Nihon Eiga or hoga as they are called domestically in Japan are Japanese movies. It may interest people to know that Japanese movies have been around a long, long time, almost as long as American movies. In fact, Thomas Edison showed his kinetoscope in 1894 and two years later it was shown in Japan. Shortly afterwards, almost at the same time as American movie industry was launched, Japan produced its first movie in 1897. From then on, it steadily developed, almost parallel with the movie industries in America and Europe.
Most young people today think of Japanese movies as the "anime" video versions or the violent, surrealistic "ninja" movies. But the Japanese movie industry was known for classic, artistic films, long before the appearance of ninja movies and the very popular anime or manga films. Even the cult classics of the 1950s and 60s, those "cheapie" movies that Tokyo churned out with comical monster creatures in kaiju movies such as Godzilla, Mothra, etc., are but a drop in the bucket compared to the serious films that were produced. Unfortunately, most American viewers were not exposed to those films, instead, the more popular "monster" movies were shown and today, the word "godzilla" has become a standard name in describing something that is abnormally huge and fearsome!
Japanese movies were for all practical purposes unknown in the west prior to World War Two. There were some excellent movies made in the 1930s and 40s, such as the first version of the Forty Seven Ronin, but they were not shown in the west. Then, after World War Two, a little known director (in the west, in Japan he was already well known) by the name of Akira Kurosawa made a movie called Rashamon in 1950. This movie was a milestone for the Japanese movie industry. It won the Venice Film Festival Award as the Best Motion Picture in 1951 and it introduced Kurosawa to the world as a great director. Today Rashamon is considered to be the greatest movie ever made!
But it also introduced a young Japanese actor by the name of Toshiro Mifune. Mifune caught the attention of the movie viewers as a handsome, dynamic young actor who could play serious roles as well as comedy scenes. In a way, Kurosawa and Mifune became like John Ford and John Wayne in Hollywood. The two went on to make a bunch of movies, all hits in Japan, and most became popular in the west as well.
Mifune was not just an action movie star, he also played roles in serious dramas. Unlike John Wayne in Hollywood, Mifune was more like a combination of John Wayne/Clark Gable/Cary Grant! In other words, he was not cast only in "he-man" roles but also in dramas where he played the roles of a suave, debonair character down to a rough mannered crook. Mifune also had the distinction of having been cast in roles in foreign films, several Hollywood films and a bunch of Mexican movies! Mexican audiences found Mifune very appealing, "muy guapo y macho" ("very handsome and manly"), they used to say! Some say that his two greatest roles were in The Seven Samurai and Rashamon, both of which won the Venice Film Festival Awards.
If Mifune was a big male movie star in Japan in the 1950s and early 60s, then Machiko Kyo was the female equivalent. However, keep in mind that, like in Hollywood, there were many other actors and actresses in Japan that were considered great as well. I have selected Mifune and Kyo to represent that 1950s, 60s era. Machiko Kyo was a beautiful girl who's two great movies were Rashamon opposite Mifune, and Ugetsu (The Gates of Hell) another great movie that won the Venice Film Festival Award in 1950, a year before Rashamon. Like Hollywood, the Japanese movie industry did not have a shortage of beautiful female actresses, but Machiko Kyo was one of the best, one of the most beautiful. She made only one foreign movie. It was The Tea House of the August Moon opposite Glen Ford! She was that lovely geisha with whom Glen Ford's character fell in love.
As I said, although there were many other great actors and actresses, and directors in Japan, Kurosawa, Mifune and Kyo, more or less represented Japanese movie industry of that era. Interestingly, although Japan was still recovering from the devastation of World War Two, the 1950s and early 60s were the golden era of Japanese movie industry just as it was for Hollywood.
The 1950s were the great period of Hollywood Westerns, and in Japan, the samurai movies, especially with Mifune and directed by Kurosawa (like John Ford and John Wayne) were the big hits. There were also cheap samurai films being made, just like Hollywood's "B" Westerns, these cheap samurai movies were colloquially known as "chanbara" movies. The chanbara were known for sword fighting scenes where the hero fights dozens of opponents and kills a multitude of bad guys, sort of like the "B" Westerns where the hero shoots dozens of attacking Indians.
With the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s other genres began to surface as the top box office hits in Japan. Movies about young toughs and gangsters began to dominate the screens in Japan. The same thing was happening in Hollywood as well with a plethora of detective movies and gangster films.
A politically ambitious journalist/writer by the name of Ishihara Shintaro wrote a popular novel about young toughs in Tokyo streets. Ishihara later became a Diet member (Japanese congress) as well as Minister of Defense and Mayor of Tokyo! He is known to be somewhat of a hawk, a nationalist, an ulta-rightist. He was a good friend of the late Yukio Mishima....birds of a feather.
The book was very popular and movie producers grabbed it to make a film version. Ishihara was hired as a script writer and he insisted that his younger brother, Yujiro play the lead role. He said that he patterned the main character of the book after his kid brother, both physically and behaviorally, although his brother was not a delinquent! The producers agreed and the kid was cast and became a sensation overnight. Thus the actor Yujiro Ishihara, a cult figure and a darling of all young Japanese girls became a new movie star. Yujiro made a string of violent movies where he was always the tough guy. His trade mark scene was drinking down a glass of ice cold Sapporo beer! He sold an awful lot of Sapporo beer in Japan!
But like Hollywood, the Japanese movie industry began to take a back seat to television. The rise of television required that movie makers concentrate on different movies, the kind that television was not likely to show or make. So the classic samurai movies and even the style of yakuza movies began to change. Many actors and actresses who were big stars in the 1960s and 70s had to switch to television to survive, and many directors were unable to make classic movies. Just like in Hollywood, the era of the big movie stars was over.
Kurosawa, however, survived. Kurosawa was an innovator in movie making and he constantly came up with new ways to make his movies interesting and exciting. It was Kurosawa who first used the technique of switching to slow motion death scenes in samurai movies. He also pioneered the switching of scenes from color to black and white in death scenes. Sam Pekinpah was the first Hollywood director to borrow that technique from Kurosawa. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was made into a western, The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner and Rashamon was made into The Outrage with Paul Newman.
Far from being upset over Hollywood's pirating of his films, Kurosawa felt flattered and said that the Western and samurai film themes were interchangeable. To prove his point he made movies like, Yojimbo and Sanjuro, which are basically Westerns set in Japan! A few years later, Sergio Leone churned out "spaghetti Westerns" with Clint Eastwood that were nothing but remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, Sanjuro and others. Kurosawa also took Shakespear's MacBeth and made it into a samurai movie called The Throne of Blood! So, the movie industry of the world owes much to Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest movie directors ever to make a film!
Yes, Japanese movies are those silly Godzilla, Mothra type monster films. They are also the fascinating action films of samurai era as well as psychological movies such as Woman in the Dunes or a serio-comic social commentary on ramen noodles in Tampopo. The Japanese movies range the whole spectrum and they are well worth watching.
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