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Japan Films and Television
Reeling from television's overwhelming success, the
cinema
industry retreated in the 1980s to the tried-and-true
formulas--the
comedies, romances, detective stories, and youth films
that always
had sure audiences. Production at the four major film
companies
decreased to some 200 films a year, of which only a
handful were
quality productions. Pornographic films grew to constitute
about
half of the films made. The animated format used for
children's
films did show promising originality, but truly creative
productions could be found only among independent film
directors.
A burgeoning number of art films, both domestic and
imported, found
homes in intimate art theaters in the cities. Foreign
films were
often the major draws in urban areas, which had record
runs for
European and North American hits. Some top directors
produced major
films with foreign funding or in foreign locations. In a
return to
Japanese production at the end of the 1980s, Akira
Kurosawa, the
acknowledged old master of cinematic art, summarized his
remembrance of things past in Dreams. A nostalgic
look at
past views of family life was seen in Ichikawa Kon's
remake of
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's The Makioka Sisters, a
visually
beautiful color film portraying the nearly vanished world
of earlytwentieth -century upper-class women. A major historical
offering
was Teshigawara Hiroshi's Rikyu (1989), which
marked the
return of this major director after a seventeen-year
absence from
films, in a pictorially magnificent presentation of the
life of the
famous Momoyama tea master and his moral conflict with the
political overlord Hideyoshi.
Although there was virtually no market in Japan for
documentaries, a major docudrama, Tokyo saiban
(Tokyo
Judgment), directed by Kobayashi Masaki and taken directly
from
footage of tribunal proceedings against alleged Japanese
war
criminals, had a rapt audience. Outstanding among the
newer
independent directors were Itami Juzo and Morita
Yoshimitsu, whose
The Family Game set a new pattern for satirical
comedies on
urban dilemmas. By the mid-1980s, Itami's savage new
satires showed
unprecedented originality. Although these films addressed
the
anomalies and excesses of Japanese life, their subjects
were
mirrored around the world, and they had a strong
international
following.
Popular comedy was led by the beloved Tora-san series
about the
travel adventures of an avuncular, bumbling everyman,
played by the
ever-popular Atsumi Kiyoshi, whose forty-first feature
film in 1989
took the hero to Vienna in a telling display of
internationalization. Another hoary favorite was the
monster series
starring Godzilla. The most sophisticated youth movie of
the 1980s
may have been Yamakawa Naoto's The New Morning of Billy
the
Kid, a fantasy set in a Tokyo theme-bar, which was
embraced by
the young worldwide. A much-loved children's classic
Kaze no
matasaburo (Children of the Wind), written by Miyazawa
Kenji,
was filmed by award-winning director Ito Shunya as a
skillful
fantasy. Animated full-length features ranged from a
gorgeously
interpreted selection from Tale of Genji to Otomoto
Katsushiro's Akira, a violent, provocative
futuristic
fantasy. Such animated features had their origins in the
wildly
popular manga action cartoons. Television also
produced a
substantial number of cartoons, including the ever popular
"Sazae-san," which had the highest rating in the late
1980s.
Television had attained virtually 100 percent
penetration by
1990, and only 1 percent of households were without a
color
television set, making Japan a major information society.
Programming consisted of about 50 percent pure
entertainment and
nearly 25 percent cultural shows, the remainder being news
reports
and educational programs. There were two main broadcasting
systems:
the public NHK and five private networks. The major
system, NHK,
was publicly subsidized by mandatory subscription fees.
Leading
newspapers were among the financial supporters of the most
important private channels. International programs were
transmitted
by satellite for instant replay after the government, in
1979, set
up the Communications and Broadcasting Satellite
Organization.
Japan's first operational broadcast satellite was launched
in 1984.
Commercial television stations had become a major vehicle
for
advertising in place of newspapers and received huge
revenues, far
surpassing those of NHK.
Samurai and yakuza (Japanese underworld) themes
in the
1980s were almost solely the providence of television, as
were
those of family life, ubiquitous in daytime soap operas.
The
biggest hit of the 1980s overall was the television drama
"Oshin,"
a tale of a mother's struggles and suffering. The
longest-running
series since 1981 was "From the North Country," in which a
divorced
father and his two children survive in the backwoods of
Hokkaido.
Criticism continued concerning the vulgarity of some
commercial
programs, but these programs still appeared in the early
1990s.
Major problems perceived were the high level of violence
and the
lack of moral values in children's shows. All television
and radio
stations, however, were required to devote a certain
proportion of
broadcast time to educational programs to retain their
licenses,
and these programs grew steadily in response to popular
demand. All
networks have to comply with the Broadcasting Law of 1950,
while
several councils oversee general programming, although
compliance
with their recommendations is voluntary.
Japan's traditional arts and their modern counterparts
found
wide expression at home and internationally in the 1980s,
reflecting the strong continuing creativity of its
artists,
performers, and writers. Major trends were seen in the
search for
characteristic cultural values and modes of expression, on
the one
hand, and the growing awareness of internationalism, on
the other
hand, affirming Japan's strong economic position in the
world.
* * *
A good general work on contemporary education is
Japanese
Education Today, by Robert Leestma and others. Both
Benjamin
Duke's The Japanese School and Educational
Policies in
Crisis, by William K. Cummings and others, offer
useful
insights into the Japanese educational system and its
differences
from that of the United States. Historical information can
be found
in Ronald S. Anderson's Education in Japan and
Ronald P.
Dore's Education in Tokugawa Japan. Of particular
interest
is the winter 1989 special issue of the Journal of
Japanese
Studies, containing a symposium devoted largely to
preschool
and early education. On secondary education, Thomas P.
Rohlen's
Japan's High Schools provides excellent coverage.
The
Ministry of Education is a rich source of statistical
data; in
English, information can be obtained from the annual
Statistical
Abstract of the Ministry of Education, Science, and
Culture,
but the Japanese-language annual Gakko kihon chosa
hokokusho
(Fundamental School Survey) is more complete.
A useful work on the arts is Sources of Japanese
Tradition, by Tsunoda Ryusaku and others, which
translates
primary materials on cultural and aesthetic values.
Cultural
Affairs and Administration in Japan, 1988 from the
Agency for
Cultural Affairs and Artist and Patron in Postwar
Japan and
"Government and the Arts in Contemporary Japan" by Thomas
R.H.
Havens outline the government's participation in the arts.
Helpful
specialized works include Takashina Shoji, Yoshiaki Tono,
and
Nakahara Yosuke's Art in Japan, David B. Stewart's
The
Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture, Kodansha's
Contemporary Japanese Prints, the Library of
Congress's
Words in Motion: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy,
Hayashiya Seizo's Japanese Ceramics Today, J.
Thomas Rimer's
A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature, the essays
on Japan
in Cinema and Cultural Identity edited by Wimal
Dissanayake,
Makoto Ueda's Modern Japanese Poets, the P.E.N.
Club's
Survey of Japanese Literature Today, edited by
Isoda Koichi,
and The Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture edited
by
Richard Gid Powers and Kato Hidetoshi. (For further
information and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of January 1994
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