"Teaching about Japan through Film"

[Mulboyne]

JPRI: Teaching about Japan through Film
Most of us who are not Japanese and who study Japan can recall that first epiphany. That moment when we realized Japan's depth and history is intellectually surprising and historically compelling. For me it was sitting through a screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964) at the Smithsonian when I was 17 years old. I'm not sure how I ended up there, on what was literally a dark and stormy night. No one I knew had ever been to Japan, or had any Japanese friends. But as I sat in the dark that evening, transported to an existential sandpit in a nameless coastal village in Japan, I knew where I was going as soon as I could raise the money...more...

[Greener]

I felt the same way when my penpal in Osaka and I went from exchangin letters to exchanging tapes of local programming. I would send him tapes of shows that were big at the time such as Cheers, Dallas, Dynasty, etc. While he would send me Yuyake Nyan Nyan and Sukeban Deka. The more I saw, the more I wanted to go there.

Now I'm here and I am officially cool!

Post #200 baby!!!

[72hw]

Most of us who are not Japanese and who study Japan can recall that first epiphany. That moment when we realized Japan's depth and history is intellectually surprising and historically compelling.

OK - this may be a bit hard to swallow, but it is the truth I assure you: My 'Oh Wow! What On Earth Have I Been Missing?' moment came after watching "Ju-On: The Grudge I" and discovering SaruDama.com which has an intense examination of the Ju-On series. Not only did Mr. Foutz delve into the various plot elements, but the cultural signifignce behind them - even tied many of them in with the 'Kwaidan' tales of old.

Though I had indeed seen a few Kurosawa flicks, some anime and your stereotypical Beat Em Up's; the "Ju-On" films also gave me my first real close look at a typical modern day (upper middle-class) Japanese house, typical school and a peek into everyday life which in turn led to my ever increasing obsession with learning more about Japan.

From J-Horror I moved onto the 'slice of life' cinema like "Laundry" for example, then I discovered Miike, Kitano and company and my curiosity became more than a casual look-see. It might be slowly driving the wife and my friends insane, but I am teaching myself Japanese, reading anything I can get my hands on, watching even more J-TV & movies, cooking J-Food, hanging out in L.A.'s Little Tokyo, etc. and so forth. Not to mix languages too much, but I think it's safe to consider me J-Culture otaku now thanks to a creepy little kid and his dead mom!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that all my J-OCD is not simply pissing up a rope to get wet - slowly warming my wife up to the idea of within 5 years time pulling up stakes and moving to Japan for a while!

[Charles]

JPRI: Teaching about Japan through Film

Not a bad little paper, although he does make some grossly mistaken assumptions with no evidence to back them up, like:

..Pixar films would not have their wry combination of adult and childhood themes without the influence of anime..

Uh.. no, that was an influence primarily from Jay Ward's Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Well anyway, I wish this guy used more Film Studies and less psychology. But what do you expect from a psychologist? One of the main thrusts of modern Film Studies is that film as a media is a western invention and the techniques and conventions primarily came from Germany, Russia, and the US, so Japanese film is by definition "seeing Japan through a foreign lens."

[Socratesabroad]

Not a bad little paper, although he does make some grossly mistaken assumptions with no evidence to back them up

Undoubtedly. Here's another one:

The violent video games produced by the U.S. Department of Defense to help recruit young men and women into the armed forces would not exist in their present form without the influence of Japanese anime.

Ummm, no, that's not right either.

First off, there's only one 'violent' game produced by the DoD that I'm aware of, America's Army, which undoubtedly owes its existence to Wolfenstein 3D and maybe Half-Life (though I'm far more familiar with the former).



Wired News

1992's Castle Wolfenstein 3D may not have been the very first "first-person shooter," as the genre came to be known. But through massive online dissemination of the game's shareware version, Wolfenstein 3D introduced millions to an immersive world in which the action seemed to be happening from the player's perspective.

The game -- in which players assumed the role of an American commando battling Nazis and their supernatural servants -- did more than define a genre. It also launched a company, id Software of Mesquite, Texas, which leveraged Wolfenstein 3D's success into a franchise of wildly successful first-person shooters, including the seminal Doom and Quake series.

So, the genealogy goes from Wolf3D to Doom/Quake along with military FPSes a la Tom Clancy's stuff (far more strategy than fighting) and Delta Force, ending up with AA. Nothing in there whatsoever about anime.

[Charles]

The first First Person Shooter that I played is Mazewar on the Mac.



That's from 1986, about 8 years before Wolfenstein 3D. It has its origins in an early 1970s MIT project, but the 1980s XEROX PARC version that ran on the Alto was the first 3D version.



Anyway, I tend to tune out whenever some drooling fanboy starts ascribing anime influences to everything, this paper didn't quite seem to do that, but it does go way overboard in parts. Why oh why can't people teach Japanese Film Studies separate from anime? They are two entirely different subjects.

[72hw]

The first First Person Shooter that I played is Mazewar on the Mac.

Woah! I remember playing Mazewar too - but I had forgotten all about it until I saw that screen cap, gave me a little rush, kinda like Dejavu. Awesome!

[Red Floyd]

While anime and Japanese cinema may be two different subjects, you have to admit that there are moments when the line between the two becomes blurred. Hayao Miyazaki being the most obvious choice for director paving the way for cinematic anime, there's still the likes of Hideaki Anno, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Momoru Oshii to consider. Am I saying all these people are excellent directors? No. But you still have to admit that they have made an impact on cinematic anime.

[Kuang_Grade]

Most of us who are not Japanese and who study Japan can recall that first epiphany.....I knew where I was going as soon as I could raise the money

Very interesting, Mulboyne...It must be a bit cool to be able look back see all that resulted from that one event...Myself, and quite a few others, I suspect, have much more convoluted origins of our interest.

In my case, it was book that started this way....
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. was the start of my interest, although it took years before I came to Japan (and even then, it was a fairly limited basis although somewhat frequent).

Socrates, there were a few other DOD/gaming interactions I'm aware of (beyond the antidotal reports that new recruits, while in worse physical shape than previous generations are much better shots on day one than previous generations)....

There was a special Battlezone Arcade varient developed (athough unclear if actually produced in quantity) for the US Army to use as a trainer for Bradley Fighting Vehicle .

There was also a mod for Doom that was developed by and for the Marines, called, oddly enough, Marine Doom

http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/Marine_Doom.html

[Socratesabroad]

Socrates, there were a few other DOD/gaming interactions I'm aware of (beyond the antidotal reports that new recruits, while in worse physical shape than previous generations are much better shots on day one than previous generations)....

I recall the trainer I had to use while in army basic training, an arcade style setup with a plastic rifle where you laid in the prone and practiced shooting at a TV screen.

But America's Army is the only DoD-endorsed game I'm aware of that is both a recruiting tool and possibly anywhere close to 'violent.' At any rate, it and its predecessors have nothing whatsoever to do with anime.

[jingai]

Don't forget the old Mac (and later PC) game Specter where you drive a tank-like thing in a crude 3d environment. There were crappy wireframe games going back to the early 80s in the arcades, but I can't remember their names.
War's not all infantry : )

Also, some of the lightgun trainer-type games might trace their lineage back to skeet shooting arcade-games which I believe Nintendo made electronic in the '70s. No anime here either.

About anime vs film, I think that would be a paper topic in its own right- what does Japanese film owe to anime and manga and vice-versa?