,
literally "petty bourgeois film" or "lower middle class film",
is a
genre
Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...
of Japanese
realist films
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of Visual arts, visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are gen ...
which focus on the everyday lives of ordinary or middle class people.
An alternate term for the is the pseudo-Japanese word , literally "common people drama",
which had been invented by Western film scholars.
The term as a definition of a specifically Japanese film genre presumably first appeared in 1932 in articles by critics Yoshio Ikeda and Ichiro Ueno.
Themes
Film historians Joseph L. Anderson and
Donald Richie define the (addressing it as ') as "
sentially a film about proletarian or lower-middle-class life, about the sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter relations within the family, about the struggle for existence,
..the kind of film many Japanese think of as being about 'you and me'."
In her book ''Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s'', Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano sees the depicting a "newly emerging modern subject, the salaried man, and his middle-class family", which "appealed to a broad cross-section of social classes", thereby helping to create "a modern national subject". Through their portrayal of social inequalities and capitalism's extended reach on daily life in the shape of company hierarchy, these films suggested a split between Japan's call for modernisation and the longing for the "mystic cohesion" of a "traditional" past. At the same time, the was criticised for a lack of genuine political content especially from the
political left.
History
The beginnings of the are assigned to the
Shochiku
is a Japanese entertainment company. Founded in 1895, it initially managed '' kabuki'' theaters in Kyoto; in 1914, it also acquired ownership of the Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. In 1920, Shochiku entered the film production industry and establis ...
film studio and its director
Yasujirō Shimazu in the 1920s.
Yasujirō Ozu
was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s.
The most pr ...
, a former assistant of Shimazu, and
Mikio Naruse
was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967.
Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("common people drama") films with f ...
are two prominent directors considered to work primarily in the field of the '.
Others include
Heinosuke Gosho and
Keisuke Kinoshita
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Ronald Berganbr>"A satirical eye on Japan: Keisuke Kinoshita" ''The Guardian'', 5 January 1999. While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and ...
.
, although having repeatedly turned to modern subjects, the oppression of women under a patriarchical system in particular, is usually not assigned to the genre canon.
Important early (and extant) examples of the are Shimazu's ''
Our Neighbor, Miss Yae'' (1934),
Ozu's ''
Tokyo Chorus'' (1931) and ''
I Was Born, But...'' (1932),
and Gosho's ''
Burden of Life'' (1935).
Naruse's 1951 film ''
Repast'' is often cited as having launched a post-
occupation revival of the '.
Gosho biographer Arthur Nolletti, Jr. regards the early 1960s as the end of the genre's golden age,
with its themes moving mainly to television.
Both he and film historian Catherine Russell see it sustained in works like the
Tora-san series.
See also
*
Tendency film
References
{{Film genres
History of film of Japan
Film genres
Mass media portrayals of the middle class