Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Terada Torahiko

I

*Byrd's Antarctic Expedition* was among the more intriguing films I had seen recently.
Though I had considered myself reasonably informed about polar landscapes through various photographs and written accounts from other expeditions, seeing them projected as moving pictures revealed—forced me to experience—vivid truths unimaginable through still images alone.
Even with something like drift ice—the way it crumbled against the ship's hull or how a walrus poked its head from a hole—one could almost sensorially intuit the ice mass's hardness, weight, and thickness.
In a snowfield crevasse too, from how it collapsed beneath a crossing sled, both the crevasse's condition and the snow's clumping became vividly discernible.

The sight of a snowbound corridor with food supplies stacked high on both sides was also intriguing.
The surfaces of the food boxes were entirely covered in soft frost accumulation—at a glance indistinguishable from one another—yet the provisions officer effortlessly located his target box, scraped off the surface frost, opened the lid, and retrieved its contents.
I imagined that at least part of this frost blanketing the corridor might have formed from water vapor exhaled by the forty-some crew members—diffusing through this passageway to gradually condense over time.
Through such imagining, I could savor the prolonged duration of their endured hardships.

Everyone welcomed Byrd back to camp with wild joy after his polar flight, hoisting him from the aircraft onto their shoulders to carry him down. At that moment, Byrd’s beloved dog kept trying to leap at its master, but people blocked its path, leaving it unable to approach; it ran about in frustrated discontent, yet no one paid it any mind. This was also an intriguing scene. Then, when Byrd entered the lodge, someone brought him a cup of hot coffee (?). When he took a sip, I thought there was an inexplicable authenticity in the movement of his cheek muscles.

There was a somewhat sentimental scene of a sick dog being shot.
On the outward journey it was the same path marked by both human and canine footprints; on the return only humans came back.
Some had dismissed this as cheap sentimentality yet it was rendered with considerable authenticity.
The composition of four figures standing in snow deliberating the kill was masterfully executed.

In this film, beyond that, the dogs played an extremely active role, heightening its sense of realism.
The team of geologists charged toward the relay station; the reliable and valiant sight of the dog pack hauling their sleds of supplies possessed a beauty that somehow touched the depths of our hearts.
Humans each had clear objectives in mind and, fully resolved to reach them, battled the bitter cold; but dogs charged joyfully into the deadly snowfields toward wherever their masters headed without understanding why—though surely even dogs did not escape suffering.

The same could be said of the dogs in *The Silent Enemy*. Yet what proved most compelling in this film was the combat between reindeer and dogs within a snowbound forest. When the cornered stag launched its desperate offensive—attempting to trample the encroaching hounds—even among beasts, this spectacle carried tragic grandeur. Any celebrated actor’s swashbuckling scenes would likely pale into farce beside such raw intensity. What followed—documentary footage of a reindeer herd traversing desolate snowfields—stood as a true masterpiece. This was cinema that seized hearts without explanation or rhetoric, asserting moving pictures’ unique domain with crystalline clarity. Neither painting nor poetry nor music could convey such films’ essence. Still I marveled at how human performances here managed such dull unpleasantness. As screen actors, we ought kneel before dogs and reindeer to beg instruction.

In connection with this, what I always felt was the disparity in value arising from the truth or falsity of "machines" depicted in films.
In older films, the absurdity of the machines depicted in *Metropolis* stood as a representative example.
In a film meant to showcase the pinnacle of mechanical culture, a lone worker—amidst a flood of surplus power—expended his most primitive muscle energy to the utmost to turn a large dial’s needle, then collapsed from exhaustion, thereby triggering catastrophic destruction.
Compared to those clumsy machines, the beauty of the genuine machinery captured in *Berlin* was truly breathtaking to behold.
In the same vein, the spinning machinery featured in the Soviet film *Torquishiv* proved equally intriguing.
And thus, the grandiose mechanical framework in *Blasting Excavator* ultimately felt somewhat lacking.

I found *Torquishiv* quite interesting when I watched it. There were also moments where the so-called montage techniques felt excessively contrived. For instance, even the alternating projection of spinning machinery’s fluid rhythm with that of snowmelt torrents and yet another identical flow from vast sheep flocks fell somewhat into this category. Yet by further superimposing elements like freight car shadows racing along rails onto these fluid sequences, I had to fully acknowledge how powerfully it conveyed the impression of some entity possessing immense momentum—accelerating as it increased that momentum—gradually advancing southward across the desolate wilderness of the Asian continent.

Compared to this, *Asia no Arashi* didn't particularly interest me when viewed as a whole.
This might have been because I lacked what one might call 'red glasses'.
Yet the multitude of Asian ethnic visages and expressions appearing in this film held considerable fascination when examined closely.
In the fur market crowds and festival throngs, I felt compelled to recognize shared bloodlines with our kin and comrades, while confronting profound questions about our distant ancestors' dealings with the continent.
The climactic scene shows what's termed the 'Asian Storm' sweeping across wilderness upon sand-laden winds.
To my methodical mind, this sequence felt somewhat overburdened with chaos.
Amidst this turbulent maelstrom however, fleeting close-ups of a white horse's face—mane whipping like flames—achieved potent symbolic force as embodiments of 'rage'.

*All Quiet on the Western Front*, as a film of its time, seemed to leave nothing particularly memorable about itself.
The relative scarcity of overly contrived acting might perhaps be counted as an achievement.
The post-lunch scene at riverside barracks exuded a peculiar languid tranquility, with sunlight so glaring it seemed to materialize that very sensation.
There, conversely, "the war seen from its underbelly" appeared rather well conveyed.
The appeal of such moments remains something achievable only through film.
Yet it resembles a mysterious heat haze that vanishes the instant one tries to capture it through verbal explanation.
Nevertheless, this very quality becomes the most reliable driving force to move viewers' hearts.
Films that merely parade effects reducible to single phrases prove distinctly unengaging.
Regarding this point, I unexpectedly felt even Russia and Germany's eminent theorists might conversely need to borrow new "fire" from America's so-called "pure nonsense films."

(November-December 1930, Tokyo Imperial University Newspaper)

II

I watched the sound film called *Morocco*.
First appeared a donkey.
From the far end of a road bathed in tropical midday sun came the sound of soldiers’ trumpets and drums.
An Arab handler tried to pull the donkey standing stubbornly at the road’s center, but it refused to obey.
The handler finally slipped and fell over, white dust bursting upward.
A crowd erupted in uproarious laughter.
This was the overture.

In the final chapter of the work, a desert bathed in tropical midday sun unfolded once again.
A troop of soldiers advanced toward the very center of that endless horizon.
The same monotonous drums and trumpets as before gradually grew distant.
A group of barefoot native women shouldering cloth-wrapped bundles and leading wild goats followed after them.
And from the very rear, the heroine—having cast off the shackles of her conventional shoes—chased after them.
The soldiers’ flags and the native children all vanished beyond waves of scorching sand, leaving behind only the faint, ever-so-faint sounds of drums and trumpets mingling with the wind—until soon those too faded from hearing.

Between this overture and the grand finale’s convoluted path, the same trumpet’s monotonous melodies and drum’s repetitive rhythms surfaced and vanished, vanished and resurfaced countless times.
The trumpet served more as an accompaniment, while the simplest rhythm of the drum acted as this film’s leitmotif, its undulations tracing the narrative twists throughout the entire drama.
The heroine’s heart lived and beat in unison with this drum’s rhythm.
And with each appearance of this leitmotif, her mental attitude sharply pivoted.
And with each such pivot, it gradually—inevitably—approached the final climax.

As accompaniment to the theme delineated by the drum, alongside the trumpet, there were the soldiers’ footfalls.
These resonated with distinct timbres—at times upon cobblestone streets, at others along rocky mountain paths, and yet again across the desert's scorching sands.

Accompanied by these sounds, the images appearing on the screen were merely a dreary soldiers' procession.
This was projected and proceeded through various differing perspectives on the silver screen in each scene.
In the initial scene where the heroine and her guardian saw off the procession, both the heroine and the audience remained stationary while the procession passed horizontally across from them.
In the subsequent scene welcoming this procession's return, the formation once again passed horizontally before us viewers; there, contrary to before, the heroine flitted restlessly in and out of view beyond the procession as the camera meticulously tracked this woman's movements and expressions.
And thus did it vividly depict the anxiety and impatience mounting moment by moment within the woman's heart.
In the final scene, this soldiers' procession had rotated exactly ninety degrees from its previous orientation.
That is to say, it proceeded toward the distant horizon at the desert's edge with its back to the audience.
By doing so, it suggested the boundlessness of this drama's impending fate.
And thus, before the audience's very eyes, this procession and the heroine following it completely vanished beyond waves of scorching sand.

The drum theme developed in this film appears to have admirably fulfilled its role as a contrasting leitmotif to the heroine's love.
In this regard, the film constitutes an interesting experiment.
Moreover, it seems to have achieved considerable success in at least indicating one new possibility unique to sound films.

The most monotonous drum was chosen for the sonic theme, and the fact that it proves this effective suggests something to us.
Fundamentally, sound films are of course not music.
We are required to engage both our auditory and visual senses simultaneously.
In this case, what would happen if one were to introduce overly complex music that strongly asserts its own presence?
Perhaps our attention would be absorbed by the music, causing the visual aspect to vanish, or conversely, the music itself might slip beyond the bounds of our awareness.
In any case, this would likely present a problem for sound film producers.

The sparse music incorporated into this film was also used quite effectively.
In the scene where the heroine searched each hospital room for her lover, the decadent folk song drifting up from a native woman downstairs thickened the gloom of this ghastly yet oddly lustrous atmosphere.
Then, the Eastern-inspired nocturne-style piano piece that perpetually resonated in the next barroom deftly delineated the psychological convolutions of the heroine.
After her soldier lover left his seat, the woman sat alone fiddling with a knife and cards.
The piano’s seemingly simple yet intricate modulations from the adjacent room meticulously delineated the tempest raging beneath this unconscious, superficially calm behavior.
Until she was led to this final psychological pivot of discovering her own name carved into the dining table, this piano piece pursued her with alternating intensity—now forceful, now subdued.
The moment this sound abruptly ceased, a solitary flag appeared at the center of the silver screen, fluttering in the fierce desert storm as a crisp crackling reverberated.
In the moment when we transitioned from the piano's sound to this flag's fluttering, we experienced precisely the same sensation as when a symphony shifts abruptly from a passionate movement to a bright finale via Attacca subitailseguente.

The native’s chants praying to God on the rooftop and the apple seller’s songs at the cabaret were not without interest either.
Such sonic effects were skillfully incorporated without excessive artifice—like when the woman strummed the piano keys with a caressing sweep to embody her reckless mood before pressing a solitary middle C, or when the soldier tried to retrieve his thrown fan and brutally clanged the keys with one hand.
However, if these had been merely minor techniques, one could imagine they were employed everywhere—not just in Morocco—in any film with even a modicum of cleverness.
The film’s unique interest was ultimately thought to lie in its musical composition—consistently structured through a distinctive motif symbolized by drumbeats, footfalls, and the accompanying soldiers’ procession.
And precisely because this simple, clear motif was handled in such a multifaceted and three-dimensional manner, not only did its repetition avoid inducing even slight weariness, but it also guided the dramatic content—intensifying step by step—to prevent any slackening of the audience’s attention until reaching the ultimate climax.

There seem to be two types of people: those who find this film extremely interesting and those who find it not interesting at all.
This phenomenon reflects the fundamental difference in the mental attitudes and demands of these two types of people toward sound films.
For future sound film producers, an analytical study of these two antithetical phenomena will become necessary.
However, these two things do not necessarily seem to me to be mutually incompatible.

(May 1931 [Showa 6], Bungei Shunju)

III

Having seen *The Blue Angel* and *Monte Carlo* on the same day made for an interesting combination.
It felt like listening to jazz after classical music.
The difference in their approaches was contrasted with considerable clarity.
The former, with its pretentious air of constantly trying to make one ponder—this forced intellectualism felt grating at every turn—while the latter conversely seemed deliberately crafted to prevent any thought whatsoever.
This was of course due to fundamental differences in their stories, and also because one prioritized dramatic elements while the other emphasized musical components—but it was equally evident that even the minutiae of each director’s technique contributed to this divergence.
When the Marquis’s retainer flashed a magnesium burst and snapped a photo, a locomotive immediately leapt onto the screen—the rhythm of the engine’s music beginning was delightfully engaging beyond rational explanation.
That a plot and material which by all rights should have proved utterly tedious and nearly unwatchable instead sustained tension without ever growing tiresome was undoubtedly due to the film’s composition being everywhere marked by exceptionally clever handling.
And therein lay its appeal—precisely because it could not be easily encapsulated in a simple explanation.
Even in the final opera scene, the rhythm of the intercutting between the two facing loges and the stage exemplified this.
If they had handled that even slightly less skillfully, it would undoubtedly have become an unbearably tedious affair.

I saw the Soviet film Zensen.
I had heard that even this one omits crucial parts, but it was still not without interest.
Scenes such as milk bottles being filled all at once or agricultural machinery arranged in grand formations possess something unconditionally fascinating for children and adults alike, for Reds and Whites alike.
The fact that realistic footage like raging waves—which delighted audiences at film's very inception—was unconditionally found fascinating stemmed not merely from satisfying curiosity about novelty, but rather from possessing one of the essential, fundamental elements inherent to film art.
In the sequence surrounding the bull’s death, beyond mere interest in its documentary truth, there was ample skill in its cinematic treatment.
Moreover, what I always find interesting in these Russian films is the rich variety of character types—a quality likely arising from natural constraints absent in other European countries.

This film, which claims to be structured based on this director’s new theory, undoubtedly has its interesting aspects; however, I cannot help but feel it remains no more than an attempt toward future cinema.
The necessity of various so-called montage and editing techniques fails to resonate deeply within viewers’ consciousness.
From the perspective of this director’s own envisioned path, it would seem he has taken but a single tentative step forward.
I hear this renowned filmmaker has criticized how contemporary Japanese films curiously lack cinematic elements despite their pervasive presence in our culture.
Moreover, he reportedly emphasizes how Japanese haikai and tanka poetry contain abundant elements of montage art.

To what extent Eisenstein understood our country's haikai when making such statements remains unclear, but what should be proposed as the supreme exemplar of montage art even through Japanese eyes was none other than so-called haikai linked verse itself.

I saw Jannings and Dietrich’s *The Blue Angel* and *The Sorrowful Angel*.
Having viewed *Morocco*—created afterward by the same director—before watching these films proved an intriguing experience.
After reading a renowned scientist’s seminal paper and being impressed, if one were to trace backward through their writings along the path that led to its creation—reading earlier works in reverse chronological order—what initially inspired admiration would come to seem nothing more than an utterly ordinary conclusion.

While this was a different matter altogether, one could discern a somewhat analogous relationship between these two films.
That which appeared purified and refined in the later *Morocco* still seemed scattered amidst the dust of bygone eras within *The Blue Angel*.

First appeared the roofs of a shabby Hamburg alley with honking geese heard; then emerged a scene loading those geese onto a cart.
Next came the rattling ascent of shopfront shutters clashing with goose cackles.
Affixed to this window was a poster showing the heroine.
Comparing this with his Morocco's opening scene of Arabs and donkeys proved intriguing.
The latter carried far more polished refinement.
Where the former offered easily explicable contrivances, the latter held inexplicable depths of implication steeped in mysterious atmosphere.
Professor Rath's bleak boarding house breakfast scene stood admirably crafted.
The ever-singing songbird lay dead.
Thus was the professor's sole love stolen away—yet later, when staying at her house one coffee-sharing morning, birdsong resurfaced.
This technique of reflecting past upon present seemed this director's signature device.
Suitcases recurred four or five times—each serving distinct roles while triggering flashbacks to trace fate's course.
The clock chiming departure time repeated insistently.
Classroom scenes bookended the narrative as transformed emotional backdrops.
Even identical female postcards shifted from student confiscations to personal peddling.
Ultimately such elements grew overcomplicated—a muddled indistinctness permeated this film.
Morocco's disciplined drum-and-trumpet motif repetitions showed superior refinement.
The Blue Angel's stage and backstage scenes likewise felt visually cacophonous.
However intended as contrast to bleak lodgings, its harshness seemed excessive—perhaps quintessentially German.
Throughout these dressing rooms clung one shadow-like clown.
This constituted an uncanny presence.

He constantly comes and goes yet remains unseen and unheard by the characters in the play, performing a role much like a ghost’s. After the professor himself becomes a clown, this figure no longer appears. This was likely something akin to the professor’s doppelgänger—a nightmare of future misfortune and a presentiment of looming anxiety. While this might represent the director’s painstaking creation, the effect regrettably doesn’t feel particularly elevated. When crafting Morocco afterward, it seems he ended up pounding even this clown into the cacophony of drums and trumpets alongside everyone else.

Regarding haikai linked verse, I have already discussed it frequently elsewhere and shall not elaborate here.
In any case—whether one engages with linked verse or knows nothing of it—should they but glance through even a few pages of the Iwanami edition of Bashō's Seven Anthologies on their train ride home from work, they would discover with astonishment how something essentially identical to today's imported montage techniques—and incomparably more splendid at that—had been casually practiced among Japan's populace centuries ago.
Matters like splicing together a woman walking Unter den Linden with a man strolling Tauentzien Street or grafting the White House's entrance are mere preludes—far more beautiful and profound montages of substance may be found throughout any haikai linked verse.
Considering both its inexorable precision as montage and the beauty of its rhythmic progression, examples worthy of serving as models for contemporary filmmakers can be discovered everywhere exactly as they stand.
Yet haikai linked verse—forgotten and misunderstood by modern Japanese—remains utterly neglected in its native land.
We must stand by dumbfounded, sucking our fingers, as Russia's new cinematic vanguard excavates and wields it through their visionary discernment.
What's more, though Russians could scarcely comprehend Japanese haikai authentically, modern Japanese refuse to accept it unless first filtered through Russian eyes.
It has become axiomatic that ukiyo-e's market value becomes established through Western patrons.
Equally commonplace remains how even in original Japanese scientific research, degrees may elude recipients until Westerners have first pronounced judgment.

Montage is montée, mounting; in Japanese, it is installation, combination, accompaniment, and treatment.
Arranging flowers is also this.
If one examines the floral arrangements created by the Nishikawa Issōtei school, they can understand just how refined the montage of grass and trees, flowers and flowers, and flowers and vases can become.
The literati-style alcove decorations and Enshū-style preferences are likewise this.
Gardening, too, is this.
One need only consider whether anyone could freely move even an inch any single stone or tree placed in a renowned garden, each selected from distant mountains and nearby rivers.
And even if all these were bundled together, the scales would still tip toward haikai linked verse.

Haikai linked verse, having reached its decadent late period and become a plaything for the petty bourgeois leisure class of that era, consequently came to appear to modern eyes as nothing more than such.
However, far from that, it was originally an incisive depiction of profoundly serious social conditions of its era; moreover, within these works, one can discern expressions of the anguished endurance of the oppressed class far more than those of the ruling class.

Such current Japanese cinema, which has long carried what Eisenstein calls the essence of cinematic technique, indeed appears—no matter how favorably one views it—to possess scarcely any of this, just as he states.
However, this is not solely the responsibility of Japanese filmmakers; the same criticism should rightfully be applied to the entirety of contemporary Japanese culture.

However, there was no need for disappointment.
In Japan—which since ancient times had repeatedly imitated and uncritically swallowed foreign cultures—it remained certain that Kōrin had been born, Bashō had appeared, and Utamaro had emerged.
Therefore, harboring the patient hope that such figures would eventually arise in cinema as well until that time came we ought to strive to appreciate works like Araki Mataemon and Street Rumpen within the limitations of what had been given.

(June 1931 (Shōwa 6), Jiji Shimpo)

IV

I viewed "Africa Speaks." With this type of documentary film, no matter how many times I was shown similar works, each viewing awakened new interest; this time, precisely because it was a sound film, the empirical interest seemed all the more heightened.

The most remarkable sight was the massive swarm of locusts shrouding the sky in flight.
I had seen this in photographs as illustrations in L'Illustration, but this was likely its first film adaptation, and as a sound film, this must surely constitute a groundbreaking recording.
The fidelity of the locusts' wingbeat reproduction remained unclear, but regardless, it produced an uncanny sound.
A sound unimaginable to those never having heard it.
To approximate its likeness, one might compare it to lumber being split by a circular saw at a mill.
Some years prior during stormy seas off Odawara's coast, I had analyzed wave sounds using a Helmholtz resonator pressed to my ear; through a high-pitched resonator emerged intermittent screeches—ten to twenty bursts per second—bearing resemblance to these locusts' wingbeats.
This congruence likely stemmed from shared mechanisms of sound generation.
That is to say, just as countless pebbles grind and scrape along a shore, countless locust wings emitted screeches—their collective effect creating that auditory phenomenon.
Indeed, when cutting lumber with a circular saw, one similarly encounters rapid irregular bursts of kindred screeching.

What do these locusts' wingbeats convey?
What purpose drives the locusts, by what are they guided, and from where to where do they migrate?
We foolish humans, who persist in believing the world exists solely for our sake, will gaze blankly through a tent's small window at this terrifying tempest of life and heave a sigh.

The vast flock of flamingos by the lakeside also made a fascinating spectacle.
I wondered why there was a single circular empty space amidst the densely gathered flock and tried to reason it out.
I imagined that spot alone had a depression in the lake bottom too deep for the birds' legs, leaving it open.
If that were true, one of the lakebed's depth contours should be discernible from photographs of the flock.
Such phenomena rank among documentary film's most intriguing aspects.
Ahead, slightly apart from the main group, stood a place where two columns of birds advanced in perfect step.
Humans still cannot comprehend what compels birds to act thus or to what end.

When I returned home that evening after watching the film and looked at the evening paper, there was a large photograph of what appeared to be the grounds from the third Waseda-Keio game.
When I saw it, I stood utterly astonished.
For the crowd of humans filling the space looked precisely like the flock of flamingos I had just seen in the film.
Were African flamingos by chance to fly over that ballpark and gaze down upon the human crowd, they too would surely fail to comprehend this gathering's meaning.
In truth, even someone like myself does not fully grasp the significance of these massive human crowds swarming to recent baseball games.

However, it was not just locusts and flamingos—zebras, gnus, impalas, and giraffes all lived in groups.
In Africa, where food scarcity presumably posed no issue, I could not tell whether they had naturally adapted to group living for defensive convenience against life’s enemies, for reproductive advantage, or perhaps even for sport.
In any case, when watching this African film and seeing small human groups mingled among these numerous animal herds, I felt that in the wilderness of Africa, animals and humans existed as equals.
The thought arose that it seemed rather improper for so-called civilized people to venture out and senselessly slaughter them merely for entertainment.

There was a scene where a lion devoured the chief’s son.
This struck me as thoroughly unpleasant—it seemed the filmmakers had nearly orchestrated the attack.
I couldn’t escape the feeling that white people likely perceive Black individuals as little different from zebras or warthogs.
The inevitable next question became: To what degree do they regard yellow people?
Any Japanese envisioning a day when some Western nation conquers the world would do well to watch this film.

The scene where the filmmakers, saying they couldn't face the chief after his child was eaten, appeared dejected came off as somewhat theatrical. When the title "A Life for a Life" appeared, I thought the filmmakers would be killed, but instead, it was a lion that met its end. However, lions never perform theatrics, which made their presence delightful. The scene where a lion discovered a car tire in the grassland, poked at it with its front paws, then grew angry and snarled was a masterpiece. The more sullen the lion became, the more the audience laughed. If I were a lion, how infuriated I would be by these troublesome intruders.

I want Africa preserved forever as the world's zoo and a paradise of wild beasts.
I want at least the greater part of this continent’s inland to be designated as a natural preservation zone through an international agreement.

In the grassland where lions dwelled, something that appeared to be a fault caused by an earthquake was captured.
When I later asked a seismologist, it turned out there had indeed been major earthquake faults running crisscross near Lake Tanganyika.
The fact that a portion of these faults incidentally appeared in the background of the lions was precisely the charm of documentary films.

In close-ups of barbarians' faces—not limited to this film—a fly crawling atop their heads was captured.
This fly served what is called "the dotting of the dragon's eyes"—the crucial detail that brought the work to life.
By seeing this, we imagined the 100-degree temperature and intense body odor.
In this scene, the fly was not an extra but the star.
However, it was amusing precisely because it appeared and performed so vigorously, completely disregarding the director's intentions.

A building resembling a barbarian king's castle was projected. This structure was extremely primitive yet possessed a kind of symmetrical beauty. To the amateur eye, it appeared more stylish than Yasuda Auditorium at our university. Perhaps it was precisely because there were no details that the design concentrated solely on the overall outline.

The impala's leaps were also a spectacle. They could leap over ten feet in height and forty feet horizontally in a single bound. I felt that inventing a sport where humans attached simple devices to their bodies to leap and move like these animals might prove interesting.

Watching such documentary footage, I profoundly feel the absurdity of human-made films.
I have known from the start that natural art cannot be rivaled, but—

(November 1931, Tokyo Imperial University Newspaper)

Five

I watched The Threepenny Opera.
From the doorway of a brothel in East London—the lowest depths of civilization—Mackie Messer the desperado emerged with swagger.
When someone attempted to retrieve the cane protruding from the window that the landlady had left behind, a concealed blade slid out smoothly.
As he swaggered past eerie vagrants lingering at back-alley gates near the docks and reached the riverbank, a shabby ragamuffin in an oversized silk hat stood rigid by the embankment, rapping a crudely drawn diagram with a stick while singing Die Moriat von Mackie Messer.
The profile of an old woman cranking a paper-reed organ for accompaniment held symbolic weight.
In the background loomed a forest of ship masts shrouded in mist near shore.
The diagram’s crude depictions of fallen murder victims and a Soho fire scene created modest yet effective imagery.
This sequence seemed to most vividly distill old East London’s atmosphere.
I felt this existed in an entirely separate realm from the later police station scenes involving telephone calls.
Polly and her child stood before Milliner’s shop gazing at display-window mannequins.
Messer’s approaching figure reflected in the glass pane grew steadily larger—an impression of menacing potency.
Squid

The scene showing only the mouth movements of a man and woman talking through the glass window of a hotel bar recalled a moment from Under the Roofs of Paris.

The scene where Messer’s henchmen stole chairs meant for a wedding venue and clocks was rather well done. It avoided being repetitive or overly garish—that was where its skill lay. The close-up of a mouse in the warehouse darkness and someone inadvertently catching their neck on a rope hanging from the ceiling and being startled—none of this felt contrived. And the smell of dust pressed in on one’s nose.

The wedding venue scene was ostentatiously gaudy, yet it masterfully achieved a truly grim and grotesque spectacle. There, Polly’s rendition of Barbara Song was quite beautiful. The hazy night sky and hazy moon of the set conversely seemed more effective than the real thing.

The scene where the mistress Jenny leans against a checkered-pattern glass window and sings feels somewhat reminiscent of a Matisse painting.

In Peachum the Beggar King's performance, there was an awkwardly artificial quality that didn't quite ring true.

It was curious how the first half of this film felt so authentically like old London, while the latter half somehow evoked modern Berlin's atmosphere.
Thus in the first half the German sounded unnatural, while in the latter half it came to sound natural.

The music was quite interesting.
Even with the same jazz instruments, I was made to marvel at how beautifully they transformed under German hands.
Even that saxophone was heard as a sound of truly delicate nuance.
Though there were times when American jazz struck me as undoubtedly fascinating, I couldn’t help sensing a peculiar taint to it.
I felt something pungent—like cabbage rolls served at back-alley Western restaurants.
This was likely the very essence of America itself.
Yet this Kurt Weill jazz (?) contained not a trace of that, instead being saturated with the emotional depth of the German people who birthed Goethe and Bach.
And still, I also felt that within each element lingered something of the Gallow Song—its distinctly English flavor to be profoundly savored.
Finally, the Moritat song—fading like ghosts into the town’s darkness alongside the procession of Lumpen, rhythmically punctuated before resounding once more—remained unforgettably in my ears long after the screen’s curtain had fallen and I’d stepped out into the streets.

The night before watching this film, I heard Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
Having just been overwhelmed and exhausted by this grand symphony filled with excessively intricate mechanisms, perhaps the simple yet fresh music of this film was all the more interesting to hear.
And then on the following evening, I heard what was called the Fengtian schoolgirls’ song via radio broadcast from Manchuria.
This was undoubtedly a simple schoolgirls’ song, yet I found myself strangely feeling something that seeped into the very viscera of my Japanese being.
It was—how should I put it—a feeling akin to hearing the "Voice of Asia."
From the reverberations of an accidental contrast between American jazz and German jazz, I might have incidentally felt that way.

Even so, the sound film that we pure Japanese truly demand still does not exist anywhere.
I had such a feeling.
What we demand is indeed Japan’s Pabst and Japan’s René Clair.
I also felt troubled by the prospect of remaining perpetually occupied with being impressed while chasing after foreign releases like this.

Prior to this, I had watched the Soviet film Women's Hygiene.
This work belonged to an entirely different realm from The Threepenny Opera—something that could scarcely be perceived as anything but a purely educational film—yet even so, there were numerous instances where considerable beauty could be found both in individual scenes and in their editing effects.
To Musik's audience, it must have seemed almost too refined for them while remaining rather difficult to comprehend.
One realization I had while viewing this film was how the children, female factory workers, and other groups of women featured in it were being utilized almost like machinery.
Watching this made me imagine that in present-day Russia, even during meals people must move their forks and knives on command—a system where someone as self-indulgent as myself could never endure.
For instance: during factory work breaks, they would perform calisthenics at a single command before resuming labor.
On the coast, groups resembling fur seals sunbathing nude would flip over in unison at a command to face our direction.
Countless children stood arranged in fields like clusters of mushrooms while performing exercises.
Even infants had their legs grabbed like frogs, being dangled and made to hop about.
This method of erasing human individuality proved thoroughly militaristic in style.
Were this maintained year-round, I thought it must prove terribly inconvenient for those of owl and raccoon-dog dispositions.
This notion briefly crossed my mind while viewing this film.

What I found most beautiful in this film was the scene where a great many women came out onto a balcony-like area of an apartment building and performed calisthenics. This was a scene utterly devoid of logic—bright, vigorous, fresh, evoking the sensation of a morning sun rising. It felt strange that even though it was the same calisthenics, the impression differed entirely from the factory’s calisthenics shown earlier. In the factory’s case—being too visceral through its connection with preceding labor scenes—whereas on the balcony it became such an unfamiliar spectacle that one was left so dumbfounded any sense of reality vanished; it might have been because I ended up watching it as though viewing a revue. However, whether that truly explained the difference remained unclear.

Among the Russian newsreels I watched alongside this film, there was a scene of a stern-faced old man with a wild goat’s beard—who was probably Kalinin—walking through an exhibition.
While watching this film, I felt that hero worship is ultimately an unavoidable and eternal fact of human society.
The newsreel we see of Mussolini attending a military review is also observed as news of an entirely equivalent phenomenon, making it truly fascinating to watch.

(March 1932, Tokyo Imperial University Newspaper)

VI

I viewed the renowned French film titled *Under the Roofs of Paris*. Having watched this quintessentially French film immediately after the equally celebrated German film *The Blue Angel* proved an unexpectedly fortuitous coincidence. Though it may seem a vulgar analogy, I feel as though I had eaten a fine salad after consuming beefsteak. Or perhaps it resembled attending two successive exhibitions—one of German modern painters and another of French modern painters. While this contrast might seem natural, opportunities to view two films back-to-back that so distinctly embody my perceptions of two different nations rarely present themselves. What further intrigued me was how this sequence led me to watch—albeit silent—the Soviet film *Earth*, and finally Dainippon Shochiku’s domestic sound film *Madamu to Nyobo* (*The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine*), creating what struck me as a peculiarly orchestrated chain of viewings.

Under the Roofs of Paris contained no significant drama. There was a slight romance, but it was a romance like soap bubbles. There were minor quarrels, but those too were quarrels like soap bubbles. A pistol fired off a single perfunctory shot, but the result merely shattered one streetlight like a soap bubble. The events and dealings depicted in this film were likely nothing more than banal, everyday occurrences that had taken place almost daily in some back alley or lane of Paris since the city’s founding up to the present day. How could such utterly mundane trivialities—monthly, daily, nightly urban minutiae—merely by passing through the lenses of cameras and projectors, through the mechanisms of recording devices, become a “celebrated film” that would draw crowds to permanent theaters across the world? Of course, some among the audience would probably be impressed simply because it was a celebrated film, swallowing its reputation unconditionally without even seeing it—but unless all viewers were such cormorants, there had to be some empirical basis for this acclaim.

In this film as well，there were indeed many clever highlights that anyone could immediately notice and that anyone could easily put into words．
For instance，the rooftop “chimney-adorned scenery” first projected at the beginning reappeared at the end，serving as the bookends of this entire reel of *Paris Sketches* and providing its structural closure．
At the beginning，the camera—and consequently the audience—gradually descended from the lofty sky as if transformed into birds，melting into a crowd of singers and listeners on a backstreet pavement；yet in the final grand culmination，reversing this course，the audience gradually ascended into the air until they ultimately became celestial beings or birds．
And just like Dante returning from his tour of hell，they found themselves compelled to endlessly mull over the phantom vision of this strange world they had now witnessed within their hearts．
Or there was the scene where chansonnier Albert took out the women’s slippers he had bought in preparation for marriage，cutting to Pola putting her worn-out slippers into a suitcase in her room；or the juxtaposition of Albert being arrested due to his involvement with the entrusted suitcase against Pola arriving for her wedding carrying a heavy suitcase—one could list countless examples of this kind of meticulous technique．

However, these kinds of techniques had likely been routinely employed since cinema's dawn as an art form, merely appearing through varied guises. Moreover, such devices were precisely what third-rate directors—those who forgot to be born with their own minds—rushed to imitate, being replicable by anyone to some degree.

Regarding sound effects too—making us hear during fight scenes the combined roar of trains passing before our eyes with cobblestone-kicking shoe clatter from brawling crowds; forcing phonograph needles into damaged record grooves during the final reel to produce grating periodic noises symbolizing Albert's collapsed romance and friendship crisis; or staging unimportant dialogues behind glass doors to liberate audiences' ears while concentrating their energy toward imaginative activation—these methods too were not without interest.

These techniques undeniably demonstrated skillful blending of sound and silent cinema's respective strengths through timely precision. Yet such transparent contrivances alone seemed unlikely to sustain sufficient charm for vigorously dragging audiences through lengthy durations without tedium. Within this lay deeper techniques—ones resisting simple analytical explanation—that must have lurked far beneath the surface.

In my perception, this film's greatest strength—and what appears to be its seemingly inimitable virtue—lay in both the beautiful temporal rhythm flowing throughout its entirety and this director's keen, finely textured sensibility manifested in its regulation.
In other words, it was the superior quality of rhythmic elements as a component of film art.
Just as it proves difficult to express a musical composition's appeal through humanity's impoverished tool called "words," attempting to substitute this film's rhythmic-harmonic merits with mere strings of characters had to be a hopeless endeavor from the outset.

The origin of rhythmic elements in music may be quite a difficult problem academically speaking, but from a layperson’s perspective, it undoubtedly rests upon one crucial foundation: how skillfully and precisely our anticipation or expectation of rhythm—born from unconscious experience and knowledge of these various periodicities—is satisfied. These periodicities include the periodicity of various physical vibrations dictated by the structure of human physiological systems; psychological periodicity arising from the inertia, elasticity, and fatigue of sensory and motor organs; and furthermore, the diverse periodicities manifest in humanity’s enduring environment.
Put simply, unless the music shares the same rhythm that we naturally move to in dance, we won’t feel inclined to dance, nor could we even if we tried.

When citing scenes with notable rhythmic elements in *Under the Roofs of Paris*, one example would be the scene where Albert sings a second song on the pavement, different from his previous one.
The close-up of Albert's face singing alternated with shots of the various faces surrounding him.
In the first similar scene, the audience had still known nothing about the background of each individual in the crowd that appeared there; but in this second identical scene, they fully understood each person’s history as well as each individual’s dealings with Albert and the lovely Pola accompanying him.
The plump middle-aged woman robbed by a pickpocket, the detective with his quintessential sleuthing visage widening suspicious eyes at the tip-off, then the villain Fred seeking retributive opportunity after losing Pola—merely having these faces appear one after another made the watching audience vividly recall every detail of the events that had unfolded thus far.
Thus a kind of uneasy tension permeated the now-familiar Albert and Pola.
The anxious vigilance passing through Albert’s own mind manifested in his constantly shifting gaze, transmitting similar ripples of emotion to the audience’s minds.
What proved most intriguing was how the sound serving as both accompaniment and background for this scene carried the song’s lyrics and melody forward without any hitch.
Had this been silent or lacked these rhythmic images despite containing songs, the effect would not merely have been halved—it would likely have vanished entirely, leaving nothing but weariness.

When considering where the distinction between skillful and inept rhythmic composition lay, it likely depended on whether—when actual events as depicted on screen occurred—the scene transitions happened with the same rhythm at which Albert’s, that is to say the audience’s, eyes naturally shifted from one point to another.
Just when viewers wanted to look over there, the crowd over there appeared; just as they turned to look here, this side materialized; and seizing the exact moment they desired to see Albert’s face, Albert’s face emerged.
And thus, guided by his gaze, the direction the audience wished to see unerringly and immediately materialized on the screen.

The exact same technique was employed in the bar scene near the end of the film.
Namely, on one side danced Albert—who had made his decision—and Pola—concealing her anxiety.
In one corner, the villain Fred’s goshawk-like gang had taken position, feigning nonchalance while maintaining vigilant watch.
There, third-party audience members—tense with both anxious and curious anticipation of the impending action drama—alternated their gaze between these focal points, thereby becoming participants within the drama itself as they were carried toward the climactic progression.
And in this scene too flowed smooth background music.
That was all there was to it.
Yet had an inept director superficially imitated such techniques here, this monotonous repetition would likely have yielded nothing but unbearable tedium.
In reality existed countless instances of such clumsy execution.
The subtle cadence preventing such missteps could only be attained through precise mastery of the "inherent natural rhythm" governing this sequence.

The distinction between skilled and inept work generally lies beyond verbal expression and measurable metrics; however, by counting the number of frames in each successive film segment that constitutes these movies’ transitional rhythms, then appropriately charting those figures or creating a curve from them, there may be some prospect of subjecting this artistic effect to scientific analytical scrutiny.
If this were actually attempted, I believe it would undoubtedly serve as valuable reference material for those involved in film production.

Another feature of *Under the Roofs of Paris* as a sound film lies in its radical reduction and near-total elimination of dialogue used to advance the plot.
From the perspective of narrative progression, this makes it virtually equivalent to a silent film.
Yet through this very restraint, the sparingly deployed human voices gain remarkable emphasis.
Consider when Albert whispers something repeatedly to Pola at her lodging's doorway—she rejects him each time with a simple "No," "No."
That constitutes the entirety.
Were this a typical American talkie, Albert would likely deliver his "whispers" at a volume echoing three blocks away.
Or take the pickpocketed matron who discovers her missing purse while humming and tying her hair—her piercing scream stands unadorned.
An American production would undoubtedly insert some premeditated quip here, content only when English-speaking viewers erupted in laughter.

In ordinary theater, dialogue is an essential element.
The actor’s words must not be missed—not a single one.
Theater is as much about listening as it is about watching.
If hearing becomes the primary focus, actors could just as well be puppets fashioned from wood and cloth scraps.
Puppet theater is precisely that.

However, if I were to imagine myself going to Paris now, wandering under its roofs, listening to street chansonniers at intersections, or settling into a corner of a bistro—would I clearly understand every single word spoken by the characters appearing before my eyes? Even were I a true-born Parisian, I could never comprehend each utterance. The reason was simple: none among these characters spoke like stage actors performing their lines. This remained an evident truth not limited to Paris but inherent in our everyday environments. In this sense, we became rather deaf to anything beyond our immediate interlocutor's words—foreigners in our own right. Yet we would watch and listen to the conversation between him and her sitting across the train car with the same attitude we maintained toward French sound films, thereby clearly comprehending only their "Non" and "Oui." Regarding this train-bound pair however, since we possessed no prior knowledge of "the previous" or "pre-previous" scenes, we consequently developed no curiosity about "the next" scene. Ultimately, it differed little from watching a mere talkie fragment—any interest sustained solely by that snippet vanished like a bubble. At another crossroads, people fought. They were taken to the police box. The officer interrogated them. A crowd gathered. Passing by, I stopped and pricked up my ears. Yet the words stayed nearly inaudible. Through people's attitudes and the occasional words or interjections that reached me, I conjectured the incident's general progression, then projected onto my mind's silver screen a self-made talkie reel titled *Under the Roofs of Tokyo*.

Thus, the audience of *Under the Roofs of Paris* strolls through the backstreets of the French capital with the same attitude they would have on Tokyo’s streetcars or at its crossroads, observing the ordinary events unfolding beneath that city’s roofs as they walk.
This is by no means a trivial matter.
By doing so, the audience will be able to recognize the true Paris, France, and its people as they truly are.

Of course I have no way of knowing where René Clair’s intentions as a director lie, but this sound film revealed to me one possibility of what sound cinema could achieve in the aforementioned sense.
Were one to follow this pioneer’s path, creating something of global significance through Japanese talkies would not be impossible.
Inserting “No” instead of “Non” or placing “Well, look here!” where “vous allez voir” had been would make scarcely any difference in effect.

The Soviet film *Earth* was also quite interesting to me in many respects.
Of course, as someone who lacked sufficient understanding of Soviet ideology, I naturally could not grasp the value of this film as a so-called Soviet work.
I had only the impressions of someone who had viewed it through the eyes of an ordinary Japanese person.

What most captured my attention in this film was the beauty of the static frames in its various scenes.
Truly beautiful tableaux vivants appeared one after another in succession.
It unfolded and progressed one after another through montage, much like the linked pearls of haikai linked verse.
From the very first scene of wind-swept grasslands that appeared at the beginning of the volume, it was truly something of unparalleled beauty in the world.
The wild grass swaying in the wind undulated like flames toward the small, rounded hill ahead, while in the sky beyond, a mass of cumulus clouds swelled grandly and vigorously.
It gave the impression that the seething, blazing vital energy of the earth was converging and pouring skyward into the celestial halls of Valhalla.
While similar in composition, the scene from *The General Line* showing that plain with cloud shadows drifting quietly overhead contained an indescribable desolate beauty and unconsoling melancholy, whereas there conversely existed a suggestion of vigorous vitality here.
And then, following that, amidst mountains of abundant fruit harvests, there appeared the smiling old man of “Past” as he died away, or alternatively, beside radiant sunflower blossoms, there appeared the maiden who dreamed of “Future” with her fixed gaze.
These were magnificent linked verse and haikai.

However, each of these scenes was in many cases static—a tableau vivant, a pose.
And in this process of transitioning from one static element to another, they sought out dynamism, thereby appearing to create a "scene melody."
This constituted one of the so-called montage techniques—by no means limited to this film alone, as it had been consistently demonstrated in both *Turksib* and *The General Line*—but in *Earth*, it felt as though the static elements of each individual scene were being particularly emphasized.
There were times when this static quality felt too ponderous, inducing a certain weariness.
For instance, even in an indoor scene expressing the melancholy of a father whose beloved son had been poisoned, the beauty of the light and shadow composition in that frame was something that vividly evoked Rembrandt, but the various variations of this scene would likely have felt somewhat too long for many Japanese viewers.
However, from another perspective, precisely this aspect seemed to me to be the element that made this film all the more Russian.
In other words, by employing such a slow tempo and rhythm, we could not help but feel as though the ponderous and tenacious mindset of Russia’s rural muzhiks seeped deeply into our hearts as viewers.

The funeral procession also felt somewhat too slow in tempo to us.
When contrasted with the rain-prayer procession appearing in *The General Line*, the latter still appeared more dynamic.
However, even there, what we—or perhaps I—perceived as an overly slow tempo would likely not have been felt as such by the majority of Russian peasants.
This seemed to be because what I had previously described as the 'inherent period' forming the basis of rhythmic perception differed markedly between Russian peasants and Japanese fans.
And it was this, I imagined, that also constituted the reason why this film failed to stir the admiration of general cinema enthusiasts in Japan—or Tokyo.

What formed a strikingly diametrical contrast to the above points was the action sequences in Japanese swordplay films.
With supernatural speed，swords and puppets intermingled in the scene，swirling like a vortex.
Then，as the rhythm that had naturally developed within general audiences toward action sequences—ensured by centuries of Kabuki and kodan storytelling’s conventional doctrines—now pulsated vibrantly on the screen，the waves of their hearts resonated and surged in unison，thereby naturally causing their arm muscles to move and inducing applause.
However，at this point，these filmmakers appeared to have forgotten one crucial thing.
It seemed to me they had forgotten an insurmountable chasm existing between photographic equipment and human vision.

When observing rapid motion with the human eye—as in the case of a sparkler swung in darkness—the light point appears stretched into threads due to retinal persistence; yet under ordinary illumination when observing human movement, this effect becomes psychologically imperceptible, such that one at least perceives each momentary object image as remaining intact.
However, in photography, the images from each moment while the camera shutter remains open all overlap, and this overlapped, blurred, disordered, and indistinct mass becomes fixed on the film.
When those blurred images are then projected periodically at intervals of a fraction of a second and observed by human eyes, the result becomes nothing but a chaotic jumble—as if someone had overturned a garbage can and scattered grated yam over it.
If everything were evenly and harmoniously blurred as when intentionally thrown out of focus, that would be another matter; however, the breakdown—and discomfort—lies in the chaotic, discordant coexistence of clear and ambiguous elements.
Such failures appear to be a peculiar phenomenon almost exclusively manifested in Japanese period films.

What consistently stood out in Russian films were the beauty of composition derived from camera angles and particularly the rhythmic use of lines and light and shadow within the frame.
In *Earth*, there was a scene where three managers stood on a small hillock, picking at cherry pits or something and spitting them out while watching tractors approach.
Because it had been shot from below with an upward camera angle and high eye level, their vertical lines appeared to tilt toward each other as if converging toward a single point in the sky, while their heads being positioned near the upper edge of the frame created an even more uncanny effect.
Had this been merely an unconventional composition, that would have been one matter; however, this framing perfectly aligned with both the situation and mood of those three hooded figures in shirts within that particular scene.
Such techniques were hardly rare in Russian films—indeed their traditional nature became evident when observing scenes from works like *Potemkin* and *Mother*, even when glimpsed only as book illustrations.
The acute sensitivity to spatially geometric beauty evident in these compositions, combined with precise understanding of corresponding psychological phenomena, ultimately proved these filmmakers' status as exceptional artists.
Mediocre creators lacking artistic vision—no matter how they twisted camera angles or mimicked surfaces—could never achieve anything substantial through such means alone.
In this regard, Russian auteurs seemed to me decisively superior to those of any other nation.
That such classically conceived art existed in actual Russia—beyond the imagined Russia posited by certain Japan-based Russophile artists—might well have constituted its own peculiar irony.

Following the scenes of dusty, parched, salt-tinged sweat and tears in the funeral procession, the final scene of rain torrentially pouring down upon the orchard was also truly beautiful enough to satisfy the heart.
But what did this scene "mean"?
The audience was likely unable to draw any logical conclusion from this scene.
It was precisely because it resembled the concluding verse of haikai linked verse.

The film *Earth* is neither drama, nor epic, nor lyric.
The only art form comparable to this is haikai linked verse, a specialty of Eastern Japan.

Though they are quite clumsy and completely disregard the formalities of haikai linked verse, I tentatively strung together some mediocre verses here as a mere experiment.

The wind that bends the grass ends where cloud peaks rise.

A girl of eighteen at the sunflower lodging

A smile remaining on one cheek of the dying

The autumn harvest is abundant indeed.

With such a sequence does this volume of "kasen-style film" begin.
And then, for example,

Dancing on the moonlit slope as night deepens slightly.

The dew-beaded string has abruptly broken.

There are various scenes—so to speak—and then at the end,

Choking on funeral dust—bush clover flowers.

Autumn rain returning to mother earth

After watching these films, I viewed the domestic production *Madamu to Nyobo*.
This was reportedly a new-style talkie.
Though impossible to gauge how much its mechanism's originality constituted an advantage, it did seem to fulfill its role as sound equipment to some degree.
First, from my impression after viewing it start to finish, there were neither scenes unbearable to watch nor tediously prolonged sequences that irritated.
As one upright Japanese citizen, I found moments of pleasant amusement.
When compared to that truly unpleasant and foolish work *Rakuyō Kayu*, this proved incomparably better in every respect.
The chorus of "Speed Up Ho," while utterly absurd and nonsensical, contained nonsense's own rhythmic breath that at least prevented excessive tedium.
Each actor appeared to perform their roles admirably without fault when observed individually.
Yet when attempting to critique this entire film as an artwork, compare it to *Under the Roofs of Paris* and *Earth*, and regard it as Japan's counterpart to those of France and Russia, I regrettably had to abandon the happiness of enjoying my position as a single well-meaning spectator at the Imperial Theatre on a midsummer afternoon.

For instance, even when depicting the nightly scene at Watanabe Atsushi’s household—where mice scurry about, a baby cries, and a child persistently demands to urinate, making it impossible to focus on crucial work—there seemed no need to present such a conceptual, explanatory, catalog-like enumeration of every detail from one to ten.
If that were all there was to it, being made to read the script without using a camera would have made little difference in impression.
This would have been clearly understandable as an attempt to delight audiences who had never experienced talkies before—just as filmmakers in cinema's primitive era delighted viewers by simply showing waves crashing exactly as they appeared on film—if its sole purpose were to let them hear voices like Miss Tanaka Kinuyo's in her traditional chignon hairstyle saying "Nay, you there."
If the sole purpose was to marvel at seeing a faithful—or slightly exaggerated—replica of the superficial transitions of our daily lives projected before our eyes, then it must indeed be called effective.
However, within this continuous flow of conceptual description, there was neither poetry nor music, nor did anything seem to grasp and convey to us the real, lived reality that delved into the inner aspects of life.
In other words, by the standards of modern cinema, there remained a regrettable paucity of substance.
Even when depicting the same single night in a household, René Clair and Dovzhenko would likely not have portrayed it in this manner.
Instead of concepts, "impression"; instead of explanation, "poetry"; and instead of tabloid news, "haikai"—one imagines they would have presented these.

It cannot be denied that among Japanese people, particularly those of the intellectual class, there exists a tendency to exaggerate only the shortcomings of their compatriots' achievements while emphasizing solely the strengths of foreign ones. There are frequent instances where they excessively admire and revere rather insipid new Western things, while disregarding what has existed in Japan since ancient times—things of equal or even far superior quality. I have come to consider whether my tendency to consistently undervalue Japanese films in comparison to Western ones ultimately stems from being afflicted with this same tunnel vision.

However, I think that today's so-called world-renowned directors—these foremost figures—are all possessors of exceptional intellects; were fate's turns to guide them into other professions, they would likely still possess the foundational qualities to remain foremost figures in those respective fields.
In other words, it may be that people with intellects of the same caliber as Einstein, Bohr, Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, Matisse, or Ravel—or even those not quite reaching such heights, like Lindbergh who recently flew across the sky—are those who happen to take up megaphones and make films in shirtsleeves.

I firmly believe without doubt that, whether viewed from general averages or individual cases, Japanese intellectual capacity in arts and sciences is in no way inferior to that of Western cultural nations. However, regarding how strikingly scarce remains the number of Japanese individuals publicly recognized as world-leading authorities in academic and artistic fields thus far, there appear to be various "circumstances" at play here.

It is not our place here to attempt analyzing these circumstances now, but one imagines that just as Lindbergh would never have become an aviator had he been born in present-day Japan, so too Sternberg, Clair, and Eisenstein would likely not have become film directors had they been born here. Therefore, should this indeed hold true, unless these "circumstances" are removed, Japan's prospects of producing truly global films in future would remain exceedingly slim.

How long will these circumstances persist? This truly seems not merely an issue confined to cinema alone—I cannot help feeling it constitutes a crucial problem concerning Japanese culture's entire future.

(October 1931 [Showa 6], Chuo Koron)

VII

René Clair’s *À Nous la Liberté* was the most delightful sound film I had seen recently.
Despite dealing with prisons and factories as its subject matter, a bright, cheerful harmony consistently pervaded the whole.
This appeal arose neither from the story’s plot nor from any philosophy or ideology, but rather seemed to stem from a musical effect in a broad sense born of the film’s rhythmic composition throughout.

Among the visual elements of this film stood out particularly striking leitmotifs—the geometric configurations formed by parallel lines and circles, followed by the rhythmic interplay between linear and circular motions.

The parallel lines of the prison workshop and cafeteria stood in stark formation. Corresponding to this arrangement, the gramophone factory revealed entirely similar parallel lines of desks and human figures. The rows of students in school classrooms formed somewhat analogous episodes within this visual scheme. A symphony of beautiful parallel lines manifested throughout the architectural designs of prisons and factories alike. In the prison escape scene, double high walls created a simple yet powerful perspectival composition through their parallel alignment. Iron bars adorned prison and detention cell windows while cross lattices patterned factory windows. Near the conclusion appeared geometrically aligned gramophones housed in round containers. Such elements repeated themselves through rhythms that fluidly alternated between urgency and restraint. Circular components included gramophone disks and record marks adorning factory chimneys and eaves. The dial of an attendance recorder marked the factory entrance. Morning glory flowers subtly echoed this circular motif through their form. Linear motions dominated through processions of prisoners and workers, sliding platforms on workbenches, and ascending numerical columns before Jeanne’s desk—all recurring as prominent motifs. Circular movement reached its zenith during the new factory opening’s climax through a gale’s complex whirling dance that formed the film’s kinetic pinnacle. Later, liberated workers dancing beneath an outdoor Maypole resonated as lingering echoes of circular motion. Finally, the delightful tramps Louis and Émile advanced forward—the road’s parallel lines before them transforming into a bridge toward an unknown future as they vanished into the silver screen’s depths.

Various motifs were repeated as sound effects. For example, in the prison and factory workshops, the sound of hammers intermingled with music was repeated, while in both cafeterias, a simple melody-like sound of dishes clinking together was repeated. The frenzied clawing-like accompaniment in the climactic gale scene was remarkably unique, serving to amply emphasize the screen’s impact. The arrangement of the crowd’s movement in this scene was actually very musical. One could see that it was by no means a careless, frenzied rush but rather a complex formation movement.

The actors all seemed to perform skillfully in their respective roles.
I found it interesting that Louis and Émile exhibited a certain haikai-like quality—something utterly absent in American actors no matter where one looked.
This so-called haikai-like quality—absent in Lloyd and Keaton—carried somewhere within Chaplin an Eastern philosophical scent.
Speaking of which, in the final scene, Louis’s makeup as he reverted from millionaire back to tramp bore a considerable resemblance to Chaplin.

Within the film lies a montage of water-surface ripples and reeds swaying in the wind; this insertion too carries a vein of haikai.
This seemingly meaningless insertion appeared to come alive in correspondence with the final "freedom" scene.
Not only that, but I sensed a kind of haikai in the very structure of this film—a continuity of sensibility and emotion stripped of all logic.
This was something I had felt in both *Under the Roofs of Paris* and *The Million*, but in *À Nous la Liberté*, I was made to feel this even more strongly.

Nowhere in this film did I detect any musty sermon of labor supremacist doctrine.
When watching this film, humans working as machines in factories seemed exactly like prisoners laboring in prisons.
School students were no different.
The high-society people appearing in this film too came to seem like a kind of prisoner.
The crowd of dignitaries at the opening ceremony ultimately appeared as prisoners; both the gentlemen and ladies seated at the factory owner’s banquet table and the tramps lining up at prison dining tables alike came to seem like gang members and crowds of convicts.

Louis and Émile broke through each and every one of these prisons, trampling them down as they stepped out into a world of "freedom".
Laughing uproariously at banquets while clutching their bellies, puncturing the potbellies of their own portraits with Curaçao bottles, or casting aside factories and wealth to fling them before gangsters—all were passports to freedom.

Where is freedom?
Is it not in the ripples upon the river’s surface, in the swaying of reeds, in morning glory blossoms, in birdsong, in tattered clothes and worn-out shoes?
Saigyō and Bashō undoubtedly withdrew from the world in a passive sense, but when viewed actively, they can also be seen as having sought this freedom.

However, this is merely that I happened to feel this way when I saw the film, and may not have been the author’s intention at all.
Even so, could it not be said that unless such elements lie latent somewhere within this author’s work, a creation permitting such interpretations could never come into being?

Throughout the world, the peoples who possessed even a modicum of understanding for haikai appeared to be the French and the Russians.
Interestingly, elements of haikai recognizable in film were still found only in Russian and French cinema.
An even more intriguing fact was that Japanese cinema—hailing from haikai’s birthplace—stubbornly adhered solely to techniques identical to those of American films, which were most devoid of haikai elements.

In any case, to fully savor the appeal of René Clair’s films, isn’t it necessary to recognize the haikai-like elements contained within them? If this is indeed the case, then when Japanese people appreciate his films, they occupy a privileged position that Americans and Germans are not permitted to share.

In *Hyakumanyo*, I somehow felt a lack of harmonious unity, as if elements from disparate fields had been mixed in, but with this film, I did not feel such dissatisfaction to any great extent. Only the scene showing workers idling and the subsequent outdoor dance sequence seemed slightly incongruous. I felt that even if these parts were cut out entirely, not only would the film’s value suffer no loss whatsoever, but it might rather become all the more cohesive.

Warped, the lid does not fit the half-chest — Bontyō

After staying awhile in a grass hut— Bashō

(May 1932, Tokyo Imperial University Newspaper)