The limits of fiction: politics and absent scenes in Susumu Hani’s Bad Boys (Furyō Shōnen, 1960). A film re-reading through its script

Abstract

is known as one of the leading figures in the renewal of cinematic language in Japan in the 1960s. During this decade, he made his most recognised works; fiction films that benefited from international distribution and obtained great prestige. In Japan, they were often ranked among the ten best films of the year by the film journal Kinema Junpō: She and He (Kanojo to kare) reached seventh position in 1963; The Song of Bwana Toshi (Buwana tosi no uta) was eighth in 1965; Bride of the Andes (Andesu no hanayome) was sixth in 1966; and Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (Hatsukoi: Jigoku-hen), which is his best known work, was sixth in 1968. 2 This essay focuses on his first feature film, Bad Boys (Furyō Shonen, 1960), which marked the beginning of a new cinema in Japan and the starting point of Hani's fiction films. While there have been attempts to rediscover the value of this work (Satō 1997: 3-12; Amit, 2004), this text proposes a new approach to Bad Boys, bringing into account its script, published by Kinema Junpō in April 1960, as well as Hani's theoretical contributions.Bad Boys is a work at the limits of reality and fiction, in which Hani implemented the method of filmmaking that he had developed during his earlier decade as a documentary film maker for Iwanami Eiga studios. This is a period that remains understudied, although in recent years, there has been a rediscovery of his two most successful documentaries Children in the Classroom (Kyōshitsu no kodomotachi, 1954) and Children Who Draw (E o kaku no kodomotachi, 1956). 3 The former won the Best Documentary at the Educational Film Festival (Kyōiku Eigasai) of 1955 and the Blue Ribbon Prize for "Best Film of Educational Culture"and the Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. After this success, the documentary was screened at Nikkatsu commercial cinemas alongside fiction films, which was a rare distinction (cfr. Takefumi 2002, 61

Developments in the Japanese Documentary Mode

“…Filmmakers such as Kurosawa Akira, Mizoguchi Kenji, Kinugasa Teinosuke, Imai Tadashi, and Inagaki Hiroshi astonished western audiences with exotic images of a legendary Japan, receiving Academy Awards in the US as well as prizes at the Cannes, Venice, and Berlin film festivals during the 1950s. This imbalance was recognized by both contemporary and more recent writers (Giuglaris and Giuglaris 1957;Yamamoto 1983;Bordwell 1994;Centeno-Martín 2018a). However, while the Japanese production of fiction films reached its peak in this decade-1958 marked a record with 547 entertainment films (VV.AA 1963, p. 63)-the number of documentary films was even greater, reaching 1794 productions in the same year (Uni Japan 1961, p. 2).…”

“…It was therefore important to defamiliarize moving imagery in ways that would weaken viewers' perceptual frameworks and create slippage between their life space and that of the image. This idea also imagines a rejuvenation 7 For further information on Hani's position within contemporary debates in Japan on filmmaking and documentary see Centeno (2018aCenteno ( , 2018b, Tsunoda (2015). For a brief introduction to cinéma vérité and direct cinema, see Musser (1996).…”

“…102-17). For more detailed accounts of this film's production and reception, seeCenteno (2018a) and Tsunoda (2015).…”

Tracing Tendencies in the Japanese Documentary Mode

“…Many of those critics, such as Imamura Taihei, recognized the documentary aspect of both fiction and nonfiction film. The self-reflexive criticism developed by postwar filmmakers has also been recognized in recent years (Furuhata 2007(Furuhata , 2013Raine 2012;Centeno-Martín 2018b, 2020a. Articles in this special issue continue that exploration, both in wartime (Fujii, Miyao) and postwar periods (Kitsnik, Centeno-Martín, Jesty, Mihalopoulos, Inoue, Coates).…”

Image Pragmatics and Film as a Lived Practice in the Documentary Work of Hani Susumu and Tsuchimoto Noriaki

“…It was therefore important to defamiliarize moving imagery in ways that would weaken viewers' perceptual frameworks and create slippage between their life space and that of the image. This idea also imagines a rejuvenation 7 For further information on Hani's position within contemporary debates in Japan on filmmaking and documentary see Centeno (2018aCenteno ( , 2018b, Jesty (2018), andTsunoda (2015). For a brief introduction to cinéma vérité and direct cinema, see Musser (1996).…”