Real and slow: The poetics and politics of The Naked Island

Abstract

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.

Record. Reenact. Recycle. Notes on Shindō Kaneto’s Documentary Styles

“…Elsewhere (Kitsnik 2018), I have argued that Shindō's voice and physical features that appear to belong to a rural laborer become the site of authenticity that supports the perception of his films as semi-documentaries. In the examples above, by bringing the documentarist to the screen, not unlike fellow filmmakers Werner Herzog, Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore, Shindō also takes a step from self-reference to self-reflexion and, by so doing, moves towards what could be called meta-documentary.…”

“…This is an expression of resistance to story, stage drama and fiction. (Imamura 1940, p. 43, author's translation) I have previously examined (Kitsnik 2018) how the over-long and repetitive sequences in Shindō's The Naked Island relate to earlier works such as Uchida's next film, Earth (Tsuchi, 1939), shot over a period of one year and simultaneously to A Thousand and One Nights in Tokyo. Shindō's first substantial assignment as a screenwriter had actually been with the elder director, although the project that included taking a trip to Manchuria and going through a number of rewrites ultimately came to nothing.…”