Shinoda Masahiro Nihilist Style Shinoda Masahiro Born in

Shinoda Masahiro Nihilist Style

Shinoda Masahiro • Born in 1931, entered Waseda University and then Shochiku. Imamura Shohei and Oshima Nagisa were his colleagues. He retired from filmmaking after making Spy Sorge (2003)

Early Films • The success of Oshima Nagisa’s Cruel Story of Youth (1960) • A ‘series’ of youth films by young filmmakers labeled as ‘Shochiku Nouvelle Vague’ films. • Most of them are poor imitations of Oshima’s. • Exceptions are …

• Shinoda Masahiro (1931 - ) and Yoshida Yoshishige (1933 - )’s films. • Auteur and filmmakers with self-conscious styles

• The debut film • One-Way Ticket for Love (1960) • About rock’n rollers and their nihilistic life styles with sensual imagery. • Commercial failure demoted him to assistant director.

• Dry Lake (1960) - caricature of college students who are infatuated with the idea of revolution and subversive actions and looking forward to a social turmoil that their terrorist activities might cause.

• My Face Red in the Sunset (1961) - cartoon-like stories about alienated assassins. A corrupt construction company owner commission them to assassinate a journalist who is about to expose his ill-doings, but things get complicated when an assassin falls in love with the journalist.

• Shochiku discontinued ‘Shochiku Nouvelle Vague’ and returned to the former production policy which targeted the female audience family drama, humanist drama, melodrama and other genre films. • Yoshida and Shinoda remained in Shochiku unlike Oshima and Imamura. • Ideas, subjects, themes, scripts forced upon him. • Though working in compliance with the demands of the studio, Shinoda was no longer innocent follower of the Shochiku tradition.

• With Beauty and Sadness (1965) a literary adaptation from Kawabata Yasunari’s novel about a novelist adulterous relationship with a much younger woman and her trauma of losing their child in miscarriage and being abandoned.

• Pale Flower (1964) coproduction of Shōchiku, Bungei Productio and Ninjin Club about a yakuza coming out of prison after three years to find many things have changed in the meantime - the gang merged with its rival gang and a young, innocent woman gambling in the card den where he had frequented.

• Assassination (1964) – about an enigmatic ronin involved in a web of political intrigue and the game of assassinations in the Kyoto at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

• Samurai Spy (1965) – a legendary Samurai Ninja, Sarutobi Sasuke, popularized through fictions, plays, and movies, caught in a web of political intrigue and espionage.

• Leaving Shochiku, he made Punishment Island (1966) – drama film about the man who was kept in a reform school at a remote island returns there to revenge against the guard who mistreated him.

• Shinoda set up his production company, Hyōgensha. It’s first film, Clouds at Sunset (1967) is a literary adaptation based on Minakami Tsutomu’s novel about a woman from a poor family becoming a maid in a spa hotel and then start sleeping with men for more money.

Later Films • Double Suicide (1969) – Hyōgensha & ATG, an adaptation from Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Shinjū Ten no Amijima which tells an doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.

• Buraikan (1970) – a historical drama about an outlaw who pushes the residents of the Edo red light district to rebel against an growing number of stifling and absurd moral laws.

• Silence (1971) – a literary adaption from Endō Shūsaku’s novel about the two Jesuits who encountered persecution in the 17 th-C Japan and local Catholics who were forced to abandoned their faith.

• Himiko (1974) – about the mythical queen of the pre-historical Japan, her involvement in power intrigues and her martyrdom.

• Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975) – adaptation from Sakaguchi Ango’s novel about a mountain man who captures a beautiful, but manipulative city woman and goes an excessive length to please every her whim.

• Ballad of Orin (1977) – adapted from Minakami Tsutomu’s novel, it tells the story of a blind travelling musician who is ostracized even by her group after she is found sleeping with a man.

• Mc. Arthur’s Children (1984) – an adaptation from Aku Yū’s popular novel about inhabitants of a small island who must come to term with the nation’s defeat.

• Childhood Days (1990) – adaptation from Fujiko Fujio’s animation about a young boy who evacuated from Tokyo during WWII and his school mates and villagers, who do not know much about what is going on in the war and cities.

• Sharaku (1995) – a biological film about Sharaku set in the cultural world where Utamaro, Hokusai, Danjūrō and Juppensha Ikku were active.

• Spy Sorge (2003) – about a foreign spy using the Sorge alias just before the outbreak of WWII and his association with a sympathetic Japanese communist who harbours the ideals of freedom and rule of the masses.

Shinoda’s Subjects • Japanese History • Historical incidents and situation at junctions of Japanese history • Radical changes and shifts in history • People’s reactions and responses to them. • Historical and national identities

• Dry Lake - the 1960 s and political movements • Assassination - the arrival of Perry’s fleet in Japan and the ensuing political and social upheaval • Samurai Spy - 1600; the victory of the Tokugawa’s and the last phase of civil wars • Buraikan - the ‘Tempo Reform’ • The Silence - the time of persecution of Christians • Ballad of Orin – Japanese modernization and Taisho Democrary • Mc. Arthur’s Children - the aftermath of the defeat in the second world war • Sharaku – Kansei Period and the suppression of popular culture and the resistance to it.

• Reaction to such changes • People who find it difficult to cope with them. • Disillusionment with radical shifts in value, ideology, and political and social system. • Nihilistic rather than ethical response to drastic shifts • Violence and subversion • Strong images of death and corruption

Early Shinoda • High degree of mannerist tendencies like in Oshima • But more consistent visual styles: more aesthetic than subversive, more artistic than chaotic, and more sensuous than violent • Sensuous modernism

Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen (cinemascope) format

Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen (cinemascope) format

Symmetrical composition

Over the shoulder, selective focus composition in a wide screen format

Normal over the shoulder shot

Chiaro-scruro (low-key lighting, high contrast) images

Symmetrical composition and chiaro-scuro lighting combined mise-en-scène

Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition with empty space on the right

Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition with empty space on the top of the screen

Chiaro-scuro lighting and selective focus

Reflected shadow

Extrem camera angles (particularly high angle)

Framing

Silhouetting

Frontal and profile shots

Frontal and profile shots

Telephoto shot (disappearance of depth)

Surrealistic and easthetic image

Swish pan (camera movement)

Middle Shinoda • • Montage (editing) Jagged jump cuts Ignoring the 180 degree rule Theatrical long cut and cinematic rapid cut

Middle Shinoda • Pale Flower (1963) - A hard-boiled Yakuza returns to the Tokyo underworld after three years in prison. He meets a mysterious, wealthy woman who hangs out in illegal gambling houses for excitement. They fall in love but their relationship is doomed.

Middle Shinoda • Assassination (1964) - At the closing stage of the Tokugawa Shogunate, assassination became a disturbing political tool, a masterless samurai tries to prevent the outbreak of civil war, changing allegiances between the Shogunate and the Emperor.

Middle Shinoda • Samurai Spy (1965) odd (unusual) samurai film about three spy rings which are involved in mutual betrayals and bloodsheds. Empty in content but displays Shinoda’s visual bravura.

Shinoda after Shochiku • Shinoda and ATG • Double Suicide (1969) stylistic adaptation of Chikamatsu’s play, The Love Suicide at Amijima. Jihei, the merchant, is married and has two children, but is desperately in love with a courtesan, Oharu.

Shinoda after Shochiku • Jihei’s infatuation brings to him and his family financial, marital and social ruin. Koharu is out of his reach when she was bought out by a wealthy merchant. This eventually leads to the double suicide.

Shinoda after Shochiku • Mixture of traditional theatre (bunraku / kabuki) and cinema; avant-garde theatre (Awazu Kiyoshi’s set design); ukiyo-e and cinema

Shinoda after Shochiku • Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970) - at the time of the great social reform led by the Tokugawa Shogun, a group of outlaws, actors of a banned theatre troupe, and a corrupt monk rebel against the rigidity of the Shogunate.

Shinoda after Shochiku • The film is set during the time of puritan ‘Tempo Reform’ in which everything pleasurable was banned - theatre, ukiyoe, novels, expensive meals, dolls, sweets, etc. Six actors from a theatre troupe, an eccentric monk and a useless fortune teller fight for the freedom of expression.

Shinoda after Shochiku • Silence (1971) - adapted from Endo Shusaku’s novel, the film is about a Portuguese Jesuit missionary and the Japanese peasant converts, who were persecuted and forced to renounce their faith. Shot by Miyagawa Kazuo with rich pastel colours.

Shinoda after Shochiku • Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975) a story about a ghost woman who puts under her spell the man who abducted her and dominates him by the use of her sexual power.

Shinoda after Shochiku • The Ballad of Orin (1977) - Goze is a blind female itinerant shamisen player and storyteller. Orin is a goze though she was expelled from a group for breaking its rules and having an affair with a customer. Traveling alone, she is a popular entertainer, but men are after not only her music but also her body.