Things We Don’t See

One of the most difficult aspects of any “foreign” literature or film is that which is taken for granted, the social mores that everyone understands but us outsiders. Yet there is one even greater problem — that which is not there at all. The Japanese film history is both broad and deep, but there are many standard genres in Euro/American films that seem to simply not exist.

The most striking of these missing genres is the Woman in Peril movie. From The Perils of Pauline to the recent Bird Box, this has been one of the absolute fundamentals of Euro/American film-making, so fundamental that we often write in a woman whose primary role in the plot is to twist her ankle to increase her peril while being pursued. But there are numerous examples of the genre in which the woman herself is the central character and her physical danger is the motivating factor of the movie, in such varied forms as King Kong, Sorry Wrong Number, Gaslight, or The Cat People. In some she is saved at the last moment by her true ultimate love, as in Charade or North by Northwest, or by a brave knight who sacrifices himself for her, as in Children of Men. In others she saves herself, as in Wait Until Dark or Alien. This latter format has become much more common in recent years, as in Gravity or the numerous movies where the mother at last turns on her family’s attackers. But we have always operated on the assumption that tension (and with it audience interest) is magnified if the character in danger is a woman.

As far as I have been able to find, this kind of movie simply did not exist in Japan before the pinku era, when some rapist movies must have slipped in that I don’t know about. It is still very rare today; if they are making them, they are not exporting them. Even in horror movies, the ghost usually is a woman seeking revenge on the man, and thus any peril for the women in his circle is merely collateral damage. Even if no spirit is involved, as in the terrific Audition, it is the man in peril from a woman.  This is remarkable not least because there were so many fine female stars and a large, probably a majority, female movie audience, at least until television penetrated all of the country. Even so, the Japanese seem not to have accepted the idea that their women characters are worth saving, so to speak, even when they are the stars of their own movies.

In general, the Suspense movie is missing as well.  We associate this with Hitchcock, of course, but it was common almost from the beginning of films in Europe and America. It overlaps with the Woman in Peril, the horror film, and the adventure/action movie, and so the category is a bit harder to define, but we all know it when we see it. We develop some kind of identification with the hero or heroine and are “on the edge of our seats,” as we used to say, until the danger is dealt with. The hero or heroine faces a problem which has a countdown, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes well aware. The problem might be Hitchcock’s classic McGuffin, the time bomb under the seat, but it could just as easily be the air running out on the spaceship, the kidnapper’s deadline for the ransom, or a terrorist attack that is due at any moment. But in a proper suspense film, tension is the point, even though we know the hero or heroine will ultimately find a way. We go to see such movies precisely for the vicarious participation in the danger. But in classic Japanese movies there is no Wages of Fear, or anything like it. We find no girlfriend or wife kidnapped to force the hero to commit the robbery, no destroyer raining depth charges on the submarine, no one bravely holding on in hopes the messenger will have gotten through and will bring help. Godzilla just appears, and then just as inexplicably disappears. Rarely do we even find a real heist/caper film.

We might expect to find some suspense in the chanbara that, like the standard Western, will ultimately end with a duel, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes with a mass of attackers. But it is very rare to find one that is actually built on the tensions that lead up to that final battle. Rarely is there a High Noon clock or 3:10 to Yuma train that must be met, which makes Mori’s Vendetta of a Samurai or the meticulous maneuvering of 13 Assassins all the more striking. The chanbara battles are more pre-ordained than suspenseful. Attackers usually just pop up, almost at random, to provide an excuse for the hero to demonstrate his skills. So unsuspenseful are these scenes that the attackers  often have to pause to explain to the hero their motive for attacking him.*

I have previously noted one or two films that rely on suspense, and a couple of the sixties hitman films might fit into the category, but these are very rare exceptions usually issued as double feature fillers. When a top of the bill feature like Zero Focus is found, although it has all the visual trappings of a suspense film with a good helping of Woman in Peril, it contents itself with the gradual explanation of a mystery. Even when we come across a hitman on the run, the movie soon slides into the more typical chanbara pattern where there is little suspense about when or how the final confrontation will come about and none at all about its ultimate outcome. Suspense also occasionally will pop up in animal pictures, usually about dogs who have been stranded and must find their way home or be rescued. Some of these, such as Antarctica, have been incredibly popular. But the standard suspense principles rarely seem to be applied to movies about actual people, even in the “borderless action” films that (at least the ones I have seen) are usually organized around a mystery or the overthrow of a master criminal.

I’m no sociologist and can’t begin to claim I understand why this is so. But I have often noted in these posts Japanese movies in which the basic attitude is: This is the just the way things are. If that is our basic attitude, then why should we pretend differently, even for the sake of entertainment? Suspense operates on the hope that things will get better; we may not know how at the moment, but love or courage or ingenuity or in desperate times a deus ex machina will find a way. For most of the twentieth century, Japanese movies seem to have not accepted that idea. Things aren’t darkest just before the dawn, because dawn almost never comes. This is not the fatalism of classical tragedy, but something else entirely which provides the more serious Japanese films with a remarkable level of emotional or social realism that is usually missing from American films in particular.

American movies work hard to establish a surface realism, but in general they have used that as simply a way to disguise or intensify the melodramatic stories we prefer, in which the heroine or the hero finds a way to triumph. In so many Japanese movies, the hero or heroine may survive, but they do not triumph. Even in the chanbara, the hero may win the duel, but he loses a friend or simply goes on to yet another duel down the road.

Another way to say this is that in Japanese movies, at least until the nineties where I have still only done a small sampling, writers discussing them rarely have to worry about “spoilers.”

Then there is the Stranger in Town story so common in American films. Obviously, the ronin or sometimes the yakuza wanders from place to place, but they are always looking for a new home, a new lord or yakuza master to serve. Yojimbo is the notable exception, the wanderer whose appearance messes up everything in the town,  which may help explain why of all the chanbara, Yojimbo became the model for the Spaghetti Western. Shimizu’s many road movies involve people going from home to spa or “work” or children in search of a home, not people always ready to light out for the territory or to ride off into the sunset when this little episode of life is over.  Those that stay on the road, like Zatoichi or Lone Wolf and Cub are driven away from every possible home, not moving from their own choice. The “Wandering Guitarist” series is the only example I can think of, and these are so clearly modeled on the American Western, down to horse, fringed jacket, Stetson, guitar, and final gunfight, that they seem hardly to count as Japanese movies. The commoner on the road, especially the traveller who lives by his wits rather than his sword, is all but unknown outside of Bakumatsu taiyo-den, at least until the arrival of Tora-san, a travelling salesman.

Of course, I may be wrong, simply because there are vast areas of Japanese film still unexplored because they have not been exported. After all, since the Americans make such excellent suspense movies, why should anyone expect them to be interested in Japanese versions with the additional problem of subtitles?** The French, for example, make far more kinds of films than the relationship movies we regularly see in the art houses, but we know their crime, action, or comedy films only when they are remade by Hollywood, almost always worse (Don’t get me started). Perhaps there are similar unknown unexplored regions of Japanese film. But, all in all, after about a thousand movies, I don’t think so.

• * My fine local newspaper critic, Mick LaSalle, suggested while reviewing a very American movie an excellent explanation of why this occurs. (SF Chronicle, 2/8/19). As he said, revenge has no deadline, where rescue or escape do. Most chanbara are built around revenge, and the only deadline is the looming appearance of “The End,” thus eliminating any real suspense.
• ** Those with long memories may recall What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, originally a very successful Japanese spy movie which was brought to the US market and then given to Woody Allen to dub, in the process turning it into a part racist parody, part New York Jewish Deli in-joke.