Tendency Films Pt. 3: 1929-1931

(3/3) - Climax and Demise

Culmination

By 1929, Marxism, social criticism, and production of left-oriented arts were at a high. As Anderson and Richie describe, "Labor unions had been growing and by 1929 there were a total of six hundred associations with membership totaling almost a third of a million" (64). Films in the tendency genre were being churned out, to enormous popular and critical success, and those set in contemporary times, even more so than the period films, resonated with audiences who felt and understood the economic troubles of the times.

Genre Tradeoff

Tendency films then began to shift towards a modern setting, despite risks of heavier censorship. Proletarian themes applied most directly to the social currents of the day, and as filmmakers such as Mizoguchi Kenji realized they might be able to pull off progressive films with contemporary settings, the genre flourished. Davis describes this shift effectively. He writes that "the economic rewards of the genre" were evidenced by "the mere fact that commercial movie producers clambered onto the proletarian bandwagon." And thus, "with its rousing denunciations of capitalism," Suzuki Shigeyoshi's 1930 film What Made Her Do It? -- which will be discussed more later --"provoked rioting in Asakusa and became the highest grossing picture in Japanese silent film history" (60).

This section will consider two such gendaigeki films by Mizoguchi, as well as What Made Her Do It? and one of Ito Daisuke's last tendency-chanbara hurrahs, 1930's Man-Slashing Horse-Piercing Sword.

Mizoguchi: Tokyo March and Metropolitan Symphony (1929) 

Both of these early Mizoguchi films "ran into severe censorship difficulties" for their keen portrayals of class struggle (Anderson, 354). Along with many others of the time, these two films in particular follow thematic narratives "in which social clashes represent the transformations of urban modernization" (Davis, 60). Both also feature modern girl heroines, a cultural trope that largely defined the gender dynamics of late 1920s Japan. 

Starring Natsukawa Shizue, the ultimate sophisticated, 'respectable' modern girl of the 1920s, Tokyo March brought progressive and liberal tendencies to drama played out in contemporary society. Fujiki Hideaki, in his book Making Personas (2013), reasons that "Natsukawa attained social respectability through harmonizing certain new values such as sophisticated fashion and consumption with a 'spiritist' effort". Spiritism in Japanese films of the 20s is defined as the quality of a character choosing to act primarily according to their own will or spirit, and this is exactly what the characters in Tokyo March do -- against a social backdrop within which "the vogue for Marxism... prompted people to become more conscious of the contradictions inherent in capitalism, the nation-state, and the empire" (280).

Tokyo March (東京行進曲), 1929 

Unfortunately, Metropolitan Symphony is lost, and thus not as much is known about it. What we do know is that the screenplay was written by Kataoka Teppei, a well known proletarian writer, and that Mizoguchi utilized Soviet-style montage techniques in the film, as well as a cast of modern heroines with lipstick, short hair, and Western clothes. It is clear that before he began to focus on historical settings, Mizoguchi "had long been interested in social problems because they concerned human beings" (Anderson, 353), and his ability to cinematically communicate this humanist concern shone in these two early tendency pictures. 

A page from a promotional pamphlet for Metropolitan Symphony (都会交響楽), 1929,

showcasing the bedraggled protagonist and the short-haired mogas he interacts with.  

Man-Slashing Horse-Piercing Sword (1930)

This film, with its shocking title, was Ito Daisuke's ultimate expression of social and economic strife, ultra-violent nihilist ronin, and proud "denunciation of the exploiting classes" (Anderson, 65). In a search for his father's arch nemesis, the scruffy ronin in Man-Slashing Horse-Piercing Sword regularly steals farmers' food to survive, but eventually comes to lead a peasant revolt against the local government. Again, though the hero does not exactly adhere to a golden standard of morality, his standing need not be questioned as long as he fights fiercely against the oppressive forces of political authority. This was Ito's last great scathing chanbara triumph before the tendency genre switched almost wholly to gendaigeki pictures.

Tsukigata Ryunosuke as the ronin in 

Man-Slashing Horse-Piercing Sword (斬人斬馬剣), 1930

What Made Her Do It? (1930)

This film, directed by Suzuki Shigeyoshi, symbolized the climax of unrest in Japanese society. Based on a modern shingeki (new drama) play, What Made Her Do It? follows a young woman who, no matter where she goes, cannot catch a break. Whether living in the home of her distant and cold aunt and uncle, or working in a circus, or a band of thieves, or an aristocratic home, or a Christian church, the cruelty of those in charge of her is startling. The pressures of money, of power, and of class severely and permanently oppress her: "She started life poor and there is no escape from her misery. She is branded for life" (Anderson, 68). After such endless suffering, in desperation, she snaps and burns the church down at the end of the film. One can guess what made her do it.

As mentioned, its first screening caused audiences to riot "in support of its anti-capitalist sentiments, being excited to the point of loud cries of 'Down with Capitalism!' and the like." It was extraordinarily successful, and "after the tremendous profits brought in by this film, no company could resist the tendency picture despite its political orientation" (Anderson, 68). This strange and ironic effect encapsulated the dynamics of the time: a conflict between rich and poor, between Marx and Smith, between spending and suffering, between empire and people, between right and left.

Takatsu Keiko in What Made Her Do It? (何が彼女をそうさせたか), 1930


Films

Shochiku Kinema (Producer), & Ito, D. (Director). (1930). Man-slashing horse-piercing sword [Motion Picture]. Japan: Shochiku Kinema.

Teikoku Kinema Engei (Producer), & Suzuki, S. (Director). (1930). What made her do it? [Motion Picture]. Japan: Teikoku Kinema Engei.

Uzumasa, N. (Producer), & Mizoguchi, K. (Director). (1929). Metropolitan symphony [Motion Picture]. Japan: Nikkatsu.

Uzumasa, N. (Producer), & Mizoguchi, K. (Director). (1929). Tokyo march [Motion Picture]. Japan: Gendai Eigasha.

Citations

Anderson, Joseph L., and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. 3rd ed., Princeton University Press, 1982.

Davis, Darrell William. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film. Columbia University Press, 1996.


Fujiki, Hideaki. Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan. Harvard University Press, 2013.