As I showed in a former article (Eizogaku No. 66, 2001), the abstractness of bunka eiga/culture film helped Japanese disavow the increasing threat from their actual situation after the “China Incident.” But shooting a film itself inevitably forced them to come to face with reality. In this paper I will show how the discourses of bunka eiga avoided this critical phase. A well-known conflict between Kamei Fumio and his cameraman Miki Shigeru exemplified two different attitudes toward reality. In filming Fighting Soldiers, Kamei captured a Chinese boy and ordered Miki to shoot his face, but Miki was unable to do so. While Miki could not help recoiling from the violent sight, Kamei regarded the boy as just “material” for his film. In the discourses of bunka eiga, the Kamei-like attitude toward reality remained dominant over the Miki-like one, and this dominance resulted from the avoidance of a confrontation with the “relative Other,” such as the Chinese, compelled by the China Incident. Between the Incident and the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese, by discussing bunka eiga without facing the relative Other, fried to avoid looking squarely at reality.
抄録全体を表示