A seminal film that presaged the 1960s boom of independent cinema in Japan, Shindō Kaneto’s The Naked Island (1960) also marked its director’s breakthrough to the international market. This article examines how the film’s depiction of primitive agrarian life, particularly the ‘authentic’ labouring bodies, relates to the notions of neorealism and ‘slow cinema’. Tracing its international influences, a comparison to Flaherty’s Man of Aran (1934) reveals how ‘poetical licence’ is an integral part of documentary film with ethnographical aspirations. Working outside the restrictive nature of the Japanese studio system, The Naked Island consolidated the director’s stripped-down and self-sufficient methods of independent filmmaking. After winning the Grand Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival, it also brought him a considerable following amidst the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War.
The chapter examines Tanaka’s early career as an actress in the 1930s and her star persona in terms of acting style and roles played within the Japanese studio system. The notion of ‘idiogest’ is introduced to analyse the gestural characteristics of Tanaka’s acting style, which constitute a fundamental element of her star image. Against preconceptions of a homogenised star image, it explores Tanaka versatile acting skills and roles in films, ranging from traditional girls to modern career women and athlete. The chapter argues that the recurrent link between her characters and tragic motherhood and romance is connected to contemporary social shifts in femininity and Tanaka’s real life. Because her star persona had a significant impact on the content, promotion and appraisal of the films as the chapter demonstrates, Kitsnik suggests talking about ‘joint stardom’ or joint authorship between Tanaka and the directors of the films.
In his work, the filmmaker Shindō Kaneto sought to employ various, often seemingly incongruous, cinematic styles that complicate the notions of fiction and documentary film. This paper first examines his ‘semi-documentary’ films that often deal with the everyday life of common people by means of an enhanced realist approach. Second, attention is paid to the fusion of documentary and drama when reenacting historical events, as well as the subsequent recycling of these images in a ‘quasi-documentary’ fashion. Finally, I uncover a trend towards ‘meta-documentary’ that takes issue with the act of filmmaking itself. I argue that Shindō’s often self-referential work challenges the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction while engaging in a self-reflective criticism of cinema as a medium.
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