A Companion to Documentary Film History. Группа авторов
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Grierson, I present him as a theorist with a distinct character and intellectual background. It is true that Rotha's argument in general follows the same examples Grierson used in his own essays such as “The Russian Examples” and “First Principles of Documentary” (Grierson 1971: 121–132; 145–156). Nevertheless, I argue that Rotha can still be distinguished from Grierson in his incorporation of dialectical thinking – or the collision between two or more categories that are mutually exclusive or self‐contradictory – into the theoretical debates on documentary. And for this very reason, he deliberately replaced Grierson's famous definition of documentary (“the creative treatment of actuality”) with his own formula (“the creative dramatization of actuality”), despite his animosity to what he called the “story‐film.” Consequently, both wartime and postwar Japanese criticisms revolved mostly around Rotha's particular usage of the term dialectics (benshōhō).
Finally, in contrast to Nornes' restriction on the contemporary reception of Rotha in wartime Japan, I address more insightful and creative interpretations of his theory emerging in the postwar period. Film historians have acknowledged that the ways in which Japanese critics adopted Rotha's theory before the end of World War II were highly biased due to the period's peculiar ideological setting. For instance, the documentary critic/filmmaker Noda Shinkichi wrote in 1967 that “it is not until the end of the war that Rotha's theory received proper criticism,” because, he added, most wartime Japanese critics and filmmakers appropriated the idea of documentary for the sake of militaristic nationalism (Noda 1973: 334–335). This temporal gap also indicates a significant shift in the attitude of Japanese critics toward the general value of Rotha's writings: no longer deeming it necessary to follow Rotha's original intentions, those postwar commentators tended to use him as a practical point of reference for the development of their own documentary theories.
To facilitate this revisionist approach, I will look at the work of three leading Japanese film critics – Tsumura Hideo (1907–1985), Imamura Taihei (1911–1986), and Hanada Kiyoteru (1909–1974) – who provided their own critical and irreconcilable readings of Rotha from the late 1930s to the mid‐1950s. Of these critics, I pay particular attention to Hanada and his original concept known as sur‐documentary. In Japanese cultural history, Hanada is widely acclaimed as one of most influential theorists and organizers of the postwar avant‐garde art movement. While Hanada's provocative essays had enduring impacts on the work of younger experimental filmmakers such as Matsumoto Toshio and Teshigawara Hiroshi, what is more significant for the purpose of this chapter is his persistent call for the historicization of film theory on both domestic and international fronts (Hanada et al. 1957: 41). Writing in the mid‐to‐late 1950s, almost 20 years after the introduction of the term documentary to Japan, Hanada did not simply offer an assessment of Rotha's argument. Rather, he provided a meta‐critique of the hitherto domestic interpretations of the conception of documentary as such; or, to use the basic formula of the dialectics that informed his intellectual activities, he deliberately presented his theoretical intervention as a negation of the negation. In doing so, Hanada gives us a helpful vantage point from which to observe how elements of the global and the local converged in the context of Japanese film theory and criticism. But before moving on to Hanada's radical reconceptualization of documentary, we must first look at how Tsumura and Imamura interpreted Rotha's theoretical text.
Reality and Actuality: Tsumura Hideo
From the early 1930s until the end of World War II, Tsumura Hideo was one of most influential – and perhaps most arrogant – film critics in Japan. His reviews for the prestigious Asahi, written under the famous penname “Q,” nearly always condemned movies with “vulgar” entertainment values. Alongside these, Tsumura published longer essays either on films with high artistic values – he was a great supporter of Jean Renoir and French Poetic Realism – or on topical issues related to the ongoing restructuring of the domestic film industry under the militaristic government's increasing intervention. His critical activities were so visible even outside film journalism that he was chosen to be one of the participants in the now‐famous 1942 “Overcoming Modernity” debates (Kawakami et al. 1979 [1943]),4 and was also appointed as a member of the Central Association for National Mobilization. It thus comes as no surprise that Tsumura eventually became one of the most powerful advocates for the state control of domestic film practice, broadly preaching his dogmatic policy proposals in books like On Film Policy (Tsumura 1943) and Film War (Tsumura 1944). Such aggressive right‐wing turns were not rare among the Japanese cultural elites of the period, but the irony here was that Tsumura was also highly critical of the British model of state‐sponsorship for documentary film production, which Rotha proudly described in his book.5
When Tsumura brought out his 60‐page treatise “A Critique of Paul Rotha's Film Theory: On His Documentary Film” (Tsumura 1940), Japanese debates on nonfiction and documentary film were heating up due to the Film Law and the administrative support it granted to the production and distribution of bunka eiga. Atsugi's 1938 translation of Documentary Film had been published amid this turmoil surrounding the film industry, with the opportune title Bunka eigaron (Theory of the Culture Film), a significant change that helped create hype around the text. Quite naturally, Tsumura begins his critique by attacking this inappropriate Japanese title and the confusion it caused for readers. According to Tsumura, Rotha's conception of documentary is a sub‐category of bunka eiga and not vice versa, because the former excludes newsreel and other types of nonfictional genres (e.g. science film, exploration film, and educational or lecture films), whereas the latter covers them all (Tsumura 1940: 150). For this reason, Tsumura uses dokyumentarī, the Japanese transcription of the English term documentary, to refer to Rotha's specific use of the term, and in turn keeps the more conventional Japanese term kiroku eiga (usually used to mean “documentary film” in general) for the traditional category of nonfiction film practice more generally.
At first glance, Tsumura's counterargument seems reasonable to the extent that he rightly criticizes his fellow Japanese critics' lack of “critical mind” (hihyō seishin) toward film theories imported from the West and provides a point‐by‐point critique of Rotha's text by revealing its logical flaws (Tsumura 1940: 109). However, the true incentive for Tsumura to write this essay was Rotha's relentless attack on all cinematic forms other than documentary. It is true that Rotha indicates in his introduction that he has no intention “to decry or limit the functions of the cinema as entertainment” (Rotha 1936: 15–16), but in the pages that follow he repeatedly stresses his opposition to the commercial use of the medium and the industry's exclusive reliance upon sugar‐coated delusive stories:
The fact is that under the limits defined by the present commercial system, entertainment cinema cannot possibly hope to deal either accurately or impartially from a sociological point of view with any of the really important subjects of modern existence. It is my contention, moreover, that whilst developed under the demands of financial speculation alone, cinema is unable to reach a point where its service to public interest amounts anything more valuable than, as Mr. Blumer has it, an emotional catharsis.
(Rotha 1936: 46)
Absolutely furious at this one‐sided judgment, Tsumura responds with a similarly aggressive rejection of Rotha's book project as a whole:
In other words, Rotha's book is very brave and heroic. While praising the documentary that is based on materialist socialism as the most valuable future form of cinema, it in turn smashes fiction film [geki eiga] into smithereens and verbally abuses it everywhere and as much as possible. Moreover, the way he assaults fiction film is totally reckless and idealistic, and I must confess that this is one of the reasons that gave me the guts to present my criticism of Paul Rotha.
(Tsumura 1940: 111)
Before assessing the legitimacy of Tsumura's criticism, it is necessary to pay attention to an easily overlooked, but no less significant, miscommunication at work here. Throughout his book, Rotha prefers