“Rebellion and Despair. Children and Adolescents in Recent Japanese Films”

Jose Montaño (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona; Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellow – Waseda University,

Tokyo)

Childhood:

- social and historical construction- ideally innocent and carefree

“Philippe Ariès’ pioneering study Centuries of Childhood describes how the modern child emerged as the object and product of primary state education, subject to the constant scrutiny and judgement of teachers, parents and peers. According to Ariès, school prolonged the period of dependency for young people by physically and conceptually isolating them from the rest of society, hence lengthening and defining the duration of childhood.”

Paget (2011) The Representation of Children and Childhood in Meiji Japan, p.2

“Two mutually dependent ideologies emerged during the early Meiji period: universal education and nation, both of which sought to redefine existing concepts of childhood. (…) These images identified children with education and a new repertoire of civic duties, bound them to the state and subjected them to new kinds of disciplinary power.“

Paget (2011) The Representation of Children and Childhood in Meiji Japan, p.1

“The children depicted in these images are enmeshed within a matrix of gazes. Adults peer down from open windows and children surreptitiously eye each other (…) the observer’s vantage point is such that he or she is invisible to the wrongdoers, the implication being that an anonymous pair of eyes might be watching at any time.”

Paget (2011) The Representation of Children and Childhood in Meiji Japan, p. 14

I was born but… (Ozu, 1932) Emptied Western suburbs of Tokyo, equated to colonies in continental land

Children disappointed of his father’s conformist acceptance of arbitrary orders from the ruling hierarchy

Historically the emperor Hirohito became a mere ‘symbol of the state’ in Japan’s new constitution, and General Douglas McArthur is reported to have described the emperor as a twelve-year-old boy. Thus, Japan’s postwar can be seen as a place of absent ‘fathers’, just as the man that once unified all Japanese as his shinmin (subjects), or his ‘children’, was now in the postwar only another ‘orphan’ with U.S. guardian.

Wada-Marciano (2012) Working Children in “Stateless” Japan: Orphans’ Places in Postwar Cinema, p.108

Sorrowful whistle & Tokyo Kid, two films depicting star Misora Hibari as an orphan

working childhttp://

www.brns.com/japan/pages1/japan32.html

Taiyôzoku films

Season of the Sun (Furukawa Takumi, 1956)

Crazed Fruit (Nakahira Kô, 1956)

Adolescence:

- stage in between childhood and adultness- duration of the period constantly increasing

“Only on the denial of death can a system like the one that structures contemporary capitalist societies, based on consumption and the creation of need, be built. The denial of death has been accompanied even by a harassment of maturity and the identification of the ideal ego with the puber as the emblem of a system which, unlike traditional societies, has eliminated the rites of passage to adulthood and replaced it with a strange prolongation of adolescence.”

Pintor (2005) The Naked and the Dead. The Representation of the Dead and the Construction of the Other in Contemporary Cinema, p.2

“Rather than simply a mirror of real life, Season of the Sun and Crazed Fruit are fantasies of wealth and privilege. The film version of Crazed Fruit in particular features ostentatious display of wealth. The boys lay about luxurious summerhouses, sail their own yachts, and drive around in sporty convertibles. This was not how most people lived […] Recalling the early days of the taiyozoku boom, Shintaro said, ‘Outside Tokyo, Japan was incredibly provincial in those days. Most kids had never seen yachts or water-skiing or motorcycles, and they certainly never carried on with girls the way we did.’ The lifestyle that Shintaro represented was something new to Japanese teens, and one that was out of reach for most of them.” Shamoon (2002) Sun Tribe: Cultural Production and Popular

Culture in Post-War Japan

Shôjo Manga- Melodrama- Sophisticated plots- Inner world- sublimation of adolescence- Moratorium to enter

adulthoodFormal features:- Compositions of concentrated

expressivity- Multiplicity of simultaneous

points of view- Motifs as flowers, glitter

and sparkles

Iwai ShunjiFireworks (1993)

Iwai ShunjiAll About Lily Chou-chou (2001)

Iwai ShunjiAll About Lily Chou-chou (2001)

Ijime (bullying):“dove style violence (…) a trend within contemporary Japanese cinema in which human beings coldly abuse one another with detached cruelty reminiscent of ‘certain species of bird’ who, when ‘a flock member is different or weaker…peck at the weakest bird dispassionately until it’s dead”.

McRoy (2008) Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema,

p.103http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqE8lUzz1t8

Sono SionSuicide Club (2002)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZ0AowGJYI

Nakashima TetsuyaConfessions (2010)

For Love’s SakeFor Love’s Sake (2012)

- Clip 1- Clip 2- Clip 3

• Violence and conflict

• Continuity and ruptures

• Masculinity/ femenity in question

• Social concerns and criticism. Expression of discomfort and uncertainty

• Scepticism (social homogeneity questioned)

• Pessimism

• Artistic pretentions as well as a strong commercial appeal