Shohei Imamura (born 1926) explored the lives of Japan's most oppressed layers of society, turning his back on traditional stereotypes of socially acceptable characters, and earning recognition with both native and western audiences.
Imamura rejected Japan's conventional, idealistic filmmaking of the 1950s to produce and direct his own vision of oppressed people on the fringes of Japanese society. Exploring the antithesis of the middle class society of his youth, Imamura was fascinated with outcasts, criminals, and prostitutes who colored his world when he was a young black marketer after World War II. A student of Japanese sociology, he made dark comedies and poignant tales of cultural taboos and the survival of the poverty - stricken in both fictional and documentary - based films.
Rejected His Middle - Class Values
Imamura was born September 15, 1926, in Tokyo, the third son of a doctor. He attended elite elementary and high schools and held company with the children of the privileged. Rather than embrace the attitudes of his peers, he rejected their narrow minded views and disdain of the lower classes. Imamura's middle - class upbringing belied the oppressed societies he would later make the focus of his films.
Imamura had first been interested in a career in agriculture but had failed the entrance exams for Hokkaido's national university. To avoid the draft during World War II, he attended a technical school for a short time. Eventually he enrolled at Waseda University in Tokyo majoring in Western History. At the war's end in 1945, he joined the literature program at Waseda. Introduced to the theater by his brother, Imamura spent much of his higher education years writing plays, appearing in avant - garde theater productions, and involving himself in radical politics.
Leaning more and more away from a typical career in business or government, Imamura loathed the presumptions of the privileged and was drawn toward the unconventional aspects of society. In an interview for The Guardian, he described how the end of the war shaped the eighteen - year - old's beliefs at the time: "It was fantastic. Suddenly everything became free. We could talk about our real thoughts and feelings without hiding anything."
After the war, Imamura became involved in the black market sale of cigarettes and liquor. With the Japanese economy in chaos, many people resorted to dealing with the black market. These experiences introduced Imamura to the underworld and to oppressed people at the bottom of society.
Apprenticed under Yasujiro Ozu
Imamura was impressed with the freedom expressed in post - war films, such as Akira Kurosawa's 1950 movie, Rashomon. After graduating from Waseda University in 1951, Imamura joined Shochiku Films. He entered the assistant directorship program at Shochiku's Ofuna Studios with the aim of working with Keisure Kinoshita. He assisted several directors, such as Masaki Kobayashi, Yuzo Kawashima, and Yoshitaro Nomura, but his most notable stint was as apprentice to master film director Yasujiro Ozu.
Imamura worked on three of Ozu's memorable pictures: Early Summer, 1951; Flavor of Green Tea over Rice, 1952; and Tokyo Story, 1953. But by the third movie, Imamura was frustrated and underwhelmed. He felt that Ozu's camerawork was rigid and unimaginative, that actors were instructed to be too stilted and regimented, and that the company's promotion system stifled creativity.
Mostly, Imamura objected to Ozu's conservative and idealized view of perfect Japanese life with passive and formal actors. Imamura wanted to produce films that depicted gritty conflict among true to life Japanese from the fringes of society. At Shochiku, he had enjoyed working with Yuzo Kawashima, who made films about lower - class life. Kawashima also rebelled against studio policies at Shochiku, so in 1954, the two moved to Nikkatsu Studios.
Produced Films for Nikkatsu Studios
Imamura entered the training program at Nikkatsu Studios, which was recruiting new talent and offering higher salaries. There he worked as a scriptwriter and assistant director for Kawashima on a number of comedies. In 1955, Imamura received his first screen credit as an assistant director. During this time, he was developing his own approach to filmmaking.
In 1958, Imamura made his directorial debut with Stolen Desire, a black comedy about a roving troupe of actors working in the red light district. It was the beginning of Imamura's fascination with the undercurrents of society and a desire to challenge perceived moral values. He received a New Talent award for the film. That year he released two other movies: Nishi Ginza Station and Endless Desire.
Became Part of Japan's New Wave of Filmmakers
As Japan's old studio system began to decline, talented young directors were coming to the fore. The Nuberu Bagu, or New Wave, named after the French Nouvelle Vague, characterized the new generation of filmmakers that sprouted in the late 1950s. Imamura and his contemporaries, such as Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, whom he had worked with at Shochiko, rejected Ozu's established form of quiet understatement to celebrate the primitive undercurrents of Japanese life. The vision of the new directors was to mirror post - war society, complete with poverty - stricken people, black markets and corruption, and outcasts.
Imamura focused on the lower classes he had connected with during his school years. He embraced taboo subjects, such as incest and prostitution. Many of his movies concentrate on specific Japanese cultural behaviors, such as superstition and attitudes toward sex, and challenge his viewers to transcend traditional values. Despite his themes, he always portrayed his down - to - earth characters with respect and objectivity. Imamura is quoted in Audie Bock's Japanese Film Directors as saying, "I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself."
The first film to be branded a distinctly Imamura film was 1961's Pigs and Battleships, a satire about traffickers who sold pigs that were fed the waste left by American bases stationed in Japan. The film, which caused a scandal, contained one of Imamura's popular themes of man - as - animal. Not only the Americans were viewed as pigs but also the Japanese black marketeers who reveled in the fortunes they were making.
In 1965, Imamura created his own independent production company, Imamura Productions, so he could continue to produce films that featured his unique analysis of Japan, its people, and its culture. The Pornographers was his 1966 black comedy about a maker of low - budget blue movies that explored male lust and incest.
Turned toward Documentaries
Some of Imamura's disturbing films did not receive the attention he had hoped for at the box office. He turned his sights on television and on documentary - based filmmaking which occupied him through much of the 1970s. In an attempt to become a better storyteller, Imamura did research in libraries to understand the sociological and anthropological traits that defined the Japanese people. He merged these scientific theories with his own observations to color the themes of his movies.
The 1967 A Man Vanishes was his first movie to blend documentary facts with fictional production techniques. The film explores the strange incidents of hundreds of Japanese men disappearing each year, leaving their jobs and families to live in obscurity. In a surreal scene, a director enters among the actors, shouts a command, and the walls reveal themselves to be sets that fall away leaving the characters on a soundstage.
Imamura touched on the encroachment of civilization into primitive villages in Profound Desire of the Gods, 1968, in which engineers from Tokyo set up a construction site among a remote tribal community. He also dealt with controversial subjects of post - war Asia and on the karayuki - san or comfort women forced into prostitution during the war.
Never losing his sense of the reality of Japanese life, Imamura often cast real - life people in his films. For the 1963 Insect Woman he cast an actual middle - aged former prostitute. For the 1970 History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess, he cast a real bar maid, who offered a gritty, intuitive, and articulate character.
Populated His Movies with Strong Heroines
Imamura preferred to populate his movies with strong - willed, resilient female characters, the kind he met during his black market days. He remarked to writer Toichi Nakata in an interview for the Toronto International Film Festival that these women ". . . weren't educated and they were vulgar and lusty, but they were also strongly affectionate and they instinctively confronted all their own sufferings."
Imamura's heroines were the opposite of the stereotypical, submissive, self - sacrificing heroines of classical Japanese tales. Instead, they were survivors, deceitful and sexual, taking the exploitative situations that modern society put them in, and coping as best they could in poverty and oppression. Imamura has been called a feminist for breaking stereotypes of Japan's patriarchal society. But he insists that his heroines do what they must simply to survive.
In the 1970s, in the wake of the downfall of the Japanese studio system, including his former company Nikkatsu, emerging filmmakers had few outlets for full - time training. In response, Imamura opened the Japanese Academy of Visual Arts to provide training and apprenticeship programs for young filmmakers. In 1975, he founded the Broadcast and Film Institute where he spent time teaching and administering.
Back to Fiction and the Cannes Film Festival
In the late 1970s, Imamura returned to the more lucrative world of fictional entertainment and to the chance to produce films with themes that were beyond the scope of documentaries. In 1979, he released Vengeance Is Mine based on a real - life criminal. It was a commercial success and allowed him to raise money for future projects.
Imamura's historical film, Ballad of Narayama released in 1982, was based on a novel by Shichiro Fukazawa. The story concerned a remote village in northern Japan that abandoned their elderly on a mountaintop to die. Shot on location, the film dealt with issues of death, life, nature, and unwanted children in a small population. It received the Palm d'Or grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
For his 1989 film Black Rain, he depicted the devastation of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, its aftermath and politics, and the struggles of survivors. Some critics viewed the sentimentality and slow pace of the film as a throwback to Imamura's days studying under Ozu.
Imamura took a nine year break between films during which time he suffered a stroke and had difficulties raising funds for future movies. He returned to produce Dr. Akagi, about a family doctor during the last year of World War II, and The Eel, about a convict who adopted a pet eel. The Eel won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, making Imamura one of only three directors to win two Palme d'Or prizes.
Imamura's Success in the West
After the tragedy of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Imamura responded by contributing to a collaborative release called September 11. Eleven directors from 11 countries produced an 11 - minute short film. Offering a humanist critique of political and religious fanaticism, Imamura presented a story about a demoralized Japanese soldier after World War II who turns into a snake.
Imamura himself is surprised at his popularity and critical acclaim in the west. He said to writer Nigel Kendall in an interview in The Guardian, "I've always wanted to ask questions about the Japanese, because it's the only people I'm qualified to describe. . . . I am surprised by my reception in the west. I don't really think that people there can possibly understand what I'm talking about."
Imamura's determination to break with tradition, to show the aspects of life that are not always pretty or socially accepted, shows his life - long desire to make films about the Japanese who interest him. When asked what role cinema can play in changing social life, Imamura told Richard Phillips for the World Socialist Web Site, "It is a lot easier to be obedient and stay with the establishment, but this is not my way of life. I always try to change society completely with my films."
Books
Bock, Audie, Japanese Film Directors, Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo, 1985.
Shipman, David, The Story of Cinema: A Complete Narrative History from the Beginnings to the Present, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1982.
Periodicals
Cineaste, Winter 2003.
Globe and Mail, November 12, 1997.
Guardian, March 14, 2002.
Toronto International Film Festival Group, Toronto, 1997.
Online
All Movie Guide, http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p - id=95413&mod;=bio (December 8, 2004).
International Movie Database, "Biography for Shohei Imamura" http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0408076/bio (December 8, 2004).
Kim, Nelson, "Shohei Imamura," Senses of Cinema, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/Imamura.html (December 8, 2004).
Phillips, Richard, "Japanese film director Shohei Imamura speaks to the World Socialist Web Site," World Socialist Web Site, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/imam-s19 - prn.shtml (December 8, 2004).
