Giddens famously stated that “modernity refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards” (1990: 3) and that “modernity is inherently globalizing” (ibid.: 177). The spread of Western modernity is transforming the rest of the world, but it is mistaken to think of this process as a simple Westernization or a form cultural imperialism; because, according to him, today, the Introduction 2 Japanese Cinema Goes Global...