Lying on a Flat Plane as a Method to Recording:

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  • TSUNOO Yoshinobu
    Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • 平面に寝ころぶという記録の仕方
  • 平面に寝ころぶという記録の仕方 : 「風俗映画」としての渋谷実『自由学校』と「虚脱」状態の両義性
  • ヘイメン ニ ネコロブ ト イウ キロク ノ シカタ : 「 フウゾク エイガ 」 ト シテ ノ シブヤ ジツ 『 ジユウ ガッコウ 』 ト 「 キョダツ 」 ジョウタイ ノ リョウギセイ
  • Minoru Shibuya’s “Film of Manners,” <i>School of Liberty</i>, and “Despondency” after the Japanese Defeat
  • 「風俗映画」としての渋谷実『自由学校』と「虚脱」状態の両義性

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Description

 Since the Japanese defeat until the beginning of the 1960s, there appeared many films called “fūzoku eiga (film of manners).” Its trait has been seen in recording its contemporary lifestyles and landscapes with a hope to grasp people’s thoughts and values. As the first step toward the comprehensive study of the possibility of postwar “fūzoku eiga,” this article focuses on Minoru Shibuya, who was called an expert of “fūzoku eiga” at that time. By comparing his postwar film, Jiyū Gakkō (School of Liberty, 1951), with its original novel and the other adaptation by Kōzaburō Yoshimura (1951), it explores the significance of Shibuya’s film as “fūzoku eiga” in the history of Japanese cinema and society. <br> Previous research about Shibuya’s works identifies two characteristics of his particular style: the continuation of trauma about WWII and the emphasis on both spatial and psychological flatness without deep emotions. To explore the relationship between these two characteristics, I analyze the male protagonist’s lying on a flat plane as a crucial motif of the film. This behavior has a dual meaning, hopelessness and equality, and it implies the protagonist’s psychological lack of any motivation. I historicize this psychology as “kyodatsu (despondency),” which prevailed throughout Japanese society immediately after the war, and indicates that the film constructs records of its contemporary society from this depressed state of mind. Shibuya’s film as “fūzoku eiga” has a radical potential to analyze the ambiguous public mind of postwar society.

Journal

  • eizogaku

    eizogaku 101 (0), 92-113, 2019-01-25

    Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences

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