Category: CHINA, JAPAN & KOREA

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Korea (1912) – Anon

‘A Korean’s greatest pride is his horsehair hat …’ – ‘Korea’ (1912) – Anon

12 mins., b&w, silent – intertitles in English

Source : AMNH, film collection no. 200

Background – This is an informational film entirely confined to street scenes in Seoul, though it is not clear who made it nor for what purpose. There is no main title : ‘Korea’ is simply how it is titled in the AMNH catalogue. The intertitles seem to be in American English, and although they are often supercilious or prejudiced, the film does not appear to have a specific agenda other than reportage.

On the other hand, the film-makers do appear to have been in favour of the Japanese annexation of Korea, which had formally taken place two years before the film was made. An intertitle towards the end of the film lauds the efforts of the Japanese to reforest hillsides around the city ‘denuded centuries ago by a corrupt government’.

Film content –  Within the  limited brief of showing something of the street life of Seoul, the film is valuable, representing the city at a time when ‘trolley cars and bullock carts share the city streets’ as one intertitle puts it.

Another intertitle claims that a few years previously, women would not have been seen in public, whereas now, as the film shows, they freely walk through the streets. The same intertitle also claims that they ‘even discuss women’s suffrage’ (though whether there was any form of democratic voting system at the time seems highly unlikely).

The film is perhaps most interesting with regard to dress. Almost all the adults in the street are wearing clothes of spotless white. Many men wear a distinctive form of headgear, which is a tubular horse-hat placed over a skull cap and tied with a crinoline bow (see above). There are also a number of engaging close-up personal portraits.

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Chanteuse japonaise [Japanese Woman Singer] (1898-99) – dir. Gabriel Veyre

Japanese singer accompanies herself on a ‘shemsin’ ‘Chanteuse japonaise’ (1898-99) – dir. Gabriel Veyre

probably less than a minute, b&w, silent

Production : Lumière, catalogue no. 1026

This is one of ten “views” shot in Japan between October 1898 and March 1899 by the leading Lumière cameraman, Gabriel Veyre. Details of the others are available on the page dedicated to Veyre.

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Trip through Japan with the Y.W.C.A., A (c.1919) – Anon

9:40 (13:00 after speed adjustment), b&w, silent – intertitles in English

Source : can be viewed on YouTube here

This is an informational film made for the YWCA (Young Woman’s Christian Association), which in an preliminary intertitle explains that it has been working in Japan for fifteen years ‘for Japanese students, for nurses, and for women who marry to join their husbands in the United States and Hawaii’.

Despite the YWCA’s patronage, however, the film is not overtly propagandistic for the organisation, except in the sense that in presenting Japan, it tends to emphasise women’s experience, e.g. in describing rice as the equivalent to bread in the Japanese diet and showing terraced rice fields, it points out that most of the labour involved in cultivating and processing rice is female.

The intertitles are sometimes patronising and the sequences are generally very brief, but the technical quality is surprisingly good and there are some interesting sequences of scenes of everyday life, particularly of women’s work.  The most extended and most interesting sequence, however, is of the Ainu bear ceremony, though this ends before the bear is killed.

 

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Chinese Historical Ethnographic Film series (1957-1966) – Various directors

‘The Azhu Marriage System of the Naxi …’ (1965) – dir. Yang Guanghai and others

Background – This series was produced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and consisted of films shot in many different parts of China, with ethnic minorities of very different cultural traditions. They were shot on 35mm black and white film and the production values were generally very high.

Source : Through the efforts of Karsten Krüger, Rolf Husmann and others, the series was transferred onto DVD with English translations by the IWF at Göttingen  and made available for distribution in the West in 1998. With the closure of the IWF in 2015, this material was transferred to the German National Science Library at Hannover (TIB) and will become available again once the situation with rights over the films has been clarified.

In the meantime, selection of the films in the series is available in the Film Library of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester and there may be similar collections elsewhere.

For the moment, the only access via the web known to The Silent Time Machine is via a film by Jenny Chio about the series, made while the author was a graduate student at Goldsmiths College, London, and which contains extracts from a number of the films. This can be accessed on Vimeo here

Film Content – The films in the Chinese Historical Ethnographic Film Series invariably emphasised the benefits that the communities portrayed had gained from the ascent to power of the Communist Party by virtue of the fact that it had put an end to a variety of abuses from which these communities had suffered, be at the hands of feudal landlords, corrupt officials of the Kuomintang regime, European colonial powers or Japanese invaders. They also tended to deride the efficacy of the traditional religious practices shown in the films, emphasising that modern medicine was the only way to cure illness. Much of the action was evidently staged, and most films were covered with execrable music.

Even so, notwithstanding these features, these films offer a remarkable ethnographic account of life as it was lived in ethnic minority communities in the decade or so after the Communist Party had come to power but before the Cultural Revolution.

Jenny Chio’s film available on Vimeo contains extracts from the following original films –

  • The Kawa (1958) – dir. Tan Bibo
  • The Li (1958) – dir. Feng Jin
  • The Ewenki on the banks of the Argun River (1959) – dir. Lu Guangtian, Zu Yaozhi and Zhang Dafeng
  • The Kucong (1960) – dir. Yang Guanghai
  • The Dulong People (1960-61) – dir. Yang Guanghai
  • The Jingpo (1960-62) – dir. Qui Xiafei, Li Peijiang and Chen Heyi
  • The Serf System in the Town of Shahliq (1960, 1962) – dir. Hou Fangrou, Liu Boquian, Liu Zhixiao and Wang Genyi
  • The Oroqen (1963) – dir. Yang Guanghai, Qui Pu, Zhao Fuxing and Lu Guangtian. This is one of the most substantial films in the series and is described at greater length here
  • The ‘Azhu’ Marriage System of the Naxi (Moso) from Yongming (1965) – dir. Yang Guanghai, Zhan Chengxu and Qiu Pu
  • The Hunting and Fishing Life of the Hezhe(n) (1965) – dir. Lori Zhongbo, You Zhixian and Qiu Pu
  • Naxi Art and Culture in Lijiang (1966) – dir. Qiu Pu, Yang Guanghai and Zhan Chengxu

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Maple Leaf Hunters {Momijigari} (1899) – dir. Tsunekichi Shibata

2 mins., b&w, silent

Source :   A very damaged version digitized by the Japanese National Film Center (NFC) is available here

This film was shot in November 1899, by the Japanese film-maker Tsunekichi Shibata, as a record of two very famous actors, Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (1838-1903) and Onoe Kikugorō V (1844-1903),  as they perform scenes from a well-known kabuki play.

In the first scene, which lasts just under one minute, Danjūrō appears as the Princess Sarashina, who is, in fact, the demon Kijo in disguise. In the second scene, the hero of the play, the twelfth century warrior Taira no Koremori, played by Kikugorō, confronts Kijo, now transformed into its true form as a demon with dramatically long and swirling hair.  Taira no Koremori attacks the demon with his sword, but the demon pulls a branch from a tree and responds in kind.

The film was shot in a space behind the Kabuki-za, the principal kabuki theatre, which is still to be found in Ginza, an up-marked commercial area in Tokyo. It was shot on a Gaumont camera, apparently using three rolls of film. As each roll would probably have lasted around a minute, this suggests that a third scene is missing from the NFC version available on the web. Certainly, this version ends very abruptly.

This film is sometimes said to be the oldest surviving film made by a Japanese film-maker and in 2009, it became the first film to be designated an Important Cultural Property.

However, not only is there evidence of a number of earlier films made by other film-makers that appear to be lost, but in April 1898, Tsunekichi himself shot a number of Tokyo street scenes for the Lumière company, as described here.

Further information about Momijigari is available here.

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Aïnos à Yeso, Les [The Ainu of Yeso] (1897) – Constant Girel

44 secs. and 47 secs., b&w, silent

Production : Lumière, catalogue nos. 1275 (741) and 1276 (742). These were only 2 out of a total of 13 films shot by the operator François-Constant Girel between January and December 1897. Further details of the others are given here.

Source : CNC at the BnF. The first of the two films may be viewed here

These two films were shot near Muroran, on the island of Yeso (today Hokkaidô) in northern Japan in October 1897. The first film shows a men’s dance, and the second, a woman’s dance.

In the first film, four bearded men, of various ages (one wearing glasses), in long cloaks, with swords at their waist, dance in circle, in what is more of a step than a dance, clapping as they do so. Shot from a single static camera position in front of dancers, at a distance of about 3 metres. Children watch from behind. It ends in midshot.

Ainu women

The second film concerns a women’s dance. It is set in the same location as the men’s dance but it is shot from a slightly different angle. The women wear much less elaborate cloaks than the men, and scarfs around their heads. They bend over clapping, first towards camera, then away from it. Men walk through shot in foreground. Children, women, men watch from behind.

Text: Aubert and Seguin 1996, p.353.

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Ainu Bear Ceremony (1931) – Neil G. Munro

[the-ainu-bear-ceremony--Film-list-image]

27 mins., b&w, silent

Source : Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI)

Extract from the RAI catalogue:

“The RAI has reedited the original film of this ceremony among the Ainu people of Japan. In the bear ceremony, now no longer performed, a specially reared bear was reverently killed and its flesh and blood eaten by the participants. The film shows a series of ritual acts with some commentary on their meaning.”

Neil Gordon Munro (1863-1942) was a Scottish doctor who lived in Japan for almost 50 years. From 1930 until his death, he lived in the Ainu village of Nibutani in Hokkaido. His book, Ainu Creed and Cult, first published posthumously in 1962, has since been republished in 46 editions in three languages!

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Hagoromo: A Japanese No Play (c.1925) – Ananda Coomaraswamy (?)

31 mins., b&w, silent

Source : NAFC, catalogue no: AS-89.2.9

This film forms part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection held at the NAFC. The maker of the film is not indicated in the film credits, but certain stylistic features – notably the introduction of a series of characters  at the beginning of the film and the typewriter-based credits – are similar to those of a number of other films that Ananda Coomaraswamy himself made. This suggests that this may have been one of the films that he shot on his second trip to Asia accompanied by his wife, Stella, a professional dancer with a particular interest in Asian dance.

The film is very simple from a stylistic point of view. It begins with an introductory title explaining the origins of the Noh drama form in the fourteenth century as well as the origins of the Hagoromo legend. (Long preliminary explanatory titles are another typical feature of Coomaraswamy’s films). Thereafter the film merely records the play itself, shot from a distant position in front of the stage. The camerawork is no more than serviceable.

The theatrical performance is accompanied by music played by musicians who are also seen on the stage. The story of the play concerns a fisherman who finds an angel’s wings. After some initial reluctance, he restores them to her so that she may return to heaven. Before she departs, the angel – who appears to be a male dancer with whitened face – dances a very slow dance for the fisherman.

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Artisanat et scènes de la rue en Chine [Crafts and Street Scenes in China] (1908) – Anon

A lantern-maker – ‘Artisanat et scènes de la rue en Chine’ (1908)

9:08 mins., b&w, silent.

Production : Pathé and the Medizinisch-Kinematographischen Universitäts-Institut.

Source : Gaumont-Pathé Archives

This is a short film of a high technical standard that offers a series of portraits – remarkably intimate for the period – of artisans (embroiderers, barbers, lantern-makers) and also of beggars in the street, before concluding with a sequence of open-air stalls selling bowls of steaming food.

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© 2018 Paul Henley