Kobayashi Masaki

1
Kobayashi Masaki

• Moralist and Perfectionist

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Kobayashi Masaki His Career

• Born in Otaru, Hokkaido in 1916 died in Tokyo in
  1996
• Graduated from the philosophy department of
  Waseda University
• Though entering Shochiku in 1941, he was soon
  conscripted and fought in China.
• Disillusionment and anger with the cruelty of war
  and absurdity of military life.

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Kobayashi Masaki His Career

• After the war, Kobayashi
• returned to Shochiku and
• became an assistant
• director for Kinoshita
• Keisuke from 1947 to 1952
• Kinoshitas Broken Drum (1949) is based on
  Kobayashis script
• Humanism - trust in human goodness
• Uncompromising hero

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Early Works

• Debuted with the short film, My Sons Youth
  (1952) his second film, Sincere, is based on
  Kinoshitas script and about a young boy
  preparing a university entrance exam while being
  hopelessly attracted by a girl dying of TB.
  Lyrical, sincere and clean, but overtly
  sentimental.
• Brainchild of Kinoshita
• How to be good - his theme

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Early Works

• Glorification of human good will and sincere
  life concerns for pains and suffering which
  arise when one tries to preserve those qualities.
  
• Three Loves (1954), Somewhere Under The Broad Sky
  (1954), Beautiful Days (1955)
• Serious, lyrical and sincere but humourless and
  sentimental
• More Kinoshita than Kinoshita

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Director with Social Consciousness

• The Thick-Walled Room (1953) - re-telling the
  war-time experiences of Class B and C war
  criminals held in Sugamo Prison.
• Passionate indictment against the war trials
  conducted by the Allied during the occupation
  period.

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Director with Social Consciousness

• Kido Shiro, the head of Shochiku Ofuna Studios,
  who withdrew Oshimas Night and Fog in Japan
  after two days, refused to release the film.
• Kidos fear - The films sympathy towards the
  prisoners who were falsely accused and expressed
  doubt over the fairness of the trials might
  provoke anti-American sentiment among the
  Japanese and upset Americans.

8
Director with Social Consciousness

• Ill Buy You (1956) - the first film (as The
  Thick-Walled Room was suspended) that
  demonstrated Kobayashi as a director of social
  consciousness. It exposes the corruption of
  baseball teams in scouting new players.
• Black River (1957) - about the violent and
  corrupt lives in a town near an American military
  base.

9
The Human Condition

• The Human Condition (1959-61) - the nine-hour,
  six parts epic, following the life of an
  anti-war, pacifist hero in Manchuria.
• One of the representative anti-war films in the
  post-war period based on Gomikawa Junpeis
  popular novel about a soldier who tries to
  preserve human decency and conscience in the war
  against China.

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The Human Condition

• Part I and II (1959) - The protagonist is a
  labour manager of a coal mine and protests
  against the maltreatment of Chinese slave
  labourers even risking his life.

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The Human Condition

• Part III and IV (1960) - He is tortured by the
  MPs and for punishment he is recruited as a
  private. He survives a series of the sadistic
  violence and bullying by his senior officers.

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The Human Condition

• Part V and VI (1961) - He tries to escape from
  the advancing Soviet armies with Japanese
  peasants but is arrested and thrown into a
  prison. He escapes and dies in a snow-covered
  wasteland.

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The Human Condition

• Deploring of the inhumane situation created by
  the war passionate protest against the social
  and military abuse of power.
• Injustice, exploitation, violence, repression,
  absurdity of militarism and military life are
  exposed by the single hero Kaji
• Impressive and heroic but improbable
• Strength and weakness of Kobayashis humanism

14
Harakiri

• Harakiri (1962) - an impoverished ronin seeks a
  permission to commit seppuku in the courtyard of
  the house of a powerful warlord. The counselor
  of the house tries to dissuade him by citing a
  pathetic incident, in which a similar ronin was
  forced to commit harakiri against his wish with a
  bamboo imitation sword.

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Harakiri

• It was not uncommon that a samurai on destitute
  insincerely requests harakiri with the
  expectation of being turned away with a pittance.
  The pathetic ronin in the story turns out to be
  the son-in-law of the visiting samurai and
  flashbacks expose that it was because of his dire
  financial situation that he resorted to play an
  insincere trick.

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Harakiri

• The ronin takes revenge on those samurai of the
  house who cruelly let his son die.
• Scathing indictment on the hypocrisy, the
  rigidity, the cruelty, the lack of compassion of
  the codified samurai behaviour and laws.
• Also accusation of the rigorous class
  stratification and the imposed conformity of the
  Tokugawa Shogunate.
• Also a critique of the arbitrariness and abuse
  of power.
• Culture of coercive, barbaric rituals,
  chauvinism, blind obedience resulted in the
  Japanese militarism.

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Samurai Rebellion

• Samurai Rebellion (1967) - a young samurai is
  told to marry a former mistress of the lord of
  his clan and soon has a baby boy with her. When
  the only son of the lord dies and he becomes
  heirless, the mistress is called back to his
  side.

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Samurai Rebellion

• Both the samurai and his wife refuse the request.
  The lord orders both to commit seppuku, and when
  the order is ignored, he sends his soldiers to
  kill them.

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Samurai Rebellion

• The film examines the abuse of power, inhumanity,
  cruelty, conformity in the feudal samurai system.
• Also criticizes rigid codes of samurai conducts
  and the suppression of individual will.
• Also demonstrates penalty to be paid when
  samurai rebels.

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Youth of Japan

• Youth of Japan / Hymn to a Tired Man (1968)
• A man is forced to revisit the unpleasant past
  when his rebellious son falls in love with a
  daughter of a sadistic military officer whom he
  hated as a private during the war. Wartime
  experiences are depicted in mastery flashbacks
  against the dullness of postwar amnesia.

21
Tokyo Trial

• Tokyo Trial (1983) - a documentary film about the
  Tokyo military tribunal between 1946 and 1948.
  The documentary consists of films recorded during
  the trial by Americans, and newsreels.
  Objectivity is kept throughout the film and
  various interpretations are possible about the
  trial.

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Subjects and Themes of Kobayashis Films

• Exposure of inhumanity in military service and
  feudal society
• Protest against the abuse of military and feudal
  power
• Questioning authority in general
• Revelation of the cost of the abuse of power

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Subjects and Themes of Kobayashis Films

• Anti-samurai films rather than samurai films
• Anti-war films rather than war films
• The maker of films with
• social consciousness
• Shakaiha ???
• Imai Tadashi, Yamamoto Satsuo and Kumai Kei

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Subjects and Themes of Kobayashis Films

• The convictions and belief reflected in
  Kobayashis films derived from his war-time
  experience.
• Conscripted to military service in Manchuria
• Repeatedly beaten up for not obeying orders
• Violence and cruelty to an absurd level
• Refusal of promotion.

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Kobayashis Visual Style

• Early films
• He owes his technical skills to Kinoshita
• Understated but well-designed composition
• Combination of smooth panning,
• travelling shots and zooming in and out

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Kobayashis Style

• Masterful use of widescreen format
• Highly formalized composition
• Clinically sparse interiors
• Expansive exteriors

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Kobayashis Style

• Interior composition
• Rectangular / rectilinear composition using
  shoji screen, beams and pillars, tatami mats

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Kobayashis Style

• Lighting
• Black-and-white photography shot with atmospheric
  grazed lighting .

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Kobayashis Style

• Takemitsu Torus music
• Music is used as if it were sound effects
• Abstractness and concreteness of the music
  correspond to those of images.