PARTI JAPANESE CINEMA IN SEARCH OF A DISCIPLINEAfter having experienced two decades of rapid institutional expan- sion and consol ion, film studies is now facing a new challenge. The specificity and significance of film as a distinct object of scholar ization have been problematized by the emergence of new elec- ional growth and development. Since the 19708, the specificity of film studies has been determined largely by its focus on theory and radical interdis ity. Yet when so many other humanities and social science departments claim a shate of cul- tural studies and offer courses on crit tween film studies and tradi blurred. ‘The purpose of this part is not, of course, to propose a large-scale solution to the disciplinary impass. instead reexamine the scholarship on Japanese cinema as a symp- tomatic mani e current disciplinary criss. Iti important ;panese cinema was not simply added to the canon of film studies some time after the successful legitimtion of film as an object of serious academic research; on the contrary, Japanese cinema played a significant role in the establishment of film postion of Japanese cinema note that lies asa discrete disci- studies has c ‘maintained its in inclusion and exch the history of American scholarship on Japanese cinema can be divided into three phases: of great auteurs and Japanese Marxist celebration of Japanese cinema as an alternative to the classical Hollywood cinema in the 1970s, and (3) critical reexamination of the preceding approaches through the introduction of discourse of Other- ness and cross-cultural analysis in the 1980s. Instead of being confined the subfield of Japanese cinema, these stages were an integral part of the expansion and consolidation of film studies as a discrete Very schem: 8 Kurosawa discipline during the last three decades. To understand how Japanese ted as an object of knowledge, it is not enough just ly scholarly books and articles on Japanese films. A critical e- examination of scholarship on Japanese cinema must be accompanied simultaneously by a reassessment of the larger discursive contexts of film studies and Japanese studies, which are constrained and regulated by specific disciplinary structures and rules. How has Japanese cinema been constructed as a dis ‘where the research, what discipline is better pre~ iy of Japanese cinema? What pared for, or moze congeni is necessary to make the schol liable, or exciting? How can we structure the field of Japanese cinema to ensure its that the following discussion attempts to grapple with. Humanism and Essentialism in the Postwar Era In the 1950s, it was mo: xge who published «essays on Japanese films. Japanese cinema burst on the American film scene when Kurosawa’s Rashomon was unexpectedly awarded a Grand Prix atthe Venice Film Festival in 1951. Ths unique period film was ex: tensively reviewed in the major newspapers and highbrow magazines, other Japanese films. Pa rood depictions of Japan and culture in the 19508! many writings relied on stereotyped images of Japan or fixated speci aspects ture and social customs asthe Japanese essence. For Hollywood and journalistic film criticism, Japan was often nothing more than a land ofexoticism and alien cult As Japanese cinema began to be treated as a distinct object of know: ‘edge in the 1960s, the production of critical discourses on Japanese formed into a more specialized activity. The fist Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 9Significant text that contributed to this transformation was The Japa- nese Film: Art and Industry. by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie, Published in 1960. Intended for a serious yet general audience, The Japanese Films a highly informative overview of Japanese film history combined with separate sections on major film directors and actos, ge ‘eric types, and industrial structure. The publication of this book did ‘ot immediately engender the field of Japanese cinema in academia however, over the years, Anderson and Richie's pioneering work has firmly established itself as the most basic reference book for fm schol, as conducting research on Japanese cinema. In addition to The Japa- nese Film, Richie has published, as the most authoritative voice in the ‘West and in Japan, numerous articles and books on Japanese cinema #608 discourse on Japanese cinema, exemplified by the works of of humanist » Which sees film as a repository lues. The best films, humanists argue, can teach audi- ences, without overtly being didactic, important moral lessons regard- ing human dignity, freedom, and the unity ofthe human race, Bu these universal ideals are most effectively conveyed to audiences wl are represented through the concrete images ofa partici {ory or culture. According to humanist etticism, what makes a film a great achievement is therefore not the abstract presentation of ‘the universal values but the complex interplay of the universal and the Particular, in which the latter embodies the former. One of the most enduring legacies of the 1960s humanist criticism on Japanese cinema is the use of “national character” asthe particu. las, through which the humanistic ideals of universal significance are said to be represented concretely. This focus on national character a3 determinate factor in analysis and interpretation has led to an unfor. {unate situation, in which stereotypes ofthe Japanese tharac- ier and cultural essence are routinely used to explain thematic motifs, formal features, and contextual backgrounds of Japanese films, Thus, in American scholarship on Japanese cinema, the Japanese are often presented as the homogeneous, ahistorical collective essence called the “Japanese mind” (“To the Jap. iFsactficing hero is the most admirable hero ofall”) I is argued that “Japanese culture and consciousness are marked by a valuing ofthe irrational,” and this is why “one finds in Japanese culture a deeply embedded notion called 20 Kurosawa _yugen, which entails the presence of mystery and incomprehensbility inall things.”® Many sweeping statements on Japanese culture are made without any consideration for its relationship to social practices and history. (“The Buddhist ‘the world as transitory and full of pain inducing a sense of resignation in the nese culture, including the cinema”; “Although the codas [the unchar actered shots that begin and end most sequences of Ozu's films) have significance, Ozu’s privileging them ily following the ic attitude that places the individual as a mere element in the universe, the ‘void, rather than at ‘the center, asin Western, Greco-Roman thought.”)§ Japanese films are ssid to be worth studying because of “what they reveal ofthe japanese character."” The ubiquitous presence in Japanese cinema of the tradi- tional aesthetic is simply assumed without any eritical analysis of that aesthetic. (“The black and white becomes an aesthetic device, which in this case reflects the Japanese ideal of wabi [poverty, the prizing of that which looks simple}.”)* Risof enue nor possible to determine precisely where this valoriza- tion ofthe Japanese national character came from. But two discursive systems from quite diferent areas, auteurism in film criticism and the legacy of the American military intelligence activity during and after World War II, cannot be ignored. japanese films’ appeal to the audi- ‘ences in and outside of Japan led many critics to conclude that there was some kind of universal value in those films. While the exotic ap eal of Japanese cultural specificity was acknowledged, the crt fim fie Japanese films— particularly gendaigeki, or films set in contemporary Japan—earned at international film festivals was re- {garded as a living proof of Japanese cinema's ability to go beyond the parochial context of Japanese society. The gap between universality and particularity was believed tobe filled by “humanity,” which was posited as the most common denominator among diverse groups of people transcending national and cultural differences. And it was the role of auteurs to mediate the specifi mn and the univer sality of films’ messages. Ther the context of 1960s auteurism, ‘the most important book on Japanese cinema was not Anderson and rhe Japanese Film but Richie's The Films of Akira Kurosawa Japanese Cinema in Search ofa Discipline 34.(1965), since the latter was not only the first comprehensive study ofthe work of a Japanese film director but also one of the earliest examples of serious film books devoted to any auteur’s work? Auteurism has, according to Janet Staiger, three basic criteria to de- termine the value of filmmakers as auteurs: “transcendence of time and place, a personal vision of the world, and consistency and coherence of statement.” In their pursuit of “universality” and “endurance,” the auteurist critics find history transcended in the works of great film. smakers.® These basic characteristics of auteurism make it an ideal sys- tem of critical discourse that has created a space for Japanese cinema in American academia, Whether explicitly stated or not, the idea of the universality of shared humanity is indispensable for making Japa- le to the American audience. Because of the great lity to transcend the specificity of history and cul- tural context, the seemingly exotic films of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and ‘other Japanese directors can easly be incorporated into a canon of the that history and cultural tradi- ificant role in the formation of a “persor vision,” what is supposedly transcended sneaks back works. The humanist studies of Japanese cinema typically try to resolve this ambivalent relationship of the universal and the particular through recourse to Zen and the idea of religious transcendence. One of the most revealing examples of the use of Zen is Paul Schrad- cer's study of Ozu in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer!* Schrader argues that Ozu, Bresson, and to a lesser extent Dreyer created \hathe calls a “transcendental style” which isa transculeural film form expressing the holy or the transcendent. For our purpose, the viability of the notion of transcendental style isnot too important. We shal also refiain from exhaustively enumerating questionable points and obvi- ‘ous factual errors in Schrader’s description of Ozu's career and films. Instead, what really concerns us here is Schrader’s precarious attempt to reconcile the universal and the particular in his discussion of Ozu's transcendental style “To what extent was Ozw’s personality unique, and to what extent was it representative ofthe Zen culture? Did Ozu subjugate his personality in the manner ofthe traditional Orient or were his films actu- ally highly individualistic expressions?” (24). According to Schrader, the auteurs! 32 Kurosawa these auteurist questions are not relevant for the case of Ozu because “considered inthe larger context of Zen culture, man and his surround ings are counterenveloping, just as are mind and body, content and form; any distinction between them is arbitrary” (25). Schrader eagerly ities to mold Ozu into a Zen artist of the East whose personality and culture are so steeped in Zen that his films express the Transcendent. Schrader’ strategy isto create a h bbe represented asa series of concentric circles: atthe center ofthis space is located Ozu's personality, which is “enveloped by Zen culture, and that Zen culture [is] enveloped by a transcending reality” (24). Once homological relations are established between the author, the text, and the context, it is easy for Schrader to claim that Ozu’s films express the Transcendent as Zen art does. ‘The particularity of Ozw's personality and the universality of the tran- scendental style are reconciled with each other through the mediating presence of Zen and the transcendental nature of Oriental art in gen= cra. In Schrader's argument, “Zen” and “Orient” are magic words that miraculously solve critical dilemmas and contradictions of his theory of auteurism. To assert that Ozu was a commercially successful director and at the same time an auteur of the transcendental styl, that is, 10 reconcile the seemingly impossible combination of the popular and the esoteric, or the commercial and the aesthetic, Schrader appeals to what he perceives as a unique characteristic of Japanese culture. Schrader claims that what initially appears to be the unattainable goal of devel- ‘oping the transcendental style within the context of the commercial film industry is not inthe end impossible to achieve because the “con- cept of transcendental experience is so intrinsic to Japanese (and Ori- ental) culture, that Ozu was able both to develop the transcendental style and to stay within the popular culture in the formation of Ozu's ranscendental styl, “not determined by tics, economics, oF moral- 3m, There are two basic steps discard anything that does not confirm the image of Ozu as a Zen artist. Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 13ince Schrader does not explicitly spec- iff the corpus of Ozu's films examin absent in his criticism is precisely the evidence for his claim. Second, Schrader deliberately confounds the transcendental specific film form with the transcendental experience as a content in film. He creates this confusion precisely by calling for the necessity of differentiating the two: “Before one can analyze the tran- soendental style in Oz the crucial yet elas art of transcendental experience within Ozu’s work. Do Ozu’ films ex- press the Transcendent, or do they express Ozu, Zen culture, and man’s ‘experience of the Transcendent?” (23). The phrase “one must make (or attempt to make) the crucial yet elusive versal) and Ozu's personal But according to Schrader, what initially seems an almost impossible task becomes achievable once the question of culturally specific per- spectives is introduced. To assert the value of the Western perspective, he frst concedes its limitation. It is very difficult for the average Western viewer to appreciate the aware of Ozu's themes or the wabi of his technique, much less to dis- tinguish between the moods ofthe furyu. The Japanese-English dic tionary itself despairs of any attempt to define or delimit the aesthetic twins of sabi and wabi. Simply because the Western viewer cannot make the distinction between sabi, wabi, aware, and yugem in Ozu's films he should not mistakenly think that Ozu is after a single basic ‘emotion, as is much of Western psychological realism. The codas of 34° Kurosawa ly complex, and the difference between @ and Mount Fuji may mean the ifr shot is “repeated” later in the film it also connotes both aware and yugen. (34) While acknowledging the disadvantage of the Western viewer, Schrader asserts the necessity of the Western perspective for the discernment of (Onu'’s transcendental style. According to Schrader, “the point at which and transcendental style begins is almost indiscernible id this is particularly the case when the audiences s many Japanese do, as a direct extension of Japanese is nat possible to extrapolate the transcendental style ly Japanese perspective; one needs several cultural ith Schrader’s argument lies in his use of the identity in & successful or unsuccess- according to Schrader, ae, and yugen in Ozu'’s films. Nor have I yet anese who can perceive the subtle change of moods from abi to aware and yugen evoked by the famous shot ofthe vase in Late Spring. Similarly, if as Schrader argues Japanese notice the point where the representation of ‘ence is transformed into the transcer do.with the limitation of the Japanese per the conceptual flaws in Schrader’s diffe style and the transcendental experience. Did Ozu create the transcendent tration into Japanese daily life or in spi le of film because of Zen’ infil- of Japanese culture's afinity to Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 45the Transcendent? How did Ozu create a filmic form that successfully ‘expresses the “Transcendent” by transcending Japanese culture when, according to Schrader, Japanese culture, so thoroughly permeated by Zen asa way of life, embodies the “Transcendent”? Is Zen an instance of «particular culture to be transcended, or is it the universal that makes transcendence ofa particular culture possible? Instead of trying to re- solve the ambivalence articulated by these questions, Schrader it, What remains most precarious in Schrader’s argument is the cally impossible status of Zen, and the problem lies in Schrader’ fasion of the “transcendental” with the “transcendent.” The ambiva- lence of Zen is never resolved; on the contrary, it is precisely through his ambivalent use of Zea that Schrader tries to reconcile the universal with the particular and constructs Ozu as an auteur of the transcen- dental style ‘Auteurism as a critical discourse enabled critics such as Richie and ‘Schrader to transcend contradiction of universalism and particularism, ‘The field of Japanese cinema was also shaped by another set of dis- ‘cursive practices: the ethnographic study of Japanese national ch ter promoted by the US. government during and after World Ws ‘The extensive wartime collaboration of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists with the U.S. military intelligence produced a sig- nificant body of work on ‘mental premise of the ns Dower, “‘the psychic uni humanity: "This combination of the universality of a basic humanity and the particularity of national characteris not as strange as it might ince the notion of national character was evoked in part the racist theories of biological determinism. Research- ers engaged in the study of national character argued that instead of tegrated cultural patterns, the unconscious logic of sentiments and assumptions, and the processes of ‘enculturation’ were the keys to ‘understanding all people participating in a common milieu.” In other ‘words, the national character study was first promoted as a way of dis- lodging race from the status of a final determinant in production of ‘lifferences. However, despite its anti-racist impetus, it is no secret that 18 Kurosawa the national character study was quickly appropriated by, and contrib- luted to, the racist discourse of wartime propaganda. luential work on the Japanese national character is Ruth ‘The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), which opens ng sentences: “The Japanese were the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought in an all-out struggle. In no other war with a major foe had it been necessary to take into account such exceedingly different habits of acting and thinking” As her opening ‘remark shows, Benedict approaches Japan as the most complete Other to the United States. Drawing on diverse sources of information in- cluding Japanese films, Benedict tries to find deep-seated cultural pat- terns in seemingly contradictory manifestations of Japanese daily life. ‘Benedict especially focuses on categories of social and moral obligation such as on, cu, ko, and girito demonstrate how the cultural paterns of Japanese are fundamentally different not only from those in the Occi- dent but also from those in the Orient. As the Japanese ethnographer Yanagita Kunio points out, Benedict’s “theory of culture patterns . seems to be concerned with those patterns which are permanently at- {ached to a nation or a race, and which are not modified by changes in environment and by the power o Race recedes from the fore- ground of discussion, yet to the extent that “cultural patterns” are per- ‘manently fixed to a particular race wit fundamental changes, Benedict’ argument is as problematic as a more overtly racist theory. Benedict’s view of Japanese society is too totaliz- ng, and not enough attention is paid to various kinds of differences in class, gender, region, and so on. Her sweeping terns of thought and behavior is ahistorical,“ ingful temporal currency to draw general During World War 1 telligence ly of ignoring mean- ls of Tokugawa period ons about present-day behavior.” spanese cinema was studied as part of the tes to grasp the Japanese national charac- ter, and their thought and behavioral patterns» The final result of this ‘ype of research was then used to aid policy makers in deciding how to deal with Japa hi luring and after the war. In the 19508 and 1960s, ween national character and cinema was reversed Instead of analyzing Japanese cinema as a key to un- this relat by film cri Japanese Cinema in Search ofa Discipline 47lock the mystery ofthe Japanese national character, they started using the Japanese national character as a means of “correctly” appreciating Japanese cinema, The ideas of on, grt, ninjo, and so forth, which Bene dict had laboriously analyzed, were blithely used in analyses of Japa- nese films without being critically scrutinized. The fundamental opera- tive principle of humanist criticism of Japanese cinema isthe inversion of question and answer; that is, what should be scrutinized through a careful analysis of films is used precisely as the answer to interpre- ions raised by those films. This inversion corresponds to what, ll “Japanese inversion of Bene: Japanese social scientists and critics s ‘unknowable’ except to Japanese, and that the role of soci the world of others... . The ‘ci and relational axes explained the dis which outsiders could nar dire Just how effective this Japanes be appreciated by the consistent use of this perception of Japanese ex- ceptionalism (unknowable but not inscrutable) in terms of group har- ‘mony and vertical loyalty to explain Japanese technological and orga- nizational proficiency.”” In the humanistic study of Japanese cinema, ‘through this process of inversion, the difference of Japanese cinema is attributed to that elusive entity called “Japan.” ‘The axiomatic characteristics of the humanist scholarship on Japa- nese cinema basically preclude possibilities of political intervention. ‘The fixated notions of national character, the Japanese mind, and the Japanese way of life make an attempt to intervene in the status quo of society simply superfluous. Even when some attempt is made to introduce politics and ideology into criticism, the haunting effect of the essentialized Japaneseness often reinforces the national stereotypes. When, on rare occasion, humanist critics call for a 1 change, they still end up reaffirming national stereotypes, thus creating adverse political effects. A plethora of claims on the feudal remnants in modern Japanese society, like Benedict's argument, virtually eliminate histori- 38 Kurosawa «al specificity from what is supposed to be ahistorical study of Japanese A Theoretical Turn? ‘The success of film studies as a newly emerging discipline was insepa- rable from a certain spit of contestation in the 1960s against the way ‘knowledge was produced in the traditional humanities. For a younger ‘generation of scholars who were increasingly unsatisfied withthe limits of academic disciplines, film was not just another type of art deserv- ing serious scholarly attention. The radical critics ofthe late 1960s and early 2970s turned to film to question the ideological underpinnings of ‘what was considered as constituting “scholarly seriousness.” The study of Japanese cinema did not remain outside this trend of theoretical radicalization. The 1970s saw the rise of the second wave of scholar- ship, characterized by its oppositional polities of aesthetic and form,on Japanese cinema. The most important work of this radicalized scholar- ship is Noel Burch’s To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (1979), which introduced the ideology of film form as a central question in the study of Japanese cinema, One of the axiomatic premises of Burch’s work is that there is an “essential dference between the dominant modes of Western and Japa- nese cinema.” Throughout his book, Burch constantly contrasts the cinema and culture of Japan with those of the West. For instance, according to Burch, Western cinema is representational, whereas Japa of Kabuki and Bunraku, nese cinema, following the tr characterized as preses strives to create a sense of depth, Japanese painting deliberately draws the viewer's atte needs to be concealed accord teflexively inscribing the sig- nifying process in the text, the Japanese textual practice foregrounds the constructedness of meaning. As these characterizations of Western Japanese Cinema in Search of « Discipline 19and Japanese textual practices show, the operative principle of Burch’s theory is very much akin to Benedict’s paradigm of “Us/Not-Us.”> that is, the absolute dichotomy of the West and Japan. What Burch is ultimately interested in is not the latter but the former, since Burch’s study “is intended . .. as a step in the direction of a critical anal ofthe ideologically and culturally determined system of represent from which the film industries of Hollywood and elsewhere deri ower and profi.” And some critics have confirmed Burch’s obj by finding in To the Distant Observer one of the most lucid descri of the formal system of the classical Hollywood cinema.” Because in his theory the significance of Japanese cinema is com- pletely dependent on the hegemonic system of Western cinema, Burch has been accused of being engaged in an Orientalist project. For Burch, Japanese cinema has a meaning only to the extent that it functions as model of a new cinema that critiques the bourgeois ideological as- sumptions of the dominant Western cinema, Or as one critic puts it, Burch uses “Japanese cinema as a rod with which to beat the back of Western bourgeois transparent cinema,” Burch’s theoretical bias — understanding of the West mediated by a “detour through the East” — 's not by itself fatal flaw. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with {an attempt to search for some alternative system of representation and ‘extualty in Japanese cinema (or for that matter in the emerging mo- ‘ment of the cinema in the early-twentieth-century West);® provided that “Japanese cinema” used for this purpose is not a mere mirage of the critic's desire. Conversely, the critic can “also . .. isolate some- ‘where in the world (faraway) a certain number of features... and out of these features deliberately form a system” and decide to call this system “Japan” as long a ths “Japan” always remains an imaginary construct, not a reality, The problem with To the Distant Observer is Precisely the confounding of Japan as a fictitious construct and as a reality. As Dana Polan argues, there isa fundamental contradiction in Burch’s project." a contradictory split between the fictional status of the “Japan” he constructs and his claim that his “approach is... histori- cal in every sense."* Burch is most misleading when he tries to develop a historical argument because to substantiate his point, he often tai- lors the modetn Japanese history to it his Orientalist view of Japanese cinema’s essential difference, Burch’s view of nonsynchronous devel- 20 Kurosawa ‘opment of aesthetic form, | ideology, and capitalist economic system may be complex and full of nuances: however, the sheer com- plexity of a historical model guarantees neither the historical accuracy nor the antiethnocentricity of that model. What makes Burch’s Ori- entalism particularly troubling is his critical stance on the dominant ‘mode of filmic representation in the West. As he indicts the ideology of the dominant Western cinema, Burch fils prey to the Orientalist trap and, despite his avowed intention, ends up affirming the same ideology that he criticizes. Does Burch deny universal values and examine the “history of film style not in terms of cross-cultural universal values, but of dominant and supplanted practices, of norms and deviations within a social con- text”? Burch does not seem to be concerned with the interplay and conflict between the normative modes of filmic representation and the deviant or subversive modes in the sociohistorical context of mod- ‘em Japan. The social context where Burch places “dominant and sup- planted practices” is contemporary Westen society, in which he i searching for a radical mode of filmmaking as an avant-garde artst- «tic. Even though the subject of his study is Japanese cinema, Burch does not show any speci the ideological effect of Japa nese and other cinemas in the context of Japanese society. The norm for Burch is not the dominant representational practice in Japanese film history but the abstract model called “institutional mode of rep- resentation” exemplified by classical Hollywood cinema. Burch does not accord the value of universality to the dominant mode of repre- sentation in the West; however, the West remains the ultimate bearer of universality to the extent that the value of Japanese cinema is always determined through its comparison to the dominant Western cinema. Although the role and specificity of perspective is acknowledged (as we can see in his self-positioning as a “distant observer”), Burch’s study never considers the specificity ofthe ized and arbitrary. Yet despite these failings, Burch’s book is ignored at great cost by scholars of Japanese film, in the classroom as well as the study. I sympathize with this attempt to separate positive ele- Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 24‘ments of Burch’s study from shortcomings and weaknesses, but I must Say that this i a task extremely difficult to accomplish. The two com- Ponents of Burchs work, Orienalst clichés and theoretical insights, ‘cannot be separated from each other so easily because there is a tural connection between Burch’s formal analysis and his Orientalist Premises. Theory in Burch’s work is not a set of critical premises free of ‘deology oa neutral tol of analysis, and Orientals tendency is not ‘mere baggage that can be discarded a will In fact, itis precisely because of Burcts Orientalist biases that his theoretically informed work on the ‘Japanese fl history isin ts own way exciting and thought provoking. {tis important for us not to simplisically equate Burch’s Orientel- ism to the shortcomings of his project asa historical study. There is ‘ho guarantee that other critics who are more interested in historical Context and cultural speciicity are immune to Orientalst assumptions Sometimes a false equation is made between the and theoretical approach to Japanese cinema exemp work. When the more “contextual” analysis ‘Palvely valrized over Burch’s theoretical imperialism, a critique of Burch can become as problematic as Burch's own study * Moreover, the ‘more detailed historical research~the use of Japanese scholarly works, the analysis of primary materials—does not necessarily eliminate Ori, uals tendencies fom the feld of Japanese cinema citer. The expert Knowledge of Japanese film history is not incompatible with Oriental. ism at all. On the contrary, as Edward Said has defi strated, Orientalism as an ideology has been produced, and propagated not by “distant observers” like Burch but by profes, sionally tained experts on things Oriental. Despit ical success, Burch’s work failed to create a “theoreti- cal turn” in the study of Japanese cinema. Why did the humanistic Studies of Japanese cinema continue to thrive even afer the publica tion of Burch’ pioneering work? For revitalization of the scholarship fon Japanese cinema, iperative to recognize that a theoretical Study of Japanese cinema intited by Burch was not simply interrupted or abandoned by scholars more interested in contextualzing Japanese cinema historically and culturally. Despite their apparent differences, there isin the end no absolute di the 1960s and the ideological 22 Kurosawa criticism start from the premise that Japanese cinema is essentially dif- inemas ed isthe system of ex- ferent from Hollywood cinema; what has chang planation to account for Japanese cinema's Otherness and how that sys- tem breaks down because of internal inconsistency and contradiction. Paul Schrader’s argument on Ozu’s transcendental style is dependent cm his deliberately ambivalent construction of Zen asthe particular to be transcended and as the universal that makes transcendence of the particular tion comes name of the to evade the question of history and contextualization by enlarging the notion of text to encompass the entirety of the Japanese cultural his- torys that is, the text and the context are merged into the supertext called “le texte japonais,” which nullfies the di formal analysis and historical study. ‘Thus, despite their appearances, there isa complicity between auteur- centered humanism and Burch’s radical theor tetically reexamining the critical premises of develops his poststructuralist/Marxist approach to Japanese cinema based on those premises. Instead of introducing a theoretical turn in the field of Japanese cinema, because of the inseparability of his theo- retical claim and Orientalism, Burch’s theoretical intervention ends up authorizing the continuation of more traditional humanist studies. Cross-Cultural Analysis and Identity Politics Barch’s book has been extensively reviewed and discussed since its 1979. Out of these discussions have grown two Japanese cinema, On the one hané, those jon and lack of attention to historical con- alized accounts of text in Burch’s project try to produce more contextual auteurs’ works, aesthetics, movements, and limited periods of Japanese film history.” On the other hand, what is called cross-cultural analysis tries to continue theorization of Japanese cinema and simultaneously construct a new historical narrative of intercultural exchange. What Burch does in his first major theoretical work on the non-Western original appearance types of trends in the who see excessive the Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 23cinema is symptomatically represented by its title, To she Dista server: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, After briely ju fying his critical position as a “distant observer” who is not too famil- jar with Japanese history, culture, and language, Burch concentrates on his ideological and formalist analysis of “form and meaning in the Japanese cinema.” Cross-cultural analysis reverses this hierarchical re- maship of the critical premise and the main body of argument in Burch’s book; that is, instead of treating the position of the critic as 4@ significant yet ultimately secondary methodological issue, cross- cultural analysis foregrounds it asa central point of contention in the study of Japanese cinema by American academics Scott Nygren develops an argument on cross-cultural influence, mis- recognition, and exchange in two articles, “Reconsidering Modern- ism: Japanese Film and the Postmodern Context” and “Doubleness and Idiosynerasy in Cross-Cultural Analysis” The former tries to con- structa large-scale historical model of cross-cultural exchange between the latter is more concerned with the role of the analysis. One of Nygren’s main theses in both texts is that modern Japan and the West are in a certain sense the inverted mirror image of each other. “Humanism and anti-human- ism,” writes Nygren, ‘play inverse roles in the conflict of tradition and ‘modernism in Japan and the West: each culture turns to the other for traditional values which function to deconstruct its own dominant ide- logy. Japan borrows humanism from the West as a component of Japa- ‘nese modernism, just as the West borrows anti-humanist elements from Japanese tradition to form Western modernism. At points of cross. between Japan and the West, traditional and mod ly to seem paradoxically intertwined What inverted relationship isthe emergence of post- which “is conceived in the West as a non-progressivst “onalist and modernist signification without progres- sivist determinism” (7), There are a number of problems in what Nygren presents as cross- cultural analysis but fist and foremost is the ambiguity of certain key terms he uses. For instance, although he wavers between different ‘sages ofthe phrase “Western modernism,” what he means by itis fairly ‘examples of Western modernism mentioned are various artistic movements ofthe late nineteenth century and early twentieth century (e.g, impressionism, cubism, surrealism, Futurism, contrast, itis difficult to pinpoint what he calls Japanese mod- cemnism. He neither defines the term clearly nor provides a coherent set of examples of Japanese modernists or modernist works.” Strangely, there is no explicit reference to various modernist movements in Japa- nese literature, art, theater, architecture, and even film.*' Granted that itis never possible to analyze comprehensively every aspect of Japanese modernism in a single article or book, it is still easy and necessary to specify what kind of modernist movement is examined and what others are excluded from a particular study. Without some kind of delimi- tation, the word “modernism” remains nothing more than an empty signifier, and the discussion becomes indistinguishable from a mere wordplay. ‘Why is it the case that while mentioning different kinds of modera- {sm in the West, Nygren fails to differentiate various modernist move- ments in Japan? It is because any specific examination of Japanese modernism would make it impossible to establish the relationship of inversion between Japan and the West. Nygren’s claim that there is a correspondence between what the “modern” meant for the Japanese of the Meiji period and Western humanism and individualism is highly contestable, Even if we accept his claim for arguments sake, not automatically ead to the conclusion that Japanese modernists were ‘most influenced by Western humanism, not modernism, even in the 19208, 19508, or 1960s. Despite his insistence that Japanese artists leaned ‘more toward humanism than modernism, itis difficult to understand ‘hy Japanese artists’ alleged preference of impressionism and postim- pressionism over such avant-garde movements as cubism, surrealism, and dadaism can be construed as evidence of the “deconstructive role of the Western humanist tradition in a Japanese context.” ‘To support his argument that the “principles of inversion, paradox ‘and aporia” underlie the cross-cultural relations between the West and Japan, Nygren mentions Doi Takeo's psychoanalytic theory of Japa- neseness. According to Nygren, Doi’s theorization of amae as a core of Japanese intersubjective relationship shows curious resemblance to the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan: “The amae subject appears as dispersed among relationships with numerous others, and the other is Japanese Cinema in Search ofa Discipline 28ara ae any possible subject position... In these terms, ie amae model of subject formation parallels the Lacani 2 split subject which cannot be conceived: esaeeaerg Gin era in Japan as a means to categorically discard the established order. Feudalism’ itself asa term mythologizes Japanese histori- 2 traditions in much the same way that humanism does for the West. ‘udalism’ implicitly positions all of Japanese history as analoy ous te the medieval sage of Western developments and imagines ees agua nia. ithoatintralconadcions tec ee comes an extension of humani ideology open to deconstri 10). Ain, thesis wile atempt to conoid wedisineret ame, potions Even if both “feudalism” and “humanism” are sometimes foci ibe see oth unary pained Wen not necessarily make “feudalism” “an extension of humanist ide- ology” Whatisgnordis thatthe term“feuao Specific category, and that there is a massive amount of schol hie on Japanese feudalism produced by both Japanese and non-Jag Scholars who do not mythologize the past. | Cros-cultural ean lnays at lent double ad articles bork ‘cultural situations, that of the reader and that of the read, unavoid- sbyandsimntancousy” Gy) Yemen ofpreesing an, situations, bs of the reader and that of the read,” Nygren’s readin; e Kaurosawa’s iru plays only with the reader’s construction of . Nest and pan, His desertion athe can sea 's fall of stereotypes and clichés about Japanese socicy, institxtos and the “psychoanalytic formation of the Japanese ibe a eel images of the Japanese essence produced by nih PE discourse on Japaneseness). When what is articulated as Japan ical” is ony a stereotype or cic conttuced by ae ee reader from the very beginning, how can cross-cultural analysis take place san ever? Can coss-cultual aalyan edonlonee eee 26 Kurosawa sense of reciprocity? Where exactly can a critical space of eross-cultural analysis be located? How can we genuinely pursue cross-cultural analy- sis when the ahistorical, decontextualized account of Japanese social dynamics is used as a critical premise? The task of cross-cultural or any engaged analysis is not to see how Kurosava’s Ikiru “sustains an irrec- oncilable conflict between the so-called feudal pejorative view of West- cern individualism and the Western humanist discounting of traditional Japanese consensus society” (179) but to question for what ideologi- cal purposes the idea of “traditional Japanese consensus society” was created in the first place* Moreover, the unreflective use of the term “West” in his essays also ends up reinforcing the identity ofthe West as something transparent, natural, and self-evident. (John Guillory points out that the “concept of Western culture is itself of relatively recent origin— perhaps no earlier than the eighteenth century —and that it is constructed by suppressing the elements of Aftican and Asian culture ithas assimilated, as well as the dificult suturing of the Judaic and the Hellenic.”)* [Nygren claims: “If we as Westerners can only conceive of the Orient speaking or writing through the Other of Western ideology, he Eastin terms of its own Ot Japan's view of the We is Other is as valid, as problematic, and as unavoidable as the West’s conception of Japan through its own Other.” Yet history shows otherwise. In 1854 Commodore Perry and the shogunate officials signed a diplomatic treaty between the United States and Japan, both of which had vastly different interpretations of the same treaty. The United States, however, immediately took action to enforce its own version of interpretation, and faced by the infinitely superior military power, Japan did not have any other choice but to ac- cept it. HD. Harootunian finds inthis historical event a paradigmatic pattern of the interaction between the United States and Japan in the last century and a half: “It might be argued, on the basis of this in- augural misrecognition, that Japanese/American relations derived from and were set upon their course by an act of interpretation, whereby the United States jumped to occupy the ‘enunciative voice’ to deter- ‘mine the meaning of a statement before the Japanese were able to press their own claim. On their part, the Japanese appeared to have been assigned to the status of second-term, or silent, interlocutors whose Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 27interests, hereafics, were to be represented to themselves by another. Sometimes the interaction has resembled the relationship between ven. triloquist and dummy." What is eras tion of Japan's and the West’s views is preci of the geo Nygten’s equivocal confla- ly the historical specificity al hierarchy and power relationship evident between and Japan since the mid-nineteenth century. “Burch’s text stands as an implicit open critique tall those historians ‘who would pursue historical artifacts as sel deining objects aleady Positioned within the hierarchical organization of linear time and cen. tealized space dictated by humanist ideology. Ths hierarchy centers the West as ulate frame of reference and vale in order to organise ‘he material, and iis this bierarchiation that so frequently goes in the ‘West by the name ‘history.’"** What remains unclear in this defense of theory against history by Nygren archical organization of linear center] the West as ype of hierarchization ‘hat positions the West as the center “so frequently goes in the Westby the name ‘history; it goes by the name “theory,” too. ‘he cross-cultural analysis’ valorization of theory over history 's only a veneer, since there is nothing particularly theoretical abour ‘wal analysis. (Dropping theorists’ names [Dertida, Lyotard, Lacan, Barthes) or their key terms (difrend, méconnaissance, pune. fun, grand récit| does not make an analysis of Japanese cinema auto- ‘matically theoretical.) The real dichotomy in cross-cultural analysis is Juablshed not between theory and history but between the identity of Japanese and that of Westerners, While trying to decenter the hiews- Chica relationship of Japan and the Wes, cross-cultural analysis ends up reaffirming the fixed identities of both. To this extent, cross-cultural analysis iin complementary relation to monacultural analysis pro- ‘moted by native Japanese scholars such as Keiko I. McDonald. Be. n Japanese cinema and classical theater “is not a book ites McDonald, “it disavows any absolute theoreti- * oF ideological commitment of the sort seen in the second ology (Marxis-psychoanalyticsemiology)": “My own approach pas most to do with that basi question about cultural specicity which 1 seek time and again as a teacher and scholar of Japanese cinema to answer: How does a person coming from the japanese tradition see 28 Kurosawa Japanese film for what it is?” Thus, in both cross-cultural and mono ccltural analysis, the question of theory's role in interpretation is dis- placed by identity politics. Japanese Cinema and the Ins of Film Studies ‘The critical and methodological problems with the scholarship on Japanese cinema cannot be discussed merely as an internal problem of the field of Japanese cinema. To understand them fully, we must broaden a horizon of our examination to include the larger it tional context, Because the field of Japanese cinema is not an autono- ‘mous entity but an integral part of film studies’ disciplinary formation, a brief examination of the history of film studies as an academic disci- 1 is in order. 7s hhas been part of the American university curricula for many years, yet it was only in the late 1950s and early 1960s that film studies finally came into existence as an academic discipline. Many new courses dated into coherent programs and curricula, The increasing popularity of film as an academic subject meant a great demand for survey books on film, New film history books (eg, Arthur Knight’s The Liveliest Art {1957]) were published and widely used in the classroom, and the clas- sical works about film history were also reprinted in a new paperback edition or under a new title** In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, film studies experienced an extraordinary period of rapid ex- Pansion. As the study of flm was firmly established as an academic discipline, the institutional centers of study of film shifted from mu- seums and archives to universities. There was a dramatic increas in not only the number of film courses but also the number of univer- sities offering them.” In addition to such established journals as, ae Quarterly and Cinerna Journal, new film journals were created for film scholars to publish peer-reviewed a As the need for legit serious academic endeavor increased, the formation of a professional society became necessary. In 1957 and 1958, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized meetings of film teachers at American univer- Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 29Out of these meetings was born the Society of Cinematol iety of Cinematologists, ‘which later became the Society for Cinema Studies, the most influential ‘organization of flm academics3* What made film studies one of the fastest growing academic disci 19608 and the 1970s? The influx of art films in the » mainly ftom Europe, dramatically changed th ; ed the image of cinema in the Unit Bergman, Antonioni, and others films were as important as the canoni- al works of English literature, music and fine arts. As the prest Status of these filmmakers as auteurs was firmly established, Hol ‘wood cinema was reappraised, too. French film cr i conception of filmmakers as serious artists who imprint ther th their unique signatures (eg, stylistic and thematic motif consistently found in their euvres) became orthodoxy not enlyin the academia but also in the world of journalistic film criticism.> ther phenomenon that prompted the transformation of film into late object of serious study was the eclipse of film vis increasing popularity of television. The “resp of film as aca- demic area was enhanced by the fact that by the 1960s in the United States film no longer functioned as the American popular entertain- ‘ment form, having been recently supplanted by television, Wi vision viewing becoming a daily ha holds, fewer alarms were raised over the n ‘movie going and more concern was expressed over the effects that tele. ‘sed violence and advertising had on children." Ironically, the status of film as an artform was enhanced in part because the American film industry was in disarray, and the cinema’s popularity in a real workd ‘was superseded by a new electronic medium of audiovisual entertain. ment. Because of the constitutive hybridity of film as a medi courses were intially offered by such a wide variety of depart motion Pictures, radio and television, theater, art, English, sociology, Poltal science, and busines. But the disciplines that most eagerly ap, mns of American house- ive social effects of 30° Kurosawa ‘propriated film as a new object of analysis were the humanities. Dudley Andrew observes that the humanities needed new courses to offer in ‘order to accommodate the rapid expansion of university enrollments and to cope with the effects of the 1960s’ university reform and democ- ratization of higher education: The humanities ... were primed to profit from the rising interest in the study of film. As the largest academic division within Ameri- an universities, not only were there excesses of students eternally seeking new (and “elevant”) courses, but excesses of faculty eager to teach them, Since the humanities were not experiencing anything like the growth pattern of the social sciences, their faculty were try- ing to achieve distinction in a crowded arena. The development of film as an extension of this arena gave many English, philosophy, theater, and language professors opportunities to find a new audi- ence to teach, new journals to publish in, and renewed enthusiasm for their professions. When academic requirements in the humani- ties began to loosen up and even disappear in the late 1960s, film studies became a way to uphold enrollment for many departments, primarily language departments." Even in the pioneering days of film studies, when education depart- ‘ments offered the largest number of film courses, the “courses dealing with film history, criticism, or appreciation ... were usually attached to literature or drama departments.” The inroad of film into the Ameri- can university system in the 1960s reinforced this connection between film studies and the humanities, or more specifi rary studies. ‘As students becaime less interested in traditional courses on litera ‘ture, English and language departments began to teach film and other noncanonical texts to boost enrollments. Besides the pedagogical use tion of the literary masterpiece, a number topics were suggested by literature/film teach- cers: comparison of films and their original literary sources; comparison related to each other ic concerns; study of film scripts as literary works; influences of film on literature, and vice versa; connections between specifi films and literary movements; established writers’ direct involvement in directing films and writing scripts. To Japanese Cinema in Search of Discipline 34Jegitimate the inclusion of film in literary curricula, many argued that “Alm is a branch of literature."® Even those who insisted on “the au- tonomy of both media, their differences and unique potential” found the most viable model of film studies in literary eriticism.® The impact of literary criticism on the academic study of film went beyond the institutional affiliations of language departments and film programs. In terms ofthe sheer number, more universities and colleges offered film courses in speech, communication, and flm/television de- partments than in English and language departments.” But even in the nnonlanguage departments, the critical paradigm of the study of film ‘was a humanistic, interpretive one. The specific institutional locations of film programs and curricula were less important than the emergence of a new institutional paradigm of film eritcism that readily crossed departmental boundaries. the combination of auteurism and art cinema launched film studies as arespectable academic field inthe 1960s, it was theory that made film studies a cuting-edge discipline in the 970s. A number of huma scholars took their cues from European cultural criticism and theo- retical thinking, For these radical critics, the study of film was more ‘than just an introduction of a new object of research into the humani- ties. They saw it as an “opportunity to help shift the ground of the ‘hole realm of humanities.” Semiotics, Lacanian psychoanal Althusserian Marxism were enthusiastically studied and used rize subject positions, spectatorship, and textual unconscious; sults of theorization and fms were constantly published in journals on film, literary studies, theory, and cultural studies. In the rapidly expanding field of film studies, theory occupied a privileged position; to some extent, ory and methodology were more important than what was being theorized or analyzed. In the 1970s and early 1980s, film studies experienced a research boom, and there was a genuine sense of newness and excitement, Yet by definition, a boom does not last forever, and there now seems to be ' consensus that the field of film studies has reached an impasse. There are probably « number of different ways to discuss the stat ofthe disci- Pline, but I find Robert Ray’s and David Bordwell’s assessments of the situation particularly illuminating, Although they have very different 32 Kurosawa agendas and solutions to remedy the problem at hand, in general both seem to agree that a major source of the stalemate is the hegemonic status of theory-inspired film criticism in the discipline. In Making Meaning, Bordwell argues that we can construct only four types of meanings out of a film—referential, explicit, implicit, and symptomatic meanings (the firs al meanings) —an interpretive activity are normally regarded as being very different from each other by film scholars, Bordwell sees otherwise. He examines nu ‘merous examples of explicatory and symptomatic criticism to demon- strate that there is no such radical disjunction between the two, not even between auteur criticism as explication and Lacanian and Althus- serian ideological critique as symptomatic interpretation. Through a careful analysis of interpretive rhetoric, Bordwell tries to demonstrate ism owes much less to poststructural- terns and rhetorical devices of various persuasions since oststructuralist film eriti- that poststructuralist film ist theory than to the set of inferent that have been widely used by film World War II, From Bordwell’s standpoint «isms emergence in the 1970s and its dominance in the 1980s did not introduce anything particularly new in film studies: on the contrary, its proliferation ensured the continuation of routine interpretive prac- tices to such an extent that film criticism has become totally repeti- tive and uninteresting, Thus Bordvell proclaims: “Film interpretation is in no crisis; itis in stagnation”,® “the great days of interpretation- centered criticism are over . .. the basic strategies and tactics have all been tried.” Robert Ray also contests the current state of film studies. He points out the futility of producing interpretive pieces based on the mechani- «ally repeatable procedures and reusable theoretical jargons as follows: ‘The extraordinary contagiousness of contemporary theory lies pre- cisely in its generalizing power: the old madel of scholarship, which relied on a specialized, scrupulous coverage of a field of study, in- sisted that the right to speak about, for example, fiction or narrative accrued only to those who had read all the major novels in a given Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 38Iierature (hence such books as Wayne Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fic- ‘ion, which seems to mention every important English novel). Con. {temporary theory, on the other hand, finds its representative model in Barthes'sS/Z, which uses one Balzac novella (and a minor one at ‘hat to make an argument about narrative in general. Having seen that approach in action, academics have ignored its lesson and in. sisted on using it as a new model for case-by-case analyses, But if You understand Barthes's points about storytelling, you do not need to see them worked out with a hundred other examples: that proce- dlure may be useful for beginning students, as a way of apprehending Barthes’s approach, but surely it should not be the model for ad. vanced scholarly work... . Having committed itself to a particular way of doing business (which we might call using that term to stand for the amalgam of struc sychoanalytic, ideo- logical, and feminist methodologies), film studies has, since 1970, «constructed an enormously powerful theoretical machine for expos. ing the ideological abuse hidden by the apparently natural stories and images of popular culture. That machine, however, now runs on automatic pilot, producing predictable essays and books on indi. vidual cases.” While criticizing, like Bordwell, the mass producibility of theoretical interpretation of particular films, Ray also recognizes the significance into the development of film studies. According to Ray, the impasse of film studies is created not by poststructualisttheory’s inherent flaws but by the discrepancy be- {ween the radical potential of theory as practice and the sterile thema ion of theory in routine, streamlined interpretation, 'm studies’ development briefly described earlier has not only ed the Japanese film scholarship but also used Japanese cinema S own purposes. As Ray argues, at the early stage of its insti- alization, film studies transgressed both national and discipli- paty boundaries: “Because its subject matter was international, lm studies} could never have respected the university’ linguistic divisions: te not just ‘French’ or ‘American’ or ‘German’ or ‘Japanese’ they constituted anew language which similarly disregarded the old, neat distinctions between music, dance, painting, andthe plas- 34° Kurosawa tic ats, Inevitably, therefore, film studies found an almost immediate need for interdiscipl and for methods which would guide its ac- uncharted free zones between official de- tudies was struggling to establish itself as a the international dimension of the cinema was a sig- shasize. The international scope of film as a hybrid ld justify the establishment of a mew academic unit be- It was in this context of disciplinary power struggle that Japanese «cinema played an indispensable role, Film studies as a new intercul- tural discipline became all the more acceptable with the discovery of other cinemas, such as Japanese cinema, whose unique artistic quality made it simultaneously an instance of particularity and a proof of the cinema's universal appeal, Japanese cinema was an ideal example dem- ‘onsteating the dialectic ofthe universal andthe particular, and a widely ‘used thetorical trope to reconcile contradictory aspects of the cinema as high art and popular culture, as universal language and culturally specific practice. Japanese cinema was also valuable to film studies be- cause it boasted two great auteurs, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, The idea of individual authorship was essential forthe self-legitimation of film studies at its early stage of inst ithout the presence of auteurs like Fel it would have been much moze difficult for humanities professors inthe 1960s to incorpo- zate film into their teaching and research. Japanese cinema continued to play a significant role in film studies’ disciplinary and canon formation by steadily supplying other auteurs besides Kurosawa and Mizoguchi (eg, Ozu, Natuse, Kobayashi, Oshima, and Imamura). Interpretation gained its hegemonic status not only because film studies was most closely aligned with literary criticism but also because itwas remarkably international and cosmopolitan. For film critics who were not familiar with the language, history, purpose of interpreting unfamiliar national cinemas, flm studies has Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 35built a powerful interpretive machine, which, by supplying film with stock images of national character, ‘makes it possible for them to understand and say something iible about those cinemas. Thus, to this extent, the disciplinary ture of film studies demands the concept of national cinema as Part of its strategy of containment. Because of this interpretive ma- chine, even those who do not have command of necessary languages can study non-Western national cinemas, and these studies are justi- fied in the name of cross-cultural analysis” However, the final product of this kind of national cinema criticism is often as equally predictable and repetitious as theoretical criticism, the value of which is seriously questioned by Bordwell, Ray, and others. The national cinemas Ray mentions in the passage previously quoted ~ French, American, German, and Japanese cinemas—do not coexist side by side in a nonhierarchical relationship. Each of them does not have the same kind of leverage over the formation of film studies’ dis- inary structure, in which theory occupies a privileged position. De- ‘theory’s—explict or implicit—universalist claim, specific exam- piles used and analyzed in theory are often from American, French, and German films” In contrast, Japanese cinema has never been included in the canon of film theory except when, as in Burch’s study, theory is used to assert Japanese cinema's essential difference from Western scholars of comparative literature try to study literature 3 @ human activity unrestricted by national boundaries. It isin part onal characteristics that have made both film studies and literature a stronghold of literary and cri academia. This focus on theory has been a major facto tion of film studies and comparative literature from foreign language and nation Despite ities, comparative literature and film studies have different positions on the question of foreign language compe. tency: Many film scholars are competent in French and German, two languages in which theoretical texts on film and relevant topics ate ex- tensively published, Yet, generally speaking, fm studies asa discipline does not particularly lay special emphasis on foreign language ski mn contrast, comparative literature strongly stresses the significance of reading literary texts in the original languages. For comparatists and other literary scholars, language isnot a research tool. A major pur- ose of studying literature is precisely to critique an instrumental view of language as a transparent medium of communicating information. For comparative literature, the competency in foreign languages is a ore of its disciplinary identity, And this is where comparative litera- ture has more affinities with Japanese studies than with film studies, ‘Whereas in film studies the majority of books and articles on Japanese cinema have been written by those who do not know Japanese, a good command of Japanese is an essential prerequisite for any comparatist who claims to be a Japanese literature specials. ‘To the extent that it combines two strong points of film studies and Japanese studies, that is, a focus on theory and language, comparative literature seems like & better discipline in which research on Japanese sinema can be pursued. Once housed in comparative literature, the film studies in terms ofits 44° Kurosawa study of Japanese cinema will not suffer atleast from the researchers’ lack of facility in the language and critical methodologies. Comparative literature can train students to become “Japanese-speaking scholars” ‘who are also conversant in film theory and critical issues in interpreta- tion, formal analysis, and historiography. But before jumping to these conclusions, we must first examine the current state of comparative erature, the disciplinary identity of which has become no less probl atic than that of either film studies or Japanese studies. Comparative literature is not immune from the same institutional forces that has prompted film studies to search for its new disciplinary identity and objective, ‘As René Wellek reports in hs often-quoted statement made in 1958, comparative literature as @ discipline has never had a clear and stable identity: “The most serious sign of the precarious state of our study is the fact that it has not been able to establish a distinct subject mat- ter and a specific methodology.””* Other distinguished comparatists have expressed a similar sense of uncertainty about comparative litera- ture: “Although I hold a Ph.D. in comparative literature, I have never bbeen sure I deserved it, since I've never been sure what the feld, or the discipline, is and never sure that I could really claim to be teach- snot kid ourselves rely sure what a comparat ‘What makes comparatsts particularly nervous now is the emergence of cultural studies as a postdisciplinary discursive activity of academics. Cultural studies has attracted many comparatists as a way of renew- ing comparative literature as a viable discipline ofthe present and the future, but it has simultaneously alarmed others who s solution but as a major cause of comparative literatur nervous tension between comparative literature and cultural studies is not a unique phenomenon but part of a sea change in the univer- sity, where so many other disciplines and depar ing similar kinds of crisis or going through the examination. The significance of the debate about cultural studies does in what proponents and opponents say about cultural lines. According ory or a “floor not akways studies but lies in what they say about other to Fredric Jameson, cultural studies is not real pan for a new discipline’; instead, cultural studies, a symptom of the Japanese Cinema in Search of a Discipline 48